We Are Evolution

Dancing On The Edge

(Excerpted from the book I am writing:  Dancing Freedom:  A Conscious Mover’s Handbook)

“When a system is far from equilibrium, small islands of coherence in a sea of chaos have the capacity to lift the system to a higher order.”  ~ Ilya Prigogine

Evolution is the process through which change acts on living systems and through which living systems change – transcending and including previous patterns in a spiral pathway of increasing diversity, complexity and harmony.

Nothing ever stays the same.  Change is the eternal constant, and life is motion.  Life implies growth, maturation, decay, death and quiescence.  Death implies rebirth.  The journey through all of these phases is a moving journey.  Systems tend towards expansion and complexity, then fall apart, then cohere again.  Coherency is a point of simplicity, or pure presence, that allows for things to come together (to cohere) at a new order of evolution.

When we navigate change consciously and coherently, we become agents of conscious evolution – literally, we are life, change and evolution being conscious of itself.  We are evolutionaries – shaping and being shaped by the growing edge of consciousness.  When we bring awareness to the process, we influence outcomes.

As we steward change, we are always either midwifing birth or hospicing death – both within ourselves and with others.  Each of us will do some of both as we facilitate Dancing Freedom.  Both things can be happening in the same group of people or in the same individual at the same time.  We hold space for this through love.  We hold safe space for the breakdown and the breakthrough by grounding, expanding to meet whatever IS, and resting in presence and compassion. We do not try to change what is happening.  We simply create coherent space through the balance of expansion (permission, invitation, invocation, inspiration) and containment (clear boundaries and agreements).

“The love we co-create together is an alchemical substance, and this substance can transform our cells and our world.  Love like this is coherence in action.”  ~Falco, founder of Dhamanhur

The Shape of Evolution

Evolution is happening.  It is happening whether we like it or not.  At this moment, it is heavily amplified by the human presence on the planet.  We have created an evolutionary crucible for ourselves and for all of life.  As conscious creators and members of the human family, it simply makes sense to BE THE COHERENCY.  We have the opportunity to engage evolution consciously – because we can.  This is the grace of having such large brains.  We have self-reflexivity and can make choices!  Because we are a species that is aware of itself and it’s creative relationship with it’s environment, we are uniquely poised to consciously co-create the next steps for our very young species and for all of life on planet earth, and perhaps for all of life in the universe.  We have brains large enough, and hearts big enough to co-create a path of harmony

We can do this by being coherent.

For a human being, coherency comes through:

• Grounding
• Personal Presence
• Collective Resonance
• Aligning with shift at all scales
• Developing an Awake Ego
• Cultivating Nomadic/Indigenous Mind

The Nomadic Consciousness or Indigenous Mind is RESPONSIVE to internal awareness and outer stimulus in a way that is in integrity with life.  Here are some qualities of this way of being:

• Non-fixety
• Source Wisdom
• Life Wisdom
• Body-presence
• Permeability with the Environment
• Wonder
• Responsivity
• Loyalty
• Providing Home
• Collectivity
• Self-responsibility
• Discernment
• Wise Seeing
• Humility
• Energetic & Emotional Ethics
• Compassion
• Containment
• Asking for Help
• Seeking Elders

Each of us is powerful beyond knowing.  We Are Evolution.  The Collective Consciousness of humanity is a system (or oversoul) that is evolving as WE change the ways in which we project, perceive and respond to reality.

~Copy write, Samantha Sweetwater, 2011

The Movement Is Moving

Reaching For Change ~ Photo: Karina Louise

Moving The Movement:  One People Flashmob at Occupy SF & Oakland

“You can’t evict an idea whose time has come.”

The Occupy movement is far more than a series of police clashes with tent cities.  It is a movement for justice – economically ,socially and environmentally.  It is a cry for meaning, dignity and shared power.  It is a vibrant critique of a broken system and a calling for true participation in transparent democracy.  It’s not going away any time soon.  As police resort to violence, the movement is moving.

You can’t evict an idea that has been embodied.

On Saturday November 19, over 100 people danced at both Occupy San Francisco and Occupy Oakland in the One People Flashmob, produced by Magalie Bonneau-Marcil, founder of DancingWithoutBorders.org and choreographed by members of Destiny Arts and DancingFreedom.com Founder, Samantha Sweetwater.  Movers from 8-80, of all races and socio-economic backgrounds, converged from around the Bay Area to dance a high-energy message of connection, resilience, reconciliation, solidarity and creative response.

