I want my fragile life, all full of living
“(With) an eye made
quiet
by the power
Of harmony, and the
deep power of
joy,
We see into the
(life)
of things.”
Wordsworth
I have spent 1000’s of hours in the dance studio. It is my home away from home. While young and at Juilliard in NYC, I went to a talk called. “Art Without Ego.” It blew my mind, no actually it softened my mind, and it got me thinking about stillness for the very first time. I didn’t realize until years later what was happening, how art was becoming for me an act of devotion. It seems the natural response when the ego;s left out. My teacher and colleague, Barbara Dilley, created a lovely form by which to explore this. It is called, Contemplative Dance Practice. I have been so fortunate to practice this for 100’s of hours as well until now it too seems part of my DNA. In an email to me a few years back, Barbara Dilley described the form in this way:
“Contemplative Dance Practice is a structured discipline which gives us time and space to explore and evolve our personal awareness practice together with others. The intention is to inhabit our body/mind disciplines, deepen awareness of inner and outer rhythms, explore creative process, support integration, unlearning and relearning, create opportunities for solo and collaborative investigation and research, make time for caretaking/giving/receiving, well being, strengthen meditative disciplines, and study/participate in social/political “village” system.
This list of intentions is huge. I want to acknowledge all the different ways we develop awareness. Each day we have different experiences as we come to awareness practice. To be without bias toward our experience is important. So much of my process of developing CDP has been noticing and naming and including all of who I am when I practice meditation. Students have given so much insight into how to proceed. They come with educational, spiritual, and artistic questions and practices. These questions are all gates we can walk through to know who we are.”
At Cypress Treehouse, as in Contemplative Dance, our experience is met without bias. We gently invite ourselves in, including all of who we are while honoring our limitations as well. Imagination and metaphor fit in somewhere too, into our fullness of life. They lead and we begin to explore. What if much can change from a simple shift in point of view? How about making life an offering? How about a garden in which we feel connected, that is intimately revealing itself, respecting ourselves as part of it and always part divine mystery as well? How about having a specific favorite thing to love today, a fascination to follow tomorrow, a genuine curiosity, something to discover, a living question to engage?
Getting there is half the work. We climb up to the Cypress Treehouse, away from the fray, and begin a healing process of gently seeing an interior life that is always with us, with eyes, heart, and senses made deeper by the knowing,
