Precision LAB
LAB 1 of 8: Beginning
Sequence
1. Arrive at 7:30 for orientation.
2. 8:00 begin work, second attention space relations
3. Sourcing Absurdity as part of the group warm up
4. Foundation source: Divine Communion (this took some time to show up...)
5. Personal warm up
6. Personal polarity (sane/insane) became trinity (sane/unsane/insane)
7. Transition jog
8. Group Polarity of Self/Not-Self - facing south in no-form corridor
9. Group Polarity of Self/Not-self again, focused on serving energy, not merging
10. East/West Passes: trinity of attention, feeling, impulse
11. East/West Passes: same trinity with focus on 'serving' energy rather than merging
12. Group Foundation Source: Final Ritual
Personal Observations
Economy-
Working this whole lab on what Antero has suggested as 'economy of movement'. while searching for this I struggled with familiar explosiveness followed by a mental reminder not to focus on 'economy' which lead to power loss. When the focus became 'service' via receptivity... this gave me some of what I was looking for.
Impulse-
The 'impulse' part of the trinity work was fruitful. I was a little in my head looking for 'new' movements... but impulse immersion brought all new information and patterns. fresh and plentiful.
Attention-
Attention immersion was easy, and listening to the group reports of that energy later, I understood why. one member talked of being able to spin without getting dizzy. I've had the experience a lot when my attention goes out to infinity in all directions, the self doesn't get dizzy because it hasn't really moved, no matter how much movement the body goes through...it's related to utter stability of the pervasive Source. also the image of a mandala (adi da's cosmic mandala) came up in 'attention' with the light source right at my third eye and me holding my arms above my head in a square shape like what I've seen in egyptian hyroglyphs of gods holding the sun above their heads.
No Form-
what else. no form deepened. perhaps because I hadn't had any caffeine since morning. this was good. also, I did a spontaneous heart sutra while standing in no-form... no heart, no mind, no brain, no thoughts, no arms, no legs, no spine... until body/mind dropped into Void. nice spontaneous connection to the heart sutra.
Devil-
lots of information about devilishness... but somehow I wasn't as scared of it. It was asking to be 'included'. I had less aversion to the animal nature, to the onyx earth decomposing core. This was a good sign I took. the wolf was welcome and I didn't freak out about the twisted or demonic. there was at least equal angelic energy throughout. this may have been a result of working with the sane/unsane/insane trinity.
Trinity-
in the personal trinity... unsane emerged spontaneously. when I stepped in, my body was stuck right down the middle of the two sources. not pulled either way. I was equally in both... until pop, the third part pushed itself into existence. the third was nice... a cloud of sorts. swirling, somewhat undefined but very flexible and inclusive. so strong in fact I hardly remember what came out in the other two parts of the trinity. I remember going up down around in and out in all directions with unsane. again, felt very inclusive and unhindered by boundaries or definition
Lab 2 of 8: Return to Muse
Sequence:
1. Second Attention Space Relations
2. Presencing Actions
3. 360 degree Awareness Actions & 360 Jog
4. Foundation Source: Happiness
5. Warm Up
6. Polarity: Animal/Vegetable
7. North South No Form Corridor: Violet/Yellow Polarity
8. North to South Trinity: Self, Death, Muse
9. Break Trance
Notes:
Violet-
river styx, image of being on the bottom of a the crossing boat, sneaking in.
skeleton dance party like a dia de los muertos comedy festival.
Yellow-
gold coins in buckets that I was distributing, huge sun I carried with my chest, like a gigantic beach ball I was holding in a standing chi position. i tried to go lay it on top of someone laying on the ground, as a gift. lots of joy and laughter and play.
Animal-
jackal/hyena mixed. anubis devouring dead flesh as a hyena.(are they the same- both scavengers?) like pulling the life force out to carry it to the land of the dead.
Self-
robot motions, mechanical. re-entry to self from muse through death led to inserting 3 and 5 swords into my head like a crown. (it was suggested I look up 3 and 5 of swords in tarot - turns out to be sorrow and defeat.) while in self the head was heavy with this crown of thinking swords.
Death -
once I cut off my head with a noose before entering into muse to receive a funnel of light from above... not just light though, fallen stars. the volvox orbs of colored light that seemed to be the muses to me in the past lab. second pass through death into muse was pouring a bunch of words into a jar. like my head draining of thought and talk into a jar that I had to discard before entering the muse.
Muse-
funnel and glowing volvox experience... almost like DNA cells orbs or something. like multiplex geodesic domes or spheres of Indra's Net. second time in I experienced the wind quality of the muse. fickle. quick. breath. breathing me. blowing out and keeping another lab participant cold. also the humor and play of the muse as the wind came out my other side... breaking wind. the way the muse didn't take itself seriously. it used even my bodily functions to come to serve Life. (this is interesting because I once again felt how muse transmuted EVERYTHING into useful art, to gifts for the service and love and connection to All.) in the personal 'self' side, my personality gets uptight about farts and more coarse humor sometimes.
-James
Lab 3 of 8: The Power of Love
Sequence:
1.) Space Relations
2.) Moving Stretch
3.) Foundation Source: Foundation
4.) Personal Warm-Up
5.) Personal Polarity: America/Europe
6.) No Form Corridor: Dream Body/ Earth Body
7.) No Form Corridor: Serve Dream Body / Earth Body
8.) East/West Passes: Resistance/Non-Resistance/Heart's Desire
9.) East/West Passes: Essence of Resistance/Non-Resistance/Heart's Desire
10.) South/North Pass: Power-Bridge of Sacrifice- Love
Notes:
Foundation as Foundation Source:
Feet and legs felt strong all night as a result of this. No-form stance felt more in my pelvis. attention was drawn to the lower 4 vertebrae often, as they are stiff, if not fused in my case. Heart opening movements arrived a lot as well, so that an open chest was a foundation of the given circumstances of my life. also, there was one foundation source jog that was very American Indian and I could feel the land and the spiritual people of this land as a foundation on which I was working.
