Deeper in the dance - or in anything in life!

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

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

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

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




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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From longing in loss, to love's presence shared

This writing came out of a discussion around the dance Thalassa. A song of loss and longing that has a circle dance which has remained popular over many years.

I have a songsheet with translation HERE (pdf) - and a version of the song can be heard HERE


The theme of separation from love - as a disconnected longing that persists in bittersweet dreaming amidst an absence of loving is surely one of the most universal human archetypical expressions.

I am reminded of a Rumi poem that points the way out of dreaming on lost love - (at least to me it does!)

"God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.  Each note is a need coming
through one of us, a passion, a longing-pain. Remember the lips where
the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it.
BE YOUR NOTE."    -Rumi

There is a polarized expression of emotion and experience in the mind of loss and longing which becomes the basis of all human drama. This particular song doesn't bring in guilt or fear as ingredients or developments of losing love - the 'why' of it isnt referred nor any sense of unworthiness - just a black fate and a personalized sense of 'Sea' as the power and effect of separation.

There is also a healing and transcending expression of feeling-being in the waking up as unified perspective and presence.
This is a shift from identifying with a polarised part in an emotional drama to feeling the movement of love's presence now.

Although words and concepts are clumsy things and associated more with the wars in the mind of Human than communicating in love - I felt to write this much with them anyway...

The healing nature of music and dance is at least partly because of feeling the energetic of our drama and being it as embodiment in music and dance, such as to open or shift into a perspective of a shared loving presence. Such understandings are in the heart and not the head - and are facilitated rather than imposed or used as costume.

What it is to be human, and what it is to be Divine - are not so far apart. Its all a matter of perspective.

(No need to read on, if you don't relate to the subject, but I felt to write on...)

In singing and dancing Thalassa, I feel a tension of an outward longing in the verse that remains in motion unfulfilled - with the second part (where we move into the centre) - having a sense of seeking solace and connection within, that brings a temporary respite. Then in the chorus there is a wonderful release as an expression of full-feeling. (Which dances a different energetic through the same step pattern).
A true catharsis lets the movement of the heart find its expression in a context of trust - in place of the censorial mind that was set up as if to suppress and control a sense of mental and emotional chaos.

Self-Realisation, (or whatever phrase points to the same thing for you),  is at least in part the coming back to a perspective of wholeness - that cannot be defined or described and constructed or achieved within the context of the framework of thought that we could loosely call our 'separation experience' - where separate concepts manipulate separate things as if there were no unified field of awareness - in which and of which is all existence.

I confess to having a bias towards embracing the separative, as a means of remembering the unified, rather than persist in its drama.
If there is an end of the world as we know it and a renewal or shift of consciousness going on, then it will be a simple but profound shift in us all as one - whereby we wont be able to afford to maintain the structures of a conflicted self sense and will need and desire to learn and discern from a unified perspective.

When people find the mind of clever thinking is not the way to safety or abundance, but to a desolate despair, then music and dance and the true art of all things will find soil in which to grow.
It isn't that we do not in some sense know - but that the knowing of the heart is disallowed and usurped by a polarized experience in which conditioned reaction has denied any true receptivity.

The receptive is not passively acted upon - but calls and embraces with discernment!
The extension of life is not blindly projective - but is rooted and guided in the receptive.
When we get out of kilter - what I tend to call 'separation' occurs.
Then we embrace or accept what we do not truly want (or love) and yet share it as if we do, and fuel it with dreams of connection - acted out in rituals of not really joining hearts and minds in shared purpose.

Forgetting seems to me to be a condition that calls for remembering - and this world is a very distracting experience!
I feel our dance offers one tool, path or vehicle - among many - to serve the desire for renewal of perspective and purpose.
I recall crispbread adverts from long ago that qualified their slimming claims by adding 'as part of a calorie controlled diet'. I have always felt the healing and renewing power of our dance to be likewise - part of a whole way of life.

The breakdown of old patterns of human culture at all levels - along with changes in climate, makes a very compelling case for the uncovering of the basis for the renewal of culture - both in personal and universal terms.

Sharing in the passion and the presence of life.

Now of course there are those who simply want some exercise or to allay alzheimer's in a pleasant musical way - (or any other perfectly valid motivation). but if the intention of the dance is held as a core culture, then that is what will be called forth - in a way and in a manner that freely arises in relationship together.

In Peace

Brian

A Truly Human Culture Shares Music and Dance

I have always felt the the dancing belongs within a larger context and live it as such. The idea of things 'on their own' is also the idea of giving things the meanings we make up, (and fight over). In made-up meanings we are cut off from Meaning; a 'Prodigal journey' away from our true relatedness.

