COSMIC MANNERS & SACRED ANIMALS
In October 2017 I visited the University of Huddersfield to attend "Cosmic Manners in Performance" a 2 day practical workshop, led by Maestro Nicolás Núñez, exploring the psychophysical performance training dynamics that are at the heart of his 'anthropocosmic theatre'. Nicolás's work involves highly energetic meditation-in-movement practices that can be powerfully transformative.
Below is international theatre director, Nicolás Núñez’s research presentation, that explores relationships between mindfulness, breath, vibration and the environment. Drawing on his recent explorations in the remote, indigenous Guna Yala region of Panama, Núñez will consider how social ethics can arise from cultural, ecological, and contemplative practices.
Conference given at the University of Huddersfield, UK October 5th, 2017.
I am going to describe the current state of affairs as I see it, and then offer an alternative perspective or approach that arises out of my work in theatre pedagogy and that processes as a model, vision or ideal for actors. I will share it with you. Thank for your patience and attention. You know… I am only a Mexican bandido.
Western civilization is a civilization of spoiled brats.
The petulant and arrogant rationalist stance ended up driving us away from the truth. And now, we are suffocating.
To seek truth exclusively with the eyes of reason is to sink more and more into the meaninglessness of life.
For life can not be "explained" only rationally. Any attempt in this sense is doomed to failure or madness.
All the mess that we suffer economically, politically, culturally and morally is the result of bad behavior: we were poorly educated. They have been educating us for ages and, to this day, continue to educate us poorly.
Let it be said that I say this from an English university forum that, accepting a dissertation like this, is willing to make the effort to understand what does good education really mean.
We have been told lies and, out of ignorance, driven away from the true rhythm of the universe. They make us believe that we are separated, isolated, out of reality. Frightening!
I breathe, and through breathing I know that I am here, present, that the consciousness of my presence connects me with my spirit and my spirit does not rationalize... it vibrates. It is here, radiant. And that vibrant spirit actualizes all my human capacity and leads me to be in the present without dispersion, with the mind attentive.
A few seconds in that silence open certain thresholds of perception that lead me to deeper layers of my being, where I realize that I am not alone; that myself is not only me but that I am all; and there, in that place where we are all together, we are able to remember; as the poet Octavio Paz says, "remember to recover our lost unity, the forgotten wonder of being alive." In that state of consciousness we touch the Source, the Source of Being.
Our tragedy is that this essential being is not connected with our social being. The essence asks us for a way to behave, to commit ourselves to the respect for ourselves and for all the energy of the universe; it demands that we behave with dignity and cosmic consciousness, that we should know and acquire the good manners to know how to behave, not only in society - in the stereotyped red carpet or in the pathetic and sinister meetings of the elite - but in the authentic human society.
Let us recapitulate then:
To breathe with attention is to connect, through the breath, with the spirit; to enter into its vibrational quality means to behave accordingly: to embody, with kindness, a vibration that fuses realities, connecting in all directions, harmonizing people, actions, environments, towns and cities, countries and milky ways, merging. Fusion, not fission.
Good cosmic education, without the breaking of the whim or the temper tantrum.
For example, a well-educated scientism knows in depth the protocol of nature and, without disrespecting it, courts it to give us its secrets, without violating it. Science that courts finds and develops the magic of connections. The science that forces and attacks, only discovers the mirror of its own limitations, the isolation, the coldness and the solitude of the reason that builds monsters.
We urge, in order to survive, a good education that will make us flourish as an enlightened humanity.
Most universities are dedicated to adjusting consciences that fit into the dislocated structure of the status quo.
We do not need that education. We need an education that liberates consciences, that allows that what is fermented in our interior flourishes: our song of rooster, our spinning of the sun, our inner horse running wild, our solar howl.
If you ask young people today, in any part of the world, what do you study for? She/he answers: to achieve a bachelor's degree, a master's degree, a doctorate, and live better.
In a world where almost any profession that is chosen is locked in the chain of production of goods and services, of cost / benefit of the world economic development, this means that the central aim for studying is to make money. I educate myself to learn how to make money.
And what does it mean to know how to make money in this world, as it is in this effervescent 2017?
