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Monday, November 29, 2004 Life-Dance Post
posted by: piankhy | 18:49 | comments Wednesday, November 10, 2004 Citizen entryThe civil step of my life-dance include everything I do that is primarily about that aspect of Individual-Personhood that relates to strangers and to my role (relationship/responsibility) as citizen of the world. It relates to my inherent relationship with those outside my neighborhood, and the responsibility implied in that relationship of seeking healthy consensus as to the Deeper Meaning and larger scale ordering of the world we share. It has to do with everything from this Blog itself, to my forth-coming attendance at the Twin Oaks Communities conference, to any conscious attempt at mutuality with strangers of any kind. In this entry however I want to recount an experiment of mine in Individual-Personal activism in the city. I’ll try to have a Theoretical essay about personal Politics and an Individual-Personal World Order up on the other log soon, so much of what I only allude to here will be found there. Still, since its impossible, as well as undesirable, to separate theory and practice completely there will be some discussion of it here too. Since I am a pretty introverted person living in the boondocks of Virginia in a somewhat isolated intentional community, I pretty much have to make a conscious attempt to see and relate to strangers. There are visitors and Guests here regularly and sometimes we’ve had meaningful encounters, but not enough to satisfy me. So once I week or more I try to go to downtown Charlottesville or Richmond and do what I call Personal Politics. Right now I want to try to explain Personal Politics by saying that Objectively, it has to do with a gesture toward the Individual-Personal World Order which I believe will be the Political/Economic Manifestation of Healthy Culture on the Global Scale, just as the Present Public/Private World Order is the Political/Economic Manifestation of Unhealthy Culture on the Global Scale. Without going into the details of that (I’ll save that for the other blog), I want to quickly follow that relatively Objective definition with the relatively Subjective one that Personal Politics is simply trying to be real and Truthful among strangers; trying to be an Individual Living Person, in a factional, “Public/Private” venue (See End note) Being an Individual Living Person in a Public/Private Venue can be very difficult If not approached with Good Sense. The Personal is always rather subversive of Public and Private Kinds of denial, dissociation and phoniness. The Public is that aspect of an alienated existance that is in denial more of the soul, the subjective, individual, and the familial aspects of Individual Personhood. In public a persons phoniness is more to deny there own vulnerability, uncertainty, and messily paradoxical individually. There is a tendency in public to assume as primary some factional public Identity based on race, gender, profession, nationality, sexuality etc and seek, out of fear and confusion really, some form of solidarity or cooperation with others based on this. Most of political and public speaking and being is this kind of thing. The Private side of the same coin is, relatively speaking, more in denial of the collective and local the objective/individual aspects of the same Individual-Personhood. In private, what we tend to deny is our inherent relationships and responsibilities to strangers and neighbors, and the outer world in general. Its more of a kind of “ain’t nobodies business if I/We Do” vibe. This is such a very rough and ready rule of thumb that is almost not a rule of any kind since again, the essential reality is that public and private behavior are just two sides of the same counterfeit coin, yet I think this distinction helps somewhat in the assessment of social situations. The Point is that expressing the Living Truth of Individual Personhood is subversive equally of Public and Private energy. Someone manifesting Individual Personhood is not denying or dissociating any implied relationships or responsibilities, including that between the various aspects of themselves as an authentic Individual, and so Individual-Personhood is always reminding Private “Individuals” of their Personhood and Public “Personages” of their Individuality. And this usually unwelcome reminding manifests, in my experience, on the energetic level long before it ever becomes verbal. Individual Persons just don’t look normal or act “right” and feeling the dissonance of ones own energy and intention with the prevailing energy of a city like C-ville can be pretty uncomfortable. For example: Today I intend to go to Charlottesville and have a solo Life-Dance Party. Strangely enough it has taken me this long to really entertain the idea of doing this ritual downtown, as a form of civil activism, just as I am now doing it as a form of Familial activism at Tupelo and as Local activism in the Twin Oaks courtyard. Somehow I assumed that I would be starting off in the city with some more formal ritual, a more taylor-made, venue-specific experiment in Integral Science. What seems to be developing though, is more like the use of the Life-Dance Party as a kind of introductory or foundational ritual with other more venue-specific rituals perhaps evolving from that, in the way that the Life-Dance Union Meeting as evolved From the Life-Dance Party at Twin Oaks. I still don’t know if this is the right way to proceed but I do think trying to do a Life-Dance party in C-ville is a good challenge for me. Previous to today, my trips downtown amounted to just excursions of inner and outer listening in which I guess I was challenging myself enough just by attempting to be in the city in an Individual-Personal spirit. At least I felt too intuitively blocked and emotionally inhibited to do any thing else. I don’t consider that this was a problem however; it was only “Good Sense” under the inner and outer circumstances. Even now, I think that that would be enough if, today, I can