We go forth

Everything that once was became so clear. How we held on like beetles and bugs. Butterflies just learning about their wings. The beauty of their reflection. How we play in the woods as children. Running, hiding, pretending we’re being chased by murderers. The 76th annual hunger games. I hid inside a hollow log and made it my home. A home like the one up the shore, in a patch of blanket in the middle of a field, we had driven for about an hour to catch the last of the show. I craved the tender holding of a friends lap to lean in, yet I don’t think I asked, didn’t wanna catch glances by the others around, didn’t wanna perceive their thoughts, judgements, ideas, or feelings. Maybe even their support and love. Though how badly I had yearned for the touch of another, even to just lay back under the same sky and feel the warmth of each others exposed arms. That would have made it all so much better. Yet, instead, I didn’t ask. I got up to dance for the final song. Spinning in circles with my head down, not taking up too much space, not entirely wanting to be seen yet so entirely visible as one of the very few standing in a field of sitting bodies. I went into my own cave, my own cocoon, no one could see me inside of here, yet this is how I could cultivate my own warmth. Or try to. Yet, there had been no one that I could share it with. Dancing is a different experience when we do it together. It’s beautiful and powerful to create within, yet it’s like the warmth of a great hug when we move as one, in union with another. Swaying and singing and feeling. It welcomes and invites us out of the confines of our own minds bodies and experiences and instead becomes a collective presence. We create all as one. One feeding into the other feeding into the other. It becomes a great communal thing, a great communal service to ourselves and to each other.

It takes the leap of faith, like asking a friend if we can lean on them on a picnic blanket in order to feel their warmth. To stand up and dance when very few are, but to do it anyway, and to keep doing it, allowing the mind to quiet, moving with it as it speaks, reclaiming our power from this space. For we are seen, we know we are seen. Others come up to us after the show to comment, like they do to the ones on stage. “We watched you dancing”, “where’d you learn?”, “it was so fun to watch” the courage for them to comment is the sliver of the desire that wishes it had been them up there moving. The answer I gave sent them away much quicker than they came “oh! Thanks! Just follow your heart and move with your heart, it always knows what to do and how to move.” They moved around and away, uncomfortable with the response. No dance lessons, no years of practicing, nothing other than the rawness. The walls stripped away, exposed to express and move, yet creating such a field of possibilities within its expression, an infinite space of openness and depth.

The movement wasn’t always bold, at times it was small. The gentle shaking of hips in the back of the crowd, a head bob, I tried to pull others forward to move with me, to break them out of their shells. It never works to force. Encouragement is one thing, an opening, saying I will be here with you, holding you as you move and sway and express. I will lock in and give you the space to express, I will feed you the energy I have cultivated and then I will turn and go inward myself and trust you are safe to move on your own. Some fall away in that moment, dissolving back into the crowd. Others don’t step forward at all, comfortable just to observe. I wonder if they ever yearn to be up front or to let themselves dance.

Then, there’s those that dance. That dance and dance and dance and never stop dancing. When the dancing is done we take a break and yearn for the time that we can do it again, we create our lives into the dance, one step at a time. One foot at a time, one sway, one spin, one laugh, one grin, one deep, deep heartfelt holding of our inner being and we become more and more comfortable and safe within our expression. How soon our arms open wider and our moves become stronger, broader and louder, safer in how we show up. Seen, and unseen, for others cannot truly know what happens within, yet we share and we express openly through our heartfelt movements. Clearer and clearer we become. More alive in every way, every sway, we help each other, we feed into each other, we dance as one.

~

I have been all of these people before. The one dancing, opening, loud and proud and bright and expressive. Taking up space, creating within it. I have been pulled into the crowd by friendly faces to move for a time and then sink back and behind, still not entirely sure within my own movement and my true expression. My ability to make mistakes and be seen, to perceive my movements as mistakes to begin with, to move shaky and janky, a newborn foal wobbly upon fresh legs. I was simply learning what felt right for me, and the more I let myself share and be and show, the easier it became to find my own flow. The channels open up easily with a bit a repeated attention, when the channels are authentic to us true and deep. Dancing, singing, storytelling, tending, laughing, creating, building are all within our bones. Working with Gaia. Communicating through our hearts, beyond the words and the spoken. Understanding, listening, seeing, sensing and perceiving. Beyond the common senses. All things that we know, deep deep deep within our bodies and our souls. They take a couple moments of coming back to when we have been detached from them for so long, yet with time and attention, and the willingness to try, for we know it’s what helps us to fly, to feel free once again, we leap and we soar and we allow ourselves to breathe life back into our full beings.

