I don’t even know if that’s a word, but spell-check hasn’t stopped me so I’m going to go with it.

The experience of being raw.

One would think that writing about my experience would help to keep me in touch with myself and in a healthier place.  The 2 posts so far, Commitment and Compassion were both written after dance retreats… events set up to “come into contact with ourselves”.  There is a note of disdain in my voice when I say that because I am sitting here wondering what the hell this whole thing is about.  You could say, I am not in a very healthy place.

If I am honest in writing about my experience… right now, I am raw.

That is, if I can stay present with what is beneath the layers and layers and layers of egoic crap that enable me to prevent myself from experiencing my rawness.  In my experience rawness is not ok.  It cannot be tolerated by my environment.  No one can possibly handle this.  So the layers are about accommodating and being something that the world can take.

What’s it like to be raw?

It’s a bit like Jekyll and Hyde… I’m one way with my friends/family… and another way inside.  And the gap between the two right now is intolerable.  It gets filled in with the day’s addiction.

Shiva is one of my favorite Hindu deities.  Shiva is a part of the Hindu Trinity… Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva… the destroyer.  Shiva is the energy of birth and death… destruction and change.  Shiva is movement.  Most people have seen the Hindu image of Shiva… called Nataraj.  This is Shiva’s dance… his dancing feet crushing Apasmara  Purusha, the demon of ignorance.  The dance is both one of destruction and one of creation.

Shiva is present in my rawness.  As I say that, I wonder if the truth is that Shiva is my rawness.  No wonder this is not ok… destructive energy is… well… destructive.  Is it worthwhile to even ask the question, “What am I trying to destroy?”

My personal work thus far has brought me the awareness that there is usually a source for whatever suffering I’m experiencing.  So, what is the source?  Or, more scary, what if I never find the source?  What if there is no resolution?  What if what I said in the Compassion piece is actually true?  What if God really is a both/and… and suffering really is real?

I want to believe the opposite.  I want to believe that suffering is an illusion and that the only truth is joy.  But that’s not my experience, not right now.

Can I ride my experience like it is just waves?  Can I allow whatever comes at me?  Can I really be the dancing warrior?