Which Melody, Which Voice?

When choreographing a song, choices have to be made.  Am I going to pay attention to the accents of the percussion, or am I going to ignore them?  Am I going to do something different with the bridge or am I going to just continue with the same choreography?  Shall I use the saxophone in the harmonies or ignore it and use the melodies that are more in the forefront?  Should I use the words to inform my movement, or should I focus on the basic melody?

These questions make me think of all the voices I have going on in my head – especially the one that cries, “What-do-you-think-you’re-doing-you’re-not-good-enough-just-hide!”  I recognize this voice, it is my old friend.  This was the voice that made me keep my head down and escape difficult childhood situations.  It really protected me.

However, listening to that voice now is no longer a safe choice.  It is unhealthy in my life as an adult to swallow my emotions just to make others feel okay. 

I know the more I try to push this voice away from me, the louder it becomes.

So I hear this voice and I choose to not believe it.  I try to love it and say, “Thank you for protecting me when I was little.  Now you can relax.  I am going to take care of you now.” 

So I embrace that voice.  It worked hard and now deserves a joyful retirement.

My life is determined by which voice I listen to.  

The voice I listen to now is the one that nurtures me.

It says, “You are safe.  You are loved.  You are on earth to be joyful and loving and to share your gifts.”

And that goes for everyone.

When I get confused by different voices in my head, I ask myself, “What would love do?”

Which voice do you listen to?  Which melody will you make real?

What would love do?

Balance

When you learn to balance, you have to take a few tumbles before you understand what muscles you have to contract, and what you have to lengthen to stay balanced.  No one can teach you to balance, really.  Someone can tell you to keep your knee soft, tighten your abdominals, and focus your eyes on a specific point, but then you have to go it alone, even when you’re sure you’ll wipe out. 

Making mistakes is how we learn.  Some parts of balancing are intuitive, others are conscious.  You just have to feel it.  Sometimes we have to allow ourselves to fail before we know how to do it right.  And we have to allow others to fall down and understand that they are just trying – as we all are.

I have fallen down in front of a class.  You get to a point while falling where you know you can’t save yourself and you just resign yourself to going down.  If you let yourself relax during the fall, your chances of hurting yourself are minimized.  

At the point where you’re falling, if you try and resist it, that’s when you can really get hurt.  You are contracting your muscles to tense for the fall and it will hurt more when you finally land.

In life, we sometimes just have to go with what our intuition is telling us.  If we resist too much, we can end up, figuratively, hurt and on our butts.  If we can go with the flow, when we know there’s nothing else we can do -- even when it’s scary – we can somehow find our way to balance.

This is all part of trusting what we feel and trusting who we are.  If you trust yourself, you are not afraid to fall and make a mistake.  If you trust yourself, you know you will find your balance eventually.

I’ve had situations in my life when I was totally off-balance.  I knew, in the deepest part of myself, what I had to do to become happy again.  I hesitated because I knew that some people around me would not approve and would, in fact, be very angry.  These people loved me, but they had an investment in me showing up as I always had.

I had to remind myself that I am not a mean person, I would never purposely hurt another and I had every right to joy.  

I had to fall a couple of times, but I knew what I had to do to regain my balance.

Trust yourself.  You know what’s best for you.

You can always find your balance. 

Your Way

My class is not a technique class.  The only rules are to have fun, sweat and not hurt yourself or others.  Much like life.

Not everyone uses the same road to get to the same place.  And even if you’re in the “same place” as another person, your experiences (though similar in some ways) must be different just because you are you.  You have your own road to follow.

We all have our own path and can make our own way.  We have an affinity for the ways that are right for us and should trust that. 

I get in touch with my spirit through dance and meditation.  Dance is my church, the way I express my faith.

It’s not the church of my childhood, where I alternately had the fidgets or fell into a deep sleep, but the joyous church of my adulthood.   

