Have you ever heard of the Nat spirits? Neither have I, at least not before visiting Burma, currently Myanmar. Well, it’s normal, everybody thinks it’s a Buddhist country forgetting that Buddhism established itself in a place that was already occupied by the animist cult of the local people. In short, the Nats are the forest spirits widely worshipped in Burma in conjunction with Buddhism.

On a February afternoon of a couple of years ago in Mandalay, my friend Silvia and I, all relaxed and with no special plans for the day, are just getting out of a massage centre run by blind women when we hear deafening music coming from the street in front of us. Let’s check, we say to each other. To our amazement we find ourselves in front of a very bizarre sight: a band is playing and pounding like there’s no tomorrow on various instruments and drums, its members seem very happy to see us and very happy in general. Beyond the band, men, women and transvestites dance to the rhythm of music wearing colourful and ceremonial clothing. All this is taking place in the open living room of someone’s house which is literally on the street. We are dazed, and we keep watching. I start taking pictures like I’m possessed. I immediately suspect that this is ritual. After a while I cannot resist any longer and must ask what is going on, nobody and I mean nobody speaks English, not even as a joke, then a woman invites us to enter. We are greeted with enthusiasm by everyone, everyone wants to give us something: fruit, water, juice, drinks. Everyone is smiling at us. We understand immediately that this ceremony has nothing to do with Buddhism, but everything to do with the Nat spirits.

All the participants are captured and hang on every word pronounced by the actors/dancers who, I will later realize, are channelling the Nat spirits. At this point the shaman enters the room, he’s a real vision, a man in his sixties, covered with red, white and golden ceremonial robes, with a four-strand pearl necklace on his neck, banknotes hanging from all sides and two bottles of whiskey one in each hand that he pours directly into the mouth of the bystanders, and since we are there as well, we get a bit also. I feel a little high, not only because of the alcohol but also for all the music and the enthusiasm to be able to experience such an event. The people, the costumes, the offerings, the decorations, the noise, all contribute to an ecstatic state. At one point, I do not know how, I ask if I can dance and I dance right there and then in front of the shaman, in the presence of the Nats, in front of all these unknown people. I do not know how long it lasted, I do not remember what I did, I only remember the pleasant feeling of doing it.

And almost two years later, here I am in my tiny village in Italy scrolling through the photos I’ve taken in the last few years to select the ones that will make this website. I come across the photos of the Nat ceremony. I smile and immediately afterwards I start worrying: ‘Was it a good idea to get up and dance during that ritual?’, ‘Who are these Nats anyway? What do I really know about them?’, ‘Wasn’t it all an ego trip? The desire to show what I can do?’, these are all questions that have already crossed my mind, especially since I started studying Sacred Dance where knowledge and respect are key elements that go hand in hand with the work. I’m a bit concerned but I decide to let go even though the questions are still there, pending.

The day after, my father, my aunt and I, armed with good will, decide to go on a Christmas shopping spree. It is one of those days where I am in a great mood, I am amazed by everything and I am so very happy to run around the countryside with these two people I deeply love. One of our stops is the local bookstore where each one of us has something to look for. I find the gifts for my brother and my sister-in-law, as well as the agenda for the new year. I’m set. I’ve found everything I needed there, within two square meters, I did not move, I did not go to the other rooms. At a certain point I look up at the last shelf under the ceiling and I see a book showing a coloured figure on the side of the cover. My heart starts beating, I approach, I get up on my toes because otherwise I can barely touch it and I pull it down. It’s a book called ‘The Nat cards’, I mean THE NAT CARDS? What are the Nat cards doing here? I am very excited, I go to the other room because tears are starting to fall. I’ve received the answer to my questions and I cannot believe it. I buy the book and the cards right away.

It’s a coincidence. Yes, of course, it can be a coincidence, two events that only coincidently or incidentally have something to do with one another but that in reality don’t, or it can be a synchronicity, a significant coincidence where time and space take their mask off and show themselves for what they actually are: an illusion. These are events that take place in the outer reality but that have a significant correspondence with an interior experience. Synchronicity means being in the right place in the right moment receiving the right information.

In all these years of participating in spiritual and esoteric circles, I have never heard anyone mentioning the Nat spirits. Nobody knows them or hardly nobody. In all the esoteric bookstores I have visited all over the world I have never seen a single book about this subject. And then I find them in the bookstore of a small provincial town, a place where some years before I couldn’t even find a book on the lives of the catholic saints to give as a present to my mother. I find them the day after I wondered if it had been a good idea dancing for them, the day after I asked who they really were, the day after I wondered about an event that happened two years earlier, thousands of miles away.

It may be a coincidence, sure, but since I have decided that I live in a magical world, for me it is a magical event, it is a direct response, it is the feeling of being part of a universe that answers to my questions, the feeling of not being a puppet separated from everything and tossed here and there at the mercy of the weather. I take part in the game and I enjoy myself and I get emotional, I cry and I laugh. Through this feeling of union, I reduce the space between two points of consciousness by erasing the illusion of separation between me, people, objects, things and places.

I decide to live in a magical world and life continually returns this world to me. And the more I observe it, the more I notice it, the more it expands into my life, like the invisible electron inside the atom, which appears exactly in the spot where I observe it.

The atom is composed of 99.99% of empty space or energy and 0.01% of particles or matter. We should start wondering why it is that we concentrate 99.99% of our attention on matter and only 0.01% on energy. The answer is that since we were born we have been conditioned to do so and to believe that we need our senses to perceive reality and that if something cannot be seen, heard, smelled, touched or tasted, then this something does not exists.

They are both perspectives, and our perspectives create our reality. Constantly. If we change our perspective, we change our reality. Try and see for yourself. For me this episode is a further confirmation of the illusion of separation. Now I am wondering whether my passion for Sacred Dance started right there during that ritual. The Nat spirits wink at me and I smile, I thank and I wink back, studying the beautiful book that found me and that now allows me to deepen my knowledge of their nature.

Life is therefore a matter of perspective, some think it’s all a big chaos, that everything happens by chance, some believe in synchronicities and in a magical world. These are all valid hypotheses because they depend on our point of view, but in the end the real question is: who’s having more fun?