TEACHING AT WEST VERNON
FIRST TIME (MICHAEL) – 5/30/02
Went to “movement class” for the first time. A lovely practice cauldron in which to work on the integration of energies. The drummer in me, physically, emotionally, psychologically, got to come out and work on integrating energetically with all the other parts. Identity becomes fluid, grounded in the body, rhythmically changing, as one dances one’s prayer, taps into a gusher of emotional juice.
The day after my first “Sweat Your Prayers” session this seems very doable. This ecstatic dance practice allows me to bring memories of any extreme experiences into the present and then flow, keep moving, allow them to integrate into a fuller, richer, presence, NOW. And with this overflowing of energy to blissfully serve the awakening of beings around me.
SECOND TIME (JO) – 6/6/02
I “had a little bit of trouble bridging universes”, Jo said about me as the dance class ended just a minute ago. I took the day off because of an exhausting day at work yesterday. It’s Thursday, June 6, 2002. I have 3 weeks left in the school year after tomorrow. Victor refused to leave the room when we were going to lunch yesterday. The principal, it seemed, was trying to blame me for Victor. I showed her the 3 letters I’ve written to her about him, starting last October. She tried to nail me for 2 things: First, I had only that day submitted SST paperwork and, second, I hadn’t yet called Victor’s grandmother, which she had told me to do 2 or 3 days earlier. It was so discouraging to have to battle him and what he produces and then her. I knew before the day was over that I needed a day off to rest, gather my energies, and work on perspective. Get clear enough to know what is the most positive, effective way to be when I go back.
Then this morning I was awakened by the phone ringing at 6:45. A false alarm, it was a beeping modem calling a wrong number. After going back to bed and trying to go back to sleep, I realized I could go to dance class. And now here I am sitting in the café afterwards.
First time I’ve seen Jo. She’s very good. Her theme today was Architecture. Building a house. Building structures, foundations, curves and lines. Many rich allusions to the body and relationships growing from the metaphor. A central episode involved gravitating to triangles. I was not able to connect. There were only 2 or 3 others who floated free. This is what she was referring to in saying I had “a little bit of trouble bridging universes”. There were a few times of connection. One was when I gave up trying, and lay down on my back looking at the ceiling. She was talking about opening up the spaces in your mind. I felt that, rather than being a moment of failure to connect, it could be a moment of deep awakening to presence. Then she started talking about “feel the support” in your triad and I felt the presence of Mary and Rebecca. It was reassuring to know we have that mutually supportive triangular structure.
A second moment of connection was when she had us make a big circle and asked one member from each of the triads to dance in the middle. This rotated through until she asked those that hadn’t come in yet to do so, including the floaters. I went in and connected with 2 of the women who were most energetic. I was drawn by the fullness of hips and buttocks. (This reminds me that the “soul card” I picked at the beginning had a huge, dark, oversized hara). Urged on by Jo’s words I became part of that triad, as she emphasized, “feel the support”, both of the others in the center and the support of the holding circle. Whether I knew it or not, I had come for the energetic support and I was being urged to take advantage of it. I knew this was right and ecstatically poured my self into my body through this frenetic dancing.
A third moment of connection was when the music shifted from slow and dreamy to an up-tempo “Well, You Needn’t” by Monk (played by Chet Baker I learned afterwards). As soon as it started I felt connected to the drummer’s ride cymbal and started running across the room perfectly in time with that fast beat. Very exhilarating.
A fourth moment of connection was during an African piece, which I learned later was from a new album called “Assembly” by Zawose and Brook. The bass tones and the big drums resonated very deeply. I felt my big drummer connection – full body fully alive to the pulse of the universe and myself as absolutely totally deeply connected. At this point one of the women I recognized from previous times came over and matched movements with me. I smiled kindly for the attention and support. I noticed as she mirrored me the facial expression was pained and the hand movements were mechanically angular. I tried to use this feedback to soften my movements while I deepened even further into the big pulse/sound.
A fifth moment of connection was just before the closing circle, when Jo read a poem from “Selected Poems” of Mary Oliver. It was about lying down in and/or being covered with flowers or petals. I’ll have to find the poem, because I felt it deeply in my soul, corpuscles, flesh, cells, and senses.
