First priorities: Buddhist monks are being slaughtered in Burma right this minute by the Chinese-backed military junta. No, I’m sorry, not a happy dancing topic, but there you have it: Please investigate for yourself or simply add your body mass to the weight of outrage by signing the petition at http://www.avaaz.org/en/stand_with_burma/t.php.
Okay, I came here today not intending to stir the activist soup but to reanimate my contributions to this site & honour my 5R experiences of the last few weeks - the latest being Amara Pagano’s third spin with her Release workshop, this time in Bellingham. About which I want to offer deep gratitude to my wise, embodied & (as this is written) Austin-bound teacher (dear maui wowie) plus our rooted mama producer (Jenny Macke) & her fab community (B’ham’s tight, sweet, growing gang of rhythmatists). And, on behalf of a few out-of-country & off-shore visitors, drop thanks on our welcoming hosts (the Macke family – wind-dancing Andreas, equestrian/thespian Holly, sunshine superboy Jonah). The workshop itself delivered a thousand flashing experiences & moments, insights & challenges, group connection & individual soliloquies – all in service to releasing into the breath and our personal issues/tissues … the should/could box of “what if” opened (gently & compassionately or with explosive urgency & need according to our own requirements) as thoughts fall away and instinctive trust in the truth of the moment is cultivated. (Oh, how I now wish I’d stopped dancing and taken notes with a camcorder – as you few people visiting here know so well, Amara explains herself with such clarity & physical artistry, literally moving the teaching as she speaks … ultimately, I think she’s asking us to open to the unwritten mystery of each moment new.)
Also: Before it vanishes into the slipstream, I must revisit Jonathan Horan’s Cycles three short weeks ago in Olympia. My first encounter with the lineage bearer, the son of she who has given us this work, this infinite mystery unfolding. J’s clocked something like 125,000 hours of practice & study, he told us, and he’s the final proof I need that this work is life-changing – transformative beyond all measure – worth dedicating a rest-of-this-life commitment. I exchanged all of ten words with him. But the common sentiment of many participants I spoke with is that we KNOW him … he stood before us, relaxed, totally himself, shifting from sacred to profane with lightness & laughs, dropping metaphorically from 20,000 feet into gravity’s embrace and showing us how to ride the overwhelmingly big wave - surrendering to its power with acceptance and a sheer giddy joy in being alive – while standing there, barefoot soul, in the den of Olympian Eagles, encouraging us to revisit ancient wounds, patterns, stories – and, in so doing, allowing us to rewrite/heal/process them anew from a present-tense place of maturity. And all of these gifts flowing from a conscious man – a tousle-haired dude in a World Cup t-shirt who can hold the paradox of mosh-pit veteran and John Wayne fan. A rare & precious male teacher who can model the possibilities for men like me who, as i've noted before on this site, are starved for same. (continues)
And so, at Cycles, I found my way home to the lost innocent who i reparented to the tune of Sara M’s version of Blackbird. Home to the confused, adrift teenager who stepped out of the family net by choice yet resented the lack of attention, the seeming absence of love from his parents (which was so benign compared to the hurts inflicted on others in our group – devastating (surely) physical hurts, beatings & verbal abuse, neglect, genuine scar tissue still fresh and raw there below the brave surface of their animate, dancing adult selves. I also revisited the closet rebel who couldn’t shake the good-boy code as heir to his father/mother’s conditioned orthodoxy. Perhaps best of all, I got a taste of what it feels like to be the wild son as modeled/taught by the archetype himself … a wild sun with a ‘u,’ burning bright in the big-mind sky, who knows that one is all and all is one – one breath followed by the next, each experience or opportunity or fresh hell to be met with equanimity, acceptance, peace & a vulnerable, other-oriented open heart.
So deep appreciation to J – and to Liz Marie Jaeger, for so ably producing another in a profoundly appreciated series of seamless, totally pro events. And, while I’m here, also a deep bow to Sara Pagano for the kick-ass dharma & spirit she offered at Aldermarsh back in August … her teachings swift & true & aimed right at the instinctive guts of the matter. Trusting from the depths of her belly & showing us how to trust our own. Fierce and needed teachings from a warrior, dancing and otherwise. (and about which I should have written an ode last month in this space).
But f*** the shoulds. I raise my middle-finger to my own self-absorption, navel-glazed myopia, my word-spinning babble. Monks are dying in Burma. Sign the petition please. It takes all of 30 seconds.
