Gabriel Interview ~
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-Talk about how you first got involved with tantra.

I think I came from the womb with the innate mission of questioning the validity of just about everything…but where the angels and demons most whispered secrets into my ears was in the realms of sex and relationships.  When I became involved with Tantra, I was in need, at the deepest Soul level, of experiencing depth and meaning in those places.  I was looking everywhere I knew, trying to find healthier ways of being, and although Tantra wasn’t one of the directions I was searching, the lessons we need have a way of finding us.  I’ll share with you two core circumstances that ultimately brought ‘Tantra’ to me;

There was a period…perhaps a year or so after acquiring my Bachelors…that i was riding my bike to work every morning, to a little coffee shop in Austin, Texas.  Every day on that ride, I passed a ‘Gentleman’s Club’…and every day, as I passed by, my stomach would tighten. I was bothered by the reality that, throughout university, I’d paid my own way, working really hard to achieve that certificate in good standing…yet there I was, still working at a coffee shop for minimum wage… still struggling to make rent.  Since I’d left home at 15, I’d had a hell of a time trying to survive in the world, so I was feeling a bit anxious as it was sinking in that the Bachelors…my vestige of hope towards ascension from minimalism and poverty, was proving to amount to nothing except…debt! How unjust is that?!  Meanwhile, I knew that inside that Club, there were girls…those kinds of girls…making more in one night then I did in an entire week.  So here I am, a complete ass, supposedly doing the ‘right’ thing, and I was broke, angry, and mega bored with the whole thing.  Beyond all that… what was up with these men?  Even from childhood I wondered where values and ethics came into play… with people, with the environment, money… work…yet it was the strip clubs, porn, and the sex trade industries were rolling in the dough.  Why were the men here, rather than caring for their children, homes, or communities?  Was it just me?…Had I watched too many episodes of ‘Little House on the Prairie’ and ‘Grizzly Adams’?   Whatever it was, I was at the end of my rope with ‘survival mode’…esp considering I’d done ’the right things’, and I was still in it.  But just as daunting was the level of judgment I had toward everything about that stupid place. Whether it was truly as evil as I thought or not, I still innately didn’t like the fact that I had a sense of hatred towards it going on…and although I didn’t understand it at the time, somehow it turned it all around and made it more about me.  So, I parked my bike, went inside, and filled out an application. Whatever all was, I was painfully aware that I could not stand a day longer in the powerlessness that strangled my life like some ethereal python from hell…with spikes.  So I cut hours at the coffee house, maintaining just enough work to pose semblance of social accountability… and went out shopping for G-strings and 6-inch heels.  How, I pondered aghast as I held a pair of sparkling red ‘fuck me’ pumps up before me, was I to walk in these things, let alone dance? I was an alchemical soup of excitement, curiosity and sheer terror for the stage I was about to step onto. Do I get to practice? What do I do with the pole?

Meanwhile, the angels and demons had been whispering their antics to me at home as well. I had begun traversing through new themes from the same vein. There, for the first time, my partner and I had begun experimenting in the world of polyamory…I’ll tell you why ~

Perhaps typical standards of relationship in the west are considered ‘normal’ to most… but to me…it all looked absolutely devastating. I just didn’t have it down. I was always either scared or bored or angry or obsessing…I didn’t have one aota of calm or content or centered… or the slightest Idea what it meant to enjoy creation, centered in the knowing of my own direction.  I was something akin to an abused Chihuahua on methamphetamines.  Anyway, I didn’t know if it was my childhood experience or the undercurrents of control, manipulation, jealousy, anger, resentment, and general unpleasantness I was noticing all around… but it all left me wondering what any of it had to do with love.  I mean… how did much of anything society was spitting out have anything to do with love?  I remember as a kid in elementary school, staring blankly into those lists of possible careers.  The other kids were happily checking their boxes –fireman, -policeman – architect, -secretary.  I looked around wondering what was wrong with me….for many, many years to come. I just couldn’t fit myself into any of those boxes.

The only two solutions that I saw before me to find a better way were A) The Conventional Model – Psychotherapy, or  B) The Alternative – Polyamory.  I’d tried psychotherapy enough to know about the usefulness of psychotherapy… so what remained was the alternative.  Polyamory wasn’t something I was excited about. I wasn’t sure it was even ethical.  But what I was sure about was I was in a relationship with a man who, although I loved him dearly, was burning a flame of a lesser caliber, and my bored gene was kicking in.  We both knew something had to change, but we weren’t so interested in separating. Funny enough, a few years back I’d happened to have met a polyamorous man who happened to be well spoken, charismatic, well educated, well traveled, completely intriguing, and delightfully sexy man that also happened to be completely crazy about me…who also had a beautiful wife of similar qualities…well, minus the being a man and crazy about me thing.  Point being, it was the perfect opportunity to give poly a try, so when I presented the idea to him, he agreed…albeit hesitantly.

So I’ve got those two situations going on backstage. Life is looking a little different.  Several months pass, and some nights in the club are close to enjoyable in between the shady layers.  Sometimes I like dancing on stage, and on a good night I find meaning in giving attention to some of these men. Compassionate understanding…in between ‘sleaze ball’ accusations made under my breath… slowly begin to replace my judgment for strip clubs.  I’ve got decent money in my pocket for the first time ever, so some days I go to that coffee shop and just sit around lounging, and read books and drink latte.  Only problem is, I’m an x alcoholic and drug addict, and that place is swarming with my demons…but I mean really, who can work a night at a strip club without a drink or two. I moderated well enough… never got drunk.  Nevertheless, the place is filled with cigarette smoke, and even two drinks a night is past what my body appreciates any more, so I start getting sick…slowly and steadily.

Meanwhile, in poly I’m walking an edge of blunders interpolated with blissings…we always love their company and there’s something completely wonderful about the unstated agreement we all make to love each other, even if they’re loving another. However, that’s the ideal but it doesn’t always work out that way completely.  I hardly notice until it’s too late…my partner is growing even more distant from me.  So after some time when the newness wears off and I look around, I come to figure out that, even though there’s been some really sweet sexuality, the thing I’ve been missing…something…I don’t know…emotional I guess, is still missing.  Plus I’m feeling like crap.  So the self-judgment starts coming in big, ‘cause…well… what now?  The stripping’s my best income so far, but it makes me sick.  The poly is fun and sexual…but it’s not got that…something…whatever that is. So…what else to do, but fall into a deep pit of depression.

Meanwhile, I’m speaking with a friend I’ve know on the sidelines from the festival circuit a few years back, named Desert. Dez calls himself a ‘Tantric Sacred Sexual Healer’, and he’s been talking me through my challenges in open relationship and in the strip club the entire time…which has been nothing less than a Godsend.  I call him any time I feel I can’t take another step forward…which is quite regularly at this point, and his words help me to keep my chin up for another day. Meanwhile, he’s also been telling me he thinks I’m oh so very special.  So special, in fact, that he thinks I’m what you call a Dakini and, you never know, maybe he and I are partners…and what if I came to his Temple in Sedona to be with him…and hey, what if we were to travel and teach Tantra together! Wouldn’t that be cool!  I think he’s been very helpful to me, but first of all I know absolutely nothing about Tantra, but shit I wish I did because all of that sounds really amazing and profound. Is he serious?  He can’t be.  But thing is, I’m pretty sure he’s a major player, and I’m not into that.

