dancing-in-the-heart

Cultural awareness and responsibility?

2011-12-22T04:36:00.000-08:00

(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?

2011-12-21T04:37:00.000-08:00

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

2011-12-20T04:49:00.000-08:00

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

Come, join the Dance

2011-08-23T01:20:00.000-07:00

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

2011-08-17T07:29:00.000-07:00

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.

2011-08-17T06:28:00.000-07:00

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

2011-07-13T15:23:00.000-07:00

Easter Gathering Feedback

I feel that the warmth and welcome, tolerance and friendship that characterizes the Easter Gathering is beautiful, heartwarming and witnesses to the spirit in which we gather. This to me is a condition for growth, in which to be stretched and inspired, rather than to get cozy in a sense of safety that then tends to resist the new - the life!
Perhaps, next year teachers could be invited to bring dances or sessions with ‘roots and renewal’ in mind - seeing as how this theme is coming up as an event next year.

Live Music
Our live music was very good in general and often excellent. I felt that the percussion could be more articulate or dynamic in the more energetic dances. Perhaps bringing a bit of focus to this might help bring it forth - or perhaps it’s simply a matter of drummers who can bring these sort of qualities out. An example was Odeno Oro. It didnt need to get faster - but did - in my opinion - need to shift to more energetic ‘feel’ of a 6/8 - to inspire the shift into more hoppy steps that the recording inspires - and which otherwise were not supported by the music.

Teaching/enabling of the dances for live music was often poor in my opinion.

At the Gathering in general there is quite a strong culture of assuming that teaching the dance is:
1. Primarily a verbal description of steps and often without any sense of the rythmic movement or musical phrasing or energetic of the music.
2. Onerous and to be done as quickly as possible as if it is somehow boring - which of course it is when it is approached in such a way!
3. Often shared without conveying a sense of loving or honouring the dance that is being shared. As if a dance is simply steps that everyone seperately acquires and performs, with very little context, introduction or personal association.

So I would invite teachers to share and enable the dances that they love and enjoy - and are willing to communicate, rather than get live dances ticked by whoever simply ‘knows the steps’.

It is good to be succinct - especially in a live session - but not to cut off the nose to spite the face. If the musicians bring forth excellence then let it be matched with the quality of dance sharing and teaching - and our dancing.

Live sessions:
Live sessions can be difficult to hold attention and different in atmosphere from sessions using recorded music, and even if someone is supposed to be ‘holding’ or facilitating the evening, it often finds teachers shouting amidst a scatterred attention - which only invites the dancers to chatter even more.

An idea that could work until the nature of the evening gathers us to a higher focus - which it generally does - is to use an opening few bars from the musicians of the next dance as a call to attention and focus - and then stop to a gathered attention in which the teacher can then speak and be heard. I feel that dance teaching is served by a clear presence and sense of relationship.

Video

I would like more attention and focus brought to the quality and propagation of dances. Because dancing is almost continuous, there is little time to make one’s own stepnotes. I feel the organising group could communicate the expectation that anyone teaching a dance at the gathering submit stepnotes as part of the sharing of a dance - no matter what session or workshop it is shared in. (Sooner than later). I would support the taking of video of the dances in addition to stepnotes. Being videoed would also be part and parcel of attending so we come knowing that video will be taken. If this is seconded so as to be a working idea then further discussion could occur. It can be as simple as a camera on a tripod with someone turning it on and off for each dance. It doesn't have to be an ‘official’ video, but simply a helpful reminder.

Photos
In the nature of our event - amidst a grown trust and intimacy, I feel it would be good to create an advance expectation and invitation that the taking of photos or video of the group, during the gathering, will also be shared with the gathering. (Via something like a private flikr group perhaps).

Food
Yes, we could make sure to liase in advance and have a greater influence on the menus and ingredients. Though the vegetarian only idea is a good one, it is also true that many who do not eat meat, do eat fish and I met a few there so at least consider allowing a fish option in the menu.

Venue:
I enjoyed the venue though I’d like to be able to dance outside as well if weather is fine again next year, and would be happy to be part of running that if an occasion arose. The dance space was slightly too small for us all in one circle. I know that in some dances this matters less than others, but I would like teachers - including live session teachers - to be reminded to consider inviting an inner circle whenever it is helpful or indeed leading a spiral or many short lines etc.
Being scattered in different parts of the building for different things does mean that spontaneous events are much less likely, but then the day is fully programmed anyway.

Sharing Dance information:
I would like teachers to be encouraged and able to share a bit about the background of the dances they share and not just steps. I would also like the active teacher to be able to invite or allow extra comments from others who feel willing to offer it - but only if such a teacher is freely willing. This could be ‘moderated’ so as not to allow derailing into ‘issues of contention’ and could actually enable a sense of the dance beyond the immediate behavioural entity of whatever happens to be shared. However, I appreciate that others may simply want to avoid potential issues and move on to the next dance and move on to the next dance etc. But I’d like to register a desire to be able to share more than we do - along with repeating that the way of our communication is the determining factor as to whether it flows or jars.

I have the sense that the protection of the feelings of teachers and dancers has become one of the primary cultural determiners as to the way the gathering is structured. I would rather shift to honour the integrity and excellence of our dance. Of course we need to act with honour and tolerance and respect for each other and ourselves - but there are ways to communicate amidst difference that do not fuel of the politics of conflict.

Dance Versions
I LIKED that in previous years, different versions of a dance might occasionally be concurrently danced in live sessions and felt it opened a greater unity that was less fixed in having to all dance the same version. I think as always that the WAY in which this happens is the energetic that makes the difference. So I for one missed this. I understand that some are fearful of difference as they see it as conflict - but an enforced sameness is symptom of a deeper conflict and affects the atmosphere even if the presentation of the form of things is tidy.

Dance music
I would personally rather simply access the music as mp3s that are to be made available, via private download rather than via a posted CD - which I then have to turn BACK to mp3 and name and tag it. There are many ways of doing this that do not make them public - one of which is Dropbox or a private space in one of the hosting sites. (I would be quite willing to personally undertake this - including the making and sending of CDs for those who still want CDs).

Proposal - we could consider allowing private access to a clipped educational version of any tracks to enable dancing one whole round of any dance that is not to be made available because of being commercially available. This would help remember and promote getting to know what otherwise can get forgot and disregarded due to the extra steps required in accessing the music.

Spirituality and Communion-ity
There is much to do with content and background to our dances - but there is also the context of our relationship - within ourselves and our experience and with each other.
The surface mind denigrates relationship as mere getting mechanism - and tends to deal in personal or private satisfactions in place of common purpose and fulfillment in a shared trust. It tends to soul-less-ness and limits life to mere forms with shifting and conflicted meanings.

A culture of inspiration must recognize and honour the unifying power or nature of love without imposing personal definitions or presuming others’s paths or teachings . Even as dance may become reduced to steps, so spirituality may be reduced to wishful concepts and ritual observances. Though such concepts may be derived from the experiences of others, they often express a second hand spirituality - a wishful thinking that fails to embody the presence and passion that it originally rferred to.
I feel that the spiritual dimension is a significant part of what circle dance is for so many of us. Mostly though, I feel the spiritual dimension is expressed in the quality of our being together and the way in which we do whatever we do. (IE: As lived rather than as presented or talked). But presence and passion - are tangible indicators of our Spirit and correspond with a unified wholeness or peace and the free expression of joy in the absence of a coercive mentality.

Culture:
Perhaps of all the comments that I felt to feed back the primary one would be to intentionally hold and grow a culture that honours the dance - the whole dance - and move beyond limiting ourselves to merely teaching steps and regarding teachers and teaching as being about teaching steps.
I understand that some teachers may indulge their role of being teachers and stretch or drag on in overteaching - going over and over with little faith in or relationship with their students and giving little sense of the nature of the music and movement that the steps will in fact be expressed as.

To honour the listening attention that is brought to play in trust and willingness is very different from identifying with a role and getting off on it - and at times it seems as if THAT is the cake that is to be shared out fairly among attending teachers. The privilege of being a teacher is of being given such an oppportunity to learn to serve.
The quality of our teaching generally and of the context and content that dances are communicated in, is part of what creates and maintains our culture in broad terms. There’s nothing wrong with using circle dance as a form of P.E to music - but it is so much less than it - or we - can be.
Unless there is a recognition of what inspires and feeds the culture of our dancing, we tend to drift in the direction of the lowest common denominator - though of course individuals remain free to express themselves as they are inspired to do, but within a larger ‘culture of expectation’.

Feedback process
Feedback for market research is often a symptom of trying to identify market trends so as to position products. I know there’s more than this and what I have written is of my own desire to communicate. When communication occurs, something shifts because of speaking it and somthing shifts because of listening. I don't write to change the formula - but to connect and share what is alive for me - as part of the gathering, and to add my voice to include my sense of the gathering.

Its also true that I see it all (the gathering) as a process or journey of self in community amidst various levels of responsibility - and whatever the format, I undertake and enjoy the fruit of the journey - for that is the context in which I come, within which are opportunities to meet and share on many levels.
I quite like the idea of feedback as a fruits and shoots part of the whole event; to spend a while contemplating and sharing - not for any other reason than to share from my own perspective into the gathering. Discerning directions is about feeling the life rather than about data crunching - in my humble opinion. That which moves us, is where we are feeling the life.

Some dance to remember, some dance to forget

2011-03-24T18:26:00.000-07:00

“Some dance to remember, some dance to forget” ~ The Eagles ‘Hotel California’.

The forms of our dancing draw on folk dance from many cultures, and from contemporary movements to a wide variety of music, old and new.
But what is it?
One can say it is many things to many people or that what it is can only be known in the dance itself and cannot be articulated. One can itemise benefits or describe the mechanics and origins. But I feel there is something I want to try to say - so I will see if it can find a way to speak through my willingness.

The areana I would address may seem beside the point but I feel that the context in which we do anything is the determiner of what it is. Indeed the same external behaviour can demonstrate opposite things. It all depends on where you are coming from. It is not so much what we do that is important, but what we hold in our heart. I don't mean this in any superficial sense of emotional affirmations or wishful thinking - but the actual and active desire sets the purpose or context from which all else follows.

Though it seems we have many options in a complex world, they can all be seen as either self transcending or self fulfilling - and I use the latter in the sense of seeking to maximise a personal sense of satisfaction in terms of a currently defined sense of self. Self transcendence is not unfulfilling - but is an expansion or a shift into a greater sense of self and life than as themind tends to define - and arises from a willingness to join or open in relationship in the moment as it moves.

The mind that sleeps in its own self definition is a kind of taken for grantedness that doesn't need to really look or listen because it believes it already knows. It sees forms but attaches its own meanings and manages its sense of itself and world in an essentially private way. It is self protective and will maintain an insulated or separated experience as a way of protecting against believed chaos, pain or inner conflict. It uses forms of communication and joining without conscious embrace or extension of trust - as in a masked presentation. We are all very adept at such behaviour as it has seemed to protect us in a loveless world - and mind.

But in innocence of any strategy, we may find life surprises or undoes us of our defences in moments of transcendence, of beauty, of joy flowing freely, of an opening of our heart that occurs spontaneously and naturally. And not surprisingly, we want to experience that again, and again and yet again.

In time we move from innocent willingness to join or trust, into a mind that acquires history, preferences and partialities and begin to grow a personna in place of a relatedness. We become opinionated and judgemental and conditional. We look to certain forms or arrangements to satisfy or qualify our involvement and withhold unless such conditions are met. We associate ourselves with specific aspects of a wholeness that carry our personal sense of the sacred or true value - and hold these over and against what seem to be misguided or off centred - or even heretical or corrupted - movements that we do not feel at one with. And so we factionalize.

to be continued...

This I would share with you

2011-03-18T17:05:00.000-07:00

What is it to grow a living culture that uses heart-connected music and dance as its vehicle of expression and renewal?

What is it to uncover the inner dancer, whose movement expresses as a whole and from within?

What is it to grow trust within yourself and therefore from there with others, so as to move through what had before seemed either difficult or obstructive to a greater joy in life?

What is it to take a few steps in trust and then find the dance somehow knows where to go? - and without your having to control the process?

What is it to know a oneness of the moment and movement of being that cannot be spoken - yet is a shared quality in which we naturally become released of a need to focus on differences and defences?

What is it to expand our horizons such that we grow our sense of participation in our world and in the dimensions and qualities of life?

What is it to share life without a sense of contractual obligation, one-up-mans-ship or ownership?

What is it to transcend the inward thinking judging mind and experience the body as love’s expression?

