Public policy, social issues, gender politics, religion, civitas, and other taboo topics fall under the hammer of Shava's iconoclasmic force of natural philosophy.
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Purification rituals and Unitarian Universalists
Saturday, April 19, 2003
8:53 AM
A friend on a local UU list asks:
How to understand folks like these? I can't imagine the UU equivalent.
[story on Christians nailing themselves to crosses]
BTW, the arabnews coverage is very evenhanded on this item.
/* in which Dave and I prove that we both tend to J in our Myers-Briggs profiles -- love you Dave! ;) */
Our entire culture is based around insulating ourselves from disease, pain, old age, death. Other cultures embrace these as part of life -- even play with the ideas. They are confronted, but not denied or fought against.
It is far more productive for a person to "die" ritually, and have a reason to live again, than for a person to descend into a living hell of (say) addiction because his or her culture gives no way for a person to make him or herself clean without experiencing true death.
Want to imagine a UU version of this? We tend to do it more symbolically, more rarified than Chod (see below). We tend to flirt with the idea of ego death coyly, rather than try to induce extreme spiritual experiences. Back in the day, some of us played with drugs to this end, rather than nails and crosses...;)
These things are often described as mysteries (quite different from secrets!), because if they are revealed to people who don't understand the experience, people make fun of them. Rather like pre-teens giggling about kissy stuff.
So you don't talk about stuff that's really heavy and transformative (near death experiences, sex, initiations) because, if things are spoken about in front of folks who don't understand, the sacred nature will get profaned in a split second.
For those truly curious about the psychology and spirituality of things like this in more classical traditions, I invite you to search for "kavadi" in your favorite search engine (try to find the native tradition rather than the american wannabes). Or if you want to dig a little more, try the more symbolic but no less intense "dzogchen chod ritual."
For the North American equivalent, look into the history of the Sun Dance.
If you have a truly open mind and a strong stomach, read this: (found searching for sun dance references): article on ritual suspension from hooks I really can't recommend surfing around the rest of this site, but the essay in relevant and compelling.
And now for something completely different...
Here's a lightweight symbolic ritual for letting go of ego and conditions I did at a CUUPs retreat once:
The exercise is advertised as an initiation ritual through maskmaking. There are little plastic craft masks, and oodles of materials (clay plaster beads feathers paints, found objects,...)
First, you ask everyone to introduce themselves in a sentence or two. You explain that we are going to make five masks over the course of the afternoon, so people should work quickly, without judging the art quality and so on, to work to free creative impulses and expression.
The first mask, you tell them, should represent the most important aspect of themselves. For one person, it might be as-parent, for another as-professional, and so on.
When the masks are finished, go around a circle and have each person talk about how the mask represents them, and then each person sets their first mask on a special place set up for only their masks.
Second mask: a bit less time is allotted to make the second-most important aspec of self. By this time, people are usually tossing materials back and forth and chatting animatedly. Again, but keep it moving, discuss the masks in a circle, and set them aside in the special little mask nooks or altars.
Third mask: Just about the same thing, faster.
break.
Fourth mask: Make a mask of what you most desire to be. Same general process.
Fifth mask: break into pairs. Make plain white masks of plaster of paris over the person's face -- life masks. set these aside on a canvas to dry.
Go outside, and build a fire, which we will sit around until the plaster masks are dry. When the fire is going well, everyone go inside and bring out their four masks -- three roles and one desire each.
Inform folks that these roles that they take on are, in fact, just masks. They are not the self. They are not existentially attached to the person who they are. Our purpose now, is to cast the masks into the fire -- all four masks, each person.
It's very rare to see someone just shrug and throw the masks in. People freak slightly. Not only do these represent precious ideas to them, but they worked hard on them and put materials into them. Why should they burn them? I've had people walk out at this point -- and that's fine. Usually one person will toss a mask in first, and then others will start doing so also. Some people throw all their masks in at once. Some throw them each in in turn, thoughtfully. Some throw them in as though giving something up. Some throw them in as though getting rid of something.
When all the masks have burned that are going into the fire, go back inside. Talk about ego and desire. Talk about the freedom of understanding how the ego is not the self -- that our roles and purposes are not *who* we are, they are what we do. They are masks we make for ourselves, and/or that others make for us.
Ground. Have dinner together. Talk.
Send people home with the blank white lifemasks. Tell them it's their choice to keep them or not, decorate them or not. Thank them for the privilege of working with them.
Part friends.
This is an exceptionally watered down, intellectual version of Chod. No one has any threatening illusion of being sliced into pieces and consumed, then reborn -- but the effect might just (then or eventually) be similar. People might or might not have a feeling of being able to let go of old disappointments, old mistakes, old bad images of self, and so on. They might feel free to evaluate future actions clearly.
But they do not have an overwhelming sensory/emotional experience to get them so completely out of their heads that their memory, their thoughts, their rational self, isn't shut up for the few seconds even that they might need to come out completely clean.
It's not generally our style, as UUs, to truly get out of our heads ever.
But all of us have our dark nights of the soul. Sometimes we repress or hide them. Often we are ashamed of them, and never speak of them. We just rarely induce them on purpose, nor do we often understand how to use them as a traditional form of spiritual technology. We have traded in the Chapel Perilous for Starbucks.
Of all these hale blithe idiots who wear yuppie sportswear with "No Fear" on it, I sometimes fantasize that a few of them actually know what they're saying.
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