One of the main reasons I have cut myself off from most people is this:

All my life I have danced to other people's tunes. It's not their fault, I have 'pleasing' issues, and so I danced. It was not so comfortable for me but I knew no other way. I guess I did my fair share of piping my own tune and getting others to dance, but I don't think it was very much, as I dislike in others what features ill in me!

So I danced and I danced, and no boats were rocked. Where the steps were out of tune for me, or where I got my toes trodden on, I internalised, accepting the blame, even volunteering for it!

Finally I got tired of dancing. I began to hear my own tune being played, and it rang well in my ears. My being started moving differently. I could admire and find pleasure in the tunes of others, but could no longer dance to discordant rhythms.

I just could not bring myself to any longer! I did not want to. I didn't see why I had to violate my being in this manner any more. I started the process of withdrawal.

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The process of tuning in to my own music, as well as discerning the different notes, took a while. During this time, I went into a long retreat and settled into a schedule-less routine entirely of my own making, night and day equal, nobody else about.

Then I started to re-engage a little, but things had changed.

I had heard my own music and I really liked the sound of it.

I realised I could dance to my own tune, and that everyone has a tune and that if we all danced to our own tunes, the world would be a wonderfully expressive place.

Yet, I found something else as well.

A tiny fraction of those to whose tunes I had danced, acknowledged and delighted in the fact that I had started listening to my own material. We could now dance to our own individual tunes together and make beautiful music.

Some didn't know what to do and just drifted off, unable to figure the new situation out.

The majority, oh the majority, didn't like it.

It was no longer the easy-going, pleasant interaction of dancing to their tune and not challenging the discordant notes or the false steps. No indeed, listening and expressing from my own musical space proved a challenge, and this was seen as a personal attack. Where once was the appearance of harmony, now appeared conflict, although in reality, this was far from the case.

Discomfort expressed; accusations made; huffs of 'oh you've changed' expressed; frantic manipulations and bribes and tantrums to return to the safety of the one-tune-relationship. But no, it's over! I try to express how beautiful it is to dance to one's own tune, to hear it and share it without imposition. But ears are tone-deaf, no other music penetrates. The initial frustration has become anger and rejection and many other things besides – the pressure to be fake, to dance another's dance, mounts.

Cut!

Goodbye for now. I can feel love and know it, but I no longer like. I will take the hike, I will settle into my own silence.

I dance to my own tune, with the symbals of my being and the strumming of my heart and the rhythm of its beats. It is a dance that is not better, not worse; not more, nor less; not subtler, nor grosser, than the dance of any other being, in any dimension, in any phsyicality!

And when I feel it, the dance is me, and universe dances as I, in unison with the entire wondrous spectrum of life and death.

All differences left behind, only Oneness expressed in music and dance.