But then a surprise happened.  You know, just when things are pretty bad, they can, actually, get worse.

My brother passes away from a massive head aneurism.

I spend the next 6 months becoming part of the living room furniture.  I still work as a stripper, as minimally as possible, and I still see my other lover at the same frequency. My primary relationship is already fallen apart and now I’m sleeping in the office.  I don’t think anything I’m doing is right. I’m depressed…yeah…still, and exhausted, and I don’t know what to do. It’s like having a drill sergeant in your face screaming ‘DO IT SOLDIER’, but not telling you what, and all you can do is lay there and hear it.  The drill sergeant doesn’t give a shit that you’re exhausted and life has no meaning. There were two people in this world I felt I could tell anything to, and now one of them was gone.  The other one left me an invite in my last email inbox.  Come with me to Travel the World and Teach Tantra.  Well… what did I have to lose?

-Sum up the events and experiences in the movie, just to give the readers a general idea of what it’s about.

Daka falls in love with girl.  Daka tells girl she’s a Dakini. He is a practitioner of ‘Tantra’ and calls sex and relationships ‘Sacred’, and she has for a long time been holding a deep calling inside of her to understand and embody that truth. He lavishes her with attention, calls her ‘Goddess, and she thinks he offers the kind of life experience and meaningful work that makes her eyes brighten and her toes wiggle.  So they come together in poly relationship and travel the world and teach Tantra- meaning, Daka teaches workshops, Dakini listens and adds in her two cents, and people really dig on it. Dakini starts feeling uneasy because Daka is having sex with overwhelming numbers of women. But the thing is, he has many years of experience in this work and is changing lives around the world.  He battles the binds of sexual conditioning, and is healer of sexual wounding.  He speaks of the temples of old and the distorted masculine and wounded feminine, and the need to end separation.  He offers sacred spot massage and ‘sacred union’. Orgasms mean healing…the more the better. He’s got a ‘big sexual appetite’ and desires ‘beautiful Goddesses’…lots of them. He is a lover and a fighter for sexual freedom!

There are issues for others around this, but he’s got no issues.  In fact he’s walking into this fully aware…taking total responsibility. After all, somebody’s got to do this!  It is women’s issues of jealousy and separation that she must heal when she is contracted in the face of his sexual appetite.  How can she really argue with that, I mean, lots of women were enjoying their time with him. Isn’t she just being a selfish ninny to want him to slow down and be there with her.

For about a year and a half I think… I experienced a relationship where one lover followed the next in a never-ending train.  I was rather shell shocked over the first few months as I realized the degree of what I was involved in, as I didn’t know this kind of thing actually existed.  But there I was in the middle of it, and our life was in such constant motion that the best I could do was to go along with it, and learn to confront ‘my issues’, as he so generously pointed out.   Granted…I wasn’t always great at that, seeing this was quite a confusing situation; Were these truly only my issues?… or his?  Projections?…or calling Bullshit?  Anyway, he’s a big person who knows lots of other big people with lots of big stuff going on.  And this is the biggest I’ve ever been…with more money, travel, experience and recognition, than ever before. The biggest problem was I’d come to really love Dez…but what the hell was wrong with him?  Wasn’t he a sex addict..and if not, why wouldn’t he just chill the fuck out and be with me?  I was sure he was, but who was I to know?  And if he wasn’t, was he just a distraction addict or something? Cause something was butt wrong here, and after a while I was figuring out it sure wasn’t just me, like he was saying.  The whole thing was major brain fry.

Towards the end of our time together, my humor was dead gone. I was sucked dry and losing any last vestiges of hope or interest I may have had left for him. It’s not that I wasn’t willing, but man, I just didn’t have any real space from one lover to the next to chill out and feel nurtured in our partnership.  By the time I decided I was at the end of my rope, it was already too late.  I was hanging from a thread…quickly shredding with disgust. When I found I could no longer stand the smell of him or even his room…that’s when I finally leave the relationship. But I’m shocked at how upset he gets when I leave….he’s crying…seemingly traumatized.  This baffles me..what would he be missing?  After all, to him…well… I haven’t been able to get beyond my issues to meet him. I’ve heard that and looked at it so much that I’ve grown numb to it now. He says he’s never loved a woman like this before…he can’t get over it.  But I’m beyond over it… Cooked. Toast.

After I’m gone, the film still needs to roll.  Dez begins to use Sex Magic with other lovers and clients to call me back into his life.  Although I’m gone, I remain in confusion around the disparity between his words and actions.  He’s seems to somehow exist in my ‘field’ all the time. I wonder why he’s still there…I know I’m not wanting to be with him…but his conviction about our partnership when I speak with him still makes me wonder…has it really all just been my issues?…but deep down I know what I have seen. Nevertheless my confusion and lack of clarity brings me back for a visit to see how we feel.  When I arrive, we lay together and we feel good there, and it seems a bit of a breakthrough. I can finally relax around him, and I consider the possibility of allowing him back into my life.  After all, a few weeks ago he’d actually gone out and bought an engagement ring and asked for my hand in marriage and said things would be different. I thought about that for a moment as I gazed at that ring, and told him I’d sit with it a few days.

It’s at this juncture, shown in the movie, when Dez’s client and lover, Robin, is shown all teary eyed and grateful how beautiful it is that she had helped with Sex Magic to bring me back into Dez’s life.  Yeah… Thanks, Robin…you meant well.  So no, I don’t go back. I know better now. Beyond the words, I’d developed a good strong distrust for him…so I walk away for good this time.

We talk back and forth over Skype the next three years. I’ve been sick with some bizarre, undiagnoseable disease the whole time.  The remainder of the film shows him playing in Hawaii with two other beautiful goddesses.  We have another chat on the phone when he’s there.  Although he’s with two others at the very moment we’re speakinh, he tells me ‘I don’t need anybody else’.  The film concludes with Dez saying that he feels people’s accusations of sex addiction towards him are their issues.  He refuses to join the collective of sexual pain, fear and guilt…and he also refuses to let this one go.  He knows this is ‘his’.

-What were the qualities of Baba Dez that led you to become involved with him in the beginning? Was it mostly a matter of him being a good lover and a teacher of tantra, or did it go well beyond sex and the physical?

Some of this is explained briefly above.  I was in a very challenged place when we came into partnership.  And although I’d proceeded with bells and whistles and red flags of warning, those could be overlooked and justified seeing that there was so much being offered.  First and foremost was the beautiful sound of a life practice that involved bringing Spirituality and Sexuality together.  I mean… I’d never really amounted to much of anything but a serious pane in the ass to whatever poor soul took me on as their girlfriend. But how amazing was all this… Now I was going to learn how to be a real live Dakini!  So what led me was that deep need…into the rich, rooted, earthy nurturance of meaning. I was willing to deal with his sexual proclivities- of course, I had no idea of the intensity I was about to take on – considering it was all in the realms I was exploring. I wanted to know healthy, conscious relationship. His titles; ‘Tantra’, ‘sacred sex’, ‘Divine Feminine’…all of that had me thinking here were the keys…and they were wrapped up neatly in a silk cloth, tied with a bow and presented on a silver platter.

