Archive for Sex+ Spirituality
An Open Letter to Rush Limbaugh
March 3rd is International Sex Worker Rights Day. My post in honor of it is combined with a few other things I want to address and is in the form of an open letter to Rush Limbaugh.
Dear Mr. Limbaugh:
From what I have interpreted in the last week, it seems you do not like the idea of birth control being funded by health insurance companies. It further appears that you found it appropriate to speculate about the personal life of an individual who disagrees with you about that and spoke about it before members of Congress.
Do you have health insurance, Rush? Would it be safe to say that you feel you should be able to eat all the french fries you want and that your insurance should still pay for treatment for you were you to develop heart disease (I certainly do not wish this on you or anyone), and that if you did happen to experience a heart attack, insurance should pay for your medical care during and after that as well? If so, we are on the same page.
If not, then for whatever reason, we do appear to disagree. Not that I would describe the above situation as taxpayers being asked to satisfy the eating habits of radio personalities, but if we are going to have a system of health insurance, it seems appropriate to me that it should cover the health care needs of the people it insures—even if those health care needs seem influenced by the lifestyle choices the holders of it, citizens of a free and democratic republic, make.
You mentioned that you felt that Sandra Fluke, who spoke before a congressional forum about contraceptive coverage in relation to health insurance, was a “slut” and a “prostitute” because she she feels birth control pills should be covered by health insurance. “Slut,” of course, is a subjective term—since it seems to me it has no actual definition, it would be hard to claim it to be slanderous. Furthermore, some of us don’t see it as a denigrating label. You could call me a slut, for example, until you’re blue in the face, and it wouldn’t disquiet me in the least because I simply don’t perceive the word as an insult.
Similarly, I don’t see labeling someone a prostitute as an insult. In the case of that word, it does refer to an actual job, so the label could be incorrect. Claiming that I am a prostitute at this time, for example, would be incorrect, but it would hold about as much power to insult me as claiming I am an accountant. Both are erroneous, but I certainly don’t take offense to either.
Because we have ignorant, puritanical, and inappropriate laws in this country about it, however, prostitution is illegal. So stating that someone works as a prostitute is claiming that person does something illegal. Thus that, if not true, is slanderous. I wish Ms. Fluke all the best in introducing legal action against you as such should she choose to.
Probably you didn’t know that today, March 3rd, is International Sex Worker Rights Day. One of the things supporting that means to me is advocating for the decriminalization of prostitution so that one day what you said about Ms. Fluke would not be slanderous because 1) it wouldn’t be accusing someone of doing something illegal, and 2) the ignorance and judgment of collective society would have subsided so that what you said would not even be perceived as an insult.
Of course, the energy with which you said it would probably still make it an unsavory thing to say. It wasn’t the words but the judgmental and disrespectful energy with which it was said, the relatively unconscious place from which it came, that made it so unfortunate.
To be frank, it would seem to me that one who underwent what became a public challenge with substance addiction as you did would have developed more empathy both for the basic struggles of your fellow humans and also for those whose personal business is intruded upon by a culture that seems to find it okay to do so to those considered famous or public figures. Why that didn’t appear to happen, I don’t know, but it seems doubly sorrowful to me because I suspect it means you are suffering all the more in order to close your heart off to the natural development of empathy.
I don’t doubt that you struggle a lot. Anyone who treats others with the degree of vitriol and contempt I have observed in you almost certainly feels those things toward oneself, whether it is realized consciously or not. I wish you all the best with the struggles and challenges you experience. In truth, it is not actually hard for me to do so—I recognize that we are ultimately all one, and even when I feel enormous frustration with what I perceive to be the ignorance or unconsciousness someone displays, I am still aware that there is something much bigger than that.
The truth is, Rush, I suspect that someday you will perceive and feel true regret for the degree to which you’ve treated your fellow human beings with disrespect. It may be on your deathbed, perhaps before. Or, perhaps it will not happen at all. I just suspect it will. Remembering that reminds me of the compassion I feel for you, as true compassion (which I feel we all have the intrinsic capacity for, whether we recognize it or not) is compassion for everyone—it’s indivisible. I don’t want to intrude on your process, so I beg your pardon for saying that; it is not for me to speculate, really. It’s just something that has occurred to me as I have observed this situation.
I wish you all the best, and indeed I do plan to continue to have as much sex as I want, with however many partners as I want, as often as I want. That happens to not be the reason doctors have recommended birth control pills as part of my health care, but it is a choice I make just like many citizens who choose to eat french fries and still receive health care for heart and other diseases. As long as I work for or pay for health insurance, I expect it to cover my health care needs to the same degree it does the rest of the citizenry, regardless of what my employer finds appropriate.
Sincerely,
Emily McCay
aka Emerald
-LIVE “Transmit Your Love”
On Behalf of the Real
I went to a workshop a few weeks ago. It was residential, lasted five days, and I spent much of it reeling or in a state of stunned silence or contemplation. That is not hyperbolic.
The workshop, as many I have attended, was inner Work-focused. The things I saw and learned about myself were life-changing…so much so, paradoxically, that it feels far away somehow to remember them now. I feel and felt the shift in me, on a pre-verbal, non-conceptual level, but residing in everyday consciousness makes it almost impossible to “remember” what it is I learned.
