All my life I have rejected the offered set route. I have built on my lived experience. My lived experience continues to be my guide and my growing bedrock. This is because I am a person who has always conversed intensely with his interior self.
Some time after my epiphany of 2013, when I saw my own heart after my first Biodanza experiences blasted it open, I completely abandoned outcomes and I focused purely on the journey.
I had been in this state for many years previously, because I had isolated my true self behind defences. What hit me during my first intense Biodanza connections was the loss of my identity into the presence of another’s identity.
After these shock waves, I could only focus purely on the journey, because I had utterly lost all connection to previously acquired inner certainties I had assumed I could rely on as fixed and determined. I did not have any handholds or footholds to use as my guides.
The past had vanished in a flash. I could not use my past to understand what had happened to me, or where I was going, or even what manner of identity I could call my own. I knew only that this was obviously blissful and harmless.
What next? From 2013 onwards, all I had left was the journey. I asked questions of my friends in the Biodanza tribe. I researched through the Internet to try and understand what had happened to me. I shared where I was now with others who might help me understand this untrodden path.
Much later on, maybe four or five years later, I came to the understanding that there is nothing to arrive at, nothing to understand. This is my “Everything Is”, when the vastness of Acceptance beyond intellectual searching makes an ever widening landing stage to tread on. And so my journey never ends.
My days became filled not by my actions or by my intentions, but by an ever growing sense of validation in the moment. I had an overwhelming sense that I was living in a completely new space. Nothing was familiar.
Nothing I could choose to do had meaning any more, because I could find nothing from my lived past that shed light on where I was. All I had for certain was the feeling of a gentle but tangible joy, much like that indeterminate feeling of butterflies in the tummy when in love.
The big difference here, then and today, is that I am in love with everything, all of the time, and I have no single object of that love. This state of grace is almost beyond description. Its main quality is newness. Everywhere I go with my body and / or with my senses, my experiences are often like one recently hatched, who is endlessly surprised at the continual newness of it all.
The joy and the peace of it is unshakeably strong.
What once opened to me so long ago through the regular practice of Biodanza will remain open. Open now, it will never close.
It will be with me till my dying day.
“Journey” is my signature poem I wrote at that time.
I find a lot of peace rises in me as I begin working in our little patch of green garden.
I am rested.
These days, if I have no physical stress, such as fatigue, my state of inner stillness comes in closer. And I only have to turn my attention inwards to feel that same old Butterflies in the Tummy of being in love!
This was the state of being I entered, during my first experiences of Biodanza, and, with the witness of some shining soulfriends, I underwent an excavation which openly revealed my naked heart to me and to others way back in 2013, a year I call the “Year of my Life”.
I have grown to recognise this feeling of being permanently in love as a state of Grace. I am vaguely curious to find similar people who can “swap notes” about it with me. But I have begun to think that analysis or the naming of objects won’t change anything for me, nor will it show me anything new.
The state I entered into in the Year of My Life was propelled there by a number of emotional shocks or Epiphanies, which I have written up elsewhere on my EveryNow blog.
My emotional landscape is characterised by an illogical sense of continual and continuing newness.
Illogical, because a new awareness or new experience of feelings generally subsides over time, and the outlines decay to take on the perspective of something old, of something like “been there, done that”.
There is nothing old hat about my emotional state whenever I touch into my heart and feel the love. I cannot detect anything I can refer to as, “Oh, yes those finished and tidied away things over there!”
This puzzles me when I think about it. But that’s as far as it goes when I hold it up to examine it.
In fact, the place I have reached inside is like a wide open feeling of shared universal connection when walking a forest trail. Wide open, yes, except it’s “bigger on the inside than the outside”.
With my most sacred space being all filled up, comes a perception of pure energy, disembodied and unrelated to spatial position.
Where good fiction is made believable by a suspension of disbelief, so the sense of being in love in isolation from and absolutely removed from any object for the love, takes on the form of a belief.