In San Francisco, a huge crowd gathered to witness the action, staged in the space between the Occupy SF encampment and the bustling Saturday Farmer’s Market at the Ferry Building.  In Oakland, the dance kicked off a march to reinstate the Occupation that was raided on November 14^th, moving it from Frank Ogawa Plaza to 19^th and Telegraph.

Enough! ~ Photo: Karina Louise

The dance illustrated a cry of pain against oppression, control and degradation, and invoked a powerful bridge of reconciliation between the 1% and the 99% – a bridge that can only span the chasm of class divide through the recognition of shared humanity.  The dance began with a freeze, drawing the attention of passersby and showing how stuck and hopeless people have been feeling.  It culminated in a dramatic moment where two actors, representing the 99% and the 1%, shake hands, reluctantly then heart-fully hug, then rejoin the circle of dancers.  In Oakland, the whole crowd got involved in the action, yelling, “take his hand”, and “DO IT.”  As the two actors came together, many people, both dancers and onlookers, had tears in their eyes.

 

Why a flashmob?

On the surface, dancing in the streets might appear as a frivolous, impractical, simplistic and childish.  What is the practical value of using our time, energy and attention in this way?

It’s more than it might seem.  As Einstein said, “No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it.”  Dance deconstructs limiting social and mental norms and gives participants and spectators alike a fresh way to see and experience the world.  It brings people together in a non-verbal, celebratory and universal way. It helps people to discover round solutions to square problems that cannot be solved with square thinking.  We’ve got a lot of square problems, and we need some new approaches – now.

Laid Waste ~ Photo: Karina Louise

The One People Flashmob made activists out of dancers, some of whom might not otherwise be involved in the Occupy movement.  Others, long-time activists, gratefully stepped into the concerted action with a sense of renewed purpose and focus.  The dancers brought unified action, hip music and a flair for celebration to the streets, illustrating how our human dignity needs beauty in order to be felt and that meaningful participation can only be sustainable if supported through person-to-person connection, creativity and levity.

Expanding Activism

Flashmob producer, Bonneau-Marcil reached out to her allies at CODEPINK Women for Peace (www.codepink.org) and the National Organization for Women’s San Francisco Chapter for support.  For her it was important to have women-led organizations cosponsor, to show the principle of the feminine energy which is largely absent from corporate and political discourse, and even within the Occupy Movement.  The flashmob was in alignment with CODEPINK’s core mission to use creative tactics to illustrate the much-needed shift from corporate greed and war profiteering to sufficient funding for education, healthcare, green jobs, renewable energy and other life-affirming resources.

The 1% ~ Photo: Karina Louise

Bonneau-Marcil and Sweetwater intend to continue producing dance pieces to contribute to the Occupy Movement and have already received requests to do One People in other cities on future dates.  This flashmob falls into the context of Occupy, in which activists have been using creative new tactics that bridge social media and flashy street action to create the perfect synergy for engaging the next generation in social change.

Occupy Dance Principles

We danced to reveal the beauty, power, wisdom and unity of this movement, to lighten the energy, and to bridge connections.  Our dance is a mentorship, a medicine, empowering the deep, indefatiguable human capacity for creative response.  Our dancing is not THE answer, but it is a key strategy to reveal, maintain and amplify the vitality, dignity and resiliency of this global movement.  You can’t evict an idea that has been embodied.

 

The movement is moving.

• We occupy a deeply felt sense of meaning in our actions
• We occupy for creative solutions
• We occupy for whole systems transition
• We occupy for human dignity
• We occupy to remember joy
• We occupy to bring connection
• We occupy to experience our sufficiency
• We occupy to build new CULTURE
• We occupy CREATIVITE RESPONSE
• WE occupy unity & diversity
• We occupy our bodies, relationships & communities as the locus of power

~ S.S. 11/22/11

Embodied Bridges ~ Photo: Karina Louise

 

•  Special thank you to Rae Abileah, national organizer for CODEPINK, for significant editorial contribution to this article.  Thank you’s to Magalie Bonnea-Marcil, Dancing Without Borders, Destiny Arts, N.O.W., Mass Transit, Ecstatic Dance, Ben Flanigan & Film Crew, Conscious Dancer , Karina Louise and Richard Power!

