It all starts with an idea
Imagine you are dancing. While you dance and the music plays, suddenly an idea pops up in your mind. You received an image of how you want to make the next step.
Refusal to execute
Maybe fear, insecurity, a sense of inadequacy, or any of a range of reasons that work to hold you in your current movement pattern. You want to express something but you are just no doing it. You hesitate and miss the right moment to take action. Now you maybe you get bored and your creativity falls ‚asleep‘. Maybe you even succeeded in putting more effort into the moves you always do, but it feels empty. You are still just hiding your insecurity. All you can do is await the gradual loss of your passion.
The inner fire
The music continues and all you did was the same stuff that you always do. Your dance feels unsatisfying. But consciously or unconsciously, you decide to put more effort to get what you need. Out of nowhere strength and courage arises in you.
The first threshold
This is the point where you actually enter into the field of development, leaving your known limits and venturing into an unknown and ‚frightening‘ realm. You could be more than content, or even proud, to remain within the indicated bounds, and popular belief gives you every reason to fear so much as the first step into the unexplored. The development is always and everywhere beyond the veil of the known.
Entering the unknown
It’s your separation from your old known world. You show a willingness to undergo a metamorphosis. So you try to execute that movement and you may now encounter a minor setback. The movement you did was not even close to what you had in mind. All your nightmares come true. You look and feel silly.
Problems, tests and experiments
Practise is a series of tests that you must undergo to execute that movement right. Of course, you fail one or more times and you could be even about to lose your motivation. This stage requires and develops a lot of patience and persistence. Your face fears and pass barriers—again, again, and again. Meanwhile, there will be some preliminary victories, unsustainable ecstasies, and momentary glimpses of what you were searching for. Try by try you learn to get closer to the movement you intended to do.
The leap of faith
Like an onion, you peeled off the skin by skin until you reached its center. In this step, you must confront the real reason that holds you back from fully executing the movement idea. You now have to do the thing you really avoided doing. All the previous experiments have been leading to this place, all that follow will move out from here. Atonement consists in no more than the abandonment of that self-generated double monster—the devil thought to be God and the God thought to be the devil. This requires the death of your ego, and that is what is difficult. You must have faith to just accept yourself as a mortal human, imperfect and small as you are, and look upon yourself with compassion. Here you have to let go and surrender to your feelings. You will transcend with your fear and for a moment rise to a glimpse of the source. Your leap of faith will allow you to do the movement exactly the way you intended to do it, and it will leave you behind with a deep feeling that you deserved to feel good.
The Reward
You got what you want. You made your breakthrough. You unlocked a new skill and gained access to a new resource of almost infinite possibilities to dance. You have a new way of moving that you can play around with forever. And like the ability to ride a bike you will never lose dancing skills again.
Back to the beginning
And then everything starts from the beginning. Having found mastership in a specific movement, you want to do something else new, but you may not want to return feeling silly again and struggle with the practice. But you still must return to be a student again. The full round requires that you shall now begin to use your experience for the exploration of the next new movement.
Master of two worlds
As you continue to practice you become comfortable and competent in both being a master and a student. You have a lot of experience in dancing and at the same time, you still have no clue what dancing really is. The freedom to pass back and forth across the two worlds, —not contaminating the principles of the one with those of the other—is the talent of the master. The Cosmic Dancer, declares Nietzsche, does not rest heavily in a single spot, but gaily, lightly, turns and leaps from one position to another. You give up completely all attachment to your individual limitations and no longer resist the self (ego)-annihilation that is a prerequisite to grow. You are a master and student, and at the same time, you are none of them.
Freedom to dance
On this level, mastery leads to freedom from the fear of the ego-death, which in turn is the freedom to live. This is sometimes referred to as living in the moment, neither anticipating gaining more dancing skills nor being trapped in the boring comfort zone. You are totally relaxed. You listen to music and enjoy just dancing a little bit.