I recently facilitated a workshop which I enjoyed tremendously. I was blessed by the presence of five fabulous belly dancers. They inspired me. They took every bit of straw I gave them and wove it into gold. Some of the things I saw make splendid examples of the spirit of the Alexander Work.
One of the things that has come up lately in discussions with two of my most important friends in the Work is what one might call the aesthetics of presence. This has been an interest of mine ever since I noticed that people sometimes looked poignantly beautiful after getting good Work. This phenomenon suggests quite clearly that we interfere with our natural beauty. A reactive, habitual, doing way of being is just not as radiant as a responsive, awakened, non-doing way of being. At one point I began working with a husband and wife, and we regularly took note that each one looked his or her best after getting good Work.
One of the women who works with me has been giving me rather regular reports on her “afterglow” experiences. Here are two of them:
After our session, I was beaming out some sort of something [because] people kept staring at me in [the grocery store] . . .
______________
So . . . the remnants of today's lesson made this man, who works at [the grocery store], feed me grapes. And then a slice of mango. Right in the middle of the produce section. Then, I kid you not, he asked if I was Argentine. . . . And then, to top it all off . . . asked me out.
I should point out that this person doesn't look even vaguely Latina. Being asked if she is Argentine surprised her not only because of that fact, but also because we do Tango-infused Alexander Work, which the man in the produce section could not possibly have known. This is either a synchronicity or a particularly strange coincidence.
The other person who has discussed the aesthetics of presence with me recently pointed out something very significant: this glow goes both ways. When you receive good Work, you are more open to seeing the natural beauty of others. You find them more interesting. You feel positive regard, you feel Peace and Love. This too is significant for belly dancers. A dancer offers her presence as an act of Love. She has to like the audience enough, have enough Love and Compassion for them, to want to suffer the burden of being on fire for them. One of the belly dancers confessed that when she really feels her presence filling the room, she sometimes has feelings of guilt for it, and this in turn contracts her presence. Others nodded in recognition of this phenomenon. A woman may feel unsure whether it’s “okay” for her to tap into such power. In the case of a belly dancer, this energy can be very sensual, which only adds another layer of difficulty. Yet this is her JOB. She is to reveal the awesome mystery of feminine power. She in fact can determine its sensual content by the simple choice of how much raw power to let through. When she truly fills the space, the result can be more sublime than sexy. As Joyce would put it, the viewer is held in a state of aesthetic arrest in which he or she is united with “the secret cause.” This may seem somewhat paradoxical when there is an obvious sensual content, but only because we are habituated to experience fear and desire, not arrest, not the still point. But there the dance is, and not just belly dance.
It was remarkable to witness the aesthetics of presence at work. I noticed it in all five of the dancers. With two, I was unfortunately standing behind them and was actively working with them. I still noticed a difference, but it is harder to describe. With the other three, there was a strong physical experience of the presence, and with the third in particular there was a strong visual experience. These are loose distinctions. One SAW something in all five, and one FELT something in all five. I’ll take two examples then.
Everyone started out more or less the same. The environment challenged them, so different was it from the circumstances of performance to which they are accustomed. We were six people in a small studio in the middle of the day, not a large, dimly lit performance space filled with people. The music was also not their own. This tended to provoke their doings. And it gave a consistent result: presence retracted, the fires dimmed, the movements (even when they looked technically lovely) seemed just a bit lackluster. Forgive me ladies if you’re reading this. I say it plainly because, especially now, we all know what you’re CAPABLE of doing. And let's understand: Alexander "teachers" are SUPPOSED to provoke. We can't blame the results on the context. My job is to help people see the doing way of being that is functioning ALL THE TIME, in dancing and in everyday life. In a dancer, it is usually CONTROLLED. The beauty of the dance emerges in spite of it. However, if we can begin to shift from doing to being, then the dance becomes more expressive, more powerful, more beautiful, more profound.
Fortunately, I did very little. Which means a lot got done. Through my non-doing, the dancers began to activate the four skills: Awareness, Acceptance, Connection, and Non-doing. Calling them “skills” is misleading. We just ARE these things. What we are certainly transcends these concepts, but we use them as skillful means, as a way to begin to access what we are.
