'PRETEND DANCING' HAS GREAT POWER TO HEAL

Q: Last Thanksgiving, my nearly 12-year-old son asked me about the fourth dimension. When he said, "Do we know anything past three dimensions?" I described being thankful as the spiritual fourth dimension -- perceiving others and all things as a precursor to gratitude, as you had suggested in one of your columns.

As I understand it, prior to having gratitude, we must perceive the world around us, get outside ourselves and become other-directed, all the while diving inward. As you wrote, "somehow, you have to open your eyes to all the factors in your life that you did not create." Serving a meal to a homeless person was one catalyst you recommended. I'd suggest a walk in nature.

Leaping directly into gratitude is akin to something science has discovered about happiness: Smiling actually makes you happy, and those who practice forcing smiles can alter their mood and experience health benefits. Any comments? -- K., Lake Worth, FL, via godsquadquestion@aol.com

A: As a moron in math and physics, all I know is that the first three dimensions are 1) up/down, 2) north/south, and 3) east/west. The fourth dimension could be an additional dimension of time, which takes us into Einstein's theories of relativity and leaves me sucking my thumb in utter ignorance. If the fourth dimension is in space, we enter the world of 4 dimensional polytopes and my thumb just gets more chaffed.

Let me just recommend that the next time your son asks about the fourth dimension, just do the old parental shake-and-bake and tell him, "Go ask your mother."

I'm intrigued, however, and have a much firmer grasp on the concept of forcing people to smile as a way to boost their happiness. I've used a spiritual technique for years that has helped many people, and me, get through bad times. I call it "Pretend Dancing."

I thought up Pretend Dancing after 9/11. As president of the New York Board of Rabbis at the time, and as Fr. Tom Hartman's friend, I was faced with many funerals in a short period of time -- with no bodies for any of them. The scene was surreal and it nearly broke me to confront the intense and widespread grief from broken families and a newly broken world.

One afternoon during this time, Tommy, my wife, Betty, and I were at my home eating lunch and just staring at the walls. For reasons I can't explain, I went to my stereo, put on some Aretha Franklin CDs, turned up the volume, and we all started to dance.

None of us felt like dancing, but I insisted for some reason that we just stand up and pretend to dance. So that's what we did for a while. Then, somewhere between "R-E-S" and "P-E-C-T," our pretend dancing turned into real dancing. We were all crying, but we were dancing. Our dancing didn't wipe away the sadness. However, it did replace the sadness just for a while with memories of what joy and gladness meant to us. On that day, those memories and the Pretend Dancing that turned into real dancing was enough.

Since that day, I've suggested versions of Pretend Dancing to people in grief. Sometimes it includes Aretha music and sometimes it does not include dancing or music at all. Sometimes Pretend Dancing can be just doing something you used to do that gave you joy - even if your heart is not in it. Like the smiling you mention, you might gradually forget you're pretending and actually become happy!

I think that whatever makes Pretend Dancing work is the same thing that makes communal prayer work. By reciting prayers, singing hymns and performing communal rituals, even when our hearts are broken, we gain strength from those who are not broken and our pretending to find God actually finds God.

Pretend Dancing reminds us that the most important lessons of life are not taught but discovered. Poet Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926) offered an eloquent statement of this truth in a letter:

"I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." -- "Letters to a Young Poet," translated by Stephen Mitchell, Random House, 1984.

So this is what I believe about the spiritual fourth dimension: Whatever it is, you have to dance your way into it.

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