A sixth moment of connection was at the very end, when Jo called the circle. Instead of holding hands, she gently put her hand on my lower back, so I did the same to the lady on my right and it spread around the circle. Then Jo started talking about supporting each other, especially if anybody has been having a hard time, by putting the hand on the lower back of the neighbor so they can feel the warmth, and as she said it I said softly, “Thank you” like an “Amen”. As she continued to say something about supporting this energy, I don’t remember what she was saying, but I remember softly saying “Thank you” at least two more times in response to the deeply healing energy of the hands, the whole circle, the community, and the dance.
Surrender to your body. To your dance. Be intimate with yourself. This is your chance. Find your own heart.
THIRD TIME (JO) – 6/13/02
After third trip to Fumbling Toward Ecstasy yesterday the words swirling around are “close the gap, integrate, healing, wholeness”. Sitting today it expands into “close the gap, non-separation, not-two, nondual, healing the original separation”. And then as I continued to sit the mantra became “Surrender the Heart to the Beloved”. Nice place to sit. It is definitely enabled by whatever is happening in the movement class. In the sixth class it was “bring light into the heart”, which is part of the practice we learned from Tenzin.
FOURTH TIME (LORI) – 6/20/02
I just went to the movement class for the 4th time. Sitting down in the café next door to write for the first time. What a beautiful experience! Totally in transformational flow. Her question today was, “What is your mission?” Take a journey. Identify your destination. Mine was full presence, in the room, in my body, right here and now, fully alive and awake. Spent much of the hour moving in that place. Even the side paths were interesting, and all ultimately grounded in the feet, in the scrotum, in the heart. I got to dance with the energy of integration. What is my vow or mission? One thing that came up is “to gather the light of all the faiths”. Then I remembered my current “Vision” in Geodex worksheet – to be grounded in a livelihood as a teacher/librarian. Both are true. And this is what I’m integrating.
The circle at the end each time is so sweet. Then after the circle I asked Lori (substituting for Jo) about bringing in Mary and Rebecca. She said ask Jo about a CD that has a full wave for dancing together at home. I need to coax them in very gently.
Lori offers various themes for various changes in the music – all working together in the flow of the morning’s program. At one point she asked, “Who will you bring with you [on your journey]?” On one level it’s Mary and Rebecca, and this dance was an opportunity to open energetically to how that works. On another level it’s all beings with whom I come in contact. And dancing this morning I was able to make the adjustments that would allow that to be possible too.
Opening to the ones I find ugly or scary or repugnant in one way or another. Not losing my rhythm to chase after the ones I find (sexually or otherwise) attractive. Dancing in between one of each and balancing out the energy by dancing in that field. A wonderful shift toward inclusiveness, felt in the body.
At one point the mantra for me was “lighten up”, which worked very well. It came from flipping into the opposite when I started feeling so heavy. Then dancing on the edge between light and heavy, allowing both, including both, but being held or trapped by neither.
FIFTH TIME (JO) –6/27/02
Just finished “Sweat Your Prayers” fifth time. Her theme was family, working with the parents, growth, separation, reintegration, etc. What kept coming up for me is my fear and apprehension anticipating going back to the classroom. What evolved was a sense of standing in the transition from 3rd grade to high school. Standing and moving in the light, aligned with all the forces of the universe, this is a context, or size of frame, that can be empowering. No excuses, no negativity. Just the ongoing growth, evolution, serious positive development. It’s where the story most transparently intersected with the joyous lightness of being present, without a story. Just absorbed by the sacred beauty, intensity, and openness of pure presence. The transition from third grade to high school is what I’m doing, in context, in a longer view than just struggling with classroom management. There is a shorter view that works and a longer view that works, but this one felt most empowering in the dance today, and it allows me to fully express how organized I am without compartmentalizing parts of life.