The wish to 'go our own way' has an allure of becoming something in our own right; a self specialness that sets out from a place in ourselves that is turned away from our true being - as if a curiosity, taken as real, becomes mesmerising - losing perspective in a self protective mask.

Prodigal journeys promise fulfilment but lead to depletion, conflictedness, limitation, and loss - an utter loneliness of being that cannot be merely salved; a convoluted thinking that cannot be extended or reconstructed. In one way of another the structures that expressed attempts of a self-will, disintegrate.

It is in the context of a willingness for reintegration that true culture originates or in 'Prodigal' terms the willingness to be of service in true relationship. In putting self will aside a deeper current rises through us and finds expression. To be moved, rather than being the mover, danced rather than being the dancer. To be wholly lived rather than playing out apart.

The interrelationships of wholeness transcend any organisation of seemingly broken or separate parts because each part expresses wholeness. In a willingness to 'be with'; to remain or abide in relationship, we invite the living spirit or principle of relatedness to express, in place of a compartmentalized mind. And are harmonized thereby.

I have never been able to articulate what the dance is that is truly shared, because even the manifest aspects of its expression are the least of its being. When I see a community learning to dance apart; of joining forms without joining of hearts, then I must dance as stillness; for joylessness is not my heart's desire to share or multiply.

In the disintegration of a joylessness is the prayer for love's awareness remembered; to see the love, and to be the love. This is an order of need of each other that cannot be measured.

Without a true basis, culture cannot 'take'. Establishing such a basis, is of giving welcome in place of a 'self-protective' script that blocks our own ears with fear of loss and costs us recognition of our true interrelatedness.

To step out of 'problem', fears, self-unworthiness, prejudice and the liability of self righteous isolation; is to step into the Music and the Movement of Life, as an integral part of wholeness. As a living embodiment of trust and connection.

Unless we give it, we shall not (know that we) have it (to share).
Perhaps losing all that we think we have, (and are) is the only way of awakening to (and as) as wholly fresh appreciation of all that is alive.

In some form or another, gathering in a shared heart, in music and dance, and in silence of our being, is integral to any truly human Culture.

The need for truth - for a true sanity of heart and mind and whole communication - is kindled within the disintegration of identity.

The wish to survive in our own terms initiates a protracted delay in which the new cannot come in because the old is barring the way. This doesn't stop the new, but simply covers one's eyes while all about is moving on. Has moved on.

The gestures of community tend to be subverted in reaction to ill fortune; to evils besetting us or adversity to overcome. Then dissipate when new evils come into fashion.

The passion with which fear is invested runs counter to the innate qualities of love's gift.

I feel it is time to own the mind that we called 'unconscious' and to become willing to share consciously of that which expresses a true interrelatedness. That isn't subject to spin and self specialness because it embodies in act, rather than being encapsulated in ideas that become used out of context.

To have a point of reference and witness that is not itself a reactive group of us over and against them or of a me over and against others, offers a true foundation. "When two or more gather in My Nature, there I am".

This is what I feel in the circle dance and this is what I hold sacred.

In Peace

Brian


PS: I also write. Some of which can be accessed via the blog links on my website:
http://www.livingcircle.net
Because it arises from a willingness of listening, it is only available to a willingness to listen. Twitter disciplines me to 140 characters!
https://twitter.com/binra

Kefi - Joy of life at the heart of the impulse to dance

Reflections arising from reading that the Greeks have the word 'kefi', for the joy of life at the heart of the impulse to dance.

This phrase stands out as a reminder of a truth the world so readily forgets.

The heart tends to be denied and suppressed by the impulse to define, identify and defend.

In earlier years, our dancing was more open, Though I don't travel that much, I often find what I tend to call dancing with the drawbridge up.

As if what once opened a way of naturally moving in a shared joy became but another environment in which to self differentiate (in self protective conditionality).

Intellectually, I am not surprised at this for it is 'the way of the world' to absorb and neutralize the heart's innocence of being - for it often seems to undermine or break our rules. But in the place of joy's expression I feel a kind of shock in meeting a joylessness within a natural occasion of joy - no matter how normal it might be in the 'culture'.

The (dance) teacher is also a point of invitation and demonstration of culture. Culture is broadly speaking, the values that we embody and share in all that we do, but in specific activities such as our dancing, we have an opportunity to invite and embrace in personal and cultural renewal. A truly Recreational activity!

Drifting, could be used as a term to indicate when old habits are running in place of - and perhaps unconsciously denying -  a conscious appreciation. When everyone drifts together, they tend to support the status quo - and the fresh energies that would rise as healing and renewal do not find a way through. The old rigidifies form and protects against change by exercising control. The new will always break through - gracefully or otherwise.

Nothing new in all this - but to read something so very true, prompted a little reflection.