Let The Circle Lead

“You have noticed that everything an Indian does is in a circle, and that is because the Power of the World always works in circles, and everything tries to be round.” ~ Black Elk

A circle has no leader.  It shows us what we must follow.

Listening to the Center ~ Photo: Darren Miller

A circle is a primal wholeness.  The social and spiritual architecture of the circle is simple, non-hierarchical and natural.  It replicates an eternity that flows through the arc of time, and the web of connections that hold all of life.  A circle is a fractal of the totality of life expressing all of the directions, and all the phases and faces of existence: birthing, growth, maturation and death.  To pray and listen in a circle repeatedly, regularly over the arc of time is to recognize the eternal and transpersonal aspects of every person’s struggles, joys, growth, and desires.  It is to come to know and feel the mirror that each person’s experience offers for my own, and to receive these sacred mirrors as a continuous invitation to more coherent participation in the life of my tribe.  It is to feel myself in others and others in me and so to move with greater empathy, respect and compassion.  The circle is life speaking with life – a feedback loop for living harmony.

When I sit in circle, I am a member, a listener, a co-equal part of the Collective prayer.   When I sit in circle, before the altar of All of My Relations, I am witnessed by my community, my elders and by spirit.  I am seen, and I see.  If I am falling apart, I am held.  If I am strong, I am part of the collective strength.  If I have courage, it is because I am reflected by my tribe as one who is willing to show up, both in pleasure and in pain, in struggle and in grace.  If I soften and open, it is because I am reminded that the heart is home, and that the path of embrace is the one that leads us all to greatest grace.  My life is elevated because I experience it through the mirror of the whole.  My life makes sense, not because I am “special”, but because the particular ways in which I feel, give, grieve, create, and gather serves to the One Great Life.

The Perfect Logic of Life

About two years ago, I started going to a Chanupa (Pipe) and Wachuma (Sacred Andean Plant Medicine) Ceremonies with George Grey Eagle Bertelstien, an elder living in Berkeley, CA who has held pipe ceremonies and medicine ceremonies for over 25 years.  George is the steward and space holder for our circle, he does not lead in the way we commonly think of leadership in the West.  He would not call himself “a leader.”  Rather, he is a dedicated follower of the ways of ceremony, a listener to the medicine who has given everything in the calling and the vision to steward life in this way.  He is a servant.  As one who has given everything, we trust him.  We take his lead.  We follow.  And, we, too, show up to serve the circle.  As elder, he defines the space, sets the boundaries, shares the teachings, opens the heart.  His stewardship is clear, unwavering, intensely loving and immensely disciplined, yet it arises though a deeply feminine surrender to his own prayer.  He is in dialogue with all of life as the medicine.  His eldership is the closest model I have to the way I now choose to live and lead in the world.  I am choosing to lead through a deepening listening to life, to my creator and to the circle, the sacred hoop of all of my relations.

In the circle, I pray to my creator – not the impersonal god of books and institutions, but my personal creator who I can talk to, who listens, and who “speaks” with me through everything – through my body, my emotions, my friends, my family, my community, the water, the buffalo skull, the eagle feather, the song of the rising sun – everything.  With the sacrament of tobacco and the power of my voice, I pray.  Through the prayer, I meet the unknown, I open my heart, and I set a clear trajectory of intent for my life.  Through the prayer, I gain clarity beyond words that I carry daily into work and relationships.  In this way, the prayer continues to unfold as my life, and again, I meet my life and continue the prayer.  It is a circle.

Dynamic Equilibrium

In Pipe Ceremony, we pray in this way:  we give gratitude; we ask for what we most want; we ask for help.  Then we get quiet and listen.  Our listening to each other makes us transparent as it amplifies and harmonizes the prayer.  Then we smoke the prayer, passing the sacred pipe from heart to heart, surrendering outcomes to the divine intelligence that governs All.

