Part Two: Integrity Loss and Recovery
the force of commitment, what feeds the being, the good fight
(updated 1/4/08)

We speak of “making real connection with others". How is this possible ? The experience of making real connections can elude anyone without an internal reference with what is "real" for them. Without this internal resonance no real connection can be possible with others. When we are cut off from what makes life real for us, our thirst for reality can be so strong it can simulate its own mirages of reality, delusions and fantasies, to sustain our imaginary bonds with ourselves, with others, and with the world. To persist, these fantasies often require complicated internal justifications and external social agreements from those who also buy into our delusions (also see Paratheatre and self-delusion) and with whom rarely disagree with us; the cheer-leading Yes Men and Yes Women...

What is real ? To know what is real may not be enough, we must also learn to act on what is real. Performers training in paratheatre must learn to remain receptive to internal sources by increasing the force of commitment to do so. Think of commitment as a force, an energy to be developed, applied and directed. If there was an overall aim of paratheatre it would probably be to perform the commitment necessary to access, embody and express what is real. Once the internal dependence of self-commitment can be stabilized, or more well established, we are poised to interact with others from a greater vertical integrity and with less chance of betraying or compromising ourselves.

 

SACRIFICE, PERSONAL INTEGRITY AND THE FORCE OF COMMITMENT
The ritual of sacrifice is as old as humanity. Any culture's sacrifical ritual embodies an enactment of whatever must be released, offered and/or given away for that culture's traditions to persist and survive. What needs releasing for any tradition to survive ? Whatever is killing that tradition and devitalizing its originating culture. Without ongoing and conscious enactments of ritual offerings and sacrifices, a culture dies a slow death and its once vital rituals become dead routines. Bali, one of the world's oldest originating culture's, has kept its traditions alive for many centuries by this very commitment to daily ritual offerings and sacrifices.

On a more personal level, whatever diminishes our capacity for total commitment is probably the very thing that needs sacrificing. Whether this is a cherished addiction to self-indulgent behavior (laziness, vanity, procrastination) or an emotional habit of engaging half-baked relationships, or the empirical skepticism that refuses to commit fully to anything except empirical skepticism...whatever decreases the force of our commitment ends with integrity loss. What performing artist can afford self-denial if it diminishes access to the internal landscape of our humanity ? Any total act of performance demands one’s entire being to perform. Any halfway, half-hearted or half-baked attempts can only succeed in achieving a modicum of mediocrity, a spiritual oppression that frustrates and starves the being.

What feeds the being ?

I am positing integrity as an absolute value, meaning, our integrity only exists wherever we are willing and able to commit 100 per cent. If there is any place in your life -- no matter how small or seemingly inconsequential -- where you can say, "I can stand behind this 100%", that place expresses your integrity. If this 100% notion seems extreme, consider the consequences of not knowing where you can hold your ground without wavering. In this way integrity-building becomes an all or nothing process that requires the full force of our commitment. Once we have discovered the area in our lives that expresses this total commitment, that very force of commitment can be accessed and directed to other areas suffering from a lack of follow-through and integrioty loss.

Integrity loss is not entirely a personal issue; it is not entirely our fault that we lack integrity. Intergity loss is a common casualty of anyone struggling to survive in a hyper-materialistic, consumer-driven, death-ignorant society suffering from massive spiritual bankruptcy. We live in extreme times. Some of the spiritual damage we endure becomes a burden we carry for the culture; it is not a personal burden. Some choose to carry the culture's burden as a personal cause. Others choose not to take on this impersonal cultural burden of suffering and drop it. Those who drop the impersonal burden of cultural suffering do not become free of suffering. They become free of the impersonal culture of suffering that de-personalizes its populace. When you have accessed your own pain and its honest burden, it is unnecessary to take on the tragedy of the world. The transformation of our own suffering can bring us enough compassion to endure the tragedy of the world.

Many of us have lost a sense of what is truly personal. To restore this sense of the personal, a certain kind of suffering must be faced, lived through and transformed. This particular suffering involves the exposure and acceptance of one's own existential circumstances; the existing conditions of our lives. Not the life we wanted or believed we should or could have had, if only things were different.

