Tuesday, March 15, 2005

Individual post

Death Day Ritual

Today is my Death Day. "What is that?",you ask. The idea of the deathday and the deathday rituals was invented (so far as I know) by me as a way of affirming and inspiring a commitment to Living as an Individual-Person rather than merely "surviving"; as an inwardly and outwardly fearful and alienated being. The deathday ritual is a Life-Dance ritual and as such an experiment in Integral Science and in Healthy Culture in general. The purpose of the deathday is to inspire a healthy sentiment of "memento mori" that acknowledges the fact that real Life can happen only when we fully receive and honor the inevitable and unpredictable reality of our own Individual and Personal death. The rituals of closure, affirmation, and gratitude enacted on ones deathday eave are meant to aid in the realization of the preciousness of our existence and underscore the incredible opportunity we have to seek real Life and Freedom as Individual-Persons while here. The gist of it as this stage of its development is as follows:

A persons deathday is the opposite of that persons birthday and takes place annually, approximately 6 months after the date of their birthday (Although the date is not absolutely mathematically accurate, I choose march 15 as my deathday, as it symbolically mirrors my birthday of September 15). The day before this ("deathday eave";), is the day when most of the solitary part of the ritual takes place.  These solitary rituals include: a ritual bath, a ritual cleaning of ones room and general tiding up of ones effects, a ritual preperation and eating of ones "last meal", a Life-Dance walk, a last Life-Dance check-in, the preparation of ones last will and testament, and a Last Life-Dance Party. I have already described the Life-Dance party in some detail else where and I intend to do the same (elsewhere) with the Check-in. For now I want describe the Life-Dance walk, which figures in other Healthy Culture rituals as well.

The Life-Dance walk is a walk to the specific venues or places in ones locality that are most symbolic of the 5 venues of Individual-Personhood. For me at Twin Oaks these 5 places are: The big living room at Tupelo (my familial venue), the court yard of Twin Oaks (my neighborhood), the place where the driveway meets the road to Charlottesville (my civil venue), the Graveyard (related to the Soul and Ultimate things) and finally, as the solitary venue of my Individuation and cultivation of self-nature there is my vision-quest spot in "monacan land". The Life-Dance walk that preceded my deathday began at my home and ended, not at my vision-quest site but at the graveyard (passing through Local, Civil, and Individual Local venues respectively. The emphasis here (which is not always the case in a Life-Dance walk) was on expressing gratitude and saying goodbye to the place and the places where I have danced my life. It consisted of a brief ritual gesture of thanks and farewell together with what ever words of appreciation and affection seemed appropriate being offered at each place in turn,spoken with an attitude mindful both of the place itself as well as to all that it symbolized at that moment.

I ended the walk at my home where I began it and, having already had my ritual last meal. Attended to other things both directly and indirectly relevant to my deathday (the rituals of death-day eave do not take up the whole time before ones symbolic death and other things can and should be attended to as well, provided you think that you would really want to do them on the day before your actual death if, by some chance you knew when that would be.

The time for my actual symbolic death was determined in relation to the time of my actual (nonsymbolic) birth in a way that is similar to the choice of the death day itself. Since I choose to die at my vision quest site, at almost the appointed hour (which turned out to be 3:16 am) I made my way to that place and to my appointment with my symbolic death. I will not recount the ritual that took place there, but I stayed there (in a symbolic Bardo I guess) until sunrise when I made my way back home grateful for my life and recommitted to my Life-Dance.

That was pretty much the end of my deathday ritual this time, but only because this was my first year doing it and because it is still in the early stages of development. Next year I intend to notify every one of the event before hand (at the community and else were) and actually have a "wake" on the next day to which people can come and pay there respects as I lie there in mock death making the occasional gesture of rigor mortis. I imagine this event to be somewhat comic, as people come up and make their mock eulogies. Perhaps the funeral will end when I am forced out of playing dead by laugher or some other uncontrollable response to some outrageous thing somebody says about me. I do want to give people the opportunity to be more serious about the whole thing though, so a few weeks or so before the event I will circulate a "deathday card" in which people can write or attach what they would really want to say to me before I die or what they would really feel about me if I was dead.

But all of that is for next year when I am better prepared. This year I'm glad just to have done the first, more solitary half of the ritual.

posted by: piankhy | 19:07 | comments

Sunday, March 06, 2005

Family-member post

Well, its been quite a while since NCOR, which was a very worthwhile, chaotic and even somewhat traumatic experience which ended, after much studious avoidance on my part, with a fight/argument between me and the object of (what I would now describe as) my Naivete and Erotic Sentimentality. I actually ended up going to Her workshop, the topic of which was eventually abandoned in favor of our argument, which the audience kindly serving as referee.

