Art As Service – “Is There Another Way: Rebirth,” the Phillipines

Makati, Phillipines:  B.K. Marge Enriquez’s annual one-woman show, “Is There Another Way: Rebirth” was a collaboration with theatre professionals at the intimate venue of Power Mac Center Spotlight, Circuit Makati, in the Phillipines. Despite a typhoon that caused floods and traffic, the event was filled with a niche group of prominent personalities.
The poetic text — based on Dadi Janki’s lectures of the same title — tackled subjects such as self-healing, honesty, respect, silence, conquering ego, dying and God’s love. The dance began with BK Marge crawling out of her cocoon, feeling the earth and covering herself with red scraps of Japanese paper represented how we cover ourselves with layers of negativity and pain. Walking around in circles gathering stones, she symbolized how we accumulate emotional baggage which become burdens. She built walls and barriers to represent how ego fragments our relationships. A dance on dying showed how we must let go of the physical case we are in, return to healing, and let peace and love be our guiding light. Thus, the rebirth or the transformation of the self. In the final poem, Marge danced happily as the words said, “With God’s love, I overcame adverse situations in life.”
Center Coordinator of the Brahma Kumaris of Halifax, BK Judy Johnson, spoke about meditation as “dying alive.” She made a comparison that in physical death, the person withdraws his or her attention from the world and from the logic of emotions which tend to move like waves of water. A person who is dying will come to realize lessons learned in life and learn to forgive. The fire of negative impressions in the mind cools down. Like air, the soul is ready to leave the body and take the last gasp of breath. In the ethereal stage, the soul becomes a being of light. Sister Judy likens meditation to “dying alive,” where the body sits comfortably and leaves behind worldly concerns such as shopping lists, friends and family. The self turns inward, checks the burning emotions or issues in the mind and lets them pass. The feeling of dying alive is the deep experience of peace and silence. Ultimately, the attention is turned to God.
The result of meditation is making life an art. “With the practice of dying alive, I have so much energy that allows me to make my body move freely and gracefully. My voice becomes gentler and harmonizes like music. Thoughts become like colors in an artist’s palette,” she said. “Dying alive allows us to live freely and peacefully as art under God’s spotlight.”
Sister Judy and the artistic team were treated to a gong bath, or healing through vibrations, by gong master Rosan Cruz.