The Raw ROAR
Having
had some wonderful experiences in workshops and 121 sessions this
month, I wanted to share some insights I’ve gained through witnessing
the roar in action.
By
roaring I mean the liberation of our truthful, primal, creative voice
which is often suppressed and compressed into the neat and tidy, polite
voice that says ‘please may I, perhaps, maybe, could I possibly, I was
just wondering if...’
It
is the rawness of our roar that contains the key to both its power and
its vulnerability. So the key to reclaiming our roar requires the
ability to get raw with ourselves, to be able to be present to the full
technicolour glory of our existence. So where does our roar get lost
and how can we recover it?
Conditioning
Compounded
emotions of centuries of familial, social and cultural conditioning can
come to greet us when we attempt to open our voices. The intent, the
willingness is there - but like a goldfish we may end up just blowing
empty speech bubbles instead of saying those all important words - ‘I’m
leaving’ ‘This isn’t working’ “I love you’ ‘I’m sorry’
Patriarchal
concepts have defined emotions as being a ‘woman’s thing’ - which has
resulted in the torture of women who were considered hysterical and the
massacre of men who were told ‘big boys don’t cry’ and sent off to kill
each other. Traditional forms of education teach children to compete
for knowledge of facts and figures but very little about healthy
self-expression. Newtonian scientific thought defined the body of the
earth as something to be conquered and dissected, priveleging rational
proof over intuitive, ethical or emotional responses.
Religious
dualistic thought further aligns the feminine with the body and the
masculine with the mind, the sword of truth. Detachment, ascension and
liberation from the messiness of life becomes the goal. Self
observation can of course can yield invaluable insights and changes in
awareness. However we cannot observe something effectively if we are
busy pretending that it does not exist. We must first allow the
intensity of our emotions to be present and acknowledge that we are
inextricably implicated in the rawness of life.
It
is no surprise then that our ability to communicate effectively can
feel immensely stunted and that our media is full of horror stories of
those who have felt driven to express themselves violently. The
glamorisation of gratuitous behaviour in movies reflects a distorted
longing for a depth and intensity of authentic emotional expression.
Denial
Keeping
us on the run from rawness is denial - which is the attempted
suppression of the intense emotions we experience on the life ride.
‘This isn’t me. I cannot possibly be feeling this. It’s irrational.
What would my mother/father/partner/friend think? I just need a drink/
cigarette/ bowl of icecream/ spliff/ internet surf.’ Denial is the
partner that gets us dancing to the tune of addictions - which are
substituted behaviours we have developed to survive the force of our
most intense traumas. As such they to be treated with compassion and
then offered to the fire.
Denial
fuses with our conditioning to form a decision, belief, or deal we have
made with ourselves in order to survive. A woman whose father beat her
decides, ‘It’s men, they’re just like that’ - and finds herself in an
abusive marriage. We justify behaviours based on beliefs we have
formed. A man stuffs down the anger he felt with his dominating mother,
tells himself ‘all women are bitches’ and punishes his partners by
cheating. We stay hooked up on the same old drama, because it has
become inextricably tied to our sense of identity and reality - the
woman whose partner continually lets her down says - ‘I told you so, men
can’t be trusted.’
Claiming the Freedom to Roar
Roaring propels us off the sofa of denial.
It connects us with the explosive force of our deepest felt emotions.
And that need not be externally noisy. That one tear that rolls down the
cheek, that one pained smile, that one quiet admission - ‘yes she beats
me every night’ - is the opening of the door to living beyond denial.
It’s
raw to roar, no doubt about it. Living without our belief systems can
feel very exposing - ‘Who am I if I don’t believe that all men are
losers - I might have to become someone who loves men.’ ‘Who am I if I
no longer believe that I am small and useless - I might have to take
action and fulfil my dreams.’ ‘Who am I if I don’t talk down to women
because I believe they are stupid? - I might have to give up being right
about everything.’
The
rewards of raw is that we get present and we get to speak authentically
instead of from a conditioned script. We get to choose who we want to
interact with instead of letting our programming determine our dancing
partners. We get to be real and vulnerable and be someone who gives
others permission to do the same. We get naked in the fire of our
creativity and passion for life and are able to sing our song, paint our
pictures, write our books and dance our dance. We allow ourselves to
play, to explore, to make mistakes and to roar with laughter. We become
connected to the raw source of power that throbs in every single cell
of our body and we recover our vivaciousness, vitality and verve. We
begin to welcome and make peace with the rawness of life. We ROAR!!!
Wishing you the joyous freedom to ROAR
Ready to Roar?
or at this month's special roaring events
