tiger birth

LISTEN to the story read by N.M.

LISTEN to the playlist inspired by this story

Our world comes from the Dance that is spinning.

The Right Here, Now is born when Something Happens in the Dance, Over There. 

Hundreds of thousands of godx – birthing and dying over and over, forgiving, laughing, loving, hitting, eating, moving, swirling, fighting, and dancing together.

Gather round with me now to witness these godx dance: Umbi godi of hunger and want, Griah godi of lightning and fear, Jutu courage godi creator and destroyer of worlds, Shichin godi of birthing and imagination, Perik godi of fear and stone, Ziksh the trickster godi of mischief, Lila Godi of light and joy, Mimun godi of perception and jokes, Karu godi of rest in love, Gallump godi of wisdom and drumming, Fregad the giver of shadow and moonlight, Ottuk the godi of death, and Amma the creator and grandchild of all of them. Watch as they spin eternal moves, humming and dancing with the rhythms of Sea Free.

Jutu Notices

In this moment – Lila is dancing his warm, bright patterns of love particularly close to Mimun. Mimun steals an extra ray of sun from Lila’s arm simply for the pleasure of it. Fregad is killing an elephant of some sort under her foot, as Perik shakes a quake down into the dance. Hundreds of thousands of eternal bodies swirl and jump, birth and die, connect and thrust apart.

Just now, the clever Ziksh spies the perfect moment to squirt water at the bellowing Griah – making their hand slip on their drum. This sends a thunderbolt through Griah’s heart, and they disintegrate into the arms of Ottuk, the companion for death. In the next moment Griah is being reborn by Shichin the midwife of all godx – they are a particularly jovial baby godi.

Jutu has been spinning her creations and destructions with Gallump for quite some time now – spinning worlds into being just as quickly as she destroys them. In this moment, she is particularly drawn to building worlds in hues of bright red and orange, filling them with warmth and fire. She is working on one she particularly loves when Gallump sneezes right into it. This seems like a good time for Jutu to take a break from Dancing with Gallump. 

She sweeps the long leaves of her skirt up in one hand, and she dances over to Umbi’s table to enjoy her favorite snack – a banana leaf wrapped shrimp. As she crunches in with her first bite, she feels the smallest bead of heat gathering on the back of her neck. This is odd. This gathering of heat feels tense – perhaps this treat will do the trick. She begins to dance again as she enjoys Umbi’s feast, but continues to notice a stirring in her heart, a stirring after hundreds, thousands, perhaps even millions of turns of the Dance – or maybe just her first one.

She feels a longing to build something more beautiful and complex than she ever has before – something outside of the dance. But what could that be? There is nothing outside of the Dance.

She looks around herself and she notices that none of the other Godx seem to be having this feeling. They Dance, and light, die, rebirth, eat, sex, and keep all the Dance going. A few of her fellow courage dancers begin to have small beads of sweat too, something is pulling them too, but it is not pulling them out of the dance. Instead it is tugging her family deeper into the circle of Perik’s earthquake towards harshness within the dance – a harshness Jutu wants to reject. They are being pulled towards a magnetic desire to punish in the dance – one that she does not want to join. Instead she wants beauty – the deepest beauty she could ever make.

In that moment her footing starts to stutter, and a piece of shrimp falls from her lip to the floor – with one little piece getting stuck in her long, thick, ink-colored hair.

She can not see a way to the beauty she desires with her powers alone – as mighty as they are. She hands her banana leaf to Ottuk who always enjoys licking off the last little bits, and she begins to try. She tries and tries and tries to pull away towards something more beautiful outside of the Dance, and she fails.

Her frustration and heat begins to grow – perhaps punishment is what she should cling to instead, forsaking her dream of something more beautiful, more full and more alive. Perhaps punishment will fulfill her need for something new instead. She looks up and sees Karu looking over at her.

Karu Notices

Karu is loving the flow of water through her belly as she Dances the Dance. There are no favorite parts of the Dance, and yet the seamless flow of water through her gut always feels like it might just be her favorite. Karu keeps losing her mind as she Dances her way through the Over There, spinning compassion through all the Godx.