Helping these women access their power had an astonishing impact. One woman actually GLOWED. I know: it sounds crazy. You don’t have to dive into metaphysical waters to accept this. If you’ve seen a pregnant woman, or seen a woman in love, then you’ve seen something like what I saw. And I was not the only one. Everyone else saw it too. It was stunning. Moreover, we also saw it vanish. I wanted to check on this, so I didn’t say anything about the glow. After recovering my wits, I simply asked her what she thought. She said that after I worked with her a little the dancing felt much better than on her first attempt. She said she tried to just “go with it.” “Okay,” I said, “but at some point did the neurosis creep back in?” She admitted that it had. I told her we all had seen it. This is not easy to bear when you’re first learning to let yourself shine. It can add pressure to know the audience can sense every flicker of neurosis. It’s almost like we’d rather not be seen. But we are. Always. Even if that which perceives us is more-than-human.
Another woman spoke of feeling self-conscious. Of course, this is common for many performers. What I find so fascinating is that what we feel in these cases is just energy, and the slightest shift of the glance transforms that energy in a radiant way. As the glance of the performer goes from within to without, she goes from self-conscious to simply CONSCIOUS. That’s something the audience doesn’t always get to see: a conscious, powerful woman revealing the mystery of the divine feminine through dance. In their daily lives, they don’t see many conscious people at all. So this is an act of profound significance. Here again the Belly Dancer is willing to burn for the audience. She is willing to suffer her self-consciousness and be brave enough to fully accept it so she can make that necessary shift in her gaze. And when she does, the experience can be overwhelming for some. Have you ever had a conscious Dancer LOOK at you during a performance? It’s not easy to bear if she really lets that divine feminine energy manifest. When she truly lets the mystery of Life come through her, and if we are brave enough to genuinely LOOK, how can we call this anything else but darshan? I won't say that we got this particular dancer to go quite that far, but the results were again powerful and palpable for everyone watching. The aesthetics of presence works by degrees. More presence means more aesthetic impact. But look at what we're really saying here: the dancer becomes more and more aesthetically significant as she becomes more and more metaphysically signficant.
If you think reference to darshan and metaphysical significance marks an entrance into questionable territory, you can perhaps still understand and accept the psychodynamic importance of what’s going on here. Because of the condition of aesthetic arrest, the viewer, and let’s focus on the male viewer for a moment, has a chance to allow his anima to mature. If you immediately leap out of the vessel, no alchemical transformation will occur. Because of the aesthetic arrest, you can begin to transform. Even if your experience has a sensual or erotic content, the dancer who can make that energy beautiful and sublime still creates a condition of aesthetic arrest, so desire ceases to function. You aren’t desiring, you are beholding, connecting. The grasping ego vanishes in the face of something too big to grasp. At this moment the belly dancer is helping the viewer, all viewers, to reconcile the problem of opposites.
I’m not sure how many belly dancers understand the importance of what they do, for themselves and for the viewer. Belly dance can be a big part of spiritual and psychological development. The context of the dance can be a vessel for both dancer and viewer. If the viewer remains still within this vessel, his or her lead can begin to turn to gold. The same holds for the dancers. Dance is a profound art, and attaining its highest potentials requires profound Work. It takes a lot of discipline and dedication. Dancers who are willing to surrender to it bestow heavenly gifts on us all. I encourage every lover of dance to seek out belly dancers and receive their gifts with deep gratitude, and I encourage all dancers to keep pushing themselves, compassionately yet with vigor.
I just want to say one last thing: psychodynamics, metaphysics, and all other "ics" aside, the phenomena described here are concrete and practical. All of us can cultivate more presence, which means we can bring a little more Beauty and Love into the world. When you are present, people see it and sense it without any need to refer to "ics." It WORKS on them, and it works on the more-than-human world. This is because you become more connected to the world and all the beings in it. Your awareness opens, and you enter a state of non-doing in which more of what actually needs to get done finds itself getting done. Every single person has access to this. It just IS you. All you have to do is begin to allow it to enter your life.
Scientists have provided the first clear evidence that memories can survive metamorphosis in Lepidopterans. Lepidoptera is the order that includes moths and butterflies, and in this particular study, the researches used moths, but “butterfly buddha” alliterates nicely, and besides, they’re family. Given that moths are active mainly at night, while butterflies are active mainly during the day, we might call moths the butterflies of the unconscious. Now we can listen for Jungian undertones as we consider the straight science.
