I like your post, Emi, and when you described the five trained dancers kicking and flipping at Steps On Broadway while listening to the lyrics of Caleb Hawley, I was reminded that there’s another side to the how of meditating; it’s movement. Instead of sitting, the body moves, and dictates exactly how it will move. It’s the way of the Kalahari Bushmen of Namibia and Botswana – “one of the oldest living cultures on earth” who sing, dance – shake, vibrate – all night. THE BUSHMAN WAY of TRACKING GOD by Bradford Keeney, PHD.
www.shakingmedicine.com
Reading Bradford Keeney’s book is exhilerating, to say the least. He seems to forever be on cloud 9; his enthusiasm for this way of tracking God doesn’t stop throughout the book. And to read it is to suddenly find yourself wanting to find a beat on a CD that might somewhat duplicate the beat the Kalahari Bushman dances to. Oh, Yes! And there you are moving to your own body’s dictate, listening, being aware. To what? – you ask. To the place within you that’s been wanting to reveal things to you alone. The jacket of this wonderful book says, “The Bushman Way of Tracking God will redefine everything you ever thought you knew about life, spirituality, and the divine.” That’s the truth.
And a moving meditation was Sufi poet, mystic, and originator of the dance of the whirling dervishes Jalaluddin Rumi’s way when he began whirling, turning, spinning through the streets of Konya, Anatolia (present-day Turkey). If you carefully read and reread this simple, beautiful, 151 page book, Rumi’s Four Essential Practices – Ecstatic Body, Awakened Soul by Will Johnson, perhaps you will never eat the same way, breathe the same way, move the same way, gaze the same way – see things in quite the same way again.
www.hayatidede.org/events/htm
www.whirlingdervish.org/classes.htm
As you can see, Emi, your enthusiastic description of Sunday’s performance at Steps got me thinking. I liked it, and knowing you, I bet you wanted to be on that stage kicking and flipping, “shaking your booty” with the dancers.
www.stepsnyc.com
Time to get moving.