Experiment: Starting Point

Sculpture by Richard Recchia  

Musing…

“The moment you doubt whether you can fly, you cease for ever to be able to do it.”

― J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

And there are countless ways to fly.

You can fly with your inspiration, fly with your courage to overcome adversity, fly with your idea...of flying.

Charise’s Turn:

All it takes is a word or concept or theme to begin building a movement phrase. I’ve participated in several improvisational movement classes with Liz Lerman Dance Exchange and what is fascinating is how movement impulse takes over from any starting point. You are given a prompt, such as: imagine your legs are so heavy, how would you move through space with such heavy legs? At first this may sound like an exercise for a child, so you suspend that thought from your reasonable adult mind and go with it. You begin with a sense of weightedness and some stuckness until you start to experiment with mobilizing in different ways – maybe rolling, pushing, pulling, falling, struggling, lifting, sinking – and you’re in a dance of your own design, basically an experience that grew from a concept but is now in the larger territory of making. This “making” is what happens when you put all your conviction into your idea; you make it believable, you make it real. And then it is real! Like a plant that develops from a seed, the dance is no longer the prompt, or the theme, it’s what it is becoming. To me, this is alchemy, or magic. After all, what does magic require? Complete belief and trust.   

Get Fired Up:
What do you believe? What can you put your trust in?  Whatever that is, it contains a seed of making, of creating, of becoming.

www.coachingmoves.com

Experiment: Living the Experiment of the Self

"Goddess Rabbit"

Musing...

"To me the sole hope of human salvation lies in teaching Man to regard himself as an experiment in the realization of God, to regard his hands as God’s hand, his brain as God’s brain, his purpose as God’s purpose. He must regard God as a helpless Longing, which longed him into existence by its desperate need for an executive organ." – George Bernard Shaw

Colleen’s Turn:

When I was a student in the Marion Woodman BodySoul Leadership program we studied Jung’s interpretation of Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s philosophy was that there was an experiment that wants to be lived through the Self. His belief was that we are only instrumental in the creative process; that God/life/the Sacred creates in us and through us. Jung believed that as well, and is reflected when he says that only people with inflation can assume that they create. You don’t create, you are created; in creation you are created.  Something makes you do it, something is working through you.

The Native American people share a similar belief. They use the expression of “becoming a hollow bone.”  The elders say that you become the hollow bone so that you can be filled up with the breath of Spirit so that your purpose may be sung in harmony with the Great Song of life. Writer Ralph P. Brown says, “If you are feeling out of harmony with your purpose it may be that you are filled with your own ideas, thoughts and beliefs to the point that there is no room for the things of Spirit.” M. C. Richards, a poet, potter, teacher, and mystical philosopher refers to this as well when she talks about living at the cross roads where the visible and invisible worlds meet.

I am committed to living the experiment that wants to be lived through me. I do my best to stay connected to the source so that I can hear what wants to come through. I do this by listening to my intuition, taking time for meditation, and by living a life that includes prayer and gratitude. David Whyte says the soul doesn’t care if you succeed or fail, it only wants to know if you have lived the life that wants to live through you. Perhaps these ideas are worth pondering.

Get Fired Up:  

As an intuitive painter I have experienced firsthand how God can work through me when I get out of the way and learn to follow my intuition. I don’t have a lot of art skills, so I depend on something larger coming through. Perhaps this week you can try your own experiment. Take out a piece of paper or a blank canvas and simply begin by choosing the color and the brush you are drawn to. Ask yourself - is there an image that wants to be known? Where should I go next? What color am I attracted to? Keep the brushes moving letting intuition be your guide. See what happens.

www.quest4wholeness.com Colleen Russell, guest blogger