A Sufi of my acquaintance once told me, “the goal of being a Sufi is To the state of being drunk on divine ecstasy whilealsoremembering where you parked the car and where you stashed the car keys.” A non-Sufi friend, who went to school next to the largest Sufi community in the United States, said, “yeah, they do the divine ecstasy really well. Driving? Not so much.”
Early in one’s practice, (or apparently when returning to it after a long absence) it is easy to reach the state where the chi becomes a powerful fire of energy on the skin. The room itself becomes electric, and one becomes astounded at the potential of what one can do with all this energy that you yourself have brought up and mastered.
And then one realizes, “Wait, which posture am I doing again? What comes next?” Then the power flees away. It’s gone, as if it had never been. And I think, “was it ever really here?”
It’s not until I go to the shower, ten minutes later, that I realize I became drenched with sweat in only 10 short minutes of “exercise.”
