Cultural awareness and responsibility?

(This article was written in a context of discussing the issues of paying for legal copies of the music we use - as opposed to sharing between ourselves or downloading 'shared' illegal copies - especially when such musicians are part of providing the culture we value and enjoy).









The argument for not undermining our own commonwealth and well-being seems self evident to me. But we each draw our lines in different places - and grow in our willingness amidst a culture of support. Is money the only currency of exchange? I think not. Sometimes the gift shares on, but not backwards. I certainly see that with my parents gifts to me that then get shared on to my own children - who like me have no real sense of that yet - as they haven't had children themselves. When the gift is not shared, it is forgotten amidst a life of substitution.

If we try and impose our own current view on others (by implied guilt), we just might get others to conform by the letter - but not in the spirit. Or, we may instead become a symbol of holier-than-thou-ness - or 'political correctness' against which there will seem to be a freedom in reaction - albeit in the dark of a hidden activity.

To meet those who hold a clear sense of value and boundary in a way that is congruent with their own integrity is to meet a conscious intent. They may or may not inspire the same outer forms of adherence - but they will hold a tone or quality of being in the culture of their dealings with others and this CAN be picked up and can grow in a freedom to feel and discover for ourselves.

The freedom of acting from an innate integrity is altogether different from the sense of freedom got in reaction to perceived restrictions. It is relief from a dissonance of being.

In the world, there is the Gift, that is felt and shared, if you will, in the Spirit.  And there are the practicalities.
Using our gifts for our private self interest may be normal to our (more modern western) culture - but this is because individualism has usurped the cooperative structures of family, clan and tribal cultures - some aspects of which we would no doubt find greatly oppressive to our modern sense of freedom to express ourselves individually.

I feel that a lot of my life has been exploring and uncovering a sense of self within relationship - rather than of asserting self amidst what might seem to be many conflicting or competing relationships. In any group or shared purpose, there is the ongoing awareness of the balance of self interest with group interest - and as one learns to tune in deeper than merely thinking about what seems to be going on and feels or discerns within - at the same time as looking without - there is the allowing of experience of unified being - in which the outer and the inner are as one - without the interjection of a thinking strategy.

We often - I trust! - experience something of this in our music and our dance - for here is an arena in which we are more readily willing to temporarily let go of 'control' into a relaxed and trusting appreciation of the flowing Moment.

The Gift is in the Spirit - but we may exclusively associate it with the forms of the music and the dance. But they are the conditions in which we are more willing to relax.  There are no words for Unified Experience - not because it is private to each mind - but because it is beyond the scope of any private mind and beyond the limits of symbolic or conceptual representation.

But love is one of the words that can been used. Unlike human attempts to DO love - which express a wish or a transactional attempt to negotiate or manipulate oneself or others, the love that is uncovered as shared be-ing is not personally generated or directed.

An unconditional love, is simply a willingness to be love in any or all conditions - and this may in practice be a willingness to NOT choose the path of withdrawing or withholding, but instead to watch and wait for the prompts or sense of integrated direction that rises to awareness BECAUSE we are listening directly to a subtlety of being that our old thought habit disallows.

Like the circle dance, it doesn't matter if we lose our way or fall of into confusion, because we can simply stop struggling, tread water in a manner that is kind to our neighbours and look for where we can come in again so as to simply rejoin the dance. IT didn't go away while we had our confusion and nor ultimately, did we.

But the living dance rejoined is a sense of connectedness that restores, renews and enlivens.
Even as recordings can substitute for a live musical relationship, so too can a sense of  'owning and knowing' music and dance undermine the direct appreciation of the Gift.

There are all sorts of ways in which we could be a purist in terms of what we do or do not accept or cultivate in our lives, but this is not always expressing a true wisdom if it makes us rigidly inflexible and judgemental. What allows or invites a Sacred dimension to our music and dance is not necessarily anything overtly present in the form, but is the conscious receptivity and intent, of both heart and mind, to the Gift which is tangibly shared and by which we are moved, not only around the circle - but shifted in our perspective.

The sharing of the Gift is always its strengthening and its extending. "Go forth and multiply" is an attribute of the  embodiment of expression. But what we choose to give value to, will be what is 'shared' - even if it is undermining of our peace and wellbeing. For this reason, I would always not want judgemental processes to block awareness of what is actually active as the current choice of focus and attention. For I can only release bad habits of which I have become aware at the level of choice - which is always deeper than the level of judging and self presentation.

Scientists need to release what they think they know in order to observe and thus describe what is actually occurring - otherwise they know that they tend to 'see' or interpret according to pet theories or unconscious beliefs, So they learn be curious amidst situations that normally one would be personally reactive in. We are all scientists in this sense if we want to observe our own mental and emotional processes so as to make an always fresh conscious choice as to what does or does not express and witness for what we really value.

Our bodies can learn a pattern and take it from our mind - but if we let our mind take over the true function of the heart - which feels whole bodily - we drift off beam with conditioned reactions to life that are partial, past their sell by date - and represent yesterday's stepping stone rather than today's discovery.


When I learned to dance our way of dancing, I also learned about learning - because the practice was an ideal scenario in which to observe myself in blockage or confusion and grow responsibility. To learn in joy is to uncover a golden path where others merely see steps to learn and problems to overcome or master.  As if our validity is about fulfilling an external requirement rather than opening an expression of wholeness, through whatever kind of discipline it may be.

Reductionism is an understandable polarity to ritual or symbolic approaches if they feel ungrounded or coercive.
But wherever we personally choose to make our own points of emphasis, it has a place in a larger culture, in both its strengths and liabilities. It seems to me that much of our attempt to 'protect' the sacred or indeed the secular aspects of life, only limits the full expression of life in an attempt to avoid the feelings of conflict that are necessarily to be found around where we find our treasure or connection in life.

But feelings of conflict do not have to be acted out from, or answered or resolved externally in order to be felt, abided with in a context of shared purpose or intent - and allowed to release in music or dance as a shift of perspective. This is not to say that action isn't ever required, but that to act from a perspective of connectedness is very different from reacting from personal histories reactivated.

In order to articulate, I use chosen words - but none of this is about words. I feel to risk into communicating because I feel the a bankrupted disintegration of modern life and choose to Occupy my life and give voice to what I feel moving in me. I stand in the willingness to look within - but I also stand with those who express integrity - whatever side of any fence they seem to be on - because I do not feel alone - but in shared purpose; a larger dance.

Thank you for your attention

In Peace

Brian