In my previous blog I shared my experience in joining a dance company and specifically my experience of myself within the group that I really enjoyed. Nothing would seem to change that, until a week before the premier of our new production. It was a Saturday morning. One of the girls said she wouldn't be able to come because she had planned a weekend to the beach with her boyfriend, they had left straight after rehearsal the night before, all excited. So there we were in the studio and our choreographer told us she had received a phone call from the girl's parents. On the way to the beach, the girl and her boyfriend had gotten in a car crash. The boyfriend was okay, but the girl had been sleeping on the backseats without her sea tbelt and was flung through the windscreen. She didn't survive the crash. No need to say we were soon all in tears after hearing the news - more so because she was only 17, the second youngest dancer in the group.

From being a happy worriless bunch, we started trying to keep it together and pull each other up. We revised the production in a week's time so it could be performed with one less dancer, as well as adding in a whole section in tribute of her. There was one particular moment in the performance where she would normally be standing right behind me - the lyrics going 'Will you dance with me?'. Although I wouldn't be able to see her - I would always feel her presence. And after she died, whenever we got to this particular section, I would feel her absence. Somehow we managed to pull off the premier without problems - until the moment of bowing and everyone applauding - we all burst into tears on stage.

We danced at her funeral at the request of her parents - that time we were already in tears before we started.

Although we all tried to support each other the best we knew how and everyone tried to mourn her loss in their own way, trying to move forward as a group and somehow managing to - her death to me was like a 'stain' on what we had as a group - and without consciously intending to, I became more reserved. I also didn't like how the girl was glorified after she died - there had been some tensions between her and the choreographer as the reason she had joined the company was in relation to a school project where she would merge hip hop with contemporary dance and perform it with the company as her 'final work' for school. She would be choreographing it together with our choreographer and in that process they didn't always see eye to eye - but that was not discussed. She was an angel now.

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In a previous post I shared how I danced an amateur dance company after quitting my professional dance training and where - we first got to know and trust each other physically.

So - it is an interesting way of getting to know people - you kind of skip the small-talk and start with physical comfortability. Looking back, there's many I still didn't know much about - in terms of their past, their lives. We would just share moments with each other - the time we spent together rehearsing and performing. But even if we didn't necesarily know much about each other's lives, we would know each other's bodies, from the perspective of what they physically feel like, how they move, where their physical weaknesses and strenghts lie and we would know each other in how we interacted in a moment, sometimes sharing some points that were gonig on in our lives, but there generally wasn't much 'time' to really go into that.

What was also distinct about getting to know people as I did when joining the dance company, is that it wasn't not based upon clothing style for instance. We would only see each other in our 'proper clothes' for a few seconds as we came in to the changing room, but then changed into our dancing clothes - which were just loose pants and comfortable shirts. So - everyone basically looked the same or similar. Another distinction was that in my life, when being in a group, it had mostly been age-dependent - in schools, on camps, music classes, dance classes - you were divided into groups of people of your own age. But in this dance company - our ages ranged from the youngest being about 15 and the oldest in their 30s.

To keep it short - we were tight, lol. No one had issues with anyone - some were closer or 'hit it off better' with certain people than with others. Herein it was fascinating that, initially, I got to know those people with whom I was most in sync while dancing, the youngest guy in the company and a young lady. In the first piece that I was a part of in the company, I by chance also had to work closely with the two of them - the comfortability in movement seemed to allow us to be comfortable in general interaction - even though - if I had met them on the street, I might no thave given them a second glance. Those whose dancing style was different to mine - in terms of timing or intensity or speed, or whatever - took me longer to have conversations with. The choreographer, thankfully, meant to give us the best opportunities to expand, so she would for instance place me in a duet with a girl whose natural dancing style was opposite to mine - it took me longer to become comfortable with her - but as we practiced our duet and each started learning from each other, together creating something new - the communication and interaction also started flowing more.

So - this is the process that I walked with each of the dancers - where eventually, I was comfortable with each one - our interaction was easy, flowing. Everyone came to dance in terms of what they enjoy doing - so we didn't bring our personal worries or troubles into the group - we were there to have a good time. Many nights, I would dread getting out of the couch and out to the train station to a rehearsal, for some reason thinking it might not be fun that night - but every time I did go - and every time I was so glad that I did, because it was just so AWESOME, lol - where I couldn't remember why I doubted that it would be anything different. I suppose I had gotten used to the fun being drained out of things after a while - and that was something that didn't happen in the dance company - at least not until something drastic happened.

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After high school I pursued an education to become a professional dancer. Dancing was my passion - what I loved to do and what I wanted to do forever. I quit towards the end of the first year, because within this training, within this school - I felt I no longer enjoyed dancing the way I used to. The training was intense of course and the school was competitive. Dancing for me had always been something I did in my free time, for me - where I 'got away from it all'.

In movies they romanticize what it means to get in to a professional dancing school, and so had I. The physical reality was different from what I had expected. The group I started in seemed to share the same expectations - we were all excited initially, but it didn't take long before we were all continuously exhausted and struggling emotionally to make it through the week. The weekend, when I wasn't dancing, was now the time we would get 'away from it all'.

After I quit the school, I joined an amateur dance company. I had seen them perform while I was still in the professional dance school and remember being impressed by the choreography, their level of technique/ability and the passion of the dancers.

There were several new dancers in the company when I joined. The group was obviously 'tight' with each other and so the newbies would mostly hang with each other - but this didn't last for long. Within the choreographies, there was a lot of partnerwork - where two or more dancers have to work in absolute harmony in order to pull of a particular part/section of the choreography - and for no one to fall or get hurt. Your timing, your positioning, your intensity, your speed has to be absolutely specific - and you have to trust the other to do the same. And if for some reason you get out of sync, you have to adjust yourself in a moment - and trust that the other would do the same. Trust on this level is quite interesting - because it is a decision that has to be made - where you allow yourself to place trust in another - to catch you, to hold you or to release you.