Not that that’s always the point. Remembering is done by a part of the mind that wasn’t where I accessed the seeing I did that weekend. But there is a degree, I think, to which I haven’t fully integrated what I learned. I don’t know if I yet know how.
The reason I’m writing about it here is that much of it had to do with sex. More pointedly, I realized—or remembered—dramatically something that had occurred to me before. There is a way in which I have wondered if it is hypocritical, inappropriate, misplaced, or somehow all of those things in combination or some other adjective that hasn’t occurred to me for me to experience myself as an advocate for authentic, aware sexuality.
Because I am so far from understanding and living my own.
I haven’t always known this. Within the last year I have seen things about my own sexual experience and perspective that stunned me beyond words. Things I thought were, were not. Things I had had no inkling of a clue about were suddenly clear in my consciousness.
I think on some level the past repression I have experienced around sexuality made me think when I overcame it that the game was over. That I was free of that now, and I was thus in control of my own sexuality. To some degree, that was true. There was definitely more of my own conscious choosing around sex for me at that time, and the shift was indeed enormous. I do appreciate it beyond description and do not underestimate it.
Where I was wrong was in thinking that was the be-all end-all. The more I’ve seen about myself, the more I’ve worked on myself, the more it seems I’ve understood that there is no such thing.
So, I have found myself wondering if my own deep revelations of the areas and degree of illusion and unconsciousness in my own experience of sexuality mean I have been and am unfit to advocate on behalf of sexuality, since I am so far from living an authentic sexual life—and having done so when I thought I was—myself.
But when that question has arisen, it has almost always been followed closely by the recognition that to my recollection, I have never claimed such. I have advocated with utmost sincerity for openness, awareness, authenticity, appreciation around sexuality—our own individual sexuality and on behalf of sexuality as the fundamental entity it is. I still do. I have not, in doing so (or at least I have not intended) claimed that I exhibit the utmost health and awareness of my own sexuality. Even if I may have thought I was doing so—which I most assuredly was not—the point, to me, in the advocacy I have done is not because I’ve felt I know it all in myself and am trying to get everyone else to fall in line.
It is, indeed, that the seeking to know is what is important.
The seeing. The asking. The receiving. The staying with. All of those things in regard to ourselves—as the essentialness and relevance of self-awareness, as I have said before, and as I passionately feel, may virtually not be overestimated.
It is not, it seems to me, where we are, but rather how open we are to seeing it and allowing shift to occur. Things are not in me what I thought they were. But my highest aspiration is to see that, to wake up, to allow consciousness to see itself through me. I have not had a clue what was going on in me, but I want to learn. I want to know. It is that openness to learning about ourselves, to self-awareness, that strikes me as of utmost importance.
So there has been tremendous unconsciousness in me around sexuality. What I have seen does not change any fundamental view I have shared about the importance of sexuality, its sacredness, any of the perspectives about our experience and appreciation of it really at all. Those are all larger than my own perspective. In fact, what I have seen reminds me of that—of that which is larger than I; and that in all of the advocacy I have done around this subject, that is always what it has been about—that which is bigger than I, and the sincere desire in me for us all to awaken to it; and that I aspire to that most of all.
That has not changed. In a way, nothing has, even as in me, the perception has expanded profoundly. And a shift has occurred with it, even if I don’t know how to articulate or verbally express it at all. I do not know everything. Or anywhere close to it—even (perhaps especially) about myself.
But that’s not why I advocate. I don’t advocate because I know—because I have it all figured out. I advocate because I don’t. And I see a potential in that that is beyond words. And it’s in us all, and the truth is, that is what I’m really advocating for: the seeing. The awareness of what is, what really is, beyond the unconscious patterns in us of which we often aren’t aware and which we think sometimes are what’s real. I had quite a taste of the reminder of that a few weeks ago. It is, actually, what I want for us all. That we see things we didn’t know about ourselves, even if it’s uncomfortable, even if it’s stunning, and we stay with that and hold ourselves in love and awaken more as a result of it.
That’s authenticity. It looks unique for everyone. It’s not a certain thing, or a certain way of doing things, or a certain look. I have not advocated for any of that. I have advocated for authenticity.
As I continue to do.
Love,
Emerald
-LIVE “Where Do We Go From Here?”
Hold This Space
Once again, it is December 17—the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers.
My hope was and is to blog about this more here, but I have a graduation party to attend tonight for a friend of mine who has just finished law school, and I don’t have much time now before I have to leave to travel there. I did not want to let this day go by, however, without acknowledging the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers here, so even though this post is not as extensive or complete as I wanted it to be (I may add more/finish it later), I offer reverent recognizance of this day as first proclaimed by Annie Sprinkle in 2003. I have had my red candle burning as I’ve been getting ready tonight, and I take a moment now to breath consciously in honor of the recognizance of this day, in reverence for all who have been involved in the intersection of sex work and violence, and in a wish for awakening for the same (including perpetrators) and for us all.
