On Changing the World, or Not – Soul Dancing – Day 23

Yesterday dance and grief merged once again.

I had watched Happy Feet with my children. A joyful dancing movie that somehow was so utterly heartbreaking to me at the end. It ends with the humans recognizing the errors of their ways and then they stop over-fishing so the penguins can also eat and live. In this happy Hollywood ending I connected with the many lives, the many animals, the many eco-systems that don’t have this ending. And while my children were enjoying – I cried.

After the film I went into a dance where grief and impotence merged in me.

As I step deeper into my Soul Dance Journey I am learning that my work is not to try to Change the World. It is to learn to express the truth, beauty and joy of this Life through my Being. To freely express and be that God Spark which is at the essence of us all. Were we all to live from this place, the world surely would be different.

And that seems like a long long way from where we currently live.

How then to accept or respond to a world that is suffering so in this moment from our ignorance and disconnection?
Is it Irresponsible – to not try to DO SOMETHING? ANYTHING?

Another part of my recent journey has been to turn away from that which does not serve me. To some it could be seen as perhaps the act of an ostrich. Putting my head in the sand. I don’t experience it that way. I don’t find that following the atrocities in Syria, as an example, bring me clarity, or strength or joy to continue doing what is right for me or my immediate world. And even if I never seek out the details, they still seem to filter through.

What struck me yesterday was the force with which I felt the earth speak directly to me. Not through a newspaper, but through the piercing pain in my heart, when I touched the destruction that we are wreaking as humanity. It came through a different channel than a newsbroadcast. A channel – which it seems – I am opening in my dance, and I am sure can be opened in many different ways.

In my dance I also touched a place where life was less, was lower, consciousness was all but gone, higher life forms were no more, there was a darkness. It felt like a taste of what may lie ahead. It was hard to acknowledge that we may well be on our way to a darkness from which we will not return.

My mind cries out and says, “So now surely you have to Do something!”
But a part of me knows, that we can’t ‘Do’ our way out of this mess.
And so what avenue remains?

Grief and Impotence.

And I keep moving my feet, my heart, my being, breathing.

My work is becoming clearer to me
My work is to give permission for my light to shine.
To trust where it takes me – and what it asks me to do.

At one point in the dance there was drumbeat and I danced a very grounding earthbound dance. Then the music changed, but the drumbeat remained in my body and I kept dancing to its beat. I realized that I was off beat, out of tune to the new song. One song later a similar beat returned and I was back in tune.

Perhaps expressing through love, my divine spark, my deepest feelings –even when they make no logical sense to the outside world is moving to a different beat – one that is out of tune to our externally created society, but perhaps in tune with Mother. With Life. With Divinity.

Can I learn to trust that?

I am learning that I can return to right relationship in each moment,
Even if just for a moment.
Perhaps this is all of our work – to re-tune, to re-turn
And perhaps, as more and more of us open to moving from this place,
Our choices begin to change, our outlook, our understanding, our priorities, our way of being in the world.
Mine certainly have.
Not because we want to change the world – but because we consciously make the choice to be true to our innate spark, our soul, our spirit, our essence.

“Show me how you offer to your people and the world
the stories and the songs
you want our children’s children to remember.
And I will show you how I struggle not to change the world,
but to love it.”
Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I can love the earth In This Moment.

I can love the wild dog that frequents my porch, the mice in my meditation hut, my children, my husband, my friends, the trees, the wind, Myself (imagine that!), the people whom I sometimes blame for much of what is going on today, the weak, the strong.
In each moment I can weave the world a little more whole
through Love,
through Joy.

And then…
I feel the grief. It pierces me
And it leaves me
With a much deeper hole in which to feel
appreciation, love, and joy for everything that is still whole
The Jacaranda blooming in my garden
The sun bird and the night jar singing through my days and nights
The earth beneath my feet
The beat of my heart, that sways my hips…