First Tanda - A Theory of Everything by Ken Wilber

Ken Wilber’s A Theory of Everything was the first of The Sage’s books I borrowed. Thank you, Ken, for taking the time to write it. The impact it left on me was profound.

The first light bulb moment shook my foundation when I realized nothing is personal… nothing.

I began to see behaviors as separate from identity. I saw the colors of The Spiral at play all around me. I could suddenly see when two people were having parallel conversations about the same thing, but couldn’t seem to communicate.

I became aware of my own identification with a system of beliefs that were no longer useful to me.

That’s when I entered The Dark Night of the Soul. “That’s me in the corner. That’s me in the Spotlight, losing my religion.” - REM

I fell into grief for the loss of my beliefs, weeping often, feeling unsettled and unsure of this new territory.

I no longer believed in the Angry God I had been taught to fear. Believing in Him became as childish a concept to me as believing in Santa Clause (sorry kids).

It was becoming clear to me what I did NOT believe, but I was still searching for what I DID believe, which left me with a feeling of longing and uncertainty to a degree that left me with the fear, at the time, that I might have been going crazy.

I later understood that I was not going crazy. I was, in fact, recovering from a previous lifetime of the craziness of following the status quo.

For the first time in my life, I was not crazy.

Now I prefer not to “believe” much of anything. By that, I mean to say that beliefs change. They are not concrete to me as they once were.

I now prefer to “Be Still and Know.”

In Argentine Tango, due to the lack of verbal communication, the value memes of The Spiral are less apparent than in daily life, which creates room for an authentic meeting and mingling of our essences.

Of course, the dancers still carry the energy of their dominant states of being, but the connection of the embrace, meeting heart to heart, facilitates a melting away of the personality constructs we’ve built, to reveal our most authentic self, which is that of Being completely in The Present moment.

Gratitude overflows.