In this moment, she stumbles over a piece of shrimp that has somehow found its way into the Dance. As she rights herself from the slightest tremble in her stride, she looks up and catches an eye with Jutu. She looks down and sees her hand shake for just a moment, and she returns to her Dance.

This – this moment – got her attention, because Karu’s hand has never trembled in the Dance before. She goes back to Dancing, wondering if any other Godx notice. And while she Dances she wonders…..

Looking at the swaying grasses of the estuary gathering in her belly, she feels a longing. A longing to hold her hand in place in one moment, one breath for all eternity. She notices the pull to harden, to seize up to stop the tremors in her hand, the waves in her belly. A fear is growing in the dance for the love dancers right now. Several of her other love family dancers are beginning to feel this same tingle of firmness, this desire to become rigid and dominate all around them under the bright light of Lila’s gaze. 

For her part, Karu wants to slow down, and feel stillness, a stillness not possible in the Dance – but she does not want to be frozen by fear, or by desire. She longs for a stillness outside of the Dance. She wonders if any other Godx ever wanted something like this, this desire for something…. Else. She assumes she is alone in her longing.

Amma Notices

Amma’s Dance is so subtle, blink and you will miss it as she lays on the longest branch of her tree. Her massive thighs at rest, her sharp claws relaxed underneath her chin. She sits at the center of the Dance watching from her bright yellow eyes. Protecting all of her creations, all of her ancestors. She is fury and love, softness and sheer power embodied in the center of the dance. 

As she yawns, she notices the beads of sweat forming on courage family’s brow, she notices hearts hardening in the love family’s dance. 

Quick – hold your eyes open for just a moment – resist the urge to close your eyes and notice the slightest exhale of breath from Amma’s nose – as gentle as a butterfly passing by a flower soaked-shrub. That breath flits through the dance like the flapping of a butterfly’s wings to go pull the heart of Jutu as she takes a bite of her shrimp. The softest whiff of air brushes past Karu’s hand ever so gently it feels like the breath of an aphid right before the ladybug swallows it down.

What is Amma up to?

Karu and Jutu, Right Here Now

Just then, Ziksh says to themselves, “Wait, what’s this?” as they notice Karu’s seagrass hand shake. “A watery wobble dealt not by my hand?”. They are delighted and incensed in equal measures, and care not to find the source, but simply to dance with this new occurrence and uncover what mischief might lay beneath. 

As Ziksh reaches out to pull Karu closer, Shichin just happens to rebirth Griah back into the Dance, and in that moment baby Griah bangs on their drum, sending a bright flash that blinds Ziksh. They lose sight of Karu’s palm.

Suddenly without Ziksh to disturb, Karu and Jutu are moving towards each other in the Dance. Jutu speeding up faster and faster. Spinning through creation and destruction to the limits of her power. She is rushing towards Karu while Karu’s body is slowing down moving into the stillness she can almost feel. She can see the stillness coming right around the corner, she can feel like Shichin’s hand coming to grab her right before she is born.

In this moment Karu sucks in a breath and holds it – she holds it forever or a second. As that breath is sucked into her divine breast Jutu crashes into Karu’s heart with all her might. The stillness of Karu’s chest is just the final move of power Jutu needs to break through into her purest moment of strength. Jutu’s crash is exactly the cathartic release Karu needed to spin down into whole and complete stillness and give birth to multiplicities outside of the dance

It is this exact moment – the meeting of Jutu’s heat with Karu’s stillness that creates our myriverse. We will exist for the length of the moment of this crash. We will end when Karu and Jutu finish this meeting and collapse into the very next step of their dance. 

Enter Tiklo – Right Here, Now

Right Here, Now – Tiklo tumbles out of the Dance Over There into water – a water surrounding all of Tiklo’s rock. Tiklo is a pure joy born of Jutu and Karu’s connection – one of an infinite number of creations.

