Musical Orgies

Yes, yes. I realize that I left off on doing The Work on some things in the previous “to be continued.”  I’ll do that presently, but first this . . .

 

Have I written before on how closely music is related to sex? probably. What have I not related to sex ?

Still, having come from Gabriel’s warm embrace into the orgiastic energy of this Irish jam, well, the similarity strikes me again.

Start with the bouzouki player. I told him he had “Dangerous Fingers.”  (She trails off, watching them.) 

Ah. Excuse me – I got a bit distracted there. That, and I’m writing this thing in longhand at a table in the pub. Yes, again. If there is no singing, I tend to read or write while I’m here. I’ll type it up later.

My question is this:

Why can’t people as easily gather for a group sex jam as they do for music?

We all know I’m not really polyamorous, but I’ve had a few new interests pop up lately, and it’s got my brain on sex again. None of them are lifetime love candidates, and they are all but one involved with someone else (whose consent they have for such dalliances, though I haven’t gone there with *any* of them, yet.)

Let’s see. There are about 4 fiddlers, a couple of pennywhistles, at least one concertina I can see, 2 flutes, a boudran (did I spell that right?), a harp, and of course, a bouzouki.

One musician starts a tune, those who know it join in – usually most of them. I think they’ve been playing together here for a long time. So, like lovers, they know the moves. They know what they like. The can improvise around each other. Now, notice, this isn’t like you just threw a few people who could play instruments all together and they just played. There’s a core group that seems to be here every week. Some come and go ( *ahem* ) and others stay the whole night. Some watch, catch the tune and then play, learning as they go. About three of them seem to either know every tune or be *such* good musicians that they play nearly every tune. I’m betting on the latter.

Isn’t sex like that?

Please don’t misunderstand – I’m not into group sex. Never have been. I’ve been in bed with a couple of other people a few times, and usually, I prefer one-on-one, like 99% of the time. I’m just noticing that if there were a community, an openness, connection and flow between a core group and some other regulars – well, group sex could be a *lot* better and a lot more satisfying – just like this music.

Of course, just as I’m writing this, a cute blond starts playing her pennywhistle for all she’s worth. She’s blowing and fingering the slender silver instrument quite masterfully. Her hair is slippingout of its tie and falling erotically over her face. Yes, she looks just like she sounds like she does – like her lips are wrapped around someone she really loves. It’s a thing of beauty.

The drummer beating time seems to fit – what does it matter what her lips are wrapped around?  I think one of the musicians saw me laughing and figured out why. I am really quite tickled at her timing.

This is just a thought. I know others have thought it. “Stranger in a Strange Land” has a few similar ideas and with all the connection and well, grokking, that would make such an experience desirable.

I’d be interested in other writings that have similar passages or themes. For that matter, if you know of any groups that have practiced either the music or the sex, without all the drama that usually accompanies such scenes, that would be interesting to know.

The old hippie slogan comes back to me:  “Make love, not war.”

And my personal favorite, which I’d like in white script on a pink t-shirt:  “Fighting for peace is like fucking for virginity.”

It’s hard not to write something really trite, like “we could make beautiful music together.” And we are. That’s how the world looks to me when I drop my stories.

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  

Evolovution – Homo Caelestis, Homo Illuminatus?

An epoch will come when people disclaim kinship with us as we disclaim
kinship with the monkeys.

 -Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet, and artist
(1883-1931)

 

I find that very reassuring.

Yesterday, we talked a little about Kurt Vonnegut’s vision of the future from Sirens of Titan.

Today, let’s talk about Spider Robinson, Arjuna Ardagh, Tom Robbins, Douglas Adams and others who weave their vision into their fiction and nonfiction writings, waking us all up a little bit at a time.

Yes, today I’m skipping obvious works on human illumination, such as A Course in Miracles, Starseed Transmissions, The Door to Everything, Celestine Prophecy, and Illusions.

Those books are obviously spiritual texts and people with spiritual inclinations read them. That’s fantastic. I’ve read all of them at least 5 to 10 times each. The experience of bliss and connection that comes with reading them is worth many repetitions.

And yes, if I start including epic fantasy & science fiction, especially films, there is a whole ‘nother list of works begging to be included, and rightly so. (Mental Note: be sure I have the reading & film lists on a Page here.)