I also want to share this quote I encountered last night in a SWOP-Chicago press release:
“Sex workers are not targeted because sex work is inherently dangerous. Sex workers are targeted because perpetrators know prostitutes are afraid of law enforcement and won’t seek the aid of law enforcement until it’s too late. They are targeted because of the stigma surrounding sex work. This stigma is constantly regenerated in the way politicians, end-demand advocates, and media representatives talk about prostitution.”
Blessings and love to all.
Love,
Emerald
-Collin Raye “Not That Different”
Unblocking
Of late, I have been experiencing anxiety to a higher degree than in much of the last decade. I trust this is due to something I have mentioned before, namely that anxiety may be an indicator of things being shaken up and reaching the surface of the unconscious. Given the last couple breathwork sessions I have had, I do feel this is likely. Much has been moving, it has seemed, and shifts have occurred, and the ego/superego in me as such may feel alarm and resistance and have shifted into “Oh shit!” mode.
Even as I’ve felt mostly aware of this, it does not mean I have not still experienced the effects of anxiety, most notably (to be discussed here anyway) in practical ways. The world continues functioning even if I feel genuine anxiety for what seem to me noble reasons of personal growth. I have especially felt challenged being in contact with people, emailing them back when they have emailed me, and the more I have not done that (despite how much I may desperately want to), the more I have felt concern and anxiety about it, which has tended to result in a cycle of avoidance. I have felt it prominently the past few weeks.
I’ve not been writing as much as I’d like. But I realize and admit that hasn’t seemed only recent. I have noticed especially lately that there are so many writers I adore and admire who seem so busy, day jobs, kids, (pregnancy!), numerous commitments besides writing who manage to write anyway (sometimes with an output that seems astonishingly prolific to me!), dedicating their time and attention to it around the numerous other things they do.
I have almost none of that. Yes, there are things that I do, but I don’t have kids, I don’t have a 9 to 5 job that demands I attend to it during certain set hours—what I have is ample time and opportunity to write. Especially when I see so many of my colleagues who don’t have that luxury but write anyway, I have been known to feel a scathing resentment directed toward myself for not taking advantage of the precious gift I have of a largely unmediated time and opportunity to write.
During a recent breathwork appointment, I saw very clearly something around this. I became aware that it is not that I need to discipline myself more, effort further, try harder to get my ass in gear and write. (Really, it’s seemed to me the superego in me has had the market close to cornered on those kinds of demands.) It is that I need to relax—what is in me is there, waiting and wanting to come out, and there is something in me blocking that flow (perhaps ironically related to said superego). I don’t need to work harder to write what I want to say. What is called for is to let go of the block and allow the writing forth.
I wasn’t particularly shocked by this, though I hadn’t received the understanding with such clarity before. However, despite this awareness, after leaving that breathwork session I have still felt frustration with myself for not, then, unblocking the block! It seems funny how something (superego) ranting at me to relax just doesn’t seem to elicit such….
Last night I was feeling this familiar frustration, and I sat with it. Rather than engaging in the loop in my head of hearing the internal accusation and tensing against it and feeling mad at myself, which intensifies both as they cycle around and around with each other, I allowed myself to simply feel the anxiety resulting from the self-accusation. I didn’t tense against it or start engaging it in my head but just let it be and sat with how it felt.
Almost immediately the frustration relaxed. And instead of tenseness and irritation and accusation, I felt something else.
Hurt.
Beyond the tension, after it relaxed, I felt the pain of not writing. While intellectually I guess I am/was not surprised by this, I’m not sure I had ever felt the raw pain beyond the self-accusatory talk of this before. That seems amazing to me, but it’s true. I felt, physically in the heart space, the pain of not writing/expressing. The direct and unmediated hurt of what wants to come out not doing so, of not taking (or getting, depending on how one looks at it) the chance to say what is in me ready/wanting to be said.
It is possible that I felt more like a “writer” that moment than I have at many other times.
Then I thought about people who experience repression, blockage, and/or anxiety around sexuality. I faced these things in myself very pointedly years ago—which is certainly not to say I have that area all figured out. Self-awareness is literally unending. There is always more to know, and we are always new. I don’t feel for a second that I have discerned and attended to all there is to know about sexuality in me and issues in me around it. What’s important to me is that I recognize that though and keep examining, exploring, facing what is there. I know, somehow, there is much to learn.
But the reason this occurred to me, I suspect, is because as I struggle with particular anxiety around blockage in me and writing and wanting to allow out what wants to come out, I’ve remembered people dealing with sexual repression and wondered how such things are/have affected them. How would it feel if they sat with it; if they didn’t engage with the historical tension cycle and faced what was there with kindness and love?
How deeply repression can hurt, and how much more to us there is than the unconscious patterns with which we often automatically engage without realizing that—that there is more. That that’s not all we are. That that’s not all we can be. That it could take just sitting, just seeing it, just allowing whatever we have tended to tense against (perhaps without even knowing it) to get to a deeper level, something new, something that may indeed be uncomfortable—but that may put us more in touch with ourselves…the real Self, that is not made up of unconscious patterns.
It may hurt. But it may also be that unconsciousness is far more painful in the long run.
