Shampoo Series – Intimacy

How do I say this?

I’m feeling really intimate with myself after 28 days of no orgasms and no sex.

Sure, I’d love to have someone to be intimate and deep with. I’ve often noticed the best way to . . . this may not make sense superficially . . . but the best way to have something is to have it.

That’s not as cryptic as it sounds.

First, wanting is always, always stressful.

Try wanting something and feeling peaceful about it. Seriously, try. There’s no way!

Wanting food is stressful. Wanting sex is stressful.

Wanting a relationship, wanting a job, all stressful.

This morning I listened to Steven’s Goal-Free Goal Setting with half my mind while IMing someone with the other half. I focused on a goal of relationship, sex, intimacy, vaguely, but the feelings were clear. Waves of peace with every step, every time I focused on the instructions.

Next, I was breathing in a hot bathtub and thinking about a song I like, “Come Through My Window” by Melissa Etheridge. I might see if I can write this insight into a parody if it doesn’t sound too forced, but that song was running through my mind.

I realized (made real) that monogamy, for me, closes the windows so that one man can come through the door.

Closing the door might be when I am only self-pleasuring and have no husband or sex partner.

Letting go of that I become permeable!

I felt like a bubble that was barely separate from All That Is.

I was laughing so hard my roommate, Tina, came to the door to see if I was okay. I assured her that I was more than okay and that I do that a lot. Sometimes I sob and sometimes I alternate between laughing and sobbing as thoughts, feelings and waves of energy move through me.

I was having a little conversation in my mind with Swami Vishwananda, too. I asked for help, and he was there, saying “You don’t need me.”

There was still surface tension. I still had and was aware of a body and tightness in my chest came and went as I breathed into it. I stayed there for a long, long while, then wrapped myself in towels and continued breathing in my bed.

That is the way to spend a Saturday morning!

I was considering Intimacy and the relationship between intimacy, conversation, sex and spiritual connection. They are so interwoven.

My preferences seem to rank this way:

1.  Spiritual Connection

How do I know when I feel this? Well, usually through conversation, touch or time together. It is most obvious to me when I’m with someone who holds paradox well. When someone understands that things are not good/bad, right/wrong, love/fear, but something that encompasses both. Try explaining that in a personals ad! Ha!

2. Conversation

Why is that next? Well, because it is foreplay… it truly does come first for me.

3.  Intimacy

I suspect that for me, spiritual connection & conversation are components of intimacy. At the same time, conversation and intimacy seem to be to be components of spiritual connection. Very interwoven here.

4.  Touch has to come last.

My being is a bit shocked by the realization. One reason is that I move so fast through the first 3 with some people, that touch can happen in … a few hours… with a few people, where the other 3 seem to be firmly in place supporting the touch I offer.

I have obviously overlooked the “time together” piece enough  not to be checking that when I meet someone who seems to be interested in a relationship. Something to be more aware of.

I realize these are close to the love languages. I definitely value gifts and acts of service. Those can demonstrate intimacy.

I was once totally thrilled when Cricket bought me a blender so I could make smoothies for him at 5:30 am before he went to work. Go figure. And he was phenomenal at fixing thingss – like the frayed cord on my Hitachi Magic Wand, bless his heart. Definitely value that stuff.

That’s what boys are for! Fixing isn’t in my skill set at all. I almost always need help.

Intimacy is showing up in another way for me right now. I have Pachelbel’s Canon in D at the end of my breathwork tape. I’ve heard that thing hundreds of times, hundreds! Somehow, this morning, listening, I heart subtleties in the violins… Christ… I even knew it was the violins… I never think of separate instruments much… and noticed a kind of dance they were doing in the piece. First, I was focusing on a harmony I don’t usually pay attention to, and then to notice the ebb and flow of the sound the way I did. I was totally blissed on that.

Must be the jazz.

Russ is going to get tired of being thanked for what I’m sure he perceives as being a selfish jerk. Somehow that was just what I needed. I hope his music, his life, become as intimate and blissful as mine have been lately.