The ones I’m writing about are almost mainstream. Most of them are fiction. And anyone might read them. That’s what I hope this blog is, and what the book written from it becomes.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOR NEARLY EVERY BOOK LISTED

But what do the following books have in common with the first list? And what is different? 

The StarDancer trilogy, MindKiller, Time Pressure, DeathKiller, The Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon series, Translucent Revolution, Jitterbug Perfume, Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency.

All but Translucent Revoluition are fiction, right?

Well, yes, if you say so.

And Translucent Revolution is just kind of a documentary about enlightened companies and their work, right?

Sure, if you say so.

Look deeper.

Spider Robinson, Arjuna Ardagh, Tom Robbins and Douglas Adams, though I confess I’m stretching a little on including him, postulate not just a better world, but evoloved* humans. People taking some kind of evolutionary leap.

Well, then why am I not writing about the immortal Robert A. Heinlein today, also?

Honestly, because my mind boggles at the task. 

Blogging about the evolutionary perspectives of the inestimable Robert Anson Heinlein deserves a few blogs devoted solely to him.  Heinlein heavily influenced Spider Robinson.

Still, for me, somehow, Robinson is the one who took the evolution leap about things most clearly. Yes, Stranger in a Strange Land and others included some enlightened sexuality & telepathy. Grok would not even be a word if it weren’t for Heinlein, but Robinson does it a little differently. I somehow feel his worlds are a little more healed, a little clearer. And he often includes the story of a rape victim who benefits from a different perspective.

But let’s start with Douglas Adams.

Why?

Because Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy starts with the demolition of Earth.

For things to really change, something must die. We have to clear the clutter of the old before there is room for something new. Death and rebirth are twins.

Arthur Dent is understandably upset that there is a yellow bulldozer advancing down his garden path bent on destroying his home. The beauty of it is that at the same time, the Vogon constructor fleet is advancing across the solar system to demolish the Earth to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

As above, so below.

I recently learned that there is a home in England that the owner refused to surrender to make way for a bypass (highway). I have to wonder if this is part of the inspiration for the story, and whether Ian Anderson’s song about a farm on the freeway was similarly inspired.  

Dent is in his bathrobe, bleary-eyed from a night at the pub railing against the lack of notice and injustice of the proposed demolition. I have to tell you that this is what I read when I am depressed.

My depression, like Cricket’s, is downright perky. Most people wouldn’t notice that I was depressed, usually. But when it happens, I can’t get past the part where:

 “”Yellow,” he thought. The word yellow wandered through his mind in search of something to connect with.

Fifteen seconds later he (Arthur Dent) was out of the house and lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was advancing up his garden path.”

I giggle just inserting that here.

(There is a God. The whole thing seems to be on the net now. See http://www.globusz.com/ebooks/Hitchhikers/00000012.htm)

I could write a book on H2G2. But my purpose is to point out that Adams writing points to human evolution. In fact, in the very next paragraph:

“Mr L Prosser was, as they say, only human. In other words he was a carbon-based life form descended from an ape. More specifically he was forty, fat and shabby and worked for the local council. Curiously enough, though he didn’t know it, he was also a direct male-line descendant of Genghis Khan, though intervening generations and racial mixing had so juggled his genes that he had no discernible Mongoloid characteristics, and the only vestiges left in Mr L Prosser of his mighty ancestry were a pronounced stoutness about the tum and a predilection for little fur hats.”

That’s about how much homo caelestis (Spider Robinson’s term) and homo illuminatus (Arjuna Ardagh’s term) are likely to relate to us. It’s pretty much a matter of perspective. Or, as Douglas Adams wrote:

“Ford Prefect knew that it didn’t matter a pair of dingo’s kidneys whether Arthur’s house got knocked down or not now. “

 

“What the caterpiller calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”

 – Richard Bach, Illusions

 

The reason I hesitated to include Adams, is that his version of what is next is more of the same world we know, but on a galactic scale. But then, that is one way to get started thinking about humanity’s Next Step.

Adams talks about evolution this way:

“The History of every major Galactic Civilization tends to pass through three distinct and recognizable phases, those of Survival, Inquiry and Sophistication, otherwise known as the How, Why and Where phases. For instance, the first phase is characterized by the question “How can we eat?” the second by the question “Why do we eat?” and the third by the question “Where shall we have lunch?” 

