Apathy and the energy of Ugra

Photo: Barbie Robinson

In recent times I have encountered people in my classes who speak to me of their apathy. They share with me that they feel sapped of energy and hold a sense of helplessness. One of them told me that they feel they are standing on a railway platform watching the trains of life pass them by.

How unsurprising that we should feel apathy in these times! Every day we face the barrage of all things that are wrong with the Earth, our health, the political systems, the financial systems, spirituality—the list is endless. There are well meaning people on all sides, experts of all shades, offering “solutions”.  People speak of the end of human civilisation, end of the Earth, coming of new eras, or the advent of a “saviour”.

And here we are in the midst of this deafening noise, holding our fragile lifetimes in the hourglass where the grains of the sands of our life keep falling, falling, falling…

Apathy is completely to be expected when at individual levels we feel we have no role in creating external change to ensure a more harmonious life. Sometimes even spiritual practices inadvertently bring us to apathy through escapism, withdrawal, or destination focus. I hear this sometimes from people in my classes who are focused on “becoming enlightened” so that they are absent to the daily unfolding of their lives and wedded to an achievement in the future. Even the word “spiritual energy” has become something effervescent and other-worldly and connected to “ascension” rather than groundedness.

It is not benign to be apathetic. It robs us of passion, presence, and expression. Without energy we are absent to life and simply inhabit stories and roles that are largely imitation rather than a unique expression of the deepest sense of our being.

In ancient dance, Ugra is the antidote to apathy. Apathy is not a modern condition, the ancients across many cultures were well aware of the helplessness that can overcome us when we tackle Reality with a mechanistic approach of mastery and solution. Ugra is the sensation of ferocity, but it is not an energy that is directed against something else. While it is invoked in martial expressions, the duality of war which is friend and foe, is removed from the constellation.

Rather than being directed externally, Ugra is the innate energy that powers our moment-by-moment movement in life. We cannot be present as a thought because thought by its very nature is based on the past and immediately removes us from the current moment. It is the body that brings us into movement within the movement of Reality as the unfolding of each moment of our lives. Ugra is the energy the body draws upon to do this.

Ugra is not a “feeling, it is an elemental sensation. We experience it in Nature as a thunderstorm, a volcanic eruption, a raging forest fire or the lion’s wildness. These experiences teach us about our own Ugra. The more we are disconnected from the wild in Nature, the less we connect with our own energy of life.

Ugra emerges in circumstances of unjust loss, speech that denigrates others and disregard of righteous authority. It is therefore associated with both intimate and personal as well as societal circumstances. Indeed, there is a continuum in this experience. External circumstances, especially where they seem to be chaotic and disorderly, cannot but impact us personally. Similarly, our own internal disorder (where we feel something is taken from us unjustly) will reflect in the movement of our external life. It is Ugra that supports our inquiry into these experiences.