Love, Ann

PS – My mother wrote today and asked me if I’d considered abstaining from talking about sex. I love that. I can find it. Sure, I can see value in that. I had one other person kinda tell me that back when I was working on these blogs last year. When it is the peaceful thing to do, I’m sure I will.  At the same time, I am not responsible for other people’s stress about it.  : )

Shampoo Series – Releasing and Receiving, Part 3

So far, I’ve only used The Work of Byron Katie in this series of blogs.

I mentioned several methods in the Introduction. Let’s talk about Releasing.

Releasing is perhaps the simplest Shampoo Method.

Credit goes to Steven Sashen, the Anti-Guru for showing me this one. It was a huge shift for me to realize there was a hmm… Wholeness… or Clarity… beyond the yes/no, heavy/light, tense/stressed dualities that I had been guiding my life by for about 15 years when I first met him.

Huge shift. It was like someone turned the light on.

Steven guides this Releasing in his Instant Advanced Meditations Series or IAM. Go here if you are interested in hearing him guide you through it. It is one of the Free Samples.

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

Or, just read on and follow these instructions.

So, here is a review of the feeling I’m talking about. Before I met Steven, I called it my yes/no feeling. I used to ask people math questions to help them find this feeling. Steven had a much better context that I adopted immediately.

Can you remember a time when you lied to someone you love?

We’ve all done it. I usually give two examples to people who try to lie and tell me they don’t lie.

Example One:  Didn’t you ever tell your mother you were going to the library, when actually you planned to meet your boyfriend? (I’m a little more graphic than that normally.) Remember a time like that when you lied. That works.

Examle Two: How many times (today) have you said, “Fine.” when someone asked you how you are, when that is not how you are feeling? I think this is the most common lie in the world, maybe.

So, now that you have an example, scan your body mostly your torso, and find a feeling of some kind. Not an emotion. Emotions (fear, anger, sadness, happiness, excitement) are interpretations of a bodily sensation or feeling. (When we get to Re-Pairing, I’ll show you how those interpretations are really One Feeling.)

Today we are after physical sensations only: tight, loose, tense, relaxed, heavy, light, contraction, expansion, are some that people may report. You may have something different or even a different word for the same thing. That’s fine. Use it.

Where do you feel it? Throat? Heart? Solar plexus? Stomach? Sex?

Great. Take note of that sensation. Get to know it. What sort of “flavor” does it have?

Now. Say anything to yourself or out loud.

Seriously, any belief, idea, judgment, thought… anything will do.

Examples: 

I want more money.

I want a relationship.

I am angry at my mother because she tells me what to do.

I am saddened by my father because he doesn’t understand me.

People should (fill in the blank… anything).

People shouldn’t (fill in the blank).

I should (you know what to do).

I shouldn’t (yep, same thing).

Start with just one. Say it. Take note of your feelings when you do.

Does that feeling in any way resemble the one you got when you checked in on that first example of lying to someone you love?

Usually, it does.

Do you know why?

You’re lying to someone you love: YOU.

So, what is Releasing?

Well, it’s your body, your feeling. Just notice the feeling you’re having and let it go. That’s right. Relax it.

Notice how much of it relaxes in the first try: 10% ? 50% ? 80% ? More?

Great. Keep doing it till it’s gone or nearly gone.

Another way to do this is to pick up some small object, like a pen. Hold it in your hand with your palm down. Notice how much effort and tension it takes to hold the pen? It’s like the tension it takes to lie to yourself. Release one and you release the other.

Remember to hold it with your palm down.

Ready? Release the pen, release the tension. Just drop it.

Then turn your hand, palm up, and Receive what wants to come into that space.

The one I mentioned in a previous blog is a very common one: wanting.

We want things all the time. Wanting is stressful. Having is not. Having is quite easy and relaxed. We Re-Pair the Universe with this pair sometimes, Wanting/Having, but right now, let’s focus on Releasing and Receiving.

