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** I was moved... Wisa (Finland)
Upon traveling to India in March, I had the feeling that this journey could
be something of a life changing experience, although I wasn't able to out
into words what I was actually expecting. Now that the three months' course
is over, I really feel like having gone through something like that - and
again, words seem very inadequate when trying to describe it. It's simply
been too rich, too intense, too new and multi-dimensional to try to break
the experience down to words.So, what happened? Happened a beginning of
a journey back to the reality of the humanbody and it's possibilities,
building up from the very basics and ending up feeling more present and
alive than maybe ever. Whatever it was that I had in mind before and, I
sure didn't know to expect being introduced to a holistic philosophy and
practice of butoh that consists of and brings together the ideas and methods
of Tatsumi Hijikata, the process oriented meditation and channel work of
Arnold Mindell / Rhizome Lee, Jungian psychology of archetypes, lectures
of anatomy, evolution history and biology, Shiatsu pressing, dreamwork,
a crazy cornucopia of physical ways and methods of moving (and incredible
ones, too, like the weakened body butoh...) and so on and so on...
Synthesized to a creative method of multi-dimensional, expressive meditation on the subconscious stream of infinite qualia passing through our time-bound physical existence, which is streaming by nature but obscured by the dominance of our daily, noisy, mechanical monkey mind. (Of course we need to block out much stimuli every moment in this crazy super busy universe, from the billions of impulses and impressions the universe bombards our poor brains with, in order to keep our brains from overloading and being fried by the sheer quantity of data flow - but it's possible to tap a little bit deeper into the underlying stream of life by quieting down the rational, language /thinking brain channel and thus making space for other, much subtler qualia to make it's way into the verge of consciousness, from where the (sub)body is able to catch it, amplify it to the maximum, and bring out new quality by amplifying the quantity to a crisis point, to a necessary paradigm chance - or a reverse twist...)
So it's hard to describe or pin down and a lot to learn. My basic feeling now is of wonderful discovery, childlike wonder and a lot of gratitude. And I think Rhizome Lee is a very rare human being and agreat teacher with a lot to offer. Which is an understatement. I came by a passage by Antero Alli (1985), interpreting a succession of four I Ching hexagrams, that seems to illuminate the process involved at least in these first steps of studying to become an independent butoh dancer, both in small daily scale and unfolding over a long time... I'd like to quote it.
"A fundamental dispersion follows any truly rapturous state and teaches
ud the restraint necessary for understanding." "58 TWEE
-Pleasure
Losing our minds and coming to our senses to fully experience each unfolding
moment for what it is, without projecting meaning, judgement or comparison.
This is the "zen" state of living in the present through our
five senses and enjoying its free-floating direction as a reward in itself,
as there is nowhere to go, nothing to achieve and nobody to be. The surrender
to absolute pleasure in the moment releases endorphins in the brain and
a sense of rapture and ecstasy throughout each cell in the body. Pleasure
begins the complete harmonious merging with Oneself as a source of energy
unto itself which can be shared easiest with others resonating at a similar
level within themselves. 59 HWEN
- Dispersion
Dispersion results from the release of physiological energy after total
immersion in pleasure. Rapture is the brilliant union of our personal consciousness
with theuniversal spirit in the body. It marks a moment of Embodiment,
as wellas "ego-death" ...in that the experience of Self is always
a defeat for the ego. Dispersion is the dissolution of the crystallization
occurring when ego and Self fuse together in momentary, rapturous embrace.
It is natural that a "darkening of the light" follow, as what
comes together alchemically, must also come apart. Conscious dispersion
is the Art of Falling Apart. 60 KHIEH
- Restraint
Restraint is simply the discipline of knowing when to stop and when you've had enough. Dispersion is clearly the destructive force working hand-in-hand with the creative. Restraint is the wisdom of pulling back to oneself...one's center... after sufficient dispersion communicates the need todo this. Without this kind of insight, self-destruction would tend to dominate our reasons for living. The practice of excercising restraint with dispersion strengthens the self-appreciation essential for integrity. Integrity is the great fortifier and grounds us enough to permit more pleasure. 61 KHUNG-FIH
- Understanding
Understanding is the innate comprehension of our inner union with Self,
God, etc., and the clarity which permits us to see this in others. True
understanding is never forced. Rather than a tried effort, it will tend
to "dawn upon us" when it occurs, as something we've known all
along but only now realized.
