I've been up against some interesting challenges the last few months in relation to being in my body and feeling grounded in the relative world. I've been working with my therapist on what she calls "connecting sense and sound", in the simplest sense, connecting my voice, speech and writing with a grounded experience in my body, my feet, my breath. 

I'm very interested in cultivating what I often can touch into when I "write from the body", which requires a lot of extra awareness for me during my writing process. Keeping aware of my feet touching the ground, my body being completely held by my chair, my hands making delicate contact with my keyboard... all of it requires a slowing down, a willingness to feel into my direct experience in the moment and not just pull out references and ideas from my intellectual bank account.

Writing from my body also requires a lot more willingness to be vulnerable. I'm currently working on an article on Shiva and Shakti for a yoga magazine here in Canada and I've really struggled with falling comfortably into the narrative style that they use. I find it much easier in my writing to stay somewhat detached as a third person observer on my experience.

I think this is the result of two main things: one is my immersion in academia at this point in my life where the "I" in writing is encouraged not to make its presence. The other reason results from the remnants of self-restraint that I still carry after coming out of an Andrew Cohen based spiritual community two years ago. The experience was amazing but  I also recognize that living in a community where the impersonal is all that matters and any discussion of personal experiences and feelings is in opposition to the purpose of spiritual life makes a girl gunshy to divulge her personal life with complete freedom.

It seems it is taking me time to really allow myself to write from the personal immediacy of my body while keeping the integrity of the impersonal present. I am working to continually give myself permission to feel into the contours of being in a uniquely female manifestation of the divine and letting my writing be informed by that space, by my own flesh and blood.

Of course, the challenge is to do this kind of intimate writing while always keeping my heart grounded in formless emptiness, where relative distinctions of gender and bodies remain transparent to the all pervasive light of infinity.

The Grace of Suffering-- Adi Da Samraj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hK5NPJ5b2E

The Test of Human Existence-- Adi Da Samraj
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0l_PZGFQPYk


I am aware of the immense controversy that surrounds the spiritual Guru, Adi Da Samraj. Wilber is one case in point for acknowledging the shadow sides that runs within his community based in Fiji.
That said, I still greatly enjoyed these two short video clips on you tube taken from his talks in the 70's. The first clip, the Grace of Suffering, speaks to the different levels of resistance that we experience on the spiritual path, staring with the gross and moving to the subtle realms. As we are increasingly and painfully stripped of our identifications on each realm we finally become so overwhelmed with suffering and pain that we "Fall". It is in this fall, when we have nothing left to protect us, that we find God.

My favorite line from this clip is "There are no Winners in God" (-:

The second clip is of Adi Da talking about the Test of Existence which he says is only Love. I find this video especially full of radiant clarity and beauty.

Anyways, just thought I would forefront this controversial figure as I still have a deep respect for his teachings.

A woman’s body yields intimate cartography

maps of silent autobiography

 

Signatures of pleasure and pain

spiral her thighs like invisible veins

 

She attempts to lift her life from shame

 

A woman’s body bestows sexual geography

Gestures of love written in sounds of untitled cacophony    

 

Movements of fire and ice

surge like waves across her chest

as her body awaits this moment

 

to finally unveil itself for itself