By Dhyana Stanley
In spiritual circles, even in the non-dual community, the term ‘humanness’ sometimes carries a negative connotation – which doesn’t quite resonate with me. Sentiments like, “We’ll always have our human side” or “Awakening is about realizing our divinity and accepting our humanity” often imply that our human side is a kind of curse, a weakness or limitation that we just have to learn to live with. Our human side is seen as synonymous with conditioning. But, in my view, to equate our humanness with conditioning misses the immense potential of our human expression and of this human experience.
Collectively, we have barely scratched the surface of what it means to be within this human experience. The potential is limitless. When we realize our true nature as that which is formless, then gradually, if not instantaneously, all form is realized as an expression of Consciousness. No form is a weakness. No form is a problem. All form, even each individual human expression, holds the potential of the infinite.
Yet, if we define our human expression, or any form, within certain limits, then those limits will appear real. If we define our humanness as a kind of weakness, something we just have to put up with, then what we experience will stay within those limits.
Psychological conditioning, our learned ways of perceiving, creates the impression of limits. But, thankfully, this kind of conditioning is not inevitable because it is all based on the misperception that lack and separation are real. After the realization of our true nature, if judgment, blame, and a sense of lack or fear continues, there is sometimes a tendency to chalk it up to our inevitable humanness and then try to learn to live with it. This misperception, however, not only limits the deepening understanding of what we actually are – it limits how we express what we are. Conditioned ways of thinking, feeling and acting are not innate to our human expression.
Awakening is not only about realizing what we are – it is also about the unfolding of the fullness of our human expression. It is about coming to live here within this human experience in a very different way. Not ‘perfectly’ but fully. When the sense of lack and fear are realized as unfounded how can that understanding then not impact how we live and relate?
It all works together perfectly – this dance, called the human experience, of the formless and form. When we realize our formless essence there is then the opportunity to realize the essence of all form as one with our own. The beliefs and feelings that anything is a problem or is something we just have to put up with fall away, and a greater freedom to dance within this beautiful play of form unfolds – which in turn reveals an even deeper understanding of our formless essence. There is an ever-deepening spiral of aligned understanding, sensing and expressing as we consciously ‘Dance the Dance’ of our divinity and humanity.
The human form is its vehicle. Life is its pulse and substance. Harmony is its flow. Peace and love are its fragrance. Freedom is its celebration.
The Dance
There is a dance you are dancing
do you feel the music?
When you lean into it
it takes hold of every cell
and swings them this way and that
to the steady beat
that is the ground and the sky and everything in between.
It all rocks
to the same
constant,
relentlessly
Loving
beat.
You know you’re going to dance it
all the way through
so why not
dance it
with full, unfettered abandon?
Lose the timidity,
let the arms swing.
Drop all caution,
let the legs jump.
Who said the dance should look a certain way?
Don’t believe a word of it.
Feel the beat
Now
And lose
and find
yourself
in it––
and then all bets are off
as
the Infinite’s Dance of Celebration
moves.
Poem taken from Dhyana Stanley’s book, The Human Experience is the Dance of Heaven and Earth. For more information please see www.dhyanastanley.com