Hence, the third book is called The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. 

 

Tom Robbins’  Jitterbug Perfume is about immortality.

Mmm hmm. Just that.

However, he still has us in these same bodies. They can just do more.  

It is very clear that Robbins is a student of rebirthing breathwork, specifically the sort evoloved by Leonard Orr. Orr taught, still teaches, four element purification – earth, the body; air, the breath; fire, sex; and water, the emotions. Wiggs Dannyboy pontificates on each in the book. It’s pure Orr. I’ve studied him. Leonard Orr wrote Physical Immortality. Good topic for a Scorpio man.

Alobar and Kudra follow practices that are meant to clear the body, mind and spirit for rebirth.

The book begins with Alobar finding a grey hair in his beard. In his pre-Christian kingdom, as soon as the king shows signs of age, he is killed and a new, young king is chosen. At Beltane, by the way.

Alobar rebels against tradition and escapes with the help of his concubine, Kudra. I haven’t read this one in a while, though I’ve read it through many times. Somewhere along the line, he mates with Wren, as well. (Polyamory, yes.)

Eventually, Alobar and Kudra learn to dematerialize and show up somewhere else. Robbins describes how they kind of fade from one place and into another. Pan, the god of the rut, the goat god, the God that Christianity blasphemously turned into our modern day devil, has done the same, but for different reasons. No one believes in him any more. All the nature spirits are dying because we’ve ignored them.

No wonder we have sexual issues in our culture! But don’t get me started. Read Robbins. Read Heinlein. Read Robinson. That’s a whole ‘nother book. Read other blogs for more on this.

Immortality may not be the immortality of this particular body that we seem to currently be in. In fact, I’m pretty sure it’s not. But all of these authors point to some kind of trancendence, something beyond the body and a way of continuing our awareness and evolving – that death is not something to be feared. It’s just the Next Step. That’s one of the things I love  about Steven’s IAM Meditation, Zooming in on Death.

This is not “I hate my body, so I’ll deny it” of some types of aceticism. This is more from love than fear. I love my life, how do I continue to enjoy it, increase my awareness of what is possible, connect more with others?

So, again, I won’t try to reproduce every enlightened thought in the book here. Read it for yourself.

Arjuna Ardagh uses the term homo illuminatus in his book Translucent Revolution to indicate human beings whose Light is shining brightly and clearly through them and into the world. You won’t believe some of the people on his list. Obviously, Eckhart Tolle, Byron Katie and the Dalai Lama fit that, but Sam Walton? George Zimmer? Hmm.

Enlightenment in business, education, relationships and several other areas of life are the organization of Ardagh’s book. Sidebars debunk various spiritual myths that many new agers still believe, like that if you’re enlightened you don’t have health problems anymore. Hmm, ask some of the world’s most famous enlightened beings about that sometime.

Ardagh has a new book out, too. I haven’t read it yet. But I imagine I’ll be letting you know what I thought, as soon as I do.

In Translucent Revolution we have real life, current day examples of what it would look like to live from love instead of fear. To treat others as we would be treated. To understand that “other people” are really just aspects of ourselves. That this is One World, One Heart, One Mind.

If you’re looking for a job, his list is a great place to start.

So Ardagh’s book is about how some of us are sharing enlightenment now in our work, our families, our educational systems, etc. 

 

Spider Robinson, oh Spider Robinson!

You know, I have spent a lot of the last 6 or 7 years reading Spider Robinson, just amazed that I didn’t find some of them sooner. I check the copyrights and some of them have been out for 20 years. Ah well. Timing is everything and this must have been mine.

http://www.spiderrobinson.com/

I’m not going to include his latest  greatest, Variable Star in this blog. I think that’s another one that will get a blog of its own someday. And I’ve only read it once – so far. It’s written from an outline found in the estate of Robert A. Heinlein.

God seems to speak to me through my computer battery these days. Oh, I’m plugged in to a wall outlet, but the battery is blinking and the connection is being weird and I was just thinking how I should go get some salad for lunch before it gets too late.

sigh

Spider Robinson’s Callahan books, as well as DeathKiller  (a combination volume of MindKiller and Time Pressure – Time Pressure is the one that skeptics and those who are afraid that joining minds with others would be the worst thing that could ever happen will want to read.) LifeHouse, and most especially StarDancer (all 3 volumes Star Dancer, StarSeed and StarMind) all have some kind of story about human evolution that echoes ACIM’s injunciton that “A sense of separation from God is the only lack you need to correct.”

