We
have many parts of ourselves, where and when - if anywhere - will the subversive
inappropriate self - the one that cares nothing for the superego or the
past or the future or prudence or respectability or empathy - be
allowed to live in the sun? If it is shamed into hiding will it just vanish?
Once, I
think perhaps for my 45th birthday, I went on a day long Tantra
workshop. In one exercise the women were encouraged to dance freely and
"womanly" in the centre of the room, while the men were asked to stand
on the perimeter and "hunt" a particular woman they felt attracted to
with their eyes or body language, or through dance ...I think direct touch
may or may not have been excluded by the female facilitator.
In such an
environment, where we were being encouraged to play with a ritualized
male female polarity, where men were being invited to own and act out a
'predatory' sexual role, and women to seduce or signal availability, and where
all participants were consenting adults who had come to explore and
find some kind of hoped for fulfillment, I found it "impossible" to
participate in this exercise, and stood there wooden and paralysed and
perhaps terrified of something (rejection? shaming?) that I had brought
with me into the room from my past and conditioning.
Certainly there
were women there who moved me, but to own this in an overt and visible
way was not accessible. And I experienced this as a kind of blockage in a
natural flow...these things are nuanced and delicate and the reactive
world with its fear driven approximations and demand for guarantees does
not often support the kind of unpackings which really resolve an issue.
"The seeing is the doing". (Krishnamurti)
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