5 Minutes to Deep Peace on Thursday 9/13

You will be entertained at the very least and enlightenment is an option.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310

Thursday, 9/13, there is a teleconference call where you can learn more about this. There will be sample meditations and a chance at a free gift worth $400.

http://advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?Clk=2095310 

Trust me. You want to try this. The IAM Meditations are the product of the fertile mind of Steven Sashen who is also responsible for much of the Shampoo Method we talk about here every day.

It’s completely safe. I’d trust this guy with my life.

This feeling, this is what we have all been looking for our whole lives. It’s like coming home.

Love, Ann  

Jen Lancaster? She Rocks.

I am so totally getting into this book by Jen Lancaster: Bright Lights, Big Ass.

http://www.jennsylvania.com/

I tried a part time job at my favorite major bookseller, Borders. I was hoping to garner enough to pay rent on a part time, later hours job, so that I could entertain myself writing this blog in the mornings, and eventually, the book of Ann’s Tale.  I twisted my ankle at Paul’s son’s graduation back on Memory Day, and reluctantly took my leave of the 8 hour shifts of standing. Well, I don’t miss the standing part, but I do miss working with book people and getting paid to tell people what to read all day. That was awesome.

Did you know the whole store is your personal library if you work for them? Ooo la la! And you can check out the publisher’s advance copies of beaucoups of fabulous new books. Man, oh man. Book Worm Heaven!

So, our trainer, Reba, she told us one day we could take any book we liked from a stack of these promo copies. She said she personally recommended this Jen Lancaster book, Bright Eyes, Big Ass. So, I went for it.

And Jen? Jen can write like a Valley Girl Erma Bombeck.

Oh. My. God.

Like that.

You totally know what her voice inflection would be like if she was sitting there sipping coffee with you while you laugh your ass off at her book. I mean uproariously. If I weren’t so unselfconscious and exhibitionistic I would not read this in public! I laugh at this book like there is no tomorrow.

I am kinda known for my laugh anyway. I really let myself go when I laugh (or cry).

I’ve already found myself at the Braying Donkey, a new coffee shop,  with a girl who refuses to speak to me because I once moved in – as a roommate – with one of her exes she broke up with 2 years before that!1 Well, I was reading Jen Lancaster and looked up to spy Becky just sitting there, turned in her chair so her back was to me, so she could, like, pretend she didn’t know I was there. But then I’m laughing to beat the band at this Jen Lancaster book. There’s no way on Earth that everyone didn’t know I was there. People passing by on the street looked in to see what was so damned funny.

Honestly, when I first looked at the book, I thought there was no way I was going to like it. Why? It wasn’t science fiction. It wasn’t a mystery. And it mentions current events and celebrities. 2

But I? I heart Jen Lancaster.

My trainer used that one, too. Pretty clear what it means. Who knew that ancient bumper sticker would become a colloquialism?

Jen writes these cute little footnotes to her stories, too. 3

She spices up the book with little emails she writes to her girlfriends about her day. I won’t try that one here because I don’t know how to put it in a text box and make it look right.

She reads like your favorite gossipy neighbor next door. And it’s amazing how hilarious that can be . . . and how hopeful.

So, look her up if you need a laugh, and sometimes I just really, really do. It could relieve your depression.

Jen Lancaster, the next Erma Bombeck.

http://www.jennsylvania.com/

Besides, I like anyone who hates Halloween as much as I do!

Love, Ann

1 – I tried to call her about it and she never returned my phone calls. I figured he was being a better friend than she was, so I packed my bags and moved in, trading cooking for rent. Our rooms were on opposite sides of a living room in a remodeled high school and I swear I never touched him.

2. I don’t even watch TV and very few movies.

3. Like this, but she knows how to superscript her footnotes and I haven’t figured that out on WordPress.

Shampoo Series – Inner Health

Health

I have learned that most health issues – physical, mental and emotional  – have to do with using our body as a toxic dump for things that were never meant to go in our mouths (or our minds.)

This is rooted in lack of spiritual trust, relaxation and peace.

We think we have to do things to support and protect ourselves from the illusion of attacks from “outside.” There is no “outside.” All that stuff we think is attacking us, be it other people, viruses, pollution, disagreement, countries, ALL of it, is our own THINKING.

“Reality is kinder than your thinking.”  Byron Katie

We terrorize ourselves with lies and stories about the past and the future and this keeps us from experiencing a True Present.

The habitual tension and stress keeps our bodies in a nearly constant state of agitation and red alert both waking and sleeping, which tears down our mental, emotional and physical health over the years. Depending on our diet and exercise habits, this creates illness (aka dis-EASE) of various types.

Meditation reconnects us with a true present and inner peace.

Then, and only then, can we really begin to heal.

IAM meditations are still my favorites.

Starting back in the 80’s I have sporadically done cleanses, mostly Arise & Shine – www.ariseandshine.com. If you like to read, I would highly recommend Dr. Richard Anderson’s book, Cleanse and Purify Thyself. Basically, we need to clean out the toxic dump that we’ve poured coffee, white sugar, white flour, cooked foods and other unnatural substances into all of these years. First, remove the toxins, then support it by not doing that anymore.

