I've been back to the ecstatic dance twice now in the past few weeks. It had been several years. I first went in 2007 after getting a divorce and starting to let my life change in the direction it was drawn, that I wasn't controlling. Watching my beliefs blow away.

Yesterday at the dance, my arms slowly lifted to the sides and then all the way up over my head, not having a plan to do so, just gradually happening as I was aware, and I suddenly recalled living in a culture where no one raises their arms up over their heads in moments of simple freedom like that. There I was in a big room full of people, a social setting, and there was freedom in me and all around me for something as normal as raising my arms for no reason at all. Just because it felt good and seemed to want to happen so it did. This is not new for me these days in my life, but it was the remembering of when it became new that really impacted me.

I remembered, in my body, how it was before I started to explore the edges of the cultural norm. I think I was particularly locked in and watchful, trying to belong. Maybe I was just very aware of it. I'd had an early experience, around age 6, of something like near death or spontaneous loss of body sensation which lasted long enough for me to not know if I was alive or dead, but what I did know was that I was utterly safe, unbounded, without identity. And then I had to continue developing my sense of self and personality as kids do, having no context to place that loss of self experience. My religion was certainly not helpful or understanding. My religion was paltry and stupifying and boring in comparison to actual consciousness. It was not my religion.

But maybe I went extreme into the hard effort of holding onto myself after that, wondering how to define myself like we were supposed to be doing, and sometimes getting glimpses again of beyond this "normal" life we were all living together. I found it deadening, for sure, but I was committed to it. Where else was I going to go? So I lived in a world of people who were so convinced of their stories and it was maddening to my senses. My body was locked. All I could do was go running all day by myself, or go out on my bike and just ride and ride. Even as a dancer, choreography freaked me out. It broke eventually, or began breaking, and it hasn't stopped yet.

I don't think that my body is me, but I do know that it has become a good home, since I started to step to the side of the culture and let the unchecked flow of stodgy belief flow on by me.
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I remember one time I was in a contact improv workshop around 2008 or so and we were all lying on the floor in the big old and beautiful gymnasium on UT campus. We were lying on our backs with eyes closed, in that open field together, and the instructor said something very poignant. He said it is rare that people can be so safe around other people in our world. He mentioned the particular rarity for women and black men to just be able to rest on the ground, eyes closed, surrounded by other humans. I think I cried. It is profound to be becoming a safe person in our world. Safe to trust and move freely and safe for others to move freely around. To lift our arms up. Not guns. To lie on the earth with our eyes closed, breathing our heavy bodies.

It's a true honor to be with people who know they're dying, and this is part of my life now.  You know the saying, "Be with people as they are"?  When people have come to this place where they know they will die, or grappling with that idea in a body that is starting to stop working, still not knowing exactly what that means and will be, they're in a place I haven't come to yet.  My psyche has gone into this dive in various ways over my life, but my body has always been working well, so I have certainly not become that raw in vulnerability yet.  The people, just as they are, are my beautiful teachers and friends, even if we've only met for a few minutes.  I feel more love between each of them and me than the normal perspective on human love.  It's just there.

Sometimes our eyes meet... sometimes we stay in a place for a while together without anything other than there.  With nothing to do.  It's a wordless plane of existence while still here in the space and the time of a moment.  

Someone wrote the most beautiful description of the total eclipse. She talked about the quality of the light in that darkness, neither day nor night to the mind as we know light.  She used the words "completely rarified".  I recognize her description in my own experience of the total eclipse and in these grateful times with people who are close to death.  My friends.

We talk about AWE in these extraordinary experiences, and they are teachers for our minds.  There is AWE everywhere all the time.  It becomes more and more visible to us, feel-able to us, never graspable, never definable, owned by no one.  We're all gathered into AWE cleanly without residue, and even as we put words to it and say from our personal points of view how it was, it only opens and opens and opens us.  And we are friends in these impermanent bodies.

Sometimes in BCST sessions, we'll notice the arising of something familiar and historically daunting, triggering, but in that moment there's space for it to move without the usual fear reaction.  It can be something very unexpected.  A memory, body sensation, emotionally charged subconscious something.  Our mostly forgotten old fear that's still with us, waiting patiently to be met. 

We can't really plan or dictate our healing process.  It comes as it comes, under the right conditions. It's honest like that.  BCST is, to me, deep body-inclusive meditation.  It's a chance to allow these old haunts to move and begin to resolve.  The focus is on the health, the loving presence that is our true nature, and within that generous invitation, these old fears can come out of hiding.

There's more and more acknowledgement recently about the nature of diseases, like cancer.  I believe it was already known in us but we don't let ourselves know fully due to cultural norms.  What's known is that diseases are, or can be, the result of internalized and long-held trauma.  The contractions that have become normalized in us, that have become folded into our personalities, are suppressions of our natural flows and full human expression.  So, we hear more often these days, as culture is starting to understand it, that we all have little tumors and "diseases" within our bodies, and they self-heal when the conditions open up in us.  We do not always know about it, typically we don't know what's happening in our bodies and subconscious, but our nature is to be well and nature is always looking for opportunities to release suppressions, to flow and thrive. 

