15 January 2004: Polarities

“There are trivial truths and there are great truths. The opposite of a trivial truth is plainly false. The opposite of a great truth is also true.”   - Niels Bohr

My recent illness, and the resultant still-healing sinus infection, and the way that they have impacted my work in aikido and the Initiations lab, have brought my attention back once again to the issue of teleology, and to the unanswerable theological question that has intrigued me throughout my life. Unanswerable because the two primary and opposing answers are Great Truths, as defined by Bohr in the above quote, which means that they are two sides of a coin, inseparable and both equally true.

The two Truths in question are:

1. There is a guiding force or principle in the universe (I call it God) that has the intent or function of continually providing each and every person with the optimum opportunities for doing whatever bits of the Work said persons are ready for at the time, and everything that happens to anyone is in accord with the intent or operation of this force or principle.

(Those who mislike the idea that people occupy some particularly exalted place in the scheme of things should note, before wasting time trying to engage me in an argument about it, that I have carefully worded the above statement such that it in no way implies that this is the only intent or function of God – merely that it is one intent or function of God. In this model of reality, God coordinates everything so gracefully that the fulfillment of any one of God’s intents or functions always supports, or at the very least never hinders, the fulfillment of any other of God’s intents or functions.)

According to Truth #1, I got sick because there were lessons it was time for me to learn, initiatic experiences that I was ready for, that could best be learned by being sick at that time. Got offered me the opportunity, and I did my best to avail myself of it. And, as you know if you’ve been following this journal recently, I did indeed learn some valuable lessons, and undergo some initiatic experiences, during my illness.

2. There is no guiding force or principle that has the intent or function of continually providing each and every person with the optimum opportunities for doing whatever bits of the Work said persons are ready for at the time.

According to Truth #2, any benefit I might derive from getting sick, this time or any other time, or from any other “bad” event, is chance, self-delusion, and/or the result of my having the skill and initiative to make the best of a bad situation.

Whichever Truth I believe, I’ll still try to make the best out of whatever happens, to do the best I can with what I’ve got to work with. But I’ve found it more beneficial to believe Truth #1, because, in addition to encouraging me to look for the lessons and benefit in any situation, it also makes me happy, and keeps my morale good. I call this faith.

I find that Truth #2 is not conducive to happiness. Taken to its most extreme expression, it produces a personality like that of Rorshach in Watchmen. So I cultivate my faith – my belief in Truth #1. But I do think about #2, as well. Blotting out awareness of other explanations of reality isn’t faith, it’s narrow-mindedness.

While these two Truths make a good polarity, a good double-sided coin, they’re far from being the only options. But I’m not about to go into all that. I’m trying to write about this week’s Initiations lab sessions. The point of all of the above is that I went ahead and worked with what I was given to work with – a miserable sinus infection. I had a minor crisis of fainth in that I kept finding myself resenting and regretting the illness and the infection, wishing I could have been in top form all throught the lab. Resentment, regret, and excessive “if only-ism” being major pitfalls of Truth #2. But of course, I made the best of it anyway, since if #2 was right, I still had the power to make the situation something other than a total loss, and if #1 was right, then I certainly wanted to make the most of this learning opportunity God had granted me.

According to #1, of course, part of the reason for the whole thing, in addition to its value to me, was to inspire the above paragraphs because there’s someone out there (maybe it’s you) to whom God wants this viewpoint imparted.

When I had lunch with Sherpa on Friday, he had two interesting things to say about my sinus infection. The first was about his own experience with an invading microorganism (an intestinal parasite he acquired a few years ago from spoiled sushi). He said that he felt that he had assimilated some aspect of the organism – that he had learned something from it, about how it moved and what its consciousness was like. He suggested that I try doing the same – that I focus on this experience as an encounter with another life form.

The second thing he said was in response to my mention of the fact that my sinuses have always been the major “problem area” in my otherwise very healthy body. He pointed out that the location of my sinuses – in between the throat chakra and the third eye – might be relevant in some way worth exploring.

Sunday was session thirteen. I decided that I had done enough work with Vanity that I could give myself a week off to let it process, while I focused on what God had thrust in my path – the sinus issue. I mean, it’s about time I dealt with it. According to Truth #1, it must have something to teach me, if my sinuses have been such a problem for me for so long. The phrase “plain as the nose on my face” occurs to me.