What is it to have regular and frequent renewal in spirit as part of a life lived on purpose?

What is it to serve and grow the culture by which you yourself have so much to be grateful for?

What is it to step out of a closeted existence that only seems safe - and embrace life as the transformative process that it unavoidably is?

What is it to find life each day ever anew - because of living out from an awakened heart and mind?

What is it to be a part of bringing the world to the light that it forgets and hides from in ignorance and error?

What is it to be called into a dance that will not let you forget nor hide again because you feel the call in your own heart and will not deny it or rest easy if your should try to?

This I would share with you.

rewritten from a response I gave to a curiosity about Circle Dancing and me

2010-09-05T04:34:00.000-07:00

Circle Dancing is a vehicle for me in which the Spirit came awake in all sorts of ways that I noticed and appreciated and have grown.

It has become a path and a Calling - yet not something I sell or evangelise - because we all find what we need when we are open to it - and then discover the need being met that we didn't realize was there - beneath the surface stuff.

Like anything in this world - the purpose for which something is used is what determines it's function. I feel and practice sharing the heart in what I do - but not in a way that sets up a WOW! factor or shouts itself loud. But nor to hide or depreciate the light of the heart that rises in our sharing together.

There's a very wide spectrum of music associated with our dancing - lots of international folk music as well as contemporary music. Likewise we include lots of traditional dances - but also have new choreography - and these vary a lot too.

Dancing with awareness and in a spirit of joining can open to music in ways that wouldn't happen if just listening - we can become intimately appreciative.

Alhough as I said, some modern dances use modern music, in general I feel the sense of community that expresses the human - and Divine - heart, in the songs and energies and qualities of the music - again at all sorts of levels and ways; sharing what it is to be human. Embracing these qualities opens a greater heart - a sense of inclusion that is more than merely thinking comforting or inspiring things. An appreciation of life that is of a different foundation.

I have written much at www.livingcircle.net - my dance site - but I don't sense that any words can communicate an experience.

All I know is that it has been given me as a Calling or vehicle and that I find a way of service by which I gain through the giving - not financially - but in the growing or shifting and awakening from a thought based identity to a heart awakened sharing.

Unlike an idealized spirituality - love manifests in and through the ordinary - that is otherwise passed by or discarded by those who still seek specialness. Yet the light of love transforms the ordinary such that we allow light and joy to move through us. To move us such that we are moved as one. Such experience is not available to intellectual imagination for it embodies an integrated willingness that can not be attained or enforced - but only allowed or accepted as it is.

I mostly teach via the way I teach - rather than try to overtly teach ideas to people who have come to dance. And of course the way I teach is of an integrated and defenceless willingness - that is simply the fruit of my willingness to listen, trust and allow. Not a polished act - but simply being as we are with what we have. The real Teacher works through us in ways we do not consciously intend or expect - but we block our reception when we believe we already know - and then assert or defend our position.

The scope of the music used for circle dance is extraordinarily rich. Sometimes music may be shared in a very local way by teachers at workshop events - not strictly a retail thing but as an educational resource. But most music can now be gotten online cheaply - where artists and sources are known.

I haven't properly tried to make recordings of my own music yet - partly because my primary motive is relationship and not product, but I sense that there may come a time when I may record my music. However, recording is like a hall of mirrors in which relational connection can easily collapse into 'not making mistakes' - and that does not make for living music - and nor does over use of post production editing studio techniques - though that's the way of the world these days.

There is often a grace through my singing because it is generally a clear expression of direct presence and passion - or felt presently. Because I feel it as a part of my relationship with Spirit I have not ventured into the realms of performance and the marketplace - though that is not to say that relationship is absent from such - but it is often subject to distortion or lost to idolatry and self image. Freedom is the natural environment of the heart; to be all that it is.

Reflections on music in our society

2010-08-30T03:26:00.000-07:00

Music:

I also am amazed to see how music is now a packaged commodity to most folks - and how that market is nurtured as part of the mindset of technological consumer man. I don't fight this - I just notice it. It seems as if we are to buy our own soul back from "corporate business mind".

As a live musician I am very aware of lack of value - in societal terms - for music. But I am also aware of a general preference for a packaged life that can be suited to private ends - as opposed to cultivating the relational qualities of trust and generosity of spirit - out of which truly moving music is created or shared.

I have a sense that 'sharing the gift' is the Calling and purpose of living - and that if I let this be true - then other things will be added to me. But I don't have any sense of how others should live - excepting that they too need to discover their guidance for their particular needs and responsibilities.

One of the things I remain deeply grateful to circle dancing for - is the discovery within myself of learning from within in a context of joy. This has extended into my life in every way. Fear guilt and punishment are deeply embedded in our minds. I don't feel that that is the way I want to live - (or can in fact truly live).

To try and enforce the 'sharing' via rules open or hidden, will create a more complex block upon the heart that shares. The heart is often associated with the feminine - as weak and ineffectual wishing, while the mind divorced from the heart seems to have usurped power as the active masculine principle. The divorce is a split mind. When we live out from such an identity we may gain the world (experience) - but we lose Soul.

We may learn that it is ourselves we hurt or limit by the mindset that we currently hold - and that discovery is a natural and automatic trigger for changing our mind in light of a heart more truly revealed.

I am discovering that as I trust that others are following their own guidance - I become more able to discern and trust my own. When I dabble in becoming involved in the motives of others - I become entangled in those very same in myself - for that of course is where they are. I cannot know what is in your heart and mind without involving my own filters and judgements and distortions.
But I can extend active trust and willingness to communicate wherever I feel a prompt or a welcome to do so.

There is always more to life than the terms which I - or anyone - may set. The appeal of a self-certainty can be seductive if we haven't a direct sense of our own peace and wholeness. Joining in an inclusiveness allows the judgemental armouring to fall away - and I sense that this is an ongoing step by step willingness by which we are weaned from a mistaken attempt to control life by divide and rule.

Unless the gift is shared on - it withers and becomes fruitless. Bankruptcy of culture can be disguised in complex derivatives - but only to that which plays the game by which the heart is denied its truth.

My primary sense of music and dance is that it is a vehicle; an instrument; a portal; a receptivity and expression of a direct energetic sense of life; a language of communioned being. Therefore I act in ways that align with an open channel rather than those which shut it down. And have joy in life that has nothing to do with targets, comparisons or goals of attaining validity or becoming a someone in my own right.

Our way of life is currently destructive to ourselves, each other and our environment - (our greater self). But the cause has to be discovered in our own life - in our own thinking - not to be compounded with guilt, but in order to be replaced by a better choice.

If we were in truth a machine - we could not observe the machinery of mind in action. Yet we can - in stillness - experience the shift or perspective from the definitions and thoughts of our self image, to awareness itself.

In a book I read about Jesus recently he allegedly said "take only what you can truly love". Whoever said it - I can feel it speaks to me as my own heart's knowing. If I truly understand it, then I'll teach it by living it - and the gift shares on through whatever forms that might take.

Reflections on cultural vitality and renewal

2010-08-30T03:23:00.000-07:00

In most general terms I am a proponent of accepting responsibility for the thoughts, beliefs and values that I operate out from. I teach by example and by invitation - because I do not value coercion as part of the way I live, or the world I live in. I am the primary learner of what I teach. Giving as I would receive.

Ideas that we live out from (and thus validate and propagate) are not always conscious - and so there is necessarily a process by which they rise to awareness.
This may be through a sense of dissonance where our beliefs are called to into question - and can be identified as beliefs instead or being experienced as real.
I feel that the attempt to manage or control 'others' by using guilt or fear is the old way of doing things - and not my living choice - so I look to my own guidance - in whatever way I can feel or find it - such that I can be free to "Share the Gift".

For through the willingness or even the grace of receiving - arises a desire to share on as I myself have received.
There are many levels and aspects to this - and also pitfalls - of 'making a self image' out of what is essentially a living relational culture. I value the opportunity to discover hidden aspects of my own distrust or selfishness - even though it might be a difficult process for me. But not as an exercise in guilt and atonement - but rather of truth, understanding and acceptance.

There is obviously a purpose and a place for obeying the laws of the land, but we are not machines - (or at least such is my assertion ;-) I feel that the heart and mind that freely chooses to align with an awakened perspective of a greater love than self alone is the living seed of cultural vitality and renewal. I feel that we are all in some sense in the learning of life - where we seem to be in a conflict between selfishness and some ideal of love.
This tends to play out as good and bad, right and wrong, worthy and unworthy.

I don't subscribe to this - or at least I dedicate my life to cancelling my subscription to this. Underneath any rational argument or appeal I feel that the truth of what is in our heart is the primary communication of what we live and not the human meaning attached to the form. Of course this can be misconstrued to mean anything to anyone on an intellectual level - but I am not speaking at an intellectual level. That we can fool ourselves should not be in doubt - but that we want to believe our deceptions is less easy to own.

Dancing with Friedel Kloke-eibl (2)

2010-05-16T12:00:00.000-07:00

Friedel Kloke-eibl’s workshop - Kent - May 2010.

Cathi and I enjoy dancing with Friedel. Some of this writing might indicate something of why we do.

Friedel holds and expects a focus of attention as part of a greater responsibility than simply mimicking or being told what to do. This effectively calls dancers to listen within and bringing attention present. I regard Friedel as an excellent teacher with whom to discover a greater expression of the inner dancer; the integrated movement of the whole being; love’s expression.

Friedel doesn't feed her dancers with opportunities for premature self satisfaction - but rather tends to drop us into situations where we are much less in control than we might otherwise prefer. She achieves this because she is at one with her work. Her presence pervades the circle even though she understates herself. I have the image of a tuning fork for awakened teaching - where the teacher holds a consistent tone of conscious appreciation. This is the relationship that the dancers come in various degrees to appreciate as Friedel’s gift - and as it is discerned she is loved - and appropriately so - for her work is a direct expression of her love for dance - and for the very life that moves us.

Dance - which implicitly includes music - is a mode of expression by which that which moves us may be made manifest and known in truth. The suite of dances that Friedel drew from were created in inspiration from a story by Herman Hesse called Pictor - and she shared this story as well as other poems during the workshop as a symbolic doorway to access our own life - at the level of creative expression. For it is an awakened creativity that moves the dancer as one in an effortlessness of being through a singleness of desire.

Dancing with Friedel is work though I tend to call it willingness. It is an inner work in which we are willing to enter a process of learning and teaching in which a degree of chaos is felt and moved through. The usual response to such chaos is control, and ‘getting it right’ - at least at the level of form - gives a feeling of protection from personal chaos - which arises from some sense of getting it wrong or not getting it. It is this reflex we overcome through practice.

Friedel could easily teach the actual dances in ways that communicate their steps and consolidate the step learning - much more than she does. But then Friedel doesn't teach dances - she teaches dance.

To know things from the outside in is to be a victim to structure rather than to share the Creative perspective or Meaning. Although Meaning cannot be described or defined in structural terms - such as concepts - its experience is available as the flow of being into expression.
In moments when we really ‘get it’ - or perhaps more accurately when we let it take us - we know in our dance a grace and beauty of life that is truly homing and unifying to our life.
Friedel doesn't talk any of this - apart from a few comments now and then that point out a direction to take or not to take. But she does hold dance to be her path in life and acknowledges that words and ideas can speak forever and yet never open or share the life Divine - (I use my own words here to paraphrase the sense I had of her own).

Friedel’s spirituality is universal in that it isn't fixed in structure based or thought based realities - yet she is most precise in her usage of structure and form. Friedel is at her most entertaining when demonstrating how not to dance specific steps. Perhaps this is where she also feels free to allow glimpses of humour that release some of the self seriousness that dancers inevitably become entangled in.

The territory of personal chaos, is also one of a self consciousness - a sense of exposure amidst a liability to feel inadequate.
Friedel does not impose this upon anyone - but she does structure her teaching so that we discover it in ourselves. For this is the ‘block’ or ‘territory’ we must move through if we are to be free of a limiting and conflicted rigidity of a false self consciousness. This is extraordinarily difficult from the perspective of the limited perspective because everything in our perception reinforces a self belief that has lost a fundamental trust. This shows up when we try to ‘do’ her dances.

Yet who can glimpse truth, (the grace of dance), and remain content with their own teaching? (a sense of self possessed control). The awakening dancer finds the teacher as the guidance of the events in their own lives; the promptings and discoveries of a path that will not fit into our own ideas of how life should be - but that we lose it. But sometimes we meet the teacher as a teacher. For me a true teacher may be an advocate for the student’s potential - but never replace the process of student’s discovery with their own teachings or person. Friedel has my appreciation for her work - even though I have only glimpsed it in two weekends.

