Be the change you want to see.

so i know it's been a little while since i wrote here.
sorry not sorry i've been trying to write stories!
which, yay! =) I'm getting better at them, and starting to assemble longer fics more consistently.

Last night I made it back to dance for the first time in like two months? maybe three? because burning man and then burning man prep before that basically ate up all my spare time in my weird ass schedule...

I volunteered to make last night's altar. I like making altars, whether for worship or for meditation. (I'll try to remember to add one of the photos I took of it, I think it turned out real pretty.)

So Thursday night is a meditation focused dance called Refuge. And there were folks there who were familiar to me (C, S, B, A) and several who were not. No worries. It was fun to get out there, and move in all the ways that "normal life" doesn't encourage. I always wind up sore down my ribs and inner thighs and neck, but in the good way. I use dance as a means of embody*ing myself, of exploring the edges of my physical abilities, flexibility, and rhythm.

Dance itself was good. We dance to warm up, then have a short seated silent meditation, a short walking meditation, return to dance. Repeat that silent-walk-dance, and then finish with a final seated meditation and a short check in circle at the end.

My places of unease last night were to do with two other people's behavior. Behavior that I viewed as close to boundary violations?

To start with lemme just say that there's common protocols in most pagan-type spaces I've been in, even public spaces. Nobody would sit on someone else's established meditation space (yoga mat, sitting cushion etc.) And yet that happened, last night. One of the new dancers totally sat on C's rug and cushion, and took C's singing bowl and was rolling the chime from it. C teaches the class.

I breathed and let it happen, because C did, was focused on DJing the dance. Another new dancer spent a lot of time in front of my altar, dancing and shaking his hands over it. I've never seen anything like it.

After three songs or so, fifteen minutes maybe, he moved away and was dancing and shaking his hands over C's station. When he moved to dance elsewhere in the room, I spent a moment or two visualizing a quick plucking away of any unwelcome or not-belonging energies from both places, like I was sweeping up spiderwebs off them, and then quickly grounded the energy from both places. I thought it was a good just-in-case.

Feels like that's something I do now. Protect places. Thank you, Temple Guardians of Galaxia Temple.

Later in the dance, the same dancer who sat on C's rug took one of my roses from home, that I had put on the altar as part of the offering, and came to me, offering it to me to smell.

whew boy, that was uncomfortable. But like before, I breathed through it being uncomfortable, it didn't hurt me or anyone to have her do it, it just felt a little like rudeness?

But you could tell from her whole affect that she didn't mean it to be a boundary incursion or a breach in protocol. She was joyful, offering me something beautiful. So I smelled my own rose and continued dancing. She later restored the rose to where she found it on the altar, which I found reassuring.

Turned out at the end of dance, when we are speaking briefly about our experience of the evening (if we choose to) that both those new dancers were here for the first time, and both had energy-sensing habits that involved shaking their hands at the thing that feels like it's radiating energy.

So the guy who was shaking his hands over my altar, was enjoying? or experiencing, the energy the altar was giving.

Which is actually quite a compliment, as I composed it on the fly out of the elements I brought from home.

I did good.

And again thanks to the Temple Guardians training, which emphasizes that when you observe people's behavior, all you have observed is exactly THAT: BEHAVIOR, and only behavior. The STORIES that we tell ourselves about someone else's behavior, are only that. Stories we are telling.

They tell us not to assume we know what's going on for anyone, and to allow a variety of expressive behavior, as long as it's not, like, harming themselves or someone else.

It was a good practice to remember last night. Because it turned out that basically, the stories I was telling, were far far off of what the folks themselves told us was going on for them.

Compassion is a PRACTICE. I don't get better at compassion without being conscious of it, both for myself and toward others.

I love these dance classes. I keep learning things about myself and others.

I love making altars. Gonna volunteer to do that some more, and I can help pitch sometimes in for assembly and tear down till R and C come back.

I love our open hearted weird wonderful community.