Dancing the Mystery

For over ten years I have been part of a spiritual writing group — nowadays seven of us that gather monthly to share a 2-page writing on a topic we selected the month before.  The most recent topic was about where we find meaning in our lives. The title of my piece was Dancing the Mystery.  It traced the main theme in my life, that is, my constant search for meaning, all the way back to my childhood. Much of this searching for meaning was an unconscious search but in retrospect very evident even in grade school.  The piece concludes with the notion that meaning comes from being the Mystery, or, the title, “Dancing the Mystery.”

Moira, my Pathwork Helper, led me to seeing that this Dancing the Mystery is my unique expression into the Cosmos of my Divine Essence.  Not everyone is called to dance this dance in this way. And she invited me to experience living out my calling as a Dancer of the Mystery of Life wherever I am — alone, with Pat, with others, with groups, with committees, in meetings, with family — everywhere. And to dance this dance freely, not needing it affirmed, but living who I am in an undefended way.

I am working on some of my SoulCollage cards — more about SoulCollage later perhaps some day — and chose to pick images related to Dancing the Mystery as my Essence Card — the card representing how Divine Source expresses through my particularity.  This insight thrills me.

Enter coffee time with Pat on Friday, the day after my session with Moira and my writing group, both of which happened on Thursday. I read my piece to Pat and she responded, “Very good. You live at a deep level and always have. Your writing captures this Essence of you. May we come to realize and experience the Bliss of Love (Bliss of the great Mystery) living us. Only our blindness keeps us from realizing this truth.”

I responded, “Love is Union. When we refuse to trust Love — and by this refusal choose to separate from Source, from God, from the One — fear is born in us. Our strategies for dealing with the fear brought on by our choice of separation are Self-Will and Pride.  In our sense and illusion of separation Duality is born.”

Pat: “Duality comes at the beginning when separation comes — form happens, then with form the feelings associated with separation. Something in our mind about our relationship, your and my relationship, has to alter. Our minds cannot accommodate the Mystery. Our human minds divide, separate, and compare — as Kornfield would say. Each soul is here for union with Mystery. In all of this, how is our primary relationship as Pat and Gary? I have conceptual views — misperceptions, distortions about how our relationship is in Union with the Dvine. My mind splits it off. I’ve always said to you: God first, self second, us third. This would make you angry in the early days of our relationship. But how is it really? Our relationship is not separate but is a piece of the Union with the Divine. But being human, my mind sees it in some separate way. Perhaps it is the God arising in me in union with the God arising in you.”

Gary: “Even this has a feel of fragmentation and duality — it suggests that the ‘God in me’ is separate from something that I think is ‘not God’ in me and separate as well from the ‘God in you’ and from what you and I think is ‘not God’ in you. In fact, in the Mystery, it is all God.”

Pat: “But we can’t get that through our thinking minds.” Gary: “Again even that languaging fragments part of me into being a ‘thinking mind’ that cannot comprehend and another part of me that is not a ‘thinking mind’ that can comprehend. This, too, is all One, all God. This is why we call it Mystery. And all we can do is dance Mystery. And yet again this is dualistic — separating into ‘dancing’ and ‘not dancing.’  It seems that language by its very nature is dualistic intending to distinguish our experiences and sense of the world around and in us. ‘This is a cup.’ ‘That is a feeling.’ Sort of a Tower of Babel story concerning the origin of languages.”

Pat: “So ineffable. Surrendering to Mystery is all inclusive.  This is a good space to go into our Holotropic breathwork session on Saturday.”

Pat: “You seek an ever larger context — this is how you seek meaning. Seeking a larger context for everything perhaps is your manifestation of your pull toward Oneness. I am different. I’m not sure where I am that it settles into clarity. Maybe my Central Channel. The heart is the organ of spiritual perception.” Gary: “Dualism is so inherent in our human condition. Awakening is giving up this struggle of sorting it all out, of having to explain the Mystery. That you and I are One, part and one-with the One, is not comprehensible in ordinary consciousness. And even here we are being dualistic in distinguishing between ‘ordinary’ and ‘unordinary’ states of consciousness.”

Pat: “The vastness of Mystery is not tolerable! The vastness of Mystery is beyond human capacity in ordinary consciousness. So in the face of that Great Vastness of Mystery, its being ‘intolerable’ to who we think we are, we shrink back and separate off from Mystery, from Oneness. Our spiritual practices are to help us develop the capacity to stay and open, what the Pathwork Guide calls surrender.”

Gary: “This all happens by Grace — like an acorn surrendering its acornness to become an oak tree. This is what the Guide calls the ‘Point of Relinguishing’ my ‘acornness,’ my dualistic consciousness. But, as with the acorn becoming an oak tree, the growth out of dualistic consciousness happens no matter what, for such is the nature of Life, the Plan of Salvation. This is all by Grace.”

With love, Gary