This blog post, of course, is a release, a coming out of something in me that wants to be said.
Words feel (ironically) inadequate to express the exquisite gratitude within me.
Love,
Emerald
“I thought maybe I was this, I found out that I am That…I can’t promise I won’t fall, and I can’t say I’m never scared…let go, give in, give up, surrender…”
-Ben Lee “Surrender”
Announcing The Other Dance!
In 2006 my mother introduced me to a small literary arts-and-nature-focused journal called Heron Dance. I experienced her as saying she suspected it would resonate with me, and she was correct. I have been a subscriber and follower of Heron Dance, which has traversed numerous transitions of format, focus, and personnel at the helm, ever since.
by Rod MacIver
The (both original and current) founder and painter of Heron Dance is Rod MacIver, whom I have mentioned or quoted a few times here at The Green Light District. A year and a half ago I even posted an announcement that he was beginning a new venture, an erotic newsletter to correspond with the nude and erotic paintings he had been doing. Shortly after that announcement, a number of transitions, including with staff, occurred at Heron Dance (a very small company and press), and my understanding was The Other Dance was put on indefinite hold in the face of more pressing business concerns that unexpectedly inhibited the practical embarkment on a new project at the time.
At this time Heron Dance has recently undergone a few transitions again, most notably in ceasing the print publication of its journal and instating an online membership fee (of $2 a month) for daily receipt of written content by Rod (entitled “Reflections of a Wild Artist”—this may still be received once a week for free by signing up here), discounts on the purchase of paintings, and access to certain areas of the website only accessible by members.
One of which will house The Other Dance, the erotic online newsletter Heron Dance is now ready to create and develop as an integral part of its professional offerings. The Other Dance will publish a new edition each Tuesday, featuring one of Rod’s nude or erotic paintings alongisde a piece of erotic fiction.
I am introducing and speaking about this so much because, I am thrilled and honored (and a little stunned!) to say, I have been hired to be the editor of The Other Dance.
Since The Other Dance area is only accessible to members, I will take the liberty to quote here from Rod’s paragraph introducing the venture from its page on the Heron Dance site:
”A common denominator in all of the diverse perspectives Heron Dance has explored over the sixteen years since it was founded is a probing of the boundaries of the human experience. The edges — the edges between wilderness and civilization, the edges in terms of the human search for meaning and in terms of what it means to live a highly-creative life. Delving into human sensuality and sexuality is a natural evolution of that exploration.”
As those familiar with me or my work will know, it has long been an aim of mine to open dialogue around sexuality, ease the collective discomfort our society seems to feel around it, relax the repression of the innate and exquisite phenomenon of the human sexual impulse, and ultimately support the cherishing and respect for this facet of life. Ingredients I see as integral to these aims include self-awareness, contemplation, openness, and love. Since I first heard of it, I have experienced Heron Dance as embodying a respect for and focus on the importance of these qualities as well, and my aim continues as the editor of The Other Dance to be to support the manifestation of these aspects in the context of sexuality.
by Rod MacIver
Before I move into the business side of things, I want to mention that at this time, the publisher is only seeking to publish work by female (or female-identified) authors—and I personally and truly apologize to the numerous beautiful male authors I know and whose work I adore that I won’t (for the time being) get to seek to work with them in this endeavor.
With that said, The Other Dance technically launched May 3, when Rod published a piece he had received last year to officially solidify the creation of The Other Dance. After he got in touch with me a couple weeks ago regarding this endeavor, he wanted to publish an edited version of “Rain Check,” my story from Rachel Kramer Bussel‘s anthology Tasting Her (as I understand it, Rod’s introduction to my work was clicking on the video of my reading said story at In The Flesh in 2008 when he visited my website), and it went live last Tuesday, May 10.
Two days ago, on Tuesday, May 17, the first piece officially published with me as the editor went live: “Strands of Imagination,” by Robin “Erobintica” Sampson! It has been an honor and delight to work with Robin as I take my first steps into this venture, and I offer her my thanks and congratulations. Robin wrote “Strands of Imagination” for one of Alison Tyler‘s flash fiction contests some time ago, and when I presented it to Rod, I experienced him as very in favor of publishing it.
For any female erotica authors reading this, I would likely love to work with you in such a capacity too! :) The Other Dance submissions guidelines may found on the Heron Dance website here, and I plan to submit them to the Erotica Readers and Writers Association call for submissions page as well.
There is a page on the Heron Dance site where reader feedback is posted—and it is not confined to the complimentary. I have had the impression over the years that Rod has received feedback encompassing varying perspectives and levels of appreciation for his offerings throughout the 17-year duration of Heron Dance. As I recall his stating at the time, never did this seem so active as when he first introduced the subject of sexuality to the work he offered to the public and his followers. When I was perusing the feedback page a few days ago, this comment caught my eye:
“Please cancel sending me Heron Dance, after a number of years! I am a published author and enjoyed your readings and paintings, etc., until you got all hepped up about sex. You had a nice, decent, above board periodical, now you have trash just like the next guy.”