To be continued

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For Context, please check out the Discussion currently happening on Facebook on the Afterlife Awareness and After-Death Communication page - under the following post:

Jackie Bourassa

The true definition of what "death" is has been on my mind recently. I've read about many people experiencing OBE's during surgery, during very traumatic accidents and many other situations where their systems were in shock. What I find even more interesting is many of the same out of body experiences are occurring in people who are normally healthy. It's called astral travel or astral projection. I was a critic until I began "flying" at the beginning of 2012. It started happening at night, usually the moment I fall asleep, however it has recently been occurring during the day in deep meditation. My physical body is not dead yet I experience travel on many different dimensions. I can no longer honestly say that death is an ending, rather it's a beginning of new experience or an awakening. Anyone else experiencing this beautiful phenomenon?

OBE's, NDE's, ADC - all these points are not the sole cause of the state of the world. They are rather ways in which we participate in the one problem that is causing the state of the world: which is not taking responsibility. And this is something people do in general, not just love-and-light-seekers, not just OBE'rs, NDE'rs or this particular facebook group. I personally don't have any experience with OBE/NDE or ADC. But I understand the underlying motivations for it. And that is where the problem lies.

We grow up in this world as children expecting nothing but fun - and then we grow up and we see that things are tough and people are often nasty. We learn about how we have to earn money to get by and we learn about how there are people who don't have money to survive. We learn about deception, about manipulation and about abuse. Now - we can either try to live our own lives and try to be as happy as we can be on an individual level - or we can look at why the world is the way it is and how we can fix it. As far as I'm concerned, I only have this one life - I may have more, but I can't verify such claims. So - I work with what I know: I have one lifetime. And in a life, we actually have quite a lot of time - and if I dedicate this time towards investigating the problems in the world and finding solutions that would work for everyone - as well as taking the staps to actually implement those solutions - then that is a life worth living. If all would do this, the world would be sorted out in no time. But instead - I've found that people prefer to just try to make their own life work and try to find some happiness and fulfillment on a personal level. I mean - that's what I was doing, that's what everyone I've ever met was/is doing. But to me that is not acceptable, because that means that when I bring a child into the world, it will expect a life of fun, but instead, I will present it with the same disappointments and horrors that I was faced with growing up: that this world is a mess and that no-one has really done any attempt to change it in any susbtantial way.

As I said, I don't have experience with OBE and things like that - but I had a different 'mission' or passion in my life - which was dancing. It was my one point of 'light' and 'comfort' because when I was dancing, I did not think about everything else in my life - it was just me, my body, other people's bodies, the music, the rythm, the flow - it was like perfect harmony and like in that moment nothing else existed but this perfect harmony. And I was great in school - I skipped a grade because I was considered 'above average' in intelligence, but I wasn't interested in studying - I wanted to dedicate my life to dancing on a professional level, because that was what made me happy.

Then I came across Desteni and I was faced with the same question you're faced with now: which was - why do you do it? Do you do it from a starting point of self-interest or because it will bring about solutions that work for everyone? And to test the answer for myself I did the following: I imagined my life without dancing. Immediately, I felt sooo sad, desperate and depressed. And that's how I knew that the reason I danced was to hide from how I really feel - to try to be happy on an individual level. It was not because it was going to help anyone - although, I could probably make up reasons and justifications of how dancing can help people. That was not the point - the point is not whether it could help people, the point was that this was not the reason why I was doing it. I was doing it to feel something positive, to feel special, to feel good about myself. But those experiences were not real or valid, because they didn't last - they only lasted for as long as I was dancing. I wasn't a ball of light, I wasn't special and I wasn't in any way better or a virtuous person. I just felt that way.

So - when I realised what I've just explained - I made a decision to give up dancing for this life - to stop trying to dedicate my life to dancing. Because I realised that dancing was not going to change me - it was just going to change the way I feel for a moment. And if I would continue participating in my blissful state of dancing, it would stand in my way of really facing who I am and what I really experience - and it would stand in my way of seeing the problems in the world and how they need to be sorted out. No-one wants to feel shitty, but we all do on some level. And from one perspective, we all have to sort out our internal world, but from another, we have to sort out the external conditions that support inner conflict and inner confusion as well. So - I decided that with this lifetime - I had a decision to make - and I decided to dedicate the time I have in this life towards finding real solutions instead of personal happiness and gratification.

And this is the decision each of you basically have to make - not that we're demanding it or because we're popping the question - it's a decision you make whether you're aware of it or not - now we're just placing the question in your awareness so you can make a more informed decision. Unless we realise that we're all in the same boat - whether we're an OBE'r a dancer, a drug addict, a criminal or, a desperate housewife, or a disillusioned child - we're only ever going to be chasing happiness through personal experiences - but it will never be real and it will never last and it will never create the world we actually would like to live in.

And - it is not about joining Desteni or agreeing with 'us'. This is about who you want to be and what you'll say when you die when you ask yourself the question: What did I actually do with my Life?

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• Day 243: Happy Birthday and God - ADC - Part 90
• Day 256: When the Negative is Positive in Secret Geometry - ADC - Part 103
• Day 258: Vampires in the Soul of Sacred Geometry - ADC - Part 105
• Day 229: Thought at the Quantum Level - ADC - Part 76
• Day 257: Reincarnation and Secret Geometry - ADC - Part 104
• Day 238: The Bigger Picture - ADC - Part 85
• Day 248: Change The World and God - ADC - Part 95
• Day 251: ESP and God - ADC - Part 98

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