Archive for Sex+ Spirituality
Love
Understandably, what has been referred to as bullying has seemed a prominent topic right now. I have seen a number of what I have found heartening responses and outreach in relation to the subject, one of which was today by Rick R. Reed. As I have reflected on what seems this bullying phenomenon I have experienced as prevalent in the media right now, some things have occurred to me.
Seeing children and adolescents act needlessly mean or cruel to each other feels like it rips my heart open. It has for as long as I can remember—even to some degree when I was one. During my pre-teen and early teenage years I felt a target of what has now been dubbed the “mean girls” phenomenon among my peers. I attended a very small school (there were about 21 students in my class), which looking back seems to me very relevant to the situation. I experienced the five girls who were my closest “friends” as arbitrarily and frequently ostracizing me, and given the tiny size of my peer group in the school and the relatively established groups of friends within it, when this happened I felt really all alone at times in the school atmosphere.
Even then, I didn’t like to see other kids being picked on because I felt like I knew how it felt. But I will say that at that age I still halfheartedly participated in it sometimes in a desperate attempt to “fit in” with those who at least as frequently scathingly isolated, verbally attacked, maliciously gossiped about, and appeared to take pleasure in ignoring me. It seemed a vicious cycle in a way, and while I say with all sincerity that kids bullying other kids breaks my heart, I must acknowledge too that that may seem easier for me to say and recognize as an adult than it was to act nobly when I was that age, because I remember sometimes (again, halfheartedly) participating in it too.
I did this because I felt desperately left out, unwanted, unloved, and like it seemed there was no place in the world I could go where I would experience the opposite and feel safe. I do remember sitting by myself one day on the playground and the thought occurring to me, “It won’t always be like this. I won’t always be at this school, with only this group of people. Someday I won’t be trapped in this environment. Someday it will be different. Something will be different.” I really do remember thinking that. I also remember thinking though that at the time, that seemed almost inconceivably far away, and I did not know what I was going to do in the meantime.
I, of course, did not have the additional confusion, possible fear, and seeming target for bullying of feeling any question or (generally, it seemed) external perceptions about the sexual orientation, gender identity, etc., in me. I am only saying that I remember feeling desperately ostracized and manipulated by my peers (mostly female) and utterly powerless to do anything at all to change it. Thus, sometimes, if for a fleeting moment it felt like I was being included, that I wasn’t suffering that horrific loneliness and searing humiliation of what seemed a complete rejection by the people my age with whom I went to school, I might do something I felt less than excited about in order to “hold on” to that feeling—like participate in picking on someone else that my group of “friends” was presently targeting.
The adolescent of a species, including human of course, is by definition not fully developed, but not completely helpless like the infant or child of the species either. It seems to me this could contribute to what makes this seem such a tumultuous time. Human adolescents generally observe some degree of autonomy but are not fully developed yet, and they may feel a sense of overwhelm in the face of the power they do have juxtaposed with that they don’t. I for one feel that they tend to take their cues from those of the species who are fully developed (which is not the same as evolved or aware—just physically fully developed as an adult).
Given what has seemed to me collective humanity’s prominent issues around sexuality (including gender) at this time, it does not seem surprising to me that this area/subject is one around which intense vitriol, ignorance, and aggression has been displayed by youth.
I have literally cried as I have read recent accounts of adolescents exhibiting horrific cruelty and ignorance toward one another. It feels like my heart breaks open—which I let it do, and do my very best to be with. But I look around at how adults treat each other, and even as my heart breaks more—I feel chillingly not surprised.
—If we want to make a lot of money via the media, we follow people who are famous and try to find things out about them that they have not shared with the public, and that we probably wouldn’t want the public finding out about us, and broadcast it indiscriminately. More of us then go on to state our perceptions about that, some of which may seem personally directed and/or even malicious. How frequently do we consider the feelings of the subjects of this kind of scrutiny and/or exploitation?
—If we want to hold political office in America, we leverage as many resources as we can against whomever is running “against” us and then attack that person/people either verbally or through forms of what seem frequently overt manipulation.
—When we don’t like the way another country/culture/society is doing something in the world (however justified we may find that disapproval to be), we go to war with them.
To me, all of these things look in some way like bullying—implicitly, overtly, collectively, and/or via manipulation.