While I honor this commenter’s experience and perspective, I feel sadness that the inclusion of discussion about or the mere mention of sexuality would relegate a literary/artistic endeavor to seeming like “trash.” I was a subscriber to Heron Dance when Rod’s transition to sharing and speaking about sexuality occurred, and whether or not one desired to see or be exposed to the subject, I never felt like anything I read seemed like “trash” at all. Granted, I have tended to feel quite receptive of open dialogue about sexuality, but I also truly found what Rod expressed on the subject quite in line with the way I had experienced his sharing in general about art and nature—probing, thoughtful, curious, raw, and sincere.
At the time, I certainly never imagined I would be offered the opportunity to become the first editor of the project into which that orientation would develop: a weekly electronic newsletter created to feature Rod’s erotic/nude paintings alongside written content of an erotic nature.
It is my honor to accept it.
Love,
Emerald
-LIVE “Dance With You”
Then As Now
“But paradise, we found, is always frail; against man’s fear will always fail…”-From the narrated poem in the opening of Dangerous Beauty
The movie is Dangerous Beauty. The screenplay is adapted from the book The Honest Courtesan, a biography by Margaret Rosenthal of Veronica Franco, sixteenth-century Venetian writer/poet and courtesan. Ms. Franco lived, and thus the events in the movie and the time period in which they are contextualized occurred, 450 years ago—a time so far in the distant past it may seem archaic or hard to conceptualize in light of how different human society is now.
Except it’s not. Different, that is. As I finished watching Dangerous Beauty for the first time that day last year, I was struck by how much, on some level, we have not changed.
Now indeed, I will say first that there are things that have on some level shifted or rearranged such that our gender roles, for example, seem less strict, and of course I appreciate that. At this point and in this location on the earth, I have additional options as a woman to survive financially beyond marrying, becoming a nun, or working as a courtesan or prostitute. There are practical ways in which women in many parts of the world have far more opportunities for financial independence now than they did in sixteenth-century Venice. This of course calls for acknowledgement, and I duly extend it. My personal appreciation for such is profound, and to not acknowledge that would be disingenuous and inappropriate.
That withstanding, however, I would argue that throughout our collective civilization, deep-seated and unconscious perceptions and distortions still exist that relegate us in very fundamental ways to the same as we were then. We’re dressed up a little bit differently—but we’re the same. So much so that it’s staggering.
Marriage is still a contract (if in doubt, observe phenomena such as alimony and the state’s having anything to do with whom is “allowed” to marry), and though what we tend to associate with romantic love seems more of a reason to marry now than then, people still feel political, financial, or other reasons to get married. Marriage itself is still expected—monogamy is still the default, the standard for people’s lives in romantic relationship. Affairs still exist, and we still pretend not to acknowledge their prevalence or potential complexity as any invitation to examine the possibility that monogamy and marriage are perhaps not the ideal configurations for all individuals.
“The Church” still inserts itself into public affairs—sometimes via official governments—claiming an esoteric authority and the position to judge the general populace according to the standards it chooses to set. We are still compelled by war. Poverty, disease, populist unrest remain. There is still rampant evidence of nationalism, classism, sexism, and political manipulation. We are still encouraged to follow the rules, whatever they may be, and not question or flout them lest we interrupt the fragile illusion of whatever arbitrary perspective of “reality” our ego-based selves have created and think they feel comfortable with.
In Dangerous Beauty, when the plague begins to run rampant through Venice, the townspeople/collective society turn on what is considered the decadence and indulgence of the city, of which courtesans are perceived to be squarely in the middle. A following of religiously oriented purveyors develops and overtly blames “those who tempt us” with “fornication and carnal practices” for the “God”-inflicted downfall of the republic.
In response to a protest that the Inquisition has appeared in Venice, the doge (presiding figure of the republic at the time) responds, “Fifty-six thousand people are dead. The living want answers. They may be the wrong answers, but they want them just the same.”
To me this line virtually epitomizes that which has not changed in four and a half centuries. Throughout society there are examples of selective intervention in human rights abuses, astounding hypocrisy in application of laws, and scapegoating of cultures, people, entities in order to get “answers” that a part of us finds tolerable internally and/or in response to the cognitive dissonance in us.
What seems most concerning to me about this uncanny similarity to a time centuries ago is not just the clarity with which it seems that we are such a parallel reflection of it but that we do not seem to realize that. We truly think we are different. That things were so primitive then, that they were so inhibited, their roles so strictly defined. We think we are so advanced because we have skyscrapers and spaceships and smartphones. But we still use that technological capacity to create ways to destroy each other and ourselves—which tells me we are not.
It seems obvious to me that despite our apparent advances and some level of progress in social redresses, under the surface the same prejudices, constraints, ignorance, and fear that formed what was seen in sixteenth-century Venice is with us now and still forming the same things. The seemingly obvious things like racism, classism, xenophobia, sexism are outcrops, manifestations, of what has remained the same—which is our ignorance of ourselves. We have not awakened enough to be consistently aware of our true nature. We are not conscious of the unconditional love that is the deepest level of ourselves and the innate oneness of the universe.
