Part Five: Transmission
the first and second attentions, the bridge between worlds
© 2005 Antero Alli (updated 6/25/07)
The First and Second Attentions
The development of a certain quality of attention remains crux to paratheatre's purpose of regenerating the ritual of theatre and of restoring the sense of its originating culture. This quality of attention is not that awareness commonly called "attention" which is linked to language, the machine of thinking and the automatic assignment of labels and meaning (refered to hereafter as the "first attention"). There is a second attention not linking to language, thinking and/or words but to presence, energy and phenomena. The first attention looks but cannot see; the second attention only sees. Most people know the feeling of being looked at; far fewer know the feeling of truly being seen. Or of seeing. Both attentions are important and necessary for differing reasons.
The underlying purpose of the first attention is survival, to figure out how to stay alive. The underlying purpose of the second attention is creativity, of directly engaging and working with the autonomous forces of creation. These two attentions can function separately and/or together with differing consequences. By itself, the first attention fixates awareness in survival issues -- such as security, status, analysis and problem solving, community needs -- with minimal access to the "post-survival" dynamic processes of creation. In electrical terms, when the second attention acts in isolation it behaves like a live wire without a ground wire; the forces of creation are engaged but sputter, disperse and fail to manifest intention in the world of time, space and knowledge. Both are necessary for the awareness and expression of our totality.
In much of the educational systems of western civilization, the first attention has gained powerful a priori status over the second attention thus, greatly inflating its sense of importance. This inflation has resulted in a mental tyranny over the body/psyche by the mechanism producing too much thinking. This quandary is further complicated by the compulsion towards non-stop comparisons compulsively associating this image with that, or that system with this one, etc. etc. Too much thinking turns the psyche into a tool for the intellect, rather than the psyche using intellect as a tool; something becomes a tool when it can be put down after its use.
Our social and public education systems have sanctioned over-thinking. Without cultivating second attention, the psyche remains tyrannized by the banal agendas of the mundane intellect and is doomed to repeat problems created by the very mechanistic mindset trying to solve them. This type of excessive mental activity expresses first attention out of control; nervous monkey mind. Those waking up to this problem can begin restoring perspective and context to our thinking by learning to cultivate the second attention.
The second attention can be cultivated by relaxing the search for meaning. This can be experienced by relaxing the tendency to project and/or assume meaning onto whatever is perceived, in lieu of direct perception of the phenomena. This can also be occur by dropping labels through an agreement to experience the world without naming what you are experiencing. The second attention functions more as intuition than intellect, though intellect can learn to follow its cues once humbled (enlightened) into a more receptive role. Intellect can be humbled after any authentic experience and encounter with the objective reality of unity -- the ineffable indivisibility of life itself -- and the realization (not merely the conceptual understanding) that duality expresses an arbitrary mental construct, rather than any ultimate reality. The suddenly humbled intellect usually reacts in one of two ways:
1) FEAR; intellect contracts into further explanations, justifications and defenses to maintain its delusional (and now paranoid) separatist position. The intellect as tyrant goes mad. Intellectual fundamentalism follows as the mental constructs of projection, assumption and preconception are fortified by blind certitude, the power of belief and finally, stone cold dogma.
2) LOVE; intellect is inspired into a devotional relationship with truth. In doing so, intellect becomes a more refined and flexible servant to the languaging of direct perceptions. The intellect as a Scribe to Life itself. Intellectual enlightenment follows as the innate meanings of experience unfold and are favored over previously outdated preconceptions, assumptions and prejudices.
The education of the first and second attentions turns into wisdom when both can work together. To review, the first attention is primarily attached to the day-to-day concerns of maintaining your survival, solving problems, and making sense of things by automatically assigning labels and meaning to experience. The second attention is primarily linked to presences, energies and phenomena and makes the experience and awareness of ritual, or cosmic, time possible. As these two attentions recognize each other and find ways to interact and work together, a kind of bridge is built.
