More on Internet Dating

Internet dating is such a hit-or-miss numbers game.

I’m kind of fond of some of the sites, like OK Cupid, because I like taking tests. (Don’t bother to look for me there. I use a pseudonym.)  I’ve met a couple of fne people on Plenty of Fish, too.

But they can be such time sinks! Especially, if I find someone that looks like a “maybe.”

It’s almost like gambling. I think I’ve said this before. I get just close enough, just often enough, to keep me looking at these a couple or three times a month for a couple of days at a time. Then that potential bubble is burst, and I go back to thinking that meeting in person is really the way to go.

Internet dating has everything backwards.

You find out a ton of things about the person, dependingon their profile, or nearly nothing, not even what they look like, depending on their photos and how recent they are. You have no idea whether you will be drawn to them in person or not. And I am so verbal that I can mistake really good email and phone compatibility for more potential that really exists.

It’s a bit annoying.

That’s okay. I imagine at some point I will meet and mate and take down my profiles from all of these silly things forever – unless I don’t. I do strongly prefer to be partnered, and at the same time I’d rather have no partner than one that isn’t working out.

One thought I have is that I should just create my *own* dating site and reap some rewards that way.

Love, Ann

Sorting By ASL

Age, Sex, Location – if you don’t know.

I cannot tell you how often I get a reply on Craig’s List or Match.com or oOKCupid.com or some other dating site reply that says, “I’m X number of years old, but age is just a number,” from men 20 years younger than I am or “I’m X number of years old, but I don’t look it,” from people who look like my grandfather.

I’ll admit that I’m in the middle-aged range. I’m in my mid-40’s. 

I also know there is a thing called the “cohort effect” in psychology that is also something we find in dating. In psychological studies, you would not run a study on people who were teenagers in the 60’s and people who were teenagers in the 90’s and expect them to have the same values about sex.  One was “free love” time and one was “post AIDS.” They are different groups with different ideas simply because they were born earlier or later and participated in a different decade of events.  

Nothing wrong with either of them. They’re just different.

I get letters from guys who are 28 or 29 telling me how they love older women, we know what we want, we don’t play games, etc. Sure, it might be fun to romp with one of these kids, but they could literally be my kid! So, I don’t.  

I send them a reply that goes something like this:  

“I understand your point of view.  I was way beyond my years, as well. At the same time, have you noticed how you don’t even speak English the same way as someone my age? I find it offensive when someone says “whazzup?”  You think you’re just saying “hello.” 
 
We don’t know the same music, the same TV shows, the same movies, and while I realize those things are shallow in one sense, we take them for granted and don’t notice the deeper bonds they contribute to unless we get with someone 20 years away from us.
 
In a sense, you are totally correct, age doesn’t matter. At the same time, no one I know of who is over 40 says age doesn’t matter. It’s really the younger portion of people who think that because they haven’t been where we are. I’d love to hear what you think about this in 20 years.
 
But the most important thing I notice here is that you didn’t say a thing about the erotic, intuitive, spiritual connection that is the only thing I requested in my ad. That’s okay, the older guys miss that, too.”

Usually, sorting by Sex and Location is a lot simpler.

I’m a woman looking for a man. Simple, right?

Oh, I’ve dated a few transgendered men, and I’ve definitely loved women, but right now, I’m simply a woman looking for a man.

Location?

If you’re more than 50 miles away you are an LDR (Long Distance Relationship) and I’m not interested. You need to be close enough to count, ok?

So, let’s make these dating site emails count. Read what is requested and respond specifically. There may be a lot of variations and details that we’ll figure out as we get to know each other, but c’mon, how hard can ASL be?

Love, Ann

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.

Ping

My Yogi Tea tab today says:

“Where there is love, there is no question.”

My friend in London sent me a gorgeous voice recording of Sonnet 116 by Shakespeare. I’ll post that as a Cowgirl Interlude soon.

Paul sent me “On the Street Where You Live” from My Fair Lady.

He is on his way to Phoenix to meet my mother and her husband?

