Monday 12 January 2009

Introduction#1 - What is Circle Dancing and why do I share it?

Circle dancing uses folk and contemporary dancing with an emphasis on the supportive atmosphere that comes from joining and moving together in dances to music from around the world.

As well as traditional dances from the Balkans, Europe, the Middle East and beyond, there are new dances to all kinds of music. We usually hold some intention to become attentive within - as might be found in Yoga or Tai Chi - and we are not performance related nor lubricated by drink as in a social dances. As a result there grows an inner sense of integration that also reflects a sense of communion or connectedness in the group. Many of our dances are gentle and meditative.

This is also why it is sometimes known as 'Sacred Circle Dance' - not because the dances themselves are necessarily or overtly sacred - (though they may be to some degree or other) - but from the intention with which they are danced. Over the last 25 years or so, the network of dancers and teachers has grown to express many different approaches - for it is a movement made of individual initiatives and has no central body or structure.

Where many activities aim at attaining something or getting somewhere, I feel circle dance works well to remember and express something that is already true - and to grow it. For the heart’s appreciation of life is easily neglected in our business and we become distracted.

In this sense circle dancing is re-creational, a presently remembering, renewing and therefore harmonizing of life - in mind, body and spirit. It can be pitched for any kind of occasion and uses dances of every kind of mood that can be joined with at many levels - and is inclusive in it's orientation.

Our culture has tended to emphasise 'the individual' to the exclusion of our true and common interest. It invites us to consume and acquire, as if to do so is life's purpose. It also asserts and persists such a mentality through our subscription to it’s thinking - rather than allow the sharing of a greater participation in life that includes and actually fulfills our individuality in a felt relationship.

Circle dancing can be used as a tool to rediscover that we are feeling beings rather than emototional management programs. All things can but serve the purpose to which they are put. And where there is a willingness to discover, life reveals itself in ways that call us awake - and we feel the joy or the peace of it.

Yet it is enough to join a dance and discover for oneself - in our own way and time - and there is no need to be intellectual about the dancing nor to be overly preoccupied with learning steps - they really do come easily as one relaxes - and many dances are simple patterns that the body learns easily.

I share dances in a relaxed and musical way with a minimum of ‘problem solving’ and bring a willingness to find the ways that work for us in the moment we find ourselves. I also often sing and play for the dance, and in this as in my teaching, I work within a act of trust - which brings forth a different music than a product or performance.

From our lives comes song and music that expresses 'what it is to be human' - in its fullest sense. In gratitude and appreciation of living, we join to honour and celebrate life and therefore each other and our world: we dance.

Insofar as our world presents us problems, needs and difficulties to meet and find solution, they may be met from a calmer perspective than by mere reaction - in which we often polarise conflict or diminish ourselves to feel ‘safer’. "Stop the world I want to get off!" is surely an expression of desiring to regain a grounded sense of sanity and value. Circle dancing is a for me part of a way of living from such an intent.

And this is actually touching into the dimension that we all need - in every sphere of activity. Because without choosing ways to remember, we simply remain lost in our own judgements and fears - which always distort our perception and become self fulfilling experience.

No amount of thinking or application of law or force or money or effort can make a welcome for each other arise in our own hearts. So compelled are we to thinking and judging - (in the name of 'self' protection as may be) - that we can scarce recognise each other unless we have shared something together for a while.

Yet when any old judgemental armouring falls off - we regain a sense of light and movement. A freedom within whose song is joy. Even a moment of such can lift our day - and our demeanour is always more communicative than we know - in our family, and work and community.

Yes, we generally join hands, and dance in a circle or line - and find freedom to simply be moved by the musical moment - which with discernment we grow to appreciate so much that was hidden before.

At this point, perhaps humanity is at the brink of choosing to continue to think alone - with all the miscommunication and struggles that that brings - or release control enough to let life happen!

The dancer within is not the one who can get the steps - it is the one who hears the music and lets it express through them as the steps. There are some dances that are as simple as walking and swaying - it is not a complex thing - but more a sense of being danced by life.

This is where words have to be put aside and let 'that which knows' lead the way.
It isn't a mystery - it's life dancing!

Thursday 8 January 2009

The Network

I have a sense of disconnections when I think of the circle dance network.
A sense that 'network' - means disconnected bits, as if 'free to do one's own thing' but without any real grounding. Yet I suppose that's may also be a way to generate experience that will cause the need for grounding to be sought. After all we do not have a strong grounded tradition already in place that holds us in guidance for a life inspired.

To an extent 'market forces' regulate some aspects of life - in that if there is no life in it - it withers from not being given attention - because it doesn't work. But while anyone believes they can get from it - it will be invested in until the bubble bursts.

Yet our own market led society is not an example of the living truth being more subscribed to or attractive than 'masked ploys to self furtherance and preservation'. (See my last post re living truth - I'm not talking about beliefs or ideologies or asserted positions or definitions).

