Part 1 of this three-part post introduced a working definition for spirituality—the whole-person practice of awakening, feeling, and expressing a connection to larger Mystery and deeper meaning—and for improvisation—the in-the-moment art of active creating in relationship to the many offers coming from one’s inner life and immediately surrounding circumstances.
This piece will explore some first connections between the two while Part 3 will investigate some deeper, perhaps more esoteric synergies.
The improv path moves right alongside deeper streams.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia.org.
Many improvisors know in their bones that the improv path offers more than entertainment and laughter. Goofiness shows up a bunch, yes, but there’s also a deeper vitality, a sense of meaning, purpose, and belonging that comes from creating in this way. To those who perform with an inquisitive mind and open heart, the kinship between improvisation and spiritual expression will come as no surprise. The paths offer mutual support.
Exercising an Ethic
Even a foundation level improv course lays out groundwork principles that sound as much like an ethic for effective living as much as a guide for good performance: Slow down. Simplify. Pay attention. Connect with your stagemates. Let yourself be changed. Such suggestions affect the quality of on-stage scenes because they make for better stories. In much the same way, they also make for better lives. We’d rather watch—and take part in—an unfolding drama where the players look out for each other, working together to discover their shared experience. We enjoy our days more when we stop to notice the gifts in them. By giving the chance to practice skills we need elsewhere and to process challenges in a low-risk setting, improv expands the range of our capabilities. It wakes us up.
Divine Play
Many Hindus say the universe itself came into being through Lila, the divine’s creative play. Any improv troupe or scene ideally carries a bit of that lila as well—even when taking on a poignant or sensitive topic, there’s a buoyant sense of exploring the unknown. We go down paths we’ve never seen. We create obstacles for the fun of it. We get our heroes into trouble so they get the thrill of getting out of it. Good improvisation brings more joy, more vitality, more connection with others, and more intimacy. A healthy spiritual life engenders the same.
“Healing” by Autumn Skye Morrison. One way of picturing the universe glowing with a playful creativity.
Used by permission of the artist. See www.autumnskyemorrison.com for other similarly beautiful images.
Mindfulness
Mindfulness weaves another connection between the two. Purposeful, non-judgmental attention to the present moment serves spiritual direction in a number of ways: our brains and beings wake up to more of reality. We see colors more richly, we taste experiences more deeply. We also build a capacity for complexity.
Like a color enhancing filter, mindfulness can bring sharper colors and greater clarity to our lives.
Photo courtesy of WIkimedia.org.
The same holds true in improvisation. By sustaining our focus, we stay fully alert to the story unfolding in real time. We improve our memory for the details that bring a scene alive. What was that character’s name from the first minute of our short-form scene? Where precisely did I place that space object wine bottle when I set it down? By practicing open awareness on stage, we remain nimble enough to notice our partner’s many offers, including subtle movements in the face or hands. Troupe members that perform with an intention of loving kindness for their stagemates find greater resilience and longevity. The generosity stitches the group together. Good improv demands mindfulness; even beginning improv can breed it.
Interdependence
Most wisdom traditions teach about the interconnectedness of the universe. That may look like unity in Islam or interbeing in Buddhism, like mirror cells in neuroscience or ecosystem in biological sciences. Hinduism offers the image of Indra’s net, a kind of web that covers the entire universe with a multifaceted jewel at each vertex, all jewels reflecting all the infinite others. The common message: we’re all stitched in to a larger tapestry. Pulling any single thread has implications for them all.
Every vertex in Indra’s net reflects every other vertex.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
Improvisation gives us direct experience with such truths. Whether playing a game that explicitly shares control—like a word-at-a-time exercise, gibberish translation, or one-person’s-hands-move-for-another-person’s-speaking—or simply enacting a regular scene, we live and breathe into that interdependent reality. The offers I make have an impact on how a scene emerges. Every choice my partner makes has an impact on me.
