Murmuration – Emergent Flow

One of my most ecstatic experiences, that came from embracing randomness and finding flow. One of the images was feeling myself as a flock of starlings moving as a whole and as individual birds at the same time. I was both the greater flock consciousness dancing, as well as each bird as a unique point of consciousness. This ability for a group of starlings or other animals to move as one, without having a single leader, is a beautiful example of emergent flow and how the four forces come together. Below is a video showing footage of the dance, and the second video is the explanation of how science describes it. It is a great example of how structure, order and emergence can come together Below the two videos is my story of the ecstatic experience.

Emergence
I love to dance and over the years, I’ve often had a practice of dancing as a form of meditation and personal process. At the end of a particularly powerful personal retreat, I decided to take my phone and earphones and go dance by myself to complete the weekend.

The property where the retreat was held has four beautiful standing stones that were placed there by the community. It’s a magical space and the stones have been witness to many life milestones for me, including my husband’s first marriage proposal to me. (I asked him to propose three times, which is a story for another time.)
I entered the center of the field with the stones around me, put in my earphones, picked the song I wanted to dance to, tucked my phone into my cleavage and began to dance…for about 10 seconds.

Then abruptly, the song spontaneously changed to a random song. I put the original song back on and started again. Again after 15 seconds the song changed. I tried putting the phone on the ground with the speaker on, so it wouldn’t move. I turned the phone on and off. I double-checked all the settings, but the phone continued to “skip” to another song each time playing for less than half a minute. It was random and chaotic.

I had danced with my phone at least a hundred times and this had never happened.

Frustrated, I was determined to dance. I decided to let it play and hoped it would stop eventually. At first it was frustrating, awkward, and I contemplated giving up. I sank deeper and decided to see if I could embrace each song and let the music move me.

Within a few minutes, I felt the flow. I began to feel myself surrender to the music and allow myself to be carried.

And the world shifted.

Suddenly, there were no longer erratic snippets of separate songs; now there was only one song. The random chaos was no longer random.
I was everything, all the parts…and the pattern of the parts flowing as one. An image of a flock of starlings flashed, a dense undulating wave. Murmuration. No longer was there chaos. I was the greater dance. I was all of the individual birds and I was flock consciousness itself.

I was all of life and at the same time, each separate part—dancing.

The idea of leading or following was incomprehensible. They were the same thing.

There was the spontaneous, emergent transformation in every instant. No moment like any other.

At one point, I moved my hand and felt it move the edge of the universe. I felt every particle as connected and the impossibility of my movement to be in isolation.
I was propelled into my body, my cells, my atoms, into the space between everything. I was nothing exploding into everything, fracturing into an infinite number of pieces…all dancing.

In one intense wave of pleasure and bliss beyond anything I had experienced, I had this wave of understanding of how everything in my journey had been bringing me to this moment. All the random parts of my story creating me, creating this moment. I understood.

I laughed and yelled, “Yes!”

In that instant, the song changed to the one I had been originally trying to play and has never skipped again.

When we are in deep collaboration, we are dancing at the edge of what wants to happen. We are playing jazz improv with life, with everything.