StarDance is kind of the science fiction version of the books I did not include here today (A Course in Miracles, Starseed Transmissions, The Door to Everything, Celestine Prophecy, and Illusions.) There is more moral and spiritual evolution to Robinson’s ideas.

“Forgiveness shows us that minds are joined.”

– A Course in Miracles

Yes.

Some of us can digest truth best when disguised as fiction. That’s why I am attempting to write my story as fiction, too. We’ll see how that goes. I’m more of a blog writer, an email writer,  than a storyteller.

Minds really join in StarDance. In fact, they do so to save the planet, just like they did in the Callahan series. Robinson’s version of human evolution, and you’ll see that twice in this blog I have mistyped and written “evoloved.” When I read that, I decided to leave it. I think there’s something to the idea.

Robinson has the more “evoloved idea,” as I see it. Tomorrow, I will post the Prologue to LifeHouse. It is something like the best erotica I ever wrote for myself. StarDancer is most clearly about evolovution (hmm). In DeathKiller (MindKiller & Time Pressure) the evolution has happened and humans of our ficton encounter humans from the future.

Since my computer has decided that it is lunch time, I’ll leave you to read it yourself. I’ve also blogged more about the details elsewhere.

This blog is searchable. There’s a box over there on the right. Type “Spider Robinson” or anything else you are interested in, and you can find things more easily.

Peace and long life, Ann

“We are One in the Spirit. We are One in the Lord.
We are One in the Spirit. We are One in the Lord.
And we pray that all Unity may one day be restored.
And they’ll know we are human by our Love, by our Love.
Yes, they’ll know we are human by our Love.
 

 -Learned in Chi Rho youth group in the 70’s.

Yes, they sang “Christian.” Same thing, said Pooh.

 

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

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

 

Shampoo Series – Aligning Sexual Preferences

My Muse asked me, “If you knew your partner liked being spanked during sex, would you do that for them, knowing it turns them on so much?”

Ah, Grasshopper, good question.

Aligning sexual preferences with another person can be very interesting!

I used to think that my fetish was fulfilling other people’s fantasies. Maybe for many years, it was. I have witnesses. I have fulfilled more fantasies than most people have ever heard of. Why? I don’t know. I’m just very willing to try most anything sexual – twice.

Why twice?

Because it might be an acquired taste.

The first question I always asked a new lover was: What is your favorite unfulfilled fantasy?

99% of the time when you ask a man that the answer is “two women.” Well, that’s easy. I am bisexual. It can be arranged. I admit it was kinda cool when I got in with a group of Ds people for whom the two women thing was fulfilled long ago. I tried everything in that arena that I was remotely interested in (see the negotiation forms in Jay Wiseman’s book, SM 101,) and some things I was not remotely interested in. Just to see.

Honestly, though, I finished that exploration stuff about 7 years ago. There is nothing at all wrong with exploring every single fantasy you have with a willing partner in a safe way. I say do it. That’s part of how Siddhartha Gautama, the Buddha, found enlightenment. He tried everything, sexual fulfillment, wealth fulfillment, he did it all. And when none of it brought the illumination he was seeking, legend has it that he sat down under a bodhi tree and found God, and was finally fulfilled. Hermann Hesse tells the story beautifully in his book, Siddhartha.

But the Buddha did not get there just by sitting and letting all his desires go unexplored, not without trying everything else first. So go for it!

Now for me, if someone tells me they want to “explore” sexuality I tell them to find someone else. I know what I like. I know what I don’t like. It takes a lot to surprise me. And I don’t like surprises. I like familiarity and comfort mostly. But most of all I want a man who connects deeply and spiritually with me through his eyes, his words and his touch. Someone whose lead I want to follow.

I used to identify as a bisexual polyamorous switch.

That means that I enjoyed sex with men and women, had open relationships with more than one partner at a time, and I had sex as both the Dominant and submissive partner.

The height of all of that was two male-to-female submissive crossdressers I dated, right in a row. Yes, men who liked dressing as women and being submissive. Well, I wanted to give men their fantasies, and it is hard for those men to find women who are interested. So, why not? I was open to it. For about 3 or 4 years, I tried.

