Plurality is a radical invitation at any time, and never more radical than in the times we live in today. We inhabit an ever-splintering vision of Reality where, overwhelmed by duality, we sink deeper into the swamp with atomisation. I sense that there is a Yearning for plurality that is screaming out as we have moved increasingly towards the regimentation of categorisation and definition. There is a cry to dissolve labels or to subvert definitions and defining narratives. However, all this is still held within the consciousness of duality and its suffocating energies of “them” and “us”, and this results in atomisation that disconnects, rather than connects, with the abundance of plurality.

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April 20 2023 was the day of an important solar eclipse that holds wisdom about the archetypal energies of these times and the times to come. When we invoke dance as Body-led intelligence, it excavates archetypal wisdom, very much like astrology. Indeed, my sense is that the knowledge of astrology was sourced from dance in ancient times.

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Image attribution: Raja Ravi Varma, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

The archetypal Goddess Lakshmi holds an important invitation to our information-dense time. Lakshmi’s domain is the inevitable collision between our information-seeking intelligence of definition and categorization, and the more expansive yearning in us to experience unity amidst the diversity of material reality. We have been tormented by this collision for centuries and have come up with rather inadequate solutions to domesticate the wildness of the Truth of plurality. Leading with verbal languages, we have sought to tame this wildness into appearances of managed and curated Reality. When we assume that we have mastered Reality in these ways, we must, with great energy and willfulness, ignore the greater part of Reality that eludes our conquest through information.

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In my courses this term we explored the spiritual qualities of melancholy. Many people in the classes shared with me how relieved they felt at the nuanced wisdom of melancholy as a sensation. Melancholy is in essence a poetic cosmos, best experienced through the nonlinear beauty of poetic intelligence. In dance it becomes the tender and meandering Rasa of Vishada which is the birthplace of Divine revelation. So here is my poetic reflection that emerged from the recent invocation of the Rasa of melancholy, Vishada.

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Melancholy is an old-fashioned word—it is rarely used in common parlance in our times. And it is an old-fashioned sensation, many centuries older than its breathtaking invocation by John Keats, one of the greatest voices of the Romantic era of poetry. The Romantic era was the last period, at least in the west, when the divinity and intelligence of this sensation was perceived as the foundation of beauty and aesthetics.

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Once upon a time subjectivity was the realm of the artist. We were enthralled by someone’s unique and intimate vision of Reality manifest as their creative expression. We did not look for the familiar, rather we expected a revelatory experience, perhaps to be surprised, sometimes shocked, or moved. This was not always entertaining, but it was enjoyable nevertheless in a cosmos of expectation where we were not locked into rational and logical paradigms as the only lenses on Reality. We enjoyed the exploration, the dipping into the dark waters of imagination, archetypes and poetry, not as we have narrated it out of all its mystery, but as unfathomable and beauteous worlds.

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If you follow astrology, you may be aware that March is considered a seminal month of 2023 with many planetary movements that are supposed to affect us collectively and individually. One of these movements is that of the planet of limits and structures, Saturn, into Pisces which is the archetype of unstructured formlessness. I find this of particular interest in terms of traditions that move in the dark waters of consciousness, like the dance I offer.

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Many women I teach find a passionate, unrestrained, and energetic expression of Body a challenging invitation. This is not surprising as we have had centuries of spiritualities that have proposed stillness, particular types of modest and restrained actions, and the controlling pf passion, as the template for a spiritual life. For women this has been specially devastating as it has exacerbated our already problematic approach to Body which often includes shame and guilt.

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Rudra is the wild, savage Deity that howls into the night and, like a violent storm, uproots that which is unmoving, tears apart that which has congealed into the paralysis of permanence, and barrels down into our structures that resist transformation. Rudra turns form into movement, emotion into its elemental nature of water, fire, earth and sky, and returns us to the terrifying fragility of our hearts.

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I recently had the extraordinary privilege of an inquiry into the sensation of Unease, which in the Rasa philosophy of dance is called Bibhatsa. As part of the guidance for that intensive, I encountered the archetypes of the Beggar and the Guardian deities of the cave.

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