Unarchiving: Amnesia & Innocence
"Use me"
At first I thought I could use this prompt to dream and make wishes both practically in my life but also fantastically stretching my imagination. Then my thoughts grew cautious in remembering the warning: "be careful what you wish for." Not that I've read so many genie-like stories in my life, but often a wish emerging from a place of ego backfires.
However, I remembered where this note was born. In a workshop I had identified an issue in my life of becoming fixated on a desire to connect with and possess an attractive man for sex or more. This desire or thought would be loud and distracting and could have the power to disconnect me from a sense of being rooted and grounded and content within my body. The fixation would close me off to a wider and deeper presence of the space and situation in which I was in...open possibilities became limited and measured according to a success or failure standard.
To work on this topic I formulated an exercise where I enlisted the help of a partner who would act as my personal genie. I would make a wish to them and they would always respond: "no." The response would make me laugh at first, and I would be able to sink deeper with the resonance of receiving a denial of a desire or fixation. I would feel immediate frustration, surprise and disapointment, but I would also be able to take a deep breath and accept a new reality. I found this repeated process deeply grounding and calming. It would tune down the noise of the shouting desire-urge-thought.
I practiced this again with a friend for a long time. Each "no" was a shaping of a new reality that, though denying a certain unfolding of a wished-for pathway, would ultimately bring me to deeper presence within myself and openness to certain "hard facts" of my immediate surroundings. I needed less and was content with this less-is-more. It was like meditation.
Funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media within the framework of the initiative NEUSTART KULTUR, aid programm DIS-TANZEN by the Dachverband Tanz Deutschland
