The dance of a peregrine stops.
Eventually, it all comes to an end; whenever so that may-be, oh well!
Let’s hope.
Or perhaps, there is a try.
At the very least, for once!
But until then and such a time when time does not exist and we escape our bitter temporality, let us then watch the peregrine dance…
And back and forth it goes accomplishing nothing more than what was historically put into it. (Luckily, there spontaneity to keep things interesting.)
Bouncing from place to place, thought to thought, worry to worry, and on and on… to concern, to comment, and to judgment of all and everything except the most specific, most detrimental crux: the criticizer itself.
And this is the dance that is played around the world and seen as the normality of human existence. Human conditioning, being socially structured, is dancing out and about. Millions of missing links looking for real connection have become so self-absorbed in their own linkness they have failed to realize the entirety of that great Link that exists between them. That which they all share and have been connected to the entire time has been so sufficiently placed affront their noses that the smell they are looking for is unrecognized. They are so used to smelling the same scent that they’ve forgotten how it smelled in the first place.
The fluttering of mind is lash and leak; fettered they say. How quick we are to assume the worst, or even the best of a moment and deny the other in our esteemed evaluations, is the most perilous disease we face. Need there is to see jointly two.
The Need For One
The assent to individuality is essential for the man/woman of the 21st century. Reaching this stage of human development is essential for the underprivileged and educationally, socially, undeveloped countries around the world to rise and meet at a global rational standard. Personal responsibility, organizational skills, and reasonable intellect are a dire need for the entire world to improve. And yet as quickly as we learn the value of differentiation, individual choice, and personal opinion, this ecstatic growth of rationalization in our educated minds is all too quick to forget its organic roots. In order to compensate the overgrowth of pessimistic self-indulgence and unabashed skepticism, we must constantly remind ourselves of our unprovoked humble beginnings and of that all too peaceful coalescence to which we, each one of us, are headed. The rut of humanity, of our own humanity, is stuck ignorantly between an indolent amorphousness and creative transformation.
As divine as we think our individual selves are, there is still something deeper to uncover. The glory we hold onto in self-esteem plagues us – each and other, but mainly the certainty we believe we see the world with stunts our personal growth toward any actual, meaningful ideation. Alas, the more we are convinced “we know,” the more duly Reality is veiled.
Dancing Masks
Unhappiness, the greater part of our un-well-being, stems from dancing. The fact that it never fully settles or reaches what it wants most and constantly changes is a force we must absolve. Whether we are looking for meaning, or purpose, or a bigger paycheck, or a family, the peregrine continues its careless spree. A goal achieved becomes a dream to reach. And this, our striving, is away from purity & presence. And as divine as we each think our interpretation is of the world and life as we know it, our fading out of the immediate moment and into every imagined mental conception is (and should more readily be) much more of a concern.
As much as we prioritize our own dance and make it of the highest importance, life goes on without a shrug and despite our best charade. So what does this tell us in regards to the meaning of our mental acrobatics? Do we forfeit the dance? Is there only dancing? And perhaps most essentially, is this dance we call our own, our own to name?
Certainly, we are dancers dancing in what is a Great Dance. As each of us is sure we have our own part to play and assure ourselves of the significance of our role, time is up. While the peregrine is looking for the role of a lifetime, or something better, the Show continues regardless.
How can this bleak knowledge help us? I mean, do we not have a show to be attending, is our dance not up? Curtains open! Curtains close.
A Dance to Call Our Own?
Surely we are dancing on our own stages, in front of personal audiences, and looking out at everything else besides our own Pierrot reflections. Sadly, the natural world becomes stark in comparison to who we think we should be. And to what end is difference, when all are all dancing about? Each is a lunatic, each is a butterfly flapping from flower to flower, sucking at nature’s big teat for more and more. To what purpose do we dance? This big charade is of the upmost importance, is it not? Are you, and you, and you, not butterflies jumping from leaf to leaf? Where go your antennae?
The dance says no. I am human. No butterfly for me. And no antennae riddles for that matter either.
And this is a great problem for us, I believe.
The fact that we contrast ourselves from such remarkable beatitude in life’s Dance. And think we have something better to offer this divine Dance than that remarkable synchronistic butterfly behavior. We fly from job to job, from place to place, thought to thought wishing for something more, believing there is something better than that luminous immediacy right here before our very eyes. Oh, what a glorious sight to be ignored!
We’d rather see ourselves as separate and in control than remarkably, subtly intelligent, coalescent beings embraced by wind and carried by strange currents.
We’d prefer to see our own dance, albeit however destructive, sad and painful it might become, than the silent sunder of brilliant butterflies fluttering from leaf to leaf. Our imagined strain, metaphysical sunder, and constant heaviness allow no rest for us peculiar folk upon delicate pedals of floating water loti.
We’d prefer to disrupt the Dance in lieu of our own show.
We’d prefer to never bloom in transpersonal metamorphosis and stay locked in our self-confined chrysalis cages than render ourselves uniquely as strands in the brilliant spectrum.
We’d prefer not to rise and stay who we say we are.
We’d prefer not to fly and to crawl by our own accord.
We’d prefer to bleed, burn, and rot than realize grace is the next breath.
Let us then, choose to dance alone.
For pride is our dance, emptiness our avoidance, temporal self-centeredness our sin, and vanity is our bane. Forgiveness need only be a quick reminder for our lack of atonement. And what should always be graceful gratitude is deformed into mechanical, intellectual, and rational dichotomies of what is interpreted through our very short-sighted, limited, half-hearted description of it.
An orchestra of rainbow-colored butterflies is flying through a grassy knoll and never once do we notice a single babe besides our own. No matter the similarity of our wings and their span, no matter the radiance of the brightly flowered plain below us, and with absolutely no regard to the dissonance that our individual preferences create, we choose to feel separate and in control of our destinies. We are so busy dancing, defining, predicting, fore-seeing our dance and how it will go than enjoying that great Flight quite right before us now. We are so busy rushing to the next flower and on to the next flower that we forget to appreciate our delicate bodies in flight, our colorful friends gliding next to us, and the sweet nectar of the flower we are sipping on that we forget to stop and appreciate the taste of this One before heading on to another One.
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Thank you Ken Bosma for the beautiful image above! (It has not been edited in any way.)