Earth Body
flat on back. pressing into the density behind my right should blade. became an earth worm inching along on my back. my foot made contact with adam's nose... but i think that was more for him. to help him assure his physical safety. when returning to Earth Body with 'service' my body took on martial art forms. it felt as if some kind of martial arts would serve my earth body right now. good info.
Dream Body
flood of images at first. like a cartoon dreamscape. quickly changing. full color. full environments. like a drug trip. later the dream body became the shuffling and organizing of my actual personal pedestrian 'dreams'. I saw myself working on all the projects I am currently putting together. I felt very adept at this dream actualizing process.
Resistance
At first I went right into my lower right back and hip. wrenching. the full expression of the resistance in that part of my body. deep growling sound. when returning to serve my resistance... I moved into the same area, but gently, slowly, but persistently. in the final return pass Resistance was about gravity and the energy and friction that density of gravity can offer me as a gift.
Non-Resistance:
On a return trip I got the image of Kali and the princess of swords... cutting away the enemy and cutting away the smoke and debris of a recently liberated mind... like the six armed version of her from that old movie.
Hearts Desire:
At first pass I held a dessert at my heart center that represents my ex-girlfriend... at it right before I stepped out into no form. felt waves of sadness, love, and longing that I usually hold at bay. On second pass of service, I put my left middle finger in my right eye socket and pressed. I started laughing hilariously. Laughter became the service to my heart's desire. Joy. really hearty joyful honest laugh.
Power:
At first it was the physical manifestation of a demon I sometimes feel is the source of my compulsions and more gross character defects as self centeredness, willfulness, entitlement, victim-hood, and blame.
Bridge of Sacrifice:
Moving from power to love I had to sacrifice my wolfish qualities. I also had to sacrifice my right and ability to speak or make noise. I had to shut up and surrender my self-important and avoidance based chatter.
Love:
I was a impersonal no-form zombie. I held one simple possition and waddeled around. It was nice. spacious. endlessly open. relaxed.
Return to the Bridge:
I sang the song "All of Me" and did a little dance number. Came to mean that I had to give myself completely to incarnation (this I understood after the session). I danced, played, and gave 'all of me' away to enter power.
Power Return:
An anchor on my forehead drops to the center of the earth. hands tighten in fists, one on top of the other, holding the chain that leads down to the anchor. low rumbling tones. with the center of the earth, with gravity. Power became about density, about earth, about darkness, about actualized love, about embodiment, about magick and friction that generates head and forms. two groups of three in the final moments of the lab created a chalice/blade of triangles... or a pentagram as it were also. the masculine and feminine energies in spacial patterns, uniting. this resonated with my final ritual understanding of the two forces and their essential nature in my being.
LAB 4 of 8: Mother-Father
Sequence:
1. Space Relations (focus on space rather than self)
2. Vertical Dance into Vertical Jog
3. Foundation Source: Body
4. Warm-Up Cycle
5. Personal Polarity: Fear/Faith
6. Transition Jog: (source to raise energy: Fire)
7. No-Form Corridor Facing South: Mother/Father
8. South to North Passes: Mother-Child-Father
9. Same: adjustment of “Walking the Grounds of Memory”
10. Impersonal No-Form Bath
Notes:
Vertical Dance into Vertical Jog: 360 degree movements have been showing up for me in the distillations of the work. arm swirling from top to bottom but also left to right and front to back all in one motion. also I find that my feet and legs follow the arm movement, with me walking backwards, stepping sideways, and moving forwards in one sweeping motion in sync with the arm, hands, head, and eyes.
Foundation Source: ‘body’ felt to vague. or perhaps too mundane for me to get fireworks. I think the overall effect it had was of fewer ‘images’ throughout the evening. more grounded in the simplicity and non-rational shape of the body.
Personal Polarity: was hoping for some clarity about how they both served or related to one another. no stand out crystallizations.
Fire: Good to know I could pick a source and access it to the desired effect. autonomy of source choices is what this lab is ‘about’ so this is a reassuring experience.
Mother/Father: the process was meant to focus beyond personal hang ups of actual mother and father… and move towards “the given circumstances of our own selves as mother and father” – a self revelatory approach. I found confirmation of a process I’ve engaged in my own life… the attempt to bypass personal parents (with whom I have shaky relationships at best) and go straight to the archetypal energies. In this ritual I found those energies without creating them. Lots of embrace and nurturing experiences in the mother… I was Mother Marry and could feel how every ‘mother’ knows that her child is Essentially the ‘Christ’. In father I found the sun, became the sun. shining on the earth, freely giving energy and heat and light as an orb of illumination. positive contact with the essence of these energies within myself.
Mother/Child/Father: Best parts of this were the transitions between the three. for instance, having come from mother, being in child and scared to enter father, I realized I had to let go of mommy’s hand. and that I had started in the mommy sphere; she was the entire world in the beginning of my life (literally when I was inside her). I had to leave her to enter father and become a man which was scary. Other images were of holding my own umbilical cord (amazing how I was so taken care of that nurturance literally got pumped directly into my system). In father, I grew a huge heavy falice that gave me gravity and dragged on the earth. this was a culmination of manhood in the Father realm somehow. I gained power and strength to stand up and face anything.