Praying in this way has shown me that we human beings all want the same things, all feel the same pains, all struggle in the same ways.  We all suffer pain and loss, we all revel in victory, abundance and success, we all want a good life for our selves and the people we love, we all crave intimacy, connection, direction and meaning.  We are all deepening our capacity to be with the unknown and the difficult, and to soften and open to life, even as we get clearer and stronger in creating our deepest heart desires.  We all fall down, and are ever growing in courage, strength, surrender and discernment.  Sitting in circle teaches all of this.  It invites immense compassion and empathy.  And, it supports participation because everyone has a unique place and everyone is the same.  We see again and again the mirror that no one is perfect, yet our commitment and right effort bring great gifts into our own lives and to the world.  We say, “Bless your life.”  These words elevate both the sacred and the profane – the “life-y-ness” of our lives.

The Sacred Altar ~ Thank You George Grey Eagle Bertelstien & Barrett Eagle Bear!

The circle has taught me to get humble.  “Getting humble” means setting down indignance, entitlement, judgment, importance and smallness.  It means surrendering ego defenses, taking ideas, opinions and preferences less personally, and literally becoming more naked to what Spirit asks.  “Getting humble” means to cease the endless human vanity of thinking that I have all the answers.  It means setting down rage or frustration at life or at God and instead practicing trusting, asking and allowing.  “Getting humble” means to take the corrections that life offers, in the form of suffering or disharmony, and to find a new prayer for greater grace.  “Getting humble” means not rejecting what is.  The prayer is always to embrace what is and to thank it.  This gratitude is the gateway to transformation.  It is through this authentic “thank you” that I am empowered to stand in the blessing, the bigness and the beauty of my life.

Getting to humility is not always easy.  In August, I was hosting the VISION Soul Quest Ceremony I do in Mount Shasta every summer.  For the first time, George and many of my medicine family had come to support the ceremony.   I felt intensely honored and humbled by their presence, willingness and collective wisdom.  But, I was a mess – completely stressed out, feeling terrified of doing the wrong thing, of mis-stepping, or of in any way dishonoring or upsetting my medicine family or any of the participants in the quest itself.  I felt like I was going to do “it” wrong – meaning everything and anything.  My inner perfectionist was literally wreaking havoc on my inner compass.  The whole situation was a perfect storm of triggers for my deepest control patterns and ego defenses.  The people I most love and respect had showed up to support me and to learn from me, and I could not bring myself to surrender to the circle of our co-creation.  George, of course, noticed this, and jokingly said to me, “honey, you just try to make a bad prayer.”  My inner spin continued.

Once the questers were on the mountain, those of us holding space entered into a second cycle of medicine ceremony.  When my turn came to pray, I said to George, “I don’t know what to pray for. It’s not that I need to be right, I just want to stop making myself wrong.”  He chuckled and said, “Oh, that’s a good prayer.  That’s the prayer to not be an ass-hole.”  What he meant was that, the more you try to do it right, the more you generally do it wrong.  There is no “right,” there is just the profound and total act of showing up.  When we show up to create big ceremony, a big prayer, part of us is convinced that it is “us” leading the ceremony.  This part competes with the part that is actually surrendered to the ceremony, so we make ourselves and others crazy.  “Not being an ass-hole” means letting go of thinking we are (or need to be) in charge.

Then he said, “Let me show you a trick.  Get down on your knees.”  He had me kneel on the ground and place my hands behind my head.  Then he put a cup of medicine in my hands and told me to carry it over my head without spilling a drop – a simple, total gesture.  “The only way you can do that is to be a human being.  Breathe.  Be a human being.” I followed, crying, breathing, praying with every aspect of my being to release, to let go of the tyrant of my own perfectionist.  I prayed to surrender my striving to be enough or to “get it right.”  I asked for the simple poise and trust to relax and be a human being.  Then I drank the medicine, letting it fill me, letting all of my emotions release, and trusting the prayer.

It worked.  Something huge and subtle shifted in me that day.  When the questers returned, I was able to receive them with an open heart and a quite mind.  I was able to carry out the rest of the ceremony as listener, a leader yet an equal member.  I was more able to simply be a human doing her part for the life of the tribe.

And, if any of us wanted or needed any kind of affirmation that we had genuinely given our prayer in service to the one great life, we received it from the spirits of the land in the form of an extraordinary omen.  At the completion of the ceremony, an Eagle and a Condor soared together, magically, over our heads.  It felt as though they were showing us, doubtlessly, that we had married our hearts, bodies and minds through our prayers, that our prayer were heard, and that we had genuinely surrendered ourselves to spirit.