What about the critical points that surely must appear if this is to represent a balanced perspective? Have I just announced myself to be a Friedel devotee? Well it isn't really like that. My love for Friedel is not separated from my love - period. This is a different love than the attraction of ‘food’ - in that it is simply love. I have no pre-set ideas as to whether I will continue to dance with Friedel in further workshops but Friedel is inspirationally alive in my dance.

At the level of the forms there could be a plethora of critical points - and yet they all belong at the level of inconsequence. There will always be something about the forms of things that does or does not line up with one’s expectation or desire. The key aspect for me is whether the purpose is truly served. What purpose? Friedel has her life and experience as a dancer and teacher and makes herself available by offering a workshop which we as dancers are drawn to discover (or extend our discovery) by attending. As this was my second time with Friedel, I was clear of baggage that I knew wouldn't help - so I didn't begin to get involved with whether I liked or disliked the music or dances. I know that Friedel has a Balletic approach and this means that there is a classical dominance in the style and content of the workshop. But the lessons I find are universal.

As it happens, this time I find I have within me a few of the dances and I have already begun to share them. This is interesting to me as I feel the dances generally need the context that Friedel holds and exemplifies. This calls me to teach likewise - though in my own style. I don't regard this context as an overly serious spirituality - but as a singleness of intent that communicates itself appropriately. We can only share with others as they are willing to discover - but we can give witness and demonstration such that the Spirit of dance is not hidden. Friedel has taught me more than I may yet have realised. I find that what we receive has a way of unfolding further as we trust it. One such is the idea of not giving without also demanding something - not to barter or set a value - but to share value in a mutual willingness.

There is a truth that, as you give, so will you receive. It is no less true that those who are willing to give - will receive because giving is the nature of receiving. This is what we have forgotten in our attempt to 'get' for ourselves alone.

Dancing opens the life presently as an expression of shared reality for me. But I see that one can also dance so as to protect our separated or private sense of self - and yet ‘join’ in forms and music that we like. I wouldn't seek to deprive anyone of what helps them cope with a loveless existence - but there is an altogether different starting place than identifying oneself loveless. Is it not true that as dancers we receive to the degree we are willing to give our willingness and attention? It is also true that what Friedel shared with us is altogether worthy of our giving. One of the implicit teachings I feel in working with Friedel is that the living love of you is seeking trust and expression. This is who I feel she serves, and not our self presentations whith which we tend to identify.

One of the reasons why words seldom ‘work’ in opening the door to Life is that we are too accustomed to believing we ‘know’ - and words, concepts and definitions are primary tools whereby we exercise a sense of controlling life. We are thus less likely to allow the encounter with the ‘chaos’ of ‘not knowing’ and less likely to persist in passing through it. However, I enjoy writing as a kind of ‘dance’ that may well be inconsequential - excepting for the spirit that is - I trust - manifest through it.

See my previous article on Friedel HERE

First sharing of Hazel Young's 'Song of Orpheus' and 'The Kiss'

2010-04-20T05:27:00.000-07:00

I shared Song of Orpheus last night. Not only is it a wonderful shared experience to dance - but we had three complete beginners - and the willingness that I shared with the group and their willingness to stay with me in its process - really opened us all into a depth of dance that words cant speak.
The first time I share a new dance can often be a wobbly launch experience - for until it is in my 'teaching body', I have not a full attention for bringing the dance present in relationship with the group - and can suddenly experience doubts that can completely undermine the sense of what I am sharing, as a result of even the slightest wobble or mis-take. However, the desire and belief in the dance did not get lost to the passing moments of confusion - and we soon came through into a very strong experience of intention and the energetic of those who experience the fruit of what they value - because they have valued it enough to bring a real attention and trust into play. I found I loved the pause after coming back from the surge - before turning in dance 2.
In all of Creation there is the aspect that beholds and sees that it is Good. And sometimes there are these Sabbath moments of rest in which the gratitude from the joy of life - rises. Once touched, it infuses the whole dance.

Later we danced the Kiss.
Muriel - our fellow dancer and Hall owner - experienced that song live with Chloe as part of a fist anniversary concert for 9/11. She'd said it was one of the most amazing things she'd ever been to. Her/our dance place is a meditation hall - and not spacious enough for the fullness of expressing this much freedom of movement in what was a fairly good turnout - but we all know this without a word and adapt. I use the non piano version where we start at the beginning - and love the way the rising aligns with the meanings in a few places. I forgive the music for not being different than it is and love the simplicity and seamlessness of the movement.
There is this thing of 'faking it' - of allowing the movement in the manner of - with the intention and gesture that puts us in the zone where the real thing can emerge from within and 'take over'. To be danced by Life is not really to be 'taken over' but to be temporarily free of being 'taken over' by an assumed mentality of external control - such that the heart knows itself directly.

I looked up the whole Rumi poem for the Kiss and it links with the Moon's role in the Paramythi lyric - which speaks to my heart and I am glad to receive.
I'm sure you have it - but I liked to read it all as part of the dance.

There is some kiss we want
with our whole lives,
the touch of Spirit on the body.

Seawater begs the pearl
to break its shell.

And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild Darling!

At night, I open the window
and ask the moon to come
and press its face into mine.
Breathe into me.

Close the language-door,
and open the love-window.

The moon won't use the door,
only the window.
Jelaluddin Rumi - 13th century. (Trans: Coleman Barks)

Paramythi (Fairy Story) The song by Orfeus Perides, used for Hazel Young’s dance ‘Song of Orpheus

The Sun the Moon the Sea,
I ask if they didn't know her, see her.
And the Sun replied from the Mountain
“I will shine on the whole world and I will find her”

The Moon spoke to me and laughed
“She sleeps in her mother’s embrace
I will wake her when I see her
She hears when I speak to her”.

And the Sea spoke to me from her depths
“You will be her love forever.
I will send the waves of the ocean
to go and soothe her heart and mind”

And the Sea spoke to me from her depths
“You will be her love forever.
I will unite all and rejoice for you.
The two I will make one, earth and sky”.

The living cultural context of dance

2010-03-26T03:40:00.001-07:00

The living cultural context of dance

The original meaning of the term culture was associated with the verb; to cultivate. Without getting bogged down in definitions and levels and meanings that inevitably fail to communicate anything - I feel it important for myself to have a conscious sense of what it is I am cultivating in my dancing.

To embody a culture is to demonstrate it and to invite others to share in it.
It is also to create the conditions in which the values implicit to the culture can be nurtured - and where values that would undermine it are not invited and not supported. For my part, I am keen to use the dance to invite and extend an inclusive experience whose passion is energetically felt as a presence tangibly shared.

Sacred Circle dance - to my mind - is not sacred because its contents are sacred things - but because the context of intention and aspiration has a willingness to discern and embrace - within our dancing - those qualities of life that we hold sacred - that truly inspire us and even transform our consciousness or awaken a deeper intimacy to our own life.

The human mind orientated towards the world will always lose this spirit and gain instead the ‘things’. These may be imbued with sacred or secular meanings that one can be ritually dressed up in - but the dance has become an external prop for a privately engaged satisfaction - if there is not an active willingness to
hold the culture of intent by which life is welcomed as it is rather than exploited for what can be gotten from it.

For me many circle and folk dance sessions I have participated in, have lacked a context of intention to join at a level that - to me - is embodied in a relaxed connected silence - and an atmospheric of freedom from judgement - with an intention and willingness to actually share the dance. I could just call it free conscious awareness. Free enough of the judgemental personna to share in a mutual appreciation.

In a larger cultural sense, I see in our times a pervasive intent that nurtures a ‘blame culture’, in retreat into fear - and the pursuit of a privatised culture of the so called individual consumer. Such a mentality is devaluing the practice of extending and growing trust- upon which we depend far more that we realize.

The above paragraph is not describing life directly in any real sense of passion or presence - but speaks of a culture that spreads by guile and insinuation and sells a sense of life by focusing always on the negative and scapegoating it.

To actively promote dancing in shared trust is to risk into ‘coming out’ in witness to an alternative approach to life than the prevailing ignorance would teach as the limited and mean spirited trickle of life that fear’s guidance delivers.

This isn't say that dancing is validated by its side effect of promoting health, happiness and harmony of being - as if it were a weapon against dark powers. No - it is simply an expression of alignment with original being - in which the false sense of self control is absent. Such is the condition in which God is remembered - not in theological terms - but in terms of the radiance and vitality and abundancy of life in our hearts and minds - and its communion through us in our daily life.

To wake up is not an independent act - but the restatement of trust in an utter dependence in which we move as we are moved and know the Life directly.
This awakening is gentle - in that it does not force - but flows more fully as it is accepted.

To let the dancer within rise and move freely, is to let go the rigidities of mind, emotion and body that would freeze life in attempt at safety and control.
This is a truly wondrous dance - and as a dance - is not aimed at getting to someplace else - but of enjoying the movement of the moment exactly as it is.
Of course this is felt as a homecoming - but it is kept by its expression and not by definition and identification with thought.

So you realize that to keep it you must give it - and not deal in that which undermines it - or you simply throw away or cover over the life that you love; the love that you live.

The thought that says you can dip in and out of life to get what you want - and balance out and manage for yourself is a kind of unconsciousness in which you seem to be taking a ride on life - yet completely ignorant oif its true nature.

Something has to call you present enough to pay attention and gain your allegiance and trust such that you choose to move through the limits of the old and allow the experience of inclusion that the new restores you to.

For me, music and dance are part of this call, that brings me a sense of others and the world made new. This is the living culture in which I share with you. It is not formulaic and cannot be defined. It truly is a dance of trust to a song of gratitude; moving in the freedom of joy.

Alevism and Sacred Dance

2010-02-20T10:27:00.000-08:00

I happened to see the BBC programme ‘Around the world in 80 faiths’ in Feb 2010.

I was moved by the introduction to - and glimpse of - the Turkish Alevis, whose culture uses dancing as an expression of being. Really lovely to see. I had never heard of them, and rarely see things that touch my ‘Dancing’ sensibilities like this so I’m keen to find out more.

Description from Wikipedia:
Alevism is Turkey’s second largest religion, and possibly its oldest, but they’ve suffered a history of discrimination and violent attacks that has made them very cautious of outsiders. Even the Turks don’t know much about the secretive group.

Alevism is a folk religion that started some time before Islam in the villages of Anatolia - a rural region of central Turkey.

Alevism shares many beliefs with Islam, but the differences are also apparent. The private ceremony takes place, not in a mosque, but in an ordinary house. Men and women worship together. Alevism is based on an oral tradition rather than a sacred book.

Male and female worshippers dance and perform a traditional song.

The episode touched on various faiths of the Middle East, and there are invariably other points of interest in the program - but the glimpse of a culture that currently expresses itself in song and dance in love of God (Life, Being, Love) - was what I felt immediate kinship with.

Though I found the dance forms beautiful and attractive, I am most moved by the congruency of intent and form. I feel that all living cultures are ‘sort of’ languages that attempt to express and share something of the true experience of being – along with all sorts of specific emphasis that attempt to reconcile such unspeakable experience with human thought and society. I feel that most human endeavour tends to get lost in the latter and forgets the former. Perhaps this is because our cultural assertions become definitions and filters that prevent the sharing of a truly current or living connected-ness.

Though we cant get others to dance if they are unwilling – the value of the heart or wholeness that such shared communal dance holds, makes it an opportunity - or way - of remembering – whether we ever dwell on, or espouse any such thoughts as I am articulating, or not.

One of the things that the programme brought home to me – was how locked into our cultural ‘identities’ we become. Such that our ‘love of Life’ (I use this instead of the ‘God word’ here), excludes and estranges others who are different from us – with all the conflict and misery that that then brings forth.

Perhaps, the disintegration of western culture - (as I see occurring) - brings a growing willingness to rediscover a fresh approach – from a sense of Life-shared rather than my-life asserted. I feel its always the same story of self-will into integrated Will – but that new generations and indeed new cultures have to rediscover it in the terms and languages of their own life – and their own day. And we can only do this from taking the journey ourselves.

This shift into a heartfelt perspective is the movement that has always inspired my dancing. In ‘letting an inspired sense of Life come in and through’ the moment, and a holding and creating of the conditions in which Life is made welcome. In such instance, I feel dance is a vehicle or instrument – just as a musical instrument – (and even the one playing it) – becomes a means of expression of a greater or more inclusive life.

