1 December 2003: Initiations

The Sunday afternoon yoga class at the Y was cancelled yesterday, so I had some time between aikido and the first session of the Initiations lab, so I completed and posted the Seven of Swords. Yes, I skipped the Six for now. I'll do the Six and the Ace when the sky is clear and I'm finished with my homework and financial aid forms. Right now, I only want to do the baneful cards.

So. First session of the Initiations lab. Fifteen participants (and allegedly a sixteenth joining us next time), plus Sherpa facilitiating. Excellent group. Includes five of the eight Crux veterans (me, Sherpa, Syrinx, Salamander, and Zap). Used to smaller groups, but it didn't seem crowded - just very alive.

Sherpa suggests that everyone keep a lab journal in which to make note of any lab experiences that seem initiatic to us. Most folks are bringing paper journals with them to lab sessions, but I don't like nailing my experiences down into language so immediately; I prefer giving them a little while to sink in first, so it works better for me to do my journaling here, when I get home. I tried to write this entry last night, but fell asleep in my chair and had to drag myself to bed.

So far, what feels initiatic to me is the act of encountering, facing, and/or accepting parts of myself from which I have in some way been separated, or which I have previously not accepted. Two notable ones this time:

1.) The particular variety of mental chatter in which I become distracted by what my fellow lab participants are doing - observing them, forming opinions, comparing myself to them (often with some competitiveness - see item two). In the past, I've dealt with it by trying to blot it out in one way or another, and by feeling like a lameass for having such a "problem." Yesterday, I eventually managed to just accept it - to devote myself to the intents of the rituals and just accept my mental chatter as an ambient phenomenon, like an internal version of weather. On my walk to the lab, the rain on my face had neither bothered me nor thrilled me; it didn't make me flinch or otherwise changed how I walked, or my commitment to reaching my destination. That's what I mean by accepting something as weather.

2.) I'm used to being one of the most physically fit, strong, flexible, and agile people anywhere I go. I've tended to lean on that, the way many aikido students tend to lean on their size, muscle, or athletic ability as a way of compensating for flaws in their aikido. No matter what's going on with me in lab, I've always been able to pass myself off (to myself) as "doing it right," because I've been able to move in ways that most people can't. No different, really, than all those big muscular aikido students who grapple and shove smaller partners to the ground and think "I did it right, because I made my partner fall." I can't do this anymore. I'm getting older. I'm not as flexible as I used to be; I have to be careful about what I do to my knees; and all this time I'm spending on mental pursuits like writing and school has cut into my exercise time such that I no longer have the formidible mass of upper body muscle I had back in the Hungry Ghosts/Crux days. And many of my fellow lab participants are young, strong, and full-time physical performers. As far as physical aptitude goes, I'm not even in the top 50% here.

But of course, Sherpa and Salamander - the two most experienced lab veterans, the ones who most consistently impress me - are both much older and less physically flexible and agile than me. Which is also the case with the people whose aikido most impresses me - they tend to be tiny, elderly, or both, and most of them took so much damage, back when the art was more brutal, that they're not very flexible anymore. What the great aikidoka have is great aikido. Not aptitude, physical strength, or agility - just mastery. What Sherpa and Salamander have is great commitment, receptivity, intimacy with the Silent Void, ability to give themselves over to a ritual intent. What they have is mastery. They're Elders.

In yesterday's session, I began the process of accepting my physical limitations, and of finding depth, of committing to work with what I've got to work with. I'm making a transition, a step away from the agility and vanity of youth, and a step towards mastery. A first step on what seems to me (from my current and rather limited perspective) to be the biggest initiation of all - the initiation into being an Elder.