Being in neutral.

Tonight I was assistant fire keeper at a sweat because Mothermouse has a bad elbow. A sweat, an American Indian custom, is like a church service held in a blacked out sauna. Hot, sweaty and pitch black one attempts to fill one’s awareness of all things past and present, give away one’s hindrances and pray for oneself and others. Glowing rocks from the fire, which I was assistantly keeping, are delivered into a pit in the sweat and watered to spread the heat. It was a fine late summer evening and a very pleasant experience. As fire keeper one should assume a neutral frame of being to assist the ceremony. I do neutral well. This juxtaposition of ceremony and neutrality reminds me of my conversations with another wise old friend; an agreement between us that one should not, or at least avoid as far as possible, holding beliefs of any sort. Not just religious beliefs but beliefs of who one is, who or how other people are, what will happen, what has happened etc etc, right down to the simplest day to day assumptions we make without thinking. Finding oneself stripped of all these cognitive shortcuts requires far more awareness of what actually IS happening around one. Boring repetition becomes continuing freshness. Of course one retains a transient knowledge of probabilities, but that’s all it is, transient. What IS happening is the constant, vibrant re-writer of it. I have a sense of throwing away a thousand filing cabinets full of data that has become redundant and, in the space left empty, having a huge room to dance around in. It’s an exchange I find extremely liberating. So I’m perhaps confusing to those who are into the ceremony. I conform and honour them but somehow I am the ceremony I’m really interested in. So many thanks to Pete, Steve and Carol, the fire, trees and setting sun for a lovely evening.