----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>; <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, January 23, 2002 3:58 PM Subject: RE: Will Russia make it?
> AC > > It maybe that too much television watching has so affected individual > identity that everyone seems to walk, talk and dress like they are playing a > bit part in some sort of made for TV movie. Why worry about what's on stage > when the stage is everywhere and they only have to worry about their own > acting, their own scripts, their own makeup--their own utterly > self-conscious behaviour. In the 1960s my Cherokee Elder, (who is an Intellectual in the Renaissance model,) told me, a young college student, that the only control that I would ever have over the future was in what I chose to surround myself with. Another way of putting that,came from my French Homeopath who is a former singer for Patti LaBelle and a four star chef. He said "You are what you eat! Merde in, equals Merde out, for your health, life, work, love, whatever." I have edited him replacing his accented English, with the French, since we English speakers prefer to speak in the polite mode on the Internet unless we are the former President defining his apology about the Lewinski affair with the word "regret." I'm reminded of my first and only LSD experience (under the aegis of a "therapist guide") thirty years ago when I looked down at my chest and saw, to my horror, that it had broken open all the way down to my beating heart. On closer examination I saw that layered from my skin down to my heart were thousands of paper thin layers of old celluloid movie films. That there was nothing that remained that was original except my awareness and my heart. I felt that this was a tremendous confirmation of something that I had always "known". Upon taking it to my teacher, the choreographer/film Artist Elaine Summers, she looked at me, shrugged her shoulders and said "so! It isn't what you start with but what you do and who you are. You can begin with all of that but what will you do with it? She also said that such chemical insights were 'cheap' and that should I decide to use the chemical path I could find another teacher. That she wasn't interested in such 'insights'." Both teachers are women and both of them told me that it was about having the courage to struggle to both "know myself" and then to overcome a basic lethargy, probably brought on by another chemical in the environment that surrounded me on the reservation and turned our finger and toe cuticles blue. Lead. Or as Ilana Rubenfeld another mentor teacher said upon learning about it: "You just have to learn to turn that 'merde' you've been dealt into gold. That is a Positive Transformer. Negative Transformers do the opposite." But sometimes the meaning of your entire life is in deciding what that transformation will be. There are so many terrible things that I have escaped narrowly from. It could have been different on so many occasions. The Gift has been that Art is my work and that it demands I come from the inside to shape the external in the circle that feedsback to develop the inside. The primary impulse is always, motivation from the inside and, to pursue it until I find it within. One blessing was the work but the other is that I have been given a profession that has led me to so many incredible individual teachers, not the classroom type but one to one. It has been my task to always turn whatever they gave me into Gold not Merde. So dear list members, to recognize the "cheap" and to realize that life is about pedagogy rather than teleology. That it is WALKING up the hills and truly experiencing their lessons as well as getting there quickly. I can't imagine anyone climbing mountains to "get it over with" but people do all kinds of things for wierd reasons. Jet planes and helicopters are for such emergencies and wars. I always remember that the only person to solo up Everest with no oxygen realized that Everest began at the Bay of Bengal and that he had to walk the entire way or submit to the crowd and the mechanical oxygen tank. That even though it took four months longer, the mastery gained would always be a part of his life. Mastery rather than mechanical manipulation of an oxygen valve. Efficiency is true only if you can balance fast with deep wisely. That we all have our paths and that the glory is in having decided from our own insides while accepting and loving the world. That, you can't learn on TV or the internet. Ray Evans Harrell