Walking the Grounds: I was almost doing this anyway because I was in a very subtle ‘economy of movement’ place in relationship to the energies. The biggest surprise was of how many positive memories of celebration came up. I also ran into one zone or ‘pocket’ of energy that was clearly past life childhoods, or collective childhoods. I had some dark memories of sexual abuse come up again but I remain skeptical about their veracity.
Impersonal No-Form: I have an easy time with this one. I couldn’t tell you qualities other than it was easy, peaceful, and a relief in many ways. I think the point was to discharge some of the intensity of the emotional material we’d dredged up around ‘parent and childhood’ content.
Half way now. Focused mostly on how I might dovetail this work with the film work I’m doing and also still focusing on making the transition to the second stage of work in ‘economy of movement’ ‘sustaining care’ and mostly ‘service’ rather than ‘reaction’ or ‘merging’.
- James
Lab 5 of 8: Treasure
(*it has been three days since the lab with no written notes)
Sequence:
1. Space Relations/Gravity as Source
2. Foundation Source: Relaxation
3. Personal Warm Up
4. Personal Polarity: Self-Preservation/Self-Sacrifice
5. Foundation Jog
6. East/West Split: Overcoming/Overcome
7. East/West Split: Find what we Lost – Overcoming/Overcome
8. South to North Pass: Overcoming, Overcome, Treasure
9. South to North Memory: Overcoming, Overcome, Treasure
Notes:
Relaxation: great foundational body source. supported the embodiment of the conventional spiritual notion of ‘letting go’ and ‘surrender’.
Self-Preservation/Self-Surrender: I liked even being able to find the wording in this polarity. I will return to it. also, it related to overcoming/overcome polarity.
Treasure: I hit a huge pocket of energy in Treasure. Knocked me to my knees emotionally. It was the presence of an ex-girlfriend. I was on my knees. Deep sorrow for how I had hurt her, for how selfish i had been. I was on my knees to her and the Divine Feminine that moved through her for my selfishness and folly. I wept and wept and wept. Returning through overcome and overcoming I realized ‘overcome’ as being overcome by the love of ‘other’ and in overcoming I discovered the method of ‘self-love’ as a way to overcome rather than a ‘fight’ to overcome. a whole new strategy and understanding of both.
gratitude,
-JW
LAB 6 of 8: Exhaustion
* this lab was dominated by physical constraint: injured back, injured left knee, exhaustion, & full stomach.
Sequence:
1. Space Relations/ Back Awareness/ Source Nourishment
2. Foundation Source: Trust
3. Personal Warm-Up:
4. Personal Trinity: Black, White, Gray
5. Foundation Jog
6. East/West Passes: Earth/Water/Fire – Air Above all Three
7. North/South Split::Known/Unknown
8. Quadrants: Earth/Air/Fire/Water: To Nourish & Temper
9. Break Trance/Report Circle
Notes:
Trust & Nourishment: entering with exhaustion, an injury, and a full stomach I had needed to work gently. In trusting my body I found that it knew what it could or could not handle and discovered navigational strategies appropriate for the limitations. I found the significant constraints as a great source of creative movement patterns.
Unknown/Unfamiliar: I was mostly involved in embodying the ‘unfamiliar’. I got exposed to sounds and movements that I did not recognize and had never made before. Or perhaps movements or energies I’d seen others use, but that had remained foreign to me. Also, both began to unite with the other as I continued back and forth. I found the familiar ways of being in the unknown and the known qualities of how uncertain certain aspects of my life are.
Black/White/Gray: Black was heavy and downwards, white was up and fast moving and laughing, gray I actually don’t recall. again, progress is celebrated in how organic and 'unpredictable’ choosing the polarities are. I let them emerge, shift, and reshape until I feel like my intuition has found it’s shape and name before entering.
I was far too foggy headed, physically distracted, and tired to even recall most of the session. I think in large part I was doing my best to fulfill my commitment, be present, and get through.
I think it’s okay to do our best and still have an off , unproductive, or sluggish day. To just keep showing up is sometimes enough to cultivate the slow path of growth and discovery.
LAB 7 of 8: Ritual Actions
Sequence:
1. Space Relations
2. Chakra Walks
3. Foundation Source: Love’s Will
4. Personal Warm-Up
5. Personal Trinity: Jack/Jason/Jeremiah
6. East/West Trinity Pass: Sulfur, Salt, Mercury
7. East/West Pass: Serve the Purpose of…
8. North/South Pass: Self/Beyond-Self
NOTES:
Walks: walks were used to bring ‘simplicity’ to the movement source since they require that you continue to essentially walk while allowing the color of the source to appear. later a participant noted that she used the ‘walk’ tool to enter sources, as a way to ease in perhaps. another participant mentioned he like the chakra scales walk as it allowed him to ‘check in with himself’. neither of these were my experience but might be useful approaches to attend to at some point. I hesitate to make note of anything except my own experience.
Love’s Will: nothing revelatory came of it but it did color all my work for the evening in a sacred context. all sources and work were in the context of Divine understanding or action to some degree.