Basically her beef was that, for someone who is so much into the culture of togetherness, I seem pretty "apart" from everyone else at twin oaks and she never even sees me (note that this is of course, my own version of things and I might be distorting her points and stuff). I think she was mad about something else too but I forget. I defended myself by telling her, among other things, that she saw so little of me because I was deliberately avoiding her. As one voice, just about everyone there asked "Why". To which question, with candor bordering on stupidity (or maybe it was visa versa), I simply said that it was because I was in Love with her etc. Which statment, besides making everybody laugh (though not mean-spiritedly), seemed to seal the fate of the ostensible subject of the workshop (which was being black in a white community). I wont go on about the details accept to say that she did end up saying twice, yelling actually, that she loved me too (I think she has forgotten this by now).

I cant remember what the rest of my defence was was about being/seeming so isolated and "apart" at T.O.(Twin Oaks). I think I could have used a lawyer. But, besides making the obvious point that most togetheness is phoney, what I should have done was to say that the Healthy Culture stuff I do to is like a kind of 12 step program that I invented and that I am trying to get the other "addicts" I live with (including her) to do with me. What she and others (who I believe are in denial) seem be saying was something like " well, if you would only come around for a few "drinks" once in a while than maybe {get this "maybe" } we would consider trying out your damned program". And this is only on the few occasions when denial doesnt make the whole idea of the program seem some unwarrented craziness on my part. Of course a sick culture addict like me certainly cant afford to go along with this kind of thing. I have enough problems staying "one the wagon" as it is.

I did'nt tell her that then but I did later back at home, (mention of which place segues nicely into the real subject of the entry--i havent forgoten that this is supposed to be a familial post). What I have to post about the Familial step of my Life-Dance is the good news that I have been doing Life-Dance parties at Tupelo (my home), pretty much since my last familial post last year. I do it once a week in one of the living rooms surrounded by the "party favors" of my books, musical instruments, life-dance note book, divination stuff (for checking in with my soul or "inner elder") and what ever else seems good to bring for a Mind-dance, Heart-dance, Body-dance and Soul-dance. Like i said before, I think is a good light(as opposed to heavy)-handed bit of familial activism and I am glad I've been doing it consistantly. At this stage I'm not actually looking for anyone to consistantly join me; im just glad to feel more responcible and alive in and to my household and the people I see every day.

One of those people though, happens to be this person of my (then?)infatuation, and she returned the favor of my unintentional crashing of her workshop at NCOR by crashing one of my Life-Dance parties. Another (even bigger) fight ensued. I wont go into content because I dont really want to describe this person too much or the details of my opinions and feelings about her. I made up for what I said (which I did not actually retract nor do I now) by subseqently letting her vent uninteruptedly at me while I took notes (it was a fairly depressing experince). The "making up" just brought us back to the same old stalemate of me wanting her to do Healthy Culture with me and she just wanting...well i guess to "have fun" along the normal lines of getting drunk, and high, and fucking and stuff. (I'm sure she wouldnt put it that way). Anyway, I dont drink, or "get high", or "fuck" or really do much else that this woman does and it was never in my head that I ever would. What I had was fantasys of Living Friendship rituals, general comradery and (perhaps) Tantra-like sex as a part of a mutual commitment to healing and to healthy culture. I did have some reason for thinking this was possible with this person but not nearly enough to get all worked up about it. It was--I want to say "is"--all really mostly a matter of possibilities and potential that are just going to be unrealized in this life.

Of couse it is a challenge to live with this person and to welcome us both into my household in an unconditional way. For a while I could'nt stand it, and was seriously thinking of leaving the community or worse. Finally, during one very dark (and very jealous) night of the soul I actually invoked the Great Spirit and all my Sprit Guides in a fit of desperation that now seems almost camp, and was told to meditate. While I did so It accured to me that this woman--who I guess represents all I could ever hope to ask as a reward for being stupid and betraying myself--was certainly going to be the death of some part of me and that it might as well be my ego.

Thats pretty much were I am right now about it; The end result (I hope its the end result) and purpose of the whole thing seems basically to be to provoke in me the commited choosing-again of what I chose in the fist place as well as to keep me on my toes about it. Now I can actually use the proximity of this person as a way to "stalk" and flush out my naivete etc., so as to better heal these things in me, and that is actually something to be grateful for. I certainly dont seek out such proximity yet, but I know what to do when it happens now and I feel i know why the whole this is happening at all, though i cant quite put it into words completely. When I can consistantly see her in the arms of others in the culture of apart-ness and not be torn up with sadness and some degree of sham jealously, will I be enlightend about the whole thing? I dont know. I'm not really interested in being in enlightened about the whole thing, I'm just trying to keep Dancing...

posted by: piankhy | 02:28 | comments (2)