what is spirituality when you take away the love and light? what if my experience is not always loving and what if there are times when i feel absolutely filled with hate? shame? grief? disgust? terror? madness? lust? as a society, we've been conditioned to look good, to have the "acceptable" attitudes and emotions, never to say "no", never to say, "i don't like it", never to admit that we feel like shit, never to go against the grain in anyway - including, and almost passive aggressively, not along our spiritual path. sure, we take workshops on getting in touch with our anger, our grief, our shadow, our darkness, etc., we get sessions where we beat on pillows with inflated baseball bats and scream like primates 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 - making it all better. as if there was something wrong with feeling feelings that are other than love and light. you know, for me, there's something really interesting about those so called negative emotions; they're pure. your hate is unadulterated by the media. you don't have hallmark cards defining your hate, there are no movies idealizing it, no fashion designers dressing you in clothes to attract it. it's virginal. perhaps your hate is actually closer to your true essence than your love? 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 we've learned the game of performing love and light and, in the process, screwed ourselves royally? no wonder there are so many of us depressed, lost and unfulfilled - in the process of 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 you gave up on trying to feel "better"? sounds dangerous, right? what if you respected yourself enough to feel all your emotions - totally? what if the biggest part of you lives within those "unacceptable" feelings that have been whitewashed by the cosmic awareness movement and what if that part is your power? your beauty? your sexual openness? maybe all this focus on love and light has really been another way for you to bang your 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 you . . . inside . . . into the darkness . . . into the mystery. in someways 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 yourself. nothing like it. because, when you finally meet yourself, you 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, you're no longer a spiritually lopsided, springloaded, new age angelic basketcase . . . you're really your own person - not my version of your own person - not hallmark's version of your own person - you're original. you find that life has texture, it's interesting. and so are you. life becomes an adventure, something definitely worth getting out of bed for in the morning. and not because you are now comfortable. not because everything's rosy. it's because everything is - well, it's all on the table. and 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. you are free. you are raw, naked . . . and your heart? this is the big bonus. your heart is open. no longer a made for tv version, but the real thing. your attitude about feeling like shit changes . . . you feel the edges of one of those "negative" emotions and you get excited. you get excited, and you stay with the feeling. you face it without trying to mask it, act on it or collapse into it. you meet it. you're excited because you know some part of your aliveness is surfacing. some part of the mystery is calling. to be seen . . . in the light and loved.