I was at Dave & Buster’s the other night, and for the most part I had a delightful time. As I walked around, however, I saw numerous games that included all sorts of aggression and violence toward both people and animals. I do not feel any aspiration to fall back on a “blame video games for all violence and issues among children” stance. I do, however, simply wonder why we find violence so entertaining. Why are games designed to be fun and compelling replete with violence that sometimes includes literally killing people in them? What is it we find so compelling about violence? Is it a way to deal with underlying fear in us that for the most part is not even conscious but that may largely direct our behavior and experience? Some part of us knows/senses such fear is there (in some this may seem more conscious than others), and in seeking desperately to not let it come to consciousness, we act out in ways that seem “safe” but still touch that darker part of us that is unconsciously there?
I don’t know. What I do feel is that the above have often been engaged in by adults. Yes, the way(s) some adolescents in question in recent news stories have acted seems horrifying—but where might they be getting this kind of example?
We don’t know what the home lives of the kids who are initiating and/or participating in bullying look or looked like, how their parents interact/interacted with them, how they are and have been treated away from their peers. I feel very clear that I am in no way intending to excuse or underestimate the behavior they have displayed by saying that. What I am rather aspiring to is remembering that there are motivations for everyone’s behavior, even kids’, and very frequently it is unconscious. In children, this may especially be the case if they are treated unconsciously by adults, particularly their parents.
To return to the “breaking the cycle” framework I invoked in a recent post, this does not seem to me helped by seeking simply to punish or counter-ostracize kids who act in a bullying way. I understand feeling the urge to do that. I do. I experience the anguish, fury, painful and indescribable frustration in response to horrendous treatment of human beings by another/others. But it seems to me reactive punishment and aggression simply breed more of the same behavior, coming out somewhere else or in some other way. It is where the motivation for the behavior may have come from in the first place.
This is not simple stuff. It is not an easy answer or certainly an easy process to say, “Okay. I’ll just change all the habits in me and get rid of all my unconscious motivations and love everybody.” First, in my experience, none of that can be “done” by way of the mind that is able to conceive of them. The shift is beyond that kind of conception and certainly beyond “trying.” It seems to me, however, that it begins with openly (and lovingly) observing ourselves, and especially on this subject the kind of example we are setting—larger than just what we do in front of kids. How are we living our lives? How do we view people? How do we treat people? How do we view and treat ourselves?
In that light, all I have is an invitation, which I offer wholly to myself as well:
Take a deep breath. Do it all the time. Focus on the breath. Hold yourself (again I am saying this to me too) in love. Touch yourself lovingly (yeah, yeah—I don’t mean just that way—though I certainly don’t mean not that way either). Seriously. Place your hand on some part of your body with love. Do you feel it? Does it feel different? Unusual? If you feel like it, even give yourself a physical hug.
Return to these things, over and over again. They may help more than we have any idea.
Love,
Emerald
“We got teenagers walking around in a culture of darkness, living together alone…don’t you know that love’s the only house big enough for all the pain in the world?…”
-Martina McBride “Love’s the Only House”
An Invitation (Perhaps a Plea) to Explore…
I recently read on Blogging Censorship, the blog of the National Coalition Against Censorship (NCAC), of two recent cases of proposed or fulfilled book banning in (United States) school libraries. The first was at Sequoyah Middle School in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, in response to a complaint from a parent about the book Shooting Star by Fredrick McKissack Jr. The school board faced a decision in August about whether to allow the book to remain on the school library’s shelves, which it ultimately did. The second case was at Stockton High School in Stockton, Missouri, which a few weeks ago held a public forum about its April ban of the novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie from classrooms and the school library.
In the Oklahoma case, a parent complained that Shooting Star used the word “fuck” in the text 45 times.
In the Missouri case, one of the dissenting parents had this to say:
So. “Fuck” and masturbation. These are what we collectively feel so afraid of our children being exposed to, from which it is so important to protect them. A word that has been known to refer to sex and a personal act that involves oneself. Huh.Mike Holzknecht, who has two children in Stockton schools, supports the ban. He displayed several large copies of pages in the book, one of which described masturbation.
“I am proud of you guys for saying no. Here’s the limit,” he said to the board, pointing to the pages. “We’re not going to take it.
“It’s an insult to my son and my daughter to say we have to have stuff like this in our schools to make them read,” Holzknecht said.
Listen, parents who initiated and continued action to have these books banned from school: I am not a parent. I do not pretend to know how challenging and intense being one may be. There have been many times when I have observed something related to children or parenting and recognized and acknowledged that I do not know how I would respond or act in that situation.
