Dance of Shiva: internal and external space

Today I’m sharing (with permission, of course) parts of a sweet letter from Lisa in San Francisco, and some of our resulting email exchange.

You’ll see why!

Here’s Lisa:

I’ve been practicing yoga for about two and a half years now, and it’s been a huge blessing in my life. I’d say about 90% of that being able to love myself and be happy has come directly out of my yoga practice.

But I know there is more that I want to do (as in “what do you want to do when you grow up”), and not only do I not know how to get there, I don’t even know where it is I want to be going.

And that part has stayed the same for many years now.

I had two conversations a couple of weeks ago that got me to start doing Shiva Nata. The first was with a woman who I went on a yoga retreat with recently.

She told me that she became a school teacher because she saw an astrologer who told her that her purpose in this life is to open her heart. I don’t remember the full chain of events, but that advice led her to leave a job in financial services and become a grade school teacher, and she couldn’t be happier.

I related this conversation to a friend who has made allusions to believing in astrology.

Astrology kind of drives me nuts. I mean, really? She changed her life based on what some stranger told her based ostensibly on the position of the planets and stars when she was born? Sorry, that’s madness.

But at the same time, it worked for her. I expressed to this friend my jealousy, how I wished sometimes that I could set aside my rational mind and believe in astrology, or religion, or whatever and someone could just tell me where I’m supposed to be going.

But I value my critical thinking skills too much, and I just can’t see that happening. His response was, “it doesn’t really matter where you get your direction, sometimes you just need someone to give you direction.”

Enter Shiva Nata.

Reflecting on those conversations I realized that I was comfortable with the insights yoga was giving me because they were essentially coming from me.

They didn’t require belief in the metaphysical. And that led me to recall what I had read about Shiva Nata on your blog and think that this is a path to insight I can walk.

So here I am. No hot buttered epiphanies yet, but my arms ache like crazy when I’m doing it and I’m lost a lot of the time so I think I’m doing it right.

And most importantly I am comfortable having faith that the insights will come. It would be hard to overstate what a big deal that is for me. I’m getting a little choked up just writing this.

So again, thank you. I am very excited about this!

Love,
Lisa

P.S. Did I come across as too judgmental on the subject of astrology? I just want to clarify that I don’t have a problem with people believing in astrology in general — if it works that’s great. And obviously it worked brilliantly for the woman I was talking about. I just can’t go there for myself.

I hope I didn’t offend you.

And my response:

Hey Lisa!

No worries. You’ll have to try way way harder than that to offend me!

I also think astrology is pretty goofy despite having had some good results with it. Actually there are all sorts of things that I don’t believe in but somehow work for me.

Like, I go to my friend Carolyn for PSYCH-K sessions which use muscle testing stuff to shift limiting beliefs.

The results are absolutely phenomenal but every single time I am convinced that it’s crap and that I should actually be able to make my muscles do what I want, but then I can’t. Because it works. So so weird.

Anyway, I’m a big fan of cynicism and skepticism, and at the same time of wackiness, so that’s more than fine.

As for the rest of it, that’s HUGE. Huge.

And thanks for the great reminder. Sometimes I forget to emphasize that yes, it’s all inside of you and you don’t have to believe in anything external if you don’t want to.

Your Dance of Shiva practice is just making connections between you and you, or really just making them more obvious.

This is such an important point for so many people.

You might also want to do Shiva Nata in conjunction with shavasana and journaling.

Like, five minutes of Shiva Nata, five minutes shavasana, ten minutes just writing thoughts down.

I also like to do it with some sort of intention to my subconscious. As in, “hey, I’d love to get a little clarity around this!” Or “Is there something else I need to know about that?”

And most important of all, if you want those epiphanies, just make sure that you keep messing up! Do it wrong! Do it more wrong! Really screw it up!

Aaaah, that’s more like it. :)
Take care, my dear. Love to you.
Havi

And Lisa:

Hi Havi,

Phew! Okay, that’s a relief. I have friends who have done the muscle testing and report similar experiences.

Very strange and interesting things, these minds and bodies of ours. I am the first to admit that there is a whole lot that science can’t account for–at least not yet.

So yes, I am also open to wackiness but not so much wackiness based on externals. Then again, I’ve never seen a serious practitioner of astrology, so what do I know :-)

Thanks for the tips on intention setting, shavasana and journaling. I didn’t do those things for the first few days, but I have for the last two. At the very least the ritual is useful, and writing more has been something I’ve been, ahem, procrastinating over for some time.

So having a ritual of sitting and writing for 10 minutes every morning will be great I think.

Love,
Lisa

And me again:

Oh I love where you’re going with this. If you just stick to internal wisdom, you’ll have more than enough to keep you busy for a lifetime!

Because internal space is infinite.

And since Dance of Shiva is all about the relationship between internal and external space, you’ll get so much good stuff from that practice too. Love it. 

And that’s it.

Just to sum up … some points for you:

• Internal space is infinite. You can keep going deeper inside yourself forever.
• External (aka outer) space is also infinite. You can keep going deeper into external connection if you wish to.
• Internal and external space are mirror reflections. This is one of the principles of Dance of Shiva.
• This means that waving your arms and legs around in external space is making ripples and waves in internal space.
• Everything you need to know is inside of you.
• Whether you use this practice for internal or external connection, you’ll get what you need.

Thanks for reading!