Drum Circle Nondualism

By Kelly Moody

It was dark, yet the sky was trying to be bright. It has just rained(finally) and the system of clouds that trailed the storm were finally withering away into the distance, marching out into nothingness, far away from this reality. You couldn't see many stars, partially because of the clouds, partially because of the tremendous light pollution which regretfully can sometimes allude a sense of technological beauty, that orangeyred that it reflects on the vastness above some nights more than others. The moon was bright even behind the clouds, but not bright enough from keeping it dark. You could still watch the water though, the ripples and rhythms of the faint reflection paired with the voice-giving wind trailing behind the storm as the clouds do.
There was an anxious excited energy in the air. Everyone prepared their spirits. The slow trickle of pilgrims made their way to the bright centerness of the fire pit, making their journey from their tents and campsites, with drums and divination tools in hand. With tambourines, didgeridoos, walking sticks/staffs also in possession. It was if slowly we journeyed into another world. Through the darkness, from one kind of light, one kind of energy-- to another kind. We began a quiet beat, with the 1st hand slap touching the animal skin, it was mechanical, but after that---the mechanics dissipated. Those who had journeyed 1st, and had initiated the genesis of the organism, were the ones to create the foundation of what was happening around them. Rather, they were the mediation between the magic of the circle already in existence on another plane, and bringing it down to earth, to this material realm. Yet, sometimes we wonder if in these moments of spiritual bliss if we are even in the same world at all. Such brightness in the center, with dancers freeing their limbs in a synchronized way rotating around the inner brightness, and the light gets dimmer as it reaches the outskirts--the drummers, the mediators of the supernatural and the material. The intuitive and the analytic. Mind and Body. Spirit and Matter. The darkness that pervaded the water, sky and land, cushioned up to this world, this transcendent ball of energy and made it even more so, it set the outlines in place.
In a sense this drum circle was a form of nondualism. We all began mechanically, but suddenly lost ourselves, lost our SELF, we flowed into the organism of the sound and the wavelength, we all became one working thing, we didn't think about our drumming, we just drummed, We didn't think about the weather, or our bodies, pain or pleasure, hot or cold, anxieties or worried, we just submitted to the greater being that is all of us combined. It was so perfectly in sync from beginning to end. It was if all of us were meant to come together, as if It were a baby waiting to be conceived and born, the Cosmo's preconceiving of it, waiting for the math to fit right to create this temporary existence. the circle from beginning to end was like birth and death of one being that we were all cells of, all aspects of. individualism dissipates and you merge with the sound, the thing takes on a life of its own. Either as a drummer or a dancer you witness both worlds, the one and the many, you become aware of your unawareness, you hands moving but not knowing how or why, you body shaking and prancing--being here and now, but beyond body, beyond place.
After its over, the clouds are gone. the moon is bright. The wind is still sporadic, giving life and voice to leaves and water, making sounds that flow together in a drum circle of their own. Orion is bright and saying hello out to the left of the inlet that we were on. Suddenly we fall back into this world, the pieces break apart again, and now we are left to reflect on what was once one. And how everything can seemingly become reordered in an instant. How is the world different now that you are an individual again? But shouldn't you just realize that you were connected all along?