Again, hold your hand closed, with some object in it (or not, either way works), find the feeling you get when you Want something. Scan your body.

Got it?

Great.

When you’re ready, just drop it. Let it go. Release.

Turn your hand palm up or in your mind notice the space where the feeling (tension, or whatever you found) is, and Receive what wants to come into that space.

Let me know what you find.

When I find myself Wanting something, wanting Russ, wanting money, wanting a lover, wanting a day off, wanting someone else to do something, any kind of wanting will do…

I Release.

I open and Receive what wants to come into that space.

Love, Ann

“In the past, I have lain in bed with you at night, looking at you, touching you but getting no response, wondering why you seemed so distant. I’m feeling good, I’m very attracted to you, but you don’t seem interested.

I’ve now come to understand that all day your body is being opened by my loving or closed by my lack of integrity, moment by moment. In fact, both of us bring the entire day’s tension or openness to bed with us. Our bodies remember the dreadful wreck or glorious art that our loving has been all day.

You and I are committed to loving each other as deeply as possible. We are both committed to practicing the ever-deepening art of love. However, our ongoing practice of love constantly fluctuates. The offering of our hearts together is deepened or shallowed by the choices we make moment by moment. I hope we can laugh together in our awful moments, learning through our mistakes, as we grow more skillful and spontaneously artful in our practice of loving.”

                                                               – David Deida, Dear Lover

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

Freedom and Marriage

Marvin and I found marriage freeing. We celebrated our marriage on Independence Day. We called it “independence from being single.” It was. We are both happy when partnered. He moved in with his new girlfriend within a year of our divorce 10 years ago. I’ve been single since then.

I’ve had many conversations with others about freedom. We all have self-talk about how we will lose our freedom in a relationship. We seem to believe that only men have these fears.

Huh. Isn’t that interesting?

I have a really high need for freedom myself.

It’s . . . probably . . . one of the reasons I haven’t married again yet.

What kind of freedom do I want or need?

Same as anybody. I just want to be free to follow my heart.

I might say I want to be free to “be myself.” That thought came up. As if I could be anybody else!

In truth, I’m always free to follow my heart and be myself.

That’s why I will only commit to doing the best I can. I cannot know where my inner knowing or my fears will lead me next. It’s impossible to say. I prefer to be honest, so when I don’t know, I say I don’t know.

I (and everyone else) have freedom. No matter what. We can’t lose it or give it up. It just isn’t possible.

I like to bring up Victor Frankl’s book, Man’s Search for Meaning, in this context. I’m told he discovered freedom in a concentration camp.

I’ll be honest. I’ve never been able to finish the book. I read it and picture it vividly. I put it down. I do the same thing with The Color Purple. Maybe someday if I can question the thoughts reading them brings up. But enough people have told me the same thing. I’m going to report that the man found internal freedom while in a concentration camp.

Well, if he can do that. What is stopping me?

“The worst that can happen is a thought,” Katie says.

Okay. So what am I thinking, what lies am I believing?

When I lie I feel tight and tense in my heart, solar plexus or throat. Most people report that same feeling.

Try it.

Can you remember a time when you lied to someone you loved?

What exactly did you feel and where?

I mean bodily sensations, not the interpretations we call emotions. Sensory specific feelings only, without the interpretations.

What do you experience?

Now. What thoughts do you have about freedom?

Do any of them bring up that same feeling (whatever you found)?

Do you know why?

You’re lying to someone you love: you.

Steven Sashen taught me that framework for these feelings that I had always thought of as yes/no. I have lived by those feelings since about 1987.

That’s both how I decided to marry Marvin and how I decided to leave. I just knew. So did he. We both agreed it was time to divorce exactly the way we agreed it was time to marry. We just knew. It was the next thing to do.  

