ICCI report extract

a journal for the Independent Practitioners Network

IPNOSIS

October 5th 1999

The first item below is an extract from the recent news bulletin of the International Centre for Co-operative Inquiry in Italy, run by John Heron and Barbara Langton.
The whole bulletin
can be found at: www.sirt.pisa.it/icci/CofB3.html

It is followed by another extract from the ICCI website, on the nature of its inquiries.

2 August 1999
Foreword
At the ICCI in Italy, we host events which invite people to co-operate in creating innovative forms of spiritual expression. We are putting out this news bulletin to share some recent and exciting developments.

We believe human beings are powerfully on the move toward full self-determination with regard to their spiritual unfoldment, without dependency on the authority of traditions, teachers and texts, while honouring traditions, teachers and texts as a huge data-bank of secondary resources. We think of this movement as a world-wide self-generating community of becoming, a network of people finding their own forms of individual and shared spiritual practice, exploring grassroots religion, expressing their own liberation theology.
It's a low profile network, only very partially established, so a lot of it is still tacit, emerging, coming into being.
Central to this emergence is the spirit of inquiry among independent pathfinders, finding imaginative and rigorous ways of revealing divine autonomy. We like to call the whole active inquiry process 'enlivenment'.

Recent co-operative inquiry visitors
Thirteen bodywork and other practitioners from the Oasis Centre in the north of the UK collaborated in an inquiry on Integrated Practice with a Transpersonal Core, preceded by a warm-up with Primary Theatre and Lean Ritual, from 23 to 30 May, 1999. For eleven people, the inquiry at ICCI was the start of an eighteen month part-time course on Integrated Practice and Holistic Learning; and they were joined by two others.
Learning Edge Ltd in the south of the UK joined us with eleven people. Nine, who make up the facilitators and participants in the second year of a two-year part-time Institute for the Development of Human Potential course, came with two other visitors for an inquiry into Primary Theatre and Lean Ritual, from 7 to 13 June, 1999.
Both events were sacred science in action, and significantly advanced our understanding both of the inquiry process and of the topics addressed. The spiritual revelations of human personhood were moving and remarkable.

Some provisional presuppositions of our forms of inquiry

Each person has their own original relation with creation.
Revelation is now, in immediate present experience.
Spiritual authority is within.
Posture, gesture, movement and sound are the primary language of our relation with what there is.
Spoken metaphor is the verbal elaboration of that language.
Enlivenment is a continuous process starting now with opening ourselves to, and actively expressing, our intrinsic connectedness with what there is.
Innovative divine becoming manifests as co-creation with autonomous humans, individually and in collaborative groups.

Primary theatre: expressive inquiry as a spiritual practice
This is one form of inquiry, one method of enlivenment, which we are evolving. We respond in movement, gesture, sound, song and speech to the spontaneous promptings of our immanent, indwelling spiritual energy, giving dynamic form and voice to, and inquiring into, our immediate relation with what there is. Each of us explores, reveals and celebrates, in nonverbal and verbal ways, our original participation in creation, unfolding the autonomous person-in-connectedness. People may work in pairs or small groups or in the whole group, each taking a turn with the silent, supportive witness of the others.

Releasing personal presence, stepping out of and transforming ordinary, culturally conditioned ways of being.
Expressing personal presence and connectedness; remembering my original self.
Celebrating personal presence and connectedness; rejoicing in who I am.
Originating authentic forms of posture, movement, sound and speech; liberating and reclaiming cliches.
Gifting the other people present, sharing with, and revealing to, them.

Degenerate forms
Contracting the person into the alienated, distressed ego.

Inhibiting personal presence, constrained by embarrassment, and not wanting to embarrass others.
Seducing the audience, showing off, hiding behind the props.
Inflating the distressed ego.
Conforming to imagined expectations, doing-it-right.
Competing with the other people present.

Knacks

Own, express and move out of embarrassment, fear, shame, avoidance, shut-down, competitiveness, copying, showing off, etc.
Explore the dramatic interface between the contracted ego and the expansive person.
Explore fully symbolic use of posture, gesture, facial expression, eyes, movement, breathing, sound; and verbal use of metaphor, analogy, myth, story. Try things out. Explore acting into charismatic dance, sound, gesture, speech.
Talk to,with or as, what there is in every respect without let or hindrance, or any part, aspect or dimension of it: people, culture, the audience, nature, the solar system, the galaxy, the cosmos, archetypal powers, presences, immediate experience, complementary realities, life indwelling, universal consciousness…
Let awareness go down into body being, the belly brain, the hara, centre of timing and spacing; and let expression charismatically emerge, as in a spontaneous dance, rather than be fully prepared in advance, with smooth transitions in and out of the flow, in and out of the session.
Explore a within focus, or an interactive, connectedness focus.
Be open to emotional processing as part of the ebb and flow.
Take time, allow pauses, silences - for their own sake, and for gestation and emergence.