I’m fine that, for many dancers, they simply enjoy, feel good, and go home renewed and encouraged – for that is the fruit. But as a ‘parent’ I am also drawn to ‘hold the culture that provides’ and not just to ‘get fed’, and my vision of one aspect of circle dancing, (under whatever names), is of a consciously held intent to share on as we have received.

I saw something of that in the Alevi Gathering. The heart made tangible – as our centre – and not just as a form for entertainment or diversion.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wdHs6h8F1A

Dancing in the heart

2010-01-26T18:04:00.000-08:00

Dance is commonly seen as either a performance, achievement, sport, social fun, or some particular styles that relate to this or that culture or subculture - but at its root the Movement moves, attention is wholly given and the body disappears as a limit because it is released into a direct communication with the very presence of life - as it moves.

Once that primary relationship is uncovered and reclaims it own - there is room for all things to be added or expressed within this context, from out of a willingness to relax into and trust the freedom and wholeness.

When the form is accepted as a vehicle - it cease to be the focus in and of itself.
The spirit of willingness is the receptivity to be moved and the trust is embodied in the act.
Love made tangible is aligned with a direct and selfless expression whose grace is first in presence and in time over time may of itself become a grace of form. But the need to entertain or find validation as form is transcended in the spirit by which we are moved.

None of this kind of verbal articulation is required to dance.
Nor is the judgemental mind that shuts down the connection in attempt to mimic and control the form.

But dancing in the heart opens a flowing awareness that can notice the feedback of the mind's focus and attention and can let go that which blocks by not feeding it - and grow that which knows the flow and presence by giving welcome and holding in gratitude.

For me it is a calling. A way in which I can share out from and thus meet in - revealed love ... unforced - allowed to be as it is.

Sharing, not as separate ones - but by joining in the same relationship of willingness and trust that then naturally or automatically shines among us.

As I discover talents I look to let them serve love's awakening rather than 'make a self'.
For that is where the loveliness of truth is shared.

Reflections on the Spirit of Dance

2009-04-28T11:05:00.000-07:00

Living dance embodies the movement - in time and space - of that which moves - alive - within. Such inspiration can be simply and presently felt or discerned in a spirit of receptive trust.

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Joy is known in freedom to feel. To be directly connecting with what is present and be moved by it, is inherently liberating and also renewing : a process of revelation.

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That which is ’alive’ cannot be mapped or defined by concepts, and a concept based approach cannot find life, though concepts and symbols can be used in service of life.

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But the spirit of life can be expressed in form by our allowing inspired life to move us . We can be as a channel or instrument through which life flows, and by this act of trust we may realize our life in truth, and not merely imitate life in concept.

Such direct experience is a glimpse of awakening from out of a habitual mentality of problematic distraction. We also regain a clearer perspective because peace is in it. Such a moment also accesses an innate wisdom, natural to a rested open attention.

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In this we have a clear sense of flowing conscious awareness, without thought or interruption, as if our being ‘just knows’ or is one with the dance. Any attempt to bring this under the control of thought based understanding immediately breaks the flow.

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In unrecognized ignorance as to what we are and what life is, we stumble in and out of a sense of life that tends to attempt balance between applying control and suffering chaos. Yet each is merely the shadow of the other denied and both indicate a loss of centred calm perspective.

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When dance expresses life directly, it is of the nature of art. This demonstrates and witnesses a living way or culture of bringing the divine into manifestation. We may speak of being touched, transported or even healed by such glimpses. They are revealed rather than manufactured, and bring into awareness that which had hitherto been unknowingly obscured.

Dance that is merely a mechanical representation, whether applied skillfully or not, is artifice. In all areas of expression this is so, for the technicalities of form at best are a structure by and through which the spirit expresses. Training and teaching are a shared intent and practice, that creates conditions to enable and encourage the true dancer to grow in expression.

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The relationship of spirit and form is simple: form must be brought to serve spirit, or it will be found superficial or without substance - as in the story of ‘The Emperor's New Clothes’. The experience of such disconnection is like an armouring or masking over of that which is felt alive. It is a freezing into form - a contraction of distrust into a polarised defence.

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Though one may endlessly debate what spirit is, the absence of true inspiration is undeniably evident in disharmony or conflict, depression or joylessness, self-illusion and pervasive distrust or cynicism.

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My sense of a living path using music and dance is as a path of restoration to our freedom of expression in being, and sharing music and dance is also a simple language by which to share life. We cannot share life without releasing the judgements that we are habituated to use to justify ourselves to ourselves and by which we withhold our self in isolation.

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In relationship, felt within, and embodied, we offer and invite a shared inspiration by our willingness for joining. Here is the simple process of growing trust and releasing obsolete defensiveness. Becoming simply present and available to the felt quality of now.

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Only by joining in such a willingness in living presence are we re-membered. For whatever Being is - cannot really be alien to our true nature or external to what we simply are, but most of us are deeply habituated to identification with our collective and private thought and imagination and do not tend to be energetically alive in all that it is to be human - or indeed to simply joyfully Be.

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Our human experience has largely become, de-facto, a realm arising from the attempt to apply or impose our will upon life. “I want it thus!”. In this we assert a strong sense of self but lose the dance in which our innate relatedness is lost to a sense of competing disparate parts. Such struggle can itself be engaged with passion and differentiations of approach and style - which may seem to give temporary meanings to a meaninglessness - but this will tend to wear out or lose vitality, for it is a self defeating exercise. Relatedness remains the way things actually are - in aliveness - in truth. Always and already so.

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It is the heart that recognises truth and the thinking mind must follow and not lead. Those who share experience of the Living may find terms and languages in which to refer to such experience - but such terms are at best sketches or pointers to an immediacy that is not really happening to a 'someone' - but which is a flow of being in which the experiencer is temporarily transparent to an greater awareness than any sense of a fenced off ‘self’.

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Always one must gently or freely put aside the mentality that thinks it knows - for this is always a fixity of the past in form. Listen or feel in some willingness of trust and for joining. This is the practice which allows the discernment of Life within - the expression of which is not according to ‘my’ - or anyone else's - thinking’ - but is actually inspirational. It has the ring or shine of joy in life felt directly.

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Dancing can thus open a context in which what I am regains a true belonging - felt as part of Life rather than a separated orphaned existence played out in self image and self commentary.

Regardless of any presentation of appearance - it is this lost belonging that is at the root of all longings and desires.

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It is a simple thing to express and share life energetically - though we tend to make it anything but - and thus require a process of experiential education that builds and regains trust and self-honesty. For it is a breakdown of communication at the level of self-trust that gives rise to a mentality of ‘externalised’ or applied control upon oneself and upon life. And it is this mentality which tends to either squelch or mimic life’s expressions. This does so with our largely unconscious identification and undermines appreciation and expression of our experience of life in all respects, including our dance.

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Authenticity of expression is found in a defencelessness to a present awareness. If we wait to be ‘pure’ on our own terms we wait ... and wait some more. Practicing self-trust in intuitive relationship is not about getting it right - or indeed wrong - but listening to a different guide in moving from the heart.

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In any inspired endeavour, we are guided to discover what we need to meet or know as we come to need to know it. It is a step by step process that is an expression of truly held desire to which we are willing to bring some commitment to.

Joy is of the innate Teacher whose only intent is restoring your own freedom to your awareness and acceptance. By this light you will freely grow in the discernment and release of that which is joyless and therefore meaningless.

Brians Easter Dance Auditions - Easter 2009

2009-04-10T15:05:00.000-07:00

I wanted to mark Eastertime with Dance. Not along the lines of religion but simply to open to feel the Easter story and allow it to speak to me.
I then chose these dances as a list of possibilities from a much longer list that offered to fill roles or illuminate aspects of the story of Jesus.
And as I was moved to write from whatever I felt in them is my own intuitive writing - by the authority that is within us all to trust, to feel and to act. But though it is all write - none of it is a claim to truth - which is far beyond the reach of thought and yet never far from the heart that listens in stillness.
The story of God-love awakening within the human drama. Not just the entry into the world - but the undoing of its foundation as truth in and of itself.
In peace
Brian Steere

Ad’aman Palikari
The world tried to teach me of war - but I learned of love.

Ashtun Daje Mori
Drinking of the world I filled me with sorrows and yearnings. In stillness I look upon the will I made for myself and release it - to be restored to peace where love is - and now the world can reflect and serve awakened purpose.

Atahualpa
The last Inca king who threw (the letter of) the bible away and was persecuted and denied by those who used the letter to validate personal gain.

Daronee
Where are you now beloved? We walk with you in our heart. We reach to you in Light. We support each other in faith and trust, we look upon the reflection of our thought in the world and become one with the love that you are. Love calling love. Love answering love.

Days of Honey
In good work we live this day - setting off from a common centre: joined in desire and trust of a true heart, sharing the harvest of the good, the beautiful and the true.

Dodi Li
My beloved and I are one. The love that expresses through us awakens the remembrance of the Father in the Son. “See me and ye have seen the Father”. This cannot be spoken of - but the Son is the Word of the Father and the Father gives through the Son.

El Ginat Egoz
The fruit of Divine love - the ‘Holy Spirit called down’ - in the hearts of those who receive.
To the Nut Grove
I went down into the nut tree grove,
to see the green plants of the valley,
to see whether the vine budded,
and the pomegranates were in flower.
Let us get up early to the vineyards.
Let us see whether the vine has budded,
its blossom is open, and the pomegranates are in flower.
There I will give you my love.

Elm Tree
Mercy’s deep consolation holds the heart in peace amidst the trials of the world.

Embrace the Shadow
Love embraces all that is true and finds its own - all that isn't true - isn't. The willingness to ‘feel the fear but follow the heart anyway’ is to break the spell of fear and embrace a greater light of pure awareness - in which the story of self is undone in perfect inclusion. From embrace and acceptance of such a light do we recognize the shadow as cast by our own thought - and yet by seeing - is this no longer hid in the dark but revealed in light.

Faith
Conflicted relations IS a call for peace to restore sanity - for conflict is an unsanity of ungrounded perceptions that breed threat and offense; distrust and fear. Just as tired children who can become manic and uncontrollably energy-drunk are needing solid rest but cannot find it. Darkness is the opportunity for Light to shine exactly where it is in fact called for and needed.

Farewell Shalabiye
Jesus prayed directly from his heart and not by rote - in that he turned attention within - in the quietness apart from the bustle of life - and trusted the communication and communion of love as his nature, his source, his guidance and his being. We often want steps and methods and such structures can serve but can also become a way to remain dependent on externals - when the Call is to awaken to the feeling awareness of life in expression - to be its expression - alive!
This dance has an opportunity to trust and allow the hands and arms to express. There isn't a right and wrong - but there is a true and false. True expression is at one with the heart and not merely an applied technicality. Use applied technicality to grow trust - not to protect from having to give it!
To be opening or growing willingness for truth is a living process and cannot be judged by the mind. There is a process of greater freedom of expression - and what is expressed is more clearly discerned - yet the Movement of life is an Is! - and not a was.
The music and dance is also a bridging of clashing cultures - an offering of peace amidst a confusion of difference.

From the Cross to Light
The mentality of self judgement and self punishment, (crucifiction), may be enacted in the world as a script of injustice, arising from a false but deeply ingrained self-ishness that engenders - and is supported by - guilt and fear.
At some point we begin to weary of the meaninglessness of suffering in ‘independence self’, and reach out, to let in truth, by releasing our investment in my story: ‘all about me’. For we desire peace in our heart.
As we grow in our desire to awaken we realize we had seen all things as through a glass darkly - covering the knowledge and remembrance of truth in the heart. In attempt to live ‘in a loveless world’, we grew a self-image that is defended, masked, and yet keeping our love and joy unseen and unshared and without witness. We hide in our story of the world - that we be kept hidden from truth - for we fear truth when we listen to the voice for fear.
In desiring peace I release the will by which I meet only confusion and meaninglessness, and accept in its stead - original or revealed Self - of which I learn as if anew until the Light remembers what and where it is and was and always shall be. (God’s Will).
Habits run deep that were deeply cherished and the journey from the cross is often associated with loss, fear and resistance - yet these are but further journeys to the cross in yet subtle disguise. For the awakened joy of release from suffering cannot itself be a call to suffer.
For the call to suffer is a separate will that has been discerned as loveless thinking that leads nowhere.
Disengaging from, releasing, and not reacting or identifying with that voice - becomes the way of hearing the still small voice of the heart - which is always Present and is the connecting of you in truth with all that is true. Now all things serve a different Master - now all things are an opportunity - not for division - but for love’s presence to reveal itself.
In the world are tares and wheat both - two minds that speak as guides for seeing - and as we choose to listen so do we perceive.
The lost seek outside themselves - busy finding many things and yet finding nothing - for nothing is outside themselves but for the wish that such be made true for them.
The found seek within - and surrender in trust - for they know they are not their own maker and therefore the makings of the mind that thinks it-self apart - can not be truth. Giving the mercy and love and compassionate forgiveness that arises from a surrendered heart is the restoration of the mind to its wholeness. Heaven is here.

