Dancing as invitation and expression of a joy based way of living: a truly human culture

I sing for dance in a manner that inspires and uplifts the heart to dissolve our habitual preoccupation with elsewhere-ness.

I use dance forms that are accessible without necessitating the resort to a problem solving mentality. I am not one who prefers dumbing down without real need and can usually share the dance to dancers within the energetic that is the feel of the dance.

Joy is the entry point - and hopefully the ongoing experience of sharing these dances.

If I am aware of information about a dance, I may include it when sharing dances, but I accord prime value to sharing an experience of dancing to a common felt inspiration.

I am not a purist regarding traditional folk dances. I may embrace circle-dancified regional simplified versions that are loved but will usually identify them as such.

I love dances that are congruent with the feel and sense of the music in my heart and body. The free expression of such qualities facilitates coming back into alignment or focus with the life that lives me. Being one. Being whole.

But also I know that the bodymind has learned patterns to which it has become fixed and we can find resistance to being open to new patterns. But relaxing through this is to grow in our range of inspiration and expression. What can at first seem chaotic can in fact be the opening into a greater freedom.

Its not unusual in any culture for incoming opportunity for growth to be 'conformed to the existing comfort zones - and so it gets neutered. To embrace the energetic qualities of the new and then discover ways of integrating and assimilating this, is to be enlivened and renewed.

Therefore I aspire to sing us out of seeming comfort zones that are not really where our joy abides. The same dynamic applies to my singing. A relaxed conduit allows expression.

I hold the meaning of a dance to be in our sharing of the dance - which is an embracing of its qualities. Because traditional dances come out of cultures that have held to their identity amidst struggle and conflict, and because dance is one of the ways that cultures express their own particular values, they may have aspects that I do not endorse at the level of their original cultural meaning. But I do feel into and join with them as an expression of that in the human Spirit, that defies a sense of illegitimate limitation and reaches beyond itself in holding for what it loves. And as expressions of beauty woven in many threaded forms.

I don't feel honouring of that in our mind which attempts to put hate onto 'other' as if they are not also worthy of the experience of love in peace and freedom - whether this be expressed by some-ism or anti-some-ism. When we join in a circle - it is a symbol of joining with all, and not a boundary set around a special identity

Forms associated with true gifts of our Spirit can be used in opposition to our truth when false self assertions are cultivated in the our minds and shared as truths.
Its not that what Truth is changes as a result - but that we lose appreciation its presence in our minds and hence our lives.

Dancing together is a way of renewing our sense of self in recreation and freedom. To experience life as a shared felt connectedness works to undo the insidious fear that would rob our joy in the form of worry, anxiety, distrust and suspicion. These are prevalent in our culture today as if they are expressions of righteousness.

The dance as I share it is but a seed or aspect of a culture of being truly human - to share in the spirit that moves us. It serves as a meeting place where we ground ourselves within that to which all else can be added. The qualities of our spirit are as a song that we remember by singing it.

By embracing what it is to be human, we open ourselves to Divinity.

I don't hold the thinking mind as the best tool to find answers - as it is merely analytical of its own database rather than connecting with a present wholeness. But the thinking mind serves the heart naturally when the light of the heart is brought forth.

Therefore the willingness to join with each other is the willingness to put our differences aside in trust, and allow what is common to us but forgotten, to rise to our awareness and include us all.

The language of living music is the vehicle of our feeling being. We are feeling beings. We are participant in life whether we withhold or share. But only by sharing a gift can we retain our appreciation and awareness that it is given us to share.

Joy is not ephemeral to us - it is innate and is the real effulgence of our spirit. The forms we associate it with are the forms where we currently give ourselves permission to allow feeling awareness to expand and extend. I see all forms that help as stepping stones, not as destinations in themselves or dependencies to become fixed or means of getting a fix.

Joylessness is a choice made in ignorance to which we have become addicted since we identified with self-willed judgement as if it were our core. To learn to live from joy is to live out of a present grounded awareness in trust - whatever the apparent outer circumstances. To bring ourselves fully present in our lives is to embrace and include that in us, (and thus in others), which we have denied or forgotten in our distractions and confusions. It requires willingness, trust and acceptance - in which our own desire is recognised and aligned with in peace and freedom. Freedom is without coercion and the heart sings freedom’s song of itself when coercion is foregone.

Releasing our selves of that which obstructs the flow of feeling is not an intellectual activity. But to allow even a glimpse of joy shared is to discover the connection in which our own guidance can reach us as a way of being and seeing in which our joy and wholeness is restored. to our awareness.

It is easy to look out on the world and see insanity - but to see that this is a reflection of how we choose to see may not be so easy. Yet blame is an error and the fear and guilt that declares itself as the Power and Truth of life has a false foundation. Sharing in the light of joy is a demonstration that this is so and an expression of our essential sanity.