I am alert for a cubic centimeter of chance to come my way as I flirt with swallowing the red pill to access the Tango Matrix.  Don Juan in Carlos Castenada’s book, Journey to Ixtlan, explains the cubic centimeter of chance:

“All of us, whether or not we are warriors, have a cubic centimeter of chance that pops out in front of our eyes from time to time.  The difference between an average man and a warrior is that the warrior is aware of this, and one of his tasks is to be alert, deliberately waiting, so that when his cubic centimeter pops out he has the necessary speed, the prowess to pick it up…  Usually we are too busy, or too preoccupied, or just too stupid and lazy to realize that that is our cubic centimeter of luck.  A warrior, on the other hand, is always alert and tight and has the spring, the gumption necessary to grab it.”

CUBIC CENTIMETER OF CHANCE --- Will you see and grab your chance before it quickly passes, forever gone?

In my own words a cubic centimeter of chance is a portal to vast life change that opens but for a short time – a few seconds to perhaps a few days.  Once that portal closes, it is closed forever, and you may have to wait years before another comes your way.  However, once you step through this portal, your life immediately executes a profoundly different beneficial trajectory.

Throughout the world of Argentine Tango, I believe these special portals emerge more often than with other activities, because what Tango demands.  Tango demands of its participants: greater intimacy; reflections of social status; a look at social behaviors; greater awareness of personal beliefs of self and others; examination of relationships with friends and significant others; and understand and feeling more deeply our own body.  Tango demands act as lightening rods, attracting portals to vast life change, similar to how psychotherapy and other personal growth modalities attract portals.

I have missed possible portals, or cubic centimeter of chances.   For example, I once stood in line at a Wild Oats grocery store in Santa Fe, New Mexico.  A woman and I made eyes at each other.  I felt some knowing and depth with her, way more than simple chemistry.  A portal opened, yet I did not jump through it by talking with her.

I wonder to this day if my life would have taken a profoundly different beneficial trajectory.  Perhaps in talking with her we would have hooked up, I would have begun an amazing relationship and moved to Santa Fe.  Perhaps she would have imparted life changing information, or conceivably nothing would have come of it.  I still wonder…

What other cubic centimeter of chances have I missed?  What if a portal I already let go offered a red pill to the Tango Matrix?

Neo

In the movie Matrix, Neo is aware that some profound truth exists but is beyond his grasp.  He knows the cause of the incessant inkling as The Matrix, and is restless in his sleep and psyche as he intuits and feels that a deeper truth awaits him.  Similar to Neo, I believe a Matrix exists in Tango, as I feel an underground current of dissatisfaction pulling incessantly at my Tango bliss when I am not dancing.

Does anyone else in the world of Tango sense that a deeper truth awaits them as I do?  Neo is different than most of his peers in that he feels this incessant inkling while almost everyone goes about their entire lives connected to the Matrix unaware their reality is not in fact real.  A very small percentage of the Matrix’s human population sense the matrix.

When I was 17, I began to strongly feel an incessant inkling that a deeper truth existed, and awaited me if only I could find some version of the red pill.  As an ambitious seeker, I participated in many personal growth and spiritually oriented workshops, seminars, retreats and organizations in pursuit of this metaphorical red pill.  After I experienced Avatar I stopped my searching- I was no longer a seeker.  I had swallowed the red pill and found that everything I wanted rested within.  Since Avatar I have not felt any urge to seek or find any deeper truth outside of myself.

However, things have changed in my psyche.  I do not sense something outside myself that I am seeking, yet after I began to dance Tango, an ever increasing incessant inkling arose from unseen depths of my psyche.  As Tango became my life path of emotional, mental and spiritual development and passion, the world of Tango held up a brilliant mirror to reflect things about myself I had not known.  

This mirror seems likely to expand radically if I take the red pill.  I believe I glimpsed a part of this radically expanded mirror during the Denver Tango Festival as I felt better than ever in my emotional state of being.  My better feeling emotional state showed me I usually reside in a less desirable emotional state – way less desirable.  A deeper truth of myself, most likely found in the Tango Matrix, will probably reflect a deeper truth of my application of personal skill sets, belief systems, character and vision.