When does doing something for your partner go against some kind of boundary of your own? When does it cause you more stress? How do you decide what to do?

Those are the details hidden in my Muse’s question above. He couldn’t see any harm in doing something your partner wants if it really turns them on. He’s Dominant in bed. Very. One of the best. But for someone else? Is there anything wrong with spanking your partner? Well, yes and no.

What if giving a spanking feels harsh, rough or simply unnatural to the person being asked to do that? Many people feel that way about spankings. Some people were spanked as children and hated it. They don’t want to make it part of their sex lives. Or maybe they just aren’t interested. Maybe they are more the submissive type.

I was cuddling with my friend, Terry, a couple of weekends ago.

He was objecting to the way women find him feminine. He said that wasn’t true. He is a man and he can prove it. I can vouch for that. All the parts are there. He has his masculine traits, definitely. But I also see why women say he is feminine.

His first alternate idea was “giver” for the stereotypical masculine role, and “taker” or maybe “receiver,” for the stereotypical feminine role. I am good with that. It’s very much like Deida’s active/receptive polarity that I love so much.

But Terry went one better. Giver and taker both have negative connotations in some ways. Terry and I both like to dance. He switched to a dance analogy and came up with “leader” and “follower.” I can go with those, too. Those terms also have some baggage, but if you’re thinking of dancing, well, you can’t both lead and you can’t both follow. You have to have one of each or it simply doesn’t work.

Polarity is true “chemistry.” But for most people, chemistry occurs when they meet someone who is the same creative energy as their opposite gender parent.

Try this: get a picture of your opposite gender parent and put it side by side with a picture of the people you’ve had long term relationships with. See if you can get a sense of whether they are energetically similar. Look beyond the physical. Do look at the eyes. That’s where you really find the Creative Energy.

Most people never get beyond finding partners who are a bit of an improvement on either their mother or father, but very much the same. People who will relate to them in the familiar ways their mother or father did. Rarely do we go for someone outside this box, and more rarely still do we go for someone who is our same Creative Energy, unless of course, one of our parents was that. That’s not chemistry. That’s not a healthy attraction of magnetic polar opposites. That’s Imprinting. If you want to know more about Imprinting, read the April 24 blog.

So what about the woman who said that her husband would never consider spanking her, even if she really wanted it? She may have had several reasons for thinking so. Here are some of the possibilities:

1.  Her husband considers spanking abusive, and even in the face of his wife’s moans of delight cannot get past the idea that he is hurting her.

2.  Her husband was spanked as a child and swore never to do that to anyone, and cannot rethink it in a sexual context.

3. Maybe her husband thinks it is weird or unnatural, repulsive even.

4.  Or maybe, her husband is not a leader. Leaders spank. Followers generally don’t. Or, put another way, Dominants spank, submissives generally don’t. It is totally contrary to their sexual preferences and sexual desires.

I came face to face with that in myself.

I am submissive, feminine, responsive, receptive and more of a follower than a leader in my romantic relationships.

I can just barely manage to do a tenuous, remotely acceptable impersonation of someone who will spank and dominate if I am told to do so. Then I’m following and I can almost do a credible job of it. Nearly. But I’m not fooling anyone. Not me, not the person who wants to be Dominated and spanked, not nobody.

It is worth noting that some people distinguish between Dominant/submissive and Top/bottom relationships. Dom/sub relationships tend toward more emotional mental, even spiritual roles. Not necessarily role playing, because I fail miserably at acting, but at fulfilling the need to take and be taken sexually. Top/bottom relationships, so I understand, are more about the physical. They aren’t needing the kinds of mental/emotional/spiritual input. They simply want to spank and be spanked (or other activities appropriate to such play).

I’m a submissive. I am not remotely a bottom. Not at all. Not interested. Doesn’t do a thing for me. I am neither a sadist nor a masochist. I am a hedonist. Well, was. I’m not sure what you would call me now. A deeply spiritual lover, maybe. Hedonism isn’t enough. I did that one with Cricket, and it quickly amounted to nothing with Russ.

For a psychological player, like myself, it ruins the whole experience to try to play at something I am not, and most of my partners have been psychological players, too. And now I can’t even “play” unless I mean it. There is something beyond the duality even of the active/receptive or leader/follower duality. There is a place where we are Love loving.

