Indian Dance and the Divine Feminine
Indian dance is one of the oldest surviving practices of the Divine Feminine. It is a sophisticated practice sourced from revelation. The revelation of dance was received by ancient women custodians who were shaman/dancer/priestesses. In Indian dance as a spiritual practice of the Divine Feminine, emotions, feelings and the human love of pleasure are embraced as spaces of transformation and expansion.
Indian dance and the Divine Feminine Video Transcript
SPEAKERS
Padma Menon
Padma Menon 00:00
Hello there. My name is Padma man. And I'm so honored and delighted that you will join me on this channel, I share information about ancient goddess practices and traditions from my culture, which is India. Today I'm going to share with you some reflections on a question that I get asked quite a lot. And that is how Indian dance is a spiritual practice in the goddess tradition. So the goddess tradition is a philosophy, a practice, where divine, divinity, the divine, is seen as feminine—sometimes called the divine feminine.
In a previous video, I had explained in a little bit more in detail about what is the goddess tradition, so I won't repeat myself here, but just to say very shortly in the goddess tradition, the universe, reality, divine cosmos, however you call it, consciousness, is feminine. And it is essentially feeling and sensation. Within that there is this masculine drive, which is the drive of the mind. And this is the drive towards creating word, language, form, story. So this is all the stories that our mind creates in order for us to explain and control the reality. That could be stories about man, woman, politics, economics, science, religion, spirituality, whatever.
The goddess practice always invites us to move from this mind dominated reality, towards what we think of as the depths or the darkness, only because we don't really know what's out there. Because it is beyond the capacity of mind to be able to describe or wrap itself around what's there. So to us, it appears to be the darkness, and the Goddess, the invitation is to move from this mind dominated reality towards the sensation and feeling so that we can know and experience and live in the fullness of reality. In order to do this, we need a practice—it cannot happen through a text, or a word, or anything that comes out of the mind, because that will still keep us in this mind dominated experience. And different ancient traditions across the world had very different practices that helped people make this movement.
In India, ancient Indian dance is one of the most powerful practices that allows people to take a journey into the depths of their own sensations and feelings. And dance is able to do this, because it is not a creation of the mind. Ancient dance was revealed to women custodians, who were priestesses or shamans, dancers, it was all the same thing. So they received this revelation. And revelation is really an important aspect of this. That's what makes it impossible for the mind to actually get hold of it, and control it, and change it into word and make it linear. So, dance, then allows us to have a language which is not a language of the mind, in order to make this journey into the depths of our sensations and feelings.
The other really powerful thing about Indian dance is that it asks us to bring and embrace all our senses, our love of pleasure and beauty, our feelings and our emotions. So unlike many other spiritual practices, it does not ask us to withdraw from our senses. It does not ask us to control our emotions, or to change our emotions to be in a particular emotion all the time. It actually asks us to bring all of our humanity into the practice. And the dance actually transforms exactly those things that make us the most human, which is our love of pleasure and the way in which we are attached to the experiences of our senses, our feelings and our emotions. So it is exactly there, that the dance transforms, so that we experience the expansiveness and the freedom of the whole of reality, and not the fragmented way in which we do when we stay with the mind dominated space, which separates us from that whole experience of reality.
I do hope that if you have any questions or comments, you will share them with me in the comment section below. And you can find more information about me in the links in the detail section. Thank you so much for joining me and I look forward to the pleasure of your company again.