dance to prayer.
Today in Intro to Improv, our teacher asked us to start from stillness. Immediately sirens went off in my head and screamed in protest, "You can't start from stillness! We breathe, we have duplication of cells, we recenter ourselves constantly..." Still, we all managed to start from somewhat stillness. Some people quickly emerged into full motion while others lay on the floor for long periods of time. My body went wild for a few minutes before finally settling in a prostrated position on the floor, the same one as in the Long Obligatory Prayer. Sit, prostrate, sit, prostrate... I did this a few times before something hit me pretty hard:
Our bodies cannot start movement out of stillness because stillness does not exist.
Our minds cannot start praying out of blankness because blankness does not exist.
I've been thinking for so long that I'm too distracted to pray efficiently, when really, my brain is just another physical feature of myself that cannot stop all that it does to concentrate on one thing, even if that one thing is prayer.
My biggest mistake however has been to confuse my brain and my thoughts with my spirit and my soul. The first two are mortal, finite, while the latter are not. Prayer, while it does help many aspects of a person, is "spiritual food."
Thank you dance class....
Our bodies cannot start movement out of stillness because stillness does not exist.
Our minds cannot start praying out of blankness because blankness does not exist.
I've been thinking for so long that I'm too distracted to pray efficiently, when really, my brain is just another physical feature of myself that cannot stop all that it does to concentrate on one thing, even if that one thing is prayer.
My biggest mistake however has been to confuse my brain and my thoughts with my spirit and my soul. The first two are mortal, finite, while the latter are not. Prayer, while it does help many aspects of a person, is "spiritual food."
Thank you dance class....