Character Trinity: this was encouraging because again it emerged unplanned (even after 15 minutes in the car making a list of possible charged polarities. planning seems to never work with this process). Jason actually became Odysseus and Jeremiah was a story of my own wounded child. Jack was being tempered by my personal story of pain and difficulty and the transcendent story of Odysseus’ journey and transformation. I think because of the ‘divine/love’s will’ foundation, I saw the Odyssey as a story of alchemy, I even became the ram with the golden fleece… thus realizing that the tragedy of the Odyssey was that he was the great treasure he was seeking. also, the moment of the sirens revealed itself as temptations quintessence. I realized that Odysseus didn’t transcend temptation… he was tormented by it. he was only smart enough in advance to tie himself to a ‘vertical’ source, his ‘mast’. but he wasn’t impenetrable at the moment of temptation. he was in utter agony looking at the sirens and hearing their voices. it is a pain I know. that longing to have and touch and be close to that which will destroy me. I may come back to it, but also a ram, a snake, and a fish(or penguin) came up in my trinity. i didn’t follow that one, but the ram did re-emerge in Jason.
Sulfur: Sulfur was powerful, it moved things quickly and has some qualities of wind but also fire at first. all I could tell at first was that it held a lot of power. on ‘ritual actions to serve the purpose’ it seemed to me that sulfur was for ‘exploding’ things, ‘breaking apart’ and ‘dismembering’.
Salt: I became a salt pillar, like from the bible. I discovered inertia, neutralizing qualities, and later I became the force of temple building… my limbs became like pillars in the four corners of a temple.
Mercury: I found a thick liquid quality. I also found Hermes as a god form in mercury. the most stunning was stepping into a vision of a matrix of double helix images and I spend the whole time taking these four DNA building blocks (like four elements) and rearranging them in new patterns. like a cosmic game of Jenga. pulling out blocks and putting them in other empty spots. it was a feeling that mercury was the patterner, the arranger, the organizer.
The three of them together make the work of the philosophers stone traditionally and what I found was that Sulfur would break things apart, explode them into pieces… Mercury would rearrange the parts into a new pattern and salt would coagulate or reconstitute the parts back into a solid form, specifically into temples or divinely crafted forms.
The last ritual of ‘self' – not self’ was challenging for me.
Self: was the skin limits of the body as self. death as self. beyond the self were things that were larger than me… art and temples mostly, but some ideas or any kind of work that many people were contributing to. this one lost power relatively quickly or I don’t recall. I recall crawling under a slightly open gateway into the beyond the self area… sneaking under the door.
this reminds me, as I started with my foundation source, ritual actions I’d taken earlier in the day showed their presence as the invocation of the 4 archangels in the four directions. on of the actions I took during that foundation source time was to open the four gate ways. there were gates I could open in each direction. I opened them and allowed the power of each to flow into my sphere and my body. I spend the evening opening gateways, and encountered doorways in the final ritual a few times.
break trance.
circle for reporting.
“ritual actions to serve the purpose of a source” seemed a strong direction for most involved in the lab and has inspired Antero's next lab focus. http://www.paratheatrical.com/actionlab.html
LAB 8 of 8: Triangle Center
*This session was run by Nick Walker, in Antero’s absence. Also, it only had three total participants.
Sequence: 1. Space Warm Up
2. Claim Space
4. Foundation Source: Devotion
5. Warm-Up
7. Trinity: (underground, ground, sky)
8. Resistance w/ Questions
9. Gradation: Resistance to Foundation Source
10. South/North Passes: Resistance, Source, God of Source
11. Center/What needs to happen to get to center
Notes:
With Antero gone and Nick Walker leading, I am quite proud of what we did as a group. An addition challenge was that only three people (including myself) arrived for the final day. The challenge of maintaining the energy for a full evening of work with just three people was large, but I feel the three of us actually rose far above and it turned out to be one of the best sessions I’ve ever experienced.
Claim Space: Because the group was only three we had to work specifically for a while to claim the space and boundaries of the room. Successful I believe.
Devotion: it was a sea of red silk or velvet sheets that I swarmed around in, in ecstasy. It was devotion as love and passion and swooning and ecstasy. Devotion as beginning with these feelings of LOVE; spontaneous and natural and unforced… even unstoppable.
Underground/Ground/Sky: Underground also became underwater, and I became a kind of large animal which immediately came to mind: Leviathan. This was the strongest experience from my trinity.
Resistance:
We returned to this over and over with strong effect. At one point given 3 options for entering resistance. I only recall “making peace with resistance” or “asking resistance a question”. the biggest response to ‘making peace with resistance’ was a series of physical experiences which amounted to ‘spending lots of time IN direct experience of the pain's source’ . Also ‘look at the light, and relax’ in the form of physical experience.
Journey to the Center: At one point the Lord and Lady (divine couple/parents) were behind me and came into my body. Taking over my arms respectively. I gave myself a huge loving hug. The experience was “Devotional Parenting: Child of God”. I saw what it would be like to know God and be a parent… seeing the child as a child of God and raising them with that level of Devotional and Joyful Effort. This was a revelation based on my upbringing in the midst of Godless lies and addiction.
Also through the evening I kept getting images of the classic ‘aliens’. big head. big eyes. but I saw them as a child off and on. reminded me of Horus and Jesus and the Divine Child archetype.
As I became the Devotional Parents, I approached the Center, I lay down and made love in those Devotional Red Satin Sheets from earlier in the session. A alien/star child was born… a Horus, a divine child. Once I had fathered this child, I stood, and became a ‘ghost’ experience (returning from a shred earlier in the evening). but this time I hovered as a ghost around the periphery looking back at the ‘son'. This was an experience of being an ‘ancestor’ or becoming an ‘ancestor’. I had the feeling of having completed my job of passing along the line by fathering and that I could join the ancestors at that point. I had the sensation that I still had influence, that I could still affect and be present for the son. and that I had earned my place among the ancestors, proudly and for a very long time.