Joy is innate rather than acquired - though of course we are all conditioned to relax and enjoin in some situations and not others. Joy is not only effusive or expansive - but is the felt quality of Soul (for lack of a better word) that shines quietly in a heartfelt connection and as a tangible presence in a shared trust.

There is a lot of folderol around spirituality - but freedom to feel and be moved, is joy's embodiment. Any attempt to become a someone or something in our own right always works against such a joy, no matter how it is presented.

When I first came to circle dance (without coordination!) I also came to a wholly joy based learning - in which the basis and context of learning was guiltless within a movement of recognition (of value) and an act of self-inclusion. I did not want to exclude myself on the basis of 'cant do it' or 'I don't belong here'. I wanted IN - and so listened within for the way of hanging in despite the triggers to fold, to back off - and to judge.

Such inclusiveness was also amidst an aspirational movement; in which we were willing to open and grow.

It is perhaps ironic that the opening of such joy invokes a self-protective grasp which inevitably patterns into factional historical perspectives over time. But just as we all sometimes feel the dance moving us that 'knows itself in its flow' - so is there in the greater dance of our lives - of the culture we create together and the perspective in which we live.

The key in simple terms might well be joy. To risk into our joy may make us more sensitive to joylessness in our life - but wherever joy is denied there is an opportunity for noticing what is really going on beneath the story our mind's set. Only the tension of which we are aware can be released.

I can can recall coming through aspirational inhibition in a willingness to reach up. Relaxing through a belief-identity that said 'boys don't move with beauty and grace'. These are easy to describe and share - but the opportunity for uncovering the so called inner dancer (you) as an embodiment of a shared innocence of being is ongoing. This speaks to me of a way of life - not preset with identities, so much as an ever releasing and renewing in a greater participation of discernment and trust.

Anyone who has danced with me knows I am not careless of the step and style of the dance - but that these are communicated within a relationship or living context that invites and extends a willingness to joy.

To be undefended to our own joy is to be without inhibition or embarrassment for THAT we love (are moved). This witness is denied our world if we hide our light under a bushel, for it is not our light ALONE - and that is what we have forgotten when we contract into a defensive posture of isolated ones seeking to connect as isolated ones through ritual acts that re-enact forms of what once Moved alive.

Please take all this as a sketch. It isn't a tirade against anyone or anything, but a prompting of joy to share its own nature.


Thank you for your attention!

In Peace

Brian

If this is at all interesting, you may appreciate reading

"Reflections on the Spirit of Dance":

http://preview.tinyurl.com/cfhgden

Feedback about feedback, the mind and the roots of culture

Before I have began to even write my feedback to the Easter Gathering, I have pondered what feedback is, and what it may serve at a deeper level than votes on likes and dislikes and consequent tweaking of the form of things to please the many and perhaps to less displease the vocal few.

Feedback, in a scientific sense, is neither good nor bad, in that it is communication that can serve to illuminate the underlying mind or culture of which the experience of the event was a fruit. The ‘feedback’ reveals meaning according to the questions we ask. Therefore we are never dealing with external facts, so much as participating in a relationship that inherently includes our desires, questions and the accepted beliefs from which they spring.

What is the purpose, basis or culture of the event for which feedback has been invited? If this itself is fragmented and conflicted, then on what basis can feedback be reliably evaluated? Is popularity or its opposite a reliable indicator of value? But feedback can simply be a vehicle by which issues can be raised and communication shared with the organising team. In that case it is enough that they read it and allow it to speak in their hearts (discernment) such as to walk with it in the next step. But the event itself is already feedback - as each organiser's experience and participation - and carries far more information than can be written or conveyed in words.


Before presuming to gather or articulate my feedback about the event, I consider my own journey of experience - that was my participation with you all - and discern its fruits. I cannot honestly say it wasn't perfect. But this is not perfect at the level of my personal shopping list of likes and dislikes. Perhaps I can clarify.

I have realized that the experience we meet, tends to be set up for and by ourselves according to the desires and intentions that we set out with. Much of this is usually running unknowing as personal wishes and fears, and in the process of experience some of what had been hidden may be brought to light of conscious awareness. This is always transformative.

When fears come to the surface, we tend to become defended, controlling, rigid and reactive. But finding a way to move THROUGH such states without investing in them IS the release of fear and this always opens a more spacious, tolerant, accepting and compassionate presence. In this freedom, love and the true desires that arise from love of life can move us directly, and we feel blessed, joyous, and grateful in an ease or natural harmony of being.

The attempt to control or manage fear IS fear, but it is fear operating strategically and coercively to seem fairer in some respects or less extreme in its effects. And by adopting mutually agreed definitions as a culture of joining without really meeting, in empty rituals upon which each projects their own imagined meanings. Joylessness becomes the new standard - against which background our personal satisfactions become our reward and the cost of conforming to a joyless culture, becomes the price exacted.