We use herbs, lots of good clean water, whole foods in their natural state, etc. to support that health.

We do yoga, exercise, sex and breathwork to bring our bodies into better physical balance.

We talk with others – counselors, friends, and support groups (like the 12 Step groups, and group counseling, seminars and workshops) to return to mental/emotional health.

We question our thoughts with The Work of Byron Katie, Quantum Wealth, Sedona Method and other paths to clarity.

And we continue to meditate and stay connected to our inner wisdom to know specifically which of these to do and when. We make no decisions for ourselves. We allow Guidance to arise from within.

Thus, when life’s seeming challenges arise – death of a loved one, divorce, a dis-ease, job issues, relationship questions – we go inside, find that inner peace in Wholeness, and we are guided in peace and truth.

I could say much more about the details of which healing modalities I have found valuable through the years, but I think the framework is enough for now.

I ran this much of the article by my friend in London and he reminded me of somthing very important:

It is just as stressful to make “health” a rule or a requirement.

If we try to use external “rules” instead of inner guidance then those external, stressful, imposed ideas or concepts about how things “should be” can be just as counterproductive as junk food.

Our Guidance may be to eat the chocolate chip cookie.

Love, Ann

“Health is a result of relinquishing attack thoughts.”

                          –  A Course in Miracles

Shampoo Series – For Things to Be Perfect, Something Has to Go Wrong

I stopped for coffee this morning after a night of Cricket – not the sport, though he is definitely a sport!

Everyone needs someone they can call and say, “Hey Baby, wanna play?” and have them 9 times out of 10 say “yes,” and welcome you in. He is the epitome of the Heinlein quote, “What the world needs is more loving: sweaty, friendly, unashamed.” In fact, Cricket has read most of Heinlein. He plays very well with others and shares his toys. His toys share him, too. (Thank you!) Usually, I drop my clothes at the door and we head for the shower before we get dirty. 

Okay, so, anyways, I was telling a fellow at the coffee shop this morning, who said I looked familiar (yes, this happens a lot), and struck up a long conversation with me, that perfect isn’t quite what we think it is.

I use the yin yang symbol to demonstrate. You know the one. It’s actually 3 dimensional. Kind of 2 teardrop shapes intertwined. The tail of each teardrop penetrates the head of the other.

His reply was excellent and quotable. I can’t find it in a Google search or on Wikipedia yet, but he says that Navajo weavers leave one end of the rug open because for things to be perfect, one thing has to go wrong. I got chills when he said that.

After I wrote this, Joy sent me a couple of links to some possible back up for this idea.

From the foreward of a book on Navajo rugs:

http://www.nmai.si.edu/subpage.cfm?subpage=shop&second=books&third=Woven

“… Harry Walters uses it: “To make something that is perfect means there is no more room for improvement. . . . If a weaver weaves a perfect rug, . . . she makes a little mistake on purpose—an imperfection. Often we see a little line, which the Navajo call a spirit line, that extends to the edge of a rug through the border. This line is added by the weaver so the rug will not be perfect.” This wonderful attitude toward human acts of creation, so antithetical to typical Western notions, is not only characteristic of, but crucial to, the way Native people think about what we call “art.” As beautiful and masterful as are the Navajo textiles you will see and read about in Woven by the Grandmothers, it is not so much the works themselves that are significant, but rather the process that led to their creation. In the Native universe, the object has always been a secondary consideration to the primacy of the ritual process itself.”

It makes total sense.

Here is another reference in a knitting article on the Grace Cathedral web site. Grace Cathedral is home to Reverend Lauren Artress, who has revitalized the practice of walking labyrinths, one of my favorite spiritual practices. But this is about knitting and makes mention of the Navajo spirit line and Persian carpets:

Back to the perfection idea of approaching a craft…You spent some time on a Navajo reservation and one of the things you observed with the Navajo women weaving is that they would intentionally weave an imperfection into the cloth called the “spirit path.”

Yes. [Navajo women] weave a line that doesn’t belong in the design. It’s called a “spirit path” because on that line, the spirit of the weaver can travel out the blanket so that [she] can go on to weave more. It’s a very common thing. In Pueblo pottery, [the artisans] won’t make a line that completely encircles the pot because it’s thought that anything too perfect will trap the spirit. The pots are made, especially the ceremonial pots, to hold spirit. It’s the empty part of them. It’s the most useful part. And so it’s thought that if you trap the spirit inside with a completely encircled line, the spirit will break the pot trying to get out.

Is the intentional imperfection also an attempt to not rival the gods with the creation of a perfect object?

I’ve heard that more in terms of the Persian carpets. The rug makers would weave an imperfection into the carpet because only Allah is perfect.”
 

I think that yes, Allah or God, is perfect.

What we sometimes have trouble reconciling is the fact that All That Is is God and that means everything is perfect, including the things we judge to be imperfect!

I have definitely had some things seem to go “wrong” and then turn out perfect.

Somehow, this wisdom from the rug felt like exactly what I needed to hear.