Procedural issues
What is the role, if any, of the following?

Self and peer feedback after each turn, or after all have taken a turn.
Peer feedback during each turn, as discreet gestures with a prearranged meaning.
Coaching and transpersonal facilitation to release authentic expression.

Forms of primary theatre
We have had experience of all of these and they are all very promising.

People take individual turns in a group or in pairs, each person exploring their unique relation with creation - verbally, vocally, in gesture, posture and movement. The audience gives full, supportive attention.
One person takes an individual turn, and one or more members of the audience respond, either as discreet mirroring, or as a discreet response, or as full interaction.
Group members are expressive together nonverbally, with vocal toning, gesture and movement. They may do their individual thing, resonating with each other side by side, or explicitly interact, as moved.
Group members are expressive together verbally, each being a spokesperson for an archetypal power or a presence.
Two people explore verbalized co-visualization, focusing on some entity within, or aspect of, creation, such as a planet within the solar system. This possibility is discussed in more detail in another section of the newsletter.

Lean ritual
The group as a whole explores its original relation with creation, collaborating in the design and execution of a ritual. The leanest rituals are free of any explicit theology, that is, any language or artefacts which are loaded with ancient or modern religious beliefs.
They are designed using only the primal meaning of basic gestures and simple words and everyday objects. Thus the group may choose to stand in a circle with arms reaching upward and say 'above', then kneel to touch the ground and say 'below', then stand and cross their hands over the heart and say 'within', finally reach out to take the hands of those on either side and say 'between'. Or each person in turn may hold up a key to the next person saying 'This is a key', touch it from heart to heart, and pass it on.
Other rituals may awarely adopt and integrate elements drawn from variety of sources, ancient and modern. These elements are always adapted and reframed for use in a context of independent inquiry.
Innumerable lean rituals can be designed by a group open to the presence of being. They generate sacred space and create a means for inquiring into its coming into being.

Benefits of primary theatre and lean ritual

Primary theatre practices are forms of enlivenment and fulfil in action inward practices of attunement, such as high prayer and meditation, traditional forms of enlightenment.
They nourish us, and they empower us to bring the spiritual into our everyday life. Thus:
They help develop charismatic presence and timing at home and at work and at play.
They can be built directly into the the process of mothering and fathering, and of education at all levels.

The second extract from the ICCI website. The full page is at: ICCI inquiries 1990-99

There are many fields of application and possible topics of co-operative inquiry. Being highly participative, it has a micro-political format and is important as an educational and politically liberating process. It empowers autonomy and co-operation among people over against any kind of oppressive, authoritarian social process. Hence its strong link with participative action research and liberationist inquiry in the third world (see Peter Reason, 'Co-operative inquiry, participatory action research & action inquiry: three approaches to participative inquiry', in N. K. Denzin & Y. S. Lincoln (eds.), Handbook of Qualitative Research . Thousand Oaks, Ca, Sage, 1994).
One field where the appeal to authority, in one form or another, has held constant sway from the remote past to the present day, is in the field of human spirituality and religious association. Creeds, cults, churches, occult groups, spiritual schools of all kinds, east and west, ancient and moden, ultimately appeal to the authority of a charismatic teacher, a written revelation, or a spiritual lineage (in this world or the next). This long-standing habituation of the human race to spiritual authoritarianism has had, and still has, a vast and subtle impact, in my view, on all other forms of social oppression.
Here at ICCI, we have a particular interest - as a fundamental part of the wide field of liberationist action research - in inquiries that focus on spiritual and subtle experience, and am joined by people with similar interests. We seek the internal authority of personal experience, honed by the exercise of discriminating judgment, and refined within the crucible of rigorous peer process. We are also intentional in inquiring into our own sociopolitical reality, living and working together for the duration of the inquiry: I call this process a self-generating culture. For a full account of the issues involved in spiritual and subtle inquiry, and for reports of eleven co-operative inquiries in this field, in the UK, Italy and New Zealand, see Sacred Science : Person-centred Inquiry into the Spiritual and the Subtle.

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