Unraveling: moving into the Divine (video)

In these times, much has unraveled for many of us in our lives, work, families and plans. I imagine that there is probably no one who has not experienced the movement of unraveling in recent years. And unraveling is often a sense of loss and discomfort.

Unraveling is a central practice in ancient spirituality. My philosophy teacher used to call it unlearning or dismantling. I like the word ‘unraveling’ because it connects with the movement sensation. All the words allude to the essence of spirituality which is not about acquiring, not even spiritual “information”, but about unraveling the stories we carry with us so we can be present and attending to the movement of reality in the moment.

Unraveling is powerfully signaled in Shiva’s dance. Shiva’s retreat from attachment to stories and known ways of looking at reality includes the movement of unraveling. This is the movement that brings us from an interpretation of reality, to living reality. It is the difference between description and the experience.

Unraveling is also the source of Shiva’s reputation as the intoxicated dancer. Shiva’s inebriation signals His abandon, the freedom that emerges when we stop resisting the energy of unraveling. This is no simple surrender because Shiva’s dance is not about dualities in any way. Moving with the energy of unraveling is to be taken by its momentum and to be fierce and present to this unknown and unstable cosmos.

We wish for reality to be stable, controlled and predictable. Sometimes it is, but mostly it is not. It is when our story of reality unravels that we have the opportunity to come to a space of vitality and wonder. This is not to deny a sense of loss or sadness, there is no rejection of any feeling in Shiva’s dance. It is to hold all of those feelings as part of the sensation of regeneration that every unraveling holds in its core.

In this video I share a simple practice of unraveling and the story of the unraveling of Draupadi’s saree from the epic Mahabharatha. I hope this is will support the energies of unraveling in your life if you experience these, and that it will help you smell the bud of infinite possibility that could be waiting for right at the heart of the unraveling.