The First Dance of Easter - an ecstatic vigil

The power of this holy night
dispels all evil,
washes guilt away,
restores lost innocence,
brings mourners joy;
it casts out hatred,
brings us peace,
and humbles earthly pride.
Night truly blessed
when heaven is wedded to earth
and we are reconciled with God!

(from Exultet, the hymn of praise for the Easter Vigil)

Tonight,
for the first time ever(!) in my life,
I danced the first communion of Easter.

This holy Easter night is the climax
of everything that has been prepared
through Lent. In this holy night
we are filled, celebrating how the Light
not only shines in the darkness, but
BRINGS THE DARKNESS UP HOME
and restores it to its Divine Place by
the most radical transformation -
not by subduing it, but by inhabiting it!
Once and for all, we can understand that
Light is for ever more now in the darkness,
so that we never need to hide our darkness
ever again! It is safe to live wholly!

It always was that way in Divine Reality,
but most have not been able to see it -
that is why guru upon guru has needed
to use radical ways to explain Real Reality!
And rising from the dead and living all
multi-realities at once, is a truly radical way!
There is a thunder, a sublime voice shouting ...

"Do you get it now?
Anything and everything is possible!
Live this Truth!
Now!"

This evening I traded my church pew for
a dance space (in the shadow of a cathedral.)
Lights were lit, an altar was set up
and adorned with colour and our prayers.
We sat in sacred circle ready to dance.
And then as the music rose, we allowed
everything in us to be safely nurtured
by the spontaneity of the dance that arose,
and at the same time were joined in
with one another as a communion in our
moving together through our inner journeys.

This holy night we celebrated Resurrection.
We celebrated Divine Inner Empowerment
in deep humility and compassion for all.
It was a perfect metaphor for the new world
that is reborn through the act of bringing
Death back to Life in ecstasy!

This holy night, I have cried
tears of gratitude to Jesus.
For this joy, for this opening,
for this daring to go there beyond everything,
for showing what is possible
for all of us.

This holy night of nights as the church
next door celebrated its holy worship,
I danced Easter into being in my body,
in my emotions, in my spirit and soul.
This night not just my mind and my head,
but also my body and my feelings know
the ecstasy and the bliss of rebirth!

Hallelujah!

John O

In Halifax, Nova Scotia's main city,
there are opportunities each month
to experience both Ecstatic Dance
and Trance Dance.
The sessions are run by an awesome
facilitator, Maryse Thuot, and her gifted
team of co-facilitators. Information
can be found on this blog.

Holy Saturday - identifying with Peter or Judas ...

It’s done.
Over with.
He’s gone.
Dead and buried.
We can go back to our ordinary life.
Dream crushed.

We have failed.
And we understand also that
we have been failed.
Betrayed even.
It isn’t as we were promised…..

or did we get it wrong?

One of the lessons to be learnt
in deep transformation, is that
what appears to be the truth,
ie the-“truth”-on-the-surface,
is so often not at all the Truth
when we go really deep down.

Even harder is the lesson
provided by Life's mirror ….
the learning which tells us that
those things and people which we resent,
despise, shy away from, get triggered by,
or shun and disown, show us
the spaces inside ourselves where the seeds
of our own healing can be found.

This past week in churches -
on Thursday evening and yesterday -
we are reminded again of two of
the friends of the guru/master Yeshua;
one “friend” who premeditates and carries out
betrayal (the betrayer’s kiss is fascinating -
Why did he betray? And why kiss Jesus? -)
the other, who never plans to disown, and
mistakenly believes he is courageous enough
to stand firm when his own life is threatened,
but who denies and weeps and flees.

And there is more than betrayal and denial -
not just that the male friends all take flight,
(the women stay, close or farther away,
depending on which account you read,)
not just that men’s worst sides come out
in ever-expanding viciousness and fear,
but that the most exultant imagined dream
is so quickly, efficiently and violently crushed.

So, who are we in this story?
(And, who do we try and avoid being?)

The god-man being put to death is an amazing
narrative that says many things at many levels.
For me, two of the most important are

- there is nowhere that the Divine cannot be found

(see my last blog-posting)
and
- the seed of even more joy lies in "the crushing" of what is.

I love the popular movement of the last few years
to encourage people to shed old limiting ways -
to let go of old hurts, of old beliefs, of anything
which stops them from becoming whole,
so that their lives may become empowered,
and that they may begin to shine brightly.
But there is a price which is not usually stated:
For a person to become whole, everything held tight -
it doesn’t matter if it’s “good” or if it’s “terrible” -
has, sooner or later, to be given up, crushed.
The radically new and stunningly blissful is
only able to emerge through the total surrender of
absolutely everything, whatever it is, to God.

Looking at the Passion story from this perspective,
perhaps Judas’ betrayal and Peter’s denial were
crucial ways for them to surrender whatever it was
that stopped them from receiving the new life -
it wasn't just about releasing “good appearances”
or no longer being trusted friend in different ways -
everything of deepest importance within them
was totally challenged and turned upside down.
(In the New Testament accounts, Judas, of course,
gives up too soon to reap the fruits of being real.
Or perhaps not. And there are also modern scholars
who don’t believe that Judas committed suicide.)
Perhaps all the cruelty and violence that we are shown
are, dare it be said, at some level a fundamental opening.
Perhaps this story, so full of horrors repeated in
so many violent places today, is an important lesson
in going deeper, in "trusting in a point beyond " -
in allowing sight beyond the hate and cruelty.