One of the things Steven taught me is that there is something beyond this duality ping pong game we all play  with ourselves. There are ways to integrate these black and white thoughts and feeling. Then we come from a more whole and more peaceful place of clarity. (His IAM Meditation Re-Pairing the Universe is one of them. Actually, they all do this. See the link on the sidebar if you want to know more.)

That’s what I’m practicing in doing 100 days of sexual abstinence, shifting my food choices, and going within.

I’m questioning my beliefs about love, relationships, marriage, freedom, choice, being myself, whatever comes up.

I’m finding the most amazing lies. Things I tell myself so often that I don’t think to question them. Thoughts I am mortified to admit in public. Yes, I do get embarrassed – easily, really.

Like what?

Oh, you know . . .

I can’t have a relationship and be free.

I don’t want a husband to control me.

I want a husband to control me.

I can’t have what I want in a relationship.

There isn’t a man who’s the right match for me.

I’ll never get married again.

I will get married again.

Now mind you, I had to do The Work on another person to find these thoughts. Much easier to see in someone else! Every thought I have about another is really a thought about me.

I’m beginning to wonder why I’m still writing this blog. It all ends up in the same place.

I explore some way I’m lying or discovering a truth. The truth sets me free and I’m done. I’m clear. I know what is next.

IAM meditations, Quantum Wealth exercises, The Work of Byron Katie, breathwork, all of these are the fun, bliss-producing ways I . . . do whatever it is I’m doing.

“Meditation doesn’t cause enlightenment.

Enlightenment is an accident. 

Meditation does make us accident-prone.”

Do you see where I’m heading?

Marriage, freedom, wealth, love, or any goal we have is really an accident. We cannot cause it, predict it, or control it.

I often see myself best in what I’m projecting about another person. It becomes a daily practice when I am in a committed relationship. The challenge is to realize that it’s all about me. Yes, really. Everything I think about him is really about me.  

When I go within, meditate, find my inner peace and clarity, then I become . . . accident prone. 

And what does the radio choose to play now? A song I’ve threatened to have played at my next wedding, I Knew the Bride When She Used to Rock & Roll. 

I have to laugh.

God forbid I ever end up like that!

Do without my RDA of rock & roll?!!!

(read: freedom)

That’s not a pretty picture.

sigh 

I guess that’s why I’m still writing.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

Love, Ann

“Success is a side-effect of clarity.”

                            – Steven Sashen

Intuition and Guidance

A friend of mine named Tony in London wrote me this morning asking about something Steven said in one of the IAM teleconference calls.

Tony asked, “When Steven says “The universe supplies paint and wood and we create the signs.” Does he mean that we will simply interpret what appear to be “signs” according to our own perception?”

“Also,  as time has gone on since you first came across ACIM (A Course in Miracles,) how do you now feel about the idea that we feel deeply (usually unconsciously) guilty as we apparently separated from God?”

Yes, about “signs,” another way Steven says it is, “All signs are self-painted.” I liked that so much that I used it as a sig quote for a while.

I still look for and try to interpret “signs.” I love reading astrology, tarot, runes, etc.  I enjoy thinking a song or a movie “means” something. The mind looks for meaning and patterns. That’s just what it does.

The interesting thing is that while the seeming “signs” have not gone away, now I’m more likely to notice times when they didn’t mean anything or to understand, as I wrote in “Deja Vu” two days ago, that it means I am present to the moment, to the truth of what is.

So, yes, that’s what he means.

I think guilt is the tension and stress and hurry we feel. It’s the same as lying to ourselves. It’s that tight, contracted, unpleasant feeling in our gut or heart or throat. Those are all lies.

I would no longer say “deeply” guilty or deep-rooted fear or pain or anything like that.  It makes it sound like it’s hard to change or see the truth. It isn’t. It’s the most natural thing there is.

So, then Tony asked, “What about guidance?”

I had to play with that a bit:

I said, “Guidance happens. What do you mean?”