It seems strongly evident to me, however, that acting like sex doesn’t exist, or that it’s something scary or wrong or bad, is not helpful. It is not going to contribute to kids’ developing aware and whole perspectives about this intrinsic area of life. It’s not going to help children respect their bodies, their instincts, each other more. It very well may interfere with these things.
What it is more likely to result in is things like the adult services section of a popular website being shut down and efforts to put people in jail for selling products designed to invoke sexual stimulation because so many adults seem so skittish about sex that openness or professional services around it seem to scare them enough to try to pretend it doesn’t exist, at least in ways they feel uneasy about, in adults too.
Another way of putting it is that these adults may have been privy to this kind of sex-phobic teaching as children too.
As has occurred to me many times, what I wish or would prefer is that adults not simply project things onto children because it seems easier (which in a way it almost undoubtedly is, though in another way it results in suffering because it is ignorant) instead of examining themselves. I truly don’t blame people for experiencing issues around sexuality. (In some ways, I may relate.) The society in which we live has seemed to me to act rampantly pubescent and/or puritanical about sex, and it does not seem to nurture an open, aware environment or tendency to nurture those characteristics individually around it. It thus does not seem surprising to me that inner distortions, conscious or unconscious, exist in numerous adults around sexuality.
But that is what they are—they are issues in oneself around this complex and inherent-to-life subject and area of life. Projecting them outward thoughtlessly, especially onto youth, is a disservice to all. Doesn’t that make sense? If you are not examining, and indeed sometimes experiencing the discomfort of, working through your own issues, don’t you see how simply projecting outward whatever you are not facing in yourself subconsciously or unconsciously is perpetuating that cycle? It means the kids subjected to this kind of projection may more likely themselves not learn how to self-examine and may even develop some of the same unconscious and subconscious issues around sexuality that have not been worked through in the adults around them.
In this way, examining oneself may truly be a way to break a lot of cycles. This terminology may be familiar in its usage in domestic violence campaigns—”breaking the cycle” of violence has been spoken of in this context. There are many more “cycles,” phenomena of ignorance and unawareness in ourselves, that are similarly perpetuated, albeit seemingly in not as grotesquely obvious ways. This is one of them. When we aren’t aware of our own unconscious motivations because we have not acknowledged or examined things inside us that admittedly feel uncomfortable, we invite and breed the perpetuation of that unconsciousness and suppression.
In my experience, observation, and understanding, individuals who seem to demonstrate extreme self-righteousness, judgment, or dictatorial tendencies do not do so just because it seems fun. Regardless of whether they are aware of or acknowledge motivations for these tendencies, there is likely a lot of unprocessed pain and/or psychological patterning in them that came at a time when they themselves were children and developed these psychic structures in order to survive. I really do understand that attending to these things in ourselves may be extremely uncomfortable, painful, or even traumatic.
But not examining them is painful in an ongoing manner not only for ourselves but also for humanity collectively. Fearing sex as a subject and our children’s eventual exposure to it as a healthy, intrinsic part of life seems indicative to me of a distortion in perspective. It is not sex itself that is problematic but our fears and issues around it of which we are not consciously aware and/or which we have not worked through, and this seems especially relevant in relation to how we are teaching and the messages we are sending young people about this aspect of life. Especially if we feel a fear or resistance around sexuality, I invite us all to take a deep breath and sincerely examine what is truly there and what resistances or inhibitions we encounter in relation to the subject—and to eventually explore the idea of feeling enthusiastic about nurturing the open, individualized, integrated, authentic, eventual sexual selves of all youth and indeed all individuals.
Love,
Emerald
-The Killers “Sam’s Town”
Exposing
I have a post up today at F-Stop: Expose the Naked I, the blog project of Neve Black, Donna George Storey, and Shanna Germain. If you’re not familiar with F-Stop and/or are interested in contributing, I encourage you to check out the site’s statement of intention.
Thank you Donna, Shanna, and Neve for hosting me.
Love,
Emerald
“I try to climb your steps, I try to chase you down, I try to see how low I can get down to the ground, I try to earn my way, I try to tame this mind, you better believe that I have tried to beat this…”
-Lifehouse “Sick Cycle Carousel”
Flow, Breath, and Triadic Offerings
A few months ago my breathworker invoked the notion of the proposed three fundamental aspects of life (according to Hindu tradition, I think) of Creation, Maintenance, and Destruction. Upon hearing it, I immediately felt a sense of my historical relationship to each.
