How many times have we seen the metaphorical statement that life is a dance? Or that somebody’s words dance on a page? Or where more directly people will say they danced but mean that in a metaphorical way? Dance is ubiquitous in our evocative experience of Reality. Yet, it never really becomes more than a metaphor or a representation.
Read MoreSince I offer contemplative dance, many of the people in my programs tend to be older. (BTW I am not convinced that a contemplative approach is only for the more mature demographic, but it seems to be the assumption in our times!) And because it is dance, most of the people tend to be women. As a mature woman myself, I have been at the coalface of the implicit assumption that as we age our Body is going to let us down and that we are better off to give up on most of our expectations of Body.
Read MoreFor those of us who are interested in archetypal movements of astrology, the recent shift of the North and South Nodes of the Moon offers an interesting inquiry and reflection. These Nodes are called Rahu and Ketu in Indian Jyotisha astrology and they have an ancient association with dance. Indeed, one of the earliest mentions of the legend of Rahu and Ketu is found in the dance text, the Natya Shastra (circa 500 BCE to 500 CE).
Read MoreThe doorway to archetypal consciousness is Death of the known. A less fearsome option is the Outcast invocation. Here is a poetic mirroring of the dance intelligence of this archetype.
Read MoreIn the discussion forum at the end of my current Lakshmi: Goddess Rising course, someone asked me, “Why does Lakshmi exit? And so suddenly? Without any chance of explanation?” She was referring to the archetypal story of Goddess Lakshmi leaving Her Divine Masculine consort, Vishnu, when She felt humiliated by what She perceived as His indifference to Her pain.
Read MoreIn my view Self-inquiry in analytical or verbal traditions is not possible as Self-inquiry asks that we relinquish the mind and its cosmos of word and thought. It is in non-verbal traditions such as dance that the radical nature of Self-inquiry emerges. Part of its radical nature is its absolute non-instrumentality. By this I mean that unless we approach it free from the lens of “what’s in it for me” it simply does not exist. We may still “learn” the dance and its information, but its seizing of our Body and Consciousness so that we become the dance (or Reality) does not eventuate.
Read MorePlurality is a radical invitation at any time, and never more radical than in the times we live in today. We inhabit an ever-splintering vision of Reality where, overwhelmed by duality, we sink deeper into the swamp with atomisation. I sense that there is a Yearning for plurality that is screaming out as we have moved increasingly towards the regimentation of categorisation and definition. There is a cry to dissolve labels or to subvert definitions and defining narratives. However, all this is still held within the consciousness of duality and its suffocating energies of “them” and “us”, and this results in atomisation that disconnects, rather than connects, with the abundance of plurality.
Read MoreApril 20 2023 was the day of an important solar eclipse that holds wisdom about the archetypal energies of these times and the times to come. When we invoke dance as Body-led intelligence, it excavates archetypal wisdom, very much like astrology. Indeed, my sense is that the knowledge of astrology was sourced from dance in ancient times.
Read MoreImage attribution: Raja Ravi Varma, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
The archetypal Goddess Lakshmi holds an important invitation to our information-dense time. Lakshmi’s domain is the inevitable collision between our information-seeking intelligence of definition and categorization, and the more expansive yearning in us to experience unity amidst the diversity of material reality. We have been tormented by this collision for centuries and have come up with rather inadequate solutions to domesticate the wildness of the Truth of plurality. Leading with verbal languages, we have sought to tame this wildness into appearances of managed and curated Reality. When we assume that we have mastered Reality in these ways, we must, with great energy and willfulness, ignore the greater part of Reality that eludes our conquest through information.
Read MoreIn my courses this term we explored the spiritual qualities of melancholy. Many people in the classes shared with me how relieved they felt at the nuanced wisdom of melancholy as a sensation. Melancholy is in essence a poetic cosmos, best experienced through the nonlinear beauty of poetic intelligence. In dance it becomes the tender and meandering Rasa of Vishada which is the birthplace of Divine revelation. So here is my poetic reflection that emerged from the recent invocation of the Rasa of melancholy, Vishada.
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