To share a living culture, as a positive life honouring gift - known in its sharing - we must learn to move free of the fear of upsetting the rules that the fearful put upon themselves and each other, by living out from a different place than a fearful separated sense that seeks to validate itself or become something valid - as if we are not already worthy of love.

Our natural authority, or integrity of being, is lost when we feel disconnected from our love and joy. We feel undermined and confused and tend to mask this with what seems to work as acceptable to or aligned with that which seems to be given authority. And we then defend and identify with our masks and their allegiances against unmasking - as if they were our selves.

Our mask also filters and limits our communication, for whatever appearance we may present, the actual energetic is what is communicating beneath the appearance - and fear or division calls a mixed response - because of wanting conflicting things. But joy calls forth wholeness of being because it speaks directly to the same in all and disregards the mask altogether.

In our teaching, we demonstrate. We firstly teach ourselves - for we are learning by what we teach. If we teach that we are moved or inspired to share something we love and value - as an expression of trust, then THAT quality will bring all else into alignment in ourselves and others - and we will teach and grow and learn in trustworthiness. To trust our self is not the same as being in control.

In a heartfelt safety, the mask evaporates of falls away of itself as unneeded, and joy shines the freedom to be unlimited and unconcerned by such thoughts as feel the need to hide. This is the context that we can invite and share as the basis of our dancing.

The form of what we teach doesn't matter - IN THE SENSE that joy is not strategic and can discern in the moment how to teach, what to emphasize, what manner to adopt - in short, how to be in the moment. So we may then also focus of the particular exactitudes of form without getting bogged down in the mind that clutches them as a mask.

The masked mind may be the normal but acquired culture of our society, but it is not our Nature now to be drawbridged, under siege, joyless and withheld from sharing in the presence of being alive. Because we feel a sense of temporary security in such attempt to control, we resist opening into life energetically and emotionally, as the feeling beings that we simply are, regardless of how locked down that sense might seem to be.

The true safety of our being, arises from growing discernment and trust within our selves, as to what we open to, and join with - at the level of our thoughts. Instead of using and identifying with a fearful template that re-enacts our past judgements and locks us out of our connection now, we live out from a felt or intuited sense of life, listening and feeling as we go.

A dying network, a dying culture, or a dying planet - these are all symbols of a sickness of our thought - even if their fruits seem irrefutably tangible. Allowing that the world is a transient phenomena that cannot be held onto anyway, we still have and Are the life that Lives us now - in and of which we may behold in a wonder and appreciation that inherently moves in us as shared being and not as withheld thought.

That whose nature is wholly shared cannot die - though it can seem to be killed over and over again. The Source of life is timeless. When the structures that arise around ‘loving to hate’, disintegrate, the birds are already singing as the dawning of a spring morning.

Thank you for your attention
In Peace

Brian

Cultural awareness and responsibility?

(This article was written in a context of discussing the issues of paying for legal copies of the music we use - as opposed to sharing between ourselves or downloading 'shared' illegal copies - especially when such musicians are part of providing the culture we value and enjoy).









The argument for not undermining our own commonwealth and well-being seems self evident to me. But we each draw our lines in different places - and grow in our willingness amidst a culture of support. Is money the only currency of exchange? I think not. Sometimes the gift shares on, but not backwards. I certainly see that with my parents gifts to me that then get shared on to my own children - who like me have no real sense of that yet - as they haven't had children themselves. When the gift is not shared, it is forgotten amidst a life of substitution.

If we try and impose our own current view on others (by implied guilt), we just might get others to conform by the letter - but not in the spirit. Or, we may instead become a symbol of holier-than-thou-ness - or 'political correctness' against which there will seem to be a freedom in reaction - albeit in the dark of a hidden activity.

To meet those who hold a clear sense of value and boundary in a way that is congruent with their own integrity is to meet a conscious intent. They may or may not inspire the same outer forms of adherence - but they will hold a tone or quality of being in the culture of their dealings with others and this CAN be picked up and can grow in a freedom to feel and discover for ourselves.

The freedom of acting from an innate integrity is altogether different from the sense of freedom got in reaction to perceived restrictions. It is relief from a dissonance of being.

In the world, there is the Gift, that is felt and shared, if you will, in the Spirit.  And there are the practicalities.
Using our gifts for our private self interest may be normal to our (more modern western) culture - but this is because individualism has usurped the cooperative structures of family, clan and tribal cultures - some aspects of which we would no doubt find greatly oppressive to our modern sense of freedom to express ourselves individually.