Birds of a feather flock together.
We do not always feel a kinship or belonging with what others choose to do - but if we do not look to our own love that it express through us as we find opportunity to share it - it 'dies'.

This could be choreographing dances that some will abhor - or it could be that it expresses as most meticulous and demanding demonstrations and attention brought to sharing dances that some are simply not attuned to appreciating. But surely, when the intent is greater than merely feeding selfishness - then it carries a tone that some others will feel and join with. How could it be otherwise?

Let the wheat and tares grow together until harvest.
This is a way of saying that there are times to attend only the good and trust the harvest to sort - because the attempt to remove the tares damages the wheat (the good). Harvest can be seen as a future event - yet can also be seen as the light by which we discern in our own life that which undermines or denies the good, from that which sustains or welcomes it. For the sole purpose of relinquishing one in favour of being whole in the other.

Hate the sin - not the 'sinner'.
The urge to see the 'bad' as external to us and thus exclude it - to punish, attack or ridicule or blank - is deeply embedded in human thinking. The 'voice' that calls for this is a lie and needs to be truly seen for what it is - or it will control us unawares and perpetuate life-as-war.

There are many seeming levels and facets to human consciousness and one could say humanity has been the exploring and expression of these. Humans have or will sooner or later do most anything that they can imagine doing and which attracts them - even if it does so subliminally via fear. What we give attention to is in effect what we feed and call forth - reaping as we sow.

Of course we don't experience ourselves free to act without consequence and our behaviours are usually brought into social rules that keep some degree of order in which consciousness can grow and learn.

Healthy plants do not attract pests.

If carelessness becomes acceptable currency - then love in all its attributes is obscured.
Carelessness is un grounded, lacking presence - a kind of sleepwalking.
It is a call for correction and education - not judgement in self righteousness.

I do have a sense of so many who are awake and active in the appreciation and enjoyment of joining in music and dance. We all have particular preferences or callings and are thus the pallet through which a greater life expresses - and reaches out to others - than can be defined or contained in single approach.

Network - I think - originally meant a connecting or series of connections that were not necessarilly hierarchical. Yet there are nodes or hubs or servers that are giving into the larger community and I don't see why they cant be working at apparently different levels and yet share the peace - and call themselves what they will. But be given definition by what you are devoted to and not by what you are against - or the endarkenment persists.

Disappointment is a way that truth taps us on the shoulder to point out that we set up the appointment according to our personal expectations - and life did not do as we wanted. This is a great opportunity to invite the Spirit within to offer its curriculum where ours failed. But if you miss it - don't worry - it is like our dance - it come around again and yet again until we join the dance with both feet.

Sunday 4 January 2009

A Peace train of thoughts

Does not each one of us have a particular perspective – coloured by our particular history?
This can seem a handicap and can become a curse, when it fuels human conflicts – but it can become a special gift when we use the same goad to judge and exclude as a deeper opportunity to teach and learn peace.

We share one life – yet we each ‘see’ - or interpret - though a lens of personal investments.
What life is – as awareness and feeling – is common to us all – whether we elect to acknowledge it or not.
But we tend to become identified with a restlessness of thought and reaction in which we are often not very directly in touch with feeling and knowing anything. We become more or less adept at managing the unmanageable by whatever means works for life as we experience it. But in our dance and in life we also have moments of flowing connected being - or glimpses of a perspective that allows and celebrates life in its instant to be just as it is.

When anyone dis-covers anything of peace, by whatever means, it will always be an experience that is shared rather than a privately asserted reality.
In its moment, there is a quality of life that is neither compulsive, driven, manipulative or exploiting – nor anxious, self regarding, problematic or defensive.

The part of our mind that seeks to control usually reasserts itself and obscures our peace or whole souled-ness – and may well even do so in the attempt to ‘understand’, (control), exactly such matters as I address here. But even as the dance comes from the music – so our understandings need to come from our heart. First they are felt or intuited – and then we find ‘clothes’ or thoughts and phrases to fit them in the particular circumstance we are in. Peace is congruency - when what we express is one with what we are.

I find that the beauty of our dancing has a context that invites such a shared experience. There are innumerable joys in its shoots and fruits – but if it is not rooted in a willingness to join in a spirit of peace then it may be using the forms of dance to protect against real or shared experience. Rather than make such a statement into a basis of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ judgements – is it not enough to say that we can discover a greater life than we thought we knew before – right in place where our unrecognised judgement before had worked to obscure it?

The ‘awakening heart’ cannot be anyone other than you yourself as you are, and have always been.
Not as our thinking presents its story to oneself or the world, but simply present without apology or justification.

The forms that joy delights in or expresses through are many but their light is one. In this recognition we naturally find willingness to an inclusive mutuality even in difference.
But in our tendency to defensiveness we are quick to see what is ‘wrong with’ the other or them or it. This seems to come naturally – yet it is a learned reaction.

