 Introduce this notion of improvisation as spiritual practice and we got to start with this word spirituality. It's kind of a tricky beast And I think of it kind of like a chameleon really depends how what the word means what the word means Depends on your background on the background. You're looking at it, right? it depends on your own eyes shifts around a lot and Some would say we shouldn't really even try to dissect it that doing so damages it If you go to the each chain the great book of Chinese wisdom, it says the Tao that can be named is not the real Tao So there may be truth in that but I also think there's value in taking a stab at words that matter to us and I Think this might matter to us, but some of us might have resist resistance to it So I want to start by saying I don't think of spirituality as the same thing as religion The the root of the word religion religio means to tie back or to bind to tie back or to bind so you might think of religion as like a shared set of beliefs practices rituals that tie us back from the things we don't want and Tie us to the things we do want and So yeah, you can see that there's some danger in that right? I mean we get constriction with religion We get division with the religion sometimes But we also get support for life's up and downs and we're connected to something a network that matters and and allows us to cope with difficulty But I want to submit that this spirituality is something different. That's a personal experience It's a fluid experience. It's a lived experience. So that's what we'll explore a little bit of this morning And I want to start with a story. This is a picture of me and my siblings. I'm on the right It's my brother David and my sister Jennifer. This is when I was about 13 years old Just about the time that I went to visit a woman named Carol Glover Carol was a woman who came to live with us when my parents got divorced when I was five and She became a great friend and like the second mother to me And I went down to North Carolina to visit her partly because I hadn't seen her in a while But also because I was a fan of North Carolina basketball. I was when Michael Jordan was playing there but I took my first flight alone to North Carolina and When I was there, she told me a story that she hadn't told anybody else and It was one that really affected me and my own understanding of spirituality Carol was with her friend Terry and they had just seen a concert in Providence, Rhode Island actually the village people and Earlier I had a slide of the village people, but I thought that'd be a little too much. Okay They saw the village people in Providence, Rhode Island and they went We're driving to Keen, New Hampshire and so it was late at night. They're both tired and Carol turned to Terry and said, hey Are you okay to drive? I Know you're tired and Terry said, yeah, I'm fine and Carol said, okay Let me know if you need me to take over. I'm glad to do it so Carol fell asleep and she started dreaming and who knows how long it was really in Her dream she got this sense of foreboding that there was something really wrong and then in her dream she saw a hand on her shoulder and Felt the hand on her shoulder and she looked at it. It was a strong hand and she had the sense that it was a caring hand and That hand shook her so much in the dream that she woke up And when she woke up she looked ahead of her and saw that they were headed towards a boulder She turned over to Terry and saw that Terry had fallen asleep So she quickly yelled to Terry Terry wake up Terry woke up slam them the brakes and they came within inches of the boulder. I Heard that story and was stunned. I'm still get chills to tell it And it wasn't just that it was that that night when she went home You know they sort of gathered themselves and dealt with the adrenaline made the trip back home Carol took out a piece of paper and a pencil and drew the hand that she had seen and she would be the first To tell you that she's not an artist And yet this hand and I'm hoping you can see it is one that I've when I saw it I thought the detail and the vitality of this drawing came through the page as if it were animated by something else Both pieces of this story the the experience in the car and the drawing of the hand spoke to me of what is this? mysterious thing that keeps us alive What is it is it God is it light is it life is it love is it I don't know I don't have a name for it but it's something and Cool, and that's about it, right? And so this is my my own understanding of spirituality come speaks to and from this perspective And so I want to put this for it as a working definition of spirituality That it's the whole person practice of awakening Feeling and expressing a connection to larger mystery by whole person I mean the chosen parts of us and the given parts of us I Mean the parts of us that we like and the parts of us that we don't like the savory and the unsavory all of it By practice, I mean it's something intentional that we commit to Like a religious practice or like a practice for performance. We come back to it again and again for improvement Awakening I'm suggesting that maybe there's a part of us that is lying dormant. We don't know yet But we're calling it. We're saying hey come on. They put that hand on the shoulder wake up But it's about feeling it's about our mind, but also our body and our emotions. It's our whole person And it's about expressing it giving voice to whatever it is we find the joy the despair the excitement the confusion And again that we're connecting to this something larger this unnameable thing The whole person practice of awakening feeling and expressing a connection to larger mystery So again, we could choose a different definition. This is the one I'm going with today for our sake, right? So then you say all right, but how is improvisation a spiritual path? And I know I've got a bunch of you already going there and probably already have I know many of you already do But I want to put forward at least seven ways that we could consider improvisation a spiritual path The first is that we're exercising an ethic if you take any beginning improvisational theater class and I imagine in any of your applied improv Experiences we have all these principles slow down simplify Connect with your partner Be ready for change These are principles that help make us help us build better scenes and they help us build better