Dance, Be Happy

 

 

 

“Dance, when you’re broken open. Dance, if you’ve torn the bandage off. Dance in the middle of the fighting. Dance in your blood. Dance when you’re perfectly free.”

~ Rumi

 

A crisp autumn morning. Somewhere on the planet Earth. The 21st century had just started five years back.

She was standing in the kitchen in her home. Waiting for the water to boil for her tea.

Suddenly she found herself gently swaying to some happy rhythm. There was no music playing. Neither on the music system that was in the living room, nor on the little CD player in the bedroom upstairs.

Yet the music was making her dance. She was not only able to hear this music but also catch its rhythm so well that her feet, her arms, her body was moving in harmony with it. The experience felt so beautiful. It felt so happy. It was happiness. Happiness that needed no reason, that simply was, within.

As the water came to a boil and her hands busied themselves with the making of her tea and toasting two slices of the multi-grain bread she always enjoyed for her breakfast, she remembered. She remembered the previous night.

The night before in her sleep, this happiness within had first revealed itself. And this morning she was still experiencing it.

Sitting at her kitchen table and enjoying her toast and tea, she kept remembering more. This time with more details, clear details. The night before while sleeping she had experienced a strange sensation, whose clear memory had lingered on in the morning.

She had been reading a book by her Guru and when she felt tired she simply sat in some silent meditation before going to sleep. It was a relaxed and relaxing sleep, almost like a baby’s sleep. She was sleeping on the futon on the floor in her study where she always read and meditated. And sometime during the night or early morning hours she felt an unusual sensation in her body.

It was as if something was crawling inside – up from the belly and into her head. It felt like this crawling thing was actually moving inside in the upward direction. Her head (or was it something else inside her head – she couldn’t tell) was spinning for a few seconds. Then the spinning stopped.

She remembered thinking in her sleep that she should not open her eyes. It was as if a part of her mind was giving a clear indication to her that she should keep her eyes shut because if she opened them the spinning would stop, the whole sensation would go away. And she didn’t want that to happen. She wanted to fully experience that experience, to be fully aware of what was happening. She was conscious of all this in her sleep.

Perhaps it was all a matter of only few seconds. But it felt much longer to her in her sleep. She felt so light and happy after this experience, completely unburdened. The feeling was as real as it can be. As if something had sort of gone free, as if some internal blockage had been set loose all by itself. And all this while she slept her conscious sleep.

May be the music within started right when the knot had been cut loose. May be the silence of the deep yet conscious sleep gave birth to the sweet music within. Music that leads one to silence.

Or perhaps she had dreamed it all, and her dream was a musical one. Music that awakens one to a new dawn. Music that purifies. Music that frees one up. Music that makes one dance.

 

 

As her breakfast ended she was convinced that the dancing to the music within her that morning was a proof – at least for her – that she wasn’t dreaming that sensation during the night. It had indeed happened.

She understood that it was in fact immaterial whether it was in the form of a dream or something else. If it was a dream, it was one of those dreams that are truly real, truly concrete. After all, how could she know – how does anyone know, for that matter – what is dream and what is real? If she experienced something, it is perhaps real, perhaps true.

She was happy. She was dancing. Dancing to the music within. What more could she ask from life? What more can anyone ask?

Dance alone with rhythm and significance can express something of the occult or of the Divine as much as writing or poetry or art… 

~Sri Aurobindo, Letters on Yoga, 17 July 1933