In a desire for peace as the condition of a true appreciation of life we discover that this old habit works against us. It has to be owned and moved past or we are in effect choosing against our peace and against our own true desire. The value of peace is that it is the condition in which all things find their true relationship. What does it profit a man or woman if they gain an orientation to the world – yet lose their very capacity to feel and know the truth? Peace is far more than an absence of war. It is the unspeakable dynamic presence of life in our heart and mind as one. Unspeakable humanly – yet speaks itself perfectly where we are still enough to listen in our heart.

I have found life to be an ongoing opportunity for deepening and revealing the heart.
To be restored to a fundamental trust in our own life is to be restored to sanity – because it is the condition in which we are not playing games with our mind.
Yet I can only release the ‘obstructions’ of which I am becoming aware.

When I first danced I became aware (the dance brought to my notice) obstruction to reaching up, to moving with grace, to accepting beauty in myself, to trusting that I could be accepted and belonging amongst a community of people.... I am sure that if I meditated on this I could make a long list of ‘obstructions’ to the flow of relationship, inspiration, and expression of joy and connectedness. I am still becoming aware of them almost 20 years later – for whatever seems to rise to limit or interrupt the music, the dance and the channel of inspiration – comes to mind to be relaxed and released.

But the principle is that there are ‘places’ in us where we hesitate, hold back, disallow, withdraw or contract from the field of relational existence. These instances are not sinful or bad or blameworthy – though they may be associated sometimes with such confusion. They are like an old program running that no longer fulfils. However the program is not really the behaviour itself – but the beliefs that give rise to it. A sense of unworthiness for love is somewhere to be found in that which obstructs our innate or natural joy. To feel the courage to open into the dance even so is an opening to whole-ing – a healing in that unnecessary armouring or outmoded strategies of defence fall away and let me move!

It is a delicate matter in moving from a mode of apparent self protection into one of self trust and expression, and every case is an individual relationship because it has to be a dance of trust where willingness to enter or accept relationship is freely chosen. The condition in which peace can be discerned in our hearts and minds is always one of freedom from judgement. This is not to say noticing ‘judgements equals my bad!’ – but that they represent an old program running that no longer fulfils – and the habit is being brought to re-evaluation. Judgements have no power to be more than momentary distractions unless they are invested in, subscribed to and fed with attention and identification. It is quite possible to be more committed to being right than being genuinely happy in real relationship – but only while knowing not what you do.

To stay in with the music – with the hall or place you are in, with the hands you hold, and the group of dancers – when experiencing the result of judgement in oneself – is ego transcending. Feeling the block but not engaging fight or flight – but feeling within for a better way. - a way to become present with. The external will always mirror within and in solidarity with our dancing neighbour, we are growing a truer sense of self worth. To ‘love one’s neighbour as oneself’ is not a social manipulation – but is an expression of simple truth. The world will blind us to this while we fear love and trust fear to keep us safe. But my witness is that we are given steps as we are willing that are within our range, such that we become more grounded, calmer and grow in a natural kindness of heart.

As civilised people, we do not tend to express our naked thought and feeling openly – but rather we mask and suppress and tend to dissociate such that we are often strategically self serving. We can and generally do make society like this but it tends to be a negative cooperation: a joining in order to minimise discomfort in terms of whatever ideas are the power or fashion of the day; a joining against something defined or inferred as bad, dangerous or hateful. This is not joining in life but in illusion!

Truth is not a matter of argument or definition – nothing to think about here! Truth as I am using it is the renewal and refreshment of our spirit – the orientation of our heart’s desire. It doesn't matter if there is any such thought as mine here in anyone’s mind – but it does materialise tangible results when anyone finds or brings willingness to recognise and accept Life’s Invitation - and take a step in a greater music.

I love so many things about joined up dancing – sharing in common – celebrating what it is to be human in a larger context than boy meets girl – or boy meets lots of drum’n bass in anonymous darkness and flashing lights. But I also know that the Spirit is also right there wherever we are - offering an optimum path from wherever we seem to be – like a GPS offering the route anew with every wrong turning. So I trust that – just as I sometimes hesitate or back off or become confused amidst the willingness to live and love – so too do you all. But the heart is like a compass that we did not make and therefore cannot unmake.

Things may often seem to get worse before they can get better – perhaps because we do not want to accept responsibility because we equate it with burden or blame.
But we are not responsible to actually do the peace or do the love – but merely to become willing to undo the blocks to such presence and make it welcome.
To share common purpose with a happy heart is not difficult! To open our hearts to those who seem to want or do differently than us can seem impossible but the undoing of obstructions arises spontaneously from the willingness to look upon them exactly as they are – and not as they are presented.

I hold the experience dear of being guided and supported as a dancer within the dance itself and see this as ‘keeping the channel open’ in the whole body-mind.
It often looks a lot like having deep and serious fun – yet just as we are - and on purpose.