Tiklo soaks in both the warmth of the water, and the icy depths of its coldness. The water is Tiklo and Tiklo is the water. 

Tiklo blinks their eyes and yearns to see all around, and the Godx of the Dance, Over There offers them light. The light is love to Tiklo. 

Tiklo yearns to touch and play with water and light, and the Godx of the Dance, Over There offers them plants and trees and algae and bacteria. Tiklo is the plants and the plants are Tiklo. 

Tiklo yearns to run and swim, and the Godx of the Dance offer them animals and fish, and reptiles, and bugs, and dinosaurs, and monkeys and air to breath and fly on. Enough water dries up to give the animals space to play with Tiklo. The air is Tiklo and Tiklo is the air. These beings are love to Tiklo. Tiklo is these beings and these beings are Tiklo.

Tiklo yearns to feel, and the Godx of the Dance offer Tiklo people. Tiklo is people and people are Tiklo. People are love to Tiklo.

The love poured forth from Karu and Jutu’s yearning sustains Tiklo today. Godx from the Dance, Over There keep Tiklo nourished and healthy – for this moment. We share in this joy of finding our lives and sharing between the dances of the Here, Now and the dance Over There.

Tiger Birth: Origins of Sea Free

Analysis from the Sea Free Science Team

As with all worlds, Sea Free has many different stories of its origins – tales of how its myriverse came to be. 

Amos and N.M. connect with Sea Free Receivers across the world, and in the last month they have had a particular focus on collecting those messages or songs that reflect what we describe as “creation stories” – stories that seem to explain the origin of the Sea Free myriverse itself. 

There has been one in particular that we have heard over and over in Sea Free Receiver reports – the story of a cosmic dance that birthed their myriverse as they know it. Sparked by the sly and wise actions of a tiger godx, a moment becomes an eternity. 

We have been drawn to this particular version of Sea Free’s creation myths as a team – the richness of the dance, the pleasure of Tiklo, the shrimp! While we have a larger archive of creation stories to share in the future, our team has decided to take this particular creation story as the inspiration for our first exhibit in Maine in August.

This page offers a snapshot of the story, as well as a bit of the context of how Sea Freesian’s from the spiritual background that created this story conceptualize their eternal beings. 

Background on this creation story:

It appears that all Sea Freesians call their myriverse “the Right Here, Now”. Their multitude of religions and spiritualities have varying explanations for why and how The Right Here, Now came to be. 

The Tiger Birth creation story seems to come from a particular Sea Freesian religion that conceptualizes spirits and gods as dancing figures that embody different elements of being human.  

This religion, divides reality into two, deeply interconnected parts:

• the Right Here, Now is everything that they can sense with their bodily senses in their daily lives
• the Over There is the spiritual realm that surrounds, penetrates and makes the Right Here, Now possible. The Over There is eternal and without time. The Right Here, Now captures the spiraling present moment. The Over There can be sensed by body sensory and spiritual perception

In the Dance Over There, Godx enjoy playing and exploring the heights and depths of their energy, for eternity. Each Godi offer their piece of the Communal Dance: a significant and unique element needed for the whole. As far as we can tell, Godx dance in families of elements: love, courage, fear, sadness, anger, wisdom, joy – among others we are still tracking. 

There are multiple Godx in each family group that seem to dance a different tone or flavor of that feeling. There are also some Godx that appear to be uncategorized. To see a list of the Godx we have mapped already, please visit the Time Shard for this period of Sea Freesian history here – there remain many, many more for us to work on. 

Note: The Science Team uses the term Godx (plural) and Godi (singular) to avoid the overly gendered words in our world. Gender and sex are separate identifiers in Sea Free, and not connected in binary/deterministic patterns as in our universe. Knowing a gender does not imply an entity’s sex, and vice versa. We have indicated the genders of the godx that we have identified but admit we don’t know exactly how similar their ideas of gender are to ours, others are either unidentified or do not conform to anything analogous to our current conceptualization of gender. We invite you to resist our own habitual patterns of assumptions and try listening to these stories with a different ear.