The heart must express
Photo: Lorna Sim
The heart must express
The Divine is embedded as the essence of all matter in the heart O Arjuna
Exalted by this alchemical Yantra (Body) of magical energy, we are spun and revolved by the Divine.
-Krishna’s words to the warrior Arjuna from Bhagavad Gita
Many women I teach find a passionate, unrestrained, and energetic expression of Body a challenging invitation. This is not surprising as we have had centuries of spiritualities that have proposed stillness, particular types of modest and restrained actions, and the controlling pf passion, as the template for a spiritual life. For women this has been specially devastating as it has exacerbated our already problematic approach to Body which often includes shame and guilt.
Ancient Goddesses appear wild and fierce in their manifestations. Before we began to instrumentalise their wildness into purposeful and useful roles as saviours from “evil”, they invited attending to heart-felt expression as sacred movement. For example, many ancient Goddesses were so called “War Goddesses” not because they upheld violence but because that is the way we perceive those expressions that are vigorous and strong in our paradigms of duality.
The heart is the domain of synthesis in the Body. It is the seat of the Divine Masculine energies of action, making something, manifesting and expressing in the world, increase and ascending. However this Masculine is a movement that remembers and reunites with the Divine Feminine, the dark waters of primordial memory, mystery, and creativity of Body Consciousness. In dance the dark waters are situated in the lower Body, in the hips. The expression of this union is propelled by the energies of heart, the Divine Masculine.
Dance in ritual traditions is the propulsive manifestation of the union of Divine Masculine and Feminine in the world. As Krishna’s words from the Bhagavad Gita signal, dance is the spinning and revolving movement of the chariot-Body that holds the Divine Masculine (Krishna) the charioteer. Krishna does not master or dominate the chariot-Body, rather He is part of the alchemical transformation of Body through the union. As another ancient text states, the Gods in the heart yearn for the Goddesses in the dark waters. The union must be heart-felt, sourced in love and yearning. There are rituals of exiting Goddesses when they are met with domination and mastery. Put simply, there is no possibility of union when the approach is not one of the heart’s love, desire and yearning.
In the movement away from Body-centred towards analytical and textual philosophies, Body and the Divine Feminine became domains of suspicion and fear. The Body became the villain in spiritual pursuits and had to be mastered, controlled and conquered. These paradigms inevitably crossed over to our attitudes to women and Earth because Earth is Body and the Divine Feminine. Expression disconnected from its primordial waters and its loving union with mystery and alchemy became brutal. It sought to dominate, compete, master and exploit.
In these disconnected expressions and actions, the heart disappears. We become increasingly mechanistic and transactional. We are disconnected from the movement of Reality as passionate, mysterious, vast and beauteous as we reduce it to paradigms of profit and loss and problem and solution.
It is not surprising that many of us have rejected these kinds of expression. However, the dualistic paradigms we inhabit may have led us to the opposite states of being which include passivity, withdrawal and avoidance of passion.
Even in this reductionist reality, the heart continues to remind us of an ancient possibility. The heart yearns to manifest as passionate expression. Without energy and Body there is no grounded Reality of expression and action. The invitation is to return to the heart and to attend to the ancient longing that is encoded in the heart of the love for the Goddesses of the dark waters. The attending is all that is required. In the attending, the dance emerges wherein the heart finally reunites with the ancient union from where all Reality begins.
The union is not a status, rather it is a ritual dance that renews in each moment. It renders life passionate, expressive, and energetic in each moment. It asks for energy, presence, and movement. The heart is rhythm. It co-exists with breath which is flow. Rhythm and flow are the essentials of movement or dance. The heart must express as poetic, rhythmic, flowing Body of dance.
When we turn to the heart’s dance, we render Body alchemical. In Indian ritual dance, Rasa or the synthesis of consciousness, is located in the heart. It is the union in the hearts from which emerges the alchemical experience of Rasa that holds the taste (also Rasa) of Reality freed from the constraints of our mental paradigms of duality.
Even as we live in these times where we are rightfully wary of energetic and muscular expression, it may be time to reconnect that energy to the heartfelt poetry of the Divine Masculine. The answer to the ills of a dominant and mastery drenched expression may not be to reject robust energy and expression wholescale. What Krishna suggests is that reconnecting to the longing of our hearts is to release the scents of primordial union that can dance us into a vibrant and passionate expression in the world.