Like a participant in an audience at a dramatic presentation, my sensation of this love is high intensity, at high volume, yet peaceful, without forcefulness.
So, on every occasion when I touch into my heart, I acknowledge the presence of it all over again. And of course, with the freshness of a love renewed daily, it feels like it’s here now for the very first time!
Being thus reassured of its presence deeply inside, I put thoughts of questioning aside and get on with things.
I cannot grasp it, because it is not something I need to take or possess. Anyhow, it doesn’t have any attributes of possession.
For most of my adult life, I have navigated some fixed stars, with maxims I created, like:
“Love is the answer to which no question exists”,
“No question; answer is before”
“Summer and winter come and go
See the sense of season
Sleep naked of reason.
Old soil is new soil
In the dark seed’s eye”
What has opened in me links back to one or other of these concepts, and these in turn link back to key events and crossroads in my earlier life.
In turn, I track back along centuries of striving and surviving, trillions of gene iterations, through interstellar dust lanes hustling potential, to the beginning of beginnings.
How do you feel when you’re in love?
Your mind will take you eventually or immediately towards the object of your affection.
What has arrived in me, intense love, quenches every last residue of fear. The awareness of such love is self sustaining. It feels like perpetual motion eternally safe !
This place. This place of perpetuity, where the perception exists of itself, and in sole occupation of the heart of loving!
The only way I have to begin to describe it is to see how it belongs.
It belongs to itself alone.
At the same time, the only other two ways to express it are to sing or scream out loud like a frantic teenager, or to go share the joy, in every possible way I have learned how to, with all those who do have ears and eyes.
I worked in the garden for some hours after breakfast. It’s satisfying to see the patch of bare, sieved earth I prepared a few weeks ago now sprouting up and up! These will be the mixed Wildflowers and Traditional Meadow Grasses which I ordered when lockdown began.
Wildflower meadow seedlings
I find a lot of peace rises in me as I begin working in our little patch of green.
Today would have been the first day of Colourfest 2020. Several friends say this outdoor Dorset festival was their top favourite. They are posting warm and warming memories on Facebook.
I am rested. I find these days that if I have no physical stress, such as fatigue, my state of inner stillness comes in closer. And I only have to turn my attention inwards to feel that same butterflies in the tummy of being in love!
This was the state of being I entered, during my first experiences of Biodanza, and, with the witness of some shining soulfriends, I underwent an excavation which openly revealed my naked heart to me and to others way back in 2013, the “Year of my Life”.
I have grown to recognise this feeling of being permanently in love as a state of Grace. I am vaguely curious to find similar people who can “swap notes” about it with me. But I have begun to think that analysis or the naming of objects won’t change anything for me, nor will it show me anything new.
The state I entered into in the Year of My Life was propelled there by a number of emotional shocks or Epiphanies, which I have written up elsewhere on my EveryNow blog.
My emotional landscape is characterised by an illogical sense of continual and continuing newness.
Illogical, because a new awareness or new experience of feelings generally subsides over time, and the outlines decayed to take on the perspective of something old, of something like “been there, done that”.
There is nothing old hat about my emotional state whenever I touch into my heart and feel the love. I cannot detect anything I can refer to as, “Oh, yes those finished and tidied away things over there!”
This puzzles me when I think about it. But that’s as far as it goes when I hold it up to examine it.
In fact, the place I have reached inside I compare to the experience for a pair of good friends who are out strolling in companionable mindful wonder along an ancient forest trail. It is a wide open feeling of shared universal connection.
As the well-known saying goes from the Doctor Who series to explain the TARDIS inexplicable hyper-lightspeed time travel capabilities, “the TARDIS is bigger on the inside than the outside”.
With my most sacred space being all filled up, comes a perception of pure energy, disembodied and unrelated to spatial position. Where good fiction is made believable by a suspension of disbelief, so the sense of being in love in isolation from and absolutely removed from any object for the love, takes on the form of a belief.
