22 December 2003: Fire

Initiations lab, session seven. Winter Solstice. A fabulous breakthrough session. Rich, intense, and fun. I could feel it coming for hours beforehand. My solution to the Vanity Koan (as chronicled in the previous entry) provided another huge initatic step in the journey from Vanity into Freedom. I’ve already observed, in my entry of December 4th, that my relinquishing of minor vanities during the earliest sessions of the lab played into the classic initiatic myth of shedding baggage, pride, and defenses on the Journey into the Underworld. My relinquishing of my Vanity-motivated attachment to being free of Vanity was an even bigger step along the same lines – a greater relinquishing, allowing me access to a correspondingly greater depth.

Interesting that so much of the paratheatrical lab work back in 1999 and early 2000 (work that helped to trigger a psychological Descent into the Underworld and subsequent rebirth for me) revolved around the theme of Sacrifice. I’m picking up on a lot of connection between Sacrifice and Initiation now.

Also implemented Sherpa’s “less arms” suggestion (see my previous entry), with very powerful results. I had expected that more expressive movements of the legs, hips, and spine would result, which proved to be the case – all kinds of interesting dances and new styles of motion came up. What I hadn’t expected was that a much greater range of vocal expression would also emerge, which it did. And it all contributed to the increased power and depth of the session. Inanna had to relinquish her weaponry as part of her initiatic Descent into the Underworld, and it’s hard to imagine a more glaring correspondence to that than “dropping one’s arms” – although that actually didn’t occur to me until this morning.

The trick I used to such great success during the Heat phase of the warmup worked even better for me this time: instead of rapid, frenzied movements, using big, sweeping, full-bodied movements, going fairly slowly but never pausing.

Two main rituals for the evening. The first was a Four Elements ritual, the room quartered into Air, Earth, Fire, and Water. This laid the groundwork for the second ritual. In the second ritual, each of the four corners of the room were designated to one of the four elements. Every participant, based on his or her self-knowledge, intuition, and experiences in the previous ritual, went and stood in the corner corresponding to whichever element he or she felt that he or she needed more of in order to balance himself or herself. Different corners, of course, got different numbers of people, though none had less than two.

From no-form, each group moved out into their corner’s element, and began exploring and developing that element, coming up with a way to embody the element as a group. When ready, we moved out into the center of the room, to interact with the other elements.

I was part of the Fire group. I danced and leaped and howled and instigated, trying to make everything hot, trying to excite movement, to make things happen, to play with everything and get everything dancing and playing. I sweated more than I’d ever sweated in a ritual before, which is saying a lot. It was also the most fun paratheatrical ritual I’d ever done. Everyone had a good time. Sherpa said it was loads of fun to watch, too.

Saw Return of the King on Saturday, with Dragon Lady and a crew of her friends. Loved it. Divergences from the books, but not bad ones. I don’t expect absolute fidelity to the book in any screen adaptation. What makes a good book is not necessarily what makes a good movie. The whole “Scouring of the Shire” business would have been nice to see, but they would have had to make four movies instead of three to fit it in. Better this way, and it also means that the generation that sees the movies before reading the books will have the pleasant surprise of discovering that final adventure as a surprise at the end of the third book.

The Gondor sets were perfect. As was the portrayal of Richard Nixon... um, sorry, I mean Denethor.

Still more good search terms from the referrer logs:

• freeing oneself from influence

(This one really got my curiosity going. Whose influence? A cult? Subliminal advertising? Satan? Mind control rays? The One Ring? Sudden mental image: the Council of Elrond in Fellowship of the Ring, where the Fellowship is first formed. Everyone is arguing about what to do with the ring. Pippin strolls up and says, “Have you tried doing a Google search?”)

• alcoholic monkey

(You see? You see? That’s what you get when you abuse your monkey! Do not whip your monkey!)

• monkey that can do karate

(Ha! That should put a stop to you monkey abusers!)

• hand on fire

(I laughed my ass off for about fifteen minutes, imagining a guy whose hand was on fire doing a quick Google search to find out what to do about it.)