No. No. And No.

Not all suffering is meaningful. The particular suffering capable of restoring integrity loss starts with accepting the existing conditions of our lives as they are and then, increasing the force of our commitment to these very existing conditions. There can be no integrity in any life that pursues futile escape from its own existence. There can be no escape from reality; we can, however, escape into reality. By increasing the heat and force of our commitment to the existing conditions of our lives, we can transform and evolve ourselves and the lives that we live. But how can this "heat and force" be increased ? By the conversion of fear into commitment. For example, if a genuine fear of interpersonal intimacy is exposed, we can face our feelings of inadequacy for meeting the challenges of real connection and real relationship. The force and heat of our commitment can be increased as soon as we start committing to the very thing that scares us; in this example, intimacy. Escape into reality.

Rebuilding our integrity amounts to increasing the force and heat of our commitment in whatever areas we are willing and able to do so. This is where it starts. This notion of integrity as an absolute value is easy to dismiss, avoid and resist. It is easy to dislike or disagree with someone who is totally behind a belief or assumption that we abhor, such as a religious fundamentalist or scientific or atheist zealot. Yet their sheer force of commitment cannot be denied and there is a certain integrity in that. Integrity loss is like losing bits and pieces of your soul and since “soul“ eludes definition, we are wise not to delude ourselves into thinking we can just call it back like some obedient pet dog. It seems to me that soul is more like a wild bird that lights and leaves with the wind; we do not control it. We do not have a soul as much as a soul has us...

We must look to where our integrity is already intact, that place -- no matter how small or seemingly insignificant -- where we can stand behind something one hundred per cent with no ambivalence, hesitation or wavering. It doesn't matter what it is or looks like; what matters is knowing how to increase the force of your commitment. What feeds being ? The being is fed wherever you can hold this position of total commitment. The being does not care what you commit to but only that the experience of total commitment can occur somewhere.

If you cannot find such a place in your life where you can stand 100% behind something -- whether it be an idea, or a person or a principle or a meaningful image or a cause -- keep searching. This is a search with a payoff; not all searches end with payoffs. If you no longer care, neither does the emotional plague that feeds on body/mind fissures. If you have lost heart, don’t be the last to know. There can be no real transformation without heart and no real life to call your own without the development of this elusive quality called soul. These critical question and issues must be engaged before any performer can make a truthful offering of him/herself.

 

THE GOOD FIGHT
“Heart and soul” has nothing to do with anything hippy-dippy new age, or any other pretty passivism. Great performers are like great fighters; both have a lot of heart, or courage, to perform their respective forces of commitment. The heart wants to know what it is fighting for. If you do not know what is worth fighting for you will end up fighting against anything that rubs your meaningless ego the wrong way. What is worth fighting for ? Are you secretly fighting for your family ? Your mother ? Are you fighting for your own survival ? Your sanity ? For God ? We are a warring species with deeply ingrained fighting instincts. Fighting is not stupid. Not knowing what you're fighting for is stupid. When you discover what is actually worth fighting for, you won't waste your time fighting against anything anymore. When the personal will aligns with a purpose worth fighting for, the heart follows and reigns triumphant.

As transformative performers we must be willing and able to make sacrifices... but sacrifice of what ? to what ? Obviously not to some nebulous ideal or noble concept. We are home to more value than that. What constitutes worthy sacrifice ? Though the nature of real sacrifice differs for each of us, performers share a common passion for performance itself, especially the act of performing something totally. To perform the total act. Anything less than the total act of giving (of oneself) is courting half-baked mediocrity and its insipid lukewarm waters that slowly shrink the being within. What is worthy of sacrifice is whatever holds us back from performing the total act...the performance of any act with the totality of our whole being.

 

Part One: Key Terms Defined
culture, theatre, paratheatre, emotional plague

Part Three: The Performer/Audience Romance
the need for love, the total act, the No-Form technique

Part Four: Part Four: Self-Observation and Ego
figuring out ego, from being to playing, flexibility

Part Five: Transmission
the first and second attentions, the bridge between worlds