Ballet Lessons

I went to the ballet the other night; it taught me a lesson. The softness and grace, and the gentle femininity of it was such a contrast to the harsh world outside. It was like a meditation, the pitter-patter of warm rain on a dry soul.

Our world has been built by men and part of that is a good benefit to us all, we have railroads, phone systems and highways, but with that infrastructure came their ideals of materialism and competition, and dog-eat-dog. Our leaders are violent and nasty but they only reflect what people want, and much of our society reflects that same misguided macho. Modern yuppie women are not very different to men, they buy the same dogma-glamour, materialism, egocentricity and a soulless, narcissistic isolation.

I don’t agree with the philosophy of the modern world that the men built, I find their ideals cruel and ugly. Making ends meet for most people is such a struggle, it makes them hard and uncharitable, and the rule imposed by big business crushes little people, milks them and enslaves them.

Yang masculinity is acid while femininity and softness is alkaline. If your food is too acid you get sick, if land becomes salty and acid nothing much grows except a few hardy grasses. If you loose your softness you lose your soul.

Humanity has become ugly but you should still look at it with a soft eye and offer a kindness to everyone. You never know, the beggar in front of you may be a saint. Spirituality is hidden away now, you hardly ever come across it. I’ve recently traveled the length and breadth of England, I visited over one hundred towns and cities, and I only found a handful of people that were kind and human and real, the rest were cold and ailing, they don’t understand they are supposed to be compassionate to others. They are far too wounded and hard. They are miles away in their minds, day dreaming and plotting.

Imagine a country where sixty million people are crammed on a small island and they have no spirituality, no sense of humanity, no comprehension of the presence of the divine in their lives. The English only have a mind, no soul. It’s dog-eat-dog all the way, so it’s a country of legless people that have been emotionally chewed out. England is uniquely strange because everyone is trying for an advantage over you. In seconds they have worked out a way of climbing over you, or controlling you, or parting you from your money. I find it godless and bizarre. The Asian English are sometimes an exception they seem softer and less yang. I like them a lot.

There is a spirituality that is vested in the friendships of the young people and the hippies in Britain are the custodians of the only other spirituality, but they are so poor and often down-trodden they have little impact, but I have always found their world warm and loving and open. The summer festivals like Glastonbury are wonderful experiences; they show us the way humanity ought to get along.

The British are normally very cynical and skeptical, those are masculine traits, while trust is feminine, you have let go to reach any sense of the God-force within you, the British are too busy ‘pretending’ to be able to let go very much. I used to lecture in England but it never came to anything. I failed. It was like helping a heroin addict only to drop him back in the ally from whence he came. I so much wanted to believe in the English but none came forward, they all got lost in their distractions and the struggle to survive. That is the trick of cruel Britannia, she entices you and traps you into becoming her slave. The rich are trapped the worst, they have pomposities to cherish and defend. They never escape.

Softness and humanity is the only way out. You have to join humanity to save your soul and you have to embrace a gentility that is not well regarded by modern people, who are fed on an obsession with self, elitism, violence, hamburgers, and gangster rap. Softness takes you away from the ego and so it can often feel uncomfortable, but your soul needs an evening at the ballet, as way of saying. I’ve held to my spirituality via meditation; every day I’d set aside time to go within, I like that world better than ours but I’m a foreigner there, I can’t pretend to belong, though I hope to do so one day.

Every moment of softness heals you, children, animals, flowers, the sea, silence, whatever. In those moments you remember who you are and where you came from and if the world rots in its yang ways what can you do about it? Nothing much. We all tried quite hard but it didn’t work, the control was too ferocious, we never broke it down.

A well-known journalist described the British as “pale people in the rain,” I thought it quite accurate and funny. They have strong minds but little or no soul. Deep within they are in enormous pain, often caused by confusion; their hopes and dreams have failed them because those dreams are so impossible to achieve.

I am sad for the English, they are cursed. It’s their lovelessness that will pull them down. The only way to rescue an insistent mind is to scare it. It seems a shame really but no other tactics work. I reckon a few will rise through the quagmire of Englishness if they get scared enough. Maybe a handful eventually find the selflessness and softness to reach the other worlds close at hand.

For me, it was a twenty-year fight to get to the end of the beginning and now we stand at the beginning of the end. It’s all settled. I reckon it’s a nine to ten year run from here. Spirituality and softness is all that is left in the end but it will have only a few celebrants, the rest of the world, billions, will be horrified by the shock of it all. They won’t be able to accept the change. Imagine a world where it’s not all about you and your needs and keeping your belly full, and your ego pumped up. Scary eh?

I don’t think we will be allowed to go back for anyone, but then again I’m not sure, that phase is still a little way off.

Stay soft and give up the struggle and walk away while you still can, nothing else feels safe. We have to learn to trust so we can evolve and survive to become something softer and more beautiful.