Day 5 Listen- I Am My Teacher

The pain of not being able to drop into the dance, while I know fleeting and easily forgotten, at the time feels like deep lonely isolation. If we were to be dancing the “alone together” dance it would be easier to take, the alone dance is easy to muster when I feel alone. Today though we are doing the “common union” dance, the ephemeral duet. I know that to feel it as tragic may seem self indulgent, a mountain out of a mole hill. I do have perspective. I know that by lunch, maybe even in a moment, after a hug, just the right words, a glance, this feeling of quiet sad desperation will abate and likely give way to a new delicious mood. This is why I write about it, to capture it, know it, bring it to the light so I can recognize it instantly, honour it, its connection to the string of times I have felt it before and will feel it again. A bead in the endless mala of moments. I write about it because it matters, alone times, sad times are not to be tucked away, ignored, gotten over, fixed. They are a part, they connect, they teach, hold wisdom and answers.

I sit before a room of 75, many with eyes closed, moving slowly, repetitively, expressively, God faces, God movements, tapping into the Divine. I sit. I write. I know this, what I am watching, felt it just yesterday, but today tapping it is a mystery. So i tap this instead, what you are reading . Something that just yesterday I couldn’t touch, I couldn’t tap.

Now the floor pounds, feet hit shiny wood, hips gyrate, arms flail, smiles of bliss everywhere. Still I sit and write, watching Vinn, my love, my Teacher as he moves and know him in a way that awkward conversation out side of this room will not allow. Am even resentful that writing this pen in hand means transcribing it to the computer later, as though this was his fault, as though my decision not to bring the computer into the witnessing circle is his decree, rather than simply what is necessary to capture this sacred space. I know this and I put the resentment elsewhere to hide that it is actually still just the pain of not tapping into the divine, my mind plays tricks. The resentment spreads, I want to dance! Feel the euphoric abandon, yet here I sit. Watching Michael now, how i love the way this man moves, hands strong, flexed at the wrist, taunt belly peeking from beneath his shirt, pink drawstring below. I wonder in another moment of magnified desperation if i will ever dance again.

Who? Who has loved with all their heart something, someone, and has not known this fear? This fear of what we love being lost to us? It is almost more than i can bare....

And yet i know that by the time you read this, what I am describing, this feeling of desperation and yearning, will be gone, transformed. This is why I write this, to capture this moment, one I believe so many have experienced, and maybe never shared, maybe out of embarrassment or fear. I want you to know, I have felt it too.

I pull out my “What i want” journal and write;

“I WANT TO DANCE”

Michael moves past me. Jade moves past me.
I watch many others, but still do not shake and quake, there is no impulse to follow.

I know the only way is to get up, start, and so this is what I am going to do.



I was going to leave it there, but it would have been incomplete, here is the rest:

I dance closed, trying to be open, hands over eyes, gaze turned down. Many tried to commune, I tried back. TRYING though is not the best recipe for ecstatic experience, it is paradoxical that the opposite is generally what brings ecstasy.

Up dances a sweaty smiling womyn of such beauty. She pushes up on her cheeks, to create a smile, an invitation. I smile. I hug her and say “thanks for noticing”. She tells me I am absolutely beautiful, open eyed, no walls, she let me in and told me she saw beauty. The ice is broken. Being seen is so powerful a thing. I spy Michael and know I can find connection there, something that has not always been easy for me with male partners here on the dance floor. I endure the slightly awkward beginning, accept the clumsiness of emerging from this shell. Then we click. His body listens to mine, mine to his. I feel safe.

I was not as connected in the dance this morning as I was yesterday. Exceptional experience becomes mundane if it inhabits the everyday. This wanting which I experience today is very much a part of the ecstatic, ecstatic foreplay. I know it will return, today was a reminder of its sweetness.

“Who do you consider to be your greatest Teachers in life?” is the question in 12 days journal #195


P.S. In the afternoon session I had one of the most ecstatic experiences I have had on or off the dance floor yet...so there you go.