Clown and the miracles of Life

We live in an era of self valuation which is great in expanding opportunities for us to experience our individuality, self-expression, freedom, the highs and the lows, our limits, both physical and emotional and really look to a bunch ‘whats’ and ‘whys’ that are significantly different from the ones the generations that precede us were used to. We have different questions, and we search for different answers. I wouldn’t say it’s better and I wouldn’t say it’s worse — it’s a different reality.
And, at the same time it seems that we struggle more with authenticity vs relations, maybe because there’s more freedom and mobility, less socially imposed structures, or maybe for a complete different set of reasons. I’m not saying this from a judgmental place, because what I feel is that the struggling was always there, but there was no space or time to tap into it, and it seems that these days we are being more challenged by it. To give an example, 100 years ago I could struggle a lot for being gay, or a single mother, or any other things, but there was no social safe space to share, feel, question or even express that, so it was something that you simple had to learn to live with it.
In the work I do with the Clown technique and self-development, that invites us to look at ourselves and others from a “judgment free point of view”, I’m often touched by the miracles that I witness in people during the workshops. It’s not a radical life changing experience, it’s not something BIG, but at the sometime it is! People are guided (by themselves) to make contact with their present feeling and emotions, and as they allow that to happen, their body’s gain color, life, movement and grace, it’s like becoming really alive.
Although I’ve been developing a lot my meditative state and practice, my spiritual connection, emotional awareness and expression, etc, “I’m an engineer”, and I always like to look at the “mechanics of things”. Sometimes it get’s me nowhere but others I feel that I reach some insights. From what I’ve been watching in my classes, I don’t believe the miracles come from something that they do, and that they can do independently of the circumstances. My feeling is that it arises from the relation. Of course that the tapping in the inner world and the self-allowing is fundamental to reach the necessary conditions to life to happen, but it seems that it’s just that. Like the temperature, the water, the carbon atoms where necessary conditions so life could generate on this planet, but wasn’t ‘them’ that made it happen. Was the relation!
And I guess that’s why I love and I fear so much the clown space: because I love as much as I fear being in relation, in an authentic way, just present, without the “personality mask”. And that’s as beautiful to experience as it is to see it happening in others.
The clown technique is all about being “in relation”. If you are fully present in the relation with an audience and you are honest about what’s happening, the audience will react to that in a supporting and loving way that will nurture and feed yourself and the relation. And that’s the miracle (It’s actually funny that I cannot think of any miracle without relation).
It’s also frightening, because we have built and invested a huge amount of energy in a set of beliefs that rule our lives — and that we already know and gives us comfort — beyond the known is the Unknown…! And if I face the Unknown alone that can actually be very struggling, but when I have the chance to face it in relation and with support is kind of exciting!
And that makes a lot of sense, because the fear is fed from the inside (based on our prior experiences) and takes us to a cold and freeze state, where we cannot act. With relation and support the fear gets warmer and starts to melt in excitement and joy (that’s why when we see children playing excited they show a shaking or vibration in their bodies), and that’s why a vibrant life or a vibrant person is more attractive and compelling. And that’s not something that you do, is something that you allow.
I believe that the following video show a short story of this kind of miracle.
I intent to explore more the question of the place of the self in the relation in a next reflection, that may or not happen :)

