Circle of Shame

I love connected dancing. It is a joining with and an enjoying of. It allows, invites and facilitates relaxing and harmonising into a congruency of being in which the defences and armouring of any sense of problematic existence that I bring with me out of my past, fall away or are forgotten in a present fullness of being that is at the same time empty of demand that it be different than it is.

The joining with is not really joining if it is not also reflecting an inner state of communication or honesty within myself, for it is very possible to join in with the form of a group activity without really joining in purpose or willingness for joy.

Circles dancing for me has always had this 'inner track' learning and communion, without which the forms are similar but nothing - or very little is truly shared. Indeed the rituals of the world seem to embody a desire to share the form of togetherness without any real commitment of presence - so as to leave our little ego-sense of ourselves intact - untransformed - except perhaps just a little - but in private - where we 'join' in rehearsal or imagination but never look up to meet another.

Since I came back from a decade in the camp-scene into the circle dance network, I have been struck by how un-relational and disconnected it has become. There are individual exceptions and there can be situations of informality among friends or in smaller groups where dancers allow their natural being to shine, but generally speaking I see a "circle of shame'. For why else would anyone be downcast but that they fear unwelcome or indeed share a sense of unworthiness?

There are factors which play into this for circle dancing - for its very inclusivity means that dancing ability can be not required to join in, one simply has to be able to 'do the steps'.
And 'doing the steps' can become the focus - as if a problem to solve and a dance 'mastered' in order to move from one to another to another dance form and music as a pleasant and undemanding way to pass some time, in a warn social activity offering some recreation and exercise.

Now there is nothing 'wrong' with engaging life at whatever level or depth one is comfortable with - but to accept so much less than life, as if it is Life is likely to become defended around a fragment against the Whole rather than in a process of uncovering Wholeness.

In our world today we don't discern the difference and see things in terms of similar forms rather than their living qualities, and so are 'templated' into a sort of mass-managed existence because we essentially demand it!

It is as if our true presence must be hidden and protected from life and from the world, and a mask presented and structures found whereby to keep it hidden - because we fear the un-love of the world that we all have met and which we find intolerable.

And so there is a tacit conspiracy in society that works to keep us unconscious of a deeper dissonance, avoiding anything that threatens our automatic defences and trying to impose a sense of order upon life from a place that is not actually centred or grounded or ... connected.

Yet we also have the movement in our hearts to know and be known as we are - and this is quite different from the desire to 'become' someone valid in the eyes of our self or parents or others. Whenever we are inspired to step out of an old or obsolete defence pattern, we embrace Life and though we may pass through a process of risk, excitement and fear, we feel and find a deeper or more real sense of ourselves, shared, as a result.

But if this willingness for Life is not nurtured, the pathways into Life become a new territory in which the old habits reassert themselves and a sense of private control comes to replace a willingness to join in purpose. And so the forms that once brought deep gratitude and  spontaneous expressions of appreciation, become a ritual of 'the crumbs from the table' that are protected as 'the little we have left'.

It is hard to teach an old dog new tricks they say, but a human mind has another perspective available upon its own consciousness in which to wake up to a fresh way of seeing. The way we seem to 'lock' our minds isn't just our conditioning, but is the beliefs and assertions that we invest in as our very sense of self; that seem to be ever more justified by the reflected perspective of a conflicted sense of self.

The movement in our mind that seeks to become valid, is the unconscious sense of invalidity which is reinforced by our world. But the movement to know and be known truly, is a wholly present expression of life. These two directions are mutually self defeating, but only one is true.

The inclusivity that I love about the dancing is that of a sense of worth - shared. That is, a lack of the judgemental one-upmanship or withholding of attention that communicates in terms of of personal status and communicates an atmosphere and distrust.

It was this sense of inclusivity of worth that attracted me to hang in through my difficulties when I first turned up at a dance event. I wasn't trying to join something 'outside myself' but was joining consciously with a sense of worth that I felt both stirring in myself as well as held in the 'culture' around me.

I came to the dance FROM a context of spiritual experience as part of the learning to express and therefore abide in that realisation. For the coming back into a true focus and perspective in our being is not adding to our self - but is in so many way the releasing of what we recognize to be who we are not - of what no longer serves us.

Yesterday after introducing a fairly demanding dance that was new to my dancers, I felt to share with them that we had all experienced real glimpses amidst our learning, in which the 'dance did itself' - or we were somehow held and guided in an experience that was harmoniously 'out of control'. And this is a miracle for it directly attests and witnesses to a capacity that we don't have within the perspective of control, and yet is freely given us or available in the willingness to receive.

And yes, if we try to bring control mind into play with 'how did I do that', then we immediately 'lose it'. Such moments are rich in true insight.

A control mentality is quite different from being on purpose. To be on purpose is to be single and clear and not struggling - but persistent in willingness to stay on purpose. This also looks like the efforts of learning, but is not the reinforcement of a desire to control life and 'become' someone, but is the holding open of the conditions in which the miracle can witness directly what no amount of struggle can attain - or indeed imagine possible.

The Life that lives us is not operating through a filter of wish-beliefs and defences, but our experience of it may be thus distorted. And thus we are out of step and stumble as we move to where we think life should be rather than feeling our way in a greater trust.

Trust always begins with an honesty within ourselves from which we can reach out. It is not a matter of technique or ritual but a living dance within and between ourselves in which we allow the condition in which Life happens because it is already moving.

The human consciousness is largely a device of 'forgetting', of busyness and distraction. But at its root is the creative movement of Life to know and to be and to share.

The circle of trust is a relationship in which our focus shifts from distraction and dissonances into a natural and free presence of acceptance, that we can only access by sharing, and which renews and encourages us. To seek 'salvation' or completion on purely personal terms is to deprive ourselves amidst a self-deception.

In a recent mail to another dancer I said, that although I bring a conscious attention to form, I also bring it to the joining and to the joy, for without ALL of these present, the dance becomes an empty ritual or mimicry of life.


Thanks for your attention

Brian