For some reason, the theme of dancing has been popping up in my writings.  Recently, I reviewed Mindfulness: an 8-week plan to find peace in a frantic world by Mark Williams and Dan Penman.  It’s a lovely book and as with any manual that guides us through our suffering, I approach it with a seriously critical stance.  Mark’s book makes it easier because of the chocolate meditation in the first chapter.  But letting that go, letting it dissolve, I am also aware that in my own struggles through anxiety and depression, I’ve never done well with the authoritarian, directive approach to healing.  I’m very much of the “let’s eat the pudding to see if it proves to be worthwhile.”  Yes, dear reader, the correct aphorism is that “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.”  In other words, like Zen, the words are devoid of teachings; the experience is the practice.

So with this book, I started with Chapter 1 and practiced each day to truly experience the cultivation of a different stance to my life as it is.  Here.  Now.  And yes, the chocolate helped.  But what helped more than anything is the connection with a lovely idea that our practice is one of learning to dance with life again.  I feel like I’m surfacing out of a heavy fog or maybe making land from a storm.  Whatever the metaphor of coming into ground from chaos, it feels like it is time to dance into my life.

Whole-heartedly.