To which he replied, “OK, I can see that.  What about the various ways people receive intuitive guidance? “And I’ll elaborate:

Some people hear a voice, others tune in to their body sensations, or a snippet of conversation overheard on a tube train or something.”

To that, I’d suggest that sometimes we are just in our heads making meaning where there is none – “Nothing I see means anything.” That’s Lesson ONE in A Course in Miracles.

It doesn’t say, “Nothing except what I interpret as guidance means anything.” It just says “Nothing I see means anything.” Nothing. No thing.

Guidance seems to me to be when we know what to do so clearly that we are just doing it.

The other stuff doesn’t hurt. We can’t do it “wrong.”

So, come to think about it, it’s all guidance.

Love, Ann

Replies to Comments on My Banner, Etc. (see below)

Oh Beth, Bonita, Elizabeth, Loretta, thank you! 

This is exactly the kind of dialogue I have hoped for here.

I want to state this very clearly and the dialogue helps me out. Where to start?

Okay, Beth…

The events of my incest and the path of my life and healing are one. They are not separate. What I am grateful for is one seamless whole. I cannot separate them. In fact, when I try, I am lying to myself.

I know I am lying to myself because I feel a contraction in my gut, a tightness, a heaviness. Try it yourself. Have you ever lied to someone you love? Remember what that felt like? What did you feel in your own body then? That’s how it feels to lie to someone you love.

Now, make a statement, a judgment of me or someone else.

Feel that? If you feel something akin to that heaviness, tightness, contraction, then guess what? You’re lying to someone you love – YOU.

Let me assure you that when I say I am grateful for incest, I am including the fact that I am grateful for my intimacy with my father in a very direct way. I haven’t gotten graphic here yet, but I will today as I address this in today’s post. Stay tuned!

Bonita, you’re coming from a similar place to Beth. I know it’s hard to hear what I have to say. I know that people may think I am grandstanding. No, I am not. Ask my friends how many years I’ve avoided doing this more public statement of gratitude for incest. It won’t go away. I can ignore it, but for whatever reason, and I really don’t know why, this is my Next Step.

In fact, an astrologer I know, Roberta, has been hitting me over the head with this for years, bless her heart. I finally realized that I might as well not bother to get another reading from her until I was well underway with the blog and the book. She was a broken record, “Are you writing on your book? All of these other issues will fade away when you do, you know. It’s right here in your chart.” That’s all I’ve heard for at least 3 years. (Roberta, you were right! Things are shifting. Look at me, I was so excited to blog and write, that I’m up at 4:30 am.)

I mean exactly what I say, “Grateful for Incest? Yes.”

I mean no ambiguity whatsoever.

I am grateful for the physical experience of going down on my father, spending time with him in the only way he knew how to show his love for me. Yes, it threw me a lot of curves, but read on and try running it through The Work of Byron Katie for yourself. (www.thework.org)

Beth is right, I have a Leo Moon conjunct Uranus; she knows her astrology. It’s in the 6th house, I believe, too. (My ascendant is 22 degrees Pisces.) While there have certainly been times in my life when I have seemed to shock people for effect and attention, I know this is a misunderstanding of who I am. I am simply willing and able to take on the energy that often comes my way when I am open and honest about the many and varied experiences I’ve had in my life.

Another friend made some similar comments in email to me. I’ve asked her to post them here.

She said she realized she had not been in contact with me for some time, but she thought that, in the words of Shakespeare, I was “protesting too much.” I can find that. I know this is what to do Next, though. Yes, there will come a day when I am quieter about it and the blogging is done. I don’t expect to stay here forever, either, but right now, this is what is showing up. So I am showing up, too. This is where I am.

I also know that I am someone who is very information based. What, to me, is a neutral fact like: I went down on my father, has this huge charge for some people. They react from where they are, no matter how I am experiencing the statement. A disarming person, someone more introverted, is less likely to take this path I am taking. I respect that completely, and I welcome their judgments of me. They are the juice in which I heal.

