Come, join the Dance

Our Dance is an expression of joy and passion in life.

But when it is mimicked in form so as to serve some private or mutually held purpose or meaning that does not itself directly express a vitality or freedom of spirit, it is becomes a vehicle for fantasy instead of a way of true integration and renewal in life.

To dance without feeling truly moved is to ‘go through the motions of life’ and to wish one’s life away. This is within our freedom - but is not the expression of freedom that knows itself free.

There is a phrase, ‘fake it until you make it’. This can seem to be necessary at the level of form because it is only in the dance of life’s expression that we truly remember why we dance and what we are as a dancer. So if we come from the mind that has forgotten its place in the movement and joining of the music, we need to bring our willingness to the fore by living out from our trust that the willingness is there! So at the level of spirit we Are allowing ourselves to be moved by a willingness that may start small, but grows as the music finds us. Therefore, we are not really faking our presence so much as breaking the habit of a self protective withdrawal from love’s presence that characterizes a busy, self concerned and problematic approach to life.

Unless we meet with something or someone that disagrees with our take on dance, we will persist from a basis that actually inhibits spontanaity, fixes the mask and persuades us we are dancing, when we are merely fitting ourselves to a design of steps and timing to a musical pattern, without opening to ourselves, each other or the music of life.

Such empty ritual characterizes the failure of human society to love, and we sacrifice our living dance to such a god in worship of a form by which we recieve only the meanings we gave it in secret. For nothing is revealed but is simply reenacted, and we ‘get’ reconnected with  a sense of life brought in from outside ourselves, yet such that we can each remain ourselves in secret ‘together’.

The God of Living Dance is not a matter of belief, but is the true nature of our relational presence now. Fearful beliefs tend to maintain rigidity and limits over an innate and natural willingness to feel.

The feeling and discernment of wholeness is lost to us in our adoption of fear inducing thoughts or ‘perspectives’ - not because it is no longer our true nature, but because loss of trust in self and life invokes a disconnected self-surviving strategy of mind and perception which covers over and distracts us from our need and desire for healing, for renewal, for joy.

In a world that has forgot how to dance, those of us who discover that we are part of remembering for everyone - may feel invalid amongst an upside down ‘culture’ that expects us to limit our expression so as not to draw attention to - or loosen - the masks by which others ‘cope’ with the ‘reality’ of a masked love. And we may find ourselves withdrawing or limiting our expression so as not to cause disturbance.

Living a secret unshared love is not living a love, but holding some kind of potential that seems to await the right conditions in which to come forth and shine and share. But in this we become the slave to conditions. We become easily manipulated out of our shell and sent back into it - because we are not joined with the unified nature of our being.

Just as we may come to a dance and need a period of loosening and willingness in order to be picked up or found in the music, so do we need to abide in the dissonance of our sense of conflicting relationship with external conditions and our capacity of inner willingness or trust - so as to begin to discern the movement of a deeper music than the assertions and judgements we carry from our past and come into a real and felt quality of relationship with each other - and ourselves - and the life and world around us.

Renewal is not a matter of recharging our batteries so as to manage a disconnected life. Renewal is the re awakening to the always connected Life, whose dance or embodiment is an ever new expression of joy; of passion and presence, felt and shared. To this wellspring we come to drink. But as we come to the Well in willingness to serve, we become one with the water.

To be one with, is of an unspeakable intimacy, yet there is peace in it because it is natural to our being. Letting the old habit go, first requires waking up to that it is running, and that it does not serve us in the truth of what is unfolding in our lives.

It does not matter where we seem to be in our life when we feel the Call or open to a sense of Life that both lifts us from meaninglessness - yet also exposes the mind we used before to cope and manage within its limits. For life isn't about becoming valid in our own eyes but of expressing an inherent value by which we share life.

The thinking mind is a rehearsal mind, a fantasy mind. It can serve but it is not designed to lead, for in the heart-sense it is blind. When the thinking mind seems to have covered over our joy in life, we need to disengage - at least for an instant or a few moments where we find our willingness and feel for the movement of Life.

Even the tiniest whisper or touch of Life is transformative, for it gives the way of the next step in trust. We don't always seem to find the answers to the problems as we define our problems - but if we take each step in trust, we will move out from the arena in which confusion defeats our spirit.

Why? Why bother to care this much and reopen one’s heart to risk of pain of betrayal, failure and self illusion?

Because you’re worth it!

And because the actual pain of a life in isolation and masked despair is no real alternative - no matter how well hidden - you - may be.

To realise we had left our path is an awakening. It Is an expression of the path that is still beneath our feet. From such moment we can either run our script of self exclusion - or rejoin the dance.