I don’t know why, specifically, but I have a sense of it. Like, I have some days where it feels like nothing is going quite right, and then others where I can’t believe what a lucky girl I am! That’s today. I admit I’m having trouble sitting down, and I’m a bit sore in all the right places, but God, I’m a lucky girl!

I also have plans for a phenomenal weekend, and hope to meet two or three new people for various parties and chanting and Beltane activities, not to mention my regular Church of Brunch.

So, what’s the one thing that went wrong so that things could be perfect?

Well, I’m not sure yet, but it appears I may have lost a friend I never had.

Sometimes my rhythms and another’s just don’t match up. We seem to want the same things, conversation is stimulating, then we try to get together, hang out, do things, and at some point, it gets skrunchy and nothing quite works. Gears grind and tailpipes backfire.

Maybe the vehicle of our friendship just needs a tune-up. I don’t know. But something is going on and the flow isn’t quite flowing. We’ve hit some rocks and rapids and it’s taking some skill to navigate the rapids.

So, I essentially blew up, let off steam in an email and called Cricket because he was just what I needed. God bless him. It was an amazing night. I hadn’t seen him in weeks and weeks, and on top of that I’ve been celibate for 2 months, and you know how good that can be for guaranteeing someone is happy to see you when you return.

I’d give my life, literally everything I am and everything I have, for an ongoing intimate loving relationship with a man who wants me, wants to share my heart and my soul, who can be all that I’ve been blogging about lately, whom I can serve and nurture and adore for possibly the rest of my life.

In the meantime, thank God for friends!

Love, Ann

“This is how God is showing up.”

                          – Steven Sashen

One Woman’s Beltane

“All women are she,”
Mykonos once told me.

“Treat each woman as the Goddess,
because she is.

Women are built to reveal openness –
they are nature’s mechanism of surrender –
and they wait for a man they could trust
with their utterly surrendered heart.

Few women ever meet such a man,
so most women suffer terribly, longing their entire lives.”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

Some of yesterday’s quotes, being from David Deida’s Wild Nights, were from the masculine perspective. You know, I appreciate what Deida says to men and I want any man that I’m involved with to know those experiences from the inside, and understand what it is to pierce and penetrate my heart (not just my pussy).

Today I want to think about this from my feminine perspective, though. For that Deida wrote Dear Lover and his books for both genders include some great ideas, as well.

From what I read, from a man’s perspective, the fear is of being engulfed, swallowed or smothered by a woman. But from a women’s perspective, my fear is of being pierced, penetrated, or wounded by a man.

Very biologically correct, hmm?

Both genders fear surrender to God, letting go, dying into God’s bliss, being lived and breathed by Spirit.

Deida refers to the “Him shaped space” that most feminine women have.

I know exactly what he is talking about.

I do long to be filled. There is space for a man inside me and I want that.

My roommate is surprised when I fold her sheets and wash blankets  for her, put away dishes and boils water for her tea for her before she wakes up. I explained to her that my nurturing energy has to go somewhere and until He comes along, she is elected recipient of some of that.

It feels hard to hold that space open, not try to fill it with whoever and whatever shows up next.

Argue for your limitations, and sure enough, they’re yours.

– Richard Bach, Illusions

Naturally, I have opportunities to do that and I long to be filled.

Sometimes that is the healthy, kind thing to do for myself. It seems very stressful to me to wait, to hold that emptiness. Well, so it seems. Chances are good that it is my thoughts about holding that space that are actually the stressful part. I’m looking for those, checking them when I find them (often in my blog writing, thanks guys) and finding that Whole Place beyond peace/stress, right/wrong, empty/full as much as I can.

That’s the same temptation, for me, to surrender to Swami Vishwananda. I imagine that he can fill that space fairly well as a spiritual partner, without sex, without a traditional relationship. I was trying to explain that yesterday to Taylor. Taylor has no experience with the California type spiritual path of gurus, chanting, meditation, etc. although he’s lived here all his life. It’s a foreign world to him.

At the same time, I can feel his search. Taylor ran across me, so I figure he must be open to hearing some of this. Every man I meet seems to be. I talk with them, send them to the blog, to web sites, books, whatever comes up. Some of them hang around to become friends. Some don’t.

I’ve been doing Steven’s Goal-Free Goal Setting meditation nearly every day for a month now. I think I missed one day. And for nearly 30 days, the Goal is the same, maybe a slightly different aspect of it, but it’s the same.

About 4 or 5 times in each meditation, the instructions say, “Now, check and see if you still want that goal. Maybe yes, maybe no. Either way. See how wanting is different now.”

I do. And it is.

Yes, I still want to be married to a man who can fuck me straight to God.

With or without sex, by the way.

Yes, I can do that myself. Can and do.

And when I check, I still want a man to penetrate me, take me, teach with me, talk with me, sing with me, make love with me. Make love in our home, in our community, in our world, through opening to each other, through teaching, writing, singing, traveling.

I started to write that the picture gets clearer every day. At the same time it gets more open and more vague. There’s more space, too. Does that make sense? Can you feel what that would mean? (If not, try Goal-Goal Setting for 30 days and I’m pretty sure you’ll have some kind of similar experience. It’s one of the IAM meditations, the last one, because it includes several others.)