lives as well So we get this Set of guidelines and principles that can keep us walking a path where we become good human beings We become good to each other we become at peace moving through the world The Hindus have believed that the world was created through lila or divine play and any improv scene no matter how poignant or Disturbing has an element of this like okay. What do we got? What's coming? and I would submit that this is an attitude about life that helps us live a vibrant joyous life as well when we're in improv and We're dancing around with this stuff with each other We're engaging this part of ourselves that is connected to that fundamental mystery You'll hear me talk about this one a lot if you know me and other circles Mindfulness is the practice of paying attention on purpose to the present moment with curiosity and kindness Paying attention to the present moment on purpose with curiosity and kindness. That's one definition Again improv trains us in this In order to be a good improviser one needs to develop this kind of awareness and attention and open-heartedness When we do this in our real lives colors become clearer Feelings become deeper tastes become richer We expand to more of who we are and what we can be many religious traditions talk about interdependence in Islam you'll hear about unity in Buddhism you'll hear about Interbeing if you turn to the world of science you hear about ecology or Mirror neurons there is a fundamental truth that we are interconnected with each other and with all things and Improv is like puts us in this nest of interconnectedness. It says go experience it Right. I make an offer. I am affected someone else makes an offer. They are affected anything affects everything else that's happening in that moment This image is of Indra's net an image from Hinduism of a net that covers the whole universe And at every node of the net is a bead That reflects every other bead So at any point in the net of the universe you can find everything else We are stitched together Carl Jung described the shadow as the part of ourselves that we have hidden or disowned we don't want to admit and If we always deny it it becomes dangerous it can leak out through projection or rupture and cause great damage If we integrate it it becomes a source of power and depth and humor and peace Improv gives us the chance again to face this and play with it in a way that is real but less risky We get to play the the nasty character my buddy Lisa who's a great improv teacher Lisa Roland Was working with me and she said you know, you're really good at playing the nice generous character I'm really good at that. She said how about playing the nasty guy? How about playing the villain? So this has been like a three-year project since she gave me that note I'm still working on it But I did get to play some villains a few weeks ago and it was actually quite refreshing Integrating my shadow the world is paradoxical when we look at that mystery we find paradox You can say how is there a loving God and so much suffering How can we be this tiny speck in a universe and matter have this sense of inherent worth that we do? How does that make sense? We is one of those things true or is the other We face the same thing in improv should I push the scene forward or should I let my partner lead? Am I just being present in the moment or am I paying attention to the narrative arc of the story that has to unfold? Right, and of course the answer is yes and we're doing both of those things and Maybe we're toggling back and forth so quickly that it just becomes one thing Like a murbier strip you follow the trail around this. It's all one thing happening at the same time and yet it's a paradox and Then I also want to mention that of course and this may be the most direct way that improvisation could be considered a spiritual path to me is that it puts us in direct contact with inspiration in Any moment of creativity when we get an idea Where is that thing coming from? Maybe it's a constellation of our experiences and our histories and our training But okay peel all that away then where does it come from? We move to you know these games and exercises or scene work. We move too quickly to do it logically it's coming from somewhere else and The word spontaneous the root of word spontaneous is about making a conscious choice a free will action and In this case, I would say that spontaneity is putting our choosing with free will to be in the space of creativity of not knowing and So improv does this for us So to come back and review these seven Improvisation is a spiritual practice. It allows us to exercise an ethic. It gives us a way of moving through the world That invites us to dive into this divine play that we're not just having a good time We could be but we're also connecting to something larger than us in it Gives us a chance to practice mindfulness in an active playful way We celebrate and experience our interdependence directly We have the chance to face the shadow to engage paradox and to open to inspiration So I'd like to leave you with for Four pieces of an invitation The first would be to wake up. I hope but maybe this talk this little snippet of thought Can be like a hand on your shoulder not necessarily that you're hurtling towards danger But that there is a possibility with an improvisation for a part of ourselves to be activated that may have been lying dormant It may have been sleeping and it's really fun to step into this realm if you choose to The second invitation is to collaborate. I would love to work with you. I would love to hear your thoughts Even if you think this is complete lunacy Tell me why tell me how I'm leading a couple workshops later today would love to see you I'd love to work with you later at some other time If you choose to step into this realm, I also encourage you to pay attention. There are little pieces signposts guide guide Angels that show up along the way that give you meaning Seek them out Play with them. See what they're trying to say pay careful attention and lastly With whatever you find Bring the rest of us along We're just at the beginning Of exploring this connection between improvisation and spiritual practice as a wider earth community and I've been doing it for a few years. It is rich and wide open. It keeps getting wider and wider So we've got a journey in front of us to have a lot of fun on I hope That you'll join in. Thank you