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

Dance Culture?

Quite apart from any issues around recording music, I have yet to experience being financially valued as a musician in the network except by a few. Part of this is - I feel - because recorded music has devalued live relationship in music. In a switch on and click world, predictability and perfection of form, reliability and controllability of outcome, have to a very large degree replaced live music as a culture. Not unlike the drum machine often replaces the drummer in the band these days.

I might add that I frequently - if not normally serve musically to move dancers at a deeper level than merely 'doing the tune' - and have no sense of being devalued personally. (ie unappreciated). Perhaps there are other issues with the Teacher of the steps not being in the same role or position as with a recording. A live option is not a product that can be gotten legally or illegally - that can then be in the teacher's tool-belt - and doesn't contribute to their 'livelihood or income'.

For my part, I feel to accept that the world I live in values things over relationships, but that I choose to live differently regardless - because I feel relationship itself is the Ground of Meaning that all else finds its place in. To the 'getting mind' a relationship is merely something to get from or make transactions of mutual getting. I say this is for-getting!
To the getting mind, the point of relationship - our now - is a fleeting experience - easily dismissed or disregarded in the culture of mutually agreed definitions that serve to validate and reinforce the essential and active motivating values that underlie our activity.
But the difference - as far as I see it - between dance as a healing, renewing and unifying cultural expression, and of dance as a another part of the marketplace of getting something for oneself either privately or in mutuality of private interests - is ALL the difference.

I am not advocating sacrificial relationship - but I am advocating an openness and generosity of spirit in the context of a larger culture - within which a greater sense of value is shared.


Our larger society and our world has been and is being systematically asset stripped culturally and ecologically, through a mentality of divide and rule - often hidden in promise of personal benefits at the expense of others, or of ownership of key elements of supply.  I don't feel it is just the climate that is changing, but of unavoidable exposure to re-evaluation of the values by which we live.

Law IS vitally important as the embodiment of, and maintenance of, the values of Life- but human made law is not always serving the interests of the whole. The concept of wholeness is absent from the market minded approach. But the market has a legitimate function as a service and expression of the health or wholeness of our society.

Until wholeness is awakened as our own living expression, the problem always seems to be that others fail to live as we think they should - and who really expects that to ever work except in fantasy?  Without real communication, communication itself is lost to the attempt to manipulate or coerce personal outcomes. There are no real winners in a battle of wills - as surely every parent knows!
And while judgement and blame are atmospherically active, who would come out and share what is really in the heart - whether it was reactive from a sense of injustice or even if it were responsive to the wellbeing of the greater good.
So, for my part, I see no renewal of nor sharing of a truly human culture while blame and shame are employed as meaningful concepts. I am quite ok with waking up to that I hurt myself by acting selfishly and feeling remorse and a change of heart - but not with being coerced thereby.

Nothing is as tricky and deceptive as our minds. Every so often this truth comes home to us all in very humbling circumstances. But such also offers the fresh root of an Innocent perspective.
At risk of losing my readership, I feel to finally note that the mind uses 'recordings' or images of self and reality, as substitutes for living relationship - and gets lost in the own spin of its own story.

The culture of honouring and bringing ourself present in Life - in our relational Now - is not a fleeting moment - but is the context of every moment. So even the recording of something that you have danced and heard a thousand times can smite you with its beauty afresh. BUT do we cultivate this? Or do we use technology to insulate ourselves from Life's Wholeness, and fall for an ever more dissociated dream of a life?

In Life, the word 'should' doesn't hold meaning as an imposition - but simply the honesty of our heart's desire. In mental shenanigans, we have all sorts of resistances to owning our heart's desire - and are afraid of it!
Education, education education!

(I trust that some humour is evident in what is also genuinely felt in this posting)

in Love's blessing
Brian

I feel for a process and culture of education

As a musican and teacher who often pays for the privilege of sharing what I truly love, I feel in agreement with holding a culture that honours and supports its contributors - but feel it is an educational process that is part and parcel of valuing and holding a culture, rather than to be imposed coercively.