I’ve explored many sexual things that I might never have had the privilege of experiencing and I credit the openness and acceptance my father tried to share with me, albeit in a socially unacceptable manner, for the joy I’ve had in trying … well, I’ll just list some things here and then I’ll give you a fuller post on them eventually, especially if you ask or Comment.

I’ve tried polyamory (look it up… www.lovemore.com). It means loving more than one person in an upfront, honest way with everyone knowing about everyone else. It is, in some ways, the opposite of cheating. Why? Well, it was partly because Daddy always told me he didn’t understand why we had to love just one person. (Thank you, Daddy.)

I’ve tried BDSM (Bondage, Domination, submission, Sadomasochism) and met some of the coolest people I know while having a helluva lot of fun. Why? To explore the power exchange in a safe, sane and consensual manner. Through playing in the scene publicly for several years, I have taken my own power back. Or, more accurately, I have re-cognized and re-membered that Power that is within me. I am safe no matter what. It’s the Victor Frankl lesson, but in incest, not a concentration camp.

I’ve studied sexuality to the point of becoming trained as a sexual surrogate myself. (Look up Institute for Professional Surrogates. http://members.aol.com/Ipsa1/home.html The president is Vena Blanchard and she has a fabulous interview on the subject at http://www.sexuality.org/vena99.html.)

Then, a few years ago, all of that dropped away. After years of practicing as a bisexual polyamorous switch, I came out of the closet as a monogamous heterosexual. That’s a blog unto itself, too!

I am, I hope, never insensitive to others who are still angry or still in pain. Because the blog is, in a way, just me writing to the world, it may come across that way at times. I can find that. Thank you for mentioning it. I will be sure to post something about that very soon, as well.

Elizabeth, I think (there’s another one of those thought thingies) I know how you must feel. I spent many years wondering if I’d ever heal, ever get over this, ever have a life that I didn’t think was “ruined” by my experiences. I thought Daddy was to blame. I was, in Dr. Donald Epstein’s terms, stuck in Stage 3, “Stuck in a Perspective.” See his book, The 12 Stages of Healing, available in any bookstore (you may have to order it) or by ordering it through www.amazon.com.

Think about it this way, and translate it to your own situation in your own words, but here is my experence:

My incest with my father lasted for several years in my childhood. It ended in June of 1975. Totally. I told my mother. It ended. We never ever interacted sexually again.

How many times, how many hours and days, did I replay those experiences in my own mind from 1975 until, let’s say, 1998, approximately, when I first began to glimpse what a gift he had given me? That’s 22 years. Way more than the time he spent with me.

I was abusing myself in those years. Daddy was nowhere to be found… except in my own mind. Katie and a friend of hers, Steven, pointed that out to me and it blew my mind. I could no longer blame my father. He wasn’t even there for that part. I did it. I abused myself. I don’t do that now. It’s gone. And I am grateful. Would I be having this exhilarating conversation with you now without that? I doubt it.

In fact, in a workshop on The Work of Byron Katie, we did an exercise I will mention here. We took a painful traumatic experience (or any experience, really) and boiled it down to its simplest components. It took me several tries and several questions to the teacher to finally get how simple it could be.

I started with something like, “My father sexually abused me when I was a child.” My next statement was something like, “My father made me go down on him when I was a child.” I went through a few more permutations before I landed at, “Man and girl in a room.” I was literally high for days with the experience of that.

Lorraine, you clearly get the whole picture. Thank you.

Who would you be without your story? is one of the most powerful questions I’ve ever answered. I want to answer it over and over and over again. Katie says, “No story. No world.” What a joy that brings me. I am at peace. I am grateful to the point of tears. How did I get so lucky?

Grateful for incest? Yes I am!

Keep asking me questions.

I’ll keep answering them. Your rich doubt and criticism and judgment is my own. Epictetus said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” Byron Katie said, “The worst thing that can happen is a thought.” God bless those who helped me to see that and thank you for being in my world.

A Note

Some names have been changed to protect the innocent.