Meditation and practices like Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy are very supportive in making space for the subconscious to reveal and for the usual body resistances to soften and to notice the fresh breeze, a sense of lightness return to us.  An unbothered attitude in the face of something that used to feel threatening.  We feel taller, more grounded, more in our center, when these deep contractions let go.  More of our true nature gets to be at play in life.   

I read just the headline of an online article that said something like "It's actually healthy for kids to throw tantrums" and I just glanced down at the first comments which were a bunch of eye roll/laugh emojis and one word exclamations.  We sure have a habit of dismissing deeper considerations, communicating on the thinnest surface, don't we?    

How honest we are as kids, and how pure our energy moves through its pathways at the same time.  Some of it is simply developmental, that our selves are learning how to move, react, respond, express in the new young body with this quickly changing voice.  And YES, it IS healthy for kids to be able to express as they develop.  Some of it is that, as kids, we haven't trained ourselves out of honesty yet, so what hurts hurts big, and what's funny is the funnest thing ever.  So alive!

Do you know how it is to witness a usually well-kept adult break in half?  Have you ever broken in half?  Completely against your training and will?  Kids do it and it's called "a tantrum" and adults who are terrified of their own possible/probably/inevitable breaking in half will quickly yank the kid up or hush them up.  What will people think of me?  Adults sometimes break in half, too.  If others see this, what do they do?  Call the police?  Turn away and make jokes?  Do something for distance.

To just BE with that full energy, that dam break that could not be contained... Does that make your belly ache or soften or tighten?  What about your heart?  I have no doubt that under the thin surface of all of us well-controlled, trained, presentable adults there's rumbling and and wisdom that wants to let it all drop away.  We can practice our capacity to not turn away when energy moves.  It might be like a feather lifted off your shoulder and the world is totally open to you, finally.  There's a remembering of your true nature, and here you are, free.  If it comes by way of a breakdown tantrum, just stay with yourself through it and notice the freedom that's rushing open behind it.  

It's impossible to screw up our lives.  It's impossible to do this wrong since how we live is what we know in any moment.  What we do is what we do, how we think and feel is how we think and feel... in any one moment.  

Forgiveness is essentially a state of freedom that comes with understand ourselves.  Forgiving the imperfect actions, the hurtfulness, the screwups.  We come off the relentless hook of perfection and find out that we can breath naturally in our honesty.  Honesty holds the door open for everything that is happening and has happened, allowing for unashamed change.  Natural change. 

Faith in the continuum of moments of life.  Faith in the impermanence of life in these bodies. 

Someone will want to hold you down to your past, waiting for an apology.  I'll hold someone down.  We all do it.  What is an apology?  Words of assuming and accepting blame?  Is it coming from shame?  Or, is the real essence of apology just like the real essence of forgiveness?  A state of freedom that comes from understanding ourselves and others a bit more.  Breathing freely in honesty for all the imperfect actions that ever hurt anyone or anything.  Permission to live, here and now, and permission to die cleanly when the time for that comes.

An interfaith minister asked us to name out loud some things we will miss about a person who has recently died.  All sorts of affectionate things were said in the room.  Then she asked us to name out loud some things we won't miss about the person.  I think there was a longer pause that gave her some time to talk about this request.  She said that just because someone died they haven't suddenly became a saint.  Let them be their whole selves.  Let yourself be your whole self.  She talked about the graciousness of grief, to allow ourselves to be honest.  A few people said some things that I don't remember since I was just sitting there loving what she'd been saying about keeping it real.

Gosh, that's all I want.  It's all I ever wanted, and had little to no information from anywhere that real and honest was a possibility for most of my life, until recent years.  Until I began the braving to be real and honest myself.  I remember people swooping in to perform "care" yet they hadn't paused to find out what was needed, or wanted.  I remember people instructing others on how to caretake, as if there's a solid object called "caretake" and that's what you do, the way they're doing it. The strongarming and the sneaky shaming.  Without any other options, I'd lay down into doormat shape and allow the out of touch "care" to be forced upon me or the other person.

Thinking back on it, from the comfort of my couch and dogs flanking, I notice a yawn coming on.  A yawn that could stretch back into my entire past and release all that weird WEIRD confusion around caring and around people dying and around grieving these changes that came that were not wanted but there they were.  Heck, even changes that ARE wanted can inspire grieving. Life is sort of a continuum of grief and laughter.  At least that's part of it.  Some say there are stages to grief.  I don't know about that.  Maybe when we're honest, when we've dropped the performances and ideas about it all, there's no distinction between grief and the rest of life.  Maybe in super real honesty, there's no real distinction between life and death.  Just a continuum of light.

