Collective Vortex Dance Offering

Dance with us this Sunday, November 24, 2013 from 5:10 AM to 7:10 AM at the U.P. Campus, Lagoon Area (Near the Lagoon Stage)

TENTATIVE P R O G R A M

I. Assembly Time and Setting – UP ( 4:30 AM to 4:45 AM)

II. Orientation (4:45 AM to 5:00 AM)

III. Preliminaries and Inner Preparation (5:00 AM to 5:10 AM)

IV. START : Opening of the Sacred Center (The Inner / Outer Vortex): The “Bathala” Call 5:10 AM

V. Invocation :
A. The Call to the Three Worlds
B. The Call to the Four Directions
C. The Call to the Four Elements
D. The Vortex Prayer / Meditation : The Call to Guardian Spirits, Inner Guides, the Divine Self (the Christ Within), the Earth-Mother, and the Supreme Cosmic Spirit : Statement of / Meditation : Statement of Public and Private Intentions

VI. The Vortex Circular Walk (Silent Walking Around the Inner Circle of Sitting People in Meditation and Prayer; Centering)

VII. The Vortex Circular Offerings : Dance, Singing, Chanting, Music-Making, and Open Spaces for Creative and Spontaneous Flows (Free-Flow Part)

VIII. The Vortex Circular Walk (Silence and Centering)

IX. The Bathala Call

X. Closing of the Sacred Center

XI. Thanksgiving to the Cosmos and Shouts of Victory

THE VENUE :
The University of the Philippines Campus – the Lagoon Area (near the Lagoon Stage).

1. By car or by taxi from the University Avenue (from PHILCOA), please enter the UP Administration Building gateway (Quezon Hall). This is where the Oblation Statue stands. There is a parking lot nearby. Walk past Quezon Hall. Just walk up the open stairway, and down towards the green lawn behind Quezon Hall. Walk straight across the vast, green, open space. If you follow this path and walk straight ahead, you will see the lagoon site, further on. The venue is the Lagoon grounds, not the Lagoon stage.

2. By PHILCOA - UP Campus jeepney : Please tell the driver that you will get off at Quezon Hall or the UP Administration Building, where the UP Oblation Statue stands. Cross the street towards the entrance gate of Quezon Hall. Walk towards the open stairway, towards the back part. Cross the vast green lawn behind the building. As you proceed straight the path, you may see further the grounds of the Lagoon Area. We will use the Lagoon ground, not the Lagoon stage.

GUIDELINES:

1. This “Collective Vortex Dance Offering” is a creative and contemporary rendition of the ancient pre-colonial “Babaylan” (shamanic) rituals. This is an attempt to re-claim ancient wisdom and ritual, in a contemporary design - dedicated to the Mother-Earth / Mother-Goddess. It is said that Mother Earth does not need any help to heal herself. If left to herself, she will in her own time renew the Earth. But do we stand back and leave her to her own resources? If we do, if we wait for her to reach the saturation point of absorbing the abuses done to her, she might have no recourse but to take drastic and radical action to balance the extreme negative and destructive energies heaped upon her. Do we have to wait for this to happen, and all be wiped out? Or do we join efforts to ensure that she is not forced to reach saturation point… to get the process of healing under way right now? Do we innovate or stagnate?

2. The dance is called a “Collective Vortex Dance Offering” because dancing in a circular formation activates the inherent energies within each one, the earth and the whole cosmos. As we meditate together and reconnect with the creative and positive energies of Mother Nature, we are awakening and activating the “vortex” within each one, to radiate from within our bodies into the greater worlds beyond. The world within is a mirror of the cosmos around and beyond us. By reconnecting with Mother Earth, we experience inner healing. By being healed, we release the inner power, the Light within. This Inner Light meets the Cosmic Light… and the Divine Self is born - as the division and duality between the human and the divine, as well as the light and darkness , are dissolved into a never-ending Light that dissolves all the darkness…..

3. There is no standard wear. White is preferred for dramatic effect, but this is secondary. What is important is the presence of the devotional heart, willing and happy to offer prayers to the Supreme Spirit...An exercise in letting go of the ego....

4. The public intentions : to do a collective dance offering to generate positive forces for the following creative intentions:

a. the Healing of the Earth ( reconnecting with Mother Nature and the cleansing of the earth);

b. empowerment of the sacred centers and energies of the Earth;

c. prayer for the emergence of a spiritual natured-based civilization, where there is “pakikpagkapwa” and “pakikiisa” with Mother Nature;

d. prayer for the peace and repose of the departed souls, specifically those who perished due to super-typhoon Yolanda in all affected areas; including those who were not even identified yet, and not given proper burial rites);

e. prayer for the speedy healing of the wounds brought by the ravages of the super-typhoon in the hearts and memory of the people affected; also the speedy reconstruction of all the cities, municipalities and barangays affected;

f. prayer for the healing of people sick in many or all levels; and

g. Prayer for the Opening of the Portal of Light in the unseen dimensions : for successful emergence of a strong, creative, and loving People of the Light (renewed people of God or the experience of a spiritual birth and renewal for humanity and the beings of nature).