I’ll be teaching Goal-Free Goal Setting to a class in a government office in a couple of weeks. I am looking forward to that and I’d love to do more of it.

I just keep doing what I do, being who I am, and in the process I am bound to meet a man who’s doing some of the same stuff and looking for a woman to play with him.

I want to say that I have a little trouble with where Deida’s writing seems to come from. He talks about yearning, which is wanting, which is stressful. It puts me in a pretty nasty place, very masculine, going out to hunt for what I want. When I don’t find it, I feel stressed, angry, tense. 

That isn’t the clarity I’ve learned from IAM meditations and Quantum . . . well, Steven teaches Quantum Wealth, but I tend to take Quantum Relationships by my own personal focus during the class.  

The last few days I’ve had a very clear sense that this man is already inside me.

Literally.

Think about it.

My definition of God is “the whole that is greater than the sum of the parts.” It is like Matthew Fox’s panentheism – God in all things. Or Steven Sashen’s “All That Is.” (The title of one of his best IAM meditations.)

If I am part of that Whole, and what else is there?

By definition, that’s All There Is.

So, He is part of that, too, and we are already part of each other. All that remains is to look into each other’s eyes and find what we already know.

Well, that’s my Beltane fire. I think it’s time to have some chocolate coffee.

Love, Ann

“Look with your understanding.
Find out what you already know.
And you’ll see the way to fly.”

– Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Shampoo Series – Nothing Tastes Good

I’m trying to eat only what I want and only what tastes good, but nothing is tasting good.

Tamari almonds have a slightly rancid taste. My Braeburn apple is mealy. The Earl Grey tea – the maple syrup in it, really – has that bitter sugar aftertaste and the caffeine will send me to the bathroom all day.

None of that is what I want, but the rich purple tea cup  is delicious to look at and the warmth on my hands is pulling me inward. I cleared papers off the desk to put it where I could glance at it once in a while.

This has been going on for a while.

I just don’t know what to eat.

Not surprising. For lots of reasons.

It’s parallel to why I’m on my 32nd day of complete sexual abstinence (self and other).

Sex didn’t feel good.

It felt tense and worried, sometimes hurried.

That’s why I’m abstaining from self-pleasuring as well as sex with others. I got bored with what was often just a little relief that only left me very, very hungry.

It’s been a joke for a while:

What does Ann want after you give her orgasms? More orgasms.

Sure, I know how to relax and have some really blissful far-out mind-blowing see-God orgasms.

But I wasn’t taking the time or paying the attention to doing that. Even wanting that was stressful.

So if I don’t know what I want, I’ll just want nothing for a while.

I get hungry or I get horny. 

I relax the wanting contraction or repair an opposite  or inquire about my thinking. I can notice whether I’m eating something or thinking about sex and orgasms with myself or someone else because I want Safety, Control or Approval.

Maybe I eat something and it doesn’t taste good. Or maybe it does. Once in a while it does.

It’s just kind of a process. The Buddhists might call it mindfulness.

Steven tells a story, I think it’s in the All That Is IAM Meditation, about a time when he was at a conference eating cafeteria food. They had an all-you-can-eat thing set up. He was just blissing out on how good everything tasted.

Then he heard someone complaining about how bad the food was. He checked his food again. It was pretty bad, actually.

Rather than buying into that “tastes bad” story, he says he chose to just stick with his story about how good everything was.

Hmm, now there’s an idea.

On the other hand, I could definitely stand to drop a few pounds. And waiting for a suitable mate is definitely on my agenda.

Maybe I’ll just stick with the story about how, so far, nothing tastes good. Maybe that contrast will help me notice when it does taste good?

I don’t know, but I’m going to play with this some more.

Do you have any suggestions?

Love, Ann

Shampoo Series – God Has No Bitter Aftertaste

One of the things I am noticing while I fast from food and sex is that the sweetness I’m experiencing right now has no bitter aftertaste.

I think “I want sex” or “I want chocolate,” but really, most of the time, those both have a bitter aftertaste. No, of course not always, but often.

I did Steven’s Goal-Free Goal Setting Meditation this morning. That is the final IAM Meditation. It’s the last one because it incorporates several of the others and assumes you’ve done those first and know how.

Yes, the following page is a sales page, but I’m not asking you to buy anything, just showing you where to find it if you want it.

Instant Advanced Meditation – Free Sample
http://www.advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?af=570391

Anyway, after I did the meditation I had the thought that when I go after something that isn’t really meeting the hunger it was meant to fill, like sugar, chocolate, coffee, and sex without love & connection, there is definitely a bitter aftertaste.

If I ran it through The Work of Byron Katie it would go something like:

I want sex/chocolate.

Is it true? No. Absolutely? No.

(By the way, it’s fine if your answer is Yes. Mine just isn’t. There are no right or wrong answers.)

How do I react when I believe I want sex/chocolate?

I eat it.  (Go ahead, snicker, I did.)