I feel that a lot of my life has been exploring and uncovering a sense of self within relationship - rather than of asserting self amidst what might seem to be many conflicting or competing relationships. In any group or shared purpose, there is the ongoing awareness of the balance of self interest with group interest - and as one learns to tune in deeper than merely thinking about what seems to be going on and feels or discerns within - at the same time as looking without - there is the allowing of experience of unified being - in which the outer and the inner are as one - without the interjection of a thinking strategy.

We often - I trust! - experience something of this in our music and our dance - for here is an arena in which we are more readily willing to temporarily let go of 'control' into a relaxed and trusting appreciation of the flowing Moment.

The Gift is in the Spirit - but we may exclusively associate it with the forms of the music and the dance. But they are the conditions in which we are more willing to relax.  There are no words for Unified Experience - not because it is private to each mind - but because it is beyond the scope of any private mind and beyond the limits of symbolic or conceptual representation.

But love is one of the words that can been used. Unlike human attempts to DO love - which express a wish or a transactional attempt to negotiate or manipulate oneself or others, the love that is uncovered as shared be-ing is not personally generated or directed.

An unconditional love, is simply a willingness to be love in any or all conditions - and this may in practice be a willingness to NOT choose the path of withdrawing or withholding, but instead to watch and wait for the prompts or sense of integrated direction that rises to awareness BECAUSE we are listening directly to a subtlety of being that our old thought habit disallows.

Like the circle dance, it doesn't matter if we lose our way or fall of into confusion, because we can simply stop struggling, tread water in a manner that is kind to our neighbours and look for where we can come in again so as to simply rejoin the dance. IT didn't go away while we had our confusion and nor ultimately, did we.

But the living dance rejoined is a sense of connectedness that restores, renews and enlivens.
Even as recordings can substitute for a live musical relationship, so too can a sense of  'owning and knowing' music and dance undermine the direct appreciation of the Gift.

There are all sorts of ways in which we could be a purist in terms of what we do or do not accept or cultivate in our lives, but this is not always expressing a true wisdom if it makes us rigidly inflexible and judgemental. What allows or invites a Sacred dimension to our music and dance is not necessarily anything overtly present in the form, but is the conscious receptivity and intent, of both heart and mind, to the Gift which is tangibly shared and by which we are moved, not only around the circle - but shifted in our perspective.

The sharing of the Gift is always its strengthening and its extending. "Go forth and multiply" is an attribute of the  embodiment of expression. But what we choose to give value to, will be what is 'shared' - even if it is undermining of our peace and wellbeing. For this reason, I would always not want judgemental processes to block awareness of what is actually active as the current choice of focus and attention. For I can only release bad habits of which I have become aware at the level of choice - which is always deeper than the level of judging and self presentation.

Scientists need to release what they think they know in order to observe and thus describe what is actually occurring - otherwise they know that they tend to 'see' or interpret according to pet theories or unconscious beliefs, So they learn be curious amidst situations that normally one would be personally reactive in. We are all scientists in this sense if we want to observe our own mental and emotional processes so as to make an always fresh conscious choice as to what does or does not express and witness for what we really value.

Our bodies can learn a pattern and take it from our mind - but if we let our mind take over the true function of the heart - which feels whole bodily - we drift off beam with conditioned reactions to life that are partial, past their sell by date - and represent yesterday's stepping stone rather than today's discovery.


When I learned to dance our way of dancing, I also learned about learning - because the practice was an ideal scenario in which to observe myself in blockage or confusion and grow responsibility. To learn in joy is to uncover a golden path where others merely see steps to learn and problems to overcome or master.  As if our validity is about fulfilling an external requirement rather than opening an expression of wholeness, through whatever kind of discipline it may be.

Reductionism is an understandable polarity to ritual or symbolic approaches if they feel ungrounded or coercive.
But wherever we personally choose to make our own points of emphasis, it has a place in a larger culture, in both its strengths and liabilities. It seems to me that much of our attempt to 'protect' the sacred or indeed the secular aspects of life, only limits the full expression of life in an attempt to avoid the feelings of conflict that are necessarily to be found around where we find our treasure or connection in life.

But feelings of conflict do not have to be acted out from, or answered or resolved externally in order to be felt, abided with in a context of shared purpose or intent - and allowed to release in music or dance as a shift of perspective. This is not to say that action isn't ever required, but that to act from a perspective of connectedness is very different from reacting from personal histories reactivated.

In order to articulate, I use chosen words - but none of this is about words. I feel to risk into communicating because I feel the a bankrupted disintegration of modern life and choose to Occupy my life and give voice to what I feel moving in me. I stand in the willingness to look within - but I also stand with those who express integrity - whatever side of any fence they seem to be on - because I do not feel alone - but in shared purpose; a larger dance.

