Lizard brain, world soul · 13 June 2009
Dance this morning was up in Hollywood, an intimate den of a place with a soft, forgiving floor and blue-grey light filtering in through the wall of windows. June gloom. The only time you really feel the ocean in the air here, the only season with the ambient drama people in the rest of the world know as weather. The air is wet and salty, and you feel it cool on your face. I love the contrast of this season, the way everyone is a little socked in, like the sky.
In Hollywood, you enter the den-space from a hidden back door, and once inside it feels like an urban fortress—like the Hollyhock House up near Griffith Park, or the Getty, or the highrise apartments in the Westwood financial district. Yet in this studio, the windows look right down on one of the seediest stretches of Pico Blvd. Today the rain was coming in sparse glops, knocking the purple jacaranda blossoms in to the street. I had the feeling of cozy mischief, like I was a child building pillow-forts up on the top of a bunkbed, looking down and out, snuggling together with other little wild ones.
What is the distance between lizard brain and the world soul? About two inches from cerebellum to pineal gland, I guess: from primate wildness to knowing, mass intersubjectivity. Does it make a difference that we come to this with the intent for exploration and play, rather than for orgiastic escape?
Usually it only makes sense to dance in other people’s sacred spaces, not in random performance studios like we did today. We meet at the Masonic lodge or at a de-sanctified church in Venice. It’s not like every other religious transition in recent millennia, in which the new faith comes in and builds its temples right on top of the previous holy site. A lot of these dancers are explict about being “the next spirituality”—the integral cutting edge of ecstasy or whatever—but in one way this innovation is different from every other religious succession. Rather than new colonizers building atop the old, they are just renters—of both meeting spaces and symbols. Building some transcendence out of what they’ve got, and leaving it behind a few hours later.
I am learning from this. That it is possible to take the ecstasy on the road. I’ve been realizing how strongly the taste for transcendence stays with me—everything hangs together better, and knows how to move, when there are regular altered states. Preferably every day. Church used to do that, then it was travel and danger, then it was practice. And now I realize why I'm less understanding of people who don't engage practice in that way... people who use it to check in with a stream of frustration or lack or trauma or play or performance or healthy competition instead of the churchy stuff. I’m not sure this is a problem for anyone—some addictions or habits-of-being are good or at least kind of necessary for a time.
But the variations between my subjective experience of dance, yoga, sitting are no longer confusing--a lot of the same stuff is going on in each because the underlying experiencer (whatever she is) is sort of constant. I'm slowly learning to hold the ecstasy more lightly, allowing that sitting or dancing or yoga not just be self-service entrancement. This has been a hard letting-go, something a teacher might have instructed years ago if I had been open then to that sort of teaching. But then, ashtanga wasn't that kind of practice. We are still stuck studiously pretending that it's not about the mind or spirit or whatever, that the only relevant instruction is about how to get beautiful and (most importantly) correct vinyasas.
Saturday links-
- Great article (http://tinyurl.com/nfhapo) on the excuses we make for people who seem spiritually insightful but are ethical wack-jobs. Raising the question: if your root relationships are a joke, what kind of practice is that? The argument is that teachers who don’t “do” everyday morality and only play with transcendence are dualist tools. Seems like, given the cop-out discourse of “that’s her projection, not my mistake,” and (more often heard in women) “oh, nothing is really wrong, the situation just triggered my own issues,” it's good to have tools for taking responsibility, and for holding so-called authorities accountable.
- A practice (www.focusing.org) that merges Wittgenstein and Heidegger with the contemplative side of Christianity to produce a series of habits of just looking in to the body to find what's going on. This is what others would call centering prayer, or still others mindfulness, or I would call getting in to the central channel. I can’t believe these people exist and are doing sort of the same thing I do but with a discourse that merges my professional worldview (phenomenology) and good old Judeo-Christian ways of talking. Who should I colonize with it first—the Chirstians or the academics? Oh yeah, neither. It doesn’t work like that now.
Posted by (0v0)
Categories: having a body
, integration
, morality
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A new kid (2 weeks old, let’s say) is an interesting reflection of/against one’s ashtanga practice. Points up the mundanities, with a subtle and never-ending undercurrent of miraculousness which can never be brought closer, can’t even be seen more directly than in peripheral vision or it disappears, but yet always more consistent than a disembodied “leap of faith.”
Posted by: patrick · Jun 14, 06:19 AM · #
Tried to look at the Heidegger/Wittgenstein/Comtemplative christian link. Had to stop myself, with every page I opened I was getting more and more pissed off and disgusted. But you can’t stop clicking open pages it’s like picking at a scab. I kept hoping that it was a clever parody, but no. Phone sessions, for heaven sake! Aggggghhhhhhh
Don’t get me wrong, love Heidegger, Wittgenstein and have a soft spot for the contemplative christians even, but the Pseudo-Shrinks and Charlatans behind this …. depressed now.
