Almost 7 years ago as the last task at the end of a personal heros journey, I decided to join a rag tag group of amazing circus performance to travel to remote villages in Thailand. And what an adventure it was! Heres two photos and two of the last entries in my journal: > The Laughing For Life Circus is in Town! Hell-o, Im Big Daddy. Im the promoter of this show. If you asked me where Im from, Id tell ya Im from Vegas, Nevada, where show bizness rules the planet. Well, theres Hollywood too, but it takes them too damn long to make anything happen. Vegas, baby, thats where LIVE SHOWS happen! So where was I... ah yes, Im the promoter of this show. See, this show if for the kids, but not just for small kidz, for big kidz too -- as long as you have a taste for whatzip like to play, to dance and to strut yer stuff! Our name is the Laughing for Life Circus. We go from tribe to tribe, village to village, and we showem kidz how its done, circus style, if ya catch my drift. Weve got hoops, weve got balls -- large and small -- to juggle, weve got sticks and staffs to twirl, and poi -- balls and rope -- to spin. Oh, and weve got some rhythms and moves to get you going too! But performance is not all we do. Our mission is really to sit with the kids and teach them those arts we are so fond of, to give them something new and different, to offer them a flavor of circus that they have often never been given. Circus arts have captivated kids of all ages throughout centuries of history. But circus often doesnt make it all the way up the mountains and all the way into camps full of Burmese Refugees. So we go where few circuses go: to those places where big shows dont exist, those places where kids walk over two hills and 3-5 miles each day to go to school, those places where where life is all about family and community. This is where we show up, share, and connect with the kids and their villages. Let me present to you our cast of intrepid circus superheroes: First, we have Ayden, our irish staff master with a sweet side. His performances are hypnotic and mesmerizing to say the least. Then we have Andre, tall handsome swedish adept at contact balls -- he can handle them balls better than I can take care of my own -- and staff. His quiet demeanor is his secret to captivating your attention and holding it hostage. Thomas, our resident swedish poi geek, will not only blow you away with his skill, hell leave you wanting for more -- except you wont have a clue how to imagine anything better! Next, we have our very own hot asian gay boy from San Francisco: Khan! A pro with the hoop and poi, he can put a spin on it with a delicious mixture of elegance and playfulness. God I love the 70s!! Then theres Hitch and Kim, our talented dancers, who will blow you away with their balancing and acro yoga tricks and short powerful dance routines! Of course, we couldnt have this show without Matt, overall kick-ass poi and flaming whip resident. If his performance doesnt give you the chills, just wait until you fall under the spell of his wit and humor! And lets not forget Bow the thai breakdance wonderboy. Yes, sometime we just call him Wow, cause thats all we can say when we see him bounce around the improvised dance floor magically created by his wonderfully picked hip-hop songs! Dhiaow, our resident Thai goddess who just joined the troop, keeps us breathless with her graceful thai dances, full of light and delicate beauty. You wouldnt know that while she is a dancer by night, by day she is a marine biologist deeply committed to the restoration of coral around the world! Zamir is one of the great surprises of this show: the man can not only handle poi with great skill, he can also clown around with gusto and drum us to nirvana! If you ever want a multi-talented diverse performer, you want this man. And, he looks great on camera without a shirt too! Ah, and then theres Buzz, tall American living in Spain with Kim. This pro juggler and poi dancer will hold you entranced with a wonderful display of skill, lightness and precision. Want to learn the arts? Fear not: just show up, call yourself a juggler, and let Buzz do the rest! Towards the last, but not leasts, we have our own Japanese Fire Samurai called Nao. If he had a middle name, it would be Showman. A pro with the staff, poi, and spinning fire wheel, Nao has the more fabulous 5 minutes fireshow for you in his back pocket. I wont say more, youll just have to see the show! And then we have our fearless leader and organizer Andrea. This isnt an easy job, folks, so many sure to let her know how much you appreciate the show. The kidz certainly do, in spades. God knows getting a group of performers together and doing a good show is like herding cats, and crazy ones at that. And not only does she get everyone in line, she also spins poi with love and grace. What a woman, I tell ya! So there you have it, the crew of Laughing for Life Circus. Good nite, folks. See you in the next town! Thanks, Big Daddy, aka Philippe Lewis > Life is a Stage, and We Are All Actors in a Play Hello folks, this is Fuzzy a.k.a. Big Daddy, live from Mae Sot, Thailand. I never thought performing with a small circus, going around teaching kids