17 December 2005: All There

Three sessions to go - tonight, tomorrow night, and Monday night - in the Paratheatrical Research lab that started out as Two-Faced Clowns or "The Clown Lab" and eventually got retitled Experiments in Hypocrisy. In light of where the work has ended up taking us all, Experiments in Hypocrisy isn't really an appropriate title anymore, either; Experiments in Compassion would be more accurate.

There will not be a performance. The group decided that quickly and unanimously when we discussed it after last Monday's session. As Sherpa wrote in his lab journal:

After what could have been the two most powerful paratheatre sessions of this 3-month lab, the group has unanimously decided against presenting any public presentation of the work we have been developing. The work we are now doing feels too valuable, too naked, too deep to share with those who would arrive to watch, judge or try and figure out what was happening. It is difficult to explain but I do understand not sharing what is too valuable. Perhaps for fear of ruining or corrupting it or frightening it away, like tourists trying to feed wild deer. Monday night's closing group circie lasted 90 minutes (the longest group circle I can remember) due to the spontaneous emergence of everybody's stories, charged moments and revelations after the awesome Cycle of Reincarnations ritual (exploring the No-Form, Birth Living, Death, Afterlife continuum and constellations of vertical and ancestral sources).

Since the lab intent shifted around 11/22, the quality of each session's work has significantly deepened in the authenticity of self-expression and vertically-aligned interactions. Every session's results keep getting deeper and more intense than the last and I expect our final three sessions to be no exception. If so, this will probably be my final journal entry as most of what I experienced over just the last two nights have been impossible to put into words to effectively convey what transpired, not just with me but with this group as a whole and with each individual. With that said, I feel proud to have been part of this experiment with such courageous and talented individuals as these. It's been quite the journey, one that I think none of us will forget anytime soon.

The next Paratheatrical Research lab, the Alchemy Lab, which will run from Spring Equinox to Summer Solstice, is not intended to end in any sort of public performance, either, so the earliest we might do another performance would probably be Winter Solstice 2006, one year from now.

This lab has been one of the great transformative experiences of my life. My aikido has evolved and advanced more rapidly in the past several weeks than I ever remember it evolving and advancing before. I wish I'd found the time to chronicle the process in this journal as thoroughly as I chronicled the Initiations Lab. But there's no time for that now - I'm already off and running with what I've learned, integrating it as I go, building momentum toward the next phase of my work. Perhaps I'll manage to chronicle that.

No performance, no chronicle. But it's all there in my aikido, and in the deeper, greater love with which I am now living my life and finding new ways to bring into the world.

Off to shower, eat, teach two-and-a-half hours of aikido. More soon.