Self inclusion is the one thing that cannot be done for us, no matter how or what is done to lead us to water, we drink or not as is our will. yet the shine and freedom and gentle nature of all who demonstrate inclusion, is part of the same Call in others.

Our true inheritance in Life is wasted when we use it for selfish ends - because it is in the shared value that we remember its Source. The Music of our very being abides with us while we engage our fantasies of self and attempt to dress them and make them dance to our own tune. Now we can hardly hear tell what is, from what we thought we wanted it to be. So we put aside the desire to be a one who knows and open to being one that flows. In the presence of our willing now-ness - there Is no conflict or confusion. Join then, the Dance, if you will!

In Peace

Brian

Running naked in the storm and dancing in the rain

I met the following quote

"Life isn't about coming in from the storm.  It's about getting out there and dancing in the rain!" (source unknown)

(also quoted as "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass it's about learning to dance in the rain")

When I read this it reminds me - amongst other things - of once when at an early Dance Camp East, when a great thunderstorm arose.
Being at camps was for me also an immersion in the energetic and vitality of Life - whole bodily embracing the qualities of life in the natural world - rather than merely pigeon holing experience from an inwardness of past impressions and thoughts.
And the charge and exuberance of the storm - and then the pouring sheets of rain, had me suddenly throwing off my clothes and running in the rain in pure delight!
I often ran for joy in rain at occasions afterwards - but this first occasion was of such an inspiration and spontaneity that I remember feeling - "this could be where dance originates, for the very power of Life Moves and is given expression in movement".

Being Moved is very different from submerging self in a so called animal nature - because it is in and of an open awareness rather than letting urge take over in order to gratify a sense of need or appetite.

In the path of opening as a dancer - as one who is moved, called or inspired, I have had all sorts of openings in all sorts of situations, that are part of restoring or growing a capacity to dance. I'm not talking technical stuff here - I'm talking of an integrated being - though of course ease also allows more free attention to bring to nuance of form if that is called for.

These openings in life are primary spiritual intimacies where inside and outside fall away, as irrelevant or without currency.  Sometimes they are served by outer conditions that support or at least do not block the impulse of Life - such as a camp in which the above COULD be allowed without any fear of freaking anyone out or merely making spectacle of exposure. Or a held circle where emotional release COULD be allowed in the same light. But always the primary condition seems a receptivity that is lost to us if we take on a life of inwardness and self concern.

It's hard to dance in a suit of armour!
Or as Sydney Carter put it; "Its hard to dance with the devil on ye back!"

in Gratitude

Brian

PS - I remember also as a 4 or 5 year old with my friend Robert, in his garden, both taking off clothes and running and yelling in warm summer rain. I think we ended up in the sand pit until Robert's Mum carried us back in and dressed us on her kitchen counter - Something of that moment with Robert and his Mum was one of the earliest memories I have of consciousness stirring in me. Of noticing consciousness.

I felt to write this after being given more information via circledancingfriends about the Elm Tree Dance to the song: Kā man klājas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Lv9CqaJy4
and also dance steps at:
http://www.joannamacy.net/theelmdance.html
and http://www.gaia.iinet.net.au/ElmDance.htm
My quintessential Elm Tree dance experience was when teaching a 'spontaneous' session outside in the sunset and rising stars at the first Passages Camp. (In England in the early 90s).
It was a spontaneous session in that I wasn't officially there as a teacher or in the program, but that I felt pregnant with the energies and qualities of the process of the camp and called out by the beauty of the feeling of the sunset. It felt that the heart of the camp had opened. Dancing out in such a glorious setting and in an already relaxed trust served as an expression of what was current - of feeling life as an intimacy that arose through our camping and being together, and which carried within it a sense of innocence or simple delight in the moment.

We finished with the Elm - in a hug and then instead of breaking off, we found ourselves forming a spiral hug that wound around one end and held all in embrace. The silence and connectedness was tangible - and then there were sobs from someone in the middle, so I said something (from the outer arc of the spiral) like - "are you ok - can you breathe in there?" and the one whose heart was in release replied, "Breathe? - I feel like I am breathing for the first time in my life!".
The blessing was felt and shared without adding word or ritual.


As it transpired - even though I held back the dance until after the programmed event started, and did so without any pre advertisement or notice, it still happened that a large number didn't go to the programmed event but did join in the dance.
As a result, there was deep disappointment and consequent blame directed at me for sabotaging the program, from the camp organiser whose heart was in running a camp where his passion could find expression in its own right - (instead of being a peripheral event at the big Dance Camp where Circle dance was the main focus). But he didn't communicate any of this to anyone until after it didn't go as he envisioned, and somehow managed to manifest his fears rather than his joy. I was asked not to return to those camps and was branded a separatist - which was not a term of endearment but of exclusion.