circus arts and showing them an altogether new way of having a good time, would be both so rewarding and so challenging. I never thought getting to know new performance styles, getting to know new friends, getting upset, getting freaked out, getting excited, getting tired, that all of this would push me so deeply. When I decided to go on this Journey by myself after Paget left, I had in mind that it would give me the profound experience of being with myself, and I was completely right. Tomorrow is the last day of two weeks of deep transformation in the face of an extreme experience of myself (or, I should say, my own personality). The experience of self/personality is such a common experience that we fail to notice it most of the time. It is most obvious when there is no living being around us -- as long as we can forget ideas of destiny/spirit or any invisible path guiding us in our life. The idea is simple: our senses receive information, and our mind puts it all together to create our idea of the world. Obviously, we only perceive so much of the actual world that our mind needs to fill in a incredible amount of blank space. This includes not only our physical (or real) idea of how the world is out there, but also the unreal world (thoughts, ideas, intentions, meaning). Our mind does this so that were best equipped to face the world in all possible ways. Since our world includes not only physical objects but also relationships, our mind takes on that job too. Back to the experience of self: having the mind take all sensations and makes sense of it means that all that we know of the world is FULLY CREATED from those sensations. And this creation is completely based on the minds ability to analyze and build that world. But we were not born with that ability: it grew as we experienced life from the moment we first set eyes, ears and all our senses on the world. We essentially worked from the very little bit of instinct we have and learned everthing from there. All of this to say: everything we know of the world is based on something we learned/understood/figured out before. In other words, when we experience something, the meaning, the significance, the impact it has on us is purely based on our own analysis. Sure, people can have impact on us, but truly, whether people are present around us or not, and whatever they do, we will use our own life to anlyze it. The upshot of this way of looking at things through our minds analysis, the upshot us creating everything about our reality, is that that reality can be changed AT WILL. But wait, why dont everyone do this? You know, simply changing perspective when something kicks us in the butt, that sort of thing. Well, the problem is that somewhere along the way, we have come to believe that who we are is our mind, our body, our beliefs, our ideas. This is identification. The tricky bit with identification is that to hold true, we have to stick with everything that relates to what weve identified with. If weve identified with a philosophy, then who we are can only remain true as long as we continue to believe in the philosophy. That is congruence. So the mind uses identification (with many things, ideas, beliefs, etc) and congruence to create our way (our personality) such that we can be in a relationship with the world. So what do we need to do in order to create our reality easily? We need to work on a way that requires less identification and less congruence. Reminds you of any free floating hippy in your life? But no, having less identification and congruence does not necessarily mean doing whatever whenever. It can, instead, mean having great flexibility to adapt to the situation at hand, with whatever identity and congruence required by that situation. And we do it all the time, especially in emergency situations when lives are at stake. Suddenly people will transform from quiet friendly people to self-confident leaders, healers, caregivers. But we dont necessarily need emergency situations to kick us in a more flexible gear. We can develop this muscle in many ways. For me, traveling was key. It allowed me to see how I could face many different situations and come out of it more alive, more mature, wiser, smarter -- and more flexible. When we have all these experiences of change and realize our own resourcefulness, we trust ourselves more and allow for these changes to push us into new roles and new skills, which in turn give us more opportunities to have these experiences. In a neverending series of large or small challenges, we learn that there are deeper qualities in us that go beyond what we identify with. That, for many, is their spiritual path. Trying to attain that unmentionable, unfathomable truth of our existence. But truly, it is just a path of growth for us, for our personality, for our mind. Because once the mind knows, there is no real reason to grow anymore, to follow any path, to do any ritual, to be anything in particular. Once the mind knows, once the mind is liberated, it can simply be. Its suchness -- creativity -- can finally come out fully without any restraint.
Posted on: Wed, 03 Dec 2014 06:32:55 +0000
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