Shadow
Psychologist Carl Jung suggested that integrating the Shadow—the hidden, disowned parts of ourselves—might prove the greatest challenge of an individual’s spiritual life. If left in the darkness of repression or denial, the Shadow can leak out in dangerous ways, either through projection (where we turn hostile to those who demonstrate the parts of ourselves we’d rather deny) or through more immediately destructive rupture (like when a public figure loses his position getting caught in the same act he’s decried for years). As poet Robert Bly has written, “Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us.” If integrated and brought to light, however, the Shadow can bring greater power, depth, confidence, and even peace. It restores wholeness.[1]
“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”
–Jesus in the Gospel of Thomas
Improvisation offers one avenue for safely exploring the Shadow. In the world of improv, for example, status relationships become a playful dance rather than a frozen stance. For that reason, we start to stretch the range of our expression on stage, often moving into uncomfortable or unfamiliar emotional territory. Those who tend to shrink get the opportunity to play imposing villains. Those who tend to dominate learn to inhabit quiet wallflowers. In doing so, players gain compassion for those different from themselves—and for parts of themselves they may have left behind.[2]
Carl Jung’s painting of his own Shadow.
Almost inevitably, improv invites us to places we’d rather not explore in real life. That’s part of its charm. A clear creative channel asks that we “yes, and” our fellow performers—and do the same with our own impulses. Characters who get themselves into trouble or who “go into the cave” make for more interesting stories. As those stories evolve, we can find ways to love the unlovable and to make peace with all of who we are. Sometimes, that process happens organically as individual players and teams develop their talents together. Other times, it happens more intentionally, through specific exercises designed for the purpose of personal expansion.
Paradox
For many, walking the spiritual path means coming to terms with the paradoxical nature of ultimate Mystery. How can life serve up such stunning beauty and such repulsive ugliness? What loving god would allow such suffering? How can we be such a small part of the universe and yet sense an infinite, inherent worth in each life?[3] The deeper one looks, the more mystery one finds.
Improvisation offers the chance to marinate in the richness of such seeming contradictions. Do we pursue excellence or allow ourselves to “be average”? Make bold offers or defer to our partner’s? Stay present to the evolving moment or remain mindful of the overall arc of a show or a narrative thread? Invest with intention or choose to change? Contribute or control? The correct answer to each of these questions: Yes, and. The most artful improv embraces the challenge of such simultaneous opposites, diving into and emerging from the ambiguity. Each moment breathes between the two poles of paradox: this truth then that truth, this truth then that. Eventually, the two seem to blend into one three-dimensional reality. The storyline becomes a Moebius strip.
Keep walking the path of a Möebius strip and you track both sides of the paradox.
…..
Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
In sum, conscious, contemplative improvisation parallels other spiritual paths. It invites the presence of Lila, or divine play, letting us enjoy the delight of experimental creation. It provides a platform for mindfulness, sharpening the skills of sustained focus, open awareness and loving kindness. It gives us the chance to welcome and befriend long-hidden parts of ourselves. And it places us squarely in the presence of paradox. Improv makes a bold offer for greater growth. It’s up to us to “Yes, And” it back.
But wait, dear Reader: there’s even more to the connection between improvisation and spirituality. Look back here for the upcoming Part 3 of this series.
[1] Note that the personal Shadow can differ greatly by culture and gender. Some societies—like ours in the United States—glorify individualism at the expense of the collective. In that setting, a public longing for community can get demonized as—gasp!—socialism. In many other cultures, the communal represents the ideal and individual expression gets subsumed to shared needs. Men may keep their tenderness or vulnerability hidden, women their anger or aggression.
The Shadow can also include what most would think of as desirable qualities. Perhaps a young man represses his musical side because an early teacher tells him he shouldn’t sing in choir. Or maybe a young woman squelches her connection to her body because she always gets picked last for teams in gym class. What put such qualities into “long bag behind we drag behind us” is that we consider them somehow shameful or undesirable.
[2] My friend and colleague Lisa Rowland recently encouraged me to move past the limits of my own tendencies as a performer. “We know you can play the lovely, kind, attentive character,” she said. “You do that well. How about playing a character with a nasty streak? What about someone who’s downright unpleasant?” As she was speaking, I realized her nudge represented an offer to bring some of my shadow into open light. I also knew it would be a safe space to do so.
[3] In her poem “The Buddha’s Last Instruction,” Mary Oliver offers one of my all-time favorite lines: Clearly I’m not needed. Yet I feel myself turning into something of inexplicable value. Yes, yes, yes. I understand completely.
Brilliant, Ted, brilliant…
Thank you, D. I’m honored that you read.
Well said. Clear writing about profound doings. Keep it up Ted.