The Great Dance

The body spoke calmly to the mind and heart as one whose foundation is the very earth. It spoke kindly, gently - yet in words firm and immutable as a mountain’s root.

“Do not hide your sorrows in me,” said the body. “Do not seclude here the grieving which neither your thoughts nor affections can bear.”

“Why not?” asked the mind, somewhat indignant, while the heart carefully pondered.

“Because if you do,” said the body, “I must accept such stiffening intrusions obediently. Yet I yearn to dance instead. I would move to the joyous rhythms of life, allowing the music of divine madness to ripple and rumble through every cell of this temple which I am. I would set chakras shimmering and auras radiating. I would quiver with the everlasting energies of eternity. Deliver me from your sadness and you shall witness the Great Dance of Being!”

“I am nearly persuaded,” the mind allowed, “yet a smallish matter occupies my attention. I would set you free even now, but cannot spare the moment necessary to secure your release.”

“A smallish matter consumes my senses as well,” admitted the heart. “No bigger than a pea is it in the grand scheme of things, yet a true princess would feel it beneath a hundred mattresses.

“And what is this ‘smallish matter’ which is nevertheless so large that that it overmasters you both?” inquired the body.

The heart glazed and glanced, then both muttered askance:

“Why, it is but a memory.
A remembrance like a Rose
With thorns for its foes.
It snags our attention
And pricks our intention
leaving nothing to spare
For the joy that you mention.”

The body considered the poetics of the wounded heart and troubled mind, and spoke to them thus: “Look upon me whom you so often have disdained and disregarded. Do you know what lurks just beneath the surface of those sufferings? It cannot be well seen by such eyes as yours, but reach forth and touch. Feel the raw essence which emanates from the core of me.”

So heart and mind reached into the body, beneath its pack-load of perturbing, problematic protuberances. And in the quiet, contented, profound depths within, a wonder occurred.

. . . the Great Dance began.