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When I whirl, I disappear

There is something about Meera’s love for Krishna that has always felt like a beautiful kind of divine intoxication. She did not love Krishna like someone loves a God sitting on a distant throne. She loved Him like a woman hopelessly, shamelessly and completely in love with her Beloved. She sang for Him, waited for Him, spoke to Him, surrendered to Him. The world could call it devotion, poetry or even madness, but for Meera, Krishna was not an idea to be worshipped. He was the one her heart had chosen.

And when I think of Meera’s love—the kind that makes the Beloved the very rhythm of one’s existence—I find that same feeling beautifully expressed in the whirling of a Sufi dervish. Different religion, different way of expression, yet somehow the heart carries the same sound of love.

The dervish puts on his white robes, closes his eyes, raises one hand towards the heavens and begins to turn. Slowly at first, and then with beautiful surrender. His robes begin to float, the music rises, and the world around him seems to disappear. You could call it a ritual, meditation or dance.

But perhaps the dervish would simply call it love.

Because the Sufi does not seem to love God from a safe distance. He loves Him like a lover loves his Beloved—with longing, tenderness, patience and surrender. He does not need to see Him to feel Him. His entire body seems to say, “I know You are there.”

Maybe every turn is a silent “I miss You.” Maybe every breath is an “I am here.” Maybe the music is simply his heart speaking a language words cannot.

One hand reaches towards the heavens, as though receiving something from his Beloved, while the other extends towards the earth, as though giving that love away. Suspended between heaven and earth, he receives and gives, while his heart remains fixed on the One he loves.

Meera sang for Krishna. The dervish whirls for the Beloved.

One loses herself in a song. The other loses himself in a movement.

And perhaps that is where they meet—not in religion, but in love.

Because when you are truly in love, you don’t always need an explanation. You simply want to be close.

Perhaps that is why Sufi poetry feels so much like a love letter. God is not merely the One to be obeyed; He is the Beloved to be longed for. And the soul becomes the lover—restless, intoxicated and willing to lose itself in that love.

Round and round he goes, without actually going anywhere, until the music becomes everything, the world becomes a blur, and even his own existence begins to fade.

You don’t disappear because you are lost.
You disappear because you have finally found someone worth losing yourself in.

He feels the Beloved not as an answer arriving from somewhere else, but as a nearness that was quietly accompanying every step.

He is simply loving.

Loving until the body becomes movement, movement becomes music, music becomes silence, and silence becomes the presence of the Beloved.

When the whirl finally stops, the world returns—the floor beneath his feet, the air against his skin, the music fading into silence. Yet something in him has shifted.

He has not arrived anywhere. He has simply come home.

And perhaps that is what makes true love so difficult to understand.

We spend so much of our lives asking love to come closer, to belong to us, to reassure us, to prove itself. But what if love was never about possession?

What if loving someone truly meant being so completely submitted that even distance could not make you feel separate?

Meera loved without needing Krishna to stand before her. The dervish turns without needing God to appear.

And perhaps that leaves us with a question worth carrying:

If love still needs to possess, prove, or be returned—have we really loved the Beloved, or have we only loved the feeling of being loved?

Maybe true love begins where the need to receive ends.

Maybe that is why the dervish keeps turning.

Not to find God at the end of a journey.

But to find love with his Beloved at every step along the way till he reach the end