I have been the one at the back of the crowd. Wanting to be left alone, to just watch, to disappear into the shadows, disappear and not be noticed. To just watch and observe and see. Sometimes silently wishing it was me up there, sometimes silently cursing those who had so much fun, who moved with so much freedom. Sometimes silently applauding them, grateful that they made the leap at one point in time. Wishing somewhere deep deep below that I could be that, instead I turned it on those living in the fullness I knew my soul yearned for. So, I invited those shadows into view. Why were those hateful thoughts present, why did I wish upon the downfall of another? Why was I spewing so much hate? What parts of me was I not seeing? What parts of me were hidden underneath that hatred and fear? How could I honor and give to those parts? What do they have to teach me?

And from this space the quiet and subtle hip swaying began. The nod of a head, up and down. Trying to find the beat, I gave up trying, then the beat found me. A small crack of light filtering through. The seed began to grow.

How could I become the one dancing, doing what my soul yearned and craved for if no one else around was? Could I really be the one to step forward and make myself seen in such a way, trailblaze the whole experience through my expression? How could I do it when there were no others, no examples to show me how? what about the hate?

I had known those hateful thoughts so deeply from my time being the one cultivating and encouraging them, so I too knew that others may share in that similar predicament. A judging look, a hateful glance, when one’s body starts to move and groove as if in a trance. Yet, without fail, I do it anyway. Allowing the body to move, encouraging the heart to express. The more we take off the walls, allowing ourselves to do what feels authentic to us, the more we share, the more open we are to the hatred of those deeply rooted within the paradigms of hate and fear. Yet, yet, without fail we do it anyway. We move, we dance, we express, we share, we laugh we pray we sing we rejoice. We know that hate has no home within the love of our hearts, and this builds protection and strength and confidence within the hearts truest expression. Like water off a ducks back, free. Your fullness, your greatest expression, your vulnerable moments, asking a friend to lean up next to them on a picnic blanket, are all what build, cultivate, and nurture the continual and infinite expanse and experience of the heart. Your sweet loving true heart will never stop speaking to you, your true loving tender heart will never stop calling to you. Your soul wants its expression. Your soul wants liberation, and only you can give it to yourself.

We allow the heart to express and then all hatred dissolves, for we know, we truly know, we remember and we feel. It’s love, it’s always love, and it always will be.

Your heart is open to all yet do not put yourself in harms way. Use your discernment, yet hold out hope and faith in the divine. There are waves and things in motion beyond what your mind may think and perceive. Choose you above all else, you, the real you, the you of soul love. The you that feels your fullest when pouring into the cups of others. True love will never ask you to lay your soul on the line. Only you can truly decide that. True love will never confine you or bring you down to drown, it will only expand you out and beyond what you ever knew possible. You are here to live so fully free and open and in love that others are drawn into your light to dance together. You are here to be loved by the overflowing light of another, you are here to feel expansive beyond words, beyond worlds, beyond the mind and through the soul, you are here to witness your own becoming. And to love every part. The love you are becomes the ticket through every door and the chasms of confidence. Keep pouring into your own cup, and find those who love in the same fashion. Soon your ever flowing waterfall of love will be all that is known.

We aren’t here to conquer any parts of us, to take from them or to kill them, but instead to learn from them and bring them into the light. The light of love, of source, of God, of consciousness. Of loving awareness, we bring all of ourselves, even the darkest most ugly bits into the light and soon, soon, without fail we are dancing until we are silly and buzzing for days. We are dancing with others, dancing with ourselves, continually rejoicing, playing, and celebrating in all that we are, but in order to be this free we must begin by asking: “what is it that you are here to teach me? What is it that I need to learn? How can I become more of the real me through you?” Sometimes the most simply response is being a guiding, compassionate hand into the light of love. Unwavering, without fail. I will love you for I know the real you. I know the true you and I will hold up this mirror for infinity.

Namaste my loves. I love you.

Keep dancing.

(Not my image, source unknown)