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Carol Skolnick , author of Soul Surgery Blog, is a wonderful writer and deep seeker.
Here is her review of Skin of Glass.
Unlike
the lyrics to the Blondie song "Heart of Glass," which speak to
fragility and betrayal, to have a skin of glass is to be transparent to
oneself. In her new book, Dunya Dianne McPherson lets us see her, and
see through her, as well...literally to the bone.
Skin of Glass: Finding Spirit in the Flesh,
is a literary spiritual memoir by my once and future dance teacher.
(She's coming to Santa Cruz in October!) I attended Dunya's
Dancemeditation classes in New York for years, initially dragged there
by a friend who insisted I didn't have be a good dancer or physically
coordinated in order to do this spiritual/somatic practice: a
combination of bellydance, Sufi work, and fluid yoga. (In doing so, I
discovered that I was a pretty good dancer, and not as clumsy as I
thought.)
Dunya was a "bunhead" kid (as we New Yorkers called
the young chignon and leotard-sporting girls scarfing ice cream outside
the Joffrey ballet school each summer) whose passion for classical
dance took her from Wood's Hole to Juilliard. In the early 1980s,
severe injuries ended her performance career while it opened her to a
new way of experiencing dance as embodied prayer. She went through the
usual stuff of spiritual biography—big experiences, parental
disapproval, disillusionment with the teacher—until the path and
practice became uniquely her own.
What distinguishes this
spiritual autobiography from others is the emphasis on the body. It is
after all through the body that we come to spiritual maturity. Dunya's
memoir is a remembrance not simply of events, but of the evolution of
bone, skin, sinew, muscle, organs, blood, sweat, lymph, and hormones
along with the soul. The language is poetic and erotic, whether Dunya
is describing a transcendent act of lovemaking or the inward journey
sparked by an awareness of skeletal structure.
The reason this
book is special to me goes beyond Dunya's exquisitely written story and
seeps into my own. My discovery of Byron Katie's inquiry collided with
my Dancemeditation practice; each enhanced the other. As fluid movement
had its way with my body, I was no longer the limited, egoic story; I
noticed that as soon as I attached to a thought that interrupted the
flow, I would take a tumble. When I was connected with my essence,
unselfconscious and unafraid, the dance danced itself. Who would I be
without my story? A woman dancing beautifully for herself, even while
performing for others.
Dunya and I approached the path to
self-realization from different sides; she was a dancer who met spirit
through dance, I was a seeker who met dance through spirit. Through our
respective practices, we touch what cannot be grasped by the thinking
mind...and we meet in the middle, where there is no distinction, where
all is transparent, where we see and are seen.
"Inside any deep asking is the answering." —Rumi
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