As for sexuality…physically, we were a perfect fit.  Many people commented on how beautifully we matched each other.  Energetically however, was a different story, and there would be major lessons around this…lessons that I am still learning from… years later.  Nevertheless, the first night we made love and slept together in his bed, I had an amazingly vivid dream.  It’s and intensely bright double rainbow…something I’d never actually seen in waking life, until later that year in our travels to Australia together.  It was so clear that regardless of any doubts or red flags I may have had…this was an undoubtedly clear omen… I was exactly where I was supposed to be.

-What’s your understanding of the real meaning of Tantra? And how does or doesn’t Tantra relate to “sacred sexuality”?

First of all, if we are going to delve into the real meaning of Tantra, I shall begin with the following disclaimer; I know absolutely nothing and do not claim authority or expertise to ‘Real’ Tantric knowledge. I don’t follow any specific sect…nor have I, in this lifetime… been devotee to any human form…well, except a boyfriend or two… but maybe that was just obsession.  Anyway, believe you me, if I’d had ‘my’ way, I’d have jumped at the chance, considering how I was run by longing to surrender into the comfort and safety of such guidance, however it doesn’t always work out the way we think we want it… and thank God for that. That said, if you are to place yourself voluntarily on a Tantric path without a Guru… you’ll need a peculiar combination of masochistic fearlessness of the warrior, innate humility, a little bit dumb, and wise devotional intent that guides your path.  You must have the will to go where angels fear to tread, and that usually is not of your own choosing.  It is sitting in the metaphorical cremation grounds that transfoms fear and confusion into the greatest of Gifts…the very impetus to recognition of‘ ‘I Am’. It’s one hell of a ride.  I won’t pretty it up for you…it can take years or a day or a lifetime to walk through.  But once you do, Magic becomes normal, and One comes to peace with all of the challenges faced as rites and Gifts set out by the One True Guru. Disclaimer made…

I like the description of Tantra as ‘madhuvidya’- the ‘honey teachings’.  This means that the bees of Spirit do the work of transforming all that is…good and evil, dark and light, the beautiful and the ugly…into nectar. Tantric knowledge and initiations are traditionally handed down from a Guru to a disciple, and incorporates long periods of discipline and practice utilizing strict ethical codes, Yoga, meditation, mantra, yantra and rituals.  Disciplines bring the mind and body into harmony with Spirit, unlocking creative potentials, cultivating evolutionary thought, and providing the strength and willpower to journey alone into the depths of the unknown to find our own unique truths and wisdom. The Left Hand Path, or Red Tantra, utilizes sexual ritual for the purpose of achieving liberation from desire and attachment, while the Right Hand Path, or White Tantra, is generally an ascetic and celebate path with the same aim. Tantra utilizes the body and the mundane world as access to the Spiritual.  A path of non-duality, self is seen as a microcosm of all that is.  Physical reality and the mundane become Sacred… and all aspects of creation are seen as Divine. This is what I understand as ‘real’ Tantra.

Tantra in the West, however, is furtively called Neo-Tantra, pop, or California Tantra. It is a beautiful effort to bring intimacy and human connection back into a collective on a perfectly devastating prosaic trajectory.  It is a profound body of work that effectively addresses the sparks of Spiritual awakening… manifest as both urgent desires for corporeal comfort of sexuality… and the need to submerge oneself into the unknown.  Yet Neo-Tantra has earned it’s name well, as it’s teachings tend to enfolded upon itself… caught within the ‘lower triangle’ consciousness in practice, as is the apprehension of so many of it’s teachers.  They are, after all, receiving money, sex and power.  It remains stuck because it is a neophyte… sprouted directly from the soil of a materially bound, spiritually pretentious and sexually obsessive paradigm.
Because Neo-Tantra lacks the most pertinent aspects of Tantra, it doesn’t know what it doesn’t know, and if it were to open it’s eyes it would find itself stuck in the same patterns of ego and gratification …except now it sits on the opposite polarity of the very culture it seeks to heal…which is the same place it started.  More abundance, more love, more sex, more orgasms…does this all sound familiar?  Professing non-duality, it nevertheless egotistically sees itself as the healer of a sexually sick culture… and so in it’s wake, can perpetuate the very sickness it projects outwards.  It is Tantra’s scantily dressed, pothead teenager… bouncing excitedly around it’s father’s perimeters, borrowing his language and imparting his movements in pretense of maturity.  It thinks it can seduce and fuck itself into the depths it yearns for, but doesn’t yet understand.
Nevertheless, what Neo-tantra is addressing cannot be avoided. How we experience and understand sexuality, determines the experiences of our lives.  If we are to evolve Spiritually, we must look at where we are deeply conditioned sexually, face our shadows, and reprogram ourselves into a more authentic sexuality.  But we cannot do that if we are simply following yet another collective conditioning.  One must eventually step out of the safety of egoistic identities, and move beyond the spiritually idealistic, sweet sounding yet surface level cliché’ Spiritual idioms. Eventually everyone must come to sit in the cremation grounds, alone… and face Death.  But what a party pooper I am! Isn’t the pleasure paradigm delicious! Life is everything. Everything is Tantra…even Neo-Tantra. Did I just contradict myself?

It would behoove Neo-Tantra’s practitioners to stand tall and proud without guiltily hiding behind the word ‘Tantra’ – a discipline who’s breadth it does not honor – and remain within a more honest portrayal of what it is…‘Sacred Sexuality’.  That said…those tantric honeybees do have a way of transforming ‘All that is’ in just the right ways.
-Talk a little about sex and boundaries. At what point did you realize the relationship with Baba Dez wasn’t what you wanted, and even that it had crossed into the realm of being unbalanced and unhealthy? From your perspective now, is polygamy not the right way to go, either in general or for you personally? Does it go against the nature of human needs for emotional commitment and stability, or do you still think it can be a balanced and workable lifestyle under the right circumstances?

First and foremost, one must truly know themselves…their expectations, desires, intentions, and goals, to have clear boundaries.  If we haven’t delved into our deepest internal/shadow work, then what we call ‘boundaries’… are more appropriately termed ‘walls’. They are the inflexible, reactive places…manifested from the pain and fear created from childhood wounds and cultural conditioning, arising from the unconscious.  Along the path of our journey, ideally we learn to break down the solidity of walls, and create clear, flexible boundaries…usually by crossing over them.

From the beginning I didn’t think partnership with Dez was what I ultimately wanted…but I also wasn’t completely sure. He was fun and a helpful friend…but I wasn’t so attracted, and I’d had red flags about his sexual nature from the start.  But the thing is… the essence behind those flags was alluring; meaning…i wanted to understand how to be less emotional and attached.  At the same time, I wanted to find a sense of depth and meaning in work, and in life.  I wanted to be Spiritual… But I’m the prozac poster child.

The way I figured it, if anyone could show me the ropes, it was a man with the title ‘Tantric Sacred Sexual Healer’, and that man was clear that I was a Dakini.  So what we have here…is a girl without a daddy, and a man with some kind of ‘authority’ telling this girl she’s special in some way. You get the picture. Anyway, seeing I wasn’t that into him, this would be the perfect opportunity to explore all of this. Of course, within the first week together we’re glued at the hip every second we can be, but he’s got other lovers and plans ahead, and before much longer, that confidently detached cool is slipping between my fingers. Suddenly I find myself entangled into a complex and baffling web of thoughts, emotions, feelings, intuitions and sexual energetic strings and snares that I just hadn’t planned on at all…or had I?

