Self-understanding, Healing Yourself - THEN You Can Help Others

     Celebrated performance artist Marina Abramovic, currently performing in Toronto, on the positive role of suffering & the road to real happiness:

     “Do you think that every ancient civilization’s sacred rituals ‘abused’ the body in order to become a shaman, or in order to go from childhood to puberty – when they send the kids into the forest & they have to survive in order to learn what loneliness means, what it means being in the wild, what it means getting food for yourself, or hundreds of other rituals where you almost have to face clinically dying in order to create a different state of consciousness? Why are we doing this? Why call this ‘abuse’? Suffering is good for us, IF we see the context, IF we see the concept, IF we see the idea behind it. We suffer because we are just temporary on this planet – the moment you’re born, you’re going to die. Just general human suffering that’s expressed in so many ways – the suffering of loneliness, the suffering of not being loved, not understanding the world, not understanding what the purpose of your life is, there are so many different ways. Just that kind of suffering - every human being has this.
     Pain is another obstacle – we’re so afraid of pain. But what I’m doing in my life, I’m staging painful experiences in front of an audience and using the energy of the audience I’m going through this experience in front of them and actually seeing how I can push my mental-physical borders. If I can do it myself, they can do it in their own lives. That’s the way I’m doing it. I don’t see this as abuse.

       Jian Ghomeshi: Do you think that the pursuit of happiness - that Americans have held to such a high standard – do you think that’s folly?  

     No, it’s so wonderful. Right now, you’re facing me, and I’m the happy person in this moment. It took me 40 years to come to that point that I actually feel happy. It’s been such a long journey, but it’s really about fully understanding yourself. You see the concept of happiness is not about having more cars, and having more money in the bank, and then go and take drugs, and drink like hell, and then suicide because you can’t deal with yourself. Happiness comes from fully understanding your own being – and this is such a long journey. And all these things, at least in my work I’ve been doing was going towards this transformation where actually you come to that kind of knowledge. And you come to that kind of knowledge, that type of happiness, you actually come to that point where you can help others to understand that."

       Marina Abramovic interview by Jian Ghomeshi on CBC Radio - starts precisely @ 0:25:35/1:09:03 see: "Eroding gay rights in Russia, Artist Marina Abramovic, Inventor Mick Ebeling 06/12/2013" http://www.cbc.ca/q/episodes/

     See: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/2012/03/approach-avoidance-dichotomy.html

     A true artist shows society what it can't see on its own.

Udayan Sankar Pal   www.facebook.com/UdayanSankarPal