One response that came from writing Found in Translation part 1 was

“It's a bunch of Greeks having a fight. Then the winner bragging about it afterwards”.

This story is told as of a distant or unrelated event from which the teller is comfortably removed. It is also humourous and isnt fixated on negatives. It allows life to continue much as before and has put the story in a way that has restored normality to the one who shares it.
I havent got a problem with this except it isnt the story that speaks for me.

The particular song recounts an historic Greek-Arvenite conflict. But it is an example of a recurring re-enactment going on around the world, within societies and families and of course within our mind. Day by day.

I believe that the roots of conflict are in our mind and can only really be addressed there. Because these roots are largely accepted, and even socially proscribed, does not make them inactive or ineffective to my mind.

I choose not to be indifferent to presentations that arise in my mind if they affect my peace. I am also sensitive to the atmosphere of fear and distrust and depression that I see in my fellow man an woman. As if it is normal (just because everyone does it). It feels like so many walk around in a defended torpor. Sleepwalking, reactive, and easily manipulated.

I believe that what we choose to accept and endorse in our minds is part of, and shared into one mind - without exception. Not so much the contents but the intent. We are teaching ourselves all the time and we also teach others to the degree that they are already open to learning what is demonstrated.

I guess that I have stepped off of the commonly accepted map because I am not willing to simply accept the current prevailing mindset that is generally called 'The human condition' without re evaluation.

'The human condition' is remarkable similar to the story we are talking about excepting that the baddies, (in various guises), relentlessly come back again and again until all that we grasped at and called 'me' or 'world' is lost in death. We get opportunities to brag our victories en route. But pride makes the fool - and the fall, inevitable.

It has come to me that transcendence or freedom in spirit is not otherworldly - but involves seeing exactly the same experience with fresh new eyes - from a vantage point that is not 'a thinking' within unconsciously accepted definitions.

Look at us as dancers at the beginning - and look at them at the end of a lively or heartfelt circle dance session and our perception will be different for by joining we let in light. And it is in light that we see and recognise and feel connected with.

Some are seeking to use dance as a conflict resolution tool but of course the first (and in a way the only) hurdle is getting to the point of letting the other in by joining with them.
Is this not me or you? For who lives here but knows conflict and the pain of it?

I feel that joining with each other can be a conflict preventative, because by the moments of seeing each other lovely in beauty we weaken the judgemental mind that focuses on differences and inevitably generates and thrives and conflict. That is its thing - even though it thinks it can contain and control or fix the situation in its terms.

Ultimately I sense that all conflict is shadow boxing. I put my shadow on you and you put your shadow on me. And the stage is all set to believe that we are in fact 'fighting' another! But each is privately within their own determinations and cannot actually see the other.

“Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do”

Therefore I get an 'wake up call' if I start seeing another in a lack of light, because it signifies that I am actually slipped into my own history scripts of conflict and NOW I can come clean with myself and own it and let the other be free of the role that was in MY mind but which I laid on them. This is true forgiveness. It is the ultimate gift to oneself.

It is necessary for me is to do what I do with a whole heart. And in this incident with this song I took what could have been a trivial issue - except I felt a conflicted sense of a song whose musical and dancing quality I enjoy.

This particular song was coming up in me as a feeling tone - which I wanted to learn to sing. In opening to its original cultural meanings it seemed to become lost to an 'enemy' (its translated meaning) - but has in fact been regained at a deeper level of meaning for me than it had when I seemed to nearly lose it. The whole process was simply because I asked within and trusted what I heard and asked some more and found Meaning.

If I hadnt I might have tried opening to the song as simply an expression of the Greek spirit and not cared about what it was about. Or I may have felt it unclean and dropped it. But a momentary stab of pain was not ignored - it was the basis for prayer. Nothing in the world was changed by the answer - excepting the mind with which I behold has recognised that the world is a script that can be read differently.

Is this a mind that has lost it? Or a mind that has let itself be found?
I cannot tell you what the Truth Is - but I can testify that my own conflicted fears are very capable of presented a dark and distorted rendition that had little if any actual connection with Reality.

In Peace

Brian