What I really desire most now is someone who wants to be intimate. Intimate in conversation, in time together, in email, in friendship, in companionship, in sharing music together, in dancing, in cuddling, in sharing meals, and yes, in sex. Deeply, spiritually, present and intimate in all areas of our lives. Someone who can be Love loving with me, who can help lead me to surrender totally, through him, but not so much to him, as to God, All That Is, that Life that lives through us.

What about Creative Energy and Imprinting?

My first husband was the same Creative Energy as my father. He was the last Sage Artisan that I know of, except for one man I had sex with once, because we were just very attracted to each other and wanted to know what it would be like. I considered that healing that I was not repulsed by my father’s type.

From then until about 2 years ago, I dated Artisan Scholars like my mother. That often happens. We switch to desiring the same gender parental archetype.

However, beginning about 2 years ago, all of the men I attracted were Artisan Priests. They are the quirkiest! I could find a Priest type of inspirational sharing with them that I enjoyed, but none of the three turned out to be more than temporary partners. I dated two Priest Artisans, as well; again, short term things where we both quickly decided this wasn’t what we wanted.

Do I think I have to have a Priest Scholar like myself? No, not necessarily. I might enjoy that, and yet I also know that I have come far enough to let another person be themselves without requiring that they be just like me. It’s still challenging, yes, but I’m ready for the challenge of deep intimacy with a man “who can fuck me straight to God,” as David Deida says in Dear Lover.

I want someone who wants to give time and energy to this, to go as deep as we can with one another. Nothing less.

And for anyone who is interested, I’m still in sexual abstinence. This is my 40th day.

After today, I don’t care one way or the other. I would love to have someone to break my abstinence with, someone capable of connecting deeply who is interested in doing that with me. I considered finding a surrogate, someone who wanted to ceremonially break my abstinence with me whether or not we became long term partners. That isn’t totally out of the question, but it may be unlikely. Or, I may wait a while longer just to see who shows up. Nature does abhor a vacuum, she wrote, grinning mischeivously. Why do you think I went into the abstinence in the first place?

I may also spend an entire day Saturday, maybe this weekend, maybe next weekend, playing by myself sexually, fantasizing about the partner who can meet me here and go to sleep dreaming of him. Then when I wake up Sunday morning (I am a Morning Person, remember? Although sex is good at any or many times of the day!) so, possibly what I may do is when I wake up Sunday morning, I will bring myself to orgasm, over and over again, invoking that energy to bring the man who desires me as much as I desire him to me.

It has worked for me twice before. Both times I got even more than what I imagined.

Cricket was amazing, but lacked the verbal and spiritual components. Russ was closer still. He is my Muse. I have written every single day since 2 days after we met. His first Love Language is words, just like mine. He has inspired more and better writing than I’ve done in my entire life. But he did not want a full time or romantic relationship of any sort. Nothing wrong with either of them. That choice is theirs to make. They are who they are. I love them both and always will. I simply wasn’t completely clear on wanting just one man to share the rest of my life with me. I was still holding back.

Let’s see how I’m doing now, shall we?

Love, Ann

“Romance can be a holy place, dedicated to the experience of Heaven on Earth.  But that can only occur if the perception of our mutual innocence is a sacred commitment.”

                    – Marianne Williamson, Enchanted Love

Shampoo Series – Sex, Death and Love

“What would you rather consider besides sex & death?”

Not much I admitted . . . “

– David Deida, Wild Nights

I agree.

I’d add love to the list. Love is more than sex and death. I think Deida would agree.

I was talking to Jared last year right after we both met Swami Vishwananda. I remember saying, “That’s what enlightenment is. We both want to die before we die.”

It felt so good to share that space with him, with anyone. I’m sure that’s part of what draws me to love sex so much. I try to live what Heinlein writes, “Thou art God,” from Stranger in a Strange Land. Spider Robinson carries the message even further in Time Pressure and DeathKiller. Actually, that sort of thing is in both of their books. That’s why I read them.

But David Deida, ohmygod.

When men ask me, “What’s the best book I could read on how to relate to women?” or “What’s the best book on how to be a Dom?” The answer is the same, even if you have no interest in the latter.

Read Way of the Superior Man by David Deida.