I indulge in whatever form of sex or chocolate is available within my limits. I feel guilty. I stress over whether to have it or do it or not. I’m tense. I am not myself. I’m hard to be around. You can continue your own list.

Who would I be without this thought, I want sex/chocolate?

Myself. Peaceful. Noticing the bliss inside me. High. Very high. Like God.

And then I notice that this has no bitter aftertaste. I ate a bit of chocolate yesterday and after I swallowed, the bitterness of the sugar really bothered me, same with the maple syrup in my tea. It was fine while it was in my mouth, but then, yuck. That nearly kept me from having tea with maple syrup today, but no, not quite.

So, I can Zoom In on the Edges of the feeling of the sugar on my tongue or the Edge of the bitterness it left on my tongue. (Doing that now, since I just drank some vanilla tea.)

It’s funny. With the Zooming In meditations, the farther in I go, the less I can find the sensation anymore, or my word for it changes, but usually, there is just Space. I guess that makes sense. I’ve heard that there is far more Space than Matter making up what we call the world.

I like that thought – more Space than Matter.

Do you see the metaphor? Just in case, I’ll spell it out:

It doesn’t matter much. There is plenty of space.

Oh God, right now the radio is playing Seven Bridges Road by The Eagles. Jesus, I love the harmonies in that. Definitely lots of space, no bitter aftertaste.

Love, Ann

“Seven Bridges Road”

There are stars
In the Southern sky
Southward as you go
There is moonlight
And moss in the trees
Down the Seven Bridges Road

Now I have loved you like a baby
Like some lonesome child
And I have loved you in a tame way
And I have loved you wild

Sometimes there’s a part of me
Has to turn from here and go
Running like a child from these warm stars
Down the Seven Bridges Road

There are stars in the Southern sky
And if ever you decide
You should go
There is a taste of time sweetened honey
Down the Seven Bridges Road

             – The Eagles

Marriage, Part Deux – The Angry Years

That is truly how I think of this time. From about 1985 when Marie and I broke up until 1995 when I divorced Marvin, I was pissed. That just about sums it up.

It went like this:

I took a semester of cooking school while I was with Marie. It just so happened that my teacher was a lesbian. I took to staying after school and chatting with her. I told her about my arguments with Marie, her drinking, and eventually about how she had punched a hole in the bedroom wall. That did it.

My teacher (I can’t recall her name just now) recommended a counseling center that was staffed by gays for gays in the predominantly gay part of town. Good move. I went. I really needed to talk to someone and it is true that my teacher wasn’t really the appropriate person for that. My counselor was Mary.

Now Mary happened to have just started going to some rebirthing breathwork groups and she suggested I might process some of what was going on there. Mind you, this is the first counseling I ever had. So, for 10 years I had been stifling the feelings, stories and thoughts from my childhood with drugs and alcohol and coffee.

After my first group breathwork session I didn’t think anything much had happened. Oh, I felt a little lighter, a little more relaxed, but we’d been lying on the floor just breathing for over an hour. After the second group session, I felt much the same. Relaxed, peaceful. But I couldn’t say anything much about what had happened and I didn’t know whether anything had been let go of or “processed.” Still, I liked the group and the discussions. And they were all into these cool quotes from something called A Course in Miracles.

But later that week, I did notice something. It was subtle.

The way I describe it is that sometimes when I went to turn a mental corner where there used to be a wall now there was open space. I gave up drugs, alcohol and coffee then and there. I no longer needed them. I could get higher breathing.

You’d have to experience it to know what I mean and if you have, there is no mistaking it. Some tension, some false ideas, something was different. So, I spent a lot of time doing breathwork. I took the training to learn to facilitate others. I did my 10 sessions with a woman and 10 sessions with a man, which they were recommending to process our parental trauma. They were teaching something called the “Five Biggies,” or 5 things we need to process and get over to be happy. I wouldn’t describe it that way now, but the 5 were: Birth Trauma, Parental Disapproval Syndrome, Past Lives, Unconscious Death Urge, and Specific Negatives (your own individual take on things).

I trained with Phil Laut and we learned the Vivation style which teaches the 5 Elements of Vivation. They describe what you actually do during the breathing and the process is the same. Just the explanation is more specific. The 5 Elements are: Complete Relaxation, Circular Breathing, Awareness in Detail, Integration into Ecstacy and Do What You Do – Everything Works. That last is the most important, really.  🙂 

From about 1985 until 1989 I did not live with anyone else. I intended to get over myself and my “traumas,” before I inflicted myself on another person again. When asked if I wanted children, my reply was, “You’ve got to be kidding. I’m still raising me!”

Yes, I dated. I was sort of polyamorous, but usually I had a primary lover. Brett was a constant during that time, much as Antonio was through high school and college. Both were men I had strong sexual connection with, but we dated and had sex with others. At that time I didn’t have my current agreement for “full, up front, in advance disclosure” before sex with a new partner. I was still figuring things out. I will always still be figuring things out, but I eventually learned that I tend to think I’ve been hurt when my lover doesn’t tell me in advance that there’s someone else. Go figure.

