ritual actionsADVANCED WORK IN THIS PARATHEATRE MEDIUM
© 2000-2011 Antero Alli
ritual actions
ADVANCED WORK IN THIS PARATHEATRE MEDIUM
© 2000-2011 Antero Alli
True initiation does not require ritual to occur; it is a spiritual event.
At best a ritual can act as a device or a tool to assist the expression
and integration of genuine initiation -- that which has never occurred
to one before and for which one can never truly be prepared.
The first initiation is Self-initiation -- the exposure of oneself to oneself.
This means to leave the self-conscious watcher behind and enter the
circle of participation. Words...images...explanations all belong to
the watcher. To the participant -- experience is everything.
SELF-INITIATION
Self-inititiation starts with immersion in the deep subjectivity of the internal landscape and is marked by identification and merging with sources of energy originating in the physical body -- the personification of the subconscious -- and deeper cellular memory. This initiatic stage tends to be regressive, chaotic and dispersive by its very nature. Often times, nothing of any apparent value communicated outwardly beyond the utterances, sounds, and motions of spontaneous convulsions. However, this immersion stage can prove invaluable for authenticating subjective experience while deepening our access to the internal landscape of the soul realm.
VESSELS OF SERVICE
In the initial exploratory stages of Self-initiation, identification with vital energies becomes necessary. We become these sources to know them firsthand. As we gain more confidence with accessing and expressing them, we eventually realize that these forces moving through us are also autonomous. They have lives of their own and are not subject to our control or even our comprehension; they are not a product of ego. We act as vessels for their expression. We do not own these forces nor are we improvising or creating them as much as acting as translators and transmitters of their presence through us.
A SUSTAINING CARE
While serving these forces as a vessel, the technique of sustaining care allows us to express them with more precision. Sustaining care means discovering in the moment what you care most about the given source you are serving. This brings a kind of precision to our expression married to empathy and emotional investment. The precision here is not dictated by the mind but the heart. However, a balance must be struck. Too much precision can kills the spirit, just as not enough precision can result in a muddled soup effect. A certain kind of stamina is required for extending the duration of a sustaining care between precision and spontaneity. This technique of sustaining care begins the process of finding ritual actions, those physical expressions giving form to the innate purpose of a given source or archetype.
THREE STAGES OF WORK
The following processes express three interdependent stages
of paratheatre work which overlap and inform each other;
no graduations or final arrivals - it's an ongoing discovery:
The first stage involves cultivatating enough internal receptivity -- via a deepening of the No-Form experience to energy sources in the body itself and then, to give these forces direct expression without imposing any preconceived outcome or "look". This first phase expresses the process of Self-initiation, of accessing and expressing the internal landscape with minimal manipulation. This stage tends to be raw, chaotic, convulsive, and "messy".
The second stage requires pattern recognition of the energies accessed and expressed. The aim here is to distinguish and express -- in gesture, voice, action -- the innate patterns, shapes, and forms emerging from these spontaneous eruptions. In the second stage we learn to serve the articulation of forms within the energy itself The results are often half-formed, dramatic, and/or expressive yet without necessarily communicating anything understandable.
The third stage requires a sustaining care for tempering spontaneity with increasing precision. Too much spontaneity turns the work into self-indulgent soup; too much imposed structure kills its life. This balance requires a certain stamina for maintaining the dynamic tension between form and force, or flow, towards ever-increasing durations. Stage three begins the articulation of ritual actions, those movements and actions expressing the innate function or purpose of any given source or archetype. Ritual actions represent advanced paratheatre work as they bridge the hidden dynamics of the internal landscape with the visible, outer world through the instrument of the participant.
To be cont.
-- Antero Alli
updated 4/11/2011
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