It still moves me DEEPLY to think of these experiences.
Sequence
1. Arrive at 7:30 for orientation.
2. 8:00 begin work, second attention space relations
3. Sourcing Absurdity as part of the group warm up
4. Foundation source: Divine Communion (this took some time to show up...)
5. Personal warm up
6. Personal polarity (sane/insane) became trinity (sane/unsane/insane)
7. Transition jog
8. Group Polarity of Self/Not-Self - facing south in no-form corridor
9. Group Polarity of Self/Not-self again, focused on serving energy, not merging
10. East/West Passes: trinity of attention, feeling, impulse
11. East/West Passes: same trinity with focus on 'serving' energy rather than merging
12. Group Foundation Source: Final Ritual
Personal Observations
Economy-
Working this whole lab on what Antero has suggested as 'economy of movement'. while searching for this I struggled with familiar explosiveness followed by a mental reminder not to focus on 'economy' which lead to power loss. When the focus became 'service' via receptivity... this gave me some of what I was looking for.
Impulse-
The 'impulse' part of the trinity work was fruitful. I was a little in my head looking for 'new' movements... but impulse immersion brought all new information and patterns. fresh and plentiful.
Attention-
Attention immersion was easy, and listening to the group reports of that energy later, I understood why. one member talked of being able to spin without getting dizzy. I've had the experience a lot when my attention goes out to infinity in all directions, the self doesn't get dizzy because it hasn't really moved, no matter how much movement the body goes through...it's related to utter stability of the pervasive Source. also the image of a mandala (adi da's cosmic mandala) came up in 'attention' with the light source right at my third eye and me holding my arms above my head in a square shape like what I've seen in egyptian hyroglyphs of gods holding the sun above their heads.
No Form-
what else. no form deepened. perhaps because I hadn't had any caffeine since morning. this was good. also, I did a spontaneous heart sutra while standing in no-form... no heart, no mind, no brain, no thoughts, no arms, no legs, no spine... until body/mind dropped into Void. nice spontaneous connection to the heart sutra.
Devil-
lots of information about devilishness... but somehow I wasn't as scared of it. It was asking to be 'included'. I had less aversion to the animal nature, to the onyx earth decomposing core. This was a good sign I took. the wolf was welcome and I didn't freak out about the twisted or demonic. there was at least equal angelic energy throughout. this may have been a result of working with the sane/unsane/insane trinity.
Trinity-
in the personal trinity... unsane emerged spontaneously. when I stepped in, my body was stuck right down the middle of the two sources. not pulled either way. I was equally in both... until pop, the third part pushed itself into existence. the third was nice... a cloud of sorts. swirling, somewhat undefined but very flexible and inclusive. so strong in fact I hardly remember what came out in the other two parts of the trinity. I remember going up down around in and out in all directions with unsane. again, felt very inclusive and unhindered by boundaries or definition
Lab 2 of 8: Return to Muse
Sequence:
1. Second Attention Space Relations
2. Presencing Actions
3. 360 degree Awareness Actions & 360 Jog
4. Foundation Source: Happiness
5. Warm Up
6. Polarity: Animal/Vegetable
7. North South No Form Corridor: Violet/Yellow Polarity
8. North to South Trinity: Self, Death, Muse
9. Break Trance
Notes:
Violet-
river styx, image of being on the bottom of a the crossing boat, sneaking in.
skeleton dance party like a dia de los muertos comedy festival.
Yellow-
gold coins in buckets that I was distributing, huge sun I carried with my chest, like a gigantic beach ball I was holding in a standing chi position. i tried to go lay it on top of someone laying on the ground, as a gift. lots of joy and laughter and play.
Animal-
jackal/hyena mixed. anubis devouring dead flesh as a hyena.(are they the same- both scavengers?) like pulling the life force out to carry it to the land of the dead.
Self-
robot motions, mechanical. re-entry to self from muse through death led to inserting 3 and 5 swords into my head like a crown. (it was suggested I look up 3 and 5 of swords in tarot - turns out to be sorrow and defeat.) while in self the head was heavy with this crown of thinking swords.
Death -
once I cut off my head with a noose before entering into muse to receive a funnel of light from above... not just light though, fallen stars. the volvox orbs of colored light that seemed to be the muses to me in the past lab. second pass through death into muse was pouring a bunch of words into a jar. like my head draining of thought and talk into a jar that I had to discard before entering the muse.
Muse-
funnel and glowing volvox experience... almost like DNA cells orbs or something. like multiplex geodesic domes or spheres of Indra's Net. second time in I experienced the wind quality of the muse. fickle. quick. breath. breathing me. blowing out and keeping another lab participant cold. also the humor and play of the muse as the wind came out my other side... breaking wind. the way the muse didn't take itself seriously. it used even my bodily functions to come to serve Life. (this is interesting because I once again felt how muse transmuted EVERYTHING into useful art, to gifts for the service and love and connection to All.) in the personal 'self' side, my personality gets uptight about farts and more coarse humor sometimes.
-James
Lab 3 of 8: The Power of Love
Sequence:
1.) Space Relations
2.) Moving Stretch
3.) Foundation Source: Foundation
4.) Personal Warm-Up
5.) Personal Polarity: America/Europe
6.) No Form Corridor: Dream Body/ Earth Body
7.) No Form Corridor: Serve Dream Body / Earth Body
8.) East/West Passes: Resistance/Non-Resistance/Heart's Desire
9.) East/West Passes: Essence of Resistance/Non-Resistance/Heart's Desire
10.) South/North Pass: Power-Bridge of Sacrifice- Love
Notes:
Foundation as Foundation Source:
Feet and legs felt strong all night as a result of this. No-form stance felt more in my pelvis. attention was drawn to the lower 4 vertebrae often, as they are stiff, if not fused in my case. Heart opening movements arrived a lot as well, so that an open chest was a foundation of the given circumstances of my life. also, there was one foundation source jog that was very American Indian and I could feel the land and the spiritual people of this land as a foundation on which I was working.
