on 'asocial'© 2003-2008 by Antero Alli
on 'asocial'
© 2003-2008 by Antero Alli
Social and Asocial Intent
As ritual intents, each produces different results. Social intentions create social rituals; asocial intentions, asocial rituals. Both social and asocial rites can mingle to produce hybrids of group dynamics; part social, part asocial. Social and asocial intentions can also be isolated for the purpose of exploring and distilling their distinct functions, expressions and rewards.
Social rituals fulfill personal and social needs for security, status, courtship, emotional support, and a sense of belonging. These rituals serve socialization processes, as well as, the development and integration of the social personality. Pursued as an end in itself, however, social rituals become a spiritual cul-de-sac where personalities conform to consensus morals, ideas, dogmas, and status symbols, which inhibit the more authentic spontaneous impulses flowing free of social considerations.
Asocial rituals involve group dynamics that bypass socialization processes in lieu of realizing asocial goals such as intimacy with void (No-Form), active prayer (Source Relations) and the evocation of archetypal forces. Monasteries and nunneries offer classic examples of asocial rituals and lifestyles. Though many religious traditions have designed elaborate social rituals and moral systems, these are generally not meant as pathways to mystical experience. They have, more likely, been developed to integrate the personality more firmly into daily community life so as to better endure the shocks of authentic transpersonal experiences: acts of God, death of family members, evictions, marriages, births and so forth.
Reflecting on these dual ritual intents — asocial and social — can help determine which rituals might be possible for any given group, despite what that group wants, fantasizes about, or expects to happen. Some groups are simply more inclined towards the social, while others are more inclined to the asocial. It’s an important distinction to make.
The Physical Body as a Gateway to the Archetypes
This paratheatre medium requires an asocial intent to function, one that elevates individual integrity and autonomy above the satisfaction of consensus social needs. Working in an asocial climate, interaction and group unity develops from a deepening respect for differences, for each individual's truth, no matter what its nature.
The intent of asocial ritual is to cultivate receptivity to transpersonal forces emanating from the body itself and beyond the social persona we sometimes identify with. The physical body embodies and personifies the so-called Subconscious. In this way, the body acts as a gateway to the internal landscape where autonomous archetypal forces govern existence as we know it (and don’t know it). These forces can be liberated after meeting the body's most central need for being felt deeply. When the body is felt deeply it yields its treasures with less resistance. Paratheatre remains a physically rigorous medium for these very reasons.
Archetypal dynamics can be genuinely perplexing to the social ego and the literalist conceptual mind. These forces do not obey us; they have lives and agendas of their own. Coming and going as they will, they are not subject to our beck and call. However, these autonomous forces can be witnessed, experienced and served to discover more of their innate nature and intentions.
On the Cultivation of an Asocial Climate
An asocial working climate can be cultivated by a deepening No-Form practice, the potential state, a comfort in being nobody; being nothing. This intimacy with void experienced in the practice of NO-FORM is the crux of this paratheatrical approach. Rituals lose their power of spontaneity without No-Form and degenerate into self-conscious or contrived play-acting. No-Form practice is engaged before and after each and every ritual. No-Form is engaged before each ritual to charge the ritual; it is engaged afterwards to discharge the ritual.
An asocial climate can also be established by increasing commitment to one's individual integrity and autonomy. This can occur as each participant commits to a silent pledge of being responsible for their own safety and creative states. Becoming accountable for one's own fears and frustrations amidst the creative process increases one's integrity and autonomy, two core values in this approach. It also sets up a non-responsibility to others in the social sense.
Asocial is not antisocial; we do not create in a socially hostile environment. Commiting fully to this silent vow of self-responsibility also helps each participant access the verticality of energetic stratas and complexes within the internal landscape. By deepening this Self-access, vertical integrity can be established. Interactions that proceed from a foundation of verticality are not social. They do not depend on taking or getting energy from others to affirm one's being or one's standing. By serving one's vertical sources while interating with others (who are doing the same), an enactment of offering occurs, an act of sharing vertical presence.
Asocial intent can also be discovered by any heightened value assigned to the space of the ritual setting. This process can be demonstrated by directing one's attention onto the space around, below and above oneself while physically moving through space and also, by relating to the space between others while moving through space. By keeping the attention on the space itself -- rather than the things and people in the space -- certain spatial pathways avail themselves, resulting in a more fluid group unity; picture a swarm of self-governing bodies in motion. Any ongoing practice of spatial awareness can dramatically increase the sense of trust between participants by the respect shown for each other's personal space. In this climate of mutual respect, more authentic responses can naturally emerge free of the compulsion for seeking external acceptance and approval and other inhibiting 'social' habits.
THIS PAGE UPDATED 11/18/08
Other Writings on Paratheatre by Antero Alli
Cellular Choreography and Ritual Actions