Plenty Is Already Happening

I spent two and a half hours sitting in one spot in the middle of a forest this weekend.

Once I arrived at my spot, it took about fifteen minutes to settle in. But as soon as I found the easiness in my breath and comfort in my seat, the forest suddenly came alive.

The song birds resumed their flitting and singing in the branches above me. Bugs and bees returned to their busy-work, filling the air with their collective hum. As I continued to settle in and open my senses, the forest became more and more alive.

So much life was happening.

It reminded me of a movement class I attended earlier this year, led by the legendary dance pioneer Anna Halprin.

There were about twenty of us in the class and we were exploring the movement of the whole. As the music played, we were instructed to notice the movement impulses that arise from within us  individually as part of a larger group movement.

It was a delicious amoeba-like experience. Flowing with my body first and sensing a magnetic pull to cluster with a group of dancers in one corner of the room. And then noticing the impulse to split off from that group and to form a new shape with another. We were a flow of connecting, shaping, separating, reconnecting, morphing, reforming. On and on.

About seven minutes into the experiment, a wave of silliness rippled through one side of the room, as several dancers began to giggle and prance.

Anna stopped the music: “Drop the cute. You don’t need cute. Plenty is already happening. You don’t need to add anything.”

Plenty is already happening. You don’t need to add anything.

This moment and Anna’s words have echoed in me ever since as an invitation to drop the habit of making something happen. To open to what’s already here, what’s already happening.

The constant push to produce creates so much inner clutter and noise that we become blind and deaf to the world as it truly is. We miss the creativity already in motion. We deny ourselves the opportunity to both witness and co-create with life.

I’m especially aware of it when, in the company of a friend, I catch myself filling the space with meaningless chatter. When I allow the space between us to be empty, like when settling into my spot in the middle of the forest, I create the opening for the richness of our connection to emerge in whatever authentic way that expression wants to happen.

I’m also keenly aware that the push to produce robs me of the opportunity to be intimately connected to my own creative impulses. More on this one soon, because it’s a doozy!

And, in the meantime…

You don’t need to add anything. Plenty is already happening.