Who tells your story?

Is it better to drop everything and dance, or to sit still and breathe? There are many ways into a different state of mind, some chosen, some that just happen. So how do we look for freedom, and how do we find it closer than we thought?

The world is full of techniques, books, teachers and systems. This piece is about something central to psytrance culture and many others: the search for release from stress, for peace and meaning in life, for the inner child and the energy to create.

Many of the oldest methods, found among peoples on every continent, are ways of entering a trance: conscious breathing, the inspiration and ecstasy of creative work, pushing past the limits of pain, childbirth, rituals and dance. These paths let us look into the nature of things, reach a shared consciousness, unite the male and female sides in us and feel at one with nature and our origins. They give our existence meaning.

Trance states open access to personal and collective energy, and with it to connection, fertility, renewal, compassion and a sense of belonging. The impressions that come from letting go inspire, mobilise, nourish and touch the root of human nature. These are deep experiences beyond time and space, but they also call for daily work on mindfulness and integrity.

Losing your thoughts, finding mindfulness

Trance is a state of being fully absorbed, a kind of zeal in action, and so a forgetting of past and future. A person in trance stops being a mind that constantly remembers the past and imagines the future. The mind works hard to hold back the unconscious, the feeling of having come from nothing. To do that, it calls up memories that place us inside the story of ourselves. Brooding over the past is fear of pain and of not existing in the future. It is a survival program.

Accepting that the future is unknown lets us free ourselves from the desperate narrative of the past, and with it from tormenting memories, comparisons and fear. What does all this have to do with dance?

Dance is a form of expression, and expression gives a voice to what is hidden inside us. Expression is like closing your eyes: for a moment only you and your inner world matter. And while dancing we often do close our eyes and enter our own inner space. We let go of outside stimuli and tell our story intuitively. When we let go of everything, pure joy is what remains.

Intuitive dance loosens blocks in body and mind. It can be a way to find yourself among people and in sound, but also within yourself or in others. Especially when you open your eyes on the dance floor and are glad to see that everyone's pulse beats in the same rhythm, that the bodies are telling the same story. What are we? The sum of our actions and our interactions with others?

The longer you dance, or give yourself to any activity, the more you lose the idea that you are your thoughts. You breathe here and now, and your breath serves to move your body, to live. You want to tell your story, for others and for yourself. The more intuitively you tell it, the more your story merges with the stories around you, until all of you are telling the story of the sounds you hear.

You become one with the music, the earth, the air, with every sensation that reaches you unfiltered by the intellect, just as it is, neutral and yet loved. The same happens to a surfer lost in the wave or a dreamer among their dreams. The first step is often simply to respond to the music and drop your worries about how you look when you dance or what you want to achieve. In the end you are not following a plan, a system, anything that is not you.

You can let in a whisper of sensuality instead of emotion. A feminine element that is not limited to women's bodies. It is part of every soul, a place where the conscious, the forgotten, the cared-for and the repressed dance side by side or fight it out.

Atlantis

After giving ourselves to such states, do we feel truly part of the world, or more alienated from the world outside this haven? Does the attitude of someone who lives this way spread out like a soft blanket the world around them can sit on too? Or does the harsh world laugh at the naive and accuse them of selfish happiness?

Ceremonies, ritual dances and places of retreat can seem like Atlantis: a mythical land surrounded by a barrier made from the energy of its inhabitants, who are also its hosts. Stepping out of that vault, you may start to wonder whether someone will steal your backpack while you plant daisies in wonder. Leaving the circle and going back to everyday life can dim the confidence and strength that being part of it gave you. It is a pity that such spaces have to be sealed off, because I want to shout that there is earth and spirit right here. It is a pity that when I step outside the zone, I don't carry a crystal with the energy of Atlantis. Fortunately, you can keep that state of freedom and acceptance inside you through a daily practice of mindfulness.

The technique of letting go

Many philosophies say similar things about the same mechanism, surrender. I explain it here following the doctor, psychiatrist and philosopher David R. Hawkins.

Let yourself feel. Give in, change nothing, don't moralise, don't block it. It is just a feeling. What energy is behind it? You don't need it: thank it and say goodbye. Let go of the urge to resist, because resistance is what makes a feeling last, refusing to accept what we feel and who we are. From now on you are what you want to be, at the snap of your fingers. No effort, just self-reflection. When you smile at yourself, it becomes easier to smile at others. When you accept yourself, you let everyone around you be themselves. Let go of the fight and think instead about learning, fulfilling your dreams and setting priorities.

The first feeling gives way to the next, weaker one, and gradually, with the help of your will, they fade. It is a process in which we stop depending on anything but ourselves. Happiness is a decision. Sometimes it is easier, sometimes harder, because life takes its own turns. The easier things are for you, the easier it is to switch into happiness, and the harder they are, the more you long for it.

Deep down you sense that happiness is open to everyone. It is the body's desires and the mind's fears that tell us otherwise and lead us astray. They create the illusion that happiness depends on something: that you have to earn it, chase it, pay for it with sacrifice, deserve it. Behind these thoughts, which drum the morally attractive cult of hard work into our heads, there are often materialistic goals. How often is hard work about status and possessions rather than love given to others? How often is "deserving" about our imagined goals rather than a cause or a person who needs help? Too often, our happiness depends on these illusions.

So simply let go of yourself and forget, while you laugh, dance, love or sit in silence.

Sit down and breathe

Meditation is a way of letting go, of keeping distance and accepting. It is an exercise in mindfulness and awareness, and above all a path to a sweet feeling of love. Negative emotions are survival mechanisms, impulsive reactions to an unfriendly world. We can stop giving in to those impulses and choose spontaneous joy instead, while simply observing the feelings that come with negative states. Let them pass without making a fuss. Meditation breaks unthinking reactions and lets us watch the impulses the mind fires off. We can't be knocked over, because we are not standing stiffly on one leg but floating in a salty ocean. We are free and unattached, in the world and for the world, but not owned by it.

We see everything in terms of judgement, and that is fear. We always choose our attitude. It is not fate, it is our choice. The goal of our life is not to sit perfectly still in a meditation pose, and we are not here to suffer either. Fear and suffering are there so that we can get out of them. And we don't need anything special for that. Everything we need is inside us. Emotions are amplified expressions of what we believe, which is why they pull us along and drive us.

You and your happiness cause no suffering to people who can find it in themselves too. We are free to choose our attitude. We can bite others and pour out bile, envy, anger and fear, or we can give ourselves, and so others, the right to be happy. The most important way to happiness is 40 cm long: the way from the head to the heart. It is a state and a choice.

No one and nothing can undermine your happiness. No one and nothing outside gives it to you. It is in you. Happiness is like a walk in the woods: you keep walking and don't step onto the road at the edge.

You want to believe it enough to laugh with happiness and not care. And although Atlantis is open, if you are not ready to dive in, you can stay on the surface and still taste the water.

Zuzanna Sadowska
Reflections based on the books "Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender" by David R. Hawkins and "Psychedelic Mysteries of the Feminine".