Garuda
Mary Magdelen’s love and intuitive guidance brought her to the chamber - where the stone was rolled back and no corpse was to be found. Her mind could not understand what her heart was revealing. Jesus - love of her heart of hearts - revealed alive in light and truth - even here. The approach of perfect love shines away the hidden self of fear - that seems to rise a moment in conviction of unworthiness and sin - only to be gently passed by in acceptance of truth as it is. In Peace.

Gentle Tsamikos
Jesus living message of love from the Father as the Source of Love came to many hearts ready to hear - and they could not but go forth in a new demeanor - a light within that yet shone through them and spread to other minds who were likewise open to receive.

Hallelujah
The holy and the broken experiences in the world are both fully felt and known and yet both are released in the willingness to sing praise in the heart to the Source of Creation - who is known through the heart that gives . In expressing life as it is - we become present to the underlying feeling and released from an emotionalism that arises from private thinking. The knowing or guidance in the heart is no kind of censor or judge.

Heart to Heart
The communion of love is the relationship within - expressed through and embodied by - tangibility : the world : each other. As we release ‘other ness’ and its defences we recognise our selves in each other and the light in all things.

Heaven Today?
Asking within becomes the conduit for the answer to come through. The flowing peace is the condition in which distortions of thought are not operating. The questions of the mind are not answered - but the desire in the heart is met.

Huron Carol
The seeking of the Divine - following the sign - led by a light - to beyond human sight, Holiness is the light of being itself and not a special object or person. With these new eyes we return to the world - to ‘our kingdoms’ in growing willingness to be guided in honouring and serving the truth that Is before Abraham was. To become on earth as it is in heaven.

Inti Tusuy
Living with a bright countenance by orienting to receive light - loving God and loving God’s Son in brother and sister and world - as one love.

Javore
in the company of the heart we feel and know and have our being in love.

Joc La Sinciene
Rising above the heavy sounds of the world - a beauty soars clearly to behold. Even the wake of the wound is turned to beauty

Jovane Jovanke
Experience of loss becomes an imprisoned yearning trapped in the past - but the prompting of the heart bids step forward and become present in gratitude and release the past along with the mind that holds your heart to its confines. Let the beauty of love shared walk alive in this day in me. ‘Let the wound become the place where my heart in love is truly known’.

Kareve Yom
in following the Father’s Will Jesus comes to recognise a gift moving within that love would make to love now stirring in sleep - the revelation of eternal life in sinlessness made tangible.
To give oneself so completely that only God is - where ‘my life’ seemed to be. And God is all in all.
This conscious ‘dying’ into Light while yet alive - was the culmination of an ongoing demonstration through Jesus’ life that God’s Spirit is one - the truth and life of all.
Jesus accepted this gift by giving it - through his own willingness to be a vehicle through which God lives - and only God lives. In such complete release of the human personality; ‘Jesus’ - did Christ awaken.
No self but only a selflessness that knows one Self in all.

Kore
The Father/Mother is one - undivided: Indivisible: the Flow or Expression of Being. Without beginning or end - eternally giving. In the Son/Daughter is the knowing Thyself. Love the Source and Truth perfectly and love thy Brother - Sister as Thy Self.

Lo Yisa Goy
‘Peter - put up thy sword’ ‘Love your enemy’. Love the ways of peace and forgive as you are forgiven for they are one. ‘Even as ye do unto the least - ye do unto me’.

Misir Lou (Vradiazi - Its getting dark)
For the disciples immediately after the Crucifiction
I searched for you at the dawn,
I found you at the afternoon
and I spoke to your heart.
I entered in the black fate.
Northern wind knocks at my door,
and in my soul cold,
and in my bitter eyes,
little by little it’s getting dark.
I searched for your eyes,
to walk in the light,
to make sweet dream,
to close old sorrows.

Misir Lou (Sto Periagiali)
“My Kingdom is not of this world”
On the secret seashore, white like a pigeon, we thirsted at noon, but the water was brackish.
On the golden sand, we wrote her name, but the sea-breeze blew and the writing vanished.
With what spirit, what heart, what desire and passion, we lived our life ... a mistake!
So we changed our life...
Composed by Mikis Theodorakis Based on (Arnisi) DENIAL [English trans : Edmund Keeley and Phillip Sherrard]
Giorgos Seferis - (Nobel laureate and one of Greece’s best loved poets).

Morning Blessing
Reawakening - whole bodily - in Gratitude. The orientation of the heart at the beginning of each day.

Mucho Madruga
We approach the center as we feel the call - we learn to pause and listen in stillness. Moved only by the movement within, we travel - we learn to listen for where we are - we are willing to release a fixed place and to step back and listen - we need to repeat that for it is a new willingness that has come to replace old habits of will.

Nada te Turbe
May nothing disturb you.
May nothing astonish you.
Everything passes.
God does not go away.
Patience can attain anything.
He who has God within,
does not lack anything.
God is everything!

One Love
Let’s join in one heart revealed - and feel ... alright!

Oro Ce Vie
A full hearted procession - sing and be glad - Hosanna!

Pravo Plovdisko Horo
Yielding to the will that is known in a quiet heart with grace, reverence and bridging the world of time and the timing of love. ‘In the world but not of it’.

Prodomeni Agape Mou
‘Love betrayed me’ - translates into the following by the Holy Spirit:
‘My wish of a love’ special to me - blinded and possessed me to see all things in its lens. But broken heart becomes open heart.
A resurrection song. Rising anew from the root where betrayal and loss of love have been felt and yet questioned in the truth of the heart to be undone and released of compulsion or necessity. This opens a presently childlike curious freedom to be from life anew.

Santos
Acknowledge and honour the Father Mother Source of all and be with love and gratitude renewed.

Sirdes
Love singing and always smiling, depart worry-free from this world of ours, whatever you do, will always be. do not believe in idle talk. I've missed you; don't you pity me? No longer can I endure the pain of separation. You're the physician who can heal me, don't let my love die in longing. May my love be intoxicated with yours, and my day with you pass joyfully, even if everyone will know, you are my heart's owner now. Let us love one another as long as we have now, for who will remain in this world forever. The world passes. (adapted from Translation)

Siriul
Jesus ‘called down’ the Holy Spirit - or rather - embodied it and brought our awareness to a capacity to discern and locate the Kingdom within. For the Holy Spirit is the higher calling that reminds you of your true home and seeks your willingness and acceptance to restore your mind to the love that it knows you eternally Are.

Tankosava
joining with others through our tasks - through our expression of common value and worth in solidarity, through our fun and play - we find vitality of life ever rising, always full.

Tsakonikos
Sharing one body - in honour of the Spirit of life that creates and flows through us as our life - we rest in your Current, feeling the subtle tides of life, and the moving with the rhythm that opens the space for the pause - a moment of conception where the eternal is for a moment clothed in form.

Tsamikos Heivala
“I have overcome the world” is the restatement of perfect inclusion in God.
For a world experienced as outside and between us, reflects a false belief.
For of a wish and belief and grasp for power does darkness seem to steal the light and render it nothing.
And yet persuade that its remaining power is the force of will necessary to survive.
But in faith and courage of the heart to hold true to its own Ground and Being is the mind of conflict starved of support and no hidden place for illusion remains. True victory is not over an ‘other’ but is the re-inclusion of the mind that believed ‘otherness’ was fear’s validity.
Great joy in release and homecoming!

White Bird
In all directions, walking only with peace for self - for each other and for world - is the way of meekness that inherits the earth - as heaven revealed and plants the demonstration of such a love into the Earth as a growing of the light in the mind that sleeps.

Yianni Mou/Goddess Invocation
From the womb of earth we are called forth by a light we cannot at first see - broken open of our dream self like a seed-case and rise to open and acknowledge the Life Force of the Sun. In abundant glory does the patterning of the earth flower. Consider the Lilies!

You Ain't Go-Nowhere
Limitations that deny freedom - the impossibility of escape from conditions that are ultimately called forth by ones own desire - yet hidden in the world.
The bridegroom cometh when ye thinketh not!
This is called the ‘kingdom cometh’ or ‘is nigh’ because to those who insist today is only as they determine it is - the bridegroom is hidden by their ‘already knowing’.
They will see as their thought determines and have their reward.
Truth cannot make war on illusion for to truth there is none!
When we come to the moment of trial we will know what to say and do - until then don't worry (or it becomes as if true by investment).
Leaving the state of freedom that is innate to awareness itself - to know itself through all things - is not possible except by disguise of illusion.

For by judgement can we exclude and by exclusion can we limit and by limitation can we suffer as one judged, excluded and limited.

Renewal (also published in Grapevine Spring 2009)

2009-04-10T15:03:00.000-07:00

I heard a BBC radio program a while back that touched me – of some young Rwandans who had been both victims and victimisers on both sides of the madness that possessed them.
They had found - and needed to find - that singing and playing together for dance had offered a way to regain an entirely clean present. This did not answer their problems as such - but it opened an intimate spiritual renewal from which to live a step at a time from a good place. A sense of life uncorrupted.
My sense is that only in a willingness or allowing of such total participation do we become altogether present – and in this we align with the very Gift of Being Itself – and so we receive new life. "Behold I make all things new" - (saith the Lord).
These Rwandans may be an extreme case where the motivation for healing is great – but it applies to all who are caught up in histories that blinker and deny the vision of innocence that only an altogether present perspective uncovers.
Such a participation of presence and passion is what I open to in my singing and it invites and touches a like quality in the dancers. Who hasn't noticed tendencies to judgement dissolve through the simple willingness to dance together?
Such experience doesn't answer our problems as such - but can surely renew and encourage us by restoring a perspective that is truly shared - in place of the endlessly recycled self-justified privacy or self-protection that a restless and often fear driven mentality locks us into.
As a young man, an insight came to me that the act of 'blanking' another human being was the soil on which holocausts and genocides depend and ultimately express. Denying reality of another is asserting one's private judge.
We all have to find our way with what we have and seem to be - yet that way is not really about succeeding in the ways that the world tends to fantasize - but is a way of experiencing and sharing in our good. This need be no fantasy but is available by the law of giving and receiving. For by what we give out do we set the measure and the kind of what we receive - and vice versa.
In what may seem to be uncertain times I invite you to become certain - not in conceptual terms - but in the orientation of your heart.
For what we desire is what we give attention to - and what occupies our attention is witness to desires we held before.
Therefore let us renew our appreciation of life, each other and ourselves, by joining in a sense of life shared. For is this not the discernment of being in love - that you walk not alone?

Following a Calling

2009-02-26T07:07:00.000-08:00

This is from a letter I wrote recently to a potential venue for holding gatherings or weekend events and I publish it here.

I am following a calling with dance – in that I am alive with the sharing of folk and circle dance as a community expression of shared humanity amidst an opening experience of oneness of being. This is always by invitation and never imposition. Dancers discover for themselves as they are willing.

This is something I have been involved with for many years along with co-organising Dance Camp East and running my own Mayflower Camps. The Camp scene has been (for me) a process of flowering, fruiting and apparent death into seed – yet much of what was opened within the community camp process remains altogether alive in me and is now growing within the larger world. This for me has been a ‘coming out’ and yet also a step by step process where I am accepting the way of willingness rather than the way of self-will. A guided way rather than an imposed vision.

In the dancing that I offer – we use songs and music from many lands – including contemporary songs of our own land and times – that have expression in dances that are shared in an intention to join. An experience of inclusion in a common inspiration.

One can approach such dances on the level of learning steps and applying them. But this is a liability of the mind which separates and thus sees all things separate. Of course as a teacher I communicate the dance movements – but I do so in relationship – in a spirit of welcome and trust – and use mime and music as well as verbal and mental mappings of step or pattern. This invites a greater participation that is itself an invitation to live from a different place than ‘thinker’ - such that the ‘what of it’ is an expression of the ‘way of it’.