Creation, I knew immediately, had often been hindered in me by the harshness of perfectionism. While having felt oriented to creating sometimes, I knew the scathing internal demand of never messing up or making a mistake or doing something not the “right” way had held me back sometimes from even starting, much less finishing, something creatively. This aspect of the three struck me as the “medium” historical orientation in me.
I have been terrible—terrible—at destruction. That itself was not new to my recognizance, but this triadic context was, so it was an interesting new way to view it. Letting go, on multiple levels and in numerous ways, has tended to feel somewhere from foreign to panic-inducing to me. The idea of consciously allowing something to be destroyed or to destroy it as a part of natural flow has often seemed so unimaginable to me it felt funny to even type that.
It was instantaneously obvious to me that the aspect to which I have felt most heavily oriented is maintenance. Once I have felt familiar with something, known how to do it, and thus something in me has felt satisfied that it may perform as close to perfectly as possible, or at least make relatively fewer mistakes, it has seemed to feel most comfortable.
A few weeks ago I had the incredible opportunity to attend a personal gathering with Adyashanti. I first heard of Adyashanti last summer when the facilitators of the ongoing Inner Work group of which am a part recommended his book The End of Your World. I read The End of Your World last September, at which time it took its place as the second most important book I feel I have experienced in my adult lifetime.
At the event, prior to Adya’s appearance, I was sitting and waiting in silence, as we had been requested to hold upon entering the meeting room. I didn’t feel consciously nervous about anything, but I noticed a tense feeling in my chest. I wondered what I felt tense about.
I kept breathing consciously, focusing only vaguely on the question, and suddenly an awareness flashed through me. It was immediate, lasting only a second, and it was not a suspicion, or a thought, or a figuring something out. It was a seeing—an instantaneous, embodied realization.
My lungs automatically tense upon exhale.
Automatically. Not when I feel a certain way. Not when I feel nervous. Not when I’m experiencing anxiety, or focused on something particular. Simply upon exhale. My lungs tense automatically in the very face of exhale.
And there it is. The most fundamental of letting go.
This feels like a very intimate realization about my body. While in a way it does not surprise me at all, seeing on what a core level this pattern has been ingrained and manifested in me was(/is) stunning. Somehow my lungs/body learned that the fundamental act of exhale, of release, was scary and threatening and that I needed to “protect” myself from it and tense against it. So much so that this physical pattern developed that has likely been in action for decades.
The metaphorical reflections and extrapolations I see of this in my life are innumerable, so much so that it almost seems it would be easier to look at times when this has not been evident. Recently my acupuncturist and I were talking about the element in traditional Five-Element Acupuncture that seems most prominent in me (the main corresponding organ of which happens to be the lungs), and she described this element’s tendency to “hoard,” to hold on to things—which in turn makes it difficult for new things to come in. There simply isn’t room. To recall the triadic aspect of “destruction,” this, as I understand it, would be its basic purpose: to clear out/destroy what no longer serves. To never destroy or release anything interrupts the flow of life and the Universe. Destruction allows room for creation, offering the opportunity for maintenance…and so on.
Ultimately, I feel enormous, deep gratitude for the exquisite opportunity to have seen something so profound and intimate about myself/my body. So much so that really it feels indescribable.
I am scheduled to appear at F-Stop: Expose the Naked I (the blog founded by Neve Black, Shanna Germain, and Donna George Storey) this coming Sunday. I know what I plan to write about (or at least what has come forth so far), and I have attributed the nervousness I have been feeling about it to the feeling of wanting to impart what I’m saying exactly right…to do it justice, perhaps? I have felt some resistance to working on it for the reasons described around “creation” above. And, of course, when it comes time to finish it, which does seem to me a form of letting go, I may see challenge in that as well. I suspect the unconscious in me has most often felt most comfortable at the “maintenance” stage of writing, this middle/”working on it” phase allowing some relaxation of the vicious standard of perfection—if there is no finished product, there is nothing that has to be “perfect.”
The “maintenance” stage is where my piece for F-Stop is right now. This (somewhat rambling, I suppose) exposition may be serving as a precursor to the openness and clarity writing it feels like it is going to take from me.
“Take a deep breath” has been a mantra of mine for some time. No matter what I am doing, it is where I begin and to where I return.
And so, breathing consciously, I go.