Anyway, back to Brother Brett. God, he was good. He also had incest in his history. In his case, his father orchestrated family orgies involving him, his sister and his mother. It was Brett who told me that he felt incest was fine, that it was the secrecy that was the real problem. I learned a lot from him. I had my first See-God orgasm during intercourse with him. I was in spiritual ecstacy. He got up to go to the bathroom, and just said, “Enjoy it.” *sigh*

I had a terrible crush on D’Artagnan back then. No, that’s not the name his mother gave him. But he and a girl I’ll call Porthos and I (Aramis) called ourselves the “Three Musketeers” because we were always doing things together. We meditated, cooked meals together, went to movies, and talked about life, the universe and everything. I got to be Aramis because I liked the cologne back then. When I stopped dating men for 3 years, I had to wear it myself.  

I met D’Artagnan and Marvin on the same night. I was living in a small college town north of the city where I had been since moving there to marry Matthew. My mother lived there and I was only about 30 miles from my grandmother and my father and brothers who still lived in Johnson City where we grew up.

Anyway, I heard about some meditation classes. 7 pm every night at an ashram. The buildings were neat old homes that had been remodeled to give them Asian styled  brightly painted awnings and a fish pond and rock garden. There were two buildings. One had about 4 bedrooms upstairs with a shared kitchen, dining room and sitting room downstairs in the back, and the meditation hall in the front. The other was a new building with 2 apartments on the ground floor. The mediation teacher, Ra, lived in one of them. Two more apartments were on the second floor. Then there was the stupa apartment on the top. We called it that because there was literally a Tibetan style stupa above the building. The bed was a pedestal type bed, built in.

After my first Rudra meditation class, Marvin and D’Artagnan invited me to stay for dinner. Ooo boy! I found D’Artagnan really hot. Marvin was cute, too. I would not have kicked either of them out of bed. We ate. I flirted. We shared stories until late, lounging in the sitting room of the meditation building. At some point, Marvin told me that his girlfriend had just broken up with him, and would I like to stay the night? He wanted to “work with female energy.” He was careful to explain that he was not asking me for sex. He wasn’t opposed, but that was not the main thing.

Well, you know me. Sex happens.

Oddly, the next day Marvin called and told me that he was terribly sorry, he didn’t mean to be leading me on, but his girlfriend had decided to try again and work it out. That was fine with me. I wasn’t hooked yet. It was easy to let him do that. Besides, I didn’t know it then, but I was going to be busy with my crush on D’Artagnan and sleeping with Bruce and several others for the next 5 years. At the same time, Marvin’s girlfriend continued to leave him every 6 months for 5 years and they’d get back together every time.

I continued in my counseling sessions, doing rebirthing breathwork regularly. It was during that time that I apprenticed to an American Indian teacher, Morning Star, and learned to run sweat lodges and pray with a pipe. I also did my NLP, Neurolinguistic Programming certification then. Marvin and I stayed in touch. I continued doing Rudra meditation. I also got what are called Alphabiotic alignments given by a chiropractor who basically did just one hard lift as his only adjusting move. At some point, I transitioned from that into receiving Network Chiropractic adjustments. Oh, and 12 Step groups, starting with Co-Dependents Anonymous, then Incest Survivors Anonymous. Eventually, I moved into the meditation ashram. I was really trying hard to figure out why my relationships had not worked.

What does all of this have to do with marriage?

Well, I was trying desperately to “fix” myself with all of these “self-improvement” techniques.

Was it working?

Well, things were different. I was learning a lot about myself. But no, not different enough for me, so I kept trying. I really wanted to find a good and happy relationship. What was wrong with me that I couldn’t? I still did not know.

In late June of 1985 I was at Whole Foods with D’Artagnan. We ran into Marvin shopping.

Time stood still.

I do not know what happened exactly, but it was much like that conversation with Matthew at the party. I know there were people around us, but to me, we were the only people in the store. Marvin asked if I was doing anything for 4th of July. I said no. He invited me to go see the fireworks from the field at the college and I accepted. He told me he’d be out of town over the weekend, but he’d call when he got back.

He did.

He told me he had gone to Arizona, slept on Karey’s couch and talked about their relationship. He was trying to be sure it was really over. It was.

By then, he had decided not to have sex outside of a committed relationship. So, oddly, even though we had done it before, intercourse was not an option that night. He had been taking some relationship seminars of his own. Turns out he had a 3 page list of what he was looking for. Hmm, so did I.

He invited me to come over again the next weekend to compare our lists.

In the meantime, he sent me flowers at work the next morning. The arrangement was beautiful. Marvin has this neat thing he does with artists. He tells them how much he wants to spend. He points to pieces they have already done that he likes and tells them to make something for him. Last I heard he was doing it with expensive artsy knives.

Well, that’s how my flowers were done. He described himself. He described me. He probably said something about our evening. And the florist was left to create something that expressed that. I may still have a picture of that arrangement. It had some very tall stalks of flowers (Marvin is 6’3″), then a large orchid at the base and it came in a simple black cylindrical vase.