Women, you want to understand men? Read that, too. Then go read Dear Lover by David Deida to understand yourself and what it takes to be who you are, which amounts to the “getting what you want” that we are so focused on. When you’re done with that one? Enchanted Love by Marianne Williamson.

Deida is very good at differentiating between gender and gender orientation and sexual orientation, which are 3 different things. Deida does not assume that all male-bodied persons have a masculine temperament, nor that all female-bodied persons have a feminine temperament. We don’t. We embody every note on a musical scale and every color of the rainbow, and many in-between. We play different ones, paint different aspects, all the time.

Orgasm is la petite morte for a reason. We let go of our fear and die into the moment.

Deida says that polarity is required for sexuality. That seems to be true. I’m submissive and feminine. I know it didn’t work so well when I tried to be dominant and masculine, since that’s not where I seem to live. I cannot quite imagine being in the middle of the spectrum. What is it like not to live at one end of sexual polarity? Are you sexual then? I have wondered about that. Or does such a person exist?

Do you have any comments to add? 

Katie says it, too, but not so erotically as Deida does:

“Love is so vast within itself. It’s where you die. You don’t die into fear; you die into love. It’s so vast that it will burn you up. It’s so jealous and greedy for itself mirrored back that it will leave you nothing. And when you’re feeling that if you don’t give it away you’ll die in it, it’s so vast there is nothing you can do with it. All you can do is be it.”

Byron Katie

Until we know that, we tend to want something. Katie also says, “Personalities don’t love, they want something.”  But the more we realize this, the more we are responsible for what we know.

Stereotypically, men want freedom and women want union.

Give it up. It’s hopeless on both sides.

Ironically, that’s the only way to get what we want.

Giving up is what all of these ideas I talk about bring us to.

Releasing & Receiving, Zooming in on Death, Re-Pairing the Universe, A Course in Miracles, The Work of Byron Katie, IAM – Instant Advanced Meditation.

Every one of them is about letting go, giving up, and practicing spaciousness, receptiveness, so that what we “want” can show up. I mean what we really want, too, not the car or the girl or the new whateveritis. What we think those things will give us – that’s what we really want.

Check.

What do you want?

Now, what do you think having that will give you?

Great.

Why not just go for that directly?

Or, as Katie says:

“When you come to the place where you don’t want anything from your partner, it’s like “Bingo! You just won the lottery!” If I want something from my partner, I need to take a look at my thinking. Because I already have everything. We all do. That’s how I can sit here so comfortably. I don’t want anything from you. I don’t even want your freedom, if you don’t. I don’t even want your peace. But if *you* want it, that’s all that’s left of my want. So I’m going to join you there, because I remember what it was to want. And if you’re not interested in your freedom, then that’s what I want. I want your heaven, I want your hell, I want whatever you want because I love you.”

– Byron Katie 

“Pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.”

– Kahlil Gibran

 

“Look with your understanding,

Find out what you already know,

and you’ll see the way to fly.”

– Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Do you want to know that place where Katie says “you don’t want anything?”  I do.

One way I practice is with these:

http://www.advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?af=570391

Love, Ann

 

 

Poetry Interlude

I received “My Soul” at the end of an email today.

The other 3 are mine. 

“My Soul”

There are a hundred billion snowflakes swirling in the cosmic storm
And each one is a galaxy, a billion stars or more
And each star is a million earths, a giant fiery sun
High up in some sky, maybe shining on someone

And deep inside a snowflake, I am floating quietly
I am infinitesimal, impossible to see
Sitting in my tiny kitchen in my tiny home
Staring out my window at a universe of snow

But my soul is so much bigger than the very tiny me
It reaches out into the snowstorm like a net into the sea
Out to all the lovely places where my body cannot go
I touch that beauty and embrace it in the bosom of my soul

And so brief and fleeting is this tiny life of mine
Like a single quarter note in the march of time
But my soul is like the music, it goes back to ancient days
Back before it wore a human face, long before it bore my name

Because my soul is so much older than the evanescent me
It can describe the dawn of time like a childhood memory
It is a spark that was begotten of the darkness long ago
What my body has forgotten, I remember in my soul

So we live this life together, my giant soul and tiny me
One resembling forever, one like smoke upon the breeze
One the deep abiding ocean, one a sudden flashing wave
And counting galaxies like snowflakes, I would swear we were the same

Oh my soul belongs to beauty, takes me up to lofty heights
Teaches sacred stories to me, sanctifies my tiny life
Lays a bridge across the ages, melts the boundaries of my bones
Paints a bold eternal face on this passing moment, oh my soul
 
-Peter Mayer, “My Soul”

Oh look!  It’s on the web!

 http://petermayer.net/music/

************* 

March 23, 2006 

Through you
The Beloved has touched my heart.

