On Writing – Each Word a World Coming into Being

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writingonbamboo
photo by Bennett Dungan at Unsplash.com

 

I want to share something with you about creativity and its source.

It really has to do with creativity, about the place from which our creativity flows, and about how we long to communicate with each other what is inside of us and how difficult of a task that really is. And on some level, it is about the (truly) unconditional love and understanding that holds us as we attempt this communication. Even when we feel we haven’t been understood, on some level something is always understanding. Even when we feel as if we haven’t been loved, something is always loving us.

When I first offered Writing Raw, I wrote something out to read on the very first call, hoping to answer this question for myself first:

What is Writing Raw?

And then on one of our calls this week, I was asked this question. And, so, I read what I wrote a few years back…

Writing Raw is writing from the edge of experience. Writing from the Soul. Writing that is formed in its own way and form that does not (have to) fit any currently acceptable writing format (e.g. essay, poetry, paragraph sentence, word. Writing that comes out of something else, first, before the words form.

Writing Raw has no particular outcome or result is intended. Instead, it is simple to deepen your capacity to listen, to feel, to hear, to open to and receive what is emerging from within your own body and soul so that it can be shared into this world.

Writing directly from these sources: sensation, internal images, visions, feelings, and the sense using guided visualization and  sense-guided exercises, and (not included on our calls) music and movement.

Writing Raw is learning to trust in what you sense is here, trusting that it will tell you what it is, trusting in the unseen and what you know and sense.

 

As I read the words aloud, my awareness moved down into this place from where words arise, a place deep within. And, out of this question and my sincere response, something opened up in me – a place that I’ve felt before, but never so clearly and powerfully. And my writing in this same session reflected this place…

 

My voice reverberates throughout my body,
Liquid words rising up out of
This dark pool of Being,
The ground of all that is.

As I hear my words, I feel
A velvet sense of love here, a radically kind presence,
Simple in its being, always
Holding me in radical kindness.

Bathed in Understanding, no matter
What I write or say, I am understood.
This radical kindness holds everything close, in love.
Nothing I do can push this presence away.
There is no away. There is no away.

And so,
I rest,
Here in this kindness,
A speechless wind on my lips.

And then in the next writing,

Held in this Absolute Understanding,
I am free. I am gradual ecstasy.
Nothing holds me but love,
A radical kindness that never leaves.

Nowhere to be found and everywhere, too,
I am
Held in nothingness.
Loved in everything.

Kindness finds its way into my cells,
Always fluid, in flux, changing
With the breath. Up and down.
Rise and fall, heart echoing against these nowhere-to-be-found walls.

This dance between worlds appears in words
And the spaces in between, each word
A wholeness in itself, each word
A world coming into being, that dies away as soon as it comes.

There is no solidity, and yet
We communicate.
Me to you and you to me,
Passing words back and forth

In the hope of landing in a place of
Understanding for just a moment,
In the hope of standing,
Together on some small patch of ground.

I share this with you because it has been so hard to articulate what Writing Raw is and offers. I see it is the nature of what we are doing – learning to write from a place that is before words, learning to trust in what is unseen yet felt and intuited.

orangeandgreenwritingrawI know the other women on the call felt this place of radical kindness and understanding. I could feel that we found this understanding between all of us, for just a moment, together standing on this small patch of ground, for a moment, just a moment, until it changed with the next breath. But what doesn’t leave, doesn’t change, is the radical kindness and deeper Understanding that is love at its core, as well as the sense of connection and community that flowers when we share from this place with one another.

This is where we write from. This is Writing Raw.

We have finished our first week, yet you can still join. All of our calls are recorded, so you can catch up by listening and writing to these recordings, and by entering into our Facebook group and introducing yourself.

Find out more and register here.

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Intimacy of Soul: A Wordless Conversation

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rosebud

 

 

…nothing is of such value or of such importance as woman’s rescue of herself. This is something very difficult for woman to accept because in the past the whole impulsion of her nature has been to respond to the needs of others. The fact that she herself is in greatest need of her own help, support and understanding is the very first step in the direction of polishing the moon.” ~ Anne Baring

 

I see the world through my own lens, just as we all do.

Seeing the world this way means we often project things onto the world, often in not so great ways. But, it also means we have a unique genius to how we see the world and how we communicate our particular view.

Oftentimes, I’ve been ridiculed, judged, and shamed for how I see beauty, value tenderness, and am in love with the sensuous. I imagine you’ve experienced something similar for expressing your unique view and genius, especially if it is a highly sensitive one in a culture that tends to shun what it deems to be weak.

