The Dance of Life
spontaneous
synchronistic
syncopating
swinging
swirling
being with the beats
of the music and the
one across from me
sometimes touching
freely moving until
the music stops
only to await its
returning call
to move some more
michael
Written after reading Brian's beautifully inspiring wordsspontaneous
synchronistic
syncopating
swinging
swirling
being with the beats
of the music and the
one across from me
sometimes touching
freely moving until
the music stops
only to await its
returning call
to move some more
michael
http://dancing- in-the-heart. blogspot. com
Though I write specifically about dance you may notice that it is simply about the dance of life – but also to dance.
in Love's blessing
Brian
Reflections on the Spirit of Dance
Dance is movement - expressed 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 connected with what is present and be moved by it, is inherently liberating and also renewing : a process of revelation.
That which is ’Alive’ can not actually be mapped out or defined by concepts, and a concept based approach cannot find life, though concepts 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 can we realise our own life in truth and not merely in concept.
Such relationship offers a glimpse of awakened vision from a habitual mentality of distracted attention. This always restores a wider perspective because peace is in it and we are guided wisely from a rested place.
In unrecognised 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 control and 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 revelation in that they are revealed rather than manufactured. They invite a bringing into awareness of what had hitherto been unknowingly obscured.
A dance is 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 through which the spirit expresses. Innate Joy shines of itself and is always associated with true health.
The relationship of spirit and form is simple: form must be brought to serve spirit - or it will be found empty - like the ‘Emperor's New Clothes’. The experience of disconnection is like an armouring or masking over of that which is felt alive. It is a freezing into form - a contracting in distrust into defence.
Though one may endlessly debate what spirit is, the absence of that which inspires is undeniably shown in disharmony or conflict, depression or joylessness, and self-illusion and pervasive distrust.
My sense of a living path using music and dance is as a path of restoration to our freedom of expression in being, and these are also a simple language by which we share life. To share life is found by releasing the denial or withholding of worth and attention that our self judgements have set up, and allowing life to move through us.
In relationship engaged within and extended, we invite a shared inspiration by our willingness to join within a spirit of discernment rather than isolate by exercising judgements.
This 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 - which may seem to give temporary meanings to meaninglessness - but this will tend to wear out, for it is a self defeating exercise. Relatedness remains the way things actually are - at the level of actuality : in aliveness - or spirit.
Allow that this cannot be understood merely in concept - but only in willingness for demonstration and participation. 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 of experience that is not really happening to a 'someone' - but which is a flow of being in which the experiencer is temporarily transparent to an awareness greater than the 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. And we can listen or feel in some willingness for trust. Such a willingness 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 or life felt directly.
Opening to a context in which ‘what I am’ regains a true belonging - felt as part of Life rather than a separated ‘orphaned life’ played out in self commentary and self image. Regardless of presentation of appearances - it is this lost belonging that is at the root of our longings and desires.
It is a simple thing to express and share life energetically - yet we may make it anything but - and tend to require a process of experiential education that regains trust and self-honesty. For it is a breakdown of communication at the level of trust that gives rise to a mentality of ‘externalized’ or applied control upon oneself and life. And it is this mentality which attempts to mimic life’s expressions that inevitably block the experience of true innate joy - that is both found within - and automatically shares - in any instant of a heart free of fear.
