Easing into my topic

I now wish I had been more methodical in my journaling, but then I’m not methodical now. I will guess it would have been late in the second year of dancing tango but that seems too soon so maybe it was during the third year that out of the blue the first of what I have come to call “transcendent” tangos occurred for me.

I don’t like the label “transcendent” but I like the term “trance” even less. I simply don’t have a name for it that I’m comfortable with. “Transcendent” seems pretentious but I’ve come to have a specific referent to what is transcended, that referent being what I now call the deliberate ego. I use the term “deliberate ego” to refer to what Tim Galway in his Inner Game books calls Self 1. That which transcends the deliberate ego is the total organism, the total brain including those functions that are unconscious.

That first experience was the epiphany that I have organized all my tango dancing around. My initial mistake was thinking that “oh, this is what tango dancing is. As soon as I get good enough this is what I will be dancing”. Wrong! Though it did get a tiny bit easier. It is a shared experience and absolutely depends on the rapport and participation of both partners.

I’ve little facility for dance and was fifty years old with a lifetime of stooped hunched posture when I started classes in 1997. As a child I would read books by the hour, a habit I gave up only of late as my eyes just can’t take it anymore and gave little thought to my body. I also listened to music for hours a day, a habit that continues to this moment. So I can’t learn to dance very elaborately and this remains a frustrating situation for me as I’m not without ambitions and wish I weren’t forced by my situation into humility. It is not a position I would adopt were it not forced on me by necessity.

But I’ve an odd facility for kinesthetic expression that is shared by only a few people I’ve danced with. This facility when met in a dance partner can result in a dance conversation of nuances of feeling that is extremely satisfying. I believe this may be the basis of the tango experience Daniel Trenner calls “trance”. I don’t like the term “trance”. Dictionary.com has these definitions.
trance
n.
1. A hypnotic, cataleptic, or ecstatic state.
2. Detachment from one's physical surroundings, as in contemplation or daydreaming.
3. A semiconscious state, as between sleeping and waking; a daze.
Ecstatic is the only word that I would apply to my experience. It is a state of heightened sensory awareness and I want to read Charlotte Selver on her approach to this subject.
I am intending to explore this topic in greater depth. For some months now I’ve wanted to see to what extent I could find words for these nonverbal experiences.