Love,
Emerald
“There’s no one else to make the moves that you can do…your every breath becomes another world…take a breath, take a deep breath now…”
-David Gilmour “Take a Breath”
The Breath of the Ocean
I’m in Florida this week (Sanibel Island) on vacation with my family. It’s my first voluntary beach/tropically-oriented vacation in years.
When I was a kid, we took a few family vacations that involved beaches. Unlike many people (it seems), I never felt much of a fan of the beach. I found the ocean 1) dirty, 2) scary, and 3) something I wasn’t personally interested in but felt forced to visit because that’s what my family “did” on vacations. This impression of beaches has generally remained in me as an adult, and I really haven’t deliberately spent time on a beach since those vacations when I was a kid. There was a small post-midnight excursion in San Diego in 2001 during which I was, um, distracted, and though my sister got married in St. Lucia in 2006, I don’t remember going to the beach much except during the actual wedding.
My family searches for seashells so seriously that “shelling” is a verb to them. This was something I also remember being forced to do engaging in as a kid, again because it was just what we “did” when we went on vacation. At that time, it also seemed necessary to the powers that be (read: my father) to get up literally before dawn to have first pick or some such thing at the shells washing up on the shore. I clearly recall feeling resentful that I had to get up earlier on supposed vacation than I did when I had to go to school.
So yesterday was the first time in probably more than two decades that I went on my own to specifically spend time on a beach. Especially given that most of my life I have felt a resistance or non-attraction to this environment, I felt surprised by the way I experienced it.
I wandered in the afternoon down to the beach by myself. I stood staring at waves, watching their swell, hearing them break, smelling the salt. I knelt and dragged my fingers through a smattering of seashells and instantly recalled how much I love the sound of shells clicking together. I grasped a fistful of wet sand and noticed there is no other feeling like that. When dry, I found sand feels in its own way like velvet, and up close the grains look as sparkly as crystal. I stared at it covering my skin, aware that it was a result of an eons-long process of dissolution into this foundational powder that fills beaches and provides the whole floor of the ocean.
Then last night, I chose to look for shells of my own accord. Having been away from them in their natural environment for so many years, I was struck by how astonishing I found them. Even the shells considered “common” or “dull” looked extraordinary to a shell amateur (or at least one way out of practice) like myself. There is a stunning quality to me in all of these shells, these amazing intricate extensions of animals that have created and live in them. I find it truly fascinating.
The simple opportunity to observe and ponder waves in the context of “shelling” further fascinated me. Like the breath of the ocean, the constantly forthcoming, uninhibited waves deposit each time a display of unpredictable uniqueness. Nothing is the same each moment as it was; it is a tangible invitation to an orientation toward Now. Sometimes something may come forth that isn’t quite reached in time, and it is let go. But there is no knowing what new may then be offered in the next breath. There is a forever flow, invariable opportunity, constant beauty, always unknown.
It reminded me of writing. And sex. And life.
As I wandered in the dark shining a flashlight on the waves, the realization was consise: The ocean is fucking phenomenal.
I won’t say I don’t still find the ocean dirty and scary. But it is phenomenal encompassing those things, its mystery, danger, glory indivisible as an entity foreign to yet universally connected to us. I appreciate this opportunity to be so close to its energy.
Love,
Emerald
“Gotta find a way to flow, in a host of things that grow…the mouth of god is wide, so let’s just fall inside, and let every damn thing go, and flow…”
-LIVE “Flow”
Keeping Witness
Recently I purchased a chakra poster (pictured left) at the wellness center where my acupuncturist practices. The chakras are part of an ancient spiritual tradition that discerns seven energy centers in the body, which run in a line basically up the spine/nervous system. They are represented by the colors of the rainbow: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, purple.
I have not done much specific chakra work on myself. I was introduced to the system three years ago in a course with one of my spiritual teachers. During that course the teacher specifically brought my attention to the second/orange chakra in me. This chakra is said to be the seat of emotions and sexuality, among other things.
On the poster now hanging on my wall, the Affirmation for the second/orange chakra (also referred to as the sacral chakra) states the following:
Well, I can certainly appreciate the importance of that. While it strikes me as more poignant than funny, it appears so painfully obvious to me that this statement has NOT been reflected in the historic tendencies in me that it is nearly laughable.“I welcome and acknowledge all of my feelings and desires, easily discerning the appropriateness of acting on them.”
