The Sur¬vi¬val Dance and The Sacred Dance

Har­ley Swift Deer, a Native Ame­ri­can teacher, says that each of us has a sur­vi­val dance and a sac­red dance, but the sur­vi­val dance must come first. Our sur­vi­val dance, a foun­da­tio­nal com­po­nent of self-reliance, is what we do for a living — our way of sup­por­ting our­sel­ves phy­si­cally and eco­no­mi­cally. For most peo­ple, this means a paid job. For mem­bers of a reli­gious com­mu­nity like a monas­tery, it means social or spi­ri­tual labors that con­tri­bute to the community’s well-being. For others, it means crea­ting a home and rai­sing chil­dren, fin­ding a patron for one’s art, or living as a hun­ter or gathe­rer. Every­body has to have a sur­vi­val dance. Fin­ding and crea­ting one is our first task upon lea­ving our parents’ or guar­dians’ home.

Once you have your sur­vi­val dance esta­blished, you can wan­der, inwardly and out­wardly, searching for clues to your sac­red dance, the work you were born to do. This work may have no rela­tion to your job. Your sac­red dance sparks your grea­test ful­fill­ment and extends your truest ser­vice to others. You know you’ve found it when there’s little else you’d rather be doing. Get­ting paid for it is super­fluous. You would gladly pay others, if neces­sary, for the oppor­tu­nity.

Hence, the impor­tance of self-reliance, not merely the eco­no­mic kind implied by a sur­vi­val dance but also of the social, psycho­lo­gi­cal, and spi­ri­tual kind. To find your sac­red dance, after all, you will need to take sig­ni­fi­cant risks. You might need to move against the grain of your family and friends. By honing psycho­lo­gi­cal self-reliance, you will find it easier to keep focu­sed on your goals in the face of resis­tance or incom­prehen­sion, ini­tial fai­lure or set­backs, or eco­no­mic or orga­ni­za­tio­nal obs­tac­les. And spi­ri­tual self-reliance will main­tain your con­nec­tion with the dee­pest truths and what you’ve lear­ned about how the world works.

Swift Deer says that once you dis­co­ver your sac­red dance and learn effec­tive ways of embod­ying it, the world will sup­port you in doing just that.

What your soul wants is what the world also wants (and needs). Your human com­mu­nity will say yes to your soul work and will, in effect, pay you to do it. Gra­dually, your sac­red dance beco­mes what you do and your for­mer sur­vi­val dance is no lon­ger need. Now you have only one dance as the world sup­ports you to do what is most ful­fi­lling for you. How do you get there? The first step is crea­ting a foun­da­tion of self-reliance: a sur­vi­val dance of inte­grity that allows you to be in the world in a good way — a way that is psycho­lo­gi­cally sus­tai­ning, eco­no­mi­cally ade­quate, socially res­pon­si­ble, and envi­ron­men­tally sound. Cul­ti­va­ting right live­lihood, as the Buddhist call it, is essen­tial trai­ning and foun­da­tion for your soul work; it’s not a step that can be skipped.