5. Please bring your own snacks and bottled water. Also bring your own umbrellas and extra clothes, just in case it rains.

6. For those who will not walk and dance, but wish to sit and do meditation and prayer in stillness, please bring mats and cushion to sit on. You will be sitting down around the Bamboo Altar as symbol of the Macrocosmic and Microcosmic Vortex. Those walking and dancing around the Vortex will also dance around you as part of the Vortex.

7. Those who come late, please just quietly walk toward the circle of walking or dancing people.

8. Please avoid loud talking and laughter, to enable others to concentrate and do continuous meditation. Silence must be maintained, if possible. If there is an urgent need to communicate, please whisper your message to the person concerned.

9. If one is doing sitting meditation and gets tired sitting down continuously for a long time, you may stand up, stretch your legs, and then sit down once again. If one wants to join the circle of walking, singing, chanting, and dancing people, please just join them quietly. If, on another hand, you have been continuously walking, singing, chanting, and dancing, and needs to sit down, one can join the circle of those doing sitting meditation and praying.

10. You are encouraged to bring your own musical instruments (for those who have them), for your music-making offering to Mother-Earth.

11. As you enter the UP Main Gate along the University Avenue, please tell the guards that you are attending the "Collective Vortex Dance Offering" at the UP lagoon, to start at 5:10 AM. I will be providing the guards posted at the Checkpoint of the Main Gate a photocopy of the official permit issued to me by the UP Office of Community Affairs last November 5, 2013, for the event on November 24, 2013.

12. After the Collective Dance Offering, please see to it that you don’t leave any litter or garbage behind. The UP Community Affairs Office would like us to leave the lagoon grounds clean and free of garbage. Please get your litters and put them into your bags, if there are no waste cans nearby.

13. Please fill in the Attendance Sheet with your full name and contact numbers. We would like to invite you later to join us in the Launching of the “Collective Vortex Dance Offering” (Sayaw-Kawalan) at the Dancing Fountain, Quezon Memorial Circle on December 21, 2013 (Saturday), a Winter-Solstice day, 4:00 PM to 7:00 PM. Henceforth, there will be such a Collective Vortex Dance Offering at the same time and place, on every other second Saturday of the month covering the months of February, April, June, August, October, and December, 2014. This is dedicated to earth-healing, serving as an offering and prayer to reconnect with Mother-earth….

14. The translation of “Vortex Dancing” into Tagalog is “Sayaw-Kawalan.” Sayaw-Kawalan literally means the “Dance of Emptiness”, the “Dance of Nothingness” or the “Dance of Stillness” (the stillness in the center of nothingness or emptiness). The root-word of “kawalan” is “wala”, literally, “nothing” or “empty.” According to the article “Reflections on ‘Tiwala’ : An Essay in the Philosophy and Theology Behind a Tagalog Word” by Leonardo R Silos (Kinaadman VII, No. 1, 1985, pp.25-37), “until recently, "wala" was still commonly used as a word for ‘high seas’ in Tagalog. It still appears as a living word in the Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala of Noceda and Sanlucar whose first edition appeared in 1754. The word is now seldom if ever so used. It is now classified by lexicographers as Old Tagalog.” He further connects the Tagalog” wala as “high seas” and related it to the Old Tagalog word “tiuala” which, according to the 1754 "Vocabulario de la Lengua Tagala" refers to “distant part, as the gulf in relation to the shore; "magtiuala", to put to sea, to go far way; "ipatiuala", what one brings with him….” He concludes that “wala” was originally the unknown, mysterious chaotic “high seas” that instilled a sense of fear among the mariners and navigators as they see the sight of nothingness and emptiness, whenever they go beyond or cross beyond, the sea-horizon. Thus, this writer, inspired by this knowledge, sees the “vortex” as the core of a whirling liquid formed by the clockwise or counter-clockwise rotation of water. The core may emanate from within going outwards, or from outside whirling within, This creates tremendous energies for creation and re-creation. The human physical body itself is constituted largely by water. The earth is likewise constituted largely by water. Likewise, as we move in a circular dance, we activate the vortex or core of water energies within the body, and by extension, so do we activate the energies in a given place, or that of the earth’s sacred centers of vital powers. Thus we reconnect with the natural rhythms of nature… we vibrate and re-align with the rhythms and pulses of nature….We synchronize and align with the inner and outer rhythm the cosmos within us, and the cosmos around us and beyond us. Hence, the “Vortex Dance” is asserted to be connected with the “Sayaw-Kawalan” in a metaphorical sense, because the “Circle Dance within and without, becomes a Vortex Dance of Light, in the process of experiencing the inner chaos, emptiness and nothingness. At the very center of chaos lies the point of stillness, in which the dance of becoming has become “in the stillness dancing” and “dancing in the stillness” as the poet T.S. Eliot calls it. Thus, by re-aligning with the universe through the spontaneous Collective Vortex Dance, we could generate a vortex of creative and positive intentions for the healing of the self and nature, as well as for the creation of a new spiritual world civilization, and the activation of the spark of divinity within each human being….As we do this, we also pray for the healing, blessing, and liberation of all the departed souls.

Salamat po Prof. Grace Odal-Devora!