Ulysses, my Morpheus of Tango, gives credence to the existence of the Tango Matrix.  Now more than ever, I feel in my bones a deeper truth awaiting me in the Tango Matrix.  I believe swallowing the red pill will thrust upon me a radically different way of believing, acting, being and envisioning in my life.

In a longer communication with Ulysses, he detailed what it would take to swallow the red pill.  ”Dave, are you willing to accept that:”

• all of your beliefs of Tango are not true
• you will be compelled to forgive and love the most snobby of tangueras and arrogant of tangueros
• you will fully understand why people burn out and/ or become disinterested in Tango, but can not just tell them why, for telling them will only deepen their dissatisfaction
• if you ever want to show the Tango Matrix to another, you can’t just show them it, but only lead them ever so craftily to rabbit hole where they will have to choose the red or blue pill on their own
• you will have to accept the nature of humanity, including its ugliness, and how it shows up in Tango
• you will have to be kind to even the most superficial and narcissistic of people in Tango
• you will have to go beyond your inherent coding of how you want to act in Tango
• at times you have acted dishonorably in Tango
• you will have to forgive yourself
• you must stop your fight against the unbearable lightness of being – what you referred to in your writings, and flirt with it and accept it
• being a fool in Tango and taken advantage of is of greater value than being guarded and protected
• you must take nothing in Tango personally

Ulysses left me with these last two items needed to be willing to accept – the hardest two as he put it-

1. you must have absolute faith (different than religion) as it is the power of personal creation
   
2. you must absolutely trust that life energy/ Universe is not neutral, but conspires to assist and compel you to be better at ALL times

Saturday afternoon I slid from inner joy to utter funk, and realized how I created the funk even as I continued to slide further into it.  Ulysses had put forth two things to do in order to perceive the possible benefits of taking the red pill of the Tango Matrix.  As I did these two things, I created a radiance and calm within myself, and my resulting inner attitude fed my Tango bliss.

However, as I had re-occurring negative thoughts during Saturday’s alternative milonga, I found my negative thoughts corrupting my focus on Ulysses’s proposed actions.  As the festival continued, I still enjoyed many dances and found myself letting go into Tango songs and arms of such wonderful tangueras.  Nevertheless, an underground current of dissatisfaction pulled incessantly at my Tango bliss when I did not dance for awhile.

In spite of the underground current of dissatisfaction, I experienced many highlights that I will remember for a long while.  Two Tangueras in particular had me consistently floating on the milonga floor with precision, grace, fun, ease and bliss.  I danced 4+ tandas each milonga with them, and marveled at our connection, embrace, and efficient blissful movement.  After each tanda, I knew that if I smoked, I would have had a smoke.  We moved as one, and always had this supremely delicious look and feel after each song.

Kristine Goodwin & Dave Donatiu in Tango Bliss -- Photo by Young B. Kim

I had other Tandas where I experienced the same floating, though it was not consistent with all songs with the same tanguera.  I call attention to this floating experience as evidence of the rewards of all that I have gone through to get to the point where I consistently enter in Tango trances.  The floating is certainly a state of flow and is my experience of the Kiss of the Divine.  All in all I am so grateful for so many of the tandas I had the chance to experience.

Other aspects of the festival captured my attention.  I could not ask everyone I wanted to dance with for many reasons – not enough time, not the right music, another tanguera enchanted me with her cabaceo, I needed a break every now and then.  Also, I noticed how adorable and beautiful so many tangueras are – just bewitching.

In addition, I perceived that at some other festivals I have attended, a greater percentage of younger people (20-30 years of age) are present – why?  Furthermore, I noticed how navigational skills can make a dance so much easier and better – those leads with less experience often mentioned how they did not like nor have good dances when it was crowded, while better leads had great dances no matter how crowded it was.

Overall, I experienced the most Tango bliss ever at this festival, danced the best I ever have, and took the best care of my Self so my recovery was swift and easy.

