Evan Bortnick http://musa-vocalis.de/
Gesangsunterricht Wiesbaden
I have to admit, a part of me loves this quote. It definitely got me thinking about my own beliefs. The one arising now is about how the real juice of life, the liveliness of life is wrapped around the drama of life. Like the chicken or the egg— did I love being on stage because of this belief or did the belief arise from my being on stage?
Whichever way it ran, this quote is precipitating the new question; ‘is it possible to experience life in another way?’ And I have to admit, over the last few years, another way seems to be consolidating. I find this hard to describe without resorting to clichés or buzzwords; peaceful, balanced, spiritual, harmonious, cultivating-stillness. What I’m dancing around with these words is something which, when I was younger, only happened when I was exhausted and about to drift off to sleep. Recently, though, its profoundness overwhelms me, without being even the slightest bit tired.
What I notice is that trying to talk about this in polite conversation seems to make people uneasy. Perhaps it hasn’t integrated itself enough so that I’m at ease with expressing it. Perhaps it sounds to others like I’m trying to proselytize for some new religion or spiritual discipline. Perhaps I just know many people for whom the Life=Drama equation is hard-wired enough so that anything else sounds weird. Every once in a while though, I’ll express it or they’ll hear it in a way which sounds refreshing and life-giving. I’m trying to get better at that.
There’s a great irony here. A potent part of what makes this new ‘stillness’ stable is its very lack of words. Funny, who would have thought that wordlessness would be desirable for someone as talkative as I am? Yet I’m finding more and more that going into wordlessness makes life’s drama at once more intense and less destabilizing. It’s also proved to be vital waters for the roots of anything creative.
Carl Rogers, the father of ‘client-centered’ therapy coined the term ‘unconditional, positive regard’. It feels recently like the wordlessness I’m referring to is a form of unconditional, positive regard regarding not only others, but the Self as well. All those little judgments…..good, bad, want, don’t-want, logical, emotional, right, wrong, etc….dwindle to non-existence. I always know they’ll return, but it’s SO refreshing to be free of their weight for a time.
Few love a good movie as much as I do. In a movie, you know it’s a movie. You can take a break any time you wish. What if life is like that and this wordlessness is the break? So with honors to Alfred H., one of the best, my new credo is that his sentiment is only one side of this bright coin!
Evan Bortnick http://musa-vocalis.de/
Gesangsunterricht Wiesbaden
Evan Bortnick 