Turning Shit into Shinola

The highest compliment that I ever received from a reviewer when I was a choreographer/dancer of my own small company was, "Lynn Rescigno certainly knows how to turn shit into shinola." My company had an extremely small or sometimes zero budget and I had to go out and look for dancers that were let go from other companies. The dancers considered themselves flawed but my strength as a director was uncovering hidden beauty in other companies' castoffs. The secret for doing this was letting go of what "proper/correct/beautiful" dance was supposed to be like. Lots of unexpectedly wonderful things came about when I was able to play like a child instead of work like a boring rule-fixated perfectionist. When you look into things instead of at them, then hidden secrets are revealed to you.


I would say that the biggest problem-solving skill that we can ever acquire is the ability to let go of controlling any certain outcome. This is difficult for us because then we are vulnerable----like a child. But that is the point.

Look at something as if you are seeing for the very, very first time.

By letting go of control, the things we need can come to us. An example of this is the breath. You can say an exhale is letting go and an inhale is receiving what it is that you need. It's really that simple.

One of my teachers says that we don't have control over anything at all. We can respond to events that come our way but we can't control them. Our responses then become our practice. When we respond with a sense of opportunity rather than with a sense of crisis then we make shit into shinola.

An example of this happened to me just the other day when my car would not come out of PARK. I walked to work and taught my classes, then i was going to use my AAA membership and then use my money to pay a mechanic to fix the car. I had a sense of control about my circumstances.

But because of all the walking and teaching, i was too tired and needed a break from everything. I walked to Starbuck's in Red Bank, NJ. At Starbuck's, I saw a friend who owns a really old car(1978) and he knows many things about repairing cars. He was more than happy to look at what was wrong with my car. We got out the owner's manual and just played with ideas for a while. It turned out that a fuse was blown and was very easy to change and fix.

I did not expect things to be solved so easily and maybe the things that you face aren't this easy but letting go of trying to take complete control of everything will allow for solutions to be made possible.

My being prepared with money and AAA were not even part of my solution. The best thing that happened that day was accepting the help that came my way. For everything else there's VISA, but letting go of control is priceless.

I know many people will say that they are not able to trust that their needs will be met without their attention to controlling anything and everything possible. But they will be.....

Amit Goswami, my teacher and quantum physicist, uses the example of M.C. Escher's "Drawing Hands". The two hands draw each other into existence.......You can't tell which hand is actually the hand of causation since they are both existing simultaneously. They are both being created and are creators of each other. They exist because of each other and are the answers to each other's questions. So actually, your problems and your answers are existing simultaneously too. Don't blame me for this........I did not make the world but this is an idea of how it works. This is just basic tantra.

On Facebook recently, Terry McClusky posted a picture of his food at a diner in L.A. It was a picture of scrambled eggs and a piece of chicken on a plate. He wrote,"The answer to the age old question of which came first the chicken or the egg, they both arrived at the same time."