Posted by: grimmly · Jun 15, 12:30 AM · #
Oh no! Is it horrible? I just looked at the description of practice and it seemed to simple to screw up. Phenomenological phone sessions? God help us. Patrick, lizard brain is closer to the miraculous? I’ll buy that. Possibly but possibly not relatied… I’m going to skip campus this morning and drive down to the airport Radisson by 8 am and get myself a token, then go sit on the floor amid the Amma devotees and see what i feel. I can’t belive I’m doing this. Right now i feel horrified and existentially angst-filled about it, not open or lovey in the least.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 15, 04:07 AM · #
You can just be a scientist going to verify if you feel the shakti, no? Hahaha! Okay, you can justify it by saying you’re going on my behalf — I’m very curious to know what it’s like!
Posted by: karen · Jun 15, 04:14 AM · #
Wow, we’re up early. My intention is just to particle-test the shakti stream. I don’t know why I’m so filled with dread right now. I’m pretty open to this kind of thing by now. Maybe it’ll feel different after practice on the way there. Off to it…
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 15, 04:17 AM · #
Keep us posted!
Posted by: V · Jun 15, 05:34 AM · #
That eager dread is familiar.
Posted by: patrick · Jun 15, 05:36 AM · #
We are still stuck studiously pretending that it’s not about the mind or spirit or whatever, that the only relevant instruction is about how to get beautiful and (most importantly) correct vinyasas.
This has confounded me. But it seems to me that most yoga teachers can only have visual access to the outer layer of physical alignment, and they will lack insight into the inner functions that determine, and that are determined by, those physical alignments. The situation must come about by way of how yoga meshes with our culture. What makes having an asana practice seem magical is that people can penetrate the internal mechanisms even despite teachers’ apparently superficial focus on alignment, etc.
Posted by: Carl · Jun 15, 08:16 AM · #
Oh my god. Intense day. A series of severe upsets in the morning before I arrived. I couldn’t help but feel circumstances were conspiring to knock me off center. In very funny ways.
Amma at the Radison. Holy stage management! Unbelievable. Given that I am a little too aware of the social construction of reality and a little too much of a latent cynical (anti-)hipster, my openness to Amma was inversely proportional to the circus act surrounding her. And given the overwhelming extremes of event-production, I should have been fully inoculated to any ambient shakti and able to take in the whole experience at full snark.
Hahahaha.
Bang. Hello Kali. It feels like she sees straight through to the other side of the shadow. Pure consciousness. That she chooses to share that with overwhelming love says more about us than it does about her. (Mark Whitwell’s choice to do the same is a reflection.) Fuck. Her and her Hershey’s kisses are some serious darshan. I probably should have bought a T-shirt.
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 15, 03:11 PM · #
Yo Carl, dial down the dualism? Minds, bodies, not so totally separate even for everyday people here in the 21st century, maybe? Patrick, not eager dread. I have no taste for trauma—you know that! :-) This was only dread.
I didn’t end up interpreting the extremely weird mishaps of the morning as foreboding… but wonder if the dread had something to do with the utter darkness she is taking on in to her deep bosom. The love in that space is not all airy New Age dismissive. It’s more grounded in suffering and acceptance. Really trancey atmosphere (I’m still a little stoned on her), but also weirdly grounded.
She has a strong message about environmental devastation and battles of the sexes. Utterly practical and immediate. Kind if like she’s saying: Will you humans stop being such environment scourges and fucking sexists so I’ll have a little less work to do mopping up the suffering you create?
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 15, 03:24 PM · #
Sorry Owl that was a bit rude of me, going off on one in your living room. Site was giving me my own dose of Ex’l angst though. Amma, this is the hugging woman yes? Just looked her up on google and Youtube but can’t manage to watch a whole video through, this old cynic keeps choking up and welling up. Damm, there I go again just trying to write this, soppy bugger.
Posted by: grimmly · Jun 15, 11:08 PM · #
“That she chooses to share that with overwhelming love says more about us than it does about her. (Mark Whitwell’s choice to do the same is a reflection.) “
Hey Owl, would you mind expanding on this?
Posted by: V · Jun 16, 12:13 AM · #
Awww, the soppy cynic. May we all be so soppy.
Posted by: karen · Jun 16, 04:17 AM · #
What dualism?
Posted by: Carl · Jun 16, 01:33 PM · #
The one I though I saw peeking out from your bag-o-presumptions?
Yes Grim, the she’s the 21st century’s version of the hugging saint. If the vids get you weepy, I recommend a visit. I’m not joking that several people (myself included) thought they felt a medium-sized earthquake as they got within about 100 feet of her. Pretty great show that they went to the trouble of installing an earthquake machine, yes? Worth a day-trip to London for sure.
V, here is the way that the devotees, the newcomers, the interpreters and I sort of sensed Amma to be: pure consciousness. Not pure love. Just god-awful omniscience. Some people said that she sees your suffering so there is no point in hiding it (thus the overwhelming emotion as one gets closer to her body, esp for people carrying grief, it seems). My feeling was that she sees what I don’t see. She has all this teaching about environmental mindlessness, social inequality and sexism.. that’s the social aspect of the shadow. But she also seems to call forward my own personal shadow… the shit in my own personality that I still have not made conscious.