The principle of dance is that of expression of spirit in and through form. The mind can short circuit this by mimicking the form as a presentation without connecting the spirit but this cuts out the source of inspiration and is essentially joyless – no matter how much effort or energy is applied or invested to the form.

We easily forget what joy is when we associate it with conditional self satisfactions. When we forget what it is we are, we become self involved in empty presentations. There is a need – I feel – for gentle ways of releasing the mentality by which we misidentify in ungrounded and unfulfilling behaviours of thought and intention.

Circle dancing is a form or structure that can be pitched at any level – fun, recreational, breaking the ice and allowing us to actually join in a simple movement. Such a willingness opens avenues of relationship that tend to be hidden from the normal modes of socially connecting – allowing a heartfelt sense of presence to rise in awareness.

We also dance meditational movements, as well as in the yearnings and prayers - or expressions of our spirit - that rise from suffering loss and limitation.

The music and dance express our humanity because music is originally a language of the heart – or Soul – the feeling dimension that is meaning. The presence of which in our day is our true wealth – for without it the world profits us not.

In this writing I have ventured to express verbally what I feel is inspired nonverbally in the dance as I share it. Sometimes some words may come in – in context of a particular moment – but the dancing is a connected attention that is more about a flow in being and not an explanation.

Living out from being – rather than living out from one’s own thinking – is the necessary path when we realize that our best thinking has only served to bring us to a sense of relationship with life in which we are to embody trust rather than exert control from an experience of distrust.

The times we live in are a call for help and there is need. But the help that meets the need must express a grounded sanity.
Whatever tasks we take on, we are all in need of ways to come together as well as ways to come to rest in our own being.

I feel that what I am growing is part of fulfilling such a desire and that it may resonate with your own vision.

In Peace

Brian

Introduction#1 - What is Circle Dancing and why do I share it?

2009-01-12T10:43:00.000-08:00

Circle dancing uses folk and contemporary dancing with an emphasis on the supportive atmosphere that comes from joining and moving together in dances to music from around the world.

As well as traditional dances from the Balkans, Europe, the Middle East and beyond, there are new dances to all kinds of music. We usually hold some intention to become attentive within - as might be found in Yoga or Tai Chi - and we are not performance related nor lubricated by drink as in a social dances. As a result there grows an inner sense of integration that also reflects a sense of communion or connectedness in the group. Many of our dances are gentle and meditative.

This is also why it is sometimes known as 'Sacred Circle Dance' - not because the dances themselves are necessarily or overtly sacred - (though they may be to some degree or other) - but from the intention with which they are danced. Over the last 25 years or so, the network of dancers and teachers has grown to express many different approaches - for it is a movement made of individual initiatives and has no central body or structure.

Where many activities aim at attaining something or getting somewhere, I feel circle dance works well to remember and express something that is already true - and to grow it. For the heart’s appreciation of life is easily neglected in our business and we become distracted.

In this sense circle dancing is re-creational, a presently remembering, renewing and therefore harmonizing of life - in mind, body and spirit. It can be pitched for any kind of occasion and uses dances of every kind of mood that can be joined with at many levels - and is inclusive in it's orientation.

Our culture has tended to emphasise 'the individual' to the exclusion of our true and common interest. It invites us to consume and acquire, as if to do so is life's purpose. It also asserts and persists such a mentality through our subscription to it’s thinking - rather than allow the sharing of a greater participation in life that includes and actually fulfills our individuality in a felt relationship.

Circle dancing can be used as a tool to rediscover that we are feeling beings rather than emototional management programs. All things can but serve the purpose to which they are put. And where there is a willingness to discover, life reveals itself in ways that call us awake - and we feel the joy or the peace of it.

Yet it is enough to join a dance and discover for oneself - in our own way and time - and there is no need to be intellectual about the dancing nor to be overly preoccupied with learning steps - they really do come easily as one relaxes - and many dances are simple patterns that the body learns easily.

I share dances in a relaxed and musical way with a minimum of ‘problem solving’ and bring a willingness to find the ways that work for us in the moment we find ourselves. I also often sing and play for the dance, and in this as in my teaching, I work within a act of trust - which brings forth a different music than a product or performance.

From our lives comes song and music that expresses 'what it is to be human' - in its fullest sense. In gratitude and appreciation of living, we join to honour and celebrate life and therefore each other and our world: we dance.

Insofar as our world presents us problems, needs and difficulties to meet and find solution, they may be met from a calmer perspective than by mere reaction - in which we often polarise conflict or diminish ourselves to feel ‘safer’. "Stop the world I want to get off!" is surely an expression of desiring to regain a grounded sense of sanity and value. Circle dancing is a for me part of a way of living from such an intent.

And this is actually touching into the dimension that we all need - in every sphere of activity. Because without choosing ways to remember, we simply remain lost in our own judgements and fears - which always distort our perception and become self fulfilling experience.

No amount of thinking or application of law or force or money or effort can make a welcome for each other arise in our own hearts. So compelled are we to thinking and judging - (in the name of 'self' protection as may be) - that we can scarce recognise each other unless we have shared something together for a while.

Yet when any old judgemental armouring falls off - we regain a sense of light and movement. A freedom within whose song is joy. Even a moment of such can lift our day - and our demeanour is always more communicative than we know - in our family, and work and community.

Yes, we generally join hands, and dance in a circle or line - and find freedom to simply be moved by the musical moment - which with discernment we grow to appreciate so much that was hidden before.

At this point, perhaps humanity is at the brink of choosing to continue to think alone - with all the miscommunication and struggles that that brings - or release control enough to let life happen!

The dancer within is not the one who can get the steps - it is the one who hears the music and lets it express through them as the steps. There are some dances that are as simple as walking and swaying - it is not a complex thing - but more a sense of being danced by life.

This is where words have to be put aside and let 'that which knows' lead the way.
It isn't a mystery - it's life dancing!

The Network

2009-01-08T06:48:00.000-08:00

I have a sense of disconnections when I think of the circle dance network.
A sense that 'network' - means disconnected bits, as if 'free to do one's own thing' but without any real grounding. Yet I suppose that's may also be a way to generate experience that will cause the need for grounding to be sought. After all we do not have a strong grounded tradition already in place that holds us in guidance for a life inspired.

To an extent 'market forces' regulate some aspects of life - in that if there is no life in it - it withers from not being given attention - because it doesn't work. But while anyone believes they can get from it - it will be invested in until the bubble bursts.

Yet our own market led society is not an example of the living truth being more subscribed to or attractive than 'masked ploys to self furtherance and preservation'. (See my last post re living truth - I'm not talking about beliefs or ideologies or asserted positions or definitions).

Birds of a feather flock together.
We do not always feel a kinship or belonging with what others choose to do - but if we do not look to our own love that it express through us as we find opportunity to share it - it 'dies'.

This could be choreographing dances that some will abhor - or it could be that it expresses as most meticulous and demanding demonstrations and attention brought to sharing dances that some are simply not attuned to appreciating. But surely, when the intent is greater than merely feeding selfishness - then it carries a tone that some others will feel and join with. How could it be otherwise?

Let the wheat and tares grow together until harvest.
This is a way of saying that there are times to attend only the good and trust the harvest to sort - because the attempt to remove the tares damages the wheat (the good). Harvest can be seen as a future event - yet can also be seen as the light by which we discern in our own life that which undermines or denies the good, from that which sustains or welcomes it. For the sole purpose of relinquishing one in favour of being whole in the other.

Hate the sin - not the 'sinner'.
The urge to see the 'bad' as external to us and thus exclude it - to punish, attack or ridicule or blank - is deeply embedded in human thinking. The 'voice' that calls for this is a lie and needs to be truly seen for what it is - or it will control us unawares and perpetuate life-as-war.

There are many seeming levels and facets to human consciousness and one could say humanity has been the exploring and expression of these. Humans have or will sooner or later do most anything that they can imagine doing and which attracts them - even if it does so subliminally via fear. What we give attention to is in effect what we feed and call forth - reaping as we sow.

Of course we don't experience ourselves free to act without consequence and our behaviours are usually brought into social rules that keep some degree of order in which consciousness can grow and learn.

Healthy plants do not attract pests.

If carelessness becomes acceptable currency - then love in all its attributes is obscured.
Carelessness is un grounded, lacking presence - a kind of sleepwalking.
It is a call for correction and education - not judgement in self righteousness.

I do have a sense of so many who are awake and active in the appreciation and enjoyment of joining in music and dance. We all have particular preferences or callings and are thus the pallet through which a greater life expresses - and reaches out to others - than can be defined or contained in single approach.

Network - I think - originally meant a connecting or series of connections that were not necessarilly hierarchical. Yet there are nodes or hubs or servers that are giving into the larger community and I don't see why they cant be working at apparently different levels and yet share the peace - and call themselves what they will. But be given definition by what you are devoted to and not by what you are against - or the endarkenment persists.

Disappointment is a way that truth taps us on the shoulder to point out that we set up the appointment according to our personal expectations - and life did not do as we wanted. This is a great opportunity to invite the Spirit within to offer its curriculum where ours failed. But if you miss it - don't worry - it is like our dance - it come around again and yet again until we join the dance with both feet.

A Peace train of thoughts

2009-01-04T17:49:00.000-08:00

Does not each one of us have a particular perspective – coloured by our particular history?
This can seem a handicap and can become a curse, when it fuels human conflicts – but it can become a special gift when we use the same goad to judge and exclude as a deeper opportunity to teach and learn peace.

We share one life – yet we each ‘see’ - or interpret - though a lens of personal investments.
What life is – as awareness and feeling – is common to us all – whether we elect to acknowledge it or not.
But we tend to become identified with a restlessness of thought and reaction in which we are often not very directly in touch with feeling and knowing anything. We become more or less adept at managing the unmanageable by whatever means works for life as we experience it. But in our dance and in life we also have moments of flowing connected being - or glimpses of a perspective that allows and celebrates life in its instant to be just as it is.

When anyone dis-covers anything of peace, by whatever means, it will always be an experience that is shared rather than a privately asserted reality.
In its moment, there is a quality of life that is neither compulsive, driven, manipulative or exploiting – nor anxious, self regarding, problematic or defensive.

The part of our mind that seeks to control usually reasserts itself and obscures our peace or whole souled-ness – and may well even do so in the attempt to ‘understand’, (control), exactly such matters as I address here. But even as the dance comes from the music – so our understandings need to come from our heart. First they are felt or intuited – and then we find ‘clothes’ or thoughts and phrases to fit them in the particular circumstance we are in. Peace is congruency - when what we express is one with what we are.

I find that the beauty of our dancing has a context that invites such a shared experience. There are innumerable joys in its shoots and fruits – but if it is not rooted in a willingness to join in a spirit of peace then it may be using the forms of dance to protect against real or shared experience. Rather than make such a statement into a basis of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ judgements – is it not enough to say that we can discover a greater life than we thought we knew before – right in place where our unrecognised judgement before had worked to obscure it?

The ‘awakening heart’ cannot be anyone other than you yourself as you are, and have always been.
Not as our thinking presents its story to oneself or the world, but simply present without apology or justification.

The forms that joy delights in or expresses through are many but their light is one. In this recognition we naturally find willingness to an inclusive mutuality even in difference.
But in our tendency to defensiveness we are quick to see what is ‘wrong with’ the other or them or it. This seems to come naturally – yet it is a learned reaction.

In a desire for peace as the condition of a true appreciation of life we discover that this old habit works against us. It has to be owned and moved past or we are in effect choosing against our peace and against our own true desire. The value of peace is that it is the condition in which all things find their true relationship. What does it profit a man or woman if they gain an orientation to the world – yet lose their very capacity to feel and know the truth? Peace is far more than an absence of war. It is the unspeakable dynamic presence of life in our heart and mind as one. Unspeakable humanly – yet speaks itself perfectly where we are still enough to listen in our heart.

I have found life to be an ongoing opportunity for deepening and revealing the heart.
To be restored to a fundamental trust in our own life is to be restored to sanity – because it is the condition in which we are not playing games with our mind.
Yet I can only release the ‘obstructions’ of which I am becoming aware.

When I first danced I became aware (the dance brought to my notice) obstruction to reaching up, to moving with grace, to accepting beauty in myself, to trusting that I could be accepted and belonging amongst a community of people.... I am sure that if I meditated on this I could make a long list of ‘obstructions’ to the flow of relationship, inspiration, and expression of joy and connectedness. I am still becoming aware of them almost 20 years later – for whatever seems to rise to limit or interrupt the music, the dance and the channel of inspiration – comes to mind to be relaxed and released.