That weekend when we met to compare our lists we checked off nearly every item on both of our lists. Unfortunately, he was allergic to cats. One of the few compromises I recall was that I had to give away my precious cats. My sister responded by making me a lovely pink stuffed cat that I have to this day in my bedroom. Bless her. She knew I loved those cats and she couldn’t imagine me without them. But I thought I had found the man of my dreams.

In one sense, I had.

Marianne Williamson, in A Return to Love talks about how the press loved to cite her “failed relationships” as evidence that her teaching about A Course in Miracles  and love just couldn’t be true. Her reply is that only the love is real. When we seem to end a relationship on the day-to-day physical level, what is left is the love. That never goes away. I agree with her. I have yet to fall “out” of love. Ever. I have sometimes lost my sexual desire for someone. And even that can poke its head up at times long after we are no longer partners.

I felt so guided to be with Marvin.

We did our ceremony at home 11 days after that first date with him, me and God in attendance. We made our own vows and we made love in front of the altar. Later we did common law papers.

Marvin also is a complete romantic. He was always very attentive. He listened. We meditated. We  . . .  started arguing.

Looking back, I tend to say that he stayed with me through the worst years of my healing of incest. I have blogged about this before, but I cannot say it often enough. Marvin was a pillar of strength. Yes, he refused to meet my father. He said he would kill him. I couldn’t allow that. I had just about forgiven him and I just wanted healing.

I talked about all of this in individual therapy, in group therapy, in 12 Step groups, to my NLP teacher, in my breathwork sessions, to my American Indian teacher. Frankly, with anyone who would listen. I had no idea what to do. I did not know what went wrong. Neither did he.

The seeds of the break up were in our first week of marriage.

Marvin said to me, “Well, I hope you’re caught up on conversation with me because I pretty much am. Don’t expect me to talk a lot.” Oh dear. Talking is one of my favorite passtimes. It mostly wore Marvin out. He doesn’t read books either. He says it’s because he can’t stop till he finishes it in one sitting. Oh dear. And me so much a word person.

Nowadays, I know about Love Languages. My primary love language is words! Marvin’s is touch, just like nearly every man I’ve ever been serious with. Oops. Now, I suppose that if you know that, you can give your partner what they are looking for and maybe everything will be fine. But what a joy when you and your partner both want and give the same thing! It does make it easier.

Around the 3 year mark, I made a decision. I knew I wanted to leave, but all of my serious relationships had ended right about then. I wanted to know what was beyond that 3 year seeming wall or barrier. So, I stuck it out, kept up with my counseling and “self-improvement” and stayed for 4 more years.

One day, I was on the chiropractic table in the office of Dr. Lance Wright, www.flowwith.com, and I suddenly realized I could do no more. I sat up, looked at Lance and said, “I have to get a divorce.” He said, “I know.”

That would not be so remarkable except that Lance almost never expresses an opinion of any sort. He lets his practice members work it out for themselves. I appreciated his validation, though. I had given everything I had. I had done everything I knew how to do. 

I went home and told Marvin I wanted a divorce.

His first words were, “I’ve been trying to think of a way to get you to leave.”

I was relieved. So was he.

I lived with him 6 more months while I applied to finish my undergraduate degree and found an apartment. As we were no longer in a committed relationship, he stopped having intercourse with me, but we did nearly everything else. We ended as friends. It was mutual. No one cheated on anyone. Marvin and I are in touch to this day, as you know if you’ve read some of my other blogs. He still does and says the sweetest things. We love each other dearly. We simply could not live together.

Why? I still didn’t know.

Coffee & Healing

I’m not saying to drink or not drink coffee.

Some thoughts on coffee:

Coffee hypes us up and re-enacts the feeling of fear and anxiety we are used to . . .

we feel we need this after we have exhausted ourselves to the point of not being able to keep it up anymore . . .

(exhausted ourselves by avoiding the feelings of fear, anxiety, etc. that come up when we start to face them like the monsters in the closets of our dreams/the past)

instead of allowing ourselves to collapse into exhaustion and begin to feel and heal.

We start where we are.

Lovingly, Ann

I Have Everything I Ever Need

Here’s an example of gratitude in action or in awareness:

All week I been craving for a fudge brownie from BreadPlay, my favorite bakery. On Friday, I tried one at Noodles & Co, and it was dry and crunchy. It almost made it worse.

I also want a lover. If not someone to share the rest of my life, at least someone to hold once in a while now. I’m monogamous. I’ve discovered some things about myself over the years. One is that I can have “Ex Sex” and not get totally entangled with expectations that this is “The One.” But if I get involved with someone new, well, it’s usually different. I get all starry-eyed and can’t see clearly for a while. We all know that feeling, right? I’d rather wait a while before having sex with someone new when I meet someone with good husband potential.

Oh, and Friday afternoon, my friend, Erica, says she’d call me Saturday morning around 10 and we’d go have coffee. It’s supposed to be a sunny weekend with highs in the 60’s.

Also on Friday, one of my fellow employees reminded me that gratitude and love create some really beautiful water crystals and so I taped the words to my water glass just to see.

So, here’s what Reality brought me:

I got up early Saturday morning, as usual, about 6:30 am. By 7:30 I had henna in my hair and was on my way to a nice new color, which also is a fabulous conditioner. Around 10:30 I’m noticing that this is a *really* good batch of henna, so I want to leave it on longer and I do. Erica has not called.