The Fire of Life

The shifts continue to deepen.  I am now more able notice the part of me that generates answers (so that I can feel safe) and to restrain that part so that I can listen more fully to how to serve the situation at hand.  I have learned to pause and ask for help with every situation in my life: big, little and in between.  In doing this, I have discovered a well of connection, surrender and of faith where I can flow with the changes and also rest.  Rather than immediately seeking an answer or solution in any situation, I tend to exhale into trust first, then ask what is in highest good.

I am experiencing renewed collaboration and passionate co-creation in my work.  I have initiated a community-wide conversation with all 60 Dancing Freedom Facilitators about how we can collectively create our brand to reflect each person’s unique leadership contribution, thus shaping a unified circle of embodied change-agents all serving the same purpose of embodied awakening within an immense diversity of communities.  We are literally creating Dancing Freedom as a reflection of the whole circle of teachers.  It is an experiment where leadership is emergent through the shared heart, mind and practice of my community, not through me as the founder of the school.  This fluidity is being supported by an increasing coherence in the way I hold the role of founder (elder) with lightness and clear authority.  It is trustworthy because I trust myself.  I hold the anchor, and I welcome true participation from everyone.   This is the wisdom of the circle in action in my life.

George’s guidance and these traditional ceremonies and ways of prayer have changed everything.  I live in the circle of life.  I have learned how to be in a daily conversation with My Creator and with all things – animals, elements, directions… everything – as animate, power-filled Relations that I am here to serve. I have learned to engage every aspect of my life as prayer.  And, I am beginning to see the world with medicine eyes, hear the world with a medicine heart and act in the world as “a medicine person” – one who lives transparently and who navigates from a constant dialogue with spirit and with the life principle itself.  These ceremonies are teaching me how to lead through listening, to be authentic and simple in all of my relationships, and to love and serve with a humble and grateful heart.  They reveal to me again and again that the Power of the World flows in a circle, and that the best I can do to “lead” is to shape myself as a servant to that Power.

Do You Have Old Wounding About Community?

I have a big dream for community.  Don’t you??

Almost everyone I know has this dream – a BIG DREAM of living on land, in community with people you love and a huge garden – living in harmony with the earth, with people, with a new kind of human tribe and family.  It’s a new paradigm vision and an ancient calling back to more tribal, interconnected and earth-centered ways of living.

It’s the new “white picket fence” – a calling to some sense of order, home and rightness in the world.

And, very few of us are living it.

Why?

We have a lot of old, mostly sub-conscious, wounding in community and family relationships and few containers for addressing and healing those wounds.

What interests me is – what will it take to actually live it, sustain it and grow the dream we hold?

A lot.  Aside from the obvious architectural, financial, organizational and legal challenges embedded in community models, if we can’t heal the wounding that happens in community dynamics, we simply can’t build or sustain the dream.
I recently recognized (and not for the first time) is that the greatest obstacle to my creating and staying in community is the pain I harbor about past experiences and relationships.  All the unresolved feelings I have about betrayal, abandonment, misinterpretation, my own and other people’s stubbornness and strong opinions, the boredom of meetings, the subtle undercurrents of sexual tensions and jealousy… these are all in in the way of me showing up with presence, curiosity, non-judgement, passion and willingness.  These are all in the way of me feeling safe.  And, because I don’t feel safe, I don’t behave in a safe way.  I subtly control who I connect with and why, how much I’m willing to give, how much I’m willing to listen, who I’m open to connection with.

When these feelings and behaviors are consciously or unconsciously running the show, I don’t, at a core level, come from an empowered place in myself or from a fully integrated capacity to empower others. Ultimately, it comes down to TRUST.

• Am I willing to trust myself and others enough to fully show up?
• Am I willing to trust that there is space within the community to heal things that are unresolved?
• Am I willing to see others as myself and myself in others so that I can sit in relationship with presence and compassion?
• Am I willing to explore my charge and to discharge, disclose and clear that charge within the context of community?
• Am I willing to risk – again?

What if we explore trust and intimacy as THE central issues of the sustainability equation?  Intimacy implies transparent, authentic connection that genuinely allows for an exchange of heart and mind.  It implies being open to being changed by the other.  It means you might get hurt.  It means you might have to stretch.  It means that all your family stuff might come up.  And yet, it’s a risk worth taking.  It’s the currency that makes things work – or creates road blocks, drama, dissolution and stagnancy.