Oh, how did that happen? Well, Mother is cleaning out some books. She had a couple of Linda Goodman’s astrology books to give away and wondered if I wanted them. I don’t, but Paul was interested in taking a look at them. Okay. Now he is on his way to Phoenix. He has business there, and he will be visiting his parents. Then he will have dinner with Mother and her husband on Thursday.

Me?

Oh Jeez. I don’t know!

It’s just the most romantic thing that’s every happened to me and I’ve had a lot of romance in my life, a lot.

I’m nervous. That’s what.

I only know one person who did a complete about-face on a relationship. Steven Sashen’s wife did that. The story is in Byron Katie’s second book,  I Need Your Love – Is That True? It wasn’t until Sashen really let go of the tension of wanting a relationship with her that things relaxed, clarity prevailed and she looked at him and thought that she could have the freedom and love she had always wanted.

Up until then, she was not interested in him.

That gave them a couple of years to become friends first. She says that made all the difference. Steven proved he’d be there, that he wanted more than a fantasy. That took some time.

And I’ve got time.

I will marry when it is simply the Next thing to do.

I will marry when there is no aching, needing, wanting, gotta have it on either side – mine or my husband’s. When marrying is the next obvious step to having the life that each of us wants. When it is not an attempt to fill some imaginary void inside, but an expression of the fullness of who I am, and who he is.

I want that decision to arise naturally and spontaneously from a place of peace and clarity.

I think you begin to understand that now if you’ve read a few of these blogs.

You also understand why, when we are “needing” and “wanting” it tells me clearly that in that moment, that this is not it.

And when we are clear and peaceful, I can see the possibility.

Now, when *I* am clear and peaceful about marrying someone – Paul or whomever – then and only then, will I say, “yes.”

Ideally, all decisions – cars, furniture, vacations – arise from that clear, peaceful, God-centered spontaneous place.

Love, Ann

“Success is a side-effect of clarity.”

                   – Steven Sashen

                    http://sashen.com/blog/

Shampoo Series – Into Me See

Intimacy.

What is it?

What is intimacy? and how does it relate to love? and to relationships? and sex?

This might be helpful.

Remember yesterday when I said that I can feel the man I “want” inside me already? As if he is already part of me? And how can I really “want” what I already have?

This part of the IAM meditations is what reminded me experientially of something I know to be true: everyone and everything is already part of me. I am connected.

A Course in Miracles  says, “A sense of separation from God is the only lack you need to correct.” (Text 11/14)

What I seem to desire is a feeling of being filled. If you have listened to any of Steven’s IAM meditations, I know he does this on Releasing and Receiving because I just transcribed the new version yesterday. I call it “bliss” usually.

The suggestion in the IAM meditation is to throw in a homeopathic dose of appreciation or gratitude at the end of the meditation process.

Then an eyedropperful, a cup full, a tub full, a lake full, an ocean full and finally, just FULL.

When I feel “filled” or “blissed” on my own, I don’t need much of anything else.

For me, that seems to be where intimacy comes from, and it is intimacy I want, not sex per se (or food or whatever). When I feel that kind of intimacy, sex seems like an easy, safe, obvious next step with some men. I feel that with some men from the first phone call. Oh, yes, I also call that “love.” It’s that feeling of being heard, seen, felt closely by another. A sense of no separation.

It doesn’t require the other person to do or be anything in particular. This sense of connection is in me.

In online personals ads, I seem to find men who may be hiding behind their computers. Many of them are in a place in their lives where even being friends is challenging. When they place the personals ad, they think they want sex or sexual release or some fantasy, and they haven’t gotten to what it is they really want.

I suspect that, like me, they are looking for that sense of connection to God that is the only lack we really need to correct. With that, everything else becomes intuitively obvious.

Back in December I decided to get out more in person with people, and I’ve been doing that. Still, I’ve met some wonderful people through personals ads.

For whatever reason, I want friends, family and a lover (eventually husband) to share that connection and bliss with. I’ve been doing the Goal-Free meditation daily for over a month, and 4 times in each one, we are asked to check and see if we are still leaning toward the “goal,” I am.