I am not criticizing organized religion.  I know that many get peace and solace by going to a place to worship and feel a sense of community.  That’s truly wonderful – but I had to go to church when I was a kid.  I had no affinity for it.   I just wanted to keep my head down and not get into trouble.  In general, I’m not crazy about rules. 

Today, even when eastern modes of spirituality are rife, we still somehow have the idea that there are only a few legitimate ways to explore spirituality.  As I have explored my own beliefs about spirituality, my practice has changed.  At first, I didn’t think dance was a valid way to the spirit; that’s not what I’d been told.  I used to do sitting meditation on a cushion in front of a self-made altar with lit candles.  I felt that I had to sit there for a certain amount of time, or it wasn’t authentic.  If it was not at least a half hour, I thought, somehow I was cheating. 

I have changed and I don’t do that kind of meditation anymore.  My intention is to drop into the space between my thoughts to find the silence.  I don’t always get there.  But now, I’m okay with that.  If I can’t get to the silence, I just start thinking about what I know to be true.  Or I consciously acknowledge  my gratitude for my life, just as it is, right now.  

While dancing, I let myself feel the joy.  Sometimes, of course, it’s a challenge.

When I meditate, I can usually reach a place of peace and silence.  Often I can’t stay in that space for a long time.  But I no longer feel guilty if my meditation doesn’t go the way I think it ought to.  I just accept it.  It’s my way. 

There are no rules except to be totally accepting of my path.  

Trust your own way.

Your road. Your rules. Your dance.

Your life.

Bricks

After class one day last week, I made a comment about what I wanted to work on this year:  the dropping of old hurts and resentments.  I understand that holding onto to resentment is hurtful to me not to the object of my irritation.  Every grudge is like a brick I have to carry on my back.  And it’s tough to dance with a load of bricks on your back.  Whenever I’ve been able to let go of resentment, I really have felt lighter, freer and happier in every area of my life.  

So why is it so hard to do?

Five minutes after I announced my intention to drop resentment, I was referring to a relative as s***head.  Oh, and her husband, too.

I was already off the wagon.

I truly want to drop all the nonsense of holding grudges, so what stops me?  Why is my knee-jerk reaction to call someone a s***head? 

Yes, it’s very satisfying on a “lower-self” level, but it doesn’t serve me.  At all.

So now, I’m working on two things: to drop the bricks and be nice to myself while I’m changing my default switch.  I have been thinking about ways to do this:

 Look at a person from a different perspective – through a different lens. 

Remember that we all have our challenges and that you can never really know what’s going on inside another person and what lens she’s looking through.

However, I need something simpler than that if I’m going to make any progress.

Upon reflection, I think the best way to accomplish this is to just, in every moment, choose love.

Love helps us to be compassionate about the foibles of others and of ourselves.  Love allows us to give each other a break.  Love remembers to be kind.  Love remembers that our faults are really places where we’ve been wounded.  Love sees only the light in another and acknowledges the light in ourselves.

Love is the music; life is the dance.

Love lifts the bricks off our shoulders and sets us free.

What We Can Do

This week an unspeakable tragedy occurred in our state.  I have no words to express the grief and outrage all of us feel that such a thing could have happened – to children and to the public servants who are custodians of our children.

All of us are searching for what we can do to help.  We feel helpless.  What can we do?  Some say that prayer is useless.  I don’t agree.  I believe in the idea that we all spring from the same source; we are all connected at the deepest level.  If that is true, it follows that when we send our love and our wish for healing to those who have been shattered -- I have to believe -- it is not in vain.  And sometimes it is the only thing we can do.

When we are lost and don’t know how to help, we can at least do this.

I would like to use this blog today to, with all my heart, express my sympathy and compassion for all those who are suffering such horrible loss.  My deepest wish is for your healing. 

Somehow, together, we will find a way to better protect each other.  

President Obama said it best.

All of us can extend a hand to those in need to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories, but also in ours.” ~ President Barack Obama 12/14/12