Underlying this lack of awareness is the resistance and refusal to examine ourselves, to see that it is what is inside ourselves that may be tormenting us rather than projecting it onto a perceived external. Repression is one of the key ingredients in this phenomenon, and repression of a fundamental instinct—such as, say, the sexual one—is one of this phenomenon’s very bedrocks.
As in the movie, many of the above-described circumstances and the societal responses decrying and attacking them have to do with sex. All over the world, a conservative populace still behaves as though perceived “immorality” around sexuality is or will be the downfall of civilization. “The Church” (represented by fundamentalist perspectives of virtually all major religions) still bewails “fornication and carnal practices” and proclaims our collective suffering “punishment” for a culture steeped in “sin.” These perspectives seem to see open sexuality rather than denouncement, vilification, and repression as dangerous, sinful, and undesirable.
Why would this be? As depicted so beautifully in Dangerous Beauty, sexuality is one of the preeminent paths to love (not just romantic, but love in the universal sense), self-awareness, Divinity, connection, gratitude, openness, and beauty. Then as now, this aspect is so fundamental to us that it instills the kind of fear that has through the ages attracted measures of denouncement, repression, fear, violence, and desperation in the face of truly experiencing and interacting with it because it is so impossibly close to us, so unavoidably reflective of ourselves—we cannot not see ourselves if we are truly and openly acknowledging and examining the sexual impulse within us. It forces us to face ourselves, and to truly do that is something we have found, probably throughout our human existence, excruciatingly difficult to do. Sexuality, our instinctive drive for what it represents, for pleasure and beauty and openness and love, is so close that we must either surrender to it or do everything in our power to control it. Yes, there are measures in between, but the sexual impulse does not give up—it doesn’t have that capacity. No matter how we try to control it, sexuality just is. It’s how we be with it that is the opportunity.
Sexual repression appeared rampant at the time of Dangerous Beauty‘s depiction (and highly encouraged by social structures at that time). It appears rampant to me now (and highly encouraged, perhaps in superficially different ways, by social structures currently). Am I suggesting that a large part of the fear, hatred, and relentless harm we do each other around the world at this time is based, at least in part, on sexual repression?
I am.
At a key point in the film, Veronica Franco’s character states,
“I confess I find more ecstasy in passion than in prayer. Such passion is prayer. . . . I confess I hunger still to be filled and enflamed, to melt into the dream of us, beyond this troubled place—to where we are not even ourselves.”
Those lines gave me chills the first time I watched the movie, and they did again yesterday when I watched it most recently. I would certainly not say that everyone should agree with them and feel the same way—we are all unique and experience things as such. I do wish, though, truly and deeply, that we would see the offering in them and open to discover whatever truth resonates uniquely and authentically within each of us.
It is in that, it seems to me, that true progress lies.
Love,
Emerald
-Adam Lambert “Aftermath”
Art of Heartness
I recently read a quote by Rod MacIver, painter and founder of nature and arts/creativity journal Heron Dance, on Heron Dance’s Facebook page:
“And it has given me something to think about, to write about: How we construct boundaries around our worlds to make sense of them, but those boundaries limit our experience of life. The role of art is (poetry, novels, music films), in part, to question the limits we place on ourselves; the role of art is to offer a glimpse of a different reality. It stands there beckoning to us, –there is greater potential in you and in life than you can see, than you are trying to see.”
Indeed. I have mentioned here before why it has seemed to me that the inarticulable, intangible, perhaps preverbal moving quality of art has felt so important to me. I suspect that sometimes the historically rigid, self-controlling, hypervigilant part of me does want a break, perhaps allows it in this seemingly “safe” area of being affected by art. Of course, perhaps unwitting to or forgotten by it, such hasn’t always seemed so “safe”—sometimes it has resulted in an outpouring of affect that the aforementioned part of me has not seemed to feel comfortable with; sometimes it has even felt overwhelming. Sometimes it has led to insights, shifts, openings that are healing and nourishing for the soul and not so job-security-increasing for those structures of ego in me that don’t know how to see beyond themselves.
What an amazing, beautiful gift of art.
I wrote that blog post opening a few weeks ago. I was going to write about re-reading novels, how I have experienced some differently upon the second or further readings at different times in my life. Sometime, I may still do that. It happens that now, though, I just finished reading a book for the first time, and it is what I want to write about instead. It, as well, fits impeccably with the quote above.
Which, along with what I wrote following it, rings very poignant right now.
I finished a novel (not in the erotica genre) last night that I started reading a couple weeks ago after feeling inexplicably drawn to and purchasing it at Barnes and Noble. I’m not going to identify it here, partly because some that I say about it is not particularly complimentary, but mostly because in discussing what I want to about it, I’m going to spoil the hell out of it.
There were many things I found beautiful about this novel. The setting, the history, the writing in general were such that I pictured the scenery and the overall novel very vividly; such vision has stayed with me after finishing it and often while I was away from it during the reading of it. Most of all, I loved the main protagonist besides the first-person female narrator—her love interest and later husband, Tom. I fell in love with Tom upon our first exposure to him, and that never changed.