SCHOOL YEAR ENDS FRIDAY 6/28
TWO WEEK BREAK 7/1-7/12
SIXTH TIME (JO) DURING BREAK 7/1-7/12
At the sixth Sweat Your Prayers I met/saw/observed/experienced that “caged animal” that Stephen used to say came out when I performed. But now it was just another powerful bubble in the mix. No trouble integrating at all. It simply arises, presences, and dissolves.
Notice that in Tenzin’s Dzogchen book, “integrating” is integrating the passions that arise into the presence of open awareness. Very similar to what happens in this dance practice. And it could be the theme for this particular writing exercise.
Sixth movement class: The word I walk away with this morning is “inviting”. Inviting all the spirits to the dance. Inclusion. Dancing with the whole earth. Healing. Overcoming the false split between self and other.
More concretely, I feel and felt energy in my belly button. Very powerful each time I returned to center there. And in the heart. Bringing light to the heart. She was saying, “find your own mudra”, and one I would find after I followed the body/mind and guidance of her voice would be the welcoming mudra of the officiant in the Gate of Sweet Nectar. Knuckle of left hand grounding at the pelvic bone in the back. Right palm open, offering No Fear. At the end she played “Calling All Angels”, and I realized every spirit is invited. Not just the hungry and dispossessed, but also the ecstatically beautiful, the orgasmically, achingly beaming dakinis, the men overflowing with body knowledge/confidence.
The dance of the ritual of the GOSN is a gift I need to remember.
The major theme today was Transitions. How to move the energy to not get stuck anywhere, but to keep on moving, move it through. This practice is a great physical metaphor for doing that throughout the widest range of emotions and situations. Absolute freedom from being stuck. And sometime it’s important to hold your ground, hold your position. But always have the freedom to let it go if that’s the right thing to do.
I need to keep my energy open enough that I’m ready to go back to work and be interviewing for high school LMT jobs both at the same time. (Note inserted later: yesterday, 8/19/02, I got the LMT job and Najarian signed the permission to transfer).
SEVENTH TIME (MICHAEL) TUESDAY 7/9/02
My first time back I struggled self-consciously with issues of gender and attraction. That was Tuesday 7/9, with Michael leading for the first time since the very first time I went. I talked with him afterward about my koan about having the practice not be a wedge between Mary and I.
Then last night and this morning I was very much up in my head and scattered. I wrote myself a note: “I should try to sit 1 hour a day to go deeper when off-track”. Today is Thursday of the second week off (7/11). The first week included a Tuesday where I went to the Valley to take dad for his pre-op (7/2) and a Thursday that was the Fourth of July. Every time I sat it felt extremely powerful cutting through layers of surface chatter to get deeper and closer to what’s important. No real content, just clearing the noise, becoming more one-pointed, more grounded. This is right. This is my primary practice. I have been doing this for over 30 years and more and more I feel it beginning to bear fruit.
The dancing feels like it clears a larger, more all-inclusive energetic space.
Last night browsing through LeDoux’s Synaptic Self I could feel it internally as he described the massively parallel plasticity of the brain systems coordinating into an ever richer, more functional “self”. I could feel how fragile is the balance but how extravagantly, elegantly multi-layered the integrity of the wholeness can be. And dancing today I could feel myself repetitively grooving into patterns that energetically felt they enhanced the magnificence of the ongoing work of high art.
STARTED DMHS 8/02
WORKING AT DMHS (WINTER BREAK FIRST YEAR)
1/12/03
And now I’m sitting in the DMHS library, during the quiet homeroom reading period. I have just finished the 2 months of working with RPM. The planning was swallowing up all of my time. My response to the demise of Geodex will now be to use Day-Timer and allow myself to be much more intuitive and improvisational. However, I must acknowledge Tony Robbins help in making this transition happen.
I didn’t write anything except the above paragraph during the whole time at DMHS so far. And now I have one more day left in the 3-week winter vacation before going back January 13, 2003. I went to dance class today. Notes below.