Thank you for your attention

In Peace

Brian

Dance Culture?

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

in Love's blessing
Brian

I feel for a process and culture of education

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

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



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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

Thank you for your attention.

In Peace

Brian

Come, join the Dance

Our Dance is an expression of joy and passion in life.

But when it is mimicked in form so as to serve some private or mutually held purpose or meaning that does not itself directly express a vitality or freedom of spirit, it is becomes a vehicle for fantasy instead of a way of true integration and renewal in life.

To dance without feeling truly moved is to ‘go through the motions of life’ and to wish one’s life away. This is within our freedom - but is not the expression of freedom that knows itself free.

There is a phrase, ‘fake it until you make it’. This can seem to be necessary at the level of form because it is only in the dance of life’s expression that we truly remember why we dance and what we are as a dancer. So if we come from the mind that has forgotten its place in the movement and joining of the music, we need to bring our willingness to the fore by living out from our trust that the willingness is there! So at the level of spirit we Are allowing ourselves to be moved by a willingness that may start small, but grows as the music finds us. Therefore, we are not really faking our presence so much as breaking the habit of a self protective withdrawal from love’s presence that characterizes a busy, self concerned and problematic approach to life.

Unless we meet with something or someone that disagrees with our take on dance, we will persist from a basis that actually inhibits spontanaity, fixes the mask and persuades us we are dancing, when we are merely fitting ourselves to a design of steps and timing to a musical pattern, without opening to ourselves, each other or the music of life.

Such empty ritual characterizes the failure of human society to love, and we sacrifice our living dance to such a god in worship of a form by which we recieve only the meanings we gave it in secret. For nothing is revealed but is simply reenacted, and we ‘get’ reconnected with  a sense of life brought in from outside ourselves, yet such that we can each remain ourselves in secret ‘together’.

The God of Living Dance is not a matter of belief, but is the true nature of our relational presence now. Fearful beliefs tend to maintain rigidity and limits over an innate and natural willingness to feel.

The feeling and discernment of wholeness is lost to us in our adoption of fear inducing thoughts or ‘perspectives’ - not because it is no longer our true nature, but because loss of trust in self and life invokes a disconnected self-surviving strategy of mind and perception which covers over and distracts us from our need and desire for healing, for renewal, for joy.

In a world that has forgot how to dance, those of us who discover that we are part of remembering for everyone - may feel invalid amongst an upside down ‘culture’ that expects us to limit our expression so as not to draw attention to - or loosen - the masks by which others ‘cope’ with the ‘reality’ of a masked love. And we may find ourselves withdrawing or limiting our expression so as not to cause disturbance.

Living a secret unshared love is not living a love, but holding some kind of potential that seems to await the right conditions in which to come forth and shine and share. But in this we become the slave to conditions. We become easily manipulated out of our shell and sent back into it - because we are not joined with the unified nature of our being.

Just as we may come to a dance and need a period of loosening and willingness in order to be picked up or found in the music, so do we need to abide in the dissonance of our sense of conflicting relationship with external conditions and our capacity of inner willingness or trust - so as to begin to discern the movement of a deeper music than the assertions and judgements we carry from our past and come into a real and felt quality of relationship with each other - and ourselves - and the life and world around us.

Renewal is not a matter of recharging our batteries so as to manage a disconnected life. Renewal is the re awakening to the always connected Life, whose dance or embodiment is an ever new expression of joy; of passion and presence, felt and shared. To this wellspring we come to drink. But as we come to the Well in willingness to serve, we become one with the water.

To be one with, is of an unspeakable intimacy, yet there is peace in it because it is natural to our being. Letting the old habit go, first requires waking up to that it is running, and that it does not serve us in the truth of what is unfolding in our lives.

It does not matter where we seem to be in our life when we feel the Call or open to a sense of Life that both lifts us from meaninglessness - yet also exposes the mind we used before to cope and manage within its limits. For life isn't about becoming valid in our own eyes but of expressing an inherent value by which we share life.

The thinking mind is a rehearsal mind, a fantasy mind. It can serve but it is not designed to lead, for in the heart-sense it is blind. When the thinking mind seems to have covered over our joy in life, we need to disengage - at least for an instant or a few moments where we find our willingness and feel for the movement of Life.

Even the tiniest whisper or touch of Life is transformative, for it gives the way of the next step in trust. We don't always seem to find the answers to the problems as we define our problems - but if we take each step in trust, we will move out from the arena in which confusion defeats our spirit.

Why? Why bother to care this much and reopen one’s heart to risk of pain of betrayal, failure and self illusion?

Because you’re worth it!

And because the actual pain of a life in isolation and masked despair is no real alternative - no matter how well hidden - you - may be.