In short, making money is learning to lower costs and increase profits.
Well, there is an infinite range of possibilities, depending on the field in which one moves.
As a trader, I can slyly increase some air bubbles in certain products, to make it look like you have more than you actually have. Does it sound familiar?
Or introduce an obsolesence chip so that after certain hours of service, the apparatus I produce dies, die of an announced death... How could we call that technique? Industrial euthanasia?
Or present the products so inflated with cardboard, plastic and useless shells - which also pollute - for the sole reason of increasing their price.
Or invent pseudo-scientific lies to put "healing" or "revitalizing" products in the market.
Or, as laboratories, invent illnesses and epidemics to profit from public health.
Or invent, and celebrate success in life, with the possession of a car ... or two ... or ten ... or, a house ... or three ...
Or a trip, or two ... or a thousand!
Or ... signature clothing,
Or ... culture as a fashion show!
Or ... accounts, many secret accounts in banks abroad, or cash, under the mattress …
In order to enter the "real" world, looking for success, white, black, brown, red or yellow have to be smart elegant cheaters.
They believe that they trick each other into personal financial gain, not realizing that they are cheating themselves.
By achieving a quality of life as superficial and dislocated as their own belief system, they do not realize that their bad education hybridizes life, dislocating and confusing us, causing anxiety and anguish, for it does not give serenity or real satisfaction; it puts us in an excitement of an inappropriate "happiness", full of an insatiable voracity, which ends up breaking us; it is a life style that generates energy and money by destroying, tricking and fissioning.
Good education teaches us, in principle, to recognize our own nature: who am I?
What is my physical, psychic, spiritual gift? And, when recognizing it, seek its place in the concert of human activities.
But we do not have time or space to do this search, we have to eat, to dress, to sleep, always running after the carrot. They have us all running around, anguished, exhausted. There is no time for anything other than working, that is, licking the iron of the mules’ yoke.
Bad education: I only look at my own satisfaction, thus provoking pain.
Good education: I look at my own blessings.
Learning to be: human being
With authenticity, without dislocating anything, without altering, inflating or deflating anything, nor egos, nor anything; seeking only to transform ourselves internally and, with that intention, to design, culturally, platforms that allow us to walk that way.
Like Tarkovski’s Stalker’s room, where the manifestation of our deepest reality is summoned and flourishes.
Or the manifestation of that same frame of mind, reflected in the geometric designs of the Kuna community in Panama.
Here I would like to share with you the research that we carried out last July in the Kuna community, in the Comarca of Armila, Guna Yala, in Panama. This community of Kuna Indians is settled in a Panamanian territorial strip that overlooks the Caribbean Sea and is bordered by Colombia. The Kuna maintain their territory and their ancestral beliefs with strength and integrity. Their way of relating to the environment makes them one of the human groups most educated on the planet, a true example of cosmic education. They know the language of trees, plants, animals and waters. They live with the consciousness of being with the universe, they know they are the universe and, through their ceremonies, they touch the Source. From the contact with these levels of consciousness emerges their conception of the world: Burbakana, the ultimate reality, the place where the basic design of everything that exists is born. The Kunas learn and share a cosmic education that is reflected in their social structure and in their attire. They grow up with an education that keeps them with their spine erect, dignified; they are aware that their work in this life is to help the flight of Mother Earth. From this comes a social ethic that transforms into a communal aesthetic evidently connected to the root and which has much to teach us. From them we learned to connect with Burbakana. We shared this teaching in an immersive theater setting that we did both in the same Kuna community, as in the Bosque de Chapultepec, in Mexico City and now here in Huddersfield. This research was possible thanks to the support of the University of Huddersfield, the British Council, the Arts Council England and the Secretariat of Culture of Mexico, who allowed me to assume the artistic direction of the project, with the participation of Caroline Clay and Domingo Adame, everything under the wise and warm guide of Dra. Deborah Middleton. Through the project we collected the perfume of a tropical jungle, and the conception of a reality in harmony with the good manners of the universe. We discovered that there is the possibility of a temperate and happy life within the paradise which is this planet, to which our Western civilization strives - with its continual bad education - to make it look like hell. The project is called "The Dreaming of Trees".