only get inner consensus to go that far, but I think I am ready for something more on this trip. As I’ve described else where, this Life-Dance Party ritual is not much more or less than an intentional and conscious form of hanging out with oneself and with others. Other than the rather formal open and closing gestures, there will probably be nothing much to remark for by the passers by who see me reading or perhaps singing or, doing chi gung or playing music at the park where I tend to be dancing. I do expect that the energy I generate will be pretty strongly contrastive with what is normal for that place. And, If such a dissonance is enough to attract any one for conversation, then the plot is likely to thicken a great deal. But we will see. I will finish this entry this evening after I return. Well that last paragraph was written 5 days ago. I did the Life-Dance Party by myself in the park next to the Library as I said I would. When doing the Life-Dance Party alone (I am rather dubious in calling it a “party” even when I happens with others, but I’ll keep doing so until I formally decide otherwise) the mind-dance, and sometimes also the soul-dance take place as entries in my Life-Dance Journal rather than as conversations. I think that transcribing selections from those journal entries will be useful here: Life-Dance Party near C-ville Library Friday, November, 5th 2004 Mind-Dance My fist formal C-Ville Life-Dance Party! A solo affair for now but even so “progress”. I did’nt do the opening welcoming ritual as well or as thoroughly as I might have (I didn’t turn to face a new direction at each welcoming of a different part of my wholeness as an Individual) owning to acute self-consciousness. Still, I stood up and did the 5 gestures facing outward toward the rest of the folks in the park, not caring too much who was looking… “My experience of ritually welcoming myself to this place among strangers was heightened compared to what normally occurs, even though there are not many people here in the park. There is something a little frightening—its like a mini healing crisis really—about welcoming both myself and whoever might be observing and judging “that strange black man with the red and purple beret making that strange series of gestures under that maple tree”. I especially felt the poignant and vulnerable mutuality of the moment at the part of the welcoming in which I place my hands over my own heart in invitation to and welcoming affirmation of my own feelings (at that moment, feelings of acute self-consciousness and vulnerability) while at the same time welcoming unconditionally the feelings, judgments and total being of those to whom I felt vulnerable.(I do this with eyes alternately closed and open, symbolically welcoming the inner and outer equally). “ There was something almost mystical and very healing about doing specifically this part of the ritual in “Public”. It was an affirmation, come what may, of my own culture and my own individuality in an environment that felt pretty unsympathetic to such a thing. Overtly of course it didn’t seem a big deal at all, subjectively though, there was an intense feeling of Life just in that little moment and in that little part of that ritual gesture which I can’t help but think had some effect both outwardly and inwardly, since, fundamentally, the two are not separate. Perhaps it was the beginning of real civil life, not only for myself, but for C-Ville… But I have been elaborating a little on my Mind Dance notes. I will return to direct quoting: ““Dancing around the Tree of Life”. That is the name of the workshop I may or may not give a NCOR (national conference for organized resistance) this year. It has only this morning occurred to me that what I am doing in this park integrates both the sense and the symbolism of the “Tree of Life” (wilderness “ground and roots”, rural “trunk and branches”, sustainable urban “fruits”, and Healthy Culture “seeds”) with the Individual-Personal world order which is the only civil context in which it can be generated. Here I am, dancing my life-dance around, or at least under, this Maple, singing, if only to myself as yet, the song of healthy culture to the accompanying whispering rustle of its leaves in the slightly chill wind of this autumn day”. What did I actually do there in the park besides write in my notebook? Oh, nothing special, I stretched out on the grass and against the tree, yoga-like, but in the friendly way that I have taught myself. I did various forms of chi gung. I sang a bit to myself and played my m’bira (thumb piano) smiled and said hi to a man and his child. Perhaps they will be here next time. I read a little—I cant remember what it was now—perhaps Derek Walcott, or some of Basho’s “Journey to the Deep North”. Above all I engaged, listened to, supported and even challenged my own mind, heart, body and soul in a spirit of inner and outer mutuality and friendship. The ritual, as it often is, was altogether languidly sublime and sacredly ordinary and pleasant. Near the end of the ritual, as part of the my soul-dance I wrote; “As lunch time nears (with the likelihood of more people in the park) I begin to feel my arrogant (vain really) fear of vulnerability set in at the thoughts of doing the formal ritual expression of inclusive and unconditional Gratitude, that concludes the Life-Dance Party. Certainly my soul can stand some challenging, but to over do it would be inner bravado and egotism rather than true humility. Again, as I do this Thanking ritual, I must be grateful for the very fear that I experience in doing it, I must be grateful for that fear as well as the bold love that is also there both in myself and in other who see or do not see, judge or do not judge… Balance, Easily, kindly….” Again the closing was not what I usually do at Twin oaks or at Tupelo, but again, it was more sublime, more of an expression of inner as well as outer compassion (and it is almost redundant to qualify compassion that way) than any thing else I could have done… |
thanks to squidfingers for the background