When I am with you
I tremble at the nearness.
Alone I’ve had this sometimes,
But with you
It’s nearer and deeper somehow.

Please help me
Not to confuse you
With the Beloved.

When I forget the truth I feel so lost!

*************

March 23, 2006

Compared to you
I’ve never wanted
Nor made love
In my life.

Compared to you
I’ve never been touched
… or healed.

Compared to you
I’ve been asleep
All this time.

So,
If you’re not the One,
Who is?

Wow!

*************

Always In Good Spirits
4/7/07

God peeked into my eyes through you,
To see if I was ready to see.
Was I?
Just about, He said.
Look closer.

God peeked into my mind through you,
To see if I was ready to understand.
Was I?
Almost, He said.
Let go.

God peeked into my heart through you,
To see if I was ready to Love.
Was I?
Nearly there, He said.
Open more.

God peeked into my soul through you,
 To see if I was ready to be lived.
Was I?
Yes.
As always.

Love, Ann

I Died Again – Zooming in on Death – An IAM Meditation

Very rarely have I trusted and loved someone (or myself!) deeply enough to say out loud something that is true of Life, and of every person and event I meet.

To say this acknowledges the truth that everyone we meet changes us. To change is to die.

I told Russ he had permission to kill me.

He is the first person to reply, “I know.”

And he did. Kill me.

For months I have been trying to be more congruent in my life, congruent with some things I know are True, some things I was lying to myself and others about. I know that things happen “in the fullness of time,” as Heinlein says. I was sensing the approach of change I want very much. I am not the most patient person on the planet and w-a-i-t  is a 4-letter word.

Synchronously, the radio is playing “Back in the High Life,” by Steve Winnwood, a song that was my theme for a shift like this one in 1989.  Thank you, Spirit.

Monday I began 100 days of celibacy. I’m cleansing and fasting. I’ve already lost 20 lbs since Christmas (5 in the last week.) I started voice lessons again last night. Tonight I am going to Qi Gong for the first time in over a year.

It happens there was a solar eclipse and the spring equinox just now, too. It’s Spring.

I feel that unmistakable sense of clarity and heightened awareness that has accompanied this shift before. I know I am not the same person anymore. I feel that “no going back” feeling.

I’m feeling a lot of energy and peace.

I have now stopped trying to have “middle ground” relationships, sex with friends and ex-lovers where I cannot fully let go into the experience of la petit mort .  .  . again. That’s where Russ was my mirror and executioner. He saw me and told me what he saw. He could no more orgasm, experience la petit mort, than I could.

Done. Finished. No more of that! 

Unless there is more of that.  : )

I may need support sometimes. My sex drive is off the charts.

There is a meditation Steven teaches, called “Zooming in on Death.” It only takes a few minutes and anyone who is willing to experience the truth can do it.

Try it.

Imagine that you’re dying. Make up some story if you like, but that’s not necessary.

Now, when you’re ready, zoom in on the exact moment of death.

Not a moment before, when you are still alive.

Not an instant after, when there is no going back.

The precise moment of dying.

What do you feel? Take your time.

Be very sure you are right at that moment of death, not before or after.  It makes the whole difference.

One way to know you’re in that moment of death is that you aren’t in the past – what you woulda coulda shoulda done, nor are you in the future – you still don’t know what happens after death; you’re not there yet.

I welcome your comments below.  

Steven has another called “Zooming in on Peace,” I wonder what “Zooming in on Orgasm” would be like? Maybe that meditation will help sustain me through the next 100 days.

If you want Steven’s guided version of these and other very profound meditations, you can click here:

http://www.advancedmeditation.com/cmd.php?af=570391

But mostly I just wanted to share how that and life are happening for me.

It’s like I was sitting on a pile of dynamite and Russ was the match.

Thank you, Russ, for being such a close match.

Love, Ann

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.