An understanding of this four-phase cycle of pleasure - dispersion - restraint - understanding simply restores our sense of what we already know for ourselves from experience. This understanding doesn't necessarily come about until after excercising restraint, without which, our lives would end with dispersion. And ...it would never begin without our surrender to absolute pleasure." To me, learning to quiet down the ego mind even a little bit, and to freely follow other impulses, is pleasurable even when it's difficult and painful.
When the process has brought up crisis situations when one is unable to
do anything because of the pain or emotional locks,it has still all the
time felt like something beneficial is happening. The ego doesn't always
agree with what the Self naturally enjoys.
The ego's whole existence, (= our whole existence, from the ego'slimited point of view), is based on control, or an illusion of contro it needs to maintain... So it is a most scary thing for the daily ego driven mind to surrender to the chaos of Nature. It's resistance is very persistent and will not go away easily, so one needs to deal withthe ego reacting to feeling threatened by the new found, multi-dimensional constellation, where it's reduced to a minor player- in fact a quite small part of a much greater whole, a handy tool fordaily doings of the world maybe but hardly anything that would preventthe lifeform from going on living just nicely if it wasn't there.
Plus the ego has quite a high opinion of itself and it's keen to take credit
for anything positive going on, even if it's not even presen twhen butoh
is created. It's no joke that ego is the biggest edge. Thus it's been important
for me, during the three months, to try and find some courage to let unexpected
things come out, especially things that the daily judgement would classify
as awkward, too weird or disturbing, grotesque or ugly...
And I think confronting this odd, alien, non-familiar side of one's self
helps greatly to find the beautiful, sublime, sensitive, subtle and so
on.
The last, "solo" performance, on the big rock, was also a priceless experience for me. Thank you again, everyone involved..!
Climbing around a huge rock for a few days, trying to figure it out, I
learned a lot about *feeling* things - instead of worrying about how they
look, or "should be" from a rational point of view etc... It
felt like doing something very healthy and personally important, getting
back to the basics and close to earth. Surrendering to the fact that no
matter what stories the ego might tell you, you're actually a pretty small
creature on this rock, that's maybe huge for you but, after all, also quite
small - One look at the Himalayas in the background puts that into perspective.
The actual beauty of everything I've experienced here, though, is that
it's a shared co-body process. The co-students in the subbody school rapidly
become like a family, like all of a sudden they're the most important people
in the world. So much shared qualia..!
Especially the kinaesthetic channel, the hidden skin, the resonant touch and all the subtle physical resonance coming through via touching, and not-touching, brought forth the almost shocking discovery of how little spontaneous human touch is involved in in our"normal" lives.
For me it's a beautiful and deeper way to get to"know" other
people and experience the dissolution of personal boundaries .I already
miss the resonant co-body theatre a lot. Where does the body end again?
Also, the whole last week of daily co-body and solo performances was wonderful,
even if in the end the experience was pretty heavy. I've rarely had the
chance to be in presence of such female power (as expressed by Anna, Belen,
Cissy, Erika and Katherine). It had a big impact on me to be involved in
these performances, and it took several days just to recover.
"One thing that's clear is that chaos is feminine, and creation out
of chaos is like creation out of the womb, an all-containing potentiality
emerging out of darkness." - Rupert Sheldrake
So. Three months is a very, very short time, just the very beginning of what I feel could be a lifetime adventure, but it has already been a great learning and healing experience. I'm quite sure I will find away to come back for a longer course in the future. And it's been overwhelming enough that I prolonged my stay here a little, in attempt to integrate some of all this into my life. Thank you, everyone.
Wisa
ps. Oh, it's also been: cuts, burns, bruises, aches, scratches, itches,
cramps, diarrhea, detox, fever, vomit, pain, tears, edges, nettles, mosquitos,
leeches, scorpions and so on... taste everything... :)
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