Most importantly, I glimpsed the benefits of taking the red pill.  As a watcher of my own experience with Ulysses’s proposal, I witnessed a disturbing but exciting partial unveiling of meaning and explanation to mystery in Tango and my life.  Some may say Tango is just a dance – I believe these people have taken the blue pill.

Do I take the red pill?  I am conversing with Ulysses to find out more of the Tango Matrix…

One by one and two by two, tangueros and tangueras pranced, sauntered, and ambled into the milonga ballroom.  So many Tango communities represented: Santa Fe, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Tuscon, San Diego, L.A., Eugene, Portland, Seattle, East Coast cities… the list does go on.  The ladies aroused my pulse with their appearances- so gorgeous!  The gentlemen seemed relaxed, yet ready to cabaceo.

Because of my extensive travels over the past 8 months, I have met so many wonderful people from different Tango communities.  As I recognized each of my friends, I felt more calmed and greater delight.  Never have I known so many of the dancers at one festival.  Tango is my community (and where all of my friends are), and I felt joy at the reunion of so many people from afar.

I luxuriated in many dances: tandas with my angel, a tanguera so sweet, radiant, beautiful and divine that I melt when I am even just around her; another tanguera that had left me speechless and spellbound after some of the best tandas in my life in Houston, once again left me wanting to sit and bask in the afterglow after moving as one in our own world on the dance floor; a milonga tanda with a great friend that I always so enjoy; many tandas with a beaming, stunningly beautiful, childlike tanguera – she brings out my little Dave to play, and she is one of my all time favorites – wow did I have fun; a friend from the rainy country who is so connecting and sensuous, I just enjoy her enthusiasm and ever-present kindess; and other tandas all in all that left me giddy and full.

I am ready for more!  And happy to see that we have at least two DJ’s from our community DJ’ing this festival.

Onto Ulysses and his proposal from his last e-mail- “At your upcoming festival do these two things, and open your eyes to what you see.” Throughout the night, I lightly contemplated the existence of a Tango matrix as I did these two things Ulysses proposed.  Doing them had their challenges, though I consistently did them.  Utter astonishment at what I am uncovering about myself, and some surprise at what I am SEEING with others.

Illusion, causation, and attraction are the strongest words bubbling up to describe my experience of SEEING with my eyes more open.  I’m sure my dances were positively influenced by Ulysses.  The next milonga is about to start – and I’m feeling impish and animated along with a dose of mystical curiosity thrown in

Do I really want to take the red pill if a Tango Matrix exists, and deeper truth is to be found?   Ulysses led me to believe that knowing more of what really goes on in Tango offers fierce realizations that could eliminate a large portion of joy from Tango.

In response to my entry, The Tango Matrix Part 1- Red Pill, one of my friends e-mailed me- “yeah, I hear you but I just think, screw it – let’s dance.”  I interpret this statement as a recommendation on taking the blue pill.  After all, dancing Tango is bliss so why try to understand it?  Is ignorance bliss?  In the movie Matrix, being unaware and living in its modern civilization (being unaware of the matrix – ignorance is bliss) seems hugely more appealing than the alternative of living in the apocalyptic world of bland goop for food, no sun, living underground, and being mercilessly hunted by machines.

However, in taking the red pill one gains freedom from the Matrix, and thereby gains choices based on deeper truth, not illusion.  Is life better when one makes choices based on deeper truth?  My question remains- will the quality of my experience in Tango and life be increased significantly to offset the potential costs of taking the red pill?  Perhaps this question comes down to a cost/ benefit conversation.

Historically, I have gone for deeper truth in several areas of life.  When I say deeper truth, I do not mean THE truth!  I don’t believe it is possible for THE TRUTH to exist.  However, I believe deeper truth involves gaining a greater complexity and thereby simplicity, accuracy of information, explanation, relation, organicity, and  growing evolution of whatever I pursue deeper truth in.

