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We came whirling out of nothingness, scattering stars like dust. The stars made a circle, and in the middle, we dance. - Rumi I now direct your attention to the whirling dervishes, engaged in a spinning dance of prayer and meditation, a practice inspired by the 13th century Sufi Persian poet, Jalaluddin Rumi. The dervishes wear a tombstone hat which symbolizes the death of their ego. They wear huge white skirts (the “shroud of their ego”) which rise and fall like ballroom skirts but with no bouncing waltz playing in the background. In fact, no music at all, just the sounds of their chanting call out to God, and the whirring sounds of their bodies and skirts, spinning like planets, pulling