So for my Personal Polarity, I went with Sherpa’s first suggestion, and did the polarity of Invading Bacteria/Healing-through-Assimilation. This produced some really interesting movements and sensations. Embodying Invading Bacteria didn’t do anything to increase my sympathy for my unwanted respiratory guests, but it taught me some twisty new movements that I’m sure will be fun to incorporate somewhere. Healing-through-Assimilation gave me some peculiar sensations indeed, containing new information about breathing and about how to access states conducive to assimilation. It didn’t bring about a miracle cure of my sinus infection, but it was certainly powerful and intriguing.

The group did more explorations designed to expand the movement vocabulary, and I noted that my movement vocabulary has indeed expanded a good deal through my work in this lab.

Alas, I didn’t get much out of the later part of the session, because, thanks to the combination of the sinus infection, the residual lung congestion from the virus, and the dry air in the room, I kept getting incapacitated by coughing fits – especially whenever the sources I was accessing called for any sort of altered breathing. And the particular ritual form we were working with, a circular journey through the four states of Birth, Life, Death, and Bardo, generally involves a lot of breathing changes for me. Fortunately, I’ve done this ritual in several other labs, and done plenty of other work with these sources (e.g., past life regression), so I didn’t feel like I was missing out on a unique opportunity.

By the fourteenth session, on Tuesday, I was hardly coughing at all, and my overall physical energy was back up to its usual level. Still lots of sinus congestion, though. I had a really good warmup, and then continued my sinus exploration with the Personal Polarity of Throat Chakra/Third Eye. This proved to be one of the most interesting and somatically informative Personal Polarities I’ve ever done, and I’m definitely planning on doing more work with chakras-as-sources in future paratheatrical labs.

I mobilized and loosened up a bunch of throat chakra armor, which bears further exploration. Lots of action in the jaw muscles. Very similar to throat chakra work I’ve done in the course of my tantra practice.

I discovered that the sinus stuff is strongly connected to the third eye. It doesn’t seem to have a connection with the throat chakra, except insofar as sinus-generated mucous, when it gets really bad, can irritate my throat (as it had in Sunday’s session). To whatever extent my sinus problems represent work I need to focus on, it’s definitely work around the third eye. Again, this bears a good deal more exploration, which will probably mostly happen in my yoga and meditation work after the conclusion of this lab.

Tuesday’s session emphasized vocalization, which is a big part of what I’ll be doing in Orphans of Delerium, the post-lab ritual performance piece that the group will be developing in February and March. Two major observations about vocalization from this session:

1. The vocalization is less forced, and more authentic, if I begin with physical embodiment, let a dance develop in the usual way, and then let the vocalization develop out of the dance.

2. Just as there are reactive movements, and then a deeper level of movement that is expressive, rather than reactive, and tends to manifest as a sustainable dance, so there are reactive vocalizations, and then a deeper level of vocalization that is expressive, rather than reactive, and tends to manifest as a sustainable song.

Two sessions to go. Very much looking forward to them. No idea what Sherpa’s got planned as far as group rituals, except that it’s likely that there will be some further development of the vocalization angle. But I’ve got my Personal Polarities all picked out. Sunday, I’ll be bringing my exploration of Vanity to the next level with the polarity of Vanity-as-Flaw/Vanity-as-Sacred-Power-Source. And Tuesday, in the one I’ve been saving for last, I’ll be diving into deep Jungian waters with the mythological anima polarity of Inanna/Erishkigal. Whee!

Today was my first day as a full-time college student. 9:30 a.m. Algebra class, then yoga at the Y, lunch, and 4:00 p.m. Psychology class. This will be my Tuesday/Thursday schedule for the semester. Mondays and Wednesdays, I’ll have Spanish, but because Monday is Martin Luther King Day, that won’t be starting until this coming Wednesday.

It’s a big load of work. And this Algebra class will be the first math class I’ve participated in since Fifth Grade. (In Sixth and Seventh Grades, I simply refused to do any schoolwork at all. Then I got sent to Bad Kids’ School, where they just didn’t have any kind of math program going. When I was finally allowed to go to a public school again, I stole my files from Bad Kids’ School. Not having the files, the folks in the high school guidance department just asked me what classes I’d already taken. I told them I’d already fulfilled the math and science requirements for graduation, and they just took my word for it. I do so well on standardized placement tests that they had no reason to doubt me – said aptitude for placement tests also being the reason I’m now in a proper college-level Algebra class, instead of pre-Algebra or some other remedial course that would probably be more appropriate to my educational level.)

Well, I’m off to start on the first math homework assignment I’ve attempted in a quarter of a century.