This is all super timely… it’s the eve of 2012…. no time not to work together.

A suggestion for practice:

Take 5-10 minutes today to contemplate where you are carrying old wounds in regards to community.

• How do these wounds sit in your body?
• How do they they play out as attraction or aversion to people around you?
• How they play out in internal self-talk that takes the form of comparison, judgement, or putting people on pedestals. 
• How do you shape your energy and attention to attract what feels safe and avoid what feels challenging, confronting or dangerous?

See what comes up.  Embrace it.  Listen to it.  Just presencing WHAT IS will help you to make new choices about how you hold yourself and show up in community.

… in my next blog, I’ll share two practices that can help you (and your community!) to deepen, sustain and create lasting spaces for long-term continuity and joyful healing in your relationships.

Love,

Samantha

 

One Earth Temples ~ The Cultural and Spiritual Backbone of an Emergent Human Civilization

Vision: 

ONE EARTH TEMPLES

• Living, useable spaces – embodied oneness temples – form the spiritual and cultural backbone of a new civilization.
• Each temple is between 2 and 3,000sf
• Each temple is a vibrant, unique hub for community ceremony, celebration, counsel and education.
• Each temple anchors the divine union of body, soul, spirit and service.
• They are built with exquisite care and devotion in accord with the Golden Mean and regenerative design standards in both urban and rural communities around the planet.
• ONE EARTH Temples are built by those reclaiming the path of sacred service to land, community and family.
• They are stewarded by men, women, children and elders who dedicate their souls to embodied oneness and the harmony of all of life.

AHO!

ARE YOU A BUILDER, A FUNDER, A LAND-OWNER, A PRIEST, PRIESTESS OR COMMUNITY MEMBER OF ONE OF THESE SPACES?  Let’s create this together.

How to gain leverage in your personal universe

Say YES to the beauty around you. Seek beauty to heal your soul.

Life is THE miracle.

Once upon a time consciousness birthed itself into form… Over time, the miriad, ever-learning form shaped itself into a very specific happening called your life…

Right now, you are having the opportunity to live as a moving, breathing, perceiving, feeling, thinking bundle of LIFE, of consciousness having an experience of itself – an experience called YOU.

This is just about the greatest, most mind-blowing miracle EVER.

So, are you ready to choose your life?

This is the way the mystic, the shaman and the practical visionary – an every day person just like you – can gain real leverage in your personal universe.  It’s an ancient truth, and a powerfully present opportunity.

So.

Again, today – not yesterday – but today – expand to meet the actual conditions of your life as an opportunity to learn, to love, to connect, to give, to receive and to co-create with the evolving beauty-web of the universe.

Just for today – notice if you expand to meet the challenges and gifts each moment, or if you are in a biology and narrative of contraction. (You are a binary system. You can not do both at the same time.) Notice how you shape your awareness in each moment – on the phone, in the car, as you make dinner, when you talk to your partner or your co-workers.

Notice and choose.

Exhale and expand.

Just for today – move, dance, return to your body, taste the sweetness of your breath and return to your center. HERE is the creative moment. NOW is evolution’s favorite location. Choose the only life you have – the one you have right here and right now.

Life is ALWAYS available for you to CHOOSE IT. This is the essence of resiliency, creativity, and that mysterious quality of total immersion called FLOW.

And… what’s even cooler, is that life (the universe, god, goddess, whatever you call it) WILL respond to your YES! So, shift YOUR pattern – it’s so simple – it’s a choice.

I’ll meet you there.

Love,

Samantha

“Thank you for my life!” ~ Easter Sunday Post

The Fire Of the SOUL Never Dies or Dims. We simply forget to trust, listen and act from the deep knowing within.

“Thank You For My Life!”

Arriving home on this blessed Day of Resurrection – this day when Christ returned through the miracle of death, this day when all of us have the the opportunity to be reborn as our true selves and to choose our path of life FULLY through the miracle that is death – I had a realization.

I realized that when I say THANK YOU FOR MY LIFE, I am not just saying thank you for the living of my life – the way I live it – all that I get to experience in it, all that I have, all that I get to do, the people in my life, the beauty, the tears – or even just the simple miracle of being a living thing called a human being in a real life body having the experience of MY life.