Other things I found lacking in the work. Frequently, especially during the second half, I found myself feeling like there was no central conflict in the book—we were reading along with what was happening in their day-to-day lives, but I was not seeing the conflict that was described on the back of the book (to me it had seemed to be resolved fairly early on in the first half), and there didn’t seem to be another “point,” if you will, holding the story together. Occasionally I felt impatience with the narrator, seeing her as selfish or a bit oblivious in ways that didn’t seem particularly convincing. Neither the story nor the characters ever really “pulled me in”; though I enjoyed it, I did not really feel invested in the story. I felt like I “knew” almost none of the characters and did not feel like I particularly cared about them.
The exception was Tom—who, incidentally, I feel was superbly written. It was because of Tom and the relationship between him and the narrator that I kept reading the book. He was the only character that I cared about—looking back, really, I was swept away by him.
To illustrate what I’m describing, about 15 pages from the end of the book, I was reading what I suspect was intended to be an intense scene. I was not particularly finding it so. It may have even consciously occurred to me then that the only character I really cared about was Tom, and as long as he and the narrator were together, I felt a fairly detached disinterest in how they would handle the potential tragedy that was in front of them. Probably in part because he was the main character, but also because of how I had interpreted the tone and content of the book, I felt no suspicion that Tom was going anywhere, so I was feeling fairly nonchalant as I read, my love for Tom and their relationship forming a background of appreciation for a novel I was finding fairly lukewarm on other fronts.
Nine pages from the end of the book, Tom died.
It seemed to me then from a writing standpoint as though all those things I mentioned—character development of most of the characters, pulling into the story, strong central conflict—weren’t even needed because the end of the book was one of the main protagonist’s meeting an untimely death. The “climax” was at the very end, if you will. All that came before was made instantly more poignant by, its meaning as a work of art perhaps even largely derived from, his death at the end of the work. Likely exacerbated by how I experienced this circumstance in the book personally, I did not appreciate this.
Emotionally speaking, I was stunned to a degree that I found stunning in and of itself. I actually found myself in denial, sure he hadn’t actually died and was going to reappear any second (which would have worked under the circumstances). It was literally not until I read the last sentence of the book that I understood that in this story, Tom really did die. And funnily enough, as I was reading the last page I didn’t even know I was doing so yet, because it is followed by an “Author’s Note” that I had not glanced at yet and thought as I was reading the last page was still more of the book.
When I realized the book had ended, I experienced some anger (a furious hurling of the book to the floor with a What a stupid book I hate it! may have been involved) as I felt the flood of feeling related to this occurrence in the book rising to potential overwhelm in me. It struck me as almost ironic in that I had not felt very invested in the story and had certainly not anticipated that I would experience much of a significant degree of affect after finishing it. I had not in the slightest expected or seen coming what happened, had felt no wisp of a hint that Tom was going to be taken away, that the emotional wind was about to be knocked out of me, that I was about to feel the flood of pain and devastation that I did: sobbing for intermittent periods over the course of the day and night, experiencing difficultly sleeping, physically feeling pain and unease in the heart area of my chest, and feeling as though, despite his status as a fictional character, I was really almost grieving Tom a little bit.
I may not have been invested in the book…but I sure was invested in him.
Less than a week ago, I experienced a realization. It was not a deduction or an analysis (or the result of one) or an intellectual examination. It was a seeing, a spontaneous embodiment and insight through which I was made aware of something about myself.
The awareness was of the absence of heart. I experienced a sudden seeing of how absent connection with my heart had been in my experience over a period of the past several months. The immediacy of this insight was breathtaking, and I was stunned that I had not seen it, had not been aware of it for the several months that it had been taking place. Granted, since the phenomenon of disconnecting from and holding myself outside of my heart is an unconscious pattern in me developed at quite a young age, it has not been an uncommon thing for me to do in this lifetime. But it is something I have become more aware of and worked on quite a bit in recent years, so to see suddenly that I had been so oblivious to its occurrence, that open awareness of and connection with my heart had been almost entirely absent in this particular period of time, was astonishing as well as heartbreaking.
At the time I saw this, I stated out loud that I desperately did not want to operate without heart, to be disconnected from my heart and exclude it from my experience and awareness. I unquestionably wanted to reconnect with it. And I felt—and said—tearfully, right then, that I did not know how.
It has occurred to me in the 24 hours I’ve had to contemplate since I finished this novel that the relationship between the narrator and Tom seemed one of the most beautiful I’ve ever read about and felt privy to observe. Seeing such heart between two people (and especially in Tom, whose inner workings the reader did not get to directly see) may have felt like the observation of something new and incredible, that has not always been forthcoming in my own experience and that calls to something profound in me. Particularly at this moment in my existence, this may have occurred to a degree that I felt, really, awestruck by it and experienced from it both a yearning and a satisfaction not unlike that akin to drinking water in the face of urgent thirst. I can—and do—appreciate that I have realized I actually felt a shift reading about them, reading the relationship between them. More and more I have felt a gratitude about this. Though I hate with a passion that the book ended with Tom’s dying, I have felt the energetic shift in me in remembering the witnessing of the love between them. In ways, that being one of them, I did love this book.
