Gentle Enlightenment

Return to love, God, the source of creation

Eyes closed, looking within…
Moments ceased, releasing into…
Dark, safe, eternal infinite Being.

I am.

It is.

Nothingness is everything.
Emptiness contains all that is.

Is this what I’ve been searching for?
Silent, calm, gentle, ageless, peace.
In union with harmony.
Time and space dissolved
Into eternity…infinity…

Is this immortality?
The place I stumbled upon
Once upon a time
When I bathed in delusion
From a left turn into a right turn
Somehow I stumbled my way back to thy

It is ever present within
Silent, calm, gentle, ageless, peace.

This is home –
The place where everything dwells;
This is I –
The observer patiently watching;
This is emptiness –
The one that gives birth to everything.

I AM HOME.
I AM LOVE.
I AM THY.

Pole Dancing and Aikido

Melt into harmony - when a partnership is created between your body and the pole.

After thinking about pole dancing for several years now, I finally took the plunge. My girl friend and I started going to Pole Sinsation the beginning of this year. Initially this new form of physical training seemed awkward and we both felt extremely spastic. For starter, I was too scared to wear the 6-inch heels, so instead I went bare foot. As I pivoted on the ball of my foot while maintaining the strength from my core, my body remembered a similar sensation from Aikido. There was something my body wanted to communicate. I allowed. It went quite for several days.

On Saturday Aikido was tough. There was one move in particular that I still couldn’t do after more than a year of intense training. My initial reaction was to blame my partner. It was the stiffness in his body that made my technique impossible. It was his height that made me overextend myself. It was his unwillingness to connect that made our relationship unnatural… I’ve been walking the spiritual path long enough now to know that I must take responsibilities, yet I couldn’t bring myself to admit my own contribution to the difficulties I’ve experienced on the mats.

On Sunday, Pole Dancing was even tougher. I was surprised how well I was doing last week but Sunday turned out to be a lot worse than I have expected. The pole was so cold and metallic it gave me blisters on my pinkie.  The skin on my thigh was getting stuck because the static friction was too great to complete my turns. The surface of the pole was too slippery on top because nobody bothered to climb up and give it a good cleaning. Finally I noticed how my repulsive thoughts have lead to my dreadful emotions; I began to resent being there and I disliked my body.  So I decided to just give it up. Not giving up dancing, but instead giving up the need to blame.

I know how much I love dancing. I took ballet, jazz, Tang Dynasty dancing, Swing, and sometimes ballroom. I’m definitely not a professional but I’ve always enjoyed dancing on my own because I love the freedom of self-expression. AND because I enjoyed feeling the strength of my own core. But whenever I danced with a partner, I would have to adjust to his style of movement. Being the control freak that I am, I secretly resented how I was not leading and I could do a better job if I was the lead. I told myself that some leads are so not coordinated that I end up losing my own center and stumble over my own feet. Only the days I salsa danced with Andre Paradis, I give up control completely. Those days I felt grounded in my heels and the strength from my center when he executed his famous triple underarm turns. He knew what he was doing as he worked around his own center while staying completely engaged. He choreographed for and danced with Michael Jackson for God sakes! Whenever we disconnected, he apologized for not making adjustments for my body since he was the lead. He graciously took responsibilities.

So how does core strength, making adjustments, taking responsibilities relate to aikido and pole dancing? Well, in both pole dancing and aikido, I have to work with a partner. In pole dancing my partner is the pole that I’m engaged in a physical relationship with while in aikido my partner is the other person I’m engaged in a physical relationship with. In pole dancing, I can see myself more clearly. It would be silly to blame an inanimate object for my failures. In order to move forward, I have to stay grounded and adjust myself.  How is my posture? Am I using my core strength or momentum? Do I clench on too tightly? Is there enough space between my body and the pole? Where do I carry the unnecessary tension? Am I out of my head and totally devoted to my body? How smooth are my transitions when I switch directions? So when I fail, I can blame the pole for not adjusting to my needs or I can take responsibilities and examine myself. All these questions will take me out of my need to blame and bring me back to taking responsibilities again. And in Aikido, being shite, I am responsible to execute the techniques by being grounded, harnessing the power from my own core, and adjusting to the unique composition of my partner. I have to first find where I am, the connection I’ve made with the mats, my body’s centerline, only from there, I can then interact with a partner by moving with his body’s natural centerline. I must ask myself probing questions: Am I grounded? How is my posture? Are the movements executed from my core or from the momentum created by my arms? Do I clench too tightly? Is there enough space between my partner and I? Do I allow myself to melt into him without all the unnecessary tension? Am I maintaining the smoothness of transition by keeping a full connection when I’m heading into a new direction?

Do you notice the similarities? In both cases, your power comes from your core when you engage in any relationship!

So by taking responsibilities, we are staying true to our core, being who we are, making adjustments to the person we are engaged in a relationship with – WITHOUT LOSING OUR OWN CORE! Being in a relationship is not about losing oneself but exerting oneself to blend with another. I’ve seen a lot of difficulties occuring in many relationships wherein one person is making too much sacrifice and thus losing oneself. That is not healthy in friendships or relationships. We will just end up losing our centerline and become resentful. By noticing how I interact with an inanimate partner I can find my own behavior patterns that stands in the way of creating a healthy relationship.

there’s more coming up next time…