Monday, March 20, 2006

Individual

Vision Dance
A vision of Names

In addition to the Death Day ritual  that I usually do this time of year, I did a "Vision Dance". A vision dance is really very similar to a Vision Quest, and the main reason I'm calling it that is because the differences between the two might strike individuals from native traditions as enough to disqualify what I do for the title Vision Quest. I feel sensitive to this right now because I was going to do this "quest" in pensylvania, with another person who rather closely follows a certain native tradition and realized certain differences which, combined with a miscommunication between my friend and me about what was actually going to happen once I got there, led to us finally (but ultimatly amicably) decide just to do our own seperate things.

  Also, Calling it a Vision Dance brings out for me the way that the experience is really like a four-day Life-dance Party without food (or in this case, even water) to prevent or dilute the full quorum of mind, heart, body, and intuition necessesary for real inner consensus (which can take the form of a "Vision") about where one is at  and should go as an individual person. I can also imagine doing such a dance with other people.

So after doing my Life-Dance walk (see a previous individual entry Death Day), my stay at the chosen place of my symbolic death lasted, not until sunrise, like last year, but for 4 days and nights. Besides a beat up tent (for if the weather got really bad), a sleeping bag, a quart of water in case I realized that not drinking the whole time was impossible, and some symbolic objects, there was just me out there in Monaccan Land, which is just this parcel of uninhabited land south  of our main property.

My Individual Name

For me the doing of vision dances is cumulative, and this being the seventh one for me, it took me back to all the ones I have done previously including the first one, which was on a deserted black-sand beach in Hawaii. I always have a kind of vulnerable, teary-eyed, apologetic moment when I first set up the circle, a kind of "here i am again as stupid and forgetful as ever" type feeling. I feel grateful that the woods are willing to even have me there and I feel despondent at what always seems like the lack of sufficient progess I have made over the intervening years or moths, in the direction of both my own and especially of  the worlds Healthy Culture. I express all of this aloud, usually through tears, to the the trees and Spirit and who ever else is listening.

This time also, entering the circle, I asked aloud for for a new name, if that was a good thing for me to have in this fortieth year of my life.  I imagined that it might come to me in dreams or that I might hear it in the cry of some animal or in other sounds. I wanted a name that, unlike "Piankhy", did not have such  gendered, racial, and class historical conotations. Of all the factional identifications that make up identity-politics in the present culture of Apart-ness, I think that that of race is even stronger in me than that of gender,(although a little less strong perhaps, than that of species) and i wanted to challenge myself with a name that trancended at least that if not both race and species.

But I want to stop here to say some thing parenthetically about individual-personhood, the factional indentity-politics of "Humanity", and the Vision Dance.

All beings, Human and Non-human,  have familial venues of some sort, they have "neighborhoods" of some sort, they share the world with "strangers", they have some soul or relationship with ultimate things, and they have a greater or lesser degree of individual integrity. All beings therefore are equal in the  relationships, rights, responcibilities and destinies of individual-Personhood. Of course what comming together as an indivdual, or what comming together with others as a neighbor, might mean in the case of this particular fox or that particular fly larva is likely to be very different in detail from what it means for me or you, but so far as my identity-politics goes they are my equals as neighbors, family, or fellow citizens of the world (by which i mean more the "the planet") This means that any kind of "Humanism" that puts "us" againts the "them" of other beings is just as alienated and factional as racism or patriarchy. Of course "equality" doesnt mean inferiority any more than it means superiority. What it should mean is mutual respect and the possibiltiy of Friendship.

The Vision Dance, seems to me a good experience for transcending speciesism, occuring as it does in an environment in which the only other people are non human people and in which our common destinies and mysteries of Death and Life are not obscured by any artifical distractions.

Anyway, back to my name. As I said I thought it would come, if it came at all, in a dream or from outside sounds that I would hear.  but this is how it happened. On the afternoon of the third day, after making my request again the second night, I was basically lying in the dirt--which, rather than grass, was what was under the dead leaves of my site. I had picked up a stick from somewhere and kind of just noticed after the fact, that i had begun to write out some letters...which I of course immediately assumed was going to be my new name. It was a somewhat odd name, not anything relevant to anything I know about myself or my heritage or anything. I was spelled differently but sounded somewhat like a common female name. I didn't really like it at first. It occured to me sudenly to grab the stick with my right hand, (i am more or less left-handed) and see what happen. I let myself write out another name, thinking I guess that it would be my last name. this was a little more problematic because I had to make sure while I was writing that i was not manipulating what was happening (for example I didnt like the sound of what i was getting so i had willed myself to keep going after the inspiration or whatever had really stopped, hoping the new syllable would redeem the sound. I immediately decided I should drop that syllable). Finally I took the stick lightly in both hands and wrote what I imagined would be my middle name. My heart immediatedly responded wholehearthedly to my whole name once my middle name was added, though just an instant later, i became critical again, finding problematic associations. All in all though I did accept it as my name, as my individual name. Later I began to feel that the first of the three names was my "Self"name, that the second was my "Nature" name and that the third, uniting the vertical "axis" of my individuality and connecting it with the nexus of more "horizontal" social relationships, was my "SelfNature" Name. I concieved that telling someone one or all of these names should probably be an act of Living Friendship inspired by mutual inner and outer consensus both between Life-dancers in the context of healthy culture. We would probably exchange names actually, since the other person would also have recieved an individual name in the same or a similar way.

A Vision of Names

Then I had a kind of "vision" of names, a vision of a process or a culture where in we would all ultimately have seven names, I my vision we would each recieve, at different stages in our lives, and through different rituals, a familial name, and neighborly name, a citizen-of-the-world name, a soul name, and a 3-fold individual name. I imagined that the individual name would be the only one that was arrived at solely though the complete (so far a other humans go) solitude of the visiondance and that the other names would be the product of inner and outer concensus between the individual and there famility, neighbors, strangers, and "soul-companions/fellow religionists-or-whatever. Perhaps to recieve a civil name for example, the indivual would, among other things, have to travel extensively and various strangers from around the world have to come to consensus with that indivual about that name in a process that would created binding international friendships.  A kind of "international walkabout" I guess.

In my vision. there were many such supporting ideas and details about what would make a beautiful ritual in of naming, and so of initiation/socialization in each of the five venues. In a way I feel that I am still having the vision. I want someday to evoke the whole thing poetically, interwoven with various other rituals, perhaps in a kind of utopian novel about what Healthy Culture really would look like as the dominant culture.  Of course it would all be actually doable, and the point of the novel, like the point of these blogs, would be too inspire help in doing it. I actually dont want to be--nor do i think I will really end up-imagining or visioning the whole thing myself. I am trying to share what I am sharing as an invitation to collaboration and co-creativity along these lines. It seems that this process in which new aspects and possibilities of healthy culture are concieved during the ritual/experiment in others, is pretty endless. I am of course inviting you the reader to join me in this. May be one day we will, in the spirit of Living friendship and as members of a growing and thriving Healthy Culture, have inner consense to share with each other one--or maybe even all three--or our Individual Names.

posted by: piankhy | 17:58 | comments