Nevertheless, as we travel together, I’m sitting tall, next to him, in the important Spiritual person seat, and loving everything I’m hearing.  This was all completely new language, and all very exciting! Yet, as time rolled forward, the man introducing concepts like ‘ the body, heart and belly knows’, was the very person my belly was slowly contracting in response to. While he’s saying ‘sex is Sacred’, I’m not so sure he’s treating it that way.  A major inward struggle with myself ensued between the opposing intelligences of body and mind, Spiritual and emotional, logical and intuitive.  Nevertheless, I wanted to be healthy and conscious more than anything.  My highest priority was to face my shadows and projections.  So each time I felt triggered around his sexuality with other woman, I did my best to look at my wounds, jealousy, and anger.  I punched pillows and slammed my face into them screaming “You Ass Hole!” I processed with others.  I cried and ached and moaned.  I climbed mountains, studied metaphysics, did cleansing and colonics… and ate lots and lots of Spirulina.  Over time, with the train of women that just kept coming and coming, I think i was holding onto the hope that he’d one day just ‘snap out of it’.  I couldn’t understand his choice of perpetual distraction into other women vs. giving it a rest and going deeper with the one he repeatedly claimed to love the most…who was clearly distraught and asking him to stop and be with her.  So…as I mulled over the tits and ass ‘Tantric massage’ ads…the question kept returning…’how is any of this Sacred’?  But there was so much… the words, the vision, the travel, the money in my pocket and some sorely needed attention and recognition…all that kept me doing my best to recognize what I was being told through his ‘authority’ and ‘expertise’ on these subjects; this was all just my issues that kept me questioning and contracted…my pain, judgment and fear around sexuality.

So when did I know the relationship with Baba Dez wasn’t what I wanted?  That would depend on which part of me you asked, but I think had it been my heart, it knew from the start.  Yet our deepest Soul’s lessons are not always so gentle.  In the end, it was just those red flags that ultimately became the finger pointing to the moon… facing the frightening, challenging, and unknown places…bringing down the walls and experiencing the humanity that exists in those places. One day, years down the line, I could integrate and transform it all into a wiser, more compassionate and loving place.

I could easily enough say, from one perspective, the entire relationship was ‘unhealthy’ and ‘unbalanced’…but what would be the point of that?  I’d rather say, that experience led me through the Valley of the shadow of Death. Those lessons forced me to open my eyes and bring myself into my freedom and power. My life has improved tremendously since, so ultimately… it was the most healthy relationship I’ve experienced.

Just imagine a world where people would be willing to take personal responsibility for their own lives and lessons…and see the gift even in the most painful circumstances. Then noone can be simply slapped with labels and uncompassionately dismissed without realization that it is from  those very places of shadow and death that wake us out of our slumber and create the changes we ultimately all long for and need.

To respond to your inquiry about poly, I think for some, poly is certainly the way to go. After all, how could it not be… there’s many doing it.  I know a handful of couples that have been successfully poly for years…and I think what creates that success is very strong foundational partnerships.  They raise children together, are dynamic in their individual careers, and carry a certain level of maturity in supporting each other equally.  With such solid foundations, no…I don’t feel it necessarily goes against needs for emotional commitment and stability…if that is the path that interests them, and they truly meet in that desire, then that is theirs to experience.
Yet for me, it’s not what I ultimately want.  Mainly because what I have encountered so much in the poly community is tendency towards intense focus on sexuality and relationships, and for me, that focus has become rather annoying and redundant. Beyond this, in my experience in poly, I was never met in that… ‘God -I just can’t contain myself- I am -so in love -I can barely stay inside my skin -eyes welling- my heart is exploding- dripping with love’… kind of experience.  For me, being met there, in the juicy depths of such intensity, is simply what makes life worth living. And I’d rather wait to have that even if just for one more experience in this lifetime, than have all the sex in the world that just can’t go there.  I’ve only had that level of meeting with monogamous partners as we’ve grown deeper in love with each other over time.  But that’s just my experience.   Who’s to say what is to come.

From a practical perspective, polyamory makes absolute sense under plenty of circumstances. For example, imagine if couples with children, finding themselves at odds, considered the choice to remain together working as a parental team, while opening their relationships to others? Can you imagine how much healthier those children’s perspectives will be…how safe, nurtured and loved they will feel.  What if partners love each other and wish to remain together, yet clearly are changing, say, sexually or spiritually, in incompatible directions, and desire to be met in those changes? With just some alternative reference points, and a little creative thought towards options other than jumping to divorce or vindictive separations, the world becomes a place of limitless possibilities.  Judging any path as right or wrong for everyone is just stupid…and many a polyamorist is just as guilty as the monogomists for their righteous indignation and finger wagging. My question for polyamory from a spiritual perspective is…is poly and sex being used to avoid and distract from higher consciousness, or to move closer? This is up to each individual to decide.

For me, poly was a finger pointing to the moon… ultimately directing me towards the depths of connection with myself and All That Is that I was seeking from the very beginnings…I just didn’t know it.  Sex and Spirit are inseparable, and it is way too easy to call one or the other blasphemy for all in accordance to their own terms. Sex can be one of the most beautiful, pleasurable and profound paths to God.  Yet, as with any medicine, ceremony, religion, or even philosophy, more does not always equal better.  Deep honor and discretion must be taken for the power of such a Gift…lest it turn to poison.

-Do you still practice tantra in some form, and if so what does it entail?

You know, I used to try, very hard, to understand Tantra and to work at being a Tantric. I went to the workshops and conferences, traveled around the world thinking I was going to heal myself and help heal other people.  But you know, I think the practice of Tantra only really begins when we drop all of that, realizing there’s nothing to heal.  When the time came that I forgot I was seeking… and the understanding of God within All That Is somehow integrated from a mental concept, into embodied reality…that is the Tantra that I now experience.

-What is sex magic and how does it fit into tantra, if at all?

Sex magic is the use of orgasmic energy for prayer. It is extremely powerful… and yes, it can be used Tantrically.  However… that would entail it’s use only by the wisest and most developed beings who have ‘squashed the grapes of ego so they may partake in the wine of Spirit’.

Wielded towards ego desires…it is otherwise known as Black Magic. The present fad of teaching Sex Magic to any workshop attendee is like handing a two year old a canister of gasoline and a pack of matches. It is justified with surface level Spiritual Idealism, and utterly ignorant towards the energies inherent in such a practice.  I have heard too many teachers justify use of Sexual or Black magic by making the argument that such words as ‘if it be for the highest good’ are used.  Yet…can you imagine the elementals would discern and make use of ridiculous left-brained words such as ‘if it be for the highest good’ over the profound passionate depth of one’s innermost feelings, thoughts, desires, distortions, and Soul energies of a person in sexual union?  It’s something akin to saying you can look at a person and make the statement ‘fuck you’ and it doesn’t matter what energy is coming through. When in truth, that ‘fuck you’ could be anywhere on the spectrum of hilarious to vicious and beyond…the words themselves are not the truth.  The truth emanates from within.