What I’ve come to see in my own life is that pure joy is available when we truly and simply accept then express what we feel in our hearts, see through our eyes, and know in our soul. It is an acceptance of Self at a deep level. It is me accepting how Source expresses through me, and it is me honoring how Source appears as me. This is the acceptance I had been looking for from others, but this is an acceptance only I can give to myself, and it is the acceptance only you can give to yourself.

This rose is truly an expression of what I feel in my heart so often but could never find words to express. There are no words for how the petals of my heart open when I come into relationship with beauty such as this.

I’ve been in a bit of a tumultous time, trying to come to know what it is I truly want to spend the rest of my life doing. I love my work and I love to work hard at what I love. I want to live my life doing what I love, what my soul is here to do. And, it has been hard getting in touch with the place inside me where I know what I want, not what I learned I should want.

I learned well what I was taught. I learned well how to ‘respond to the needs of others’. But, I was not taught how to support myself or ensure my needs were met or even to listen so well to myself that I came to understand me. Yes, of course, I take care of my daily needs. But this call to know Self is much deeper. And, not only know Self, but honor Self and express Self through this vessel of me.

As I grow older, I see that I don’t want to die having only lived what I learned I should be. I do not want to die without having lived what I am, without having rescued myself into being.

For me, this is not living what the culture deems is worthy of living. I do not care to live in order to satisfy some external sense of a good life. I want to live the longing I feel in my soul. I want to live the longing that life has to live through me as me. I want to come to know myself as Self.

And so, this requires a softening that comes when everything is accepted, even the resistance to that softening and acceptance. It feels like a ‘dissolving into’.

I want to know the immediate intimacy of soul, both mine and yours. I want to experience myself this way and I want to know you this way, too.

And I want to know if you are feeling this same longing and desire? I want to know if you are coming to see that what can only be expressed through you is the most glorious thing you could ever hope to express in this lifetime?

This is the wordless conversation I want to have with myself, with you, and with life.

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Weather Report for Today: Hips, Hands, & Heart

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“Movement never lies.
It is a barometer telling the state of the soul’s weather to all who can read it.”
Martha Graham

The truth is close at hand. Just move and you will know it.

::

Today at dance, a different teacher played the music and guided us through our two-hour practice, a teacher I’d not yet danced with. As with each 5Rhythms teacher, he played a unique blend of music and guided us in his own unique way. And as has always been the case, my dance today was another unique expression of where I am, right now, a as a soul, dancing with another 149 other souls, to another unique soul’s musical selections.

I think back over my eleven years dancing the 5Rhythms as a moving meditation practice and how my soul has moved over those years. If my thousands of dances had been recorded and put into one long stream, it would be a long weather report showing the changes in the state of my soul over the years – and there have been infinite state changes along the way.

When I first started dancing all those years ago, I felt called to it – even though it freaked me out to dance, freeform, without steps, in a room full of strangers. I kept showing up, week after week. This taught me so clearly how we know where our soul wants to move even if we fight it or fear it.

Yes, I felt embarrassed often. Yes, I even felt like I might die of embarrassment – and I didn’t. Something pushed me to go. Something without words. It was instinct. It was knowing. It was intense.

Eleven years later I can’t imagine not dancing. I can’t imagine not knowing the people I’ve met through dance. I can’t imagine not having come to know myself so much more clearly. I can’t imagine not being more deeply awake in the cells of this body. I can’t imagine NOT knowing that this powerful joy is possible to know on a regular basis.

Joy comes even when my soul is in the middle of stormy weather, because the joy comes from movement itself, not from being ‘happy’.

Movement is like that. It shows us what’s up inside. It shows us how we are unfolding.

Creative expression is movement through the body. Whether we’re moving the pen across paper, brush across canvas, feet across the floor, the body loves to move and the soul loves to express. We are creative beings by nature.

But here’s the thing.

Anyone or anything that tells us our expression, movement, disposition – basically the expressions of who we are – should be all sunshine and blue skies all the time doesn’t know a damn thing about weather.

Being human is not always sunny and blue skies – not if we’re truthful.

When your hand is moving across the paper or your feet across the floor, don’t stop your soul from moving the weather at hand – or foot. Let your soul pour rain onto the paper, or dance a dark star-lit sky across the floor, or move strong confident wind across your vocal cords.

We are nature. Why should our movement and creative expression be any different than the weather?

It only is when we try to control it by hanging onto it, forcing it, or telling a big story about it that we stop the weather from rolling out across the plains of our lives.

Let your expression move and you will come to know clearly, and beautifully, exactly the state of your own soul and a profoundly grateful joy. Our hips, hands, and hearts know what’s going on inside and they’ll be the first to report the weather if you’re willing to move.

 

 

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