Earth Body
flat on back. pressing into the density behind my right should blade. became an earth worm inching along on my back. my foot made contact with adam's nose... but i think that was more for him. to help him assure his physical safety. when returning to Earth Body with 'service' my body took on martial art forms. it felt as if some kind of martial arts would serve my earth body right now. good info.
Dream Body
flood of images at first. like a cartoon dreamscape. quickly changing. full color. full environments. like a drug trip. later the dream body became the shuffling and organizing of my actual personal pedestrian 'dreams'. I saw myself working on all the projects I am currently putting together. I felt very adept at this dream actualizing process.
Resistance
At first I went right into my lower right back and hip. wrenching. the full expression of the resistance in that part of my body. deep growling sound. when returning to serve my resistance... I moved into the same area, but gently, slowly, but persistently. in the final return pass Resistance was about gravity and the energy and friction that density of gravity can offer me as a gift.
Non-Resistance:
On a return trip I got the image of Kali and the princess of swords... cutting away the enemy and cutting away the smoke and debris of a recently liberated mind... like the six armed version of her from that old movie.
Hearts Desire:
At first pass I held a dessert at my heart center that represents my ex-girlfriend... at it right before I stepped out into no form. felt waves of sadness, love, and longing that I usually hold at bay. On second pass of service, I put my left middle finger in my right eye socket and pressed. I started laughing hilariously. Laughter became the service to my heart's desire. Joy. really hearty joyful honest laugh.
Power:
At first it was the physical manifestation of a demon I sometimes feel is the source of my compulsions and more gross character defects as self centeredness, willfulness, entitlement, victim-hood, and blame.
Bridge of Sacrifice:
Moving from power to love I had to sacrifice my wolfish qualities. I also had to sacrifice my right and ability to speak or make noise. I had to shut up and surrender my self-important and avoidance based chatter.
Love:
I was a impersonal no-form zombie. I held one simple possition and waddeled around. It was nice. spacious. endlessly open. relaxed.
Return to the Bridge:
I sang the song "All of Me" and did a little dance number. Came to mean that I had to give myself completely to incarnation (this I understood after the session). I danced, played, and gave 'all of me' away to enter power.
Power Return:
An anchor on my forehead drops to the center of the earth. hands tighten in fists, one on top of the other, holding the chain that leads down to the anchor. low rumbling tones. with the center of the earth, with gravity. Power became about density, about earth, about darkness, about actualized love, about embodiment, about magick and friction that generates head and forms. two groups of three in the final moments of the lab created a chalice/blade of triangles... or a pentagram as it were also. the masculine and feminine energies in spacial patterns, uniting. this resonated with my final ritual understanding of the two forces and their essential nature in my being.
LAB 4 of 8: Mother-Father
Sequence:
1. Space Relations (focus on space rather than self)
2. Vertical Dance into Vertical Jog
3. Foundation Source: Body
4. Warm-Up Cycle
5. Personal Polarity: Fear/Faith
6. Transition Jog: (source to raise energy: Fire)
7. No-Form Corridor Facing South: Mother/Father
8. South to North Passes: Mother-Child-Father
9. Same: adjustment of “Walking the Grounds of Memory”
10. Impersonal No-Form Bath
Notes:
Vertical Dance into Vertical Jog: 360 degree movements have been showing up for me in the distillations of the work. arm swirling from top to bottom but also left to right and front to back all in one motion. also I find that my feet and legs follow the arm movement, with me walking backwards, stepping sideways, and moving forwards in one sweeping motion in sync with the arm, hands, head, and eyes.
Foundation Source: ‘body’ felt to vague. or perhaps too mundane for me to get fireworks. I think the overall effect it had was of fewer ‘images’ throughout the evening. more grounded in the simplicity and non-rational shape of the body.
Personal Polarity: was hoping for some clarity about how they both served or related to one another. no stand out crystallizations.
Fire: Good to know I could pick a source and access it to the desired effect. autonomy of source choices is what this lab is ‘about’ so this is a reassuring experience.
Mother/Father: the process was meant to focus beyond personal hang ups of actual mother and father… and move towards “the given circumstances of our own selves as mother and father” – a self revelatory approach. I found confirmation of a process I’ve engaged in my own life… the attempt to bypass personal parents (with whom I have shaky relationships at best) and go straight to the archetypal energies. In this ritual I found those energies without creating them. Lots of embrace and nurturing experiences in the mother… I was Mother Marry and could feel how every ‘mother’ knows that her child is Essentially the ‘Christ’. In father I found the sun, became the sun. shining on the earth, freely giving energy and heat and light as an orb of illumination. positive contact with the essence of these energies within myself.
Mother/Child/Father: Best parts of this were the transitions between the three. for instance, having come from mother, being in child and scared to enter father, I realized I had to let go of mommy’s hand. and that I had started in the mommy sphere; she was the entire world in the beginning of my life (literally when I was inside her). I had to leave her to enter father and become a man which was scary. Other images were of holding my own umbilical cord (amazing how I was so taken care of that nurturance literally got pumped directly into my system). In father, I grew a huge heavy falice that gave me gravity and dragged on the earth. this was a culmination of manhood in the Father realm somehow. I gained power and strength to stand up and face anything.