The sacral chakra column on the poster also shares that “if we do not keep a witness to our emotions,” it may result in an extreme of either “a constant need for pleasure or rejection of pleasure due to fear or shame.”
Some of the central patterns of the personality structure in me have been specifically geared toward not acknowledging either feelings or desires in me. “Easily discerning the appropriateness of acting on them” frankly didn’t even seem very relevant for much of my life because the feelings and (especially) desires were not acknowledged or recognized enough to consider acting on them consciously. Unconsciously, of course, these things would still be there and would be influencing me in ways of which I was unaware since they were suppressed and kept in the unconscious or subconscious, but consciously it seems there was simply a rule to not act on such things in general because they were not even supposed to be recognized. Frequently, I likely did not even realize they were there.
So I feel certainly famililar with the “rejection of pleasure due to fear or shame” component of the sacral chakra imbalance. When the orange chakra was first brought to my attention during the aforementioned course three years ago, it came to my attention that the question, “What do you want?” elicited little more than a blank look from me. It was almost as though I didn’t even understand what the question meant. What does “want” have to do with anything? You do what you’re supposed to, what you should do, what you’ve said you would do, what’s “right,” etc., etc., etc. Want doesn’t really enter into the picture. That was truly what the habitual patterning in me seemed to see.
Sexually speaking, that historical pattern seemed to reign in me up to about my mid-twenties. When an emergence of consciousness occurred in me and that shifted, I won’t claim the pendulum didn’t seem to swing to the other side, so to speak. That has not seemed unusual in my experience — a tendency toward extremes/”all or nothing” has been characteristic in me historically. “Feelings and desires” that may have been so suppressed and ignored in me suddenly allowed to come forth may have done so in a manner similar to that of a caged animal suddenly being set free.
Presently, I wonder if the second part of the Affirmation is emerging in my experience. The part about “easily discerning the appropriateness of acting on them.” Acknowledging and staying with feelings in me has been a colossal part of the Work I have done and continue to do on myself. Acknowledging want is actually a front and center issue for me currently, and it occurs to me that as I start to see it, the discerning/acting part of the equation does become relevant as the historic rigidity of the simple strategy of suppression and indiscriminate restraint dissipates.
Perhaps now for me, as on one level things seem to balance out more (i.e., I recognize want within me), I am presented with a different challenge on a deeper level. This of course is how growth works, so it is not a surprising occurrence. In this case, it may be that when feelings and desires are allowed, the question of whether and when to act on them comes forth as an opportunity for me. While for some people that might be an area that has seemed long familiar or to some degree understood, for me it seems brand new and thus unsettling at times.
I had a dream a few nights ago right before I woke up to go to an acupuncture appointment. It was a dream that involved intense sexual yearning, and in the course of talking about it with my acupuncturist, we/I surmised that the yearning seems representative of something within me that is asking to be or ready to be developed. In other words, something that is within me that I have not yet recognized fully (or maybe even very much), and something I am to provide for myself rather than look outwardly to find.
The sexual desire in the dream seems to me an attempt by the part of me not interested in growth to simply project it outside and try to get this from someone else — which authentically speaking may not be done. This kind of phenomenon has occurred to me before, as I mentioned in my post about (the outrageously beautiful) Billie Joe Armstrong, and reflecting on this dream it once again struck me how seductive the urge to project things outside of ourselves may be. This invitation to develop a capacity within me manifested in this dream as an incredibly magnetic attraction to something outside myself — a strategy to get me to ignore or avoid the recognition that it is something that I must provide for myself (and is already within me whether I see it consciously or not) and cannot be obtained from the outside. I deeply appreciate seeing this information via this dream.
In Five-Element acupuncture, we are currently in the season of Winter, which holds unknowing, mystery, stillness, silence (yes, obviously in this culture we have managed to skew that a bit by throwing in what tends to be a hugely non-silent “holiday season,” but regardless, those are gifts of Winter according to traditional Chinese medicine). The element of Winter is water. I noticed the description of the second/orange chakra on my new poster includes, “It holds the spectrum of emotions from the depths of silent dark waters . . . .” The main corresponding organ to the Winter season/water element is the kidneys, which are housed in the sacral chakra.
Sexuality once again strikes me as such a beautiful, awe-inspiring gift to us. In its fundamental connection to life it holds so much potential and energy, manifestable both authentically/supportively and inauthentically/destructively.
