What if my experience is not always loving?

What if there are times when I feel absolutely filled with hate?

Shame?

Grief?

Disgust?

Terror?

Madness?

Lust?

As a part of society, I’ve been conditioned to look good, to have acceptable attitudes and emotions and to never to say no. I’ve learned to never say,” I don’t like it,” to never admit I feel like sh*t, to never to go against the grain in any way—including to not upset the apple cart on my spiritual path.

Sure, I take workshops on getting in touch with my anger, my grief, my shadow, my darkness. I get sessions where I beat on pillows with inflated baseball bats and scream like a primate in padded rooms (comfortably air-conditioned, of course), and it feels good!

Don’t get me wrong, some of these workshops and sessions are truly digging into the real. Far too many, however, focus on releasing these negative emotions, getting rid of the uncomfortable feelings and making it all better—as if there is something wrong with feeling feelings other than love and light.

For me, there’s something really interesting about those so-called negative emotions.

They’re pure

My hate is unadulterated by the media. You don’t have hallmark cards defining my hate. There are no movies idealizing it, no fashion designers dressing me in clothes to attract it.

My hate is virginal.

It’s certainly less conditioned, less practiced and less contrived. What if hate is a whole lot closer to love than the societal brand of love we’ve all been brought up with? What if love has become so polluted, so conditioned and conditional that it’s no longer trustworthy?

What if I’ve learned the game of performing love and light and, in the process, screwed myself royally? No wonder there are so many depressed, lost and unfulfilled people—in trying to live up to an ideal of love and light we’ve abandoned our sensitivity and turned our backs on our passion.

What if I gave up on trying to feel better?

Sounds dangerous, right? What if I respected myself enough to feel all my emotions—totally? What if the biggest part of me lives within those unacceptable feelings that have been whitewashed by the cosmic awareness movement and what if that part is my power? My beauty?

My sexual openness?

Maybe all this focus on love and light has really been another way for me to bang my head against the yoga mat trying to live up to someone else’s idea of enlightenment?

What about diving deep? Where nobody can go but me . . . inside . . . into the darkness . . . into the mystery. In some ways it’s a like climbing Everest—it’s a huge risk. Not everybody who sets out on the journey makes it and the way is full of peril, pain, loneliness and challenge. So, why do it?

Because there’s nothing like meeting myself. Nothing like it.

Because, when I finally meet myself, I discover a place inside that has always been intensely alive, will always be intensely alive. A place that cannot be tainted or tarnished by family, society, religion, abuse, repression, neglect.

Suddenly, I’m no longer a spiritually lopsided, spring-loaded, new-age angelic basket case. Instead, I’m really my own person—not anyone else’s version of my own person, not Hallmark’s version of my own person.

I’m original.

I find that life has texture. It’s interesting. And so am I. Life becomes an adventure, something definitely worth getting out of bed for in the morning. And not because I am now comfortable. Not because everything’s rosy. It’s because everything is on the table.

That 15 megatons of internal pressure caused by trying (said with clenched jaw and grinding teeth) to live in love and light has been released. I am free. I am raw.

I am naked.

And my heart? This is the big bonus. My heart is open. No longer a made-for-TV version, but the real thing.

My attitude about feeling like sh*t changes. I feel the edges of one of those negative emotions and I get excited. I get excited, and stay with the feeling. I face it without trying to mask it, act on it or collapse into it. I meet it. I’m excited because I know some part of my aliveness is surfacing. Some part of the mystery is calling.

To be seen:

in the light

and

loved.

Dawn Cartwright is a Tantric visionary, sacred writer, world traveler, and innovator in bio-energetic Tantra fusion. She discovered the path of Tantra by accident shortly after a period of life-changing mystical experiences in lovemaking. During her 20 years of teaching, she has integrated the Vigyan Bhairav roots of Tantra, Alexander Lowen’s teachings, the wisdom of Osho, and a microcosm-macrocosm approach to the body. Founder of the Chandra Bindu Tantra Institute in Santa Monica, California. www.chandrabindutantrainstitute.com

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Editors: Lori Ann Lothian/Kate Bartolotta