YES.  I am saying a HUGE THANK YOU TO ALL OF THIS, But I am also doing something much more essential, more holy.  More real.

When I say “thank you for this life,” am I saying thank you for the simply, undeniable and absolutely unique FACT of ME.  I am saying yes to the manifested blueprint of my own particular soul – the way the universe experiences and expresses itself as the actual, unfolding event called “Samantha Sweetwater,” the way it is for me alone to be the essence of this, and for no one else.

I am saying THANK YOU for the fact that GOD HAS CHOSEN TO MANIFEST AS ME.

He… She… It has chosen to manifest as the small, immense, perfect, fallible, magical, single life that I personally am living RIGHT NOW.

I am saying thank you for the WHO and WHAT I am as a person who is by my very nature an emanation of the divine mind and heart.

THIS is the core of my THANK YOU.  And, this is the wellspring of my true worth in this world – not anything I do, anything I achieve, anything I create or anything I own, but all the particular qualities of creation that exist in the world because I exist.

I AM ENOUGH – not because of anything I do or prove to myself – BUT BECAUSE I AM INNATELY DESIGNED THAT WAY – BECAUSE CREATOR CREATED ME TO BE JUST ME AND ONLY ME AND EXACTLY ME, JUST THE WAY I AM.  PERIOD.  Creator created me to DO LIFE in the particular way I do.  And that’s how simple – THAT’S HOW BIG – my enoughness is.  That’s the size of my sufficiency.

It’s up to ME to align my mind with this truth, and to say an ever bigger yes to the WAY GOD IS AS THE PARTICULAR LIFE THAT I AM HERE TO BE.  To say an even bigger yes to the unique experience spirit is having through my body, my heart, my mind and my choices.   To say an even bigger yes to the way the universe sees itself through my eyes, the way it feels itself through my feelings, the way it lives as my body, the way it speaks through my words.

So, I am saying THANK YOU for the miracle that god is created as me – just like you, just like your dearest friend, just like your greatest enemy – as god’s perfect representative to be exactly what and who and how I BE – exactly THIS LIFE THAT I AM LIVING RIGHT NOW.

THANK YOU FOR THIS LIFE!  THANK YOU FOR THIS GLORIOUS LIFE!

Aho! Mitakuye Oyasin.

A note:

If this speaks to you deeply, I invite you to re-read this again and place yourself in the driver’s seat of the words.  Like this:

Read these words as if they are your own words.  Relax your mind and open your body, your heart, and your whole self to BE this gratitude for yourself as a perfect expression of the One Great Life.

Love,

~Samanatha

Naked

How many coverings will God accept before saying no to more coverings? Before saying yes to the pure brilliance of the one who covers? Before full embrace of the I AM that is god, that is me, choosing?

All intelligence is perfect intelligence.

When, in nakedness, will I accept this truth and fully forgive myself all of my experiences? When will I accept this truth to learn the perfect lessons of all that I am – in pain, pleasure and in pure emotion?

I am naked, yet still there is resistance to the grace that I am. Let me choose. Let me choose love. Let me choose embrace. Let me choose the full, raucous spectrum of my own creation and expression. Let me choose to learn what I have called forth to learn and to LIVE in this life, and step now completely into the light.

And so it is.

What is Partner?

Endlessly, I am called into this sweet addiction to experience…
Teasing out the strands of marriage and usury –
true engagement untangled from insecure attachment.

I have exchanged with you the most sacred of contracts.
Our mirrors are well met.
Holograms harmonizing and expanding through the sweet friction of difference.

You are me.
I am you.
And not.

What is our now alignment?
What is the form that can match our souls’ gifts for each other and for the world?

If I stop pretending that I have answers,
A great window opens,
A great river finds itself flowing through us and me and we
A gentle symphony begins its first notes.

(I think of the first time I tasted Rhapsody in Blue played by Benny Goodman…
Like that.
Like god on a good good day in the sun.)

There is no linearity to this poem.
Because, there is no where to go.
No WHERE to get to.
Only more here, more essence, more love, once more.

All the pains we have caused are forgiven
Our contacts are a sea of choice.

I choose this one.
This place.
This heart.
This body as the chariot for
A vast and uncontainable loving.

And you?
Shall we dance together?

~s.s.

October 2, 2010

Courage – Reposted to Honor My Tokyo Community!