Given how I saw this relationship and how it moved me, it makes sense to me that I would have found the abrupt and unexpected loss of one of the participants in it, and thus in a way the relationship, as stunning and excruciating as I did. It occurs to me that other readers may not experience or have experienced it that way did they not have the circumstances and current experience I have described in common with me. Even I may have experienced it differently at a different time.
As it was, I was overwhelmed—blindsided, I had no guard up against the devastation that was coming because I had no idea that it was coming. The rawness in my heart has felt scathing, initially almost unbearable as I felt the fury at this book’s ending and the soul-wrenching awareness that I could not undo the experience of reading it, of falling in love as I did with Tom and experiencing his disappearance from the form in which I came to do so. That it was a fictional work and he was a fictional character seemed to have little effect on the anguish to which I was privy when I realized the story was over and Tom was dead and I had no choice but to experience what I would as a result. Emotionally, I was laid out flat.
Days ago, I said that I wanted desperately to reconnect with my heart—but that I felt I did not know how to.
Here is my answer.
If I take seriously that I want to connect with and open to and integrate my heart, then the invitation to me is to see this for the opportunity that it is. To see the offering, as Rod put it, “that there is greater potential in you and in life than you can see, than you are trying to see.” There was no guarantee, or even a likelihood, that it was going to be comfortable. As wrenching as my response to this book may feel, this is the opportunity I asked for. This is what I said I wanted.
And I love it for that.
Poignant as it felt to me to read when I started this post, I am brought back to the assessment I offered at the beginning of it, that I wrote long before I finished reading the novel I have discussed here: What an amazing, beautiful gift of art.
In humble appreciation.
Love,
Emerald
“And if your glass heart should crack, and for a second you turn back, oh no, be strong…I know it aches and your heart it breaks…walk on…”
-U2 “Walk On”
Illumination
Earlier this week, I wrote about avoidance and anxiety. It happened that the next day, the ongoing Inner Work group of which I am a part had a conference call, which we have scheduled sometimes in addition to our two annual in-person weekend retreats.
A participant on the conference call talked about, as I interpreted it, a feeling she had been experiencing of “non-movement” lately. She said she didn’t see it as necessarily an egoic resistance or defense maneuver but just a slowing down or quietness of action. She wondered if there may ever be an energetic “pause” in the experience of Essence—that there might be a time in the authentic experience of ourselves in which there did not seem to be any particular movement seeming called for.
Immediately the internal response in me was, Of course there may. And that was when I realized it.
I had forgotten it was Winter.
As I’ve mentioned here before, Winter is the season in Five-Element Acupuncture that offers stillness, silence, immersion in the mystery, respect for unknowing/the unknown. In listening to my fellow participant’s question, I realized the entire season of Winter, as I understand it, represents and invites the very phenomenon of which she spoke. Winter itself could be one answer to the very question.
At that moment, this seemed obvious to me—and yet immediately preceding her inquiry, this awareness had been entirely blocked from my consciousness. The exposure to this conversation invited an entire reframing of the perception of my recent experience. The anxiety I have experienced recently may be specifically related to the call of Winter—or more pointedly, my own ignoring and forgetting of it—and the perception of and frustration with avoidance may not necessarily be with actual avoidance of things as much as—or at least as well as—a product of the resistance to, paradoxically, slowing down, surrendering to the authentic stillness deep within me as invited by this season. A part of me may in fact have been deliberately blocking the conscious awareness of and remembrance of the symbolism of Winter, finding the stillness, silence, and surrender to the unknown that Winter invites intimidating and unnerving. And of course the further I am from what is true in me, including connection with the flow of the Earth and its offerings, the more anxiety I am likely to feel.
Nothing I said in the post on Monday was wrong. It just wasn’t seeing everything (as probably my perspective now isn’t either; it has just expanded to encompass more than then). I was seeing something from a particular, and limited, perspective; others were, at the time, blocked from my consciousness. It was like looking at a rainbow but with such a narrow perception that all that is seen is blue. The gift of my colleague’s sharing invited the expansion of my awareness to include more than one color—which, of course, may change the whole perspective.
The anxiety is still there, and the reasons for it I expressed have not changed, in my perception. The reframing did not make the anxiety go away—it allowed for a different relationship to it, a new awareness of why it may be there and how to awaken more and hold within myself the invitation and response in me that feels truly called for. That might not be the one the culture surrounding me, or anyone with whom I’m interacting, or perhaps particularly a part of me that is made up of structures that formed in my past may seem interested in. But as I said at the end of the post earlier this week, anxiety may be an invitation.
The message I feel right now is, Slow Down; It Is Winter. Alas, I had forgotten. Thank you, Universe, for the reminder.
As I mentioned last year and the year before, today, December 17, is the International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. Organized events are planned today around the world to commemorate this designation and the sentiment behind its inception in 2003.
My red candle honoring such is lit and pictured above. From the mystery, stillness, and depth to and from which Winter calls us, I acknowledge and observe as love all who have been affected by violence in their professions as sex workers in the last year and ever, all who have felt directly impacted by such, and all who have committed it, as well as everyone everywhere. It is here especially, in the darkness, depth, and unknowing of this season, that the ultimate Oneness that we are may be so clearly seen.
May we so.
Love,
Emerald
-Adyashanti
