WHILE GOD DANCED ON MY BACK
Dan Holden
President, Daniel Holden Associates, Co-Founder, ESPíRITU— SPIRITUAL HEALING WITH HORSES. Co-founder, VETERANS EQUINE ALLIANCE— Horses & Veterans: Common Ground, Extraordinary Journey
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STORY #149
WHILE GOD DANCED ON MY BACK
Rachel Naomi Remen, MD tells a funny story about a group of physicians at an offsite retreat with the late Joseph Campbell (From Kitchen Table Wisdom, Penguin Books, 1996). The focus of the retreat was on the experience of the sacred. At one point he showed an image of the “Dancing Shiva”. Shiva is the Hindu word for the masculine aspect of God. The image is striking. Shiva’s many arms are flung into the air each holding the abundance of life’s offering. Everything is burning with bronze flames. With his one leg raised into the air, Shiva’s other leg rests squarely on the naked back of a little man crouched over intensely studying a leaf he holds in his hand. Despite the blazing beauty of the scene the physicians were riveted on this little man and wondered who he was.
Campbell laughed and said, “ He is a person so caught up in the study of the material world that he doesn’t know the living God is dancing on his back!”
…….
Eight hundred years earlier on the other side of the planet a great Sufi Muslim cleric, Hafiz, explained how we could miss something so amazing: “…Most everyone becomes ill from guarding nothing…most everyone becomes diseased from making love to nothing.” (From, It Has Not Rained Light, Daniel Ladinsksi, trans.).
“Most everyone” is a lot of people!?
Most of us are busy guarding, defending, reacting to, pursuing, arguing about, striving towards, hoping to save ourselves by getting involved in… nothing at all. Watch the political headlines and see for yourself. In my executive leadership coaching work, upwards of 70% of leaders lead primarily in a reactive, fear-driven way. We convince ourselves we’re reacting to circumstances around us. In reality we’re reacting to our own inner story — assumptions, beliefs, conditioning — about those circumstances. Meanwhile, the living God is dancing on our backs. I was about to get a reminder of this.
Closer to home and only 100 years ago, the great Austrian poet Rainier Maria Rilke made a similar observation as he watched a storm sweep in across the fields.
…What we choose to fight is so tiny!
What fights us is so great!
If only we would let ourselves be dominated
as things do by some immense storm,
we would become strong too, and not need names.
When we win it’s with small things,
and the triumph itself makes us small.
What is extraordinary and eternal
does not want to be bent by us.
The ‘little man’ part in us seems easily seduced by minutiae while the extraordinary Dancing Shiva practices dance moves, waiting for us to grow tired of the distraction of small things.
Nature herself is a doorway to move beyond the mundane. Something magical happens when surrounded by horses in nature. These magnificent creatures seem able, by their presence alone, to dissolve away the small concerns we are pre-occupied with and allow the extraordinary and eternal to shine through.
………..
I had been having trouble with high blood pressure, despite being on meds. During a recent visit with my physician we came up with a plan to alter my diet — more organic, vegetables, less processed food — and see if this could make a difference. We agreed to meet again in six weeks. I made shifts in what I ate and over the course of the next several weeks I noticed myself feeling better. Blood pressure dropped 4-5 points. I will stay with the diet changes but the blood pressure readings were discouraging.
I have greeted virtually every life changing moment in the same way — I resist with all of my might.
One afternoon while I sat with the horses in their paddock I wondered about how I could impact my numbers even more noticeably. The response was instantaneous and surprising: Forgiveness. As with all life changing feedback I have received over the years I resisted with all of my force. ‘What do you mean — Forgiveness?’ I asked in my unmasked arrogant way.
Two faces appeared in my mind. I fell silent. I could feel the anger and resentment build in me. ‘No, I said, I’m not ready to forgive.’
The next two days passed. I was increasingly aware of my resistance. Finally one morning after an intense bargaining session with my angelic team of Teamster lawyers I agreed to be made willing to forgive. Seriously, I knew I couldn’t talk myself into forgiving but I also knew my Spirit could affect a shift in my mind-body that would enable me to forgive. Over the next two days the resentment faded, the energy driving my anger and unforgiveness?dissipated and I was able to genuinely forgive. A followup appointment with my doc revealed a startling surprise — a 30+ drop in blood pressure. The numbers have not been this low in decades.?
I noticed God tap dancing on my back.
The solitude of nature and the quiet rhythm of horses on a horse ranch carry the promise of a return to wholeness for those of us willing to step back from the busyness of life and look a little deeper at what ‘…The extraordinary and eternal…’ are saying to us. Some say this is why horses are still here among us.
I agree.?
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