The Direction of Intention

733. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 469.

As I dust off and relearn the story of Parcival I have decided that it will be the spine of the work I do next week with teachers; we will follow the metaphors; we will open the story so the stories of our lives might open. As I work I am discovering that everything you need to know to be a great teacher is in this story! Parcival is a knight of the Round Table and, depending upon the version you read, he is the knight that finds the grail. Metaphor alert: the grail is not a thing to be possessed. It is what Maslow called self-actualization. It is a metaphor for finding your truth and fulfilling your purpose. What is the purpose of learning if not to seek and find your truth (do not be fooled, passing a test is far from the point of learning and will ultimately leave you empty and the test full)?

I love many aspects of this story and the section I reworked today made me smile. I giggled in the coffee house where I was rehearsing. The other patrons, afraid of the man in the corner talking and cackling to himself, gave me plenty of room to work (have I mentioned that I can’t talk without flailing my hands all over the place. If you ever want me to be quiet, simply bind my hands. I’ll make noises but words will be impossible). The story describes Parcival’s first entry into court. He grew up isolated, deep in the forest (not unlike Arthur, though Parcival did not have Merlin to school him) so he knew nothing of people or manners or custom. He thought dressing like a knight meant he was a knight. He approximated some armor, weaving a breastplate from reeds, a helmet from fronds, and he wielded a stick as a sword. He “borrowed” a mule and rode into Camelot. Arthur and his knights, thinking Parcival was a clown, laughed at him.

Growing up without instruction meant that he had the ideal upbringing for a trickster. He followed his nature without inhibition. Parcival had no inner-editor so the civilized world viewed him as a fool. He acted purely so he threatened custom. He spoke what others could not; he carried no conventions so he had no limits. He had no rules of conduct. Parcival would be the boy in the crowd to say, “This emperor has no clothes!” It would not occur to him to lie. When you are not doubting or protecting your purity you have no reason to deflect or manipulate or withhold. Lies are a byproduct of rules. He was powerful yet his power was raw, unrecognizable, so the world he wanted to enter could only laugh. And their laughter was his fuel. Their laughter propelled him into the world to learn. Arthur was capable of seeing his purity. And Arthur gave him hope. Arthur sent him into the world to prove himself, to learn the rules of society, and invited him to return to court once he’d learned the code and conduct of a knight.

The story is a story of desire; it is a story of following an inner imperative. It is a quest for fulfillment. It has laughter and despair, triumph and shame, obstacles that seem insurmountable; it is a story of perseverance and letting go. It is a story of 2 teachers: one provides the rules for conduct; the other helps Parcival shed the rules of conduct. Both are necessary if you want a shot at entering the grail castle.

If it were a poem it would read like this: Revel in your nature. Betray your nature. Rediscover you nature: Grail.

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732. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 468.

Sometimes I have the ultimate theatre mentality. Once, in college, I was running a spotlight for a musical; the tube from the fan to the bulb housing fell apart in the middle of the show and between cues, to keep the light working, I was able to build a replacement tube with a paper cup and duct tape. Use what you have. It need not be permanent. It only has to work for a while. The show must go on but no one need know how poorly it is constructed. Sometimes that’s the magic.

This used to drive John crazy. He is a real builder, a master woodworker. John built some stage sets for me that will be here long after they drop the bomb; the only thing left on earth will be the sets that John built. I’d say, “John, it only has to look real, no one will know.” He’d say, ‘I’ll know.” Now, that is a true artist! Once I was hired to provide a set for a commercial featuring the Mutant Ninja Turtles. There was a desert scene: I hauled in sand and dumped it on the floor. I pulled some scrub from the canyon by my house and stuck it in the sand. The producer was thrilled. The real non-construction was for a scene in a cave. Since it was a film my cave only needed to hold together for a single day. Old flats, cardboard, the sand from the desert set mixed with some good goop and lots of runny paint. I stuck it all together with a staple gun and duct tape, stood it up and prayed the turtles didn’t hit the walls. I told John about my cave and he said, “I don’t know how you live with yourself.”

It’s been a long time since I’ve designed or built a set. But, my “use what you find” mentality still comes in handy. Today I needed to ship a painting and it was too large to get into my car and too awkward to carry. The shipping place was only five blocks away so I scoured the building for a hand truck. No luck. I hit pay dirt in the basement when I spied an old wheelchair parked next to the garbage. I tied the painting on to the wheelchair with an old rope and like Nurse Ratchet gone rogue I wheeled my patient through the city to the shipping place. I think I added local color to the neighborhood. Some nice Dutch folks took my picture. Some people along the way gasped and parted as if I was the Loathly Damsel. Their horror might have been commentary on my packing job. The woman at the shipping place called my packing “Frankenboxing” though she gleefully applauded my method of transportation. Both were high compliments. Being from the theatre, I knew that, in such a moment of appreciation from a stranger, it was appropriate to take a bow.

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731. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

I am in Holland for the next 7 days and since I didn’t get my act together and get 7 posts ahead, this will be archive week at The Direction of Intention. This was originally post 467.

Saul-the-Chi-Lantern turned his back to us. He settled, ready to start the form. We readied ourselves to follow. Just as he was about to take the first step he stopped, turned and said, “A lot of marriages would be saved if only the man knew what color of toilet paper to buy.” It was either a Zen koan or a fragment of his internal monologue and either way we fell on the floor laughing.

“No really,” he continued, as if we weren’t howling. “There’s a right kind of tissue, a right color of Kleenex box and men seem completely oblivious to this fact. It causes a lot of strife!” And then he turned back to the beginning position as if he’d said nothing. We wiped the tears of laughter from our eyes. Wondering what just happened, we followed him into the form. Our hearts were light, our concentration was easy and I suspect we learned to stop being so serious in our approach to our Tai Chi. We certainly found a flow and rode a current when we started from laughter instead of knitting our brows and thinking our way through.

One of my great lessons from Bali was that the sacred is filled with laughter. The holy is ripe with giggling and joy. In addition to reverence, prayer, sermon, hymn, (such heavy words) humor, play, fun, and frolic are forms of worship. The gods might have a better sense of humor if we did. There’d be less road rage. Men would not wear ties and take themselves so seriously. We might not need a 24-hour entertainment-cycle-disguised-as-news to keep us occupied. Of this I am certain: we’d have a better flow of chi.

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