Survival Dance vs Sacred Dance
There's a common tension for people who are trying to do work they love. If you're not independently wealthy, you face the tension of needing to make money while pursuing your passion, your dream or your desired career. There is often a balancing act of time between these two things - what makes you money and what makes you light up.
A Native American teacher, Harley Swift Dear, says that each of us has a survival dance and a sacred dance - and the survival dance must come first.
The survival dance is what you do for a living. In Bill Plotkin's book, Soulcraft, he writes, "For most people, this means a paid job. For members of a religious community like a monastery, it means social or spiritual labors that contribute to the community’s well-being. For others, it means creating a home and raising children, finding a patron for one’s art, or living as a hunter or gatherer. Everybody has to have a survival dance. Finding and creating one is our first task upon leaving our parents’ or guardians’ home."
Then there's your sacred dance. This is what makes you most alive. It's also where you are of greatest service to others, offering your highest gift to the world. This is probably what you dream about doing, what you know you're here on this earth to do.
For many, there's a desire to increase their amount of time doing their sacred dance and decrease their time spent on their survival dance. It can lead to resentment, irresponsible decisions, a victim mentality, or giving up on your sacred dance altogether.
Here are three ideas that are helpful to me in navigating this tension.
Don't Crush Your Sacred Dance
"If only I could make money from that, then I'd be happy!" Maybe. But maybe not. Adding the burden of financial income to our sacred dance right now might crush it. It may just be an interest that you're still developing. It may be a passion that needs to be nurtured and protected from the weight of providing money. It may need to be something you do just for yourself. At least right now. It's not ready to be scrutinized and shaped by the marketplace.
My wife loves to sing. She has since I met her when I was in middle school. When she went off to college, her first stop was in Denton, Texas, to pursue a degree in music. After one semester, she found that subjecting her passion to the demands and discipline required in that setting quickly sapped the joy out of her favorite activity.
It's tempting to think that making your passion your career is the key to your happiness. But recognize that not making it your primary income - at least right now - might be it's salvation.
Take Steps to Transition
You may know that you are supposed to earn a living from your sacred dance. But that doesn't have to be a sudden leap - it can be a slow transition.
Maybe right now, 100% of your income comes from your survival dance. Then take steps to make it 80/20. Then 50/50. Until your sacred dance supports your life - both financially and spiritually.
This also gives you the right amount of time and space to test your sacred dance - is it really what you are here to do? Do you have the skills and understanding of the craft to make it a career? What are you learning from letting your sacred dance interact with the marketplace?
Again from Bill Plotkin: "Swift Deer says that once you discover your sacred dance and learn effective ways of embodying it, the world will support you in doing just that. What your soul wants is what the world also wants (and needs). Your human community will say yes to your soul work and will, in effect, pay you to do it. Gradually, your sacred dance becomes what you do and your former survival dance is no longer need. Now you have only one dance as the world supports you to do what is most fulfilling for you. How do you get there? The first step is creating a foundation of self-reliance: a survival dance of integrity that allows you to be in the world in a good way...it’s not a step that can be skipped."
Your Survival Dance is Preparing You
Finally - and this shift has been crucial for me to see - your survival dance is actually teaching you and shaping you into the person you need to do your sacred dance.
The very ways you are struggling with your survival dance - discipline, commitment, professionalism, apathy, or treating it as a craft - are the very things you need to learn to fully embody your sacred dance effectively.
How you do anything is how you do everything. Your survival dance is here to teach you the lessons that must be learned first. It's your training ground to to equip you for your sacred dance. It is not an obstacle - it is the path.
When you see this, it takes away the constant resistance to your survival dance. You see that your minimum wage job waiting tables is not in the way of you doing your sacred work, it is preparing you for it. The longer you resist the lessons from your survival dance, the longer it will take to step into your sacred dance.
The Tension Dance
This is an ongoing tension that must be navigated. You could say it is a dance as you move from one dance to the other dance.
How are you holding this tension between your sacred dance and your survival dance? How do you need to see and relate to what is currently providing you income? What kind of season are you in and how do you want to frame your job or work right now?
May you learn to hold the tension between the different parts of your work. May you create some space for you to nurture your sacred dance, even if it's a minority of your time. May you find ways to show up more fully in your survival dance, not shrinking back but using it to grow into who you want to be. And may you see the ways your survival dance is trying to prepare you for the work you're most meant to do.