Here is a simple example of deeper truth- for 9 months I sold T.V.’s among other electronics.  I questioned almost everyone- what was the best T.V.?  I reviewed Consumer Reports, read other information, and interviewed repair personnel in the company I worked for (they repaired T.V.’s).  I discovered the following:

• Useful selection criteria, and the practicality of the selection criteria such as how bright the white truly is, and how much of a difference it really makes
• Actual data on reliability of the major brands for different years and models
• I became the person with the most information and possibility to answer the question in depth – my peers came to me when they wanted to buy a T.V. themselves  - they did not buy what they were pedaling to customers
• Management and most personnel knew the “answer” to be – whatever makes you the most money and what is in stock AND the management told me this was THE answer!
• And the most important realizations- I experimented and found:
  • almost every customer did not care for the answer (did not want the truth), but really wanted an illusion of a good T.V. and what they could take home immediately (what was in stock)
  • I sold the least when I told customers the truth, for they would not want to process the information and usually walked away confused
  • I sold the most by uncovering the customer’s illusion of what they thought a good T.V. was (NOT facts/ data/ great selection criteria/ actual reliability) and then selling that illusion

My desire to uncover deeper truth in other areas of life (time management/ nutrition/ finding one’s purpose/ sex/ creating a career) has led to similar results where: I discover great selection criteria; useful data; became knowledgeable on the researched subject; and most importantly, that many people did not really want deeper truth, but some illusion of what truth they imagined and therefore wanted to see!

Worst of all, usually when people started to receive deeper truth, I witnessed the following:

• Denial with a good rationale for the denial – too much info, not important, doesn’t make sense
• Whatever they were asking about they lost some good measure of interest in- a person, a hobby, an industry, a job, a question
• Shooting the messenger, which took various forms- disliking, hating, gossiping, not returning communications, etc.

Therefore I realize that pursuing deeper truth around Tango presents hazards.  But what are the benefits?

I e-mailed Ulysses (not his real name – he wants to remain anonymous) and asked what benefits show up in taking the red pill.  What he sent back elicited two responses: he delighted me with an opportunity to find things out for myself; and floored me with the brilliance and simplicity of his proposal:

“At your upcoming festival do these two things, and open your eyes to what you see.”

Last Thursday Ulysses threatened and unraveled my Tango world by presenting me with the choice of a red pill or blue pill.  For those of you that do not recognize the reference, it is from the Movie, Matrix.

The Matrix’s plot brief explanation from Wikipedia: Computer programmer Thomas A. Anderson leads a secret life as a hacker under the alias ”Neo”, and wishes to learn the answer to the question, “What is the Matrix?” Cryptic messages appearing on his computer monitor and encounters with three sinister agents lead him to a group led by the mysterious Morpheus, a man who offers him the chance to learn the truth about the Matrix.

Neo accepts by swallowing an offered red pill, and subsequently finds himself naked in a liquid-filled pod, his body connected by wires to a vast mechanical tower covered with identical pods.  The film describes a future in which reality perceived by humans is actually the Matrix: a simulated reality created by sentient machines in order to pacify and subdue the human population while their bodies’ heat and electrical activity are used as an energy source (for the machines.)

Ulysses is a man I met in a Buenos Aires milonga 2 1/2 years ago.  We talked enough where we both felt a connection worthy of staying in touch.  On Thursday, I skyped Ulysses explaining my frustrations and confusion over various behaviors at Stone Soup.  Ulysses asked me to go into more detail about my experiences at Stone Soup and other Tango festivals.

I could offer all of you the details of a long rant, but it is quite negative, ugly and full of anger, sadness, and depression.  I can sum up my rant with the following:  I have known for some time that I have sensed that something beyond my conscious awareness is at work, and if known, could explain ALL of the behaviors behind my rant.  I believe my frustrations, shortcomings, insecurities and lack of full alignment and joy with Argentine Tango are of my making.  However, I have been unconscious of what I have been doing to create these consistent experiences I would term – non-aligned with my Soul/ Psyche.

