The other morning I read the following from Practicing the Awakened Self Prayer: “I accept I am God’s dream realized, here to express what needs to be.� That idea—that I am here to express what needs to be—popped into my head again later that day as I drove on the freeway. When I remembered it, my mind immediately went into “good person� mode. I began thinking in terms of how to follow a more enlightened set of rules . . . then I stopped (my mind, not the car!) and thought, no, it’s not about ordering your behavior according to a set of rules, it’s about knowing what’s in your heart and following that. To become familiar with that inner voice from which springs wisdom, love, and compassion, and to respond to the promptings of that voice is what I need to do. That’s how I learn to express “what needs to be.� How often I merely switch from one set of rules to another. I engage my self-centered, fear-based ideas of how to behave, then something inspires me to switch to “spiritual� rules and I try to behave differently. In either case I’m acting. I need to dig below the level of rules, get into my heart, and find the truth of who I am, who I’m supposed to be in this world, feel it, and let it come out. That is the way I serve truth, self, and others best.
The dance provides an ideal format for prospecting for reality. The goal is not to imitate the moves of those around me, but to find my own inner promptings and let my body move according to what’s inside me. Expressing what needs to be is just as real on the dance floor as it is in the office or on the freeway. And just as important. We are such beautiful, wonderful, beings in our core yet over the years we’ve covered that glory over with learned behavior, prejudice, fear, and doubt. The dance opens the door to freedom and the opportunity to find that which needs to be.
