“Mysticism is the highest reach for wisdom”

In my teens and early twenties when I felt distraught, it followed that I was also overcome by unexpected pervasive encounters with unconditional love. Ever since, I’ve sought to serve this Love out of gratitude.

As a dancer, I took it as an assignment to learn how to bring body and soul together by fostering freedom and love through dance and the arts. With Phil Porter I discovered an exceptional way of creating dance and theater on the spot that felt like streaming a whole different reality. We wanted more people to have that. I’m proud that the result, InterPlay, gives a growing number of people grace-loads of forgotten fullness, beauty, wisdom, and connection IN BODY!

Along the way I’ve been directed to learn to embody courageous love. How is peace and love to be lived in an organic, humane way when there is much to fear? Listening to the wisdom of the body I’ve found tools rarely named or used in modern life. They aren’t difficult though they diverge from what we normally learn as adults. Honestly, each step of the way I’ve asked if it’s worth it to keep going down this mysterious path. And the answer is, “ABSOLUTELY!”

Would you like tools that allow your human-divine connection to interplay in a truly fulfilling way? Would you like to really live into life? Would you like body and soul to feel like one? Would you like to claim the wisdom of your body and soul among others? Would you like more joy, beauty, awe, and whole-heartedness every step of the way?

If you’ve been active in your healing and creativity then your soulful awareness is heightened. This is called being “awake.” You know what a creative state is. You know how to notice your experience. You are securing strength from witnessing and affirmation. You may also feel more sensitivity, overwhelm and confusion Your capacity for uncertainty might have doubled You wonder if you are called to something more. You may be making choices on behalf of Love that appear ridiculous. You may have mystical experiences and insights but wonder how to live or share them.

On the hand, you may not have mystical experiences and wonder how to do that? Maybe something you feel and see is what I call soul and that by attending to these embodied instincts we can gain greater health as a human family.

The tools I’ve uncovered aren’t complicated on the body level. It’s just that we’ve forgotten that the body knows things. When I share them you’ll probably wonder how you missed them. Why would we miss them? My theory is that modern people pay little corporate attention to personal experiences, yet we’re consumed by them…i.e. reality TV. We have become expertsat following and reacting to standard canons of wisdom until they don’t work, like in an illness, death, accident, rejection, betrayal, or job loss. Directly facing the mystery of life we open our eyes.

As a “higher” education beneficiary I’m grateful for tools that help me think, evaluate, reason, research, and articulate. I trust myself to order my choices, edit, rearrange, and override unhelpful instincts. An education also showed me that there are holes in any theory. At the same time I’ve operated with the intent to honor body and soul in my higher education, as a dance major at a time when soul wasn’t mentioned in State Universities and as a divinity student when embodiment hadn’t entered classroom discussions.

Thankfully, as an artist with a penchant for what Australians call, “cheeky” humor, and inventiveness I have natural crowbars at work beneath my hard grip on reality. Humor, playfulness, and curiosity help me stay close to Abiding Love. The downside? It can be hard to take myself seriously.

Wouldn’t it be nice if it were easier to develop spiritual intelligence tools, tools that anyone could practice? Don’t Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, and the 13 Grandmothers call us to more than a dream? What if the central intelligence agency we call body and soul IS THE WAY TO CREATE peace, joy, freedom, wisdom, kindness, justice, and most of all LOVE?

What if mind’s role is to open to and help regulate the wisdom of the body, not lord it over the whole shebang.

For me it boils down to technology, artiful design and a loving heart. There is an underlying organic mystical reality that seems determined to strengthen human soul connectivity in spite of ways we violently thrash about.

If you are still with me I want to offer the first technology right now. It seems to make a huge difference to every leader that hears it.

You do not have to integrate your higher and lower self.

What is your higher self? If you haven’t had fun in awhile you may not know you have one. On a body level we move between the tops of our game to feeling like we’re eating humble pie. Our “higher” educations, religious lives and pop psychology reinforce the idea that we should be able to “stay up,” “improve,” and rise above suffering and “pettiness.” (See workaholism, self-righteousness, and do gooders.)

The alternative is to feel forsaken. (See despair, drainbows of desire, and replacing god with idols). This approach is pretty much the same as being uppity but in a downwardly mobile way. Either way, the up up up approach usually leads to the shame and anxiety that we won’t “live up” to the mark. But the body knows something different! Let me tell you how I discovered the secret that we don’t have to stay up.