That was all very long ago - and yet the trust and willingness, to honour the movement of life in me, and finding it serves at a deep level, and yet also activates a script in the world of exclusion is a familiar one. I embrace the experiences of exclusion in my life as opportunities to uncover otherwise hidden judgement and release it from my mind- but that doesn't mean I do not feel pain. It means I choose not to make stories of grievance and suffer Self-exclusion as a result of self indulgence.

These days I sing the Elm Tree song for my dancers.  And the quality of opening through a cut heart into a deeper inclusion is in the song - yet held so gently.
There is an accidental 'meaning' in the song  just before the pause and the high notes where its sounds like 'oh feel this now'.
It is one that I accept as a gift of my Spirit regardless of that that is not what is really being sung. For the denial and fear of feeling is the exclusion of our own capacity for joy in life now - and to feel and flow and be released of exclusion and fear and conflict, is to breathe anew.

(Managing the denial of the heart or feeling being is a heavy burden of misplaced responsibility)

The true Heart has its own language - secret to the mind of command and control - which is blind by design. The sharing and moving through dance is a vehicle for such communication and communion of Life.  Breathing together.

(Elm dance note: Our groups often come into a hug as part of the dance and not just at the end).

There are all sorts of aspects to the nuances of the form of a dance - but there is also the issue of whether the form is mere surface, or whether it serves and is embraced as a vehicle. I feel the latter is often easily lost in the world - in any inspired cultural expression.

Shaking hands, hugging, dancing - even making love! - all can become an empty ritual of meaningless facade onto which any meanings may be applied or agreed BUT without sharing the Meaning of love.

It is our innate and inescapable responsibility - or nature - to be the love that we are. This isn't a burden of yet another impossible task for management-mind to get a handle on. It is simply staying present in our inalienable capacity to receive, to feel and to express.  And seems to be a matter of acceptance and peace amidst whatever moment of life we find we are in - that we feel as we feel - and - be gentle with ourselves and each other in the way of our expression.

"Music soothes the savage breast".  (this also often slips into using the term beast).

I feel music offers an alchemical process of uncovering the yearning beneath the hurt, beneath the anger, beneath the triggering thoughts and perceptions.  When as Rumi says, BE the yearning, we will find and be found in an Inclusion before 'the world as we make it' clicks into gear.  And NOW we have a perspective from which to choose anew. Without such a willingness of awakening beyond a personal protectiveness of misidentified thoughts, there can be no true restoration and no renewal, but only an endlessly rebranded repetition of the old rituals that sacrifice or deny our feeling being - our joy in life.

I feel to write openly of what is usually held secret because our human world is becoming very fearful and unstable in the directions and focus of its intent, its media and its thought. I do not feel to be defined by fear for it is the condition in which we are most easily deceived - but I do feel to be alarmed into waking up. Not to reaction - but to uncover and align in the perspective of my heart's truth. That on which a true foundation can be lived out from - whatever the world seems to become.

Seeing the related Elm Dance web pages linked above relating to other cultures joining in a deeper solidarity of heart despite suffering the oppressions of callous, careless and divisive intent, I feel, (as I long have) - that the dance that is seeded in my life is not a hobby or an activity in search of members, and still less a business - but is a path of transformation and renewal - available to be discovered by any who are willing to step out from their closet into a deeper trust.

Presence and passion communicate directly and energetically. And a lack of presence and passion communicates itself no less. The 'what' of what we do is either something consciously real to us - to which we bring our heart's committment - or is something we do in attempt to make ourselves real to ourselves and others. But we never did or could or can make, determine or define the reality of our awareness. We accept and be aligned with it as it Is, or, we imagine it as it isn't and experience our own definitions as real - even though reality remains - as it Is.

Such is the habit of living imaginatively in thought, that it has virtually (sic) replaced our real life.  But in all sorts of little ways, Awareness rises to life, and can lead out from confusion. Joining in a circle of dance offers a very simple way to be touched by an experience of unified being, in the company of others also touched. But if it is reduced to achieving conformity of form as a privately defined sense of belonging, held within a tacit agreement not to join, nor become present in our joy - then it has become like the seeds, that were sown on the path, but there was no soil so that the birds came and ate them - and there was no crop.

In Peace

Brian

"God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.  Each note is a need coming
through one of us, a passion, a longing-pain. Remember the lips where
the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it.
BE YOUR NOTE."   

-Rumi