The study involved teaching caterpillars to avoid a certain odor they wouldn’t normally avoid. Researchers then checked to see if they would avoid the smell after metamorphosing into moths. As long as the training occurred after the caterpillars reached a certain age, the memories persisted into their reincarnation as moths.
This study inspires me to take a few moments for some butterfly reverence. Butterflies might be a barometer for human impact on the environment. There seem to be fewer and fewer butterflies thanks to widespread pesticide use and irresponsible land development. Because they have a complex life pattern, they reveal the interconnectedness of things, and they warn us about how delicately some of Gaia’s great tapestries are woven.
The subtlety and sophistication of Gaia’s hand shows itself everywhere you look, but casting a glance at the relationship between butterflies and the rest of the world can make your jaw drop. For instance, the rare Bathurst Copper butterfly lives out its caterpillar days fully supported by ants. During the day, the caterpillars sleep in the ant colony. At night they are escorted by the ants––yes, escorted––to feed on Blackthorn plants. The ants watch over the caterpillar with such dedication that if something shakes the plant, the ants go right into action, with some of them escorting the caterpillar to safety while others go to attack whatever is shaking the plant! You can read more about this relationship if you like.
Butterflies exemplify Kantian aesthetics. When we say they are beautiful, we don’t mean “to me anyway.” We mean they just ARE. When we marvel at them, we don’t mean, “well, I think they’re fascinating.” We mean they just ARE. Perhaps if we keep our love of them alive, and encourage every man, woman, and child to let that beauty and mystery WORK on us as a species, maybe butterflies will help us become sustainable in our way of being. Here are a few butterfly tidbits. Please share some of your favorites as well!
________________________________
Wake up! wake up!
be my friend
sleeping butterfly.
Basho
__________________
You are the butterfly
and I the dreaming heart
of Chuang-tzu.
Basho
__________________
The fallen blossom
has returned to the branch;
no, it was a butterfly.
Arakida Moritake
___________________
While the sad wind goes slaughtering butterflies
I love you, and my happiness bites the plum of your mouth.
Neruda
___________________
In hand-heights, the dazzle of butterflies,
butterflies setting sail in their unbounded light.
Neruda
___________________
The monkeys wove a thread
interminably erotic
along the banks of dawn,
demolishing walls of pollen
and flushing the violet light
of the butterflies from Buga.
Neruda
_____________________
the spear stuck in the pure stone
the wounded fish flapped in the light
harsh flag of an uncaring sea
butterfly of bloodstain and salt.
Neruda
______________________
a butterfly hovers in front of her face
how long will she sleep
Ikkyu
_____________________
In one breath
the haiku exhales
a butterfly
R. D. McManes
____________________
A broken dream––
where do they go
the butterflies?
Death poem of Ichimu
____________________
The dreamy feelings
when held between our fingers––
a butterfly
Buson
___________________
On a temple bell
alights and naps
a butterfly
Buson
__________________
Such is the world
the life of a butterfly
busy too
Issa
__________________
To buy its dream
no butterflies appear––
a winter peony
Buson
__________________
Making a pillow
of my arm––
a butterfly is asleep
Issa
_____________________
Now the butterflies, yellow
in September, fly in pairs
over the grass in the west garden.
The scene breaks my heart.
Li Bai
________________________
And Wisdom is a butterfly
And not a gloomy bird of prey.
Yeats
The bodhisattva with 1000 arms can be a helpful figure for students of the Alexander Technique. This bodhisattva is an icon of non-doing, and allowing it to work on us can help us see more clearly into the nature of the four skills.
There is a classic story about a grasshopper and a centipede. The grasshopper sees the centipede and is taken aback. “How is it possible,” he asks, “that you can walk with all those legs?! How on earth do you do it?!” The centipede stops and says, “I don’t know.” The grasshopper insists on knowing. He says, “Come now! Don’t keep it a secret! Tell me! I must know how you do it. If you really don’t know, then think about it! I want you to tell me how you control all those legs.” The centipede starts thinking about it, and after a few minutes he realizes he can no longer walk. He is totally confused, and now he can’t get his legs to work at all.
