STUDY DIARIES: Dances with Cars

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Since 1970 I, along with an old university friend, have wondered just why some people love speed.

In my younger years I used to race karts and until recently my conclusion had been that it was the experience of mastery – the wonderful feeling when you managed to power drift through a corner on just the right line, or that oh so elusive relaxed attention when a lap came out just right at a faster time than before.

But now I think I have found the answer, and surprisingly it has links to dance.

In a previous post I talked about how dancing, at its best, uses conscious movement to express our ‘true’ movement of thinking. Notice the use of the use of the word thinkING instead of thought, which could be construed as a fixed item rather than the mobile and dynamic activity that I am describing.

This ‘true’ movement is something some people want to express and dance is one form.

The other can also be driving or flying well.

In line with the previous post, to me it makes sense that we have an inner experience of our thinking being able to move instantaneously, and we feel good when we can manage to express it physically, whether it be with our bodies, or through a technological construct such as a car – or an aircraft. Indeed Ayrton Senna has been described as someone who could dance with the car.

So now I have a far better explanation of why I am such a petrol head, dancer and lover of flying!

But why is this post in the section of the study diaries?

If you read Scaligero or Steiner, their wisdom is predicated on developing a true experience of such a living, mobile, dynamic thinking. It is not something you can really put into words, which are fixed entities.

However it IS something we can experience.

The difficulty is that any characterization of it in fixed form, whether it be in words, pictures, or a materialistic science, will always – always – miss the point. Such expressions can dimly point to the living idea but the listener or spectator will always need to be active. They will have to re-enliven such fixed and dead forms with their own thinking in order to reproduce the living experience.

As I have said before, this is why Steiner and such authors are so hard to understand. In their writing they are purposely trying to short-circuit your analytical brain, which likes fixed constructs,  in order to try and help you move into the living experience of the idea.

BOUNDARY STORIES 8: By Chants

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“There is more to being human than meets the eye
We think we know who we are
But if we fix the image
We will never see our truth”

Edwin received the next message on his doorstep on a grey rainy English day that matched his mood.

In truth, he liked this sort of weather. It felt cozier than any summer’s day with a bright blue sky. A point he viewed with perplexed amusement.

In the light of being solo again, he had taken himself off to a meditation retreat where he had learnt some Tai Chi, practiced Zen meditation and enjoyed American Indian chanting as he had braved a hot sweat-lodge ceremony. A smorgasbord of hippy-ness that fitted his variable mood.

He had forgotten about the anonymous messages, despite the fact that it was they that had provided the original impetus to attend the retreat. Something very different for him that reflected a new found drive to better understand himself.

Two days later he received a call that his mother’s condition had deteriorated and that she was not likely to last the day. After some frenzied packing he drove to the home where she lived, reflecting gratefully that he was glad he had gone to see her more in the recent months.

When he arrived an attendant showed him to his mother’s room and commented that the day had been a difficult one for her. His mother had become unconscious and was having trouble with her breathing. Edwin’s heart went out to her because he knew her worst fear was of drowning and not being able to breathe. It was as if at the gate of death such fears had a life of their own and were purposely confronting her, attracted by such a weakness.

As he sat by the bed his mother, seemingly sensing a change, became more panicked, grasping at her breath as though clinging to the last straw of life. It was then that he received as a gift – he could think of no other word for it – an intuition that he should sing to her. And so he began a chant that he had learnt on the retreat – pitching his voice soft and low, timing his chanting to match the rhythm of her breathing.

It was if a switch had been thrown, providing a light in the darkness. She immediately relaxed and began to breathe calmly as he kept up his chanting. He brushed a stray hair back from her forehead, feeling the wonder of how life changed and how it was that the child became the comforter to the parent.

It was only a short time later that, as if his mother had been waiting all day for him to arrive, her breathing slowly became more shallow and reduced. As he carried on chanting her breaths became less frequent and finally…

Naturally…

Stopped.

He carried on chanting for a few minutes more – rather for himself than for his mother.

When he stopped, his tears came – quietly – matching the peace of her death. They were not angry or upset tears but rather – fulfilled – rightfully placed.

After seeing to the details he walked back to the car feeling somehow more whole, as though this was a moment he had been meant for, a seminal point in his life. He had carried his mother over a threshold, gently and lovingly laying her soul to rest in a safe place where he knew that whatever followed, it would be right for her.

Despite all his shortcomings and self-doubts this was one thing he knew he had done well.

© Charles Tolman 2016.