Dancing in the Dark

I became aware over the last couple of days that I felt really weak through my upper body. I had shiatsu last week and it released something from my heart but maybe it stayed. In describing this weakness I said it felt like I was carrying someone around, an attachment or entity. So I decided to light the fire, candles… push back the furniture and dance the 5 rhythms. The 5 R recording I have is ancient and I know it so well - there's nothing spontaneous left in the music for me. I danced the first half - vaguely aware of what was in me - the emotions locked behind yards of glass - the desire to express those emotions only the merest tickle like a long distant maybe sneeze.

Then the music stopped and my head was slumped and shoulders rounded. Stock still like a hung man. I became aware of the body of a dead child inside me - heart overlapping heart - and another and another. Aged 7, aged 10, aged 14. Hanging lifelessly as if hung by the neck. Hair falling forward over their faces. They were not spirit attachments. They were me.

The music restarted after its pause. To the outside observer I would have seemed to have stopped dancing. Feet planted deeply I barely rocked but I was breathing and my energy bodies were open and pulsing. I heard a voice say "wake up" and realised it was my voice. "Wake up"… and the dead children stirred uncomfortably as if wanting 5 more minutes rest. The shamanic drum and gentle music beating like a heart. I could hear a voice groaning… and realised it was me. Long low groans like labour pains. Tears falling straight down, not bothering with my face, straight onto the slate of the fire place.

The bodies were now floating in water… then spinning in space. I looked at the fire and as I did the logs split and flames leapt. The groaning and moaning continued "wake up" I kept saying "I choose you"… "I claim you". And the rage awakened and I roared silently. I stretched up and opened my body feeling the young saplings unfurl and stand open with me... before weariness overcame me and I sank into the child's pose, forehead on the floor.

And there I stayed - perineum pulsing to the music but nothing more - stone still until the music stopped.

And now the world is different and still the same.

The Innocent Mountain needs my Flag

I even surprised myself to come back to this blog full of ideas to write a post about innocence only to realise I did last week! Huh?! Oh yes... now I remember. Honestly... I hope it's a sign I live in the present not that I am losing my mind that I completely forgot I did that. But the topic of innocence persists.

The inner voice alive in me is my inner youth - I am about 13 or 14 inside me at the moment. A time in my biography where everything in my life was being shattered into infinite pieces. I am still that, I am still there.

And the question posed by this predicament (to be 35 and seeking to reclaim my adolescence) is just HOW does one reclaim innocence; especially if you feel you were born an off shade of miswashed gray?

Things I do too much of... I can stop doing. But those things where I feel the lack? How can I pick them up? Money, affection, intimacy?

Tied intrinsically to this sense of guilt and shame I realise the sense of the hunt is on! I will reclaim my innocence if it's the last thing I do...

But how?

The first sensible suggestion has come to me this evening... play! Fun!

Prone to pouting and muttering like a sullen child "I don't know HOW to have fun"... I shall let you know how I get on.

Innocence is all

In the pre-verbal space I feel a sense of being weighed and measured and found wanting. Who is the one judging? I don't know - I don't have logic to explain the feeling but the feeling is one of being unacceptable. Do you believe in innocence? Oh yes (tears spring to my eyes) oh yes I believe in innocence. And what does innocence mean to you? Untouched, unblemished, uncorrupted, pure, not guilty. Do you believe the we are born innocent?

... And I think about this for a moment. I like to believe we are born innocent but what about karma from past lives, what about the ancestral coding in my DNA? When I think about it... no, no I don't believe we are all born innocent. There are some of us that are not. That are pre-programmed to be found wanting.

I have no framework to explain these early feelings. I was not raised in religion nor taught about a punishing God or original sin. But it seems that woven into the fabric of my being is a belief that I and those like me are not innocent. That my very existence brings shame. I stop and think and I say that knowledge is the dividing line - I was innocent as a young being until I knew that I was evil; once I was told... then I knew and then I lived into that version of the story.

But, asks the question, if these things of blame are beyond your control are you not innocent? And thus aren't we all?

And then, yes, I see it. Just as "God is all or God is nothing" so "Innocence is all or innocence is nothing" - there can be no partial innocence because that would create guilt or non-innocence which requires judgment and in the judgement is duality and subjectivity; the henchmen of the ego. All factors leading to a perception of non-innocence are always beyond control.

Innocence is all there is. And when I am; I am innocent.