Courage

Mid-August.  It is Monday night in Tokyo: hot, sultry weather and a room full of bodies in full motion.  Thirty dancers reveal the soul dancing as I “hold space” – just being fully myself and weaving light in the room.  The whole place vibrates, and I feel the earth sending waves of gratitude to us through the floor.

It is a remarkable and brave thing to dance your soul.  Naked, vulnerable and free, I see dancers opening body, heart and spirit in the motion.  Sweaty and blissful, I see people in divine radiance.  I see courage.  I see the whole person.  I see the dance of life, death and birth.  I see timelessness.  It’s exquisite!

As I witness, I begin to contemplate this remarkable courage, expression and beauty.  I think about who these dancers are as people, as spirits, as wisdom keepers.  I shiver.

What is a person? A person is a collection of perceptions, feelings and actions.  A person is a skin bag full of bones, blood and heart.  A person is a miracle – with arms, legs, spine and a mouth to speak.  A person is a spiritual event happening one moment at a time.   A person is a body that includes the physical, emotional, mental, higher self, soul and spirit, all weaving together in one unfolding conversation of Self.    A person is a dance.

What is courage? Courage is what I witness every day when these remarkable beings called humans come to do this incredible action called dancing.

Courage is naked self. It requires a willingness to perceive, feel and act.  It requires presence.  It takes guts.

When I see people connecting deeply to what their senses perceive, their bodies and emotions feel, and their dances express, I see raw humanity.  I see incredible, wild, truth.  I see diversity, and I see unity. I see divinity.  Courage is what I see when a person deeply perceives him or herself in the movement, allows that perception to be totally felt, and finds the willingness to express that into the dance.  It is risky.  There are no guarantees.  The gamble is our own freedom.

Courage means being your self totally, without apology, shame or doubt.  It means being vulnerable.  It is a tool for being wide awake – totally alive and free.  Without the courage to be vulnerable, we can never know true power.  True power comes from embrace of life, not control over it.  The dance asks us to loose control and thus experience being – totally.  It asks us for real embrace.  You can’t dance if you are busy editing your own feelings and actions.  You have to be unconditional.  This is how we learn self-love.

Here in Tokyo, we are dancing.  People are coming together – body and soul – to Dance Freedom and sweat prayers.   Everything is breaking open: hearts wide open, pores wide open, voices wide open, expression wide open!  I am in AWE of what I see.  Awe.  There is no other word for it.  It get kundalini waves just thinking about it.

The freedom to experience and express the self is such a radical thing here in Japan.  Just the concepts of self-awareness and self-leadership are radical.  There is no word for sovereignty in the Japanese Language.  In this culture, there has been so little space to feel, so little room for individuation. Space is tight.  You get by.  You do what you are told.  You fit in and work hard and live in responsibility to your family and ancestors.  You live in the context of a larger culture, an older order and continuity over which you have no control.  Yet, there is an incredible momentum towards self development and a growing drive towards sovereignty.  There is also a call to release the old pictures of cultural identity to enter new possibilities of beauty.  People are claiming their power and recognizing that they are creators.  There is a spark of passion – soul fire! – coming alive everywhere, like the day glow colors on the billboards of this endless city.  These people are so courageous!

This new Soul Fire is idiosyncratic, self-affirming and radiantly alive.  It arrives as a wordless drive, or a will to know, and it opens the gates of the heart.   People are shedding the skins of culture and asking WHO AM I?  WHAT DO I WANT?  WHAT AM I HERE TO CREATE?  HOW CAN I LOVE – MORE?  HOW CAN I BE FREE?  WHAT IS MY PURPOSE?   HOW CAN I LET GO OF EGO?  Each place I go, I meet people struggling with the Great Questions.  It is time to dance.  In the dance we arrive at sensation, feeling and action: the simplest building blocks of our humanity.  We remember that the answers are not external, like new clothes or new jobs, but are held in the heart and in the ways in which we experience our lives. We find the courage to be ourselves, and THIS is the only real answer.  Let life be an endless question.  It is much more interesting that way.  This is where the Dance of Freedom begins.

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world all at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach. One of the most calming and powerful actions you can do to intervene in a stormy world is to stand up and show your soul. Soul on deck shines like gold in dark times. The light of the soul throws sparks, can send up flares, builds signal fires.”
– Clarissa Pinkola Estes