“So here it is – I feel like a shell that I was in has cracked open and the fullness of the world is streaming in to meet me. It comes with so much light, I almost have to keep my eyes a little squinted. Light, love, joy, beauty. I walk past people and love them. Some of them can’t see me – perhaps they are still sitting in their shell. Shell’s are safe and snug, but not so good for meeting the world. Greeting the world. There is a bounce in my step and I want to dance into and through my dance. I guess I am. I see the sun’s rays touch a clearing in the woods through the clouds, that have opened for a moment and it takes my breath away. I am awash with gratitude. I hear a song that rocks and I laugh out loud. I hear the sound of the waves retreating from the beach, a sweet gentle swoosh and my skin crawls with delight.
I don’t think the world has changed radically in the last few weeks – so that is how I have come to my shell analogy. Something in me has cracked open so the sunlight can truly touch me.”
Journal entry January 9, 2014
It is not like everything is always hunky dorey. As I sit here writing I am tired. I often wake tired during these days. But then I get up, and dance. As I dance my body wakes, and my soul returns from wherever it may have gone at night – and I see the grass and the trees and the rays of sun outside, and I marvel. And I cannot be anything by filled with delight for all this beauty sharing my world with me.
Yesterday in my marvel I thought of all the people who don’t have the garden I do, (or the friends, or the community), and thought perhaps it was harder for them to wake in the morning and marvel at their surroundings.
Surely that is true – and yet…
I know that I did not always feel so much gratitude flowing through my veins. I know that I did not always feel that my life was the best thing there is. Even with the very same trees, and grass and sun and dogs and life right out there.
So what exactly has changed?
I am not entirely sure, but here is my best shot at capturing some of it….
1. The dance is opening my body – Literally. Making me less dense. Where there was stiffness I am learning to find flow in the movement, where I was stuck I am coming open – perhaps even undone ;-). And I am learning that space is healing. Space creates lightness. We are mostly space, the density is in many ways an illusion. The dance is connecting me to the space between molecules. And where there is space there is freedom. I am becoming light and more free in the dance. I bring the density of mind into my dance and feel it dissipate beneath my dancing feet :).
2. I have made a choice a few years back to only do that which brings me joy. When I am filled with joy, my light shines brighter. So whilst it is in many ways a selfish choice, it is one which has benefited my family and friends so very much. I am literally becoming more luminous as I choose in accordance to my joy. What does joy dictate for me? Such things as: Dancing more, spending more time with the trees, playing with my dogs and my children, bringing more laughter and movement into the meetings I host, cleaning up my mess…. It aint a bad task master at all!
3. Gratitude. I am developing a habit of expressing consciously and oftentimes out loud with friends and family my gratitude. Gratitude is such a magical river. The more we express it, the more there is to express. So the more I touch my gratitude for the two enormous Msasa trees in our garden, the more I fall in love with them, and the more grateful I am, and perhaps it is that gratitude that spills over to the grass blowing gently in the wind, and the dance of the wind in the leaves of all the trees. It is full of magic and grace and power and beauty. And I stand in the morning at the end of the dance and am filled with gratitude for what is mine to touch and feel and live.
How can I not marvel at my life?
At yours?
At ours?
Safety Warning!
It makes me a little more vulnerable. Or perhaps a lot. This newfound openness. Stories of pain move me more quickly also. But I treasure that. I feel some relief in fact for being open to both, to all spectres. Sometimes it means retreating from others because it is too much to be open and connected. I am learning that balance, though, and thankfully I have friends that can call me back if I go into myself for too long.
And here we go. The journey continues. On with the dance.
“While I dance I can not judge, I can not hate, I can not separate myself from life. I can only be joyful and whole. This is why I dance.”- Hans Bos
Dancing Universe 