In a church I was working at ten years ago,
the midday prayers bulletin had an illustration of
God going down deep on the cover (from Africa)
showing that there is nowhere deep enough,
evil enough, painful enough, that the Divine
is not there before us (as Psalm 139* says.)

I believe we are asked to show as much kindness
and compassion as we are able, wherever we go.
But there will be times when the complete and
absolute opposite overtakes us in some way,
and then it is time to dare to go down deep within.
For me, surrender to God often means allowing
this going-down-deep journey, however difficult
or ugly or painful it may be. Especially when
there seems no rime or reason why something
awful has “had to” happen.

Let’s go back to the mirror image for transformation
which I mentioned at the beginning of this post.
There is a hidden gift here; a wonderful “positive side”
to accepting that what we see in others is also in us -

The wholeness and holy joy
which we see and honour
in the saints and gurus and friends
whom we love, admire and look up to,
is mirrored in the seed of wholeness and holiness
and the essence of the Divine Creator and
that Godly Connection within us!

Or to paraphrase the Gnostic Gospel of Philip,

we are who we truly see and get to know.

I also asked the question which character we feel
we are in this holy unfolding, leading to death.
I risk being called a blasphemer by some, but
I suggest that it is our holy destiny
ourselves to be the god-man, Jesus.
Part of this being Jesus, is the learning that
by not holding on for dear life, we also may
transcend all pain and hurt and death, and so
allow ourselves to be
reborn in glorious elation.

I dare to believe that the more of us
who are convinced of this principle,
- we are who we truly see and know -
and have the courage to live by it,
however often we may fail by denial,
or by betrayal or any any way,
the quicker our rape and pillage of the Earth,
and of each other, will cease.
And that our New Age, so longed for by Jesus,
so long prophesied by every spiritual tradition,
and so clothed in beauty by so many poets,
visual artists, dancers, musicians, etc.,
will at last be manifested among and in us
with a joy and bliss beyond our imagining.

May your Easter be full of dreams
and of rising Joy!

John O

*
If I say,
"Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,"
even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day -
for Darkness is as Light to you!
(Ps 139, vv.11-12)

A passionate lesson in non-duality

It's now 2 days into Holy Week
(well, according to the Gregorian calendar,
western version - west of Constantinople, that is )

Holy Week? Holy in what way?
Who is holy? What is holy?

Holy, according to the dictionary, means
something or someone to be revered
and comes from the old English word for
WHOLE.

I've always been fascinated by
this time of year in the Christian Church;
suddenly, it seems, there is no need to
preach dogma or doctrine or moral rules -
for everything is self-evident;
the stories speak for themselves
and we become fellow journeyers
in and through a transformational world
of cosmic, divine proportions.

There is a wonderful phrase in
the Apostles' Creed .....
after the brief crucifixion narrative
comes the sentence ...

He descended into Hell

For me, this is the ultimate confirmation
that the Divine is in everything,
however "good", however "evil" -
whatever we may think of something
or of someone, however "impossible",
God is not just "also there", but in totality!

The very Essence of Divinity dwells there!

So how do we in Western Society
get to a place where we can allow ourselves
to explore the physical and emotional intensity
of the dark places of Earth-life in safety?
And, more important , how do we access
the hidden darkness within us
- those recesses which we do everything
in our conscious power to hide
from ourselves and others?

I believe that most of us really endeavour
to live - and try to appear to live -
"good" lives. Any perceived dark faults
and cracks in our personality ......
- such things as our anger, our frustration,
our raw passion, our longing to break out,
the yearning to stamp our feet or
scream as loudly as possible,
the desperate urge to let go and
freely allow our bodies and minds to do
absolutely what they will, etc., -
we try and lock away in our body-cage
and perhaps even try to pray, meditate
and therapize them into submission.

Mind over matter we tell ourselves.

Part of western civilization's baggage is
the Gentle-Jesus-meek-and-mild Syndrome.
It matters not whether one professes faith
in the traditional church manner or not -
the cultural imprint of the erroneous
"Be good/nice, or you'll go to Hell!" is
still very much with and inside us!

Yet, not having any pathways to explore
and express the darkness inside us
is a sure way of avoiding the very inner peace
we long for! By desperately trying to avoid
our own "unacceptable behaviour" we are
opening ourselves to "Hell on Earth" - the
hidden personal misery which finds no outlet
- or worse, school shootings, rapes, murders,
dangerous abusive relationships,
and pointless, seemingly unstoppable, wars.

Holy Week actually inspires us to be whole.
We follow a man who gets so angry that he
- takes a whip to drive traders out of the Temple
shouting at them as his whip stings them,
- curses a fig-tree early in the morning because
it didn't have any fruit on to feed him,
(what happened to his morning meditation?),
- gets totally exasperated with his loyal friends
and speaks kindly to his betrayer (?!?)
a man who is so brazen that he quotes for himself
the divine name of I Am in front of the very
people (church leaders/puppet politicians)
he's just slandered as vipers, liars, hypocrites,
and then flatly refuses to even speak to
the authority that is trying him as someone
totally beneath him, etc.......

One of the points of this story seems to me
to be the example it shows of someone
who dares to be whole.
Uncompromisingly whole!
Not just following that inner knowing
whatever the cost, but also being totally
raw, real, open and vulnerable along the way!

In this totality of being there is little
space or time for duality, (except, of course, in
moments of doubt - those Gethsemane experiences!)
Shall we dare to explore what it means
to be real, to be whole, to be so impassioned
that we must follow our calling wherever
it may take us, and dare to be real and raw
as we let go and tread the path?

More on this, soon.

Holy blessings of wholeness

John O