Walking the Grounds: I was almost doing this anyway because I was in a very subtle ‘economy of movement’ place in relationship to the energies. The biggest surprise was of how many positive memories of celebration came up. I also ran into one zone or ‘pocket’ of energy that was clearly past life childhoods, or collective childhoods. I had some dark memories of sexual abuse come up again but I remain skeptical about their veracity.
Impersonal No-Form: I have an easy time with this one. I couldn’t tell you qualities other than it was easy, peaceful, and a relief in many ways. I think the point was to discharge some of the intensity of the emotional material we’d dredged up around ‘parent and childhood’ content.
Half way now. Focused mostly on how I might dovetail this work with the film work I’m doing and also still focusing on making the transition to the second stage of work in ‘economy of movement’ ‘sustaining care’ and mostly ‘service’ rather than ‘reaction’ or ‘merging’.
- James
Lab 5 of 8: Treasure
(*it has been three days since the lab with no written notes)
Sequence:
1. Space Relations/Gravity as Source
2. Foundation Source: Relaxation
3. Personal Warm Up
4. Personal Polarity: Self-Preservation/Self-Sacrifice
5. Foundation Jog
6. East/West Split: Overcoming/Overcome
7. East/West Split: Find what we Lost – Overcoming/Overcome
8. South to North Pass: Overcoming, Overcome, Treasure
9. South to North Memory: Overcoming, Overcome, Treasure
Notes:
Relaxation: great foundational body source. supported the embodiment of the conventional spiritual notion of ‘letting go’ and ‘surrender’.
Self-Preservation/Self-Surrender: I liked even being able to find the wording in this polarity. I will return to it. also, it related to overcoming/overcome polarity.
Treasure: I hit a huge pocket of energy in Treasure. Knocked me to my knees emotionally. It was the presence of an ex-girlfriend. I was on my knees. Deep sorrow for how I had hurt her, for how selfish i had been. I was on my knees to her and the Divine Feminine that moved through her for my selfishness and folly. I wept and wept and wept. Returning through overcome and overcoming I realized ‘overcome’ as being overcome by the love of ‘other’ and in overcoming I discovered the method of ‘self-love’ as a way to overcome rather than a ‘fight’ to overcome. a whole new strategy and understanding of both.
gratitude,
-JW
LAB 6 of 8: Exhaustion
* this lab was dominated by physical constraint: injured back, injured left knee, exhaustion, & full stomach.
Sequence:
1. Space Relations/ Back Awareness/ Source Nourishment
2. Foundation Source: Trust
3. Personal Warm-Up:
4. Personal Trinity: Black, White, Gray
5. Foundation Jog
6. East/West Passes: Earth/Water/Fire – Air Above all Three
7. North/South Split::Known/Unknown
8. Quadrants: Earth/Air/Fire/Water: To Nourish & Temper
9. Break Trance/Report Circle
Notes:
Trust & Nourishment: entering with exhaustion, an injury, and a full stomach I had needed to work gently. In trusting my body I found that it knew what it could or could not handle and discovered navigational strategies appropriate for the limitations. I found the significant constraints as a great source of creative movement patterns.
Unknown/Unfamiliar: I was mostly involved in embodying the ‘unfamiliar’. I got exposed to sounds and movements that I did not recognize and had never made before. Or perhaps movements or energies I’d seen others use, but that had remained foreign to me. Also, both began to unite with the other as I continued back and forth. I found the familiar ways of being in the unknown and the known qualities of how uncertain certain aspects of my life are.
Black/White/Gray: Black was heavy and downwards, white was up and fast moving and laughing, gray I actually don’t recall. again, progress is celebrated in how organic and 'unpredictable’ choosing the polarities are. I let them emerge, shift, and reshape until I feel like my intuition has found it’s shape and name before entering.
I was far too foggy headed, physically distracted, and tired to even recall most of the session. I think in large part I was doing my best to fulfill my commitment, be present, and get through.
I think it’s okay to do our best and still have an off , unproductive, or sluggish day. To just keep showing up is sometimes enough to cultivate the slow path of growth and discovery.
LAB 7 of 8: Ritual Actions
Sequence:
1. Space Relations
2. Chakra Walks
3. Foundation Source: Love’s Will
4. Personal Warm-Up
5. Personal Trinity: Jack/Jason/Jeremiah
6. East/West Trinity Pass: Sulfur, Salt, Mercury
7. East/West Pass: Serve the Purpose of…
8. North/South Pass: Self/Beyond-Self
NOTES:
Walks: walks were used to bring ‘simplicity’ to the movement source since they require that you continue to essentially walk while allowing the color of the source to appear. later a participant noted that she used the ‘walk’ tool to enter sources, as a way to ease in perhaps. another participant mentioned he like the chakra scales walk as it allowed him to ‘check in with himself’. neither of these were my experience but might be useful approaches to attend to at some point. I hesitate to make note of anything except my own experience.
Love’s Will: nothing revelatory came of it but it did color all my work for the evening in a sacred context. all sources and work were in the context of Divine understanding or action to some degree.