But the principle is that there are ‘places’ in us where we hesitate, hold back, disallow, withdraw or contract from the field of relational existence. These instances are not sinful or bad or blameworthy – though they may be associated sometimes with such confusion. They are like an old program running that no longer fulfils. However the program is not really the behaviour itself – but the beliefs that give rise to it. A sense of unworthiness for love is somewhere to be found in that which obstructs our innate or natural joy. To feel the courage to open into the dance even so is an opening to whole-ing – a healing in that unnecessary armouring or outmoded strategies of defence fall away and let me move!

It is a delicate matter in moving from a mode of apparent self protection into one of self trust and expression, and every case is an individual relationship because it has to be a dance of trust where willingness to enter or accept relationship is freely chosen. The condition in which peace can be discerned in our hearts and minds is always one of freedom from judgement. This is not to say noticing ‘judgements equals my bad!’ – but that they represent an old program running that no longer fulfils – and the habit is being brought to re-evaluation. Judgements have no power to be more than momentary distractions unless they are invested in, subscribed to and fed with attention and identification. It is quite possible to be more committed to being right than being genuinely happy in real relationship – but only while knowing not what you do.

To stay in with the music – with the hall or place you are in, with the hands you hold, and the group of dancers – when experiencing the result of judgement in oneself – is ego transcending. Feeling the block but not engaging fight or flight – but feeling within for a better way. - a way to become present with. The external will always mirror within and in solidarity with our dancing neighbour, we are growing a truer sense of self worth. To ‘love one’s neighbour as oneself’ is not a social manipulation – but is an expression of simple truth. The world will blind us to this while we fear love and trust fear to keep us safe. But my witness is that we are given steps as we are willing that are within our range, such that we become more grounded, calmer and grow in a natural kindness of heart.

As civilised people, we do not tend to express our naked thought and feeling openly – but rather we mask and suppress and tend to dissociate such that we are often strategically self serving. We can and generally do make society like this but it tends to be a negative cooperation: a joining in order to minimise discomfort in terms of whatever ideas are the power or fashion of the day; a joining against something defined or inferred as bad, dangerous or hateful. This is not joining in life but in illusion!

Truth is not a matter of argument or definition – nothing to think about here! Truth as I am using it is the renewal and refreshment of our spirit – the orientation of our heart’s desire. It doesn't matter if there is any such thought as mine here in anyone’s mind – but it does materialise tangible results when anyone finds or brings willingness to recognise and accept Life’s Invitation - and take a step in a greater music.

I love so many things about joined up dancing – sharing in common – celebrating what it is to be human in a larger context than boy meets girl – or boy meets lots of drum’n bass in anonymous darkness and flashing lights. But I also know that the Spirit is also right there wherever we are - offering an optimum path from wherever we seem to be – like a GPS offering the route anew with every wrong turning. So I trust that – just as I sometimes hesitate or back off or become confused amidst the willingness to live and love – so too do you all. But the heart is like a compass that we did not make and therefore cannot unmake.

Things may often seem to get worse before they can get better – perhaps because we do not want to accept responsibility because we equate it with burden or blame.
But we are not responsible to actually do the peace or do the love – but merely to become willing to undo the blocks to such presence and make it welcome.
To share common purpose with a happy heart is not difficult! To open our hearts to those who seem to want or do differently than us can seem impossible but the undoing of obstructions arises spontaneously from the willingness to look upon them exactly as they are – and not as they are presented.

I hold the experience dear of being guided and supported as a dancer within the dance itself and see this as ‘keeping the channel open’ in the whole body-mind.
It often looks a lot like having deep and serious fun – yet just as we are - and on purpose.

Notes and stories from some of my recent dance choreography

2008-12-26T15:19:00.000-08:00

I have recently choreographed dances to these songs.

‘What are they doing in heaven today’ by the Be Good Tanyas.
‘Farewell Shallabiye’ by No Blues.
‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’ - a traditional Carol.
‘The Huron Carol’ (Twas in the Moon of Wintertime) - a traditional Carol.

Heaven Today?- as I have called the dance - is already a song I enjoy singing and in a simple way holds some deep truths that are supported in the lilt and yearnings of the song - which lends itself to harmonies and a heartful expression. I have also long held a sense of wanting to dance more of the songs I sing - and to add more English songs to our dance repertoire.
At various times, unborn dances nudge or prompt me. Some attempt to be born and have many hours and moments spent that yield only a dance in pending but not really through. It isn't a matter of finding or deciding steps but of feeling the qualities in the song and music and honouring these in the dance. Heaven Today? has a lazy lilt where the singing lags the waltz just a little - and hold the theme of human loss, suffering and courage - and asks a question that cannot really be framed in worldly terms which in broadest terms holds a sense of life beyond the world we seem to know and struggle within.

When I choreograph, it is a form of playing. I allow movements to occur and explore those which feel alive. But often many possible variations arise and it can become quite maddening - so there can be a need to establish some basic sense of the way of it - as a sort of skeleton structure or idea in which to focus. But always the head has to serve the heart or else the dance becomes a sterile imposition. Of course the experience of this is more about trusting myself than it is about rules of any kind - but there is a rule of asking within as to how it feels - and what it speaks of or teaches. I often find lovely movements that nevertheless do not have a home in the particular dance I am working with.
It is often the case that some of the movements evoke or symbolise aspects of the dance - and where these fit without force they are welcome. In the parts of this song where hardship is sung, I found the dance moving closer to centre but turned away from it - and for the part that approaches ‘heaven’ we simply move to centre and sway - but initially with downturned eyes and humbly - because we do not expect to deserve Light, Love, and Peace from our worldly identity. But when we look up we actually find neither sin nor sorrow - this has a reaching up and discovery that is also shared at the centre. ‘Peace is found/abounds like a river’ is one part of the song that does not have this lazy lilt - and flows as a continuum - which feels congruent with the lyric - so also in the dance the continuum of sway, turn and grapevine and sway is all exactly on the beat and without pause in a flowing movement.
I also like a dance to have something unique in it that carries a moment of discovery for the dancer and perhaps extends the vocabulary of movement - but again this is a matter of discovery rather than invention. In this dance there is a common motif of a sway that on completion spills into a turn on a swivel and another sway - which is not something I have met with before.

‘Farewell Shallabiye’ by No Blues.
This is an exercise in Arabicana - a fusion of a US blues track and an Arabic song. I feel that to join these cultures in shared joy is itself a prayer that heals. It is feelgood and upbeat with exotic Arabian threads through what otherwise could pass as a JJ Cale track. I danced a very simple intro dance to it at an IFD workshop that was like a congo and quite unsatisfying to me - but I got a copy of the music and found it lovely - and desired from time to time to dance something more congruent to it. The whole dance came to me while my partner Cathi went to post some parcels at the local Post Office - almost ready made and effortlessly - (Whereas heaven today had required concerted persistence and been crafted over many sessions).

There is an instrumental theme that is very catchy and occurs between each other part of the music and this found a simple crossing step with a slight lean and a lift of hand and foot as one. Totally brainless and immediate as well as easy to gain orientation without need to count anything. The blues part found a series of step, slipstep and sway that just fits the flow of the delivery. When the Arabic singing comes in I felt to let it be an expression primarily of the hands - so I let the feet have a sort of grapevine where the latter two beats were more expansive - like the singing - and the hands were free to move to the arabesque singing. This is an area of growth and awakening for most circle dancers - and with appropriate permissions and encouragement is enjoyed greatly. So much of our expression as dancers is forfeit when we hold hands all the time. The second time the Arabian part comes round it is much shorter and subtler. I invite this to focus more on the energetic of presence expressed through subtly held gesture - and scarcity makes it precious as there is no time to take it for granted! At the final part there is blues and Arabic singing in fusion - and I hold this as an opportunity to do the blues part of the dance in the hands free and expressive style. This is not accessible at first for most so I leave it as the standard ‘blues’ part of the dance until the dancers have found the dance in their bodies and their own freedom in hand gesturing - but again is an opportunity for growth as a dancer.

What is growth as a dancer?
Not really the acquiring of techniques or skills so much as the release of obstacles that allow the fuller freer expression of life in dance.
Of course this coincides with increased perspective and freedom within a more spacious awareness to feel and be presently expressive as the very resonance of the music in ones own being. A grace and lightness of being. A natural un-armoured demeanour. A calm and receptive presence.

‘Drive the Cold Winter Away’ - a traditional Carol.
Well actually I made this last year - Christmas 2007 - but wanted to add a few notes here.
It is a merry and convivial carol with references more to the warmth of forgiving, restful and celebratory hearts than direct references to Jesus’ birth - and I wanted a simple but fitting movement that flowed in the manner of the 6/8 music. As I write this I have just seen a partner option for the first part that would add further merry meeting.
It has a pattern that naturally invites looking up in greeting - with a ‘Condor’ moment at the centre. The Horslips instrumental version is fine for when driving the winter away appeals but the seasonal celebrations are behind us! I haven't news of a good recording of the sung version that fits yet - but it is fun and hearty to sing and I enjoy doing so.

The Huron Carol - a Trad Carol.
I found versions of this Carol on youtube and liked elements from different versions - but for the dance initially I was drawn to a version that can be viewed HERE
I was drawn to the sense of opening and aspiring in the third line that then falls into a pause amidst a rather strange and wonderful incompletion from which the chorus then stands forth. I immediately ‘felt’ a dance!
As it happens the week before I had made up a simple dance on the spot for 4 seasons because I didn't recall or like the original but wanted to sing and dance the song - and the first part of this tapped me on the shoulder and said "I fit this Carol just right" - and I agreed. It is a forward travelling step slipstep step - slightly expanding and contracting.
The third line faced centre and palms up moved in to right, in to left. The 4th line has us step back before then stepping in to centre and bending knee in reverence and pausing. The chorus then bends again and suddenly rises our arms as we steap back and rock and sway to indicate the cardinal directions which is also a cross and arms come down with a slow grapevine to finish.

The feelings of this are a travelling around that comes to face centre in willingness to behold and receive - yet this is in some sense hesitant as of approaching a holy state or place that the conditioning of our past might have us feel tempted to unworthiness or fear of - for we are stripped of our pretensions in such a light. Yet we do approach and in essence kneel or give recognition, welcome into our heart and honour. This for the wise men who left their kingdoms in guided search for truth and received it. The immediate response of the awakened heart is to give joyously and to rise and release and allow the light to plant itself in the world through them, here in this place, here with these hands I join.

Now of course these words are not in the dancer - but something of such energetic symbol is innately in the dance and it is a way to bring the appreciation of the entrance of the divine into the human story - into wordless experience felt and known.

There are other aspects to the Huron Carol lyric that I hope to address. I will make a new lyric from the literal translation of the Huron version that was made by St Jean de Brébeuf a jesuit missionary in (then) New France c.1643. The popular verses used are simply a version made by Jesse Middleton, a Toronto journalist and church musician in 1926 that renders the standard nativity in American Indian terms - whereas the original included aspects of teachings in addition to nativity references.

That Christianity may be associated with the white man’s subjugation and genocide of indigenous peoples is distinct in my mind from the story of Jesus - which is not owned or ultimately interpreted by Christianity.
The crucifixion was an act of ignorance. The mind in ignorance knows not what it does - for it does not know what and who it is! Jesus is a story of a man who did know he was ‘of the Father’ - and who released his own will in service and love for ‘the Father’s Will’ found in his own heart’.

Which brings me to consider the sacred and dance as a subject for a future blog entry.
But for now I would say that to be congruent in receiving and expressing the music felt in heart and body, is to be adding not - nor taking away - but is in effect surrendering one’s self will to allow a greater Will - and this is the open ‘door’ to the sublime in whatever kind of quality of life we share.

PS - The Huron Carol - I have gotten a version by the Crash test Dummies which I will try with either a slightly adapted (simplified) dance - or use Amazing Slow Downer to play it a bit slower.

A bit about me and dance and the journey of awakening

2008-12-08T15:42:00.000-08:00

I came to circle dance in the late 80's when a friend sent me a flyer for a dance weekend. I'd been involved in spiritual search, which had fruited such that I no longer felt to be seeking in private, but growing by sharing from a willingness to join. I didn't know what this dancing was - but felt it had a spiritual aspect - and that we could go as a family.
I couldn't dance - a helpless grin on discoordinated spaghetti legs! But the atmospheric was tangibly open and inclusive - and curiously from the outset- I 'knew' something was offerered me to share through. A path and a tool. A song at the time summed it up: “From you I receive, to you I give, together we share, by this we live”. Yet the dance itself didn't need even such few words to be potent in opening the heart.