What follows is addressing this movement of education towards a truly human culture.



My emphasis would be that we deprive ourselves and teach deprivation when we act without integrity - but to understand this, one first has to HAVE a conscious sense of integrated being. This isn't generally part of our education or our culture and so is an ongoing educative experiential process. But the result of coming into a deeper integrity is of uncovering a shared nature that is otherwise covered over by a fearful sense of self that is blindly driven to get for itself.  We generally associate it with personal survival - but it isn't the deeper wisdom that knows how to relate to its environment intimately and appropriately, but a concept of self that substitutes for a living relationship. A defence. A mask. A presentation. As such, this is also a withdrawal of presence. When presence withdraws, shadows come in. This also applies in reverse.


When I came back into the Circle dance scene after a decade or so in the Camp scene, I would have loved to have found some financial support for what I was devoting myself to with a very high degree of commitment - but I generally didn't and haven't. For whatever reasons, the scene in North Norfolk is sparse, the groups are small, and I hadn't felt movement in me to actively promote what I do - (not least because I cannot communicate it merely in terms of dancing folk dances in a trusting and friendly context).

 My sense of the network was that it wasn't large enough to support a career based approach. Rumi says, "If you cant get fed, be bread". So I felt to trust into it as a Calling toward seeding a living culture, by expressing and sharing it anyway.  To surface thought it can often seem that this is like trying to light a fire with wet wood, but in the willingness to take each step in a wholeness and fullness of spirit, I have found it a transformative process - that has given me far more than could be measured in monetary terms. But I acknowledge that I have been able to do this because of living off a lump sum from the division of my estate after my separation from Lynne - and from the very active and tangible support of Cathi, with whom I share life, love and inspiration.

Now if I had to, I could sing in pubs and get a significant return compared to teaching and singing for dance. But the relational quality of singing for dance is Home to me, and I can give myself into it unreservedly, subject only to my capacity to trust and relax.
I don't know if I would be able to be so open or honoured in being so open, in pubs with diffuse attention and a liability to want pleasing rather than to bring receptivity. Perhaps I should try it.

But there is a difference in commercial approaches to anything. Not necessarily a better/worse, but there is a difference - because it is in the market place.  The market place was part of my life as a candlemaker - and in many of the events I participated in, such as festivals and fairs, the market place (market stalls with products and services), played a vital role in the energy and atmosphere of the event. But also it was easy to see how commercial forces distorted this over time, such that the relationship with the people shifted from livelihood to targeting 'punters' and maximising profits. Most everyone 'sold out' as the energy of a movement became lost to mimicking the forms without the feeling.

The modern day market is a kind of war, where consumerism is mesmerically suggested as a way of life in pervasive advertising onto a society who are (often willingly) manipulated and milked. And very often with no real sense of a mutuality of value in their relationship, no real meeting, but getting stuff through an anonymizing business template that again has little opportunity for human culture to express itself. So not surprisingly there is defence and counter measures in 'consumers' - where the thing or service is generally sought at the cheapest price, with no real sense of support, loyalty or relationship with the companies and corporate interests that control the marketplace.

Now there is a lot of residual trust in many, such that they feel for the rules and play by the rules - up to a point.
But there is also a sense of having power where before,  the process of distribution was physical. It was socially acceptable to copy Lp's or radio onto cassette tapes and share with friends. The technology had certain bottlenecks that limited this - but it was pervasive and though possibly strictly illegal, I don't think anyone was ever prosecuted for breaking the law - excepting where passing off or selling as black market copies. Digital distribution has changed all of this to make it much simpler, not only to share a track or an album, but a whole collection of almost anything.  Distribution and access have become decentralized and uncontrollable, so new ways have to be found or new cultural expressions will occur that fit the new 'environment'.

