“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...
Thursday, 24 March 2011
Friday, 18 March 2011
This I would share with you
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.
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.
Sunday, 5 September 2010
rewritten from a response I gave to a curiosity about Circle Dancing and me
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.
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.
Monday, 30 August 2010
Reflections on music in our society
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.
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
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.
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.
Sunday, 16 May 2010
Dancing with Friedel Kloke-eibl (2)
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
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
Tuesday, 20 April 2010
First sharing of Hazel Young's 'Song of Orpheus' and 'The Kiss'
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 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”.
Friday, 26 March 2010
The living cultural context of dance
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.
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.
Saturday, 20 February 2010
Alevism and Sacred Dance
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.
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
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
Tuesday, 26 January 2010
Dancing in the heart
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.
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.
Tuesday, 28 April 2009
Reflections on the Spirit of Dance
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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’.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
- ◊ -
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.
Friday, 10 April 2009
Brians Easter Dance Auditions - Easter 2009
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.
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.
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