As far as I can tell, there is no experience on the planet that can’t connect me with bliss. Anything from crying to laughing, from meditation to movies, from pain to pleasure. I’m there. It’s almost just a matter of attention, paying attention to the truth in every moment, and being there in that moment, not separating myself from it.

So, why not just marry the next guy that shows up?

Well, I guess I could, but there is a sense of feeling “right” that I know how to recognize, that I will know when I know. I’ve had that feeling of “rightness” both in marrying and divorcing, in finding a job and in finding a lover.

Something “clicks,” and we just both know that this is where to be and what to do.

Most of us have had that feeling. But somehow we often follow the opposite one, the tightness and clenching in our heart or our guts, the fear, rather than the love. I’m looking for someone who knows the truth that is paradoxically beyond the expansion/contraction duality, kind of the expansion beyond the expansion. The “just full,” or Love.

“Miracles are natural. When they don’t happen something has gone wrong.” Another A Course in Miracles quote.

I don’t have to worry about whether he’s a night person or a morning person, whether he puts the toilet seat down or not, whether he wants to live in California or Kalamazoo. When we can find the truth together, all that stuff falls into place.

Yes, I’m looking for some lifestyle compatibility. That would be nice. I have my stories about what that would be. And I’m willing to receive something better than the small picture I can imagine for myself. Someone or something that is really for me is always better than I thought it would be.

Even the challenges. They’re the ones that take me out of my sense of separation and back to connection, fullness and bliss with Love.

Everyone I meet on the way is part of me.

It’s a pleasure to meet you.

Love, Ann

Ginger in Dark Chocolate

I sent a set of music to a local radio station a couple of weeks ago. I knew that they select some of these sets to play at the noon hour. I didn’t realize they also awarded prizes when yours is chosen.

So, imagine my surprise when I answered the phone at a quarter till noon today and it’s Ginger, saying, “I’ll be playing your Select-A-Set at Noon today. It will be the second set at about 12:10, and you’ve won two concert tickets and a $50 gift certificate to a camera shop. Is there a story with this?”

I told her a little bit about Russ. She asked how she should announce the set. I suggested she make it in memoriam. So, she announced it “In memory of a recent relationship.”  

I picked up the tickets & gift certificate this afternoon, and left a thank-you note and some Chocolove Ginger in Dark Chocolate for her at the station for playing my songs.

Well, well, well.

Jupiter in Sagittarius, conjunct my natal Jupiter. Isn’t that fun?

The funniest part is that I nearly didn’t send the set. I thought it up while thinking about the aborted relationship with Russ a while back. Remember?

Here is the set, in the order it was played, and the lyrics:

Think I’m In Love
        – Beck

I really think I better get a hold of myself
Don’t wanna let the night get ahead of myself
Whisperin’ her love through a smoke ring smile
She doesn’t know what happens when she’s around

I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

Doodododododooodoo

Probably lay my head on a wooden floor
Tell her I was tired from working the store
Counting all the cash from an old shoebox
Saving up to buy her something she wants

I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

What if it’s wrong?
What if it’s wrong
To pray in vain?
What does it mean
To fake your death?
To wake up tainted?

Take a little picture in a photobooth
Keep it in a locket and I think of you
Both of our pictures, face to face
Take off your necklace and throw it away

I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so
I think I’m in love
But it makes me kinda nervous to say so

Really think I better get a hold of myself
Don’t wanna let the night get ahead of myself
Whisperin’ her love through a smoke ring smile
She doesn’t know what happens when she’s around

I think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love
Think I’m in love

Please Don’t Tell Her I Love Her
    – Big Head Todd & the Monsters

I always leave her waiting
I always leave her down
If she should come my way
I always turn around,
Please don’t tell her I love her.
Please don’t tell her I love her.

I always keep her out
I never let her in
If she should come my way weeping
I greet her with a gin
Please don’t tell her I love her.
Please don’t tell her I love her.