Just went to dance class for what might be the last time until school is out at the end of June (6 months!) I so really love the way it works. I went 3 times during this break. Can’t remember the first one right now. During the last one I got into doing the Vajra Guru mantra. That was Tuesday. Then yesterday I found the Sogyal Rinpoche book on Dzogchen and Padmasambhava. I read the chapter on Guru Yoga and about the mantra. Today in class that was in and out. Mostly letting the instructions, rhythms, and movement shake me out of my head. Like Roshi said, even with a very high spiritual mantra you still have something in your head. Drawn deeply to the feeling of the GROUND, I recognized the earth element.
Oops. Let me take a step back. At the beginning of the class I spoke briefly with a regular and told her, “I’m working on withdrawing my projections. I have too many projections out there.” Where this came from is a couple of things. First, I had been reading the book on Chakras and Archetypes. While Rebecca was taking her driving test yesterday I was reading the chapter on the solar plexus chakra. Oh, saying that reminds me that why I was reading about that particular chakra was because of my experience at the class Tuesday. What happened was as I continued to dance and to do the mantra silently (and sometime voicing it a little) the energy got so huge that I could feel my breathing very strongly at the diaphragm. By the end of the class I was doing huge, natural, powerful, aware, diaphragmatic breathing. It was very centering, natural, organic, satisfying. Head completely cleared out. Later in the day and the next day I found myself drawn to reading about the solar plexus center. She talks about it in terms of the servant vs. warrior archetypes. It’s the center of power and she talks about how to take back the power you have given away. This connected for me with the fact that for much of the class I was the only man there. I had a whole thought stream going in the background about possible fantasies of how I could manifest a dream of taking more advantage of the situation. Dakini flashes came in and out. Thinking about coming back today into a very similar situation I didn’t want to be wasting energy tripping on fantasies of lust or selfishness or control or any other kind of fantasies. That’s what I meant by letting go of projections. Taking them back.
(Last night I picked up and started reading from the beginning Dakini’s Warm Breath). And that gets into reclaiming the earth element. (Tibetan dakinis in Simmer-Brown’s book, reading about dakinis associated with the 5 elements in both Tenzin Wangyal and Ken McLeod’s books). Reclaiming my soul in my body.
Dancing today I felt the best mode is to be completely in the music and rhythm with no thought stream happening. Second best is to have a “spiritual practice” thought that’s steering me back to such a state. Examples are mantra, or bringing in elements. Third best is being in thought with the intention of finding my way back to rhythmic presence. Next best is being temporarily disengaged, taking a break, resting the body and mind in a neutral mode. Next best is being caught in a fixed idea but allowing the music to move me through it. Actually, even that is great growth.
I’ll really miss this regular practice. It’s a container within which I can test the viability of strands I’ve been gathering on not only a mental level, but throughout the whole energetic range of emotion, intimacy, intensity, channels, groundedness. If it works here I know I can dance it in life, dance with rather than just dance alone.
So without dancing I’m left with the Vajra Guru mantra. With the energies of the 5 elements. With the dakinis as explained by Simmer-Brown, Wangyal, and McLeod. With the non-substantiality of consciousness as examined by Daniel Dennett from a scientific point of view. How this overlaps with the studies in the Dalai Lama book I just read aloud. With all the cluster of energies around Padmasambhava: the mantra, dzogchen, the visualization at time of death, the dakini who was his consort, and the many western teachers who refer to him as a touchstone. The fact that when Maezumi Roshi died Padmasambhava came to comfort me for the first year. Knowing that I can learn to be real with all these energies by allowing them into the dance, where they nourish and support. The essentially empty dance. To raise the bodhi mind, train in absolute and relative bodhicitta. Keep working on the lojong slogans together with Mary. Read the dakini book she is reading. Continue to study the manifestations of Padmasambhava. Don’t forget the space element at the center of the mandala. The five rhythms and the five elements. The joy that comes from being in touch with the pulse of life. The oneness, differentiation, and harmony.
How do we support each other? What supports you? How do you support everything around you?
Tune in to the pulse.
SUMMER AFTER FIRST YEAR AT DMHS
6/24/03
And now I’m back to dancing. First time since Arthur’s Playshop. I have a much bigger energy to work with.
In both practices the magic happens when the mental model falls away and you are totally one with the rhythmic flow, fully present, richly transcending all categories.