In 2010 when I was sitting a 10-day Vipassana meditation retreat, I was about to go nuts. A spot on my face had started to itch and it became my focus.  I sat there for an eternity planning when and how I'd reach up to scratch it, because that's all I knew to do with itches.  At some point the simple meditation instructions repeated in me:  meet everything that arises with equanimity, as impermanent, and from the field of loving presence. It occurred to me that the itch is the same as anything else that would arise, and I'm here to do this particular practice.

My agreement with the itch then changed. It stopped being my target to get rid of, stopped being an exception to the practice, as I had been uncuriously seeing it just moments before, and surprisingly it started to move and stretch out across my face and scalp and down my neck... I witnessed the itch turn into warm energy and its movement opened me to a realization about something in my life I had no idea was coming. That sort of thing happened over and over in those 10 days and still happens. It's a new way forward from before.

How many itches of so many sorts happen in a day in a life? How many opportunities are we missing by reflexively, uncuriously scratching away and blocking our doors to awareness, with conventional beliefs about things we've labeled as solid state?

When I feel something start up in my body, and it's not because I just feel down the stairs or cut myself or something like that, I allow it the sensation. Even if I did just fall down, the only thing really to do is move openly from there. I find out over and over that nothing is separate. There's no body separate from mind separate from emotion. It's all one movement with countless facets we can perceive in a moment. Aware of my context, that I'm not standing in the middle of the street about to get hit by a car but something just came across my mind and I contracted, allowing pause and openness lets me learn, unexpected and undirected by my thoughts. Things that are held separate from the rest of it by my beliefs, perceived exceptions to the practice that my personality holds out as special, even that stuff is just energy trying to move. 
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The only barrier is our strongman beliefs about ourselves and the world as solid state.

One morning in college, my biochemistry professor suddenly stopped lecturing mid-sentence. He became very still, then sat down. The entire teaching auditorium full of students was paused and open and silent. He eventually told us to go home but no one moved until a few started going down to him. We learned later that he was having an aneurism, and that the space he created in himself, probably made even more potent by the space we all created for him, saved his health and maybe life. He was fine. Had he continued pressing on or had he gone into reflexive contraction against that movement, the pressure would have compounded in his brain. Instead, it got to dissipate and move through.

What if we all practiced everyday to meet life this way? What if a sudden itch or pain somewhere is not met with reflex habit or fear and contraction but open kind awareness? Faith in life itself. We can still be taken to the ER or equivalent, but on the way we can be spacious inside and allow for the unexpected pathway to open.

"What I think of you has nothing to do with your worth".

Words that came across my mind earlier today. I saw the face of the person. Giving him back his worth from within my mind does feel freeing. I don't like him because he's made it clear that he doesn't like me. So, I guess my not liking is retaliation or defense.  Those words also flow in the opposite direction. What he thinks of me has nothing to do with my worth.  Yes, someone could have said that to me but it would have only gone so deep. This sifted surprise up from inside my body as I walked to buy half & half at the corner store. A moment of grace I want to name, roll around with.

People honestly not liking each other but still co-existing is better than people having to "love each other" because that is a high expectation in the world of egos. We can trust that need with the spiritual truth of Love, which can hold all our disagreements. Our honesty and flexibility is what's needed down here in the trenches of life.  Plus, nothing is fixed in place and only honesty allows real movement and change. Who knows what will come? I feel a bit inspired that this not having to lord over ourselves with "should love each other" is a way forward in this world of crazy division we've been creating with our expectations.
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No person can take away another person's worth. Check, and thank you. We can coexist, all worthy of the same big Love, what we ultimately are.

Our bodies are perfectly safe.  They are our only homes in this life.

Healing is a unique process to each of us, of reoccupying the safety and at-homeness of our bodies, the bridging of the divide between the life of the mind and the life of the body.  As healing goes on, as deep as we choose, the bridge disappears and we are simply whole and fully alive, free to be our non-strategized selves.  There is no conflict in that, only generous truth. 

I find out over and over that healing is a creative discovery, and I don't have to wait until I'm dying to remember my wholeness, to feel and to know.  Without this body, where would I be?  And as long as I'm here, why not be fully alive?  Not scary alive, running mania type thing.  Fully alive.  It comes down to choice.  That's the free will in life.     

There is nothing wrong with you or me.  I'm saying this because I know it's true, not because I believe it might be true.  And pain is not an indicator of wrongness, I know it as an indicator of love, that something needs care.  In any moment of pain in the body, old or new, it can spur separation and worry, an unsafe feeling.  Try allowing consciousness to include the pain and expand, feel the love that is always with you, right there in your safe home. 

If you just fell off a roof and you feel pain, the love will allow you to yell for help.  If you just cut your finger, the love will grab a cloth and compress the cut to stop the bleeding, and allow you to look to see if you need stitches and follow through with the need.  If your family shuns you and your heart is crying at the loss of connection, allow the love within your own body to bring you wholeness right here and now.  Allow your own mind and body to live together, and allow the present flow within you to maybe even have no need for a bridge between mind and body.  Maybe choose to discover that you are unconditionally whole and be comforted in your safe home.

The safer we become in ourselves, the safer we become for all, and the safer our world.