If she should discover the colors of my love,
She will fly, fly away
Now you can try tenderness,
You can try to hang around,
Oh, but I’m sure she’ll love you less,
I’m sure she’ll bring you down.
Please don’t tell her I love her

Wicked Game
   – Chris Isaak

The world was on fire
No one could save me but you.
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I’d meet somebody like you
And I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you

No, I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
No, I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
With you

What a wicked game you play
To make me feel this way
What a wicked thing to do
To let me dream of you
What a wicked thing to say
You never felt this way
What a wicked thing to do
To make me dream of you
v And I don’t wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
And I don’t want to fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]

{World was on fire
No one could save me but you
Strange what desire will make foolish people do
I never dreamed that I’d love somebody like you
I never dreamed that I’d lose somebody like you

No I don’t wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart
No I don’t wanna fall in love
[This love is only gonna break your heart]
With you
With you

Nobody loves no one.

I have to wonder what their story is. Sad, isn’t it?

I also have the thought that some people don’t have enough ways to love. 

I am certainly an all or nothing girl in many ways. At the same time, I have a lot of ways to love someone. I had a serious moment of doubt a couple of weeks ago. I was having the thought, “I can’t do a Middle Ground Relationship,” and I got a definite contraction telling me I was lying to myself!

Oh no! 

I’d just writen a whole blog, a whole explanation about how I wasn’t doing that and I was going into some abstinence to kind of clear the boards and all, and then I find this lie! What gives?

I even sent Russ a message about it. I thought maybe he could see something I wasn’t seeing. But before he replied (I am not sure whether he would have, anyway), but before he did, I realized what was going on.

There is a world of difference between “I can’t do a Middle Ground Relationship” and “I don’t want a Middle Ground Relatinship.” Two totally different concepts!

I am completely capable of a Middle Ground Relationship.

That’s why I answered Russ’s ad for “Sexual Healing.” I’ve spent my entire life studying and practicing that. I have vast experience in loving the one I’m with until the One For Me shows up. Sure, I cry sometimes. Why not? I’m going to cry about something, especially once a month.

When I realized that, I also realized it was safe to call Cricket. I was so clear there were no tears this time. I cannot say there never will be. But not if I’m living in the present moment, enjoying the attention of a man who loves me dearly and knows my body (or even one who wants to learn.)

Of course, I’m willing for my partner to set boundaries on time. For Heaven’s sake, Cricket has two other girlfriends. One spends every weekend with him and the other seems to have Monday nights tied down. Or, well, more likely the other way ’round. Monday nights Cricket has her tied down. The ropes are in the eyehooks on his bed, and I’m not much for bondage. I like to be manhandled and thrown around on the bed.

To say he is not as verbal as Russ is like saying that a drop of water isn’t Niagra Falls.

So, naturally, I craved Russ for conversation and email more than I did Cricket. Cricket simply didn’t have it in him. Russ did. But if someone as highly sexually charged as I am can find a middle ground for sex, I can do so for verbal communication, as well. And, if and when it feels right, I damn well will until the man shows up who wants to really go for all we can with each other, the one who wants to experience spiritual sexual emotional union and melt into bliss with me.  I want someone who can embrace paradox and know the many in the one, me.

Meditation is a given. Someone with at least a Priest secondary or primary creative energy is likely to be important for this to work, and now that I’ve experienced someone with a love language of words, I’m pretty sure that’s going to be a given, too.

My experience of him has, as I said, changed. I can feel him as if he is here. It’s merely a matter of time.

I hope he has long hair.