6/26/03
That was spectacular. I think it’s the first time I went in with a mantra/koan/phrase and held it the whole time. “What Is My Vow?” Also, I was the only man there the whole time and I didn’t get into any head trips. It was very sensual a lot of the time, but no clinging. If I would start to drift into trshna I would recall the phrase (What is my vow?) and follow the flow away from the shallow water, run aground, gasping sense of lack, which would flutter away before it had a chance to get as bad as that sounds.
7/3/03
Greed, anger, and ignorance. Moving it through. Moving the anger through a container strong enough and loving enough to allow the big stuck energies to flow through. The groundless ground really is peace, love, bliss. This dance is such a container, and the drum circle can be such a container, more accessible for more people.
Before going to dance this morning I was looking at Gabrielle’s Sweat Your Prayers. The grid of archetypes and rhythms started to make sense. I have talked here about wanting to integrate LSD. Note that I read Campbell’s Hero With a Thousand Faces before the first trip, anticipating that it would give me access to all these stories, and be an instance of quest itself. In this writing I have been naming all the roles I’ve been through in life to try to make sense of them or find the story line. Roth talks about dancing all the roles, all the archetypes, at appropriate places in the rhythmic flow. Right now I’m reading through Michael Meade’s Men and the Water of Life. It includes stories, myths, and archetypes that we flow through and live through at various times. Buddhism says the self is no fixed thing. On one level all the archetypes, and stories are flowing through, limited only by where we are stuck and what we can handle. The dancing helps the stuck ones flow through. Below the level of fragments of self-image and identity is just energy flowing through, and below that is the stillness from which it all emerges and to which it returns. No fixed thing.
The energy of the dance allows the emotions to flow that fuel identity. Identification with roles and archetypes. Energy, emotion, and identity –a good summary of the cauldron I’m working with.
Notice the subtle interplay of sub personalities and social roles, either or both of which can partake of archetypes or stereotypes.
7/17/03
Went to dance today with the mantra “What is my koan?” Spent most of the dance in “Give no fear.”
8/14/03
She (Jo) was telling us “Be a bridge between worlds. Offer the bridge between the worlds. Be the bridge.” And I danced with that, moved with that. And isn’t that a metaphor for this whole writing project? Isn’t that the perspective I’ve been looking for from the beginning, a way to integrate, to make sense of the whole thing? When I was going to Avnet (or RPS) every day, living at the Zen Center, I felt I was serving as, acting as, a bridge between those two worlds. As a librarian one can be a bridge between many worlds. At Avnet I was a bridge between the worlds of the computer people and the senior managers.
What I had been working on when she brought this up was “basic trust”. Experiencing in the dance my own seamless contact with essence, being, original nature. Not looking outside for affirmation, confirmation. It is self-fulfilling samadhi. Dogen’s jijiyu zammai is the same as Almaas’ “basic trust”! – full-body awareness grounded in the pulse of life, the state we achieve in the dance. Almaas gives it the name Basic Trust – in Being, Essence, True Nature. The simple experience of pre-existing unity, and the ability to act spontaneously and naturally from that.
And then operating from there, be a bridge between the worlds – inner and outer, self and other, one social world and another.
8/21/03
After class talking with Betty Jane, what came up was I should write a YA novel that takes place in a MAGICAL LIBRARY. Everything fell into place. Later at home I wrote, “They have a book club that becomes a Socratic dialog that asks questions that start unraveling the nature of reality. They stumble upon a common language that connects all humans.” The magical library is the setting for my book. It’s a bridge between worlds. The librarian may have had some experiences something like mine. The main characters are the kids. I’m not sure what they do, but that will come.
Note that the Pullman Trilogy involves moving back and forth between worlds – through an opening. This library is like a passageway, or way station.
The dance we do at class feels like the form Alan Watts envisions in the Epilog of The Joyous Cosmology, most specifically p. 87-88. Gabrielle’s form, for me, perfectly fulfills the need Watts describes. What are the qualities of that space? Clearing an open space for presence, for Being, and for Being-Together, that includes movement and stillness.
Helping birth a thriving life planetary consciousness