I've complained about my aching right knee long enough, now I've done something about it. Recovering from knee surgery includes spending loads of time laying on the couch with one leg on a pile of pillows. It gets old, but it also gives me time to read and think about life.
One of the things I read was a real eye-opening interview with Michael J. Fox. The reporter asked him what his secret was to staying so positive when Parkinson's Diseaase had robbed him of what his life used to be. His response was very profound. He said that while he mourned the loss of pure spontaneity in his life, " . . . what I found was that if you just kind of relax for a second and see what comes into that space, something will come into it. There are no vacuums. And when you see that happen, it's amazing. So if you are in a place in your life, whether it's Parkinson's or whatever it is, you can fret about it all you want but at a certain point, you just have to relax. And that opens all kinds of doors for you."
You just have to relax and that open all kinds of doors for you. An old truth, arrived at from a different angle. I couldn't help but see the analogy to the dance. When I program my dance, when I plan how I will move, I may feel good about it, but I will have missed the delicious gifts that are there within me, gifts of movement that my spirit, my true self, generates all on its own, without the need of ego's conscious planning or control. I give up my own need to control the outcome--which is often dictated by outside forces--relax, and something else, something better, fills the space. Someone remarked at the Monday night class this week that she was dancing her own dance and it felt so good. It was true; I could see the freedom in her motion and on her face as she danced.
This truth extends to life itself. It’s like the Buddhist idea of beginner’s mind: open to what’s next without having to know what’s next. Letting Life fill its own void, allowing Spirit to guide by being. Or Being.
