Field Note #17 - True Expression: The Sacred Service of Being Ourselves
Oct 20, 2026The languages we learn, the presence that moves through them, and the sacred service of being ourselves.
True Expression has been a lifetime of inquiry for me, beginning long before I had words to describe it.
Throughout our lives, we learn so many languages.
The languages of our cultures, education, religions, beliefs, professions, and the arts. The languages of movement, music, science, and healing.
I spent many years studying the language of classical ballet, and later exploring other languages of movement, bodywork, yoga, and natural healing.
We study these languages, practice them, and sometimes even come to identify ourselves through them.
Yet none of them can capture our True Expression.
So what is it that moves through these languages?
What comes first?
In this Field Note, I explore the presence, breath, and life force that precede the forms through which we express ourselves.
When this is honored, the languages we have learned become something different. They become paints, movements, tones—possibilities through which something uniquely alive can flow.
And I inquire into how even our physical forms—the cells, the DNA, our bodies, the bodies of trees, horses, and plants—may be instruments through which the Divine life force expresses itself.
The Gift of Our Expression
I share a personal story from my teenage years as a classical ballet dancer.
It was a difficult period in my life, filled with intense study, extraordinary dancers around me, and considerable suffering, illness and self-doubt.
Recently, as I have been inquiring into True Expression, a memory from those years resurfaced.
One day, a little girl who had been watching our class shows up out of nowhere and gives me a card expressing her love for my dancing.
Looking back now, I wonder: what if my entire dancing career had been for that one encounter?
What if touching the heart of that one child was enough?
I know what it is to have my own heart touched.
And it is the whole world.
This brings me to a contemplation of sacred service, and the recognition that there is no higher or lower in the offering of our True Expression.
Caritas — Love Freely Given
Recently, while contemplating whether and how to offer Four Weeks Together, a word came to me:
Caritas.
I began exploring its meaning and its association with divine love, freely given.
A few days later, while sitting quietly beside my daughter in a dentist's office, contemplating Caritas...the word charity unexpectedly caught my attention on the page of her book.
There it was again.
These are the kinds of messages I have come to recognize in everyday life.
And as I continued contemplating Caritas, I began sensing it moving through the many individuals who have touched my life—through family, teachers, communities, unexpected encounters, and moments of connection.
Through all of us.
To Be Met, and to Invite Forth
There is something deeply meaningful about being met in what is true within us.
I have been contemplating the teachers and individuals who have helped draw forth my own expression—not necessarily through their particular methods, systems, or techniques, but through their capacity to witness something within me.
To invite it forth.
To help me experience my own presence.
Perhaps this, too, is sacred service.
Sometimes, I feel that this is at the heart of what I offer - within any form that I am teaching.
In this video, I invite you into these contemplations and the discoveries that continue to emerge through them.
An Invitation — Four Weeks Together
This exploration is part of what has been moving me to open Four Weeks Together—a space to share these discoveries and to invite forth what is uniquely alive within each of us.
Beginning October 26, I'll be sharing weekly videos, personal stories, guided practices, and opportunities for us to meet and explore together.
Participation is freely offered, and you can join from wherever you are, in your own time.
