“At the still point of the turning world.
Neither flesh nor fleshness.
- T. S. Elliot
How long is eternity?
There are some questions in life which we cannot hold in our mind. How do we conceive or answer our felt experience around time? Of course there is chronological time which passes with the tick-tock of the clock. But there is also another sense of time which lingers on sunset beaches or rushes through the traffic. And there is a third sense which is linked to a cosmic connection of atemporality – existing outside of both space and time and yet at the same time encompassing both. This last sense of time is the space in which we experience wonder and awe. It is the space we connect with everything in oneness and at the same time dive deep into our inner soul.
These are not journeys for the rational mind. These are journeys felt with our whole being. We can access these experiences when we still the mind, or as Carlos Castaneda says, “stop the world.” This is definitely not a process of stilling the mind through meditation, this is about engaging every atom of our being into an ecstatic connection with all that is life. This we can do through the dance.
Dance flirts with both our interior and exterior world. Without shame it engages our sense, our emotions, our imagination bringing together both body and mind on a journey of ecstasy. The basis of our everyday experience of life is through movement. That is negotiating time and space as we encounter the world, engage and learn from it. To transcend this world is to transcend our own ego and dance opens up that possibility. Dancing with time means that we step out of this world and into a space-time continuum of our own making. Our dance shapes a different experience of life. It opens up the mystery and we are exposed to ecstatic wonder and awe. The only requirement is the courage to lose our self a little, be entranced by the dance for a moment only to emerge again refreshed, rejuvenated and renewed.
| Christos Daskalakos