Like a participant in an audience at a dramatic presentation, my sensation of this love is high intensity, at high volume, yet peaceful, without forcefulness.
So, on every occasion when I touch into my heart, I acknowledge the presence of it all over again (and of course it feels like it’s here now for the very first time!) and being thus reassured of its presence deeply inside, I put thoughts of questioning aside and get on with things.
I cannot grasp it, because it is not something I want to take or possess. Anyhow, it doesn’t have any attributes of possession.
For most of my adult life, I have navigated some fixed stars, with maxims I created. Such as:
“Love is the answer to which no question exists”,
and
“See the sense of season Sleep naked of reason. Old soil is new soil In the dark seed’s eye”
What has opened in me links back to one or other of these concepts, and these in turn link back to key events and crossroads in my earlier life. In turn, I track back along centuries of striving and surviving, trillions of gene iterations, through interstellar dust lanes hustling potential, to the beginning of beginnings.
How do you feel when you’re in love?
Your mind will take you eventually or immediately towards the object of your affection.
What has arrived in me, intense love, quenches every last residue of fear. The awareness of such love is self sustaining. It feels like perpetual motion eternally safe !
The place of perpetuity, where the emotion exists of itself, and in sole occupation of the heart of loving, the only way I have to begin to describe it is to see how it belongs.
It belongs to itself alone.
At the same time, the only other two ways to express it are to sing or scream out loud like a frantic teenager, or to go share the joy, in every possible way I have learned how to, with all those who do have ears and eyes. Exactly as I believe do you, dear Reader!
I wrote the poem ‘Journey’, just as my heart was beginning to open in 2013. The lifelong search for meaning was both beginning and ending.
I have been knocking at an open door. I have been straining to hear echoes from my voice. I have woken up to drag my feet through the unexplained, inexplicable days with my eyes closed.
When an animal like a dog or a bird spots an object of interest, it will race to it. It takes no time out for risk assessment. It consults no preflight checklist, it undertakes no critical path analysis of its intention, and it generally measures its actions against its peer group behaviour not at all.
When “I”, Peter the Pilley, lean into “I” the animal, I have no use for the old and much-thumbed ‘Wiki of What-Ifs’. I can leave it to sit on the shelf in the library of my mind.
The naked flame has no label. The naked flame hurts. That’s all there is to it from my perspective.
My perspective!
Picture a tree in a woodland setting. Here is the label neatly printed, affixed to the trunk. It confirms beyond all doubt this entity’s identity, because it is written: TREE.
Turn away and look elsewhere. Millions of labels are attached to millions of objects, most with subtext and supplementary information.
The naked flame needs its label. Either I acquire it by burning myself, or it is given to me by admonition.
The World of Labels is acquired from our human beginnings. It is a useful and often necessary complement to my navigation. Labels can disappear entirely under the influence of a hallucinogen. Labels will reappear later to be where I am, only to hang around one step in front of me — as persistent and ingratiating self-appointed guides — ready with their irrefutables… “this is this” and “that is that”.
Desperation, frustration and plain old misery can arise if the world of labels is accepted unquestioned. Labels can cage the heart and trap the soul. I am talking about barriers tagged “What if” and “I can’t” and again “not now, some other time”.
It is in the years since the Year of my Life, 2013, that I have seen through the heaviness of damp woollen shrouds, all richly hung with labels. Gradually, as I see mirrored everywhere the living-beingness of things, I have experienced over and over the thrill of recognition.
I stop. I see here the waving antennæ of a single lacewing at rest. What is it? What is it sensing? What does it search for, sifting the sightless drifts of air for what signal? I stop and ask Lacewing.
I stop at a stone on the footpath. It is different, maybe in shape or colour. I stop and ask Stone where did you acquire your shape? What processes and over how long originated your stoniness?
There is a curious, unmistakable recognition of excitement aroused by pausing to enquire in this simple way, where no parent, schoolteacher, employer has shown, instructed or directed before.