That’s really destabilizing. Talk about TMI, right? No wonder they say she is an avatar of Kali (funny to be the avatar of an avatar… in a way she is Kali… they say prayers to the goddess in her presence and it’s like they’re praying to her directly). Kali’s horrible and fierce because she’s attacking unconsciousness.
So given that she is conscious like this, it seems to me she has chosen an emotional tone to offer us when we come in to that space of being so seen. Instead of the vanquishing fierceness I had imagined in Kali, Amma’s tone is: everything is ok. That’s what Mark says too. The second people start to wander or get bored, he just invokes the “everything is ok” vibe. “Everything is fine, mother is here.” (Imagine him saying this in a thick New Zealander accent.) He explicitly holds conscious space and accepts everything in immanent, worldly reality as perfect and complete just as it is. In Amma’s case, she just smashed me in to her armpit and chanted “daughter daughter daughter daughter” in some weird dialect and when I tried to come up for air (her armpit smelled like flowers though—even after hours of hugging) she plunged me back down again and kept rocking me there. It was extremely undignified, but worth the high and the faith it gave me in the possibility that some humans are superconscious.
With both Amma and Mark, the “everything is ok” and overwhelming loving vibe they project seems to be there out of compassion. The trauma of being that close to pure consciousness might be unbearable without overwhelming positive emotion and comfort. So what I meant is that their decision to show so much love says a lot about our own human fragility and how difficult it is for us to look directly at ourselves and whatever we keep in shadow.
I was there with my friend Gary, a 72-year-old daily ashtangi who is retired special forces and violently hates everything woo woo, new age, etc. Probably the most cynical ashtangi I know and one of the few in this zone whose metaphysics I trust since he emphatically believes in nothing. He was so annoyed by the Amma road-show production and people in attendance, kept calling it a “damn hippie love-in.” But he also felt the earthquakes. After I actually hugged her, I walked over to him fairly tirpped out and sat down. Then he and I were hugging (I’ve been close with him for 5 years and never exchanged the slightest affectionate touch… I mean, his form of affection is sending dirty joke-videos he finds on the internet). He shook his head ruefully and said, “Well, you can take that to Detroit!”
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 16, 02:07 PM · #
I’m glad you had the opportunity to check out Amma. I think it would scare the shit out of me, (in the best possible way, of course). And Gary sounds like a total badass.
Posted by: RE · Jun 16, 03:07 PM · #
I didn’t say weepy, just mildly choked in a manly way, gruffly welled up. But there is something about that gesture of embrace. I looked up when she next visits London but began to get an idea of how big the organization/cult is, which concerns me. While she may be exceptional, I question whether an organization that big ever is or can be. Can you strip all that away and just encounter her and her embrace? But then your post suggests that perhaps you can, and that that is perhaps the point.
Posted by: grimmly · Jun 17, 12:37 AM · #
“It was extremely undignified”
Ah, how that makes me chuckle, Owl. You’re a teeny little carbon-based being in a big universe (yes, like me!) and somehow the consideration of dignity just seems hilarious in that context, no? :-)
Posted by: karen · Jun 17, 04:32 AM · #
I’ve seen Amma a couple times (in the Motor City). Her darshan has been a good experience. All organizations/cults of that nature and size are essentially the same — crazy. Nothing to be bothered about. Personally I enjoy it as a traveling Indian village festival complete with bazaar. Usually good dosa too.
Posted by: Jamie · Jun 17, 07:17 AM · #
The hug hit works, but the staging is kind of cheesey? A drug then, not a religion — or whatever word that would imply a more “sustainable” ongoing thingy with Amma. I ask, because I know someone who got wholly caught up in the Amma-ness, and her (the acquaintance) devotion is neither comprehensible nor pretty — at least from the outside. I don’t get it, and you seem fairly rational… Tell more.
Posted by: KNL · Jun 17, 10:08 AM · #
Perhaps Grim.
But Karen, there are TV cameras! You never get to totally check out of immanent reality with her. The seed of my petty self-awareness persisted in the bliss. Alas. :-)
Jamie, it delights me you saw her there. Yes, good dosa. I had this great mung bean thing for $4.. And not a bad bazaaar. I bought a little crocheted dress and the cashier was wearing ear muffs. I asked if this was because the tabla music distracted him from counting money accurately (which amused me a lot). But he wobbled his head and said that no, he just gets really cold in American hotels.
KNL, one of our fellow ashtangis (name also begins with K, though you may not know her) in town is a big Amma scenester. When I saw her Mon in situ she was in full on (Linda’s term) spiral-eye mode. When she engaged me, I tried to get her to speak a complete sentence. She was fully incapacitated and confused. I got out of there.
I’m preoccupied the next 3 days but would like to collect some more descriptions of this experience. If you’re in LA, there’s another public programme on Friday afternoon. The solstice is Saturday and the programme will go all night and be far more intense (and dark, and unabashedly Kali-tinged) than the hugging thing. Or so they tell me. Being a solstice junkie, I’ll be there all night as a docent in the very unlikely event I get my journal deadline met early…
Posted by: (0v0) · Jun 17, 10:27 AM · #
Shit! That’s amazing, Owl. Thanks for writing about it.
Posted by: joy · Jun 17, 10:32 AM · #