Deeper in the dance - or in anything in life!

We have regular intimate dance gatherings in our Home that don't need many and cant take more.
Our New Year Gathering this year is full but we have gatherings and days throughout the year. If dancing in such a context appeals, then consider joining us. With sufficient interest, dance days can become weekends or longer - and with time for walking the land and being together and simply being.  We feel for sharing and growing a culture of joy in dance and accept support rather than charge a fee. If you want to pay a fee, invite me to run a workshop!

I was just going to link you to our Christmas Greetings:
http://www.livingcircle.net/amerrychristmas.html

.... But then I found myself writing.....  I like writing. It isn't about asserting definitions or opinions - but my best attempt to cloth meanings that have tangibility of feeling, in a tangibility of form. It is like a dance or a music because I have to 'get out of the way' to allow its fullness. It may 'look like' intellectual stuff just as circle dancing may look like whatever the mind of the perceiver looks WITH. Always what we choose to look WITH is the guide for what we see. We are never independent of the mind we employ.

There is no call to read on in what I write unless something of a similar resonance occurs.
A stirring within that the mind is willing to hush in order to feel.




I see Dance as a vehicle and not a thing or end in itself - and yet of course anything that becomes associated with a tangibly shared joy and freedom of expression is easy to love, hold special - and become possessive of and identified with. 'Holy' wars are made of such idolisation of forms.

I have long noticed that our human minds are predicated to see the things and forms of the world as if they are separate things, and miss entirely, the Living Context in which - and of which - all expression rises. Human vocabularies may not articulate a unified appreciation without being open to misinterpretation. Because the mind is a layer of interpretation that runs largely unconsciously along preconditioned lines.

But the languages of music and dance operate at a different level and open an experiential quality that doesn't need to be interpreted into the 'meanings' of a mental mapping in order to be felt and known in the heart.  This 'level' of being actually is conscious and not merely thinking itself as being conscious.

So much of the meaning of love is lost to us simply because we are culturally too embarrassed to allow its witness and expression in our lives - and the world then easily becomes a tacit agreement to keep our light hidden - often by 'ritual behaviours of love' that may pass muster but do not communicate an underlying ease of being.

The first and most important dimension of circle dancing when I first met it was a tangible atmosphere that was akin to spiritual states I had witnessed - but was a shared communication of a cultural willingness or intent. Simply put, it was without judgement - to a significant degree, compared to any other social events I had participated in. I found a capacity to include myself even though at that time I had yet to uncover the 'dancer within' or the unashamed expression of life in movement and grace. A lot of the early phase of any movement is a relative innocence and discovery, that becomes lost as we make history together and become covered over by what passes as 'knowledge' - or experiences that condition us to no longer open in a willingness of discovery and growth.

The 'deeper' of the dance or of life is simply available when we cease to skim the surface realities and let the moment live us. This is always a releasing of apparent controls or defences, into a greater trust, for it is always fear that triggers such a mentality - which then starves us of our Soul and its cultural expressions in every walk and dance of life.

People look out and decry the 'state of the world' and may or may not engage in attempts to influence it at the level of effect, but very few look within and see the mentality that gives rise to the world we experience and tacitly communicate, because it is very uncomfortable or dissonant - and tends to trigger a great desire to escape such feelings by any means available!

I have found the dance to be a relationship 'within' that also extends 'without' in which a harmonising occurs not only in myself, but in the group - as we are willing to accept. I also find that the simple willingness to share serves as a safe and trustworthy context in which armouring or inhibition falls away of themselves. Not in order to become a free or fearless someone 'in our own right' - but as a transparency to the qualities of being that are present - in this group, in this place, at this time.

There's another thing I was drawn to about circle dancing, a freedom from the cult of 'individual expression' that has taken our culture into anything but the witnessing and sharing of an indivisibility of being - which is the true nature of our individuality and not the outer presentations or packaging - which are transcended rather than perfected.

There is that in our human mind which becomes distracted very easily from Wonder, and Gratitude. It becomes self-absorbed at the drop of a hat and cant be reached while it is so engaged. However, I feel that to heed and to accept the opportunities that DO arise in our day and our lives, to allow (even momentary glimpses of) a spaciousness of perspective is to grow them instead of grievances - and as this becomes self aware rather than moments of self-awareness, it becomes a seed of cultural renewal.

Unless a culture is being lived and shared, it remains a fantasy or rehearsal of life, unlived. What can be shared is what we are willing to accept and this is the fruit of the level of trust we can allow in the honesty of our being.

I find it ironic to see reports making fun the 'end time' - as in Mayan Calendar or other communications - amidst such fundamental change as is now occurring. For sure, the tendency of the mind to fearful and dramatic reaction has to be seen for what it is - just that! But that is not to say that the attempt to operate on the basis we have been operating on, hasn't bankrupted us, laid waste culturally and environmentally, and lost the power or capacity to maintain itself as a credible and cohesive authority.

It is all in a kind of slow motion paralysis - the falling apart - because of the global indebtedness and investments in holding the appearance of order intact. Bankruptcy is often a surprise to all but the insiders - because of drawing out to the last in hope of rescue - and in denial of the true nature of the situation. When the world has changed - there is no option to remain as we were. We either suffer resistance in seeking to control life, or find the movements of inspiration and sanity from which to build anew.