To realise we had left our path is an awakening. It Is an expression of the path that is still beneath our feet. From such moment we can either run our script of self exclusion - or rejoin the dance.

Self inclusion is the one thing that cannot be done for us, no matter how or what is done to lead us to water, we drink or not as is our will. yet the shine and freedom and gentle nature of all who demonstrate inclusion, is part of the same Call in others.

Our true inheritance in Life is wasted when we use it for selfish ends - because it is in the shared value that we remember its Source. The Music of our very being abides with us while we engage our fantasies of self and attempt to dress them and make them dance to our own tune. Now we can hardly hear tell what is, from what we thought we wanted it to be. So we put aside the desire to be a one who knows and open to being one that flows. In the presence of our willing now-ness - there Is no conflict or confusion. Join then, the Dance, if you will!

In Peace

Brian

Running naked in the storm and dancing in the rain

I met the following quote

"Life isn't about coming in from the storm.  It's about getting out there and dancing in the rain!" (source unknown)

(also quoted as "Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass it's about learning to dance in the rain")

When I read this it reminds me - amongst other things - of once when at an early Dance Camp East, when a great thunderstorm arose.
Being at camps was for me also an immersion in the energetic and vitality of Life - whole bodily embracing the qualities of life in the natural world - rather than merely pigeon holing experience from an inwardness of past impressions and thoughts.
And the charge and exuberance of the storm - and then the pouring sheets of rain, had me suddenly throwing off my clothes and running in the rain in pure delight!
I often ran for joy in rain at occasions afterwards - but this first occasion was of such an inspiration and spontaneity that I remember feeling - "this could be where dance originates, for the very power of Life Moves and is given expression in movement".

Being Moved is very different from submerging self in a so called animal nature - because it is in and of an open awareness rather than letting urge take over in order to gratify a sense of need or appetite.

In the path of opening as a dancer - as one who is moved, called or inspired, I have had all sorts of openings in all sorts of situations, that are part of restoring or growing a capacity to dance. I'm not talking technical stuff here - I'm talking of an integrated being - though of course ease also allows more free attention to bring to nuance of form if that is called for.

These openings in life are primary spiritual intimacies where inside and outside fall away, as irrelevant or without currency.  Sometimes they are served by outer conditions that support or at least do not block the impulse of Life - such as a camp in which the above COULD be allowed without any fear of freaking anyone out or merely making spectacle of exposure. Or a held circle where emotional release COULD be allowed in the same light. But always the primary condition seems a receptivity that is lost to us if we take on a life of inwardness and self concern.

It's hard to dance in a suit of armour!
Or as Sydney Carter put it; "Its hard to dance with the devil on ye back!"

in Gratitude

Brian

PS - I remember also as a 4 or 5 year old with my friend Robert, in his garden, both taking off clothes and running and yelling in warm summer rain. I think we ended up in the sand pit until Robert's Mum carried us back in and dressed us on her kitchen counter - Something of that moment with Robert and his Mum was one of the earliest memories I have of consciousness stirring in me. Of noticing consciousness.

I felt to write this after being given more information via circledancingfriends about the Elm Tree Dance to the song: Kā man klājas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0Lv9CqaJy4
and also dance steps at:
http://www.joannamacy.net/theelmdance.html
and http://www.gaia.iinet.net.au/ElmDance.htm
My quintessential Elm Tree dance experience was when teaching a 'spontaneous' session outside in the sunset and rising stars at the first Passages Camp. (In England in the early 90s).
It was a spontaneous session in that I wasn't officially there as a teacher or in the program, but that I felt pregnant with the energies and qualities of the process of the camp and called out by the beauty of the feeling of the sunset. It felt that the heart of the camp had opened. Dancing out in such a glorious setting and in an already relaxed trust served as an expression of what was current - of feeling life as an intimacy that arose through our camping and being together, and which carried within it a sense of innocence or simple delight in the moment.

We finished with the Elm - in a hug and then instead of breaking off, we found ourselves forming a spiral hug that wound around one end and held all in embrace. The silence and connectedness was tangible - and then there were sobs from someone in the middle, so I said something (from the outer arc of the spiral) like - "are you ok - can you breathe in there?" and the one whose heart was in release replied, "Breathe? - I feel like I am breathing for the first time in my life!".
The blessing was felt and shared without adding word or ritual.


As it transpired - even though I held back the dance until after the programmed event started, and did so without any pre advertisement or notice, it still happened that a large number didn't go to the programmed event but did join in the dance.
As a result, there was deep disappointment and consequent blame directed at me for sabotaging the program, from the camp organiser whose heart was in running a camp where his passion could find expression in its own right - (instead of being a peripheral event at the big Dance Camp where Circle dance was the main focus). But he didn't communicate any of this to anyone until after it didn't go as he envisioned, and somehow managed to manifest his fears rather than his joy. I was asked not to return to those camps and was branded a separatist - which was not a term of endearment but of exclusion.