-After everything you’ve experienced, what are your thoughts on sex as it fits into the scheme of life? Are we all just overly obsessed with it and making it out to be more than it really is, or does it still live up to all the hype for you? And did you ever reach something you might call ultimate sexual satisfaction? If so, how or why–was it more of a physical experience, an emotional one, a spiritual revelation, all of the above or something entirely indescribable perhaps?

I feel that, yes… we as a collective, are undoubtedly obsessed with sex.  Yet, sexuality and relational forms are, historically, the fulcrum point of cultural structure.  With the massive shifts in paradigm that are now occurring, I think this focus on sexuality is serving the purpose of waking us from prosaic structures of nuclear family, individualism, isolation, separation…and most of all, the meaninglessness that has been created through all of this.  Perhaps this ‘obsessive’ focus is the interpretation of Shakti waking a culture running on the lower three chakras.

As I said a bit earlier, for me, all the hype on sexuality has grown redundant. I feel the same for all the hype about Spirituality, as well.  There is a whole lot of lip service pointing to something that is still missing for them…whether it be ‘Sacred Sex’, ‘Tantra’,  ‘Spiritual integration’ or what have you. We’ve become dumb with Spiritually prosaic phrases.  A good friend, in fact, recently wrote me, frustrated about this very subject- “I get the feeling that these well-worn ‘loving’ cliched phrases are just a substitute for feeling the pain of not yet being where these people want to be, with ‘god’, enlightened, happy, etc.”

My point here is that there a radical difference between integrated embodiment, and hype. So no, the hype’s not so interesting.

As for the ‘ultimate sexual experience’ I will say this.  I’ve had many profound  sexual experiences in the past.  Those experiences were simply my natural expression at the time.  Since then, I’ve become a different being, seeing the roles of love an sexuality in an entirely new way.  Yet I’ve been on my own for most of my deepest integrations over the last few years, and now I’m just being here, doing as I love.  So, whether my sexual experiences will become something other than what I have seen, is yet to be seen.   The ‘ultimate sexual satisfaction’ at present is simply acceptance of what is …nothing else needed.
-What advice can you convey to men in the general realm of relating with women? What can or should men do better or differently in order to connect with women in the same way that women desire in their hearts to connect with men?

Any man will be able to connect with a woman when he is truly connected with himself.  Problem is, most people are so caught up in their stories that they can’t truly get quiet enough to center, step outside of their dramas, and offer to themselves what they need in order to create the changes that will truly alter their lives.  Men who are connected to Nature, Earth, and devotion… have no problems relating here.  He must be willing to walk through the valley of the shadow of Death in order to come into his maturity, and that may very well mean walking alone and learning that the energy and pleasure of Shakti is from Source…all that is… not from the physical womb.  Just as all women must learn the stability and protection of Consciousness is from Spirit, not from a man.  When a man does this…when he is connected with the nature of his True devoted Self he will not need to ‘do anything’ differently…he will simply be different…and naturally know how to connect with and deeply love woman.

-What advice or tips can you give men when it comes to lovemaking? What do men generally do wrong, what do they do right, and what should they be doing that they just aren’t getting around to at all? What are a few super important things that men should keep in mind when it comes to making love, that will help take both man and woman into something resembling cosmic ecstasy, true sexual satisfaction?

So I’m gonna answer this question for both men and women. Feeling…the depths of love…cannot be emitted from lovemaking if it is to be truly ecstatic and satisfying.  It is vulnerability, openness, and the willingness to experience and dance with whatever arises naturally.  Our sexuality is so metaphorical for where we are as a collective.  What we generally do ‘wrong’ is focus on the physical…we go into constant motion because our nervous systems are wound up and we are so conditioned to go for the goal… when the best part is along the journey.  We don’t need to try…it is always felt. Trying to make a woman come or stay hard or get to orgasm is the antithesis of the most profound levels of sensuality. When we try and move into constant physical, goal oriented sex…our genitals, our hearts, and our souls grow numb.  Trying needs to be replaced with ‘being’, and ‘being’ can only be there when we are integrated enough in ourselves to truly relax into love.  Then the focus is on the entire experience, not just the genitals, or the erection, or the orgasm.  Then we begin to slow down, feeling ourselves and our partners…honoring the love that is there, the mystery of being in these bodies, eye to eye, deeply present…moving with the natural waves and rhythm of what is.

-What is the true nature or role of femininity as you see it, the goddess energy, and what is or should be the real role of the masculine?

This is a tricky question to respond to, as Masculine and feminine are forever One, inseparable Beingness. Nevertheless, I will do my best to create distinction to respond to the question.  Know that any ‘roles’ portrayed are absolute bullshit and mental concepts that, if taken literally, ultimately serve as nothing but entrapment. That said ~

The feminine is limitless, feeling, flowing, creativity in action and manifestation. She cannot be separated from the masculine, as she embodies him. She is consciousness itself, manifest.   If I look at mother nature, Gaia… I can see her fecundity, her loving and giving nature.  She is a limitless source of beauty and creativity that nurtures and provides.  She provides joyously for those who honor her natural beauty, flow and rhythms… providing everything we need. Yet If she is seen as separate…if her gifts are forgotten and dishorned as something to greedily take from, she responds with great force, either becoming dry, deserted, and barren… or a raging storm which destroys everything in it’s wake.  So her role is both sexuality and death ~ to nurture, provide and birth creation into being…as well as the energy and form that catalyze the lessons of Spiritual growth and learning.
The masculine is Spirit, Truth… unchanging consciousness itself.  He cannot be separated from the Goddess Shakti, as he the Ultimate Source of her form.  He is life and breath itself.  The masculine is the Father, who provides truth, wisdom, structure, direction, knowing… the seed of life. Every cell, tree, plant, fish, and animal knows what to do.  They simply are what they are…they be…as consciousness itself. Only man developed the ability to create the illusion of separation from Being, through the mind, so as to observe himself as Being. So the masculine is Spirit, the direction of Being.  He is life itself, it’s protector, and destroyer.  When out of alignment, the masculine… through the mind…disengages from Shakti…from feeling and creative energy.  He becomes numb and destructive… a separate, lost, limited form unaware of itself as Being.
Masculine and feminine are always One, yet the world of physical reality creates the illusion of duality.  Men and women are equally masculine and feminine, Shiva and Shakti, in the highest sense. Only as we move ever further into density…into the mind and physical reality as separate from Spirit, do such distinctions become in any way significant.

Blog India ~

It was twilight hours of mid January when I made my way down the rubber-mat exit platform that led from the plane into Calcutta airport, after an exhausting 24-hours journey.  I joined a staggering line of passengers into a beige tiled, fluorescent – lit room, labeled ‘customs’.  Passing a guard in green fatigues with a machine gun strapped round his shoulder, I stopped in the long line for admittance into India.  I felt a moment of squirm in the midst of the gun and the sterile authoritarianism of the place, and squint in bewilderment of the sudden 3am brightness towards the woman behind me who, I’m guessing, feels the same.  I’m tired and I don’t want to play their stupid anti- terrorist bullshit game.  An agent waves me over and my thoughts jolt back into the moment.  He looked my papers over, slammed a few stamps onto my passport, and upon finding no evil, handed them back.  My journey had begun.