Around 11:30, I’ve rinsed the henna powder out of my hair and I’m on AIM, and lo and behold, there is Erica. I gave her about half an hour to kind of wake up and check her mail before I IM’d, “Hey, looks like you’re awake.” We IM’d for a while. She didn’t mention coming by for coffee at all, and by now her boyfriend was probably awake and she’d be busy with him the rest of the day, anyway.

So, me, carless again (one of the biggest blessings of my life. Keep reading and you’ll get a sense of that. I’ve driven 5 people’s cars in the past year, mostly for free!) and I want to go out. Not so much for the coffee, but I’m feeling stir crazy and I want to get O – U – T. So, I head out on foot, with my thumb in the air. I am immediately picked up by a man in a minivan with his daughter heading to Main St. The coffee shop I want to go to is straight down Main about … well, I didn’t know how far at the time, but later I found it’s 2.4 miles. So, I got a ride for 5 miles, walked 2.4 in the gorgeous day, got my exercise, and arrived at The Daily Grind around 3 pm. Not too shabby for a carless person, hmm?

I hang out for about an hour and I’ve got this nagging thought to call my friend, Audrey, so I do. She’s out hiking with a friend and they’ll be done about 4, and yes, she’d love to come up and see me (and give me a ride home). So, Audrey shows up around 4:30. We hang out for an hour or so and decide to go have Mexican food. Just as we are served our dinner, Stefan calls. I ask if he’d like to come play with Audrey and me. He checks his intuition and says, “Yes, I’ll be there in an hour.” I ask if he’s hungry, he says “yes” and I order him some cheese enchiladas to go. Oh, and I tell him that if he wants to stay the night, I could use a ride into town in the morning to go to “church.” Some of my friends gather every Sunday morning for our church brunch. Wowza.

So. Audrey and I got home just a few minutes before Stefan arrived. I busied myself with unmaking the bed and putting out some of my favorite toys and arranging the pillows on the queen size bed to accommodate 3 people. Woo hoo. I told Audrey it was nice to be able to just get things ready for 2 friends who have enjoyed each other before and everyone knows what we want and what we like, and not have to pretend we’re doing something besides getting together for some fun sex with each other. It’s very comforting and comfortable.

About that, all I’ll say is “A good time was had by all.” Everyone pretty much got what they wanted. Audrey had to go home because she had earlier plans than we did and needed things from her place. Stefan stayed the night. I didn’t realize till the next morning that this was the first time I’d snuggled and slept with anyone in nearly a year! No wonder I wanted this so much!

Morning Ex Sex with Stefan, a man who knows my body as well as anyone on the planet (there are a handful who do), was just what the doctor ordered. I was floaty and high, but I was also teary. Part of it was just plain PMS hormonal tears. I seem to need to cry about *something,* anything right before my period. And Stefan and I were able to talk about some details of what we each need from this renewed arrangement and confirm the fact that neither of us sees us moving forward together for very long, that this is comfort sex and we are both looking for someone else, ultimately.

We have an understanding.

Stefan drops me off at the church brunch where the waitress brought my usual. It’s so cool that someone actually knows what I want and how I want it like that! She’s a dear, and I’m an ex-waitress, so I really value a good waitress!

After brunch, one of our group was heading to the health food store, 2 blocks from the coffee shop where I want to lie on the couch and read for a couple of hours. Cool. Ride handled. Thank you, Lord.

Stefan and Aubrey both called to say “thank you” for the fabulous evening. We chatted a few minutes each and I kept on with my reading in Celtic spirituality.

The Daily Grind just happens to have one more brownie left… it’s from BreadPlay! Synchronous brownie craving satisfaction!

When I got ready to leave, I walked up to the counter where John (who knows I like a little hot chocolate with my whipped cream) was talking with another customer. I asked if I could borrow the store’s computer to look up the bus schedule. The other customer pulls the bus schedule out of his pocket and tells me the nearest stop and the next bus home. How cool is that!?

I get to the bus and find out that on Sundays they don’t go very close to home and I’m going to have quite a walk to get all the way to my house. I chat with the bus driver for a few minutes about how close he can drop me to 5th and Main. I get off there, preparing to stick my thumb out and get a ride the next 2 miles home. I am immediately picked up by a nice older couple. Turns out the woman was on the bus! She saw me and heard me ask the driver how to get close to 5th and Main, and she and her husband live just 2 blocks from me there! So, they drop me almost at my door!

I’m hungry, so I finish off Stefan’s cheese enchiladas. This is doubly cool because last night at the restaurant I wanted a taco and an enchilada, but only ate a taco because otherwise it was too much food. But now, I get Stefan’s leftovers and get to have my taco and eat his enchiladas too!  🙂

I could not have planned a weekend that satisfying and stupendous. But I can stay open to it and accept what is offered to me. I am so satisfied. I’ve had my brownie, my lover(s), my hot chocolate, a ride to and from church brunch, the whole enchilada and a whole lotta love.

I have everything I need.