Life as a Dance | Alan Watts
What is time and why does it exist? What purpose does it serve for the universe to unfold gradually rather than happen all at once? Just like a story, something is causing the pages to turn, getting more deeply immersed in its drama. We don't read a book for the purpose of getting to the end, but rather to experience the story as it unfolds across each and every page. Or, as Alan Watts puts it, time is like a tempo to be played upon:
One doesn't make the end of the composition the point of the composition, if so, the best conductors would be those that played the fastest. When dancing, you don't aim for a particular part of the run where you should arrive at, the point of dancing is the dance.
Okay, let's rewind. In my last post, I discussed the cognitive barrier of perception and how we can coordinate external viewpoints to produce an internal perspective that can go deeper than what could ever be expressed to you or perceived by your senses. I gave an analogy about looking in the mirror and identifying how your external cognition of "you" is limited by your perception; the way you appear. As an appearance, it is bounded as a single point in space and time, losing accuracy as soon as either of those conditions change. It dies and is reborn into every subsequent moment.
However, you can surpass this limitation by looking inward and recognizing that there is something deep inside that is experiencing the perception and observing the appearance of "you." It's the real you: a particular consistency of change-- a track connecting all points of time in your life to the same, linear experience. You are not just the notes, you are the whole song in motion. By learning to quiet the false self and detach from its appearance, we can improve the way we deal with emotions. It's not "I am angry," it is "I am experiencing anger." By detaching, we avoid falling for what is only an appearance and give ourselves the chance to look within and get to the source.
Now, I'd like to step away from the topic of cognition itself and share a personal anecdote about how Alan Watts' music analogy revealed a path for me to detach from my ego and recognize the self-inflicted suffering of my own discontentment.
As Watts points out, society is a system that is run by the deception of destination. That is, we grow up in school systems which grade us and prepare us to get to the next level. We are told continuously, "the thing is coming" and all you have to do is get that job, keep working hard, make that quota, all driven by the excitement of feeling like we're getting closer to something important. "The thing is coming," all the time, but first I have to get the food, and then I have to buy the car, or whatever. Maybe you do reach that great success you've been looking forward to for so long and soon realize you don't feel any different than you did before. Now what do you do?
At the darkest points in my life, I was tortured by my perspective of the temporary nature of emotion. I felt painfully aware that every moment of happiness I got a hold of was like sand slipping through my fingers. I thought of happiness to be something that you're supposed to latch onto and, as a result, I could never truly experience it because I was too busy trying to make it last forever. But you can't enjoy a story if you're trying to stay on your favorite page. I was living through my reflection; falling for an appearance over an experience. Alan Watts describes existence as best understood by analogy of music. He claims that the universe isn't "trying to get somewhere;" like a piece of music, its entire duration exists for its own sake and is therefore playful, in nature (like you play a piano, not work it-- despite being a complex task). It's not a journey with a destination but rather a journey of its own desire: an adventure.
We thought life was a journey, a pilgrimage with a grand purpose of reaching the end, success... but we cheated ourselves and missed the point the whole way along: it was a musical thing, and you were supposed to sing or dance while the music was being played.
When we treat life as a dance, it becomes much easier to detach from our false self. When encountering strife, we can stop trying to fight it and recognize that this is a temporary experience. Clinging to permanence causes us to suffer. So, no matter what happens in life, remember that every page is part of the whole story. Music is made to be experienced, so dance like the trees because it’s within your heart to move. Sing because the song of nature is desperate to incorporate your voice.