Blessings, Ann

All I Want

     – Joni Mitchell

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Traveling, traveling, traveling
Looking for something, what can it be
Oh I hate you some, I hate you some
I love you some
Oh I love you when I forget about me
I want to be strong I want to laugh along
I want to belong to the living
Alive, alive, I want to get up and jive
I want to wreck my stockings in some juke box dive
Do you want – do you want – do you want
To dance with me baby
Do you want to take a chance
On maybe finding some sweet romance with me baby
Well, come on

All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you too
All I really really want our love to do
Is to bring out the best in me and in you
I want to talk to you, I want to shampoo you
I want to renew you again and again
Applause, applause – life is our cause
When I think of your kisses
My mind see-saws
Do you see – do you see – do you see
How you hurt me baby
So I hurt you too
Then we both get so blue

I am on a lonely road and I am traveling
Looking for the key to set me free
Oh the jealousy, the greed is the unraveling
Its the unraveling
And it undoes all the joy that could be
I want to have fun, I want to shine like the sun
I want to be the one that you want to see
I want to knit you a sweater
Want to write you a love letter
I want to make you feel better
I want to make you feel free
Hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm,
Want to make you feel free
I want to make you feel free

Easy Like Sunday Morning? Just a Morning in May?

I re-read yesterday’s blog just now and had the thought that often what I write and what I do are two different things. It seems to take a certain amount of attention for others to notice that.

A man I used to date once asked me a couple of insightful questions.

The first was, “Have you ever thought about being a ‘kept woman?'”

We were driving in the mountains, and while I thought about how to reply to that one, he answered his own question saying, “That wouldn’t change a thing you’re doing, would it?”

I said, “No, but it might make some things a little easier.”

Another time, he asked, “You’re not as easy as you look, are you?”

I was delighted and said, “Thank you for noticing!”

I know that I will speak freely about things many people can barely bring themselves to even think about and that I’ve done many things that seem courageous and daring to others (like move to Colorado without knowing anyone here, and going to a BDSM club, and answering Craig’s List ads, and then actually meeting men who reply), but the truth is that I’m not as easy as all that makes me sound.

Free? Well, yeah.

But easy? Nope.

I’m actually pretty picky once I get past that intial move or meeting or whatever. And that’s a Good Thing ™. I have enough relationship experience to have a serious handle on what doesn’t work and what does work and what might work.

I’m thinking of writing a couple of ebooks. One would be on how to write a good personals ad. The other would be on how to meet strangers from the internet with a few safety nets in place.

I need someone to help me format them and market them.

I saw a blog today . . . hmm. . . something about lifestyle DD (Domestic Discipline) where the person had put a lot of links to spanking sites and was also marketing his own book about DD.

Here it is. The blog writing is repetitive and not that informative, in my opinion, but the way his web site works looks good to me.

http://lovingdd.blogspot.com

I want something like that. Where I can blog here like I do, and anyone who is interested can buy ebooks and go to links (that pay me when others click on them). That has enough integrity for me and would be kinda fun.

Today, my usual brunch group isn’t meeting. Some of them are at a dance group, some are out of town. And wouldn’t you know it? I’m totally in the mood to get out for brunch. I’m going to call a few friends, see who’s vertical at this hour and go have some brunch somewhere.

Love, Ann

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

Beltane Celebration

“I wanted refuge, not chaos.

I wanted peace, not passion.

I was trapped in my little room of sanctity, in my meditative stillness and solitude.

This wasn’t true freedom. Nor was it love.

As Mykonos pointed out, I wasn’t penetrating the world

with my love and opening “her” into bliss.

Rather, I was pulling back. I was obsessed with myself.”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

 

Beltane, depending on whom you ask, is yesterday, today or even Saturday.

What is Beltane?

It is the holy day (holiday) of fertility . . . Holy Daze of Fertility, Batman!

Plain and simple.

Agriculural communities celebrated Spring and fertility, supposedly having mass orgies & dancing around Beltane fires in order to insure good crops (and probably because sex is just plain fun.) Rumor has it that couples handfasted for “a year and a day” at this time. I’d consider that. In fact, that was kind of what I have been looking for since December. On the other hand, maybe not. I am of at least two minds on that one.

Might as well be. We are not necessarily meant to be sane around this time of year.

Spring Fever? Rutting passions? You know.

May 1, the Full Moon or an astrological degree, that according to one site, is when the Pleiades is on the horizon, which seems to be Saturday and the markers I’ve found for the timing.