Character Trinity: this was encouraging because again it emerged unplanned (even after 15 minutes in the car making a list of possible charged polarities. planning seems to never work with this process). Jason actually became Odysseus and Jeremiah was a story of my own wounded child. Jack was being tempered by my personal story of pain and difficulty and the transcendent story of Odysseus’ journey and transformation. I think because of the ‘divine/love’s will’ foundation, I saw the Odyssey as a story of alchemy, I even became the ram with the golden fleece… thus realizing that the tragedy of the Odyssey was that he was the great treasure he was seeking. also, the moment of the sirens revealed itself as temptations quintessence. I realized that Odysseus didn’t transcend temptation… he was tormented by it. he was only smart enough in advance to tie himself to a ‘vertical’ source, his ‘mast’. but he wasn’t impenetrable at the moment of temptation. he was in utter agony looking at the sirens and hearing their voices. it is a pain I know. that longing to have and touch and be close to that which will destroy me. I may come back to it, but also a ram, a snake, and a fish(or penguin) came up in my trinity. i didn’t follow that one, but the ram did re-emerge in Jason.
Sulfur: Sulfur was powerful, it moved things quickly and has some qualities of wind but also fire at first. all I could tell at first was that it held a lot of power. on ‘ritual actions to serve the purpose’ it seemed to me that sulfur was for ‘exploding’ things, ‘breaking apart’ and ‘dismembering’.
Salt: I became a salt pillar, like from the bible. I discovered inertia, neutralizing qualities, and later I became the force of temple building… my limbs became like pillars in the four corners of a temple.
Mercury: I found a thick liquid quality. I also found Hermes as a god form in mercury. the most stunning was stepping into a vision of a matrix of double helix images and I spend the whole time taking these four DNA building blocks (like four elements) and rearranging them in new patterns. like a cosmic game of Jenga. pulling out blocks and putting them in other empty spots. it was a feeling that mercury was the patterner, the arranger, the organizer.
The three of them together make the work of the philosophers stone traditionally and what I found was that Sulfur would break things apart, explode them into pieces… Mercury would rearrange the parts into a new pattern and salt would coagulate or reconstitute the parts back into a solid form, specifically into temples or divinely crafted forms.
The last ritual of ‘self' – not self’ was challenging for me.
Self: was the skin limits of the body as self. death as self. beyond the self were things that were larger than me… art and temples mostly, but some ideas or any kind of work that many people were contributing to. this one lost power relatively quickly or I don’t recall. I recall crawling under a slightly open gateway into the beyond the self area… sneaking under the door.
this reminds me, as I started with my foundation source, ritual actions I’d taken earlier in the day showed their presence as the invocation of the 4 archangels in the four directions. on of the actions I took during that foundation source time was to open the four gate ways. there were gates I could open in each direction. I opened them and allowed the power of each to flow into my sphere and my body. I spend the evening opening gateways, and encountered doorways in the final ritual a few times.
break trance.
circle for reporting.
“ritual actions to serve the purpose of a source” seemed a strong direction for most involved in the lab and has inspired Antero's next lab focus. http://www.paratheatrical.com/actionlab.html
LAB 8 of 8: Triangle Center
*This session was run by Nick Walker, in Antero’s absence. Also, it only had three total participants.
Sequence: 1. Space Warm Up
2. Claim Space
4. Foundation Source: Devotion
5. Warm-Up
7. Trinity: (underground, ground, sky)
8. Resistance w/ Questions
9. Gradation: Resistance to Foundation Source
10. South/North Passes: Resistance, Source, God of Source
11. Center/What needs to happen to get to center
Notes:
With Antero gone and Nick Walker leading, I am quite proud of what we did as a group. An addition challenge was that only three people (including myself) arrived for the final day. The challenge of maintaining the energy for a full evening of work with just three people was large, but I feel the three of us actually rose far above and it turned out to be one of the best sessions I’ve ever experienced.
Claim Space: Because the group was only three we had to work specifically for a while to claim the space and boundaries of the room. Successful I believe.
Devotion: it was a sea of red silk or velvet sheets that I swarmed around in, in ecstasy. It was devotion as love and passion and swooning and ecstasy. Devotion as beginning with these feelings of LOVE; spontaneous and natural and unforced… even unstoppable.
Underground/Ground/Sky: Underground also became underwater, and I became a kind of large animal which immediately came to mind: Leviathan. This was the strongest experience from my trinity.
Resistance:
We returned to this over and over with strong effect. At one point given 3 options for entering resistance. I only recall “making peace with resistance” or “asking resistance a question”. the biggest response to ‘making peace with resistance’ was a series of physical experiences which amounted to ‘spending lots of time IN direct experience of the pain's source’ . Also ‘look at the light, and relax’ in the form of physical experience.
Journey to the Center: At one point the Lord and Lady (divine couple/parents) were behind me and came into my body. Taking over my arms respectively. I gave myself a huge loving hug. The experience was “Devotional Parenting: Child of God”. I saw what it would be like to know God and be a parent… seeing the child as a child of God and raising them with that level of Devotional and Joyful Effort. This was a revelation based on my upbringing in the midst of Godless lies and addiction.
Also through the evening I kept getting images of the classic ‘aliens’. big head. big eyes. but I saw them as a child off and on. reminded me of Horus and Jesus and the Divine Child archetype.
As I became the Devotional Parents, I approached the Center, I lay down and made love in those Devotional Red Satin Sheets from earlier in the session. A alien/star child was born… a Horus, a divine child. Once I had fathered this child, I stood, and became a ‘ghost’ experience (returning from a shred earlier in the evening). but this time I hovered as a ghost around the periphery looking back at the ‘son'. This was an experience of being an ‘ancestor’ or becoming an ‘ancestor’. I had the feeling of having completed my job of passing along the line by fathering and that I could join the ancestors at that point. I had the sensation that I still had influence, that I could still affect and be present for the son. and that I had earned my place among the ancestors, proudly and for a very long time.
It still moves me DEEPLY to think of these experiences.