I use the word heart here simply as our truth sense. Living with and from the heart is closer to the life of us - though in opening we also uncover the 'human conditionings' that tend to self-protection and denial of life rather than its giving and living. Grounded guidance is found within the music and the flow of our present - yet as long as there is an attempt to control from a mentality of self protection, this will not be felt or recognised. 'Knowing ourself' is not a collecting of data for developing a new self presentation - but simply growing a capacity for trust based on self honesty. Trust is the bedrock on which all sanity rests and it is not a matter of thinking or analyzing so much as feeling our way. Safety, is an inside job.

Immediately after the weekend, I saw on tv some Arab guerillas dancing preparing to fight, and Hitler youth folk dancing. I saw joined dancing carries an invitation or expectation to join a form - which may not mean what it presents itself as - and a response - which is the faith and intention of those who respond. Dance is a tool or a vehicle that serves the purpose for which we employ it. This is a fundamental truth of mind: All things serve the purpose accorded them.

My early dancing years were an incredible time for me. A living path is like as to where the inspiration within is alive and life aligns with learning in joy and an unfoldment in grace. From the early 90s I shared the dance and hosted network events from my home as well as connecting at Easter meets and Dance Camp. I worked a self employed craft candlemaker with 4 children - and Emily - our second - was handicapped. The care of Emily and family life meant I had to cut back on my dancing path - though I kept local groups. This became a sense of stillborn child in my own heart - but I felt a duty of priority and we had very little support around us.

Camps came into my life as a deeper golden thread - again our whole family could participate, again I was sharing of a freedom to be. Joy is the light that the heart shines whenever it knows its freedom. I don't dance to get something - but to be restored to a presence of giving and receiving - and dancing is an extension of living. So I became involved in running camps and that became my creative path or focus. I didn't want circle dance to be the invitation of my camps - but to be a tool within a more inclusive invitation - that expressed a community spirit in our whole camp.

When I last wrote to Grapevine it was with news of loss of my firstborn, Elanor. That was 1995. My response to that event was to let all that I was, be brought to renewal at the most fundamental level, for I had squandered an enlightenment in trying to make 'my life' work. I'd got it back to front. But I let go of teaching dance outside camp in 2000 amidst a dichotomy of the atheist and the martyr; either feeling juke-boxed by my own liability to 'give without joy' - or overstretched in giving all when leaning out into raw new creativity using live song and music (often found in the moment with whoever joined in). They both seemed to cost too much - though in opposite ways. I had a few more years to come to the point of choosing life and letting the fears go - in which my livelihood was lost to cheap imports, my marriage failed, my camps were lost and I was 'in the wilderness'. But for all the dramas and the stuff of it, I have come to a calmer and clearer abiding in life and letting it abide in me. Allowing 'new wine into new bottles'. Releasing old thinking that essentially made the script by which I forgot what life is.

To 'come out' again in teaching dance and singing for dance was extremely hard because it involved opening up an area where I had lost trust. It wasn't an issue of ability - but of true intent and dedication. When the very heart's desire seems to die or fail it is a loss of communication. Self unworthyness is so deeply embedded in our minds that it has become normal currency. But it is joyless.
For the core of what I felt moved to stand in and support was and is joy. Survival to me is all about living in truth and spirit, which is less about mentality of fear and more about trusting to live this day well, to feel the music of the day and move with it in gratitude. The call to joy is innate but often hidden, and works in mysterious ways that I don't have to know about or control - but I do have to heed the call in my own heart to know the gift by which I live.

The songs and music I sing and play for dance are the song of the human heart in all its cadences of yearning and delight, and they are each exactly felt and brought present such as I can 'get out of the way' and let the song live through me. This is the same for dancers: Relax of the world we carry in our head and feel the quality of whatever this dance is - in its unique setting in this place in our lives - becoming simply present where the flow of experience is alive and no one needs to try and say it or grasp it. Be found in such a grace and all facets will be uncovered in due course and take their place in a dance like a tapestry of threads that are distinct and yet express relation to the whole.

It's deeply fun - a moving experience - it's joined up and alive! - and runs as deep as our willingness to receive - which cant be separated from a willingness to share. To hold a welcome in one's heart for others is not to be a doormat - but to be consciously receptive.

If something alive isn't made into a 'Solution' it can be free of the problem - and a wellspring of sanity for all who come to drink. For sure when we have regained a healed perspective we are encouraged and more able to discern practical solutions where before seemed unworkable and dispiriting.
When we grow trust within our own being - it shares out, our armourings become automatically obsolete and we can share life in depth and subtlety without a word.

When I look at the world and see so many who share so little - I am glad to realize that they have such discovery awaiting them. But for me I have come to see that giving is not the cost I cant afford to keep making - but is the only way to remember the love in which I am whole. And so whatever it seems to 'cost me' is not to be weighed and measured. But that I find a willingness to share the dance I love is true cause for gratitude.

(This was written as a draft for a Grapevine article but something else I wrote was used instead so I put it here).

Dancing with Friedel Kloke- Eibl

2008-12-08T15:24:00.000-08:00

(This has been transferred from my matters 'spiritual' blog where it was written on 15/04/08)

I have just returned from a dance weekend with Friedel Kloke- Eibl - a Sacred Dance Teacher who as a young ballet dancer trained with Bernard Wosien - who brought Sacred Circle Dance to Findhorn Community 32 years ago from where it has spread internationally. Friedel exemplifies the dance as an art and as a path of initiation - not merely an outer form that is acquired, mimicked, traded or collected.

I felt that Freidel communicated a warm and clear presence of no nonsense and in grounded but natural discipline. It was we who were expected to embody the willingness to bring attention present to what she offered. Her expression is of a directly felt conscious response to music and life and she held faith in us as dancers in process of discovery and awakening.

Freidel’s demeanour throughout the process was calm, present and considered in the light of her clear sense of purpose. Her joy was evident in her love of dance, her patience was acceptance of where we as students were currently at, but always inviting, a greater involvement than that which the current mindset or approach of the student allowed. So she was also willing to ‘trick’ of tease of drop the dancers into the deep end - or experiences of chaoticness - but she herself held and communicated a calm and connected composure and expressed confidence in all that she undertook even when we did not feel it in ourselves.

Circle dancers who are used to accessibility, exhaustive step maps in advance and motherly inclusion, as well as dancers used to being fed exciting and challenging dances had to let go of that expectation of habit - or be disappointed. Freidel used many simple movements as exercise for stilling and centering as well as using them as basic components of a more elaborate dance forms later in the session. Yet many of the dances she shared - most of which she herself choreographs - were precise in their intent and used hand and arm and gesture that was ‘just so’. This was challenging in a different way as it was really something to open to and allow or discover - rather than something to impose upon. Though Friedel would often comment on where some or all of us were not getting it or were asleep to the actuality, she never acted in any way that demeaned the dancer or worked to undermine their trust - though she was quite capable of simply not supporting a dancer’s expectations or demands and obliging them to take self responsibility.

Freidel would usually give a brief demonstration of the dance with an also brief and not very voluble description of sequence and then drop us - the dancers in it. I sense that she does this according to her sense of our capacity and not as an act of indifference. Although she would often answer questions with a warmth and patience that felt very loving and encouraging - she would often do so in ways that indicated that she wanted a greater trust from us for ourselves and her, and her composure discouraged casual questions or indeed acquaintance. but also she would repeat the dances many times and at each time we would be given further help or instruction as to our readiness.

Because of her approach we would often experience shortcoming and even chaos - which brought us into the arena of control and the lack of it but also of where the control is coming from. For the attempt to control life must yield to the heart if the dance is to become presently embodied and alive. In this and so many other ways she gave maximal opportunity to awaken to and from from our mental patternings and their interference with the dance. The manner and the art of travelling was emphasised as the dance and not the getting there - yet not with adding decoration or embellishment but rather of expressing innate qualities.

The workshop overall was rooted in and from a poised appreciation of one’s own relationship with ground and above - our vertical, and from there opening relation with others. Many of the dances were danced without hands joined - often to facilitate less distraction when learning and more freedom of movement. The social element was economized throughout the event excepting during breaks or outside the hours of practice. Yet Freidel would often express humour - particularly in her demonstrations and exaggerations of what not to do! She also took a few opportunities to read poems or talk about the dance. Being a large group in a large hall made active listening essential but even so we could not often hear as we may have wished. We did receive copies of the poems though.

Her sense of honouring the dancer was tangible and she worked with many at various times without showing either partiality or any lack of care to any - yet also she was spontaneously present in many moments of gesture , look or touch. In being so clearly the centre of our attention she also deliberately also made herself absent from being a replacement for our own responsibility - often leaving the circle - even before the dance began. her manner outside the circle was never one of scrutiny such as to intimidate but of a happenstance meeting with general attention to us on many levels and some periods of having her back to us so that we were not in the emotional dynamic of being seen or exposed to being seen. Yet she was also acutely open to opportunity for supporting her dancers and would not hesitate to engage directly in the most understated but direct expression of approval or a very subtle disappointment that itself seemed not to matter for what was gone but invited ongoing willingness to persist in the process of mastering the form in the heart such as to meet her in the spirit in which she teaches.
Whereas in circle dance we may often be used to a menu of dances whose intent is to be a journey of self fulfilment often using ‘known’ steps that we may exercise in boiler plate fashion, Freidel’s dances were more aimed at grounding and awakening us to aspects of where and what we truly are via the journey through what is obscuring that expression. The degree to which we are able to be willing and accepting-expressing truth is simply where we each and all are at any moment, but her willingness to serve and grow in willingness for such work was tangible. Her choreography extended and attuned the movements of dance but also returned again and again to the most basic stances or positions - as in classical ballet.

For a collector of dances Freidel’s workshop may have had a gem or a few such - but the experience was much more that of deepening one’s own dance and growing more present as the movement consciously expressing. This is not merely about dance - but speaks of life itself.

As such Freidel is not merely a dance teacher of professed sacred forms or notions but is in service and mastery as a demonstration and relationship in spiritual practice - a spiritual teacher or catalyst and invitation to wake up to Life. As with the dance, there are levels to pass through in uncovering and embodying a spirit unalloyed, and Freidel is accepting of these as with dance as stages that we pass through and not marks of status or specialness. Her teaching is expressed in dance and not as mental constructs to be asserted, refuted or chosen from.

My impressions here are my own. They may not resonate with others but they do express my experience. As my first meeting in dance with Freidel I am gladdened and encouraged to find such capacity and willingness at work in the world and I trust that something of what has occurred continues to be nurtured and grow through my own living and dancing.

Many look at Freidel and see a form that they could never hope to match - but this misses the point. The outer form is an expression of an integration of heart, mind and Spirit that will express uniquely and appropriately through us as we allow and discover the same within ourselves. A perceived or believed lack of self-worthiness is an obstacle that would bar the gate against grace being allowed expression through our very self. But if such thinking is put aside and the experience is embraced and allowed in, then we will discover more of ourselves than we could have ever found within the bound of such thought.

About this particular blog

2008-12-08T13:20:00.000-08:00

I have been writing for some time on another blog at
http://livingcircle-dot-net.blogspot.com
mostly about matters that I regard as spiritual - of the heart, of the mind, of the spirit that moves and enlivens.

But I now want a place to address dance and music as a vehicle of expression of integrated being - and I use this broadly in terms of the experience of dance as well as particularly in terms of dancing in joined community and participation within such as circle dance may invite.

So as you can already see, no doubt, I remain a writer who seeks to raid on the unspeakable; matters of the heart, of the mind of the spirit that moves and enlivens.

Dead truths don't dance!

Inhibition to flowing, expressing, joining and generally being a presence of Soul in Expression is because in some way we hide our light under a bushel - or as the more recent Bibles would have it - a bowl ( I think a bushel might originally have meant a measuring basket or bowl).

What does it profit a man or woman who gains the steps but loses (the appreciation of intimacy of) their soul?

So yes I will let myself remind me - and perhaps you the reader - of this inviolable intimacy from which the world has turned our mind, but I will also address specific aspects that arise - as they arise and my fingers follow the dance of writing.

But in all that I write I seek to let fly from the cage and not to imprison.
It is true that the mind of words has sought to control and deny the heart - by listening only to his or her own private thought.

But tools are defined by what purpose they are employed to serve.
This is as true for the reader as for the writer - But - the intention is here. Feel it between the lines - in the phrasing.

The call to dance is not in the perfection of the form of the music - but in its spirit.
And the rest shall be added ye!