The Bridge Between Worlds
Perhaps the most difficult yet critical aspect of active paratheatrical research -- to access, embody and express the internal landscape -- is the ongoing work of applying our ritual experiences to daily life. Fantastic insights, realizations and epiphanies can result from archetypal immersions but without any real integration into our mundane existence, these precious awarenesses can fade away, soon to be forgotten. If what we discover in paratheatre cannot be apllied to our lives then we are no better off than the petty bourgeoisie Protestants who go to church on Sundays, repent and then return to their daily habitual ways. For paratheatre work to be of any real use, there must be some process of building and maintaining a bridge between worlds, between the mysteries of the internal landscape and the mundane responsibilities of survival, drudgery and community.
Ongoing paratheatre practice opens up the second attention and ushers participants into "ritual time", a kind of window into infinite possibilities where consciousness expands, becomes more malleable and impressionable to living, autonomous forces in The Body and The Deep Self. In ritual time the second attention opens up and we see the ineffable, multidimensional nature of reality. We stand awestruck and astonished. It's a beautful thing, enchantment.
However, this enchantment also creates its own kind of trance, or self-hypnosis, that can easily seduce the ego into assuming that cosmic experience is more important than mundane existence. Though in the moment it may feel that way, after we leave the ritual we still must return to our daily lives and responsibilities. And, what then ? This escapist approach to transformative ritual can, without us reaizing it, inhibit the critical process of integrating paratheatre work into our daily lives. This is why those aiming to advance their work must eventually graduate from previous hedonic, escapist motivations to higher levels of Self-initiation and transmission.
In context to paratheatre, Self-initiation is an important term that must be continually updated and redefined as our experiences of "Self" and "initiation" develop, grow and outgrow previous concepts and forms. In the early stages of paratheatre work, our experience of Self-initiation can naturally dive into more self-centered, cathartic immersions in sources of energy we discover in our own bodies. Ecstacy! Rapture! Bliss! These joyous eruptions open the first doors beyond the survival-based ego. This romance with the archetypes, and its idealization of the forces of nature, can also inflate the ego with a grander sense of meaning and self-importance. We may even have a genuine spiritual conversion experience that changes our very outlook and our lives to such an extent we are compelled to convert others. However, at the end of the day we all go home, cook our meals, read a book, piss and shit, sleep, dream, wake up and go to work to pay our survival bills.
If we are to integrate the deep immersion experiences of paratheatre into daily life, we must learn how to build and maintain a bridge between inner and outer worlds. A bridge where the ego can become strong flexible enough to come and go between worlds and where we can escape mundane reality and enter the dreamtime and then, return to reality with the renewed power of the dreaming; to dream ourselves awake, to dream ourselves into existence, to dream...
We must also learn to detect what depletes our power to dream and what trivializes our lives and keeps us crimped and small like "giants raised as dwarves". One of the challenging side-effects of consistent paratheatre work manifests as a sensitizing of the human instrument -- physically, emotionally, intellectually, socially, somatically and psychically -- which presents its own unique problems for anyone attempting to "wake up" in a society that depends on the depersonalization, desensitization and demoralization of its people (in the UnHoly name of Progress).
Traditionally this problem has been addressed -- with greater and lesser successes -- by "sangha" or monasteries, ashrams and other alternative communities and microcultures that support the awakening human soul incarnating into greater conscious embodiment. Those awakening from the nightmare of history necessarily seek solace and refuge in the community -- the common unity -- of kindred souls and like minds. Whether this occurs through virtual online communities, real-time communal living and/or through creative and artistic group ventures and projects does not matter. What matters is that we find each other.
to be cont.
Antero Alli, director,
ParaTheatrical ReSearch, Berkeley CA USA
PostScript
I have posted this manifesto online to stimulate dialogue.
All sincere responses, thoughts and comments encouraged.
My e-mail: antero (at) paratheatrical (dot) com
Part One: Key Terms Defined
culture, theatre, paratheatre, emotional plague
Part Two: Integrity Loss and Recovery
the force of commitment, what feeds the being, the good fight
Part Three: The Performer/Audience Romance
the need for love, the total act, the No-Form technique
Part Four: Self-Observation and Ego
figuring out ego, from being to playing, flexibility
