A man who is cynical or predatory doesn’t write like Michael Jackson.
“I cannot escape the moon. Its soft beams push aside the curtains at night. I don’t even have to see it—a cool blue energy falls across my bed and I am up.”*
A man who is self serving, selfish and self centered doesn’t respond to the energy of the moon or go and visit a hospital or orphanage somewhere in the world in order to gift lonely, sick and dying children with the gift of his presence as well as the gift of presents. Children loved Michael Jackson because children could feel Michael Jackson. For them, birth was not that long ago and they have not forgotten that sparkling sacred essence from which they emerged at birth. Having floated in that pure, warm and buoyant environment of the world before birth still connected by an invisible umbilicus to the Divine and unspoiled by human contact or doctrine, they emerge innocent, trusting and helpless. They emerge easy to love and find love easy.
“Moon, I’m here! I shout. Good,” she replies, “now give us a little dance. But my body has started moving long before she says anything. When did it start? I can’t remember—my body has always been moving.”
Babies are for rocking, for cradling, for cooing and connecting. Children are not mini adults. Childhood is to be a time of wonder and magic, of exploration and of gingerly sticking one’s toe into the world to see if this new body will survive this new and foreign place. Existence! What wonder! Sticks and snails and puppy dog tails. Santa Clause and the Tooth Fairy. Magic Kingdoms and imagination. Disneyland and Neverland. The land before time.
A man who dances with the moon and talks to her is a special man. He is unshakenly living in his own skin, unflinchingly secure in his connection to and his place within the cosmos. He knows. And he knows that he knows. And since there are no words for it, he says it in the language of his art.
“The stars draw me near, close enough so I can see through their twinkling act. They’re dancing too, doing a soft molecular jiggle that makes my carbon atoms jump in time.”
A man so close to the cosmos, to Creation and yes, the Creator, understands about life, its dance and manifestations. He respects life as a gift and respects the Creation and expression of that life in all its forms.
“With my arms flung wide, I head for the sea, which brings out another dance in me. Moon dancing is slow inside, and soft as blue shadows on the lawn. When the surf booms I hear the heart of the earth and the tempo picks up. I feel the dolphins leaping in the white foam, trying to fly, and almost flying when the waves curl high to the heavens.
A man who can send his consciousness out to sea to meet a dolphin in the waves is someone who is in touch with a world beyond the ordinary. He hears the voice of the sea and speaks to its spirit. “Ah!” the sea says. Now we are gathering a crowd.”
“I throw back my head and a swirling Nebula says, “Fast now, twirl! I start to spin as wildly as I can. This is my favorite dance because it contains a secret. The faster I twirl, the more I am still inside. My dance is all motion without and all silence within. And silence is my real dance, though it never moves. It stands aside, my choreographer of grace, and blesses each finger and toe.”
A man who speaks of grace blessing the fingers and toes of a dancer is a man who is in touch with other realms besides this one. He is sensitive and he is an artist of the highest magnitude and the art he produces is high art. No, it will not be understood by many. Many cannot go there. He is walking the path of the mystic. He is reaching up to grasp the hand of the Divine. Dervishes whirl to create that vortex, a portal or opening where Holy Spirit can fly close enough to the ground to touch the human waiting there. All mystics aspire to that union.
“As far away as a star, as near as a grain of sand, the presence rises, shimmering with light. But touch it once, and light shoots forth from the stillness. It quivers and thrills me, and I know my fate is to show others that this silence, this light, this blessing is my dance. I take this gift only to give it again. Quick give! says the light.”
This man communicates with light! He hears the elements, feels other bodies, knows the rhythms of life. He is in communion with all that is. He is in touch across vast expanses of space and time. The man in this story is an enchanter, an alchemist, a mystic. He is also a Patch Adams, a healer who can communicate in the language of children and healing. He is in touch with his Inner Michael, the sparkle that animates life and makes one to shine from the inside out. He walks in this world and in the one that is not yet created. He walks the way of the shaman.
He is a man who understands that life is a tabla rasa— blank canvas. He understands that man is the interlude between the Creator and Creation. He understands that the world is a palette and the mind is the brush. He knows that breath is the place of birth. He is an artist. He IS art.
*Excerpts from Dancing the Dream by Michael Jackson
(c) Michael Jackson 1992
Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishers
0-385-42277-6 1st Printing July 1992
18 Comments
This is a beautiful peek inside Michael. I say a peek or glimpse because I can just barely understand who and what he was. Seems like I get a grasp of the concept and then it slips away. I can feel it, though, and the feeling comes through as tears, as so much around Michael does.