As a dancer and performer I’d be high after the curtain closed, especially if I did well. But, eventually I’d come down. Sometimes I even felt depressed. Why? Similarly, in the role of minister I noticed that I could “take on” a bigger energy. Later when people saw me in my ordinary state  they seemed disappointed. Me too. I wanted integrity, but staying up and high-minded not only seemed inauthentic it made me cranky. To tell the truth I eventually “broke down” from trying so hard to keep “up” with it all.

I began to notice that rockstars, politicians, ministers, athletes, parents, and leaders all struggle with their energy. To regulate the dance between our higher and more ordinary states we use drugs, alcohol, “uppers,” downers and all manner of getting outatown to manage. Meanwhile our shadow side develops bigger and bigger wings.  The self-help generation has had opportunities like no other generation to experience the shadowy side of our human condition.

In spite of signing up for an entire life practice course on human initiations that have taught me to forgive others and myself, I remain very human in terms of reactions, fears, and longings. I hear the same thing in the writings of great teachers. Nothing changes and yet everything does.

What if this is THE WISDOM OF THE BODY?

I began to notice that indigenous folk demonstrate ease whether hanging out or in a ceremony. They seem to trust themselves to cosmic care. They aren’t worried about performing. At the same time they seem extraordinarily receptive to the expansive states of drum, dance, trance, chant, ceremony, and vision. Can I trust my ordinary self to a greater source?

I learned that shamanistic practice mention two bodies sometimes referred to as “the twin” or “the other.” Wisdom doesn’t require behaving holier than thou. Often a person with visionary resources is indistinguishable until called upon.

Then one day it came to me.

When I put my arms up, I often feel “big” in body similar to when I dance, sing and pray. When I put my arms down at my sides I feel closer to my ordinary experience. FLAPS Up! FLAPS Down!

Two different states. I can feel them differentiate between them and I can choose between them. The big secret? They don’t need to be integrated. Both are both part of the human design.

Not only do I not need to feel bad if I am not in an expansive state, my ordinary human experience of bumps and delights is important. As I free myself from the EVERYTHING MUST BE INTEGRATED MYTH I ask, “Why suffer this little self?”

This leads to the great teachings on simplicity, sustainability and humanity– to come down; allow guidance to show us how to make daily life beautiful, meaningful, and awesome NO MATTER WHAT. We know this. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses.”

We are ensouled in both high and ordinary states. We make choices about which state we need when. We can learn to play with these states in more and more creative ways. The challenge is to become fully ensouled as creative contributing, playing everyday humans, to stay connected to the grandeur of Divinity by rising up, exploring, and then bringing the wisdom of soul home.

The meek shall inherit the earth! That’s not a bad thing in a system where body and soul are also free to venture into extraordinary places and glory in the adventure we call life.

The Ruby Way Online Dance Practice offers spiritual intelligence for becoming ensouled, a practice used by mystics, psychics, artists and shamans. As you explore the tools, the point is not to advance as much as to become more spacious while adding your take on how, when these tools are useful. I believe they are part of the forgotten initiations for soul intelligence where we

• Initiate soul connection: What is Ensoulment? Where is soul? The soul loves the body. Identify the physical signatures of your soul- spontaneity, synchronicity, and union.
• Initiate the minds eye: Play with focus and seeing from your higher self (center of head and on a screen).
• Initiate body to body communication: How to neutralize the sensitivity of your Mirror Neurons: Shake, Breathe Exform, including sensitivity beyond the physical realm.
• Initiate our onnect ability-The Hand Mic- connect and drop connection, Stream on the Field
• Initiate the big and little body- Don’t integrate
• Initiate the ability to Synch: Healthy Interaction checklist
• Initiate the 4 power centers including the one not in your skin:
• Initiate our core aps: move, tell, voice, be, connect by engaging your core energies.
• Initiate our Mystic Center: top of the brain
• Initiate orr Gifts, Calls, Purpose and Basic CPR—Organizing Yourself to Create (contribute) play rest!

Dance is truly a ruby way, one of the most remarkable teachers for ensoulment. I welcome other to practice and learn through exercises on the Mystic Tech Blog or in Direct Group Coaching at https://cynthiawinton-henry.com/product/ruby-way-online-course/.  Sessions are year round.