Imagine what a grasshopper would think of the bodhisattva with 1000 arms. These are not just insect legs, but human arms, each with human hands capable of sophisticated movement. The image is so baffling that we too should become like the grasshopper and marvel at it. Or maybe we gloss over it, viewing it as just another religious image. What kind of religious image is it? What is a bodhisattva, and who is this bodhisattva with 1000 arms?
In a nutshell, a bodhisattva is an “enlightenment being,” one who has vowed to attain enlightenment for the sake of helping all sentient beings. They sit in meditation to save all sentient beings, they practice compassion for the sake of all sentient beings, they follow the Way for the sake of all sentient beings, and when they die they vow to keep returning to the world of samsara until all sentient beings are free. The very essence of a bodhisattva is compassion.
Some bodhisattvas are very well known. Avalokiteshvara may be the most famous of them all. He is known by many names and manifests in many forms. In Tibet he is known as Chenrezig. The Dalai Lama is viewed as a manifestation or emanation of Chenrezig. In China the most famous form of this bodhisattva is Kwan Yin, a female version. In Japan, Kwan Yin is called Kannon. Any of these versions of Avalokiteshvara may manifest in the form of a being having one thousand arms, one of 108 forms through which he may manifest.
Here are links to a couple images of this bodhisattva. The first link contains an explanation of how the bodhisattva came to have 1000 arms:
http://www.buddhanet.net/e-learning/history/guanyin.htm
http://www.asianart.com/exhibitions/bowers/01.html
That’s the background. To get into the substance of why this bodhisattva is an icon for the Alexander Technique, let’s return to the question of how we look at such an image in the first place. I’m going to do a smart thing and turn to Zen Master Takuan. His comments on this figure get right to the point, and one could hardly find a better source. The following long quote is taken from Immovable Wisdom, a translation of Takuan’s writings done by Nobuko Hirose. The title is well chosen. One could say the Alexander Technique seeks to cultivate a wisdom that is immovable but not fixed. We all have it, we just tend to cover it up. Takuan touches on this in his discussion of the thousand-armed bodhisattva, in this case appearing in male form (you might ask why this bodhisattva of compassion needs weapons):
Senju Kannon (the thousand-armed Kannon) is represented with a thousand arms, each arm holding a different weapon, but despite having a thousand arms, if his mind ‘stops’ with the one that uses a bow, for example, all the remaining 999 arms will be of no use whatever. Only if his mind does not ‘stop’ with the use of one arm can his other arms work efficiently and the thousand weapons be useful.One thing I find so surprising in Takuan’s comments is the way they echo Joseph Campbell. Campbell believed that our mythologies are poetry mistakenly read as journalism. If you read the Bible or stories from ancient Greek religion as journalism you may be tempted to say, “It’s a lie!” Or, you may accept this or that image as real, and it may lead you to look at images revered by other cultures and say, “It’s a lie!” Campbell felt the images of all great mythologies (i.e. past and present religions) were metaphoric of human potential. These images are telling us what we are. If you believe in Kannon the way Takuan suggests, with intelligence and doubt rather than “blind” faith, you will see for yourself.
As for Kannon, how can it have a thousand arms on one body? This figure is intended to show us that when a man realizes immovable wisdom, even with as many as a thousand arms on one body, he is able to use each and every one in one way or another.
. . . . Ordinary people regard Kannon with reverence for no reason. They simply believe in Kannon as an extraordinary being because it has a thousand arms and eyes on its body. Some people with superficial knowledge deny Kannon and say, ‘How can one have as many arms and eyes as a thousand on one body? It is a lie.’ Not only do they deny Kannon, but they abuse Buddhism. But one who knows Buddhism more deeply will neither blindly believe nor deny it. Because one understands the reason for things and pays respect, so one believes in Kannon.
Buddhist teaching often manifests its principles in a form. This is also the case with all other Way, especially Shintoism (the old indigenous religion in Japan). These figures are symbols and a means of teaching. One who sees and thinks only on the surface is ordinary. On the other hand, one who abuses Buddhism is worse. Everything has its reason. One must see behind phenomena. This school, that school, there are many schools, but they all boil down to this.
Continue reading "Introduction to Aiden O'Shea's Poetry in Search of the Way" »