Dance Like Nobody's Watching

"I want to turn the world into one big dance floor!" proclaims Madonna of her new Confessions World Tour 2006. I bought my tickets, have you bought yours? ;-)

There are three different forms of meditation that Kabbalists have used over the centuries, all with the intention to ascend to the transcendental, spiritual realm of Ayin, which literally translates to "Nothingness." This is where all perception, and in some cases even imagery, ceases to exist. Meditation is a key element of Kabbalah because it gets us out of focusing on the physical world and the more we are able to do so, the more we can connect to a higher power, not just in meditation, but in every day life.

The roots of the Hebrew word for meditation (Hitbodedut) actually mean "to be secluded." So literally, Kabbalah comes at meditation from a perspective of self-isolation. Ancient Kabbalists believed that one must seclude themselves in their thoughts to the ultimate degree and in doing so would separate the soul from the physical body to such a point that they no longer felt any relationship to their body, their mere shell. And this, as we are told, is one of the keys to enlightenment. One of the great Kabbalists, Rabbi Chaim Vital, once wrote, "The more one separates himself from the physical, the greater will be enlightenment." Separating ourselves from the physical is what we strive for in our Kabbalistic studied always, be it in meditation or elsewhere. Meditation is an amazing tool in that it retrains our mind to begin thinking that way, to connect to another energy, to think outside the box of what you see in the physical world.

There are three types of meditation that can be broken down into meditation of intellect, emotion and body.

STRUCTURED MEDITATION (Externally-Directed/Intellect)
- Focusing on the repetition of a mantra or divine name.
- Focusing on a contemplative device, ie. crystal ball, tetragrammaton
- Visualizing divine name combinations, ie. 72 Names of God

SPONTANEOUS MEDITATION (Internally-Directed/Emotion)
- Spontaneous prayer, emotional outbursts of words of worship.
- Meditation on thoughts, feelings or mental images that spring to mind.

STILLNESS MEDITATION (Non-Directed/Body)
- Withdrawal from all physical perception, both internal and external.
- Absolute stillness of the mind, but not the body, which moves on pure instinct in a transcendental dance.

The last of these, Stillness/Non-Directed/Body, is said to be the most powerful and most difficult of the three meditations. Interestingly enough, dating back to ancient times, dancing is said to be one of the greatest methods for attaining this level of pure ecstasy and enlightenment in this particular form of meditation.

This got me to thinking: When I was younger, I would go to a club by myself, get on a dance floor, sometimes a stage or a platform, and just lose myself. I would dance for what seemed like only ten minutes, eventually pulling myself out of the trance to realize I'd been there for three or four hours and it was time to go home. I used to dance like nobody was watching and it was literally an out of body experience where I let go of my body, let go of the physical and just moved to the music. As we get older, we tend to stop dancing like this, both literally and metaphorically speaking. We begin to focus more on other people's reactions to us; we put ourselves in their head instead of being present in our own moment.

It also made me think about Madonna's new album, "Confessions of a Dance Floor." As if the title alone weren't enough, her slogan for the new Confessions Tour has been, "I want to turn the world into one big dance floor!" I think the new album is more rooted in Kabbalistic wisdom than most people are aware. She's just not beating the general public over the head this time around.

And also, isn't that what she's been saying for years, even before she got involved in Kabbalah?

Beauty's where you find it
Not just where you bump and grind it.
Soul is in the musical.
That's why I feel so beautiful, magical...
Life's a ball so get up on the dance floor.

You've got to let your body move to the music.
You've got to just go with the flow.

Sometimes I think Madonna just finally started to take her own advice. Would that we all could do the same and take our own.

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Have questions? Need advice? Want to share? EMAIL Jason at jason@jasonsechrest.com