Authenticity is absolutely the aim in me, and right now there seems once again to be an invitation for me to recognize this within the realm of sexuality. Since all of the service I offer around sexuality, including erotic writing, is an offering of this invitation as well, it seems not only appropriate but imperative that I answer that call myself.
Love and Namaste,
Emerald
-Rob Thomas “Little Wonders”
The Willingness to Let Go
For the past few months I’ve been working actively on a story I started more than three years ago. Yes, three years. I haven’t been working on it three years straight though. It’s taken many hiatuses (hiati?), left in a folder untouched for several months at a time, but the story has never fully left my memory. It’s crossed my consciousness frequently, especially in the summer, perhaps since that’s when it’s set.
I pulled it out at the beginning of the just-passed summer and over the last few months rather gave it an overhaul. Since then, I’ve been ready to consider it finished minus about the last three or four paragraphs. I’ve reworked them over and over, and it hasn’t yet seemed to fit.
What seems funny to me about that is that the last line of the story was written about three years ago. It was one of the first things to emerge after the basic shape of the story took place. So I’ve been working with these final paragraphs preceding it for several weeks now. Yes, I have spent hours at a time working on three, four, sometimes five paragraphs. No, they are not done. I have seriously found this confounding.
Finally I started wondering if maybe the story just wanted a different ending now. It did change substantially. The ending still seemed to fit to me, but maybe I need to let go of that last line that’s closed the story for so long and give it some space to do what it wants. Maybe it will end up wanting that line to end it anyway, but perhaps I have to let go of it first and let it decide, not me.
As that occurred to me I was reminded of something A. H. Almaas said: “[T]he most elementary requirement for growth is the willingness to let go of what you believe will make you happy.” (Diamond Heart Book One p. 153.) The idea of such a letting go of course makes no sense to the ego. Which, generally speaking, is another way of saying it’s incredibly hard to do.
So hey, since it’s something I’ve seemed to like to do here, I’ll talk about sex for a moment. To put this in the context of sex, it would be like believing we want a certain exact sequence of sexual activity to make us satisfied. That may work, but at any given moment there may be something else too that has not even occurred to us, that we don’t even know to conceptualize or plan. If we approached sex every time with a fixed idea of what we were looking for that would satisfy us, does it not seem such would limit sexual interaction, experience, possibility? Yet this is how the ego sees life, because it doesn’t know any better, and often times we don’t even recognize it because it feels so “natural” and familiar to us.
So seeing the need or at least possibility of letting go of this final line and allowing space for whatever else may be there to emerge has reminded me of a much broader offering. I don’t really know what any of this means right now, which actually seems to fit the theme of this post somewhat. It’s just what seems to be here, and seeking and articulating a meaning for it doesn’t right now feel compelling to me. Perhaps it is an invitation to openness, and I appreciate this story leading me there.
I now plan to go attend to it for the first time sans previous final line and see what comes.
Love,
Emerald
-Clare Dacey “Ordinary Beauty”
Yellow Lights and Long Summer Shadows
Earlier this week in my Spicy Summer Sundays blog tour post, I talked abut transition. As well I invited readers to talk about it, which they did so beautifully and thoughtfully that it has inspired me to continue to ponder the topic. (It appears I wasn’t the only one — check out the beautiful flash story Craig J. Sorensen created.) Yesterday as I was driving home, I noticed the “long shadows” that Rick had mentioned earlier as uniquely characteristic of evening in late summer. I wasn’t looking for them, but as I looked out the windshield at a large flowering bush, I suddenly did notice a particular kind of light. I realized the lighting appearance was that of the long shadows he had just been talking about — a sign of late summer.
As I mentioned in my poppy seed post, according to Traditional Five-Element Acupuncture we are in the season of Late Summer* — the season of transition. After writing the post and reading the extraordinary discussion that followed, I have been noticing transition more, and sometimes I have been deliberately pondering it as well.
As I noticed these long summer shadows, I simultaneously seemed to feel a quite vague, mysterious, and fleeting yearning. It occurred to me that transition may seem so fascinating to me because historically there has been an orientation in me distinctly disposed to focusing on extremes — a “one or the other,” “all or nothing,” black and white mentality. I remember when I was a kid, long before I learned to drive, I didn’t understand the purpose of the yellow traffic light. Seriously. It seemed to me you either go or stop — what is the in between of the yellow for? After I learned to drive, of course, the purpose of the yellow light made sense, but it seems funny to me that even now I can remember feeling genuinely confused by its existence.