I trotted out happy to finally be free from airplanes and lines, and found an Indian man in a smart suit and tie holding a sign in black letters; Maya Yonika.  He had me follow him to retrieve my luggage.  That was another 40 minutes of waiting, but when it was finally said and done, he directed me outside past a crowd of anticipating Indians, and to a black Suburban.  I was whisked into the car, the door shut behind me without a word, and I was off.   My driver was a husky dark man in a white turban held by a chin band that matted his short beard where it held.  I looked into the rearview, and his dark eyes remained fixed on the road.  ‘He must be Muslim’, I thought to myself…’he looks Muslim… I think’.  I leaned up to confirm his name, Singh?,  vaguely remembering  my directions.  “Yes, Man…Singh”; his strong but gentle voice returned.  “I’m Maya”.  “Yes, Mam”.  With that, I leaned back and drowsily watched India’s dark hours pass from the car’s side window.

Occasional sections of roadway were hazily lit around dusty abandoned construction sites.  Skeletons of building projects, begun and seemingly forgotten, loomed over piles of scrap wood, rebar, and groups of two or three men warming themselves around tiny fires, lit in the chill of the night.  Fan plants, bananas and bougainvillea crept through cracks and over city walls.  Here and there stray dogs perused scanty make – shift slums displaying laundry lines hanging above heaps of garbage.  Twenty minutes passed before we pulled into a long driveway blocked by massive metal orange doors.  Singh flashed his lights and sounded his horn and two guards with machine guns strapped to their backs opened them and saluted our arrival.  ‘Whoa’ I ponder…’this guys got armed guards’.  The driveway is lined with coconut palms and potted flowers.  We arrive into the parking area, where two other Sports cars of some kind- I don’t know my cars…but I know these are really nice cars…and two stocky Indian men in white coats arrive to greet us.  The shorter man opened my door; “come, Ma’am”.  I was directed through a large sitting room, thickly carpeted in beige, with a black secretary’s desk on the right.  It looked more like a business then a home.  We stepped through wood framed, glass double doors to a veranda, with marbled granite flooring, furnished in white.  My luggage appeared behind us and the servant asked “dinner, Ma’am”?  I shook myself to coherence, surprised at the inquiry at 3 am.  “Um…do you have fruit”?  The servant nodded once and walked out. Five minutes later, he returned with a gorgeous platter full of sliced kiwi, banana, strawberry and melon.  “Anything else, Ma’am?” The two servants and the driver stood outside my doorway smiling.  “No…thank you”, and I bowed in Namaste’ to them, somewhat out of habit.  They returned my bow, saying “Good Night, Ma’am”, and the door shut behind them.

This journey was much unexpected.  India was a destination I’d considered somewhere to go later…like much later…when I was ready…like when I was more Spiritually developed, or had some kind of reasonably secure home base, or in another lifetime, or… something. The idea of coming here intimidated me; it seemed the antithesis of the West, economically poor, but the motherland of Spirituality.  Riddled with ancient Temples and cremation grounds, Gurus and Saddhus…if I came, I might come face to face with authentic Tantra….and then again, I might not…that being what I was most afraid of.

You see, I felt what I’d experienced in the Western Neo-Tantra world was not ‘the real thing’, but rather some modern Sexy aggregate of Spiritual affectations.   I never felt completely settled into it…not because I felt it ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’, but because it didn’t cater to the depths in practice I was seeking.  For the objectives of shaking us from the slumber and dry bore of conventional sexual and relational demands,  it’s a brilliant breath of fresh air…a new sexual option and permission to express and let go of the most damaging of sexual repressions.  For the initiatives of making money, lovers, and ‘juicy orgasms’, it’s the place to be; a great stepping-stone to widening one’s perspectives and options in life, and I will be forever grateful for my lessons there.  Yet at the same time, deep down I experienced the West’s Tantra as being ‘stuck’ there; what I feel is meant to be a psychological re-evaluation, in the hands of Spiritual deficiency, can easily transmute into a sexually neurotic lifestyle…an unfortunate imprisonment into convention’s polarity, wrapped in Eastern Spiritual concepts, molded and distorted to justify the feeding of ego desires.  Something about it seemed to bind so many of it’s practitioners further and deeper into their egos….or in eastern terms, ‘bind them deeper into Samsara’.

I knew deep down that authentic Tantric practices were not about a quick- fix ‘sexy poly show’.  The ancient practices of Tantra Yoga require experienced guidance, training within strict disciplines, deep awareness, and continuous work towards destruction of Ego desires.  My feeling is that Neo- Tantra plays right into the west’s collective mindset of incessant pursuits, hidden behind ‘lip service’ to the Sacred.  Something about this felt not only ineffective, but spiritually ‘backpedaling’.  Again, It’s not that the Teachings themselves were in any way ‘wrong’, but I did see them as dishonest in relation to the language built around it.  In other words, I may have approached the Tantric scene in a different air, had it been entitled ‘Sex Coaching’ or ‘Open/poly University’, or what not.  But in my naivety, the words ‘Tantra’, ‘Sacred Sex’, and ‘Spiritual’ attracted me, in the state I was in, like a moth to a light bulb.   It was the depths of internal spiritual guidance I was in need of.  What I got was valuable and had it’s place, yet in many ways, moving in the opposite direction that my wounding needed for healing.  I dreamt of this several months after I left that ‘Tantric’ relationship;

my partner grabbed hold of my foot that had an open wound…a very bad one where I could see bone and tissue.  Yet regardless of how bad it was, that wound was showing signs of healing.  As if my partner was oblivious to those signs, he took his hand and dove it into the wound, ignorantly breaking the places it was healing.  I tried to get him to stop, but he was so sure of his ways that he continued, and when he finally stopped, I knew then the chances were much greater…it would then become infected.

The dream is an allegory of both my internal and external experience.  My partner reflected my own distorted inner masculine, overriding my deepest inner sensitivities, my knowing…. and the messages they held.  That overriding manifests as the proverbial incessant search for more…. better educations, occupations, residence, and identity, more money, sex, power….and things to ingest and numb us from it all.

Western Tantra tends to play into and promote ‘the more’ and get’s ‘stuck’ there.  Yet ultimately, authentic Tantric Yoga is about the disintegration of our ego hungers.  For ego’s pursuits are never satisfied… only built upon.  The incessant pursuit of ego desire fails to provide the deep inner contentment we seek…yet we continue with it, even vehemently defend it, not knowing what else to do.   Just take the old adage’…never speak about politics, sex, religion or money.  Our identities are completely wrapped around these things, in and out of  ‘consciousness’ communities.  But the discipline necessary to be aware of the difference between ego desires and the patterns of behavior that naturally accompanies connection with the wisdom of the ‘Inner Guru’, or the ‘higher mind’ or ‘Divinity’ if you do so choose…is hardly palatable to western initiatives.   So we continue to look for the next thing outside, that will get us the ‘love’, money or power that we think will save us.

So I’m the jerk trying to rip open this Pandoras box and sort out taboos within taboos, hidden agendas within open declarations, open agendas within hidden words… the imprisonments of those screaming ‘Freedom!’, and the freedom within those very ‘imprisonments’.  My ‘issues’ and ‘projections’ from the truth of ‘discernment’, and ‘knowing’… and ‘theirs’…and is there any difference anyway.

