Day Seven : Embracing Mystery

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7

Embracing Mystery

If we are going to encourage ourselves and others to feel deeply about people and place, we need practiced forms for creative expression—to avoid depression, repression, and aggression. How do we meet challenge and cultivate creativity in our lives and work?

See or imagine a doorway. As you walk toward the threshold, notice your approach, the passing through, and the aftermath:

-Begin walking: You are simply a human being walking.  Walk your own walk.

-What’s the threshold between walking and moving? Where does the word “moving” land in your body? Be bold. You are a human being, moving. Does this word change your choices?

-What’s the threshold between moving and dancing? Any style, cultural tradition, or personal movement is included. Your body knows about dancing; it’s your birthright.

-What’s the threshold between dancing and raucous dancing? Explore whatever that means to you.

-What’s the threshold between raucous dancing and performing? You might be giving a talk in front of a group, engaged in a challenging conversation, or premiering a new dance in front of hundreds of people. What’s your embodied experience of performing?

-What’s the threshold between performing and meditating? Invite between-ness. Now you are meditating as you move—whole body moving.

-What’s the threshold between meditating and walking?

Exploring that sequence again, continue walking through the space. Cultivate the gap between knowing and not knowing, the ecotone of uncertainty that allows a creative response:

-What’s the threshold between walking and moving?

-Between moving and dancing?

-Between dancing and raucous dancing?

-Between raucous dancing and performing?

-Between performing and meditating?

-Meditating and being?

-Dance your own dance. Explore any threshold that captures your imagination.  Thresholds return us full circle to the process of arriving—practicing presence.

Sometimes we don’t have the words, but we know from experience that the evocative qualities of music and dance link us to larger spheres, like the giant kelp forest silently undulating just below the ocean’s surface.

Humans don’t create movement, we participate in a moving universe.

People are nature too, not separate but same.