This thing you do… Tantra… all this spirituality and religion stuff… God, what’s it all about?
I never imagined I would find myself living in the desert of the United Arab Emirates.
The community I moved into last month was built by four brothers who grew up in what was then Palestine. They modeled it after the village of their childhood; not just a neighborhood, but a true community.
There are stables within a short walk from every villa and apartment with a dozen or so horses, greenhouses with communal herb gardens, and a walking trail where free-roaming chickens, ducks and peacocks wander without rules.
There are two schools here, and on my morning walks, I watch as children can’t resist feeding the animals or chasing the chickens, while their parents do their best to guide them back to the path before the morning bell.
At the heart of this community is a large open courtyard with six restaurants; Thai, Japanese, Mexican, Italian, Arabic and fusion. There’s also a café beside a shop that only sells locally produced honey. After my walk through the gardens, I often find myself sipping a latte on the café terrace, watching how the light turns the shop window amber and gold.
None of the restaurants serve alcohol, and somehow, this makes it clearer that this courtyard belongs to the children. On weekends, from morning until late at night, the air fills with their play and laughter; interrupted only by the sounds from the nearby Mosque.
Come to prayer… come to prayer…
Friday is the mosques’ busiest day. Worshipers from outside the community arrive, red and white cones are set up to create extra parking. The mosque overflows, and so outside, in the shade of trees and along sidewalks, strangers kneel together on prayer mats, foreheads touching the ground in unison.
They come to prayer. And when they leave, always, seeming to walk a beat slower. Their gait a little lighter, as though the air itself has turned more tender and more merciful.
Also in the courtyard is the yoga studio where I offer the tantric meditations. On Friday nights, I hold space for a small group of people, most of whom are only beginning their inner journey.
While holding space is always a blessing for me, there’s something particularly special about witnessing someone meditate for the first time and experiencing some of the deepest inner states; their utter astonishment and delight at discovering what is available to all of us.
One of my students made a joke the other night of how good my job was; of all the kinds of work a person could do in this world, mine was like giving out free ice cream to children.
And yes, sometimes, it feels that way. At other times, it is harrowing. Those who have experienced tragedy, grief, deep enmity and buried their pain; all this suffering must be faced before it can be released. This is the work. And free ice cream.
And then, on the rarest of occasions, the work is simply sacred, in the purest sense of the word.
On those nights, I simply bear witness with heart agape.
This past Friday night was one such occasion.
It wasn’t a burning bush. No one was miraculously healed, no one levitated or spoke in tongues.
It was something far simpler and pedestrian and yet still caused me to hold back tears.
Seven of us sat in a circle on the wooden floor of the courtyard yoga studio. A few flower petals had been placed at the head of everyone’s mat. The room was dimly lit. The air carried the scent of earthy incense while the sound of children playing flowed in from the courtyard.
In front of me, a harmonium and my travel alter; a small embroidered fabric with cherished images.
I had finished the invocation and guided the group into meditation.
I watched on as everyone descended deeper into the silence. For some, the gentlest of flowing movements began. For others, the softest of smiles. Faces becoming ageless, skin beginning to shine.
In these moments it sometimes happens that people experience spontaneous movements or sudden sounds as the journey into peace touches points of catharsis. But not on this night. The peace only got deeper for everyone, including me. The pull was getting ever stronger, the will to resist dissolving like a sandcastle into the waves.
Each breath became ever subtler, receding and withdrawing to its source.
Those things we all fight for each and every day, that drive to survive and thrive along with it, fading into the still of this night. There is no doing on this tantric path. There is, simply, surrendering to the great seduction at the very core of all life, the longing to go home.
Then, the prayer from the mosque began pouring into the space.
It was the first night of Ramadan; the night of power.
My heart has become capable of every form:
For gazelles a meadow, a cloister for monks,
For the idols, sacred ground, Kaaba for the circling pilgrim,
The tables of the Torah, the book of the Qur’an.
I follow the religion of Love:
Wherever its caravan turns, that is my belief and my faith.
– Ibn ʿArabī
Every land carries its own vibration. It’s not just the landscape that shapes a country’s essence; it’s the traditions of its people, the resonance of their values, the sound of their heart beats, the frequency of their traditional food, and maybe most of all, the energy of their prayers.
For a brief moment on Friday night, it was as though the entire desert outside swelled with divine love. And in that moment, the mosque became something else for me. A bastion of love and light, holding the children in the courtyard and the adults in the studio in its protective embrace.
Inside the room, I watched as the people in front of me fell into the deepest state of silence possible, while what felt like wave after wave of ethereal goodness moved through the room.
Later, after guiding everyone back and resting, some people shared about their experience.
I felt waves of peace coming at me, a man said. It was like waves were washing away year after year of old tensions. I remember at one point thinking, oh… there goes 2006!
But mostly we sat in comfortable silence together. Until the moment that moved me to tears.
A man spoke who had been coming regularly. He recently started bringing a friend to the gatherings. This was a friend he cared deeply for; and when he spoke softly, his voice quivered with devotion and gratitude. He looked at his friend’s face, pointing at him awkwardly and offering shyly:
Therein lies the peace of God.
And indeed, his friend was lit from within. His skin glowed in its softness, his smile warm and effortless, and his tender heart radiating the peace of that which is eternal.
A peace that does not mark the absence of conflict but rather the absolute ground of being itself. The peace from which all things arise and to which all things return.
The friend had come to a courtyard yoga studio for a simple end-of-the-week meditation, only to get swept away in the currents of worship echoing from the mosque, on a holy night. Then finding himself washed on to the shores of the infinite, his mind not yet able to comprehend the magnitude of this unfolding.
I didn’t want to come out, he said. I wanted to stay there, he said.
It happens like this sometimes in tantric meditation. The ocean currents of consciousness coalesce just so. The moon and the planets align in exactly the right way. The mosque begins its prayers at exactly the right time. And the fraternal love and prayers of a single man profoundly impact the heart of another.
Come to prayer… come to prayer…
It is not the kind of life-saving miracle that will make the day’s headlines.
But one that is now etched in my heart.
This oh-so-ordinary miracle of love. One person caring so passionately about the wellbeing of another. A man becoming lit from within on the first night of Ramadan to the sounds of prayer on an otherwise typical Friday night in a Palestinian-inspired village in the middle of the desert, complete with a sushi bar and free-roaming peacocks.
To all my Muslim friends, Ramadan Mubarak!
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