After Ulysses patiently listened to my long rant of 3 1/2 years of frustrations with Tango, he responded with, “Dave, hold on.”  After more than a couple of minutes, and more frustration on my part, he came back to the screen with two pills – one red, one blue.  OK, they were not the same pills as I saw in the Matrix, being obvious pharmaceutical over-the-counter drugs, but I got the chilling reference.  In disbelief I shared with him how I have sensed some hidden stream of information that could fully account for what I have witnessed, experienced and heard in Tango, AND several experiences in my personal life, which is mirrored in Tango and its milongas and festivals.

He looked me in the eyes – which means with Skype, you need to look up into the camera, not at the computer screen.  So he seemed serious when he said something to the gist of- we have talked only a few times in the last 2 1/2 years, but I know enough about you to be able to offer you a choice – red pill or blue pill.  I smirked, and said, great, tell me the red pill stuff!

He responded to my smirk, “wait – you don’t think I’m serious?”  I retorted, “Of course not Ulysses, but if you have some great info that would explain what I have been experiencing and/ or creating, bring it on!”  He countered with, “I want you to think carefully about the possibility that a Tango Matrix exists.  Knowing the truth of what really goes on in your world of Tango will change your Tango world and life.”

At this point thoughts ran through my head shouting: “You heard this before from more than a few supposed Gurus and spiritual teachers”; “Is this guy serious at all?”; “B.S.”; “I had a friend who got all mystical and mysterious on me and bugged the shit out of me with his B.S.”.

However, Ulysses put forth the following – What if in taking the red pill you could find out:

• What is behind mens’ and womens’ choices of who they dance with
• Why there are cliques
• Why you and so many people are drawn to Tango
• Why many will never get much better in Tango
• How you could get really good
• What men and woman really want
• What most people believe about Tango that is false, but do not realize is true of Tango
• You can’t share the Tango Matrix because you will piss a lot of people off, and they will not like you, not dance with you, nor hire you
• What you are personally lacking in social skills
• You will have to face ugly truths about yourself
• More than half of the magic, joy and pleasure of Tango will disappear, possibly for good
• And the worst possible thing- you may become so turned off to Tango, that you give it up and find that you’ve wasted a lot of time and money

And then he added, “I can’t even tell you many of the things that taking the red pill will show you, but think about what I have said.”  He said he had to get back to work.

Great – is this guy for real?  And then I launched into thinking WHAT IF?

As I travel around the country visiting Tango communities, I notice quirks particular to each community.  Even within different camps within communities, idiosyncrasies usually show up.

Quirks are habits that show up in a majority of the community’s dancers, and they are not necessarily bad or good.  Sometimes a quirk may be a more open embrace by default, or a lot of ganchos being led.  However, quirks are quirks, and usually unconscious.  When you want to learn more rapidly, it is very important to become conscious of what is not conscious!

Some bad-habit quirks I have witnessed in different communities: a lack of intentionality in the leading; a substantially higher pace of frenetic dancing; a lot of gas pedaling from the follows’ right arm; much less spinal movement.

Last night, I watched quirks of our community – in particular I realized how many leads allow the follows to migrate over to the lead’s right side and often do not use appropriate spinal rotation to stay with the follow as the follows are lead to the lead’s right.

Until my recent privates with Murat & Michelle, I had not realized I also had this quirk of migration and not enough of staying with my follow from the center of my chest.

I want to stress how insidious inbreeding in Tango is – when we dance and learn with the same people month after month (inbreeding), we can easily learn bad habits and not realize what we have learned.  Often our bad habits support each other, lead/ follow, to continue their bad habits such as a follow gas pedaling her right arm and the lead pushing hard with his left arm.

Crossbreeding – dancing with people outside the primary group of people one usually dances with – is needed to grow in a healthy way.

Awhile back, I asked several teachers what they thought the fastest way to learn Tango was.  While I received many tips, I think the best tip was the importance of dancing at festivals (thank you Tom Stermitz).  Dancing at festivals is essentially crossbreeding.

When I notice quirks, I look to the community teachers and pay attention to what visiting instructors have come through town.  I am fascinated with how quirks are unknowingly passed on. I am noticing my own quirks I may have inherited from dancing in the Pacific Northwest.  Can any of you guess the quirks?  These quirks are actually pretty cool!