I like to ask myself why I enjoy ceremony at Celestial Heart, and why do I go back.

I find it to be a surprisingly difficult question to answer. Recently I think I finally connected enough pieces of what the answer might be, at least for now. What follows is my attempt to write this down.

Celestial Heart is where I learned what it means to be centered,
how to recognize when I am out of center,
and how to empower my next step to be in the direction of my true self

I go back to recalibrate the internal compass pointing toward my divine path.

To realign with the way, remember the why, and recognize the how.

Many of the teachings and lessons we study in ceremony revolve around this idea of alignment.

What does it mean to be aligned? To live life from a place of alignment?

For me the most salient first encounter with this question came the first time I witnessed the salutation to Exu, clasping your hands in front of the belly, heart, brow, and behind the head, repeating:

may what I do, what I feel, what I think, and what I carry in my deepest self all be in harmony

I think my first thought was, "uhh that sounds great I'll take two please."

But how do you get there?

In the moment, especially when deeply in union with the queen of the forest for the first time, it's nearly impossible to not hear this and almost casually react with something like "ah yes I am indeed in harmony with the universe *meditation pose*."

But the deeper lesson here is learning to ask yourself these questions on a regular basis, and at least for me, realizing the true extent of just how bad you really are at answering yourself with utmost honesty and transparency.

what have I been doing?
am I making plans, however small?
do they excite and inspire me?
am I fulfilling my commitments to others? to myself?
have I been showing up in the ways I hope and intend to?
how have I been feeling?
what am I resisting?
have I been open to wonder?
what am I curious of?
have I been reacting or responding?
are my thoughts constructive?
in what ways am I proud of myself?
am I actively participating?

My goal is to design a life where as often as possible I can answer these questions with my truth and for that truth to be rooted in a love for where I am, where I came from, and where I am headed.

This is what I consider to be my spiritual practice.

In this pursuit, the most effective tool I have found is this idea of centeredness. Constant introspection and self inquiry as to where I presently am with respect to my own definition of center.

This is unanswerable without first defining what your center even is.

For me, being centered is an internal perspective, a frame of mind that can be cultivated and out of which comes thought and action which are in alignment with the person you want to be.

The primary insight, and I would say the most critical piece for unlocking this as a tool, is the understanding that you are effectively never truly centered.

(That is, unless you are actively experiencing 3rd cup transcendence, having broken free from all earthly bindings and have re-merged with eternity ... but more on this below.)

So the goal is not to achieve centeredness, it is to practice the never ending pursuit of more centeredness.

I like to imagine that the source of divinity is a real place, 500 billion miles away. And now picture a straw that is 1 micron wide, 499 billion straight miles long, standing between you and the divine. True centeredness is the experience that follows when the line drawn between divinity and the deepest point of your being passes unobstructed.

It was in my first ceremony where through direct experience I was shown what it might feel like to embody this state of centeredness. In some sense it was as if I had for the first time laid eyes on my own personal north star.

Having witnessed this I can now try to gauge, at any given moment, both how far away I am from this north star and in what direction might I consider to try to get closer.

Now, I don't want to understate the impact of these experiences. Time and time again mother Ayahuasca, Kai, and every one of the other open hearted community members in Lebec, come together in union, and what emerges are these moments and states of being that are so breathtakingly powerful they fundamentally redefine any preconceptions you thought you had about what is possible.

There is no hope in believing that there exists any arrangement of words and sentences that can accurately capture even a fraction of what this is like. That said...

Imagine a warm sense of resonant, undisturbable peace emanating from deep within you. Pure and all encompassing love toward yourself, those not present, and especially those sitting in the circle — brothers and sisters in spirit, companions on the shared battlefield against our inner demons. Where victory is only possible through the smiling embrace with your shadow. Each of them in pursuit of honest and earned growth both for themselves and those around them. There is complete absence of any fight or flight response, as if you've dropped into nervous system regulatory equilibrium; I have never felt safety like this. At times it can feel like you've been adorned with a full body set of armor but instead of crude protection at the price of mobility you're actually floating, with a deep knowing that everything is all right. Thoughts become sharper and clearer — things subtly start to make sense in a way they never have before. Wondrous contemplation takes hold. Is this what it's like to be fully conscious?

When you find yourself in this space, heart and mind wide open, you notice that things start to happen.

You stop hiding from yourself the parts that are easy to ignore. You demonstrate to yourself how to approach your smallness with empathy and forgiveness. New ideas percolate, realizations and revelations start to materialize. Where there was stuckness you now notice a glimmer of a way through. The learnings and the reflections energize and excite you, and the actions that fall out of these moments and the days ahead seem to self perpetuate, opening into even more ease and clarity.

It is a sublime state of consciousness. As if something deep in your soul was finally nudged into place. Or like you have been walking without pause your entire life and for the first time took a seat.

why hasn't every moment felt this way?

And that I think is the moment where I began to consider what has become the core teaching I have received from Celestial Heart:

the whisper of the heart is a compass

allowing yourself to hear it and then be moved by it is a skill which can be developed
and the more you practice, the harder it becomes to differentiate between the life you can be living, wherein your truest self is fully expressed, and the life you are living.

I think this is also the underlying reason for why I dance. By far, without question, the most exquisite indescribable experiences of centeredness, moments where it was impossible to imagine any further alignment, have come to me through song.

Never do I feel more authentically me than when I have completely and utterly surrendered myself to the groove.

I have often struggled with this question of why do I like music. In many ways I think I partly understand — it reconnected me to my childhood best friends, and was instrumental in shaping my sense of self. The dance floor is where I evolved from a self conscious and uncertain boy and took my first steps as a man.

but why can it feel so good?

To be clear, what feels good is not some trivial sense of alignment like the winning condition of a game of Connect 4 - I'm talking about ...

HIGHER ORDER

MULTI-DIMENSIONAL

COSMIC ALIGNMENT

physical, spiritual, emotional, environmental, and existential harmony

duality has completely collapsed
you are the music and the music is you

senses are enhanced
perception feels effortless and unbounded

each harmonic oscillation sends energetic waves cascading through your mind and body

every beat of the drum lands as an ancient reminder of what you are: a singular yet infinite point of light manifested as a bridge connecting the physical and the divine

all things have dissolved into the present moment
and in this moment there is only love

So yea I guess the music is pretty cool

As for the why — my current best answer is Nataraja, the Lord of Dance. Nataraja is a Hindu deity, one of Shiva's many forms. Commonly portrayed as performing the Ananda Tandava, his eternal dance of cosmic bliss. Though more accurately he is beyond gender, and is in fact not performing the dance — he is the dance.

Consider the five actions symbolized in Nataraja's dancing pose:

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.

Will I go back?

eh probably not, sounds kind of lame.