The Feeling of Dance as Meditation.

When my body moves, two things might happen. With small daily activities such as doing the dishes, pacing, or detailing over needlepoint, my thinking focuses. My subconscious can work through any problem, if my body could just distract my conscious mind from the issue. But if I take up something more athletic such as making love or dancing, my mind moves beyond thinking through a problem. Instead, my mind clears.

Let us consider the dance as meditation. It starts when I hear the music. The music moves my body; then there becomes no distinction. Soon there is no boundary between me, the music, and the dance. We simply are together in one place in time. And then my mind is silent. The musician gestures.

But I fear when the musician watches, for when the musician joins the trance of dancing, it all ceases and nothing continues. I feel I need a divide between me and the musician or the music will stop. Oddly, the musician is one with the music. The music is one with the dance. The dance is one with the music and me, but I cannot be one with the musician. We need separate mental spaces. I warn them all not to look directly into the light.

And when the music gestures, I would love to say I feel it move me… but I feel nothing but the music itself. I simply am… right there… at that point in space and time in the universe… feeling the music spin on its axis. When the music plays and I find myself, I exist at one with my time and space. I am at peace.

And then comes the part that, from what I can tell, must be the same for all successful forms of therapy—- the sublime evaporation of pain and suffering that leaves behind the residue of life and experience. I am no longer one that is suffering but have become one that suffered… well, at least, until they make me suffer again. It is the only way I have found to be able to alive—- free of the burden of it all but the memory. After all, it is our experiences that make us—- we cannot be without them—- but we can only live on without the pain, the sorrow, and the suffering.

This is how I overcome the suffering. This is the release of my pain to nothing but memory. This is the end of the torture until they begin it again.

And after I dance, I find I can think. Again, I can dream. Yes, again I can write, I can speak, and I can solve.