That was all very long ago - and yet the trust and willingness, to honour the movement of life in me, and finding it serves at a deep level, and yet also activates a script in the world of exclusion is a familiar one. I embrace the experiences of exclusion in my life as opportunities to uncover otherwise hidden judgement and release it from my mind- but that doesn't mean I do not feel pain. It means I choose not to make stories of grievance and suffer Self-exclusion as a result of self indulgence.

These days I sing the Elm Tree song for my dancers.  And the quality of opening through a cut heart into a deeper inclusion is in the song - yet held so gently.
There is an accidental 'meaning' in the song  just before the pause and the high notes where its sounds like 'oh feel this now'.
It is one that I accept as a gift of my Spirit regardless of that that is not what is really being sung. For the denial and fear of feeling is the exclusion of our own capacity for joy in life now - and to feel and flow and be released of exclusion and fear and conflict, is to breathe anew.

(Managing the denial of the heart or feeling being is a heavy burden of misplaced responsibility)

The true Heart has its own language - secret to the mind of command and control - which is blind by design. The sharing and moving through dance is a vehicle for such communication and communion of Life.  Breathing together.

(Elm dance note: Our groups often come into a hug as part of the dance and not just at the end).

There are all sorts of aspects to the nuances of the form of a dance - but there is also the issue of whether the form is mere surface, or whether it serves and is embraced as a vehicle. I feel the latter is often easily lost in the world - in any inspired cultural expression.

Shaking hands, hugging, dancing - even making love! - all can become an empty ritual of meaningless facade onto which any meanings may be applied or agreed BUT without sharing the Meaning of love.

It is our innate and inescapable responsibility - or nature - to be the love that we are. This isn't a burden of yet another impossible task for management-mind to get a handle on. It is simply staying present in our inalienable capacity to receive, to feel and to express.  And seems to be a matter of acceptance and peace amidst whatever moment of life we find we are in - that we feel as we feel - and - be gentle with ourselves and each other in the way of our expression.

"Music soothes the savage breast".  (this also often slips into using the term beast).

I feel music offers an alchemical process of uncovering the yearning beneath the hurt, beneath the anger, beneath the triggering thoughts and perceptions.  When as Rumi says, BE the yearning, we will find and be found in an Inclusion before 'the world as we make it' clicks into gear.  And NOW we have a perspective from which to choose anew. Without such a willingness of awakening beyond a personal protectiveness of misidentified thoughts, there can be no true restoration and no renewal, but only an endlessly rebranded repetition of the old rituals that sacrifice or deny our feeling being - our joy in life.

I feel to write openly of what is usually held secret because our human world is becoming very fearful and unstable in the directions and focus of its intent, its media and its thought. I do not feel to be defined by fear for it is the condition in which we are most easily deceived - but I do feel to be alarmed into waking up. Not to reaction - but to uncover and align in the perspective of my heart's truth. That on which a true foundation can be lived out from - whatever the world seems to become.

Seeing the related Elm Dance web pages linked above relating to other cultures joining in a deeper solidarity of heart despite suffering the oppressions of callous, careless and divisive intent, I feel, (as I long have) - that the dance that is seeded in my life is not a hobby or an activity in search of members, and still less a business - but is a path of transformation and renewal - available to be discovered by any who are willing to step out from their closet into a deeper trust.

Presence and passion communicate directly and energetically. And a lack of presence and passion communicates itself no less. The 'what' of what we do is either something consciously real to us - to which we bring our heart's committment - or is something we do in attempt to make ourselves real to ourselves and others. But we never did or could or can make, determine or define the reality of our awareness. We accept and be aligned with it as it Is, or, we imagine it as it isn't and experience our own definitions as real - even though reality remains - as it Is.

Such is the habit of living imaginatively in thought, that it has virtually (sic) replaced our real life.  But in all sorts of little ways, Awareness rises to life, and can lead out from confusion. Joining in a circle of dance offers a very simple way to be touched by an experience of unified being, in the company of others also touched. But if it is reduced to achieving conformity of form as a privately defined sense of belonging, held within a tacit agreement not to join, nor become present in our joy - then it has become like the seeds, that were sown on the path, but there was no soil so that the birds came and ate them - and there was no crop.

In Peace

Brian

"God picks up the reed-flute world and blows.  Each note is a need coming
through one of us, a passion, a longing-pain. Remember the lips where
the wind-breath originated, and let your note be clear. Don't try to end it.
BE YOUR NOTE."   

-Rumi

Easter Gathering Feedback

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Video

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

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

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


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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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