Good grief. See what happens when popes muck about with good agrarian timing?

I decided that Beltane is all week, through Sunday!

In fact, if I keep enjoying it as much as I have so far, I may just declare the whole month or even the whole year Beltane. Why not? It’s all pretty arbitrary.

I did Steven Sashen’s Goal-Free Goal Setting meditation last night on the “goal” of having someone intimate to talk to. I found someone a couple of months ago that totally lit that fire and then dropped out. I’m still smoldering. More than that, really.

He left me aching and hungry. I went into sexual abstinence, thinking that Qi Gong classes would support me in this. They did not. Not needing to do their 100 days, I decided not to spend half the summer in abstinence. I noticed that Beltane was coming up.

Beltane has many traditions, some may be New Age fluff, some may be vaguely real. Tom Robbins makes use of some of the Beltane ideas in one of my favorite books of all time, Jitterbug Perfume. Highly recommended reading. See Amazon for excerpts.

Here are some Beltane links for you, if you’re interested:

http://www.cyberwitch.com/wychwood/Temple/beltane.htm

 and http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/beltane.html

from  http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/7280/ which has all the holy days.

You’ll find it on Wikipedia, too. 

So, here I am, ravenous as usual, and wondering what to do with myself (or with anyone else.)

“You know what it’s like to take the Great One

so far into you that there’s nothing left to do

but give it all up to the Lord, don’t you?

Maybe you’ve never done it.

But you know what it would be like.

You can feel it. You know you want it.

You want to be fucked into God, don’t you?

Do you know what I mean, ma?”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

This is what happens when I read David Deida. I stayed up reading almost half of Wild Nights last night. I had an orgasm, found myself thinking of someone I miss, cried, put the vibrator down and the phone rang.

First, Joy called. We’re arranging for me to visit her.

30 seconds later Sean called. He was going to go, but backed out, and is helping me make the trip.

30 seconds after that Taylor called. I hadn’t talked with him in a couple of weeks.

Nice to get what we ask for, isn’t it?

I tied up my conversation with Joy. I called Sean back. I told Taylor we could talk today at a more human hour. I was already an hour past my bedtime (sundown).

Now I’ve been up since sunrise (around 5:15 am), working out some of the details of several projects I need to get on with now that I’m done with some required bill paying activities that will hopefully leave me free for a month to do these other projects like teach, start a goddess center, work on the book this blog is writing and other fun stuff like that there.

Orgasms.

I have not yet had any orgasms this morning.

Why?

Well, I don’t know. I have this tendency to jump out of bed, do some busywork and email, then when all that is off my mind, at least an hour later, go back to the sheets for a while. My bath water is hot. Maybe I’ll play in there.

I think I’ll just leave you wondering.

Love, Ann

“What this world needs more of is loving:  friendly and unashamed.”

– Robert A. Heinlein
To Sail Beyond The Sunset

 

 “He is afraid to fuck. He is afraid to dance with the lady, ma.

He wants to stand back and watch, like a scientist.

He’s afraid to leave his room, to lose his purity

that he has worked so hard to attain.

He’s afraid to lose his precious stillness.

He’s afraid of the wildness of woman.

Everything has to be all tidy for him.

He wants the pussy, but he doesn’t want the slop.

He wants the tit, but not the tooth.

Oh, he is a good man, alright. Look at the light in his eyes.

The light has guided his entire life.

This boy might just make it.

But not until he learns to embrace the lady, ma.”

…

“And I’m not talking about him

wiggling his pecker in her pussy, you know?

I’m talking about the heart.”

– David Deida, Wild Nights

 

Ancient Holy Days

by Astrological Degree

0 degrees Aries  – Vernal Equinox
15 degrees Taurus – Beltane
0 degrees Cancer – Summer Solstice
15 degrees – Leo – Lammas
0 degrees Libra – Autumnal Equinox
15 degrees Scorpio Samhain
0 degrees Capricorn Winter Solstice
15 degrees Aquarius – Imbolc