I have an 18 year old boy/man in my life and recently he expressed sadness because he realizes he can never go back to his childhood. He knows it is gone; for him there is no returning to the wonder of Disneyland or the safety of parents’ love. He is more man than child now and I hurt for him because he is wise enough to feel his loss.
Michael never lost that innocence. What the world did to a soul like that! Almost more than love was his connection to all of life, to all of creation–an open conduit to touch and know what God knows. Someone said of Michael “One of one”. Thank you, Barbara, for explaining why.
God bless Michael. I pray that Michael, regardless of where he is, regardless of the space he occupies, may he always know and feel the presence of his Creator. I take Michael with me wherever I go regardless of the space I occupy, regardless of those around me.
Rev. Barbara, you capture once again the essence of Michael Jackson. Everything about him is explained by his writings and lyrics. But, there were so many who didn’t or won’t see the truth. They fear the truth and thus fear Michael and his influence. Thank you for continuing to explain.
Dear Rev Barbara,
“Dancing the Dream” is one of my most treasured possessions; every night I always read one of the stories or poems before I settle down to sleep. I randomly open the book and where it opens is the one I read that night. The book shows how Michael thought about so many things but “Dance of Life” is my favourite. I can not only see him in my mind dancing through all the different scenarios connecting with nature and life at every turn but I can feel the pure joy in it as well. Has anyone else experienced this? The whole book is so much more than a book, it is an enlightenment to Michaels very being. Rev Barbara thank you once again for your beautiful writing. Much love Anne x
I love it. Please keep it coming. This series of yours which explains his works is so important…we don’t know this man yet. Please help us see. Thanks a lot.
I found a quote that fits Michael so well: To be nobody-but-yourself — in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else — means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting. e e cummings I love you MOST.
Dear Rev. Kaufmann! I love “Dancing the Dream,” I love MJ, and I love YOU! Thank you SO much for sharing your thoughts and wisdom with us! LOVE and GRATITUDE 🙂 Anne Mette, Denmark
What’s amazing to me about Michael was that he was able to somehow bring us with him in whichever medium he found expression. On the concert stage, he brought us with him into the state of ecstasy he inhabited while singing and dancing his heart out – beyond sense – beyond time – beyond reason. In songwriting, he expressed our joy, confusion, heartbreak, pain – as well as his. In the visual arts, he brought us with him on his trips through his imagination and we ‘glimpsed for an instant the playfulness of life’ through his eyes. He had an uncanny ability to connect with each one of us in a different and meaningful and personal way and take us along regardless of where each one of us is on our own individual journey. For those few hours, we walked along his path – ‘went on his adventure’ – but he always brought us back home safely. In his writings, we, too, can feel the moonbeams bathing our faces in quiet, blue light and the sand squishing between our toes as we twirl in silence! I still can’t imagine how he continued to pour himself into the world’s cup to the point of overflowing and maintain any kind of sanity when we drained the cup and set it back on the table to be filled again while berating its capacity and belittling the quality of the wine as vulgar and base. I am grateful that he did because I have benefited so richly from his generosity. “Dancing the Dream” is just another example in a host of examples of that generosity. Thank you, Michael!
Thank you for so beautifully articulating what I have been feeling and thinking about Michael for so long. I have been blessed by his energy in my life, and share his connection with the beauty and grace of the natural world. He so bravely and naturally lived his connection, while many of us are afraid, or still aren’t hearing it. These excerpts are from one of my favourite passages from Dancing the Dream, it resonates deeply with me.
The first time I saw Michael in concert on DVD: Live at Bucharest – I had to re-watch several times. I HAD to understand what was coming at me, through a TV screen no less, that dropped me to my knees, and made massive audiences so fixated on him they looked like they were willing their souls to escape the flesh and fuse completely with him. What made them dissolve into ecstacy? What was coming off a small TV screen that sent ME there? And I got it: Michael let God out. Of all his genius’, this was his greatest. He let God roar through him and shatter everyone there with fulfillment of our deepest desire: to have that Love completely fill and take us over. That’s the dream Michael danced and it made macho boys scream, never mind the rest of us.
I understand Michae’ls connection to the moon and the ocean.
Michael was God’s instrument. When I read of michael’s messages, his words, his heart, my whole being is being pulled to his essence…it has been happening since the day he died. For me, he is not dead, but passed as it is a passing, a milestone, a passing through. A rite of passage to somewhere else.. another life, another dimension. Michael passed through here- in this time and space for 50 years, 45 of them as a healer, a messenager, a prophet, a mystic warrior. I love Michael Jackson, not for his popstar status, although that in itself-was creative genius in all its glory; I love Michael Jackson because I know HIM–his HEART, his ESSENCE. I know I will see Michael again, along with his millions of warriors of LOVE, JUSTICE, and PEACE. And until my pasage, when my passing is over, I will continue to live my life in devotion to keeping his legacy alive, for the SPIRTUAL MAN he was. Thank you again Rev. Barbara. I think you see Michael the way I see him. God Bless you.