For those of us who have subscribed to the Internet, we can access most music for a very affordable sum - so there is every reason to share links or artist and track information. There are exceptions. I have had to edit a few tracks that I made dances to, so if I want those dances to live, I have to make the edit available to those who want to share the dances.

Perhaps the internet could become a place where one can download directly from an artist - such that they get a better share. Or perhaps the major digital music channels will be the place where everyone goes to, so that is where artists have to sell - and take the terms given.

I would hope that there is more drive to share a love of music in a live relationship with listeners, and less manufacture of music as product with its posing and hype of seeking fame and fortune by 'selling' identity.

I feel that very few are sensitive to live music and many want to get what they want with minimal - if any - real relationship. Such is the mindset of the consumer, which in some ways is that of an infant demanding to be fed in its own terms.

In life we often take for granted what we receive, and see our own little part as if independent and a universe to itself. But life also breaks us of selfishness, and obliges us toward accepting responsibility. We may have to grow to the capacity of giving what we used to take for granted. We may still see this as carving our own path and becoming something, but again life may oblige us to grow to see a larger shared purpose, despite the range of difference of approach or emphasis, and hold a sense of that purpose in everything we do. In this we become holders of a culture, not merely because of resources, but because of a greater love and dedication that expresses as service.

Insofar as I have shared what I might call a truly human culture - (and I have, in various events and moments throughout my adult life), it has been a tangible love and joy embodied in our togetherness. It has to find its spark amidst a larger culture of fear, defensiveness and distrust,  amidst what seems a loveless and untrustworthy world. (Often called 'back to reality' though I challenge that in my own life).

From the perspective that has grown in me, I feel the dance can play a vital part in serving a larger purpose at personal, cultural and planetary levels than might be currently imaginable. Living in the foundations of what may not appear in my own lifetime is like - not waiting for anyone else to get it, before I can live it. But it does have to tune into integrity in order to offer a genuine willingness to be a foundation.

Honouring the source from which I receive - and honouring the willingness of those who join in sharing, is the principle I feel in Jesus' two commandments - (They were not made up by him - but are associated with his answer as his). This expresses a unified alignment of being that restores harmony and a true functionality. In this sense I feel there is Immutable Law that we either enjoy aligned or suffer in a false sense of struggle to be a someone in our own right. Its ok - it isn't an imposed law. We can struggle if we want to.


Unfortunately, human rules serve to undermine personal responsibility, because they program response. When imposed coercively they also breed reaction and resistance. When we are 'made to share' by our parents as kids - it needs be done enough to set a pattern of behaviour, but not so much as to deny and humiliate the child's spirit - or we teach denial of the basis of freely spontaneous sharing.

The mentality that sighs 'there is no answer to this debate' holds true if we were to try to lock down and define life with rules - about anything! But in each specific case in which these things arise, there is a process of discernment that  - if allowed and embraced, will lead to one consciously taken step. It may not be the same answer the next day, because each circumstance needs to be felt anew - otherwise we run on a template - that is … blindly.

It is the mind that fears itself that seeks control, and in attempting so - creates the very conditions that justify itself to itself. It is validated by opposition.

So I feel for a process and culture of education, that includes uncovering our integrity, our trust and our harmlessness. Words are never going to do it - and the last century surely shows that ideology is not a Foundation for a living culture - and nor is the shallow, opportunistic and asset stripping 'Global free market economy' that is currently expressed as an elite corporate power network with puppet nations and politicians indentured to debt and seemingly obliged to be progressively stripped of much of what kept them compliantly cooperative.

Discernment has to begin with not knowing, in order to allow a sense of perspective and priority to provide the next step or decision. I do not know what forms our changes are bringing us globally and locally in terms of our stability and freedom from war, our economy and essential services - but I do feel to come out - as insignificant as that may seem - in willingness to find a better way together.

Thank you for your attention.

In Peace

Brian