The emotional charge in such personal address between I and an object in my reach is magnified and becomes tremulous, because I’m so aware I am unwitnessed and we share intimacy intensely alone in each other’s company.
There is an urgency in the attraction of this feeling. It is related to, but not exclusive of, the search for an ultimate meaning.
I wanted to repeat the thrill of seeing both myself and the lacewing’s mind disappear under the cross-examination of reading the Mirror of Thisness.
Gradually, over a long period of time, I made my choice. I chose to ask, to see if I can see the unseen in everything I walk past. The more I stop to examine the macrocosm in the microcosm of my immediate surroundings, the more I began to melt away as “I” observer.
The intensity of what is mirrored to me from the life-energies which surround me everywhere, of which in truth I myself am composed, is perfectly able, if I allow it, to blow me away.
Blown away like the seeds on a dandelion. Like the mist over a morning pond. Like drunk with the most intoxicating liquor ever brewed by the ancients of days in millenia past!
I started going on methodical, mostly solo, backpack rambles in 1978. Till now, in my sixties, I must have covered many thousands of miles, almost all in the south of England.
I went for a walk in Roydon’s Wood, near Brockenhurst in the New Forest, one spring not long ago. The months of build-up of house moving stresses demanded release in some forest bathing.
This woodland walk was not like the others. It felt like it was my very first. The woods and the Big Green of the scenery were not specially different. I was. The intensity of the recognition of pleasure at finding myself at last alone among so many mature trees on a windless Spring day was so surprising that my identity as a social creature had shrunk away. I had become little more than a sensitive receiver and I was filled up with awe and joy.
As I walked, very slowly indeed, “I” experienced the magic of Not Being Here in all its wonder and beauty. I knew what was happening. My self-referential identity had dwindled to unimportant. I willingly gave myself up to the awe of the moment. I had no need at all to reach out and label.
There are many who need little, even no preparation, and who “get it”, this discipline of enquiry into Thisness.
For me, it has been decades of stumbling, falling down, failing, being rescued, not recognising received love, ferociously hating, self-sabotage, asleep-waking, when all I needed was simply to stop and open the eyes of my eyes.
I guess years of meticulous study and self-disciplined enquiry could have brought about the reunion of my heart within my identity, but I always rebelled against training and self-discipline.
As it turns out, a time came at the start of 2013, when I met and engaged with people who allowed their hearts to share their visibility with my own.
This happened at a time when my courage to understand matched my curiosity discover. I began the regular practice of Biodanza. The result was an emotional earthquake, an explosive event which removed the decades old protective layers I had placed around my heart.
Since that moment, I have been working to revere and celebrate the continuing discoveries. My EveryNow blog is one way to record these.
My heart is an opening heart. It is no different to your heart. No different to the heart of a stone on the footpath!
Only connect! In an inevitable plurality of beings, I allow myself to disassemble into Beingness. As often as possible, I melt away the walls of the mind. Let the sighing relief of simply being alive fully take over from the exacting exigencies of imposed imperatives.
The entirety of the potential of the universe is yours and mine, and it only asks to be asked for!
The self I call “I” is a flat calm transparent natural boundary. Clear water is deep down, air is deep up.
The surface is almost colourless, without ripple or feature. It extends without horizon, but never leaves my sight.
In such a state I can ride and stay in balance during the time I am presented in the here and now with thoughts, feelings, distractions and discomfort.
Here, from my surface I offer this.
It is through my extraordinary journey of unanticipated heart awakening, around the time I began the regular practice of Biodanza in February 2013, that I know I can fully access healing. That, together with other understandings related to identification of ancient hurts and the resolution of previously unrecognised confusions, have granted my awareness of myself the opportunity of expansion and room in which to expand.
As I become self-aware, aware of the sanctity of the gift of life being lived and experienced more and more abundantly, so in equal measure I value the gift of life in relation to other living sentient beings.