Methinks herding ferile cats with bare hands might be a less daunting task.

Admittedly, I‘ve felt rather ‘lonely’here…I questioned all of these things about Western Tantra while I worked under it’s umbrella…yet still I found no language to confirm my knowing… little examples of something ‘healthier’ to validate my feelings. While the ‘Sacred Sex’ crowd waved banners of  ‘open relationships’ and ‘multiple orgasmic bliss’, I found myself standing there… wondering why I wasn’t finding it as enjoyable as ‘everyone else’. Was it just ‘my wounds’ speaking, as my tantric partner insisted?  The words he spoke certainly sounded right ; “When amrita flows the rivers will run free”, “the goddess is juicy all the time”, “follow your desires”, and “end the separation”.  Well, I certainly wanted people to come back together and for the rivers to run clean, so I did my best to stay ‘open’ sexually, regardless of the emotional and physical yearnings to stop that were overwhelming me.  My mistake was expressing my need to him, and depending on him to hear me and act accordingly…but he could only hear his own desires, and insisted I up the sexual ante even more.

If you take nothing else from this writing, take this: Never trust the word of another over your own internal knowing.

My entire being became contracted to the point where I was bound to explode.  At one point, I felt so emotionally violated and overwhelmed, I took a swing at him.  That was the beginning of the end.  When I finally walked away, I contradictorily felt both grateful for lessons learned, and resentful as hell for both it’s failings and my own.   Perhaps I left wiser of the world, gaining a deeper understanding of sexual conditionings and their connection to the emotional body… and even some ‘Spiritual street smarts’… yet I remained even more confused and bewildered around what  was ‘conscious sexuality’.  Certainly it wasn’t the proverbial monogamous relationships I’d witnessed and experienced in earlier years… yet I hadn’t found it here in the ‘Sacred Sex’ world, either.  Ultimately, the yearnings for depth and meaning that initially led me to Tantra, remained unsatisfied.  A whole drama ensued…how could I leave this man who was sure I was his partner and beloved?   Once again I sat bewildered, wondering if ‘they’ were right…was it just ‘my issues’ speaking, by not being interested in experiencing life with a partner with his level of sexuality, or was it ‘healthy discernment’, to walk away? The whole thing was maddening…or maybe I was just mad.

I set out again on my own, and spent a year traveling between Oregon and Northern Cali in a little camper trailer, wondering who I was, what I was doing, and how I was going to make my next dollars.  I set up an office for a few months in Santa Cruz and offered Tantric massage to an occasional client, but really I was not at all in the Spirit of it.  I was falling apart myself.  Tantric work, emotional exhaustion and ‘survival mode’ don’t mix well.  Slowly but surely in that time, I noticed I was getting chronically sick and tired.  My determination to find meaning and depth in life and relationships began falling by the wayside.  Perhaps I was wrong all along… the depths of Love I so deeply desired just didn’t exist.  It was my lone ranger fantasy.  That nemesis of Truth and Meaning had been dangling over me like some kind of festering wound for over a decade.  I couldn’t find its expression, inside or out.  In fact, I was totally fucked, because it seemed the more corrupt or out of integrity, the greater the reward.  Who made this shit up, anyway?  Apparently, I was on the wrong fucking planet.

Yet…there were those moments; those occasions where I’d be gifted these beautiful glimpses… breathtaking feelings of love and awe and serenity….usually when I was alone in the lush of nature….walking amongst the trees, or on high mountain-tops, or even through my fingers when my whole being  melted into a piece of clay as I watched and felt my creations come alive, or within the details of a painting.  Nevertheless now, I was growing unwell… and my motivation and ability to seek it…whatever it was… was running dry.

You see, Since running from home at 15, I’d moved place to place, hopping from one home and sexual relationship to the next… and all the way until I ran into ‘Sacred sexuality’ and ‘Tantra’, at 33.  My brother had passed away, and I thought then I was at the end of my rope.  It was there, I was sure, I would find the keys my Soul was by then quite literally aching and burning for. It was there that I put my last hope to find true depth and substance, to find something rich and Real and valuable.  Something that would ease the pain of my childhood, loss of my father, my brother, and having never truly being close to mother.

Ultimately, I had to stop my searching and become my own Savior- and it took one hell of a long road for that to finally sink in.  Yet to truly finalize the external search was to let go of all of my most treasured dreams and desires… I was alone.

That was rock bottom.

I remember a few days I just lay in bed crying and couldn’t get up.  My roommate called a friend, and let him know I was in bad shape.  He came in and lay with me and just held me for some time.  It took some hours, but after receiving his loving words and unconditional touch, I began to find the strength to stir once again.

It took a few years to completely shake the sickness and depression, learn to   honor my own truth and voice, and begin loving myself enough to find the ways to health and inner contentment.  The phoenix began to rise from the ashes, and a new evolution began.  I started to tell my story, and my desires began to transmute to the place where they had always belonged… where we find ourselves after our fair share of darkness… into the light.

I changed some things, then.  I dedicated my will to the Will of Divinity…well, at least as much as I was capable of such an ideal at the time, which wasn’t much…nevertheless the intention was there.

In support of said intention, I focused on the one structure that always made me feel healthy and amazing; the one I trusted completely ~ Kundalini Yoga.  I saved my money and put it into a teacher-training program on Big Island, Hi.  That was a month long program, running every day from 6am to 10 pm, and the remainder of the time sleeping in a tent not too far from Pele’.  It was an intense set up.  If you’ve ever taken a Kundalini class with a gung-ho teacher, you know how challenging they can be.  We did that several times each day, in between discourse and meals, for an entire month.  Having taken only a few classes before, I was far from ‘seasoned’, and needless to say, I was sore, tired and shed my fair share of tears during that time.  But it was all worth it… since those beginnings, life has never been the same- mind, Spirit, or Body.  Yoga and meditation are altering my mind, life experience and initiatives in ways I’d never imagined, and this feels like just the tip of the iceburg ~

So if I have not fully bored you, I’d like to share of the miracle that is Now~

It was only a few months previous when I was visiting my mom in Boston after a year abroad in Bali.   We had agreed, her and I, to consciously ‘work on our wounds’ together.  And I tell you, after a few weeks of living in the same house, we didn’t need to go digging or anything …frustrations would arise in sudden steamy geysers all on their own.  Historically, our dynamic created the proverbial downward-spiral…she pushing, demanding attention or priority to something… I resisting, ignoring, or disrespecting…I’d vaguely attempt to maintain dignity, all the while my blood simmering …until I couldn’t, and then, the oh-so-loveable Taurean explosion- “You’re worried about me NOW!!”  I’d bark at her…”Where were you when I really Needed you!?”