This paradise can also be found in the designs of the Huicholes’s, in Mexico.
Or as the symbols that adorn the culture in Babylon, Greece, Rome, Tenochtitlan, Tibet, China, Machu Pichu and many other places in the world, which are the testimony and reminder of the authentic contact that man has with the deepest layers of a universal consciousness. The same Source of circulating energy, in an infinite game of fractal geometry.
Languages may be different one from another, almost incomprehensible to each other. However, the contact with a deep graphic signal uncovers the archetypes that sustain all cultures and unifies our perception of life, revealing our surprising brotherhood.
We are like drops of water from the same spring. I believe that this is the grammar of a universal language, the code to which we all belong.
Watson analyzes it very well in his essay on rituals and experiences of altered states of consciousness. Remember that it was he who made María Sabina, the Mexican shaman, well known all over the world.
So how about a kind of theater that focuses on taking steps in that direction? Even without the mezcalina of Timothy Leary or the honguitos of the shaman Maria Sabina, not even with the ancient Greek soma but, anchored to an advanced scientism, create theatrical designs as honest vehicles of transformation of the conscience.
As if we were filthy and smelly, with the urgency to cleanse ourselves by blows of breath and attention.To be self-educated so that, in our friction with the contemporary world, we get as less dirty as possible. Less greed, vanity and lying, less arrogance, personal importance and power, to create a melting atmosphere that slowly boils, bubble after bubble, until the persistence of the fire compels the critical mass necessary to bring to a transformative boil which we need. No one knows what path it can take, but we do know that its first boils always manifest through the stage - the stage that is built not with marble and iron, but with the most ancient and solid material it has: the convocation, "now it is" (silence) "now it is not".
This type of platforms are definitely exclusive for spirits in a state of emergency. It is a call to establish a culture of dignified behavior with ourselves, with the other, with the cosmos.
The metaphor is the only boat which can navigate these waters. This, if we accept that these waters emanate from a spring of endless energy, without beginning or end.
We have to realize that we are simply animals that are nourished and live in an unpalatable cosmos; That all that huge cosmos interacts; that we are all cosmos; that in thought, in blood, in society, on the planet and in the universe, there are streams of energy that circulate constantly, obeying a design that surpasses our human understanding.
Science has shown us that, out of 100% of the reality we perceive, only 30% can enter into a rationally repeatable, predictable, measurable process and that 70% of it is outside our rational parameters, remaining in the realm of mystery, unpredictable, unattainable.
Do we want to live in an isolated reality of only 30%?
Or do we seek to open thresholds? We have to risk entering the current of maturation of who we are, even though we do not know very well what it is that we are.
We fail to understand that the true contemplation of our being emanates from unfathomable strata that surpasses reason. It is not with arguments, but only through true silence that we open doors.
What theatrical current goes in this direction?
The one that summons, in principle, to be together.
Ok, here and now, we're together.
With my rational mind I begin to realize that each of us is breathing.
I'm here, just breathing.
This action pulls my intuitive mind, the one that knows more about me than I, the one that perceives the energy of the group.
And these two aligned minds, energetically, enhance my perception of the living instant.
I open myself to the ability to cross the threshold into deeper states of consciousness and try to connect the Source, the eternal spring, the fractal geometry.
Movements, shapes, colors, flowing images, without asking where they come from or where they are going.
We simply observe, without judgment. We close our eyes. I do not resist, I learn to let myself go in that spring. I gently play to learn to swim in that spring.
I interact with these waters, I flow with them.
I get wet in their color and shape.
Universal energy "looking at itself in
What is my job on this planet?
The one that the energy has designed for me.
In deep silence, with true innocence, I fall into myself and surrender to my own being (silence).
How do I know I genuinely touched the Source?
Very simple, I become aware of how I’m feeling. If I feel uncomfortable, angry, tired, speculating, it means I did not touch the Source. How do I feel? Happy, so happy, that if I would have a tail I would be wagging it!
It seems to me that wagging the tail of happiness is a symptom of good health and good cosmic education. That is what universities have forgotten to teach us, to wag the tail. Thank you.