What comes from living in such a new and richly jewelled life is a greater gratitude than I have ever known. It has far reaching implications on my remaining days of life. It is the ever-growing understanding that my life is not a discrete occurrence only in me. I am a pixel of humanity, and life is living through all things and beings, sentient and not sentient.
I am a happy ripple in a continuum of life. Life lives me as I live life.
Here’s the thing… Nothing has changed! Everything is utterly different and constantly completely new! The newness is “EveryNow”.
I begin. My journey of exploration and discovery begins all over again from the very start every moment. Nothing existed in the previous instant of this awareness of existence to guide me to where I am. At any given moment, I look forward with barely containable excitement to the certainty of discoveries in the moment following.
I think of it like this. For the first fifty years I had been “Living to Love”, which is decorous, pretty, even beautiful, but it is an existence limited by inconsequential superficiality.
As my heart awakes and presents its face towards me to greet me, my heart starts “Loving to Live”.
This is the wholesome, plain and simple adoption of the richly textured reality of here and now, of “EveryNow”.
I am no longer secreted away in a place of safety of my own elaborate construction, but I go shining with gratitude and wonder at the mere fact of being vital and alive.
This is a state of being which is totally raw, exposed and vulnerable, but simultaneously full of living courage, and naked certainty.
Unencumbered by fear, my state of being can freely develop in its self-expression in the knowledge that it has its permanent residence in the secure environment of the heart’s pure and spectacular peace.
We are all capable of healing.
It’s about trusting love to come into close contact inside my most personal sacred space, and knowing that there, in that serene place of peace, I can heal.
For those who regularly practice Biodanza – and I am one of some few hundred thousand every week in dozens of different countries – there is a sense of coming home attaching to the word Mindfulness.
From way back, when I began to reflect on the big questions, up to today, I will almost daily catapult my mind into the Now by reference to the notion of my own death. It is a cleansing act which sharpens my gratitude and my wonder for being me being alive in this moment – right here now.
It’s with my regular practice of Biodanza that I am becoming accustomed to the practice – not only the idea – of living my daily life more and more ‘in the Moment’.
That’s to say I am going about the business of my days without tripping up over selfconscious self-referential thoughts. Less and less do I feel the need to question my motives, still less do I bother to direct my thoughts in at myself, where there’s a treadmill for thoughts with nothing better to do than trudge round and around.
What takes my mind away from mental closed circuits today is my gratitude for the pleasures of inclusive warm comradeship I feel from my fellow Biodancers.
Yes, I might still be lonely in my days and nights, but my friends in the Dance of Life have reflected my natural inner joy back to me from their integrity and respect and unconditional trust.
In Biodanza, something as simple as feeling joyful can be revealed as depending on nobody around me. I can see that the joy in the eyes of a partner in the dance spells out happiness all by itself. His or her joy doesn’t depend on me. It arises between us in the shared act of dance. We recognise it is our naked flame of humanity which each has made possible to reveal to the other in the unguarded intimacy of our moments of communion.
Biodanza to me is a spritual reawakening and a growth in potential of the whole person through wordless self expressive freestyle movement, mediated through music, under expert guidance and in the companionship of others whose integrity and trust is strong, explicit and bonding.
I have not dared to hope that Biodanza will always continue to reveal more subtleties of innerscape, more outward expanses of conscious joy, more awareness of the same upward spiralling awakening in those all around me.
I had not dared to hope until I asked Natasha, who has some eight years’ Biodanza. She says it’s perfectly clear that the beneficial effect goes on getting higher, deeper, broader both on the inside and out, and it will never end.
I’m reminded of the illusion of those lonely parallel tracks. In the experience of Busy-busy living, when I think I am alone on the path, I blink, look around and see others on parallel paths. As we face the horizon, all our different divergent paths converge, merge and blaze together in a revitalising sunrise. Or sunset.
The View at 72+ 