Of course that wasn’t very effective.  Nevertheless, the empathy that we intended began to shine through our old patterns.  We wanted to understand each other and began to not only share our story and perspective, but empathically hear each others….What was she thinking when all this was going on? That enquiry could only successfully proceed from a reasonably detached curiosity that of any need to be right.  I had to see her as a human with a history and feelings rather than my mother who ‘should have’ been this or done that.  When she shared, her thoughts and stories brought tears to my eyes.  I learned that her love and care was always there… silent within the painful depths of her experience.  I came to understand her thoughts and despair.  It became clear she’d been doing her ‘work’ over the years.  In fact, I was stunned when, at a time when I was losing temper, I experienced her, for the first time… stand calm, collected, and concerned in the face of tension.  She stopped, and listened.  And in that one enactment, I could see her care and willingness to open to a perspective other than her own, and gained a respect for her that had been sorely absent.  Perhaps she saw the changes in me as well, for each time tensions rose, we did our best to be patient and excavate into the core of what was happening.  Deep down we both knew that disillusionment between us would forever continue to ripple into the rest of our lives.  I was 38, she 62. Truly, it’s been well worth the challenge to become closer….it took only humility and the desire to do so.

Our relationship was already showing improvement in that first month. I’d purchased a return ticket to Bali in early September, but as the departure date drew nearer, something didn’t feel right.  She requested I extend my stay and I agreed it’d be best to stay together a bit longer.  It had been 6 years since my brother’s passing when we’d last spent any real time together, after all.  I pushed my ticket a month ahead, but even as that date approached, my intuition told me to cancel yet again…but why?   I certainly didn’t want to remain where I was…the winds of an approaching New England winter were blowing, and I had no intention of revisiting such a ghastly experience.

Meanwhile, a past lover, Stephen came to mind, and I sent him an email to check in. He and his wife, Sara, were my introduction into the world of polyamory, now a decade past.  That connection was borne during an overwhelmingly intense time of need to experience the kind of deep love and ways of relating that, although I’d never experienced it, I was sure existed, and was determined to find.  The intensity that came over me at that time felt akin to a possession…I dare to call it a ‘Soul calling’…I simply could no longer have things as they were.  The option in front of me as the path to ‘consciousness’ was ‘open relationship’, so that’s where I was going.  Stephen was my impetus.  Since those initiations, I’d entered all sorts of new and interesting realities…initially working as a stripper, and within a few months, partnering with a Daka and traveling the world teaching Tantra…something I knew not a thing about.  Through that journey, I would ultimately become a prominent figure in a controversial film based on that relationship; Sex Magic, Manifesting Maya.  The Gods must have been having quite a laugh.

It’s 6 years later, and after all of that, I’ve been saddened by the fact that the openness and curiosity I once held for both polyamory and Tantra had clamped down with an overlay of cynicism in it’s wake.  Accordingly, I felt it might be beneficial attempt to crack open that door again… perhaps dipping my toes on more nurturing terms, within the safety and familiarity of Stephen and Sarah.  Married for over 14 years, they’ve proven to know love and commitment.  So I bought yet another ticket- but this time to Austin, Tx, with the intention to love, dance, make  time to write, and for work…. find an outlet to teach Yoga.

All was going well with Stephen and Sarah.  Stephen and I became lovers again, and Sarah and I became closer friends than we’d ever been.  Yet time had brought it’s shifts and changes, and I think our greatest glory was in the deepening of our friendship and understanding for one another.  Where there was once walls and judgments, became replaced with beautiful open-hearted discussions, tears and laughter.

I found a tiny apartment in an ideal area of South Austin, freshly painted it’s walls and got myself a futon…all ready to call home for a cozy winter.  Yet an unexpected problem soon became clear on the economic front ~ turned out, Austin is already saturated with Kundalini Yoga.  Go figure – the middle of Texas of all places, bustling with Singhs, Kaurs and Sat Nams.  What to do!? Yoga has been my lover, calling and mainstay since I let go of Tantric work, and I knew it was my calling.  I was there, and there was no work.  It seemed the most reasonable option was to return to Tantric work, yet that felt the antithesis of where I was and what I wanted.  For years I have been telling my clients one cannot make decisions out of fear.  I knew it wasn’t time for that, nor would it be natural to go out in search of a job.

What to do but bide my time and enjoy! I partook of some of my favorite activities; hiding away and sipping lattes, reading and writing in coffee shops, visiting with friends and practicing Yoga….as each morning turned to dusk, and my dollars dissapeared.  A kind of limbo set in as I moved through the second month in Austin, with no sign, nor sense of what would come.  Nevertheless I was intrigued with my state of calm- really, an illogical calm considering I had only a months rent money remaining.  For most of my existence, I’ve held an ever-present background of panic that ran through my veins around survival.  But this time I didn’t.  Life had shown me enough support from following creative impulse and intuition to know worrying wouldn’t help and my next steps would present themselves…at least, I was pretty sure.

A week later I received an email.  Some people get perfumed letters, sealed with wax rosettes.  Others receive grand visions, prophetic dreams, or Holy Saints in white, shining robes and golden auras, floating down from the heavens upon Divine rays of God.  I get emails…and this one was an inquiry from a man that took a few private yoga sessions with me in when I was teaching in Bali.  He asked if I’d have any interest in traveling to his home in India to work with him and his friends on a daily basis for several months?  My impudent fingers began to type something along the lines of “does a bear shit in the woods”, but I interjected it with a more appropriate, although still hasty response.  With the ‘swoosh’ of my message sent, I pondered if I might one day find the sense to give intelligent contemplation to such proposals before approving them… but the thought dissolved into the screen of India’s ‘Visa requirements’ home page.  That was late November.

It’s three months later, and this intensive in India is already half way to completion.  My employer, Kaaliya and his friends have been a dedicated troop, and minds, bodies, and lives are improving. This has been my dream job, for it enforces a level of discipline that benefits me on every level; never before have I so acutely gained a sense of the true science of yoga through the changes occurring in my own body.  We practice every morning and evening just outside my room, in an open-air courtyard of white marble floors, bordered in thick grasses surrounding an old banyon, wrapped in serpentine vines.  Walls of tropical greens and jasmine frame the yard, edged with enormous potted dalias, lupine, snapdragon and marigold.

A beautiful and fecundant Peruvian, Antoinete, is my most dedicated student.  With a will of steel and heart of gold, she’s quit smoking …and past her morning practice, has begun ancillary work twice a week, upping my ante to 3 sessions on those days.  Ant is the ultimate Demeter- her example of unconditional giving and propensity to  bring flowers and incense sets the stage for everyone.  She’s grown dear to me, along with another new friend, Vanessa.  She’s a gorgeous thick accented French Indian, with long black locks and a blithe charisma, emphatically expressed through cigarettes waving and sips of espresso.  When I first arrived, I told her of my intimidation for exploring the streets of Calcutta, and she was kind enough to take me into a central area called ‘New Market’ and show me the ropes.

We left home and joined a sea of bright yellow taxis, auto- rickshaws and motorbikes, weaving and swerving haphazardly through nondescript lanes.  In Calcutta, they don’t use signals- the horn is the indicator- for anything.  Upon my tenth or twelfth wide-eyed ‘Oh My God!’-in between catching my breath and giggles of relief following near-misses, the driver looks back from the rearview and assures me emphatically, “Don’t worry Miss! – mostly people walking in roads hit, not auto to auto…isn’t it! ” How comforting, I think.  Vanessa, sitting next to me, confirms, and tells me it’s the highways that are the main issue; “India haz di hiyest ayxcident motality in za vorld!”, she says.  I don’t doubt her.

We got out at a busy sides street and Vanessa took my hand, directing me into the rhythm of the city streets.  Pedestrians don’t have the right