Transition. The yellow light signals transition (interestingly, the color that corresponds to the Late Summer season in Five-Element Acupuncture is yellow). And in a way, transition flies in the face of that focus on extremes that has historically operated in me. Scarlett Greyson mentioned in a comment after the poppy seed post on Sunday the transition of fresh water to/from ocean water — an example I found exquisite, as well as one I don’t ever remember occurring to me. To the historical “extremes” perspective in me, there is fresh water and there is salt water. There are places of each. Somewhere in a cold mountain spring, the water is as fresh as can be. In the ocean, that freshness is nowhere to be seen in the utter saltiness of seawater.
Yet somewhere, there is a transition between. Somewhere, there is a meeting in which the extremes are not yet defined.
I felt actually startled when this relation between transition and non-extremes occurred to me, as I don’t know if it had ever quite occurred to me that way. Unsolicited, different areas of transition began to occur to me, along with how the historical orientation in me toward extremes may have influenced my perspective or experience.
First came writing. For almost as long as I can remember, I have loved the act of writing. Sometimes I have experienced it as evoking a near-euphoric feeling in me. In Jeremy Edwards’s Spicy Summer Sunday post, he asked what readers’ favorite phase of the writing process was. An answer I gave, very sincerely, is that one of my favorite parts of writing a story is when I finish it. I mentioned a possible reason for that as well, and a number of reasons for such have occurred to me before, but this drive yesterday was the first time viewing it in relation to transition had occurred to me.
I have noticed — numerous times — a part of my psyche that has seemed to operate with “the story has not been written yet” and “the story is done” being basically the two aspects it feels aware of or interested in. The middle literally seems like a blank. The act of writing, when I’m doing it, may feel magnificent, but if I am not writing and examining what to work on or do, I have often felt this orientation in me front and center.
As though it looks at the actual writing of the story as a transition. And it does not feel interested in that as per its zeroing in on the extremes — the story is either done or it is not started yet (or barely started during a time of aforementioned euphoria-producing writing but obviously not finished yet).
I wondered as this occurred to me what this part of the psyche in me does not like about transitions. Possible answers came forth again unsolicited. Transition may be a time of uncertainty, of disorganization, of fragility, and perhaps most of all (maybe in part due to those things) of vulnerability. It was not new to me to recognize that a part of me has historically not felt comfortable with those things. It was new to me to consider them specifically in the context of transition.
At which time sex occurred to me. When I was younger, the perspective in me about sex seemed often not interested in transition. In fact, it seemed distinctly opposed to it and wanted to pass over it as quickly as possible/practical. The orientation in me at that time was to literally go from determining the interest in and practicality of fucking someone to the act of doing so in as little time as possible. The area of transition was where things like emotion and, perhaps relatedly, vulnerability could develop. Of course in these encounters I was interested in mutual respect (in fact insisted upon it), connection, and to some degree affection, but serious emotional experience or certainly intimacy (which I’m not sure this part of me even had a conception of) seemed disorienting, frightening, or utterly foreign to this part of me and, according to it, were to be avoided.
When I first became a patient of Five-Element Acupuncture in January 2006, the layout of the five seasons was explained to me (the familiar four plus Late Summer), and it came to light also that each season presented unique offerings and gifts. At the time, I liked summer and that was about it and had found plenty of reasons to disdain the others. During the course of treatment, my acupuncturist presented the different offerings of each season, and a significantly new appreciation for all of the seasons and their incredible respective offerings developed in me (so much so that I was actually just moved to tears as I typed that).
As I write this I feel like the examination of Late Summer has perhaps been the least focused on for me. I’m not sure why — maybe because we haven’t seemed to work as much on that element in me (each season corresponds with an element in Five-Element Acupuncture, which relate to meridians in the physical body), or maybe because its being the transitional season has made it not seem so much like a “season” to me as the four with which I was previously familiar. In any case, the opportunity really seems prominent to me right now for me to appreciate and explore this season of transition. I feel deeply grateful as such.
Love,
Emerald
*I would guess that now we are actually quite close to or even into Autumn according to the Five-Element calendar, which does not follow or coincide with the official Western calendar (e.g., the Western calendar places the beginning of such seasons as summer and winter around their actual solstices, which according to the calendar of Traditional Chinese Medicine is actually their peak).
“And look for the stars as the sun goes down…just sit back…prepare for the best and the fastest ride…everything’s magic…”
-Angels & Airwaves “Everything’s Magic”