Thank you Barbara for clearly identifying all the reasons why Michael was so special! Dancing the Dream is an extraordinary offering of his soul – everything that he was/is in this world and beyond. As you said, the language of his art expressing, as only Michael can, his connection to and his place within the cosmos. Yes, I agree, he knows.
I like your play on words in the title “Taking Com-moon-ion” – very clever! In addition to its reminder of Michael’s connection to the moon, it makes me think of the sacrament of communion with the bread and the wine, and what these elements represent – the body and the blood of Christ. The bread and wine were shared with the disciples at the last supper the night before Jesus was to be crucified. With utmost respect to all faiths and beliefs, to me this is beginning to feel like a metaphor for Michael’s life! His immense gift, his art, was shared with us through his instrument (body) which was blessed by the Divine (just as communion elements are blessed by a priest or minister.) And his pain, his broken heart (bleeding) over the injustices in this world as well as the relentless persecution he endured was also presented and communicated through his art.
Michael himself said in a letter he wrote to the media in 1987 responding to a flood of untrue stories and rumors that were circulating about him at that time, “Animals strike, not from malice, but because they want to live. It is the same with those who criticize, they desire our blood, not our pain. But still I must achieve, I must seek truth in all things. I must endure for the power I was sent forth, for the world, for the children. But have mercy, for I’ve been bleeding a long time now.” …He definitely knew.
I haven’t read Dancing the Dream for weeks, but decided I must read ‘Dance of Life’ before the end of the day. I picked up my book and read a couple of other poems and decided to leave it at that for the time being, I could always find the other one tomorrow. Then I noticed my ‘bookmark’ poking out from one of the pages, its not a bookmark as such, just a card with beautiful butterflies on it entitled ‘Bright and Beautiful.” Out of all those pages I expect you know which one was bookmarked for me, so I got to read ‘Dance of Life’ that night anyway. Thank you MJ and Rev Barbara.
In the same way that each atom is a small part of that which together forms matter, all living things together are part of God’s creation. He who understands that the wonder of life comes from God, he who marvels at God’s creation of his own volition, is incapable of moving even a single finger to destroy something or someone, much less a child. Michael was a man who understood and respected the wonder of God’s creation; we can see it in”Dancing the Dream” as he describes the world around him. Michael knew he was a part of that perfection, and he is certainly a man who will never ceases to amaze me. Thanks Barbara.
Wonderful article Rev. B! I sincerely hope I live long enough to understand an inkling of what Michael knew. He held the answers to the questions people most yearned to know and he blessed us by sharing his insights. Now we are left to figure out each tiny piece of the puzzle, only to discover the secret of the bigger picture!
Such beautiful, beautiful words….both from Michael and from you, Rev Barbara. Thank you for this wonderful piece of writing.
I actually had to read it every day up until now before I felt I could respond. I needed to allow these words to permeate into my heart and mind and soak into my soul. What a truly blissful plane Michael existed from. I want to get there.
I love Dancing the Dream. In my opinion, no-one can begin to understand Michael, without reading this book. Its in his words that we see where his creative energy and force hails from and all that he does flows from that place. Michael cannot be talked about without acknowledging the spirituality that he embraces, embodies and emits.
When I first read this book, I found myself constantly asking, “What is it in him, that I can find in me?”. This has now become a daily mantra, if you will. I dont claim to have the answer but I know that I am not the same person that I was a year ago. And the more I discover and learn about this man, the more I realise that I havent even begun to scratch the surface yet.
Barbara, thank you for this spiritual journey you are guiding us through. Please continue because in discovering more about Michael, I am discovering more about myself. God Bless you Rev Barbara~
Lastly, I wanted to share this video tribute with all the beautiful souls here. I think it speaks for itself:
Hallelujah
I’ve come to the same conclusion you have. A man who writes like Michael Jackson is connected to the inside universe and couldn’t possibly have done what they accused him of. He said pretty early that he believed in God on a spiritual level, not on a religious one. That is very evident in his book, which is grossly underrated. A man who thinks and feels like the man who wrote that book is bound to be a good man. I love the thoughtful poem he wrote for his mother, thanking her for giving birth to him. This man had a lot of moral and spiritual courage. He was advanced. He knew things and lived what he knew. The world did finally manage to drag him down, as they did Jesus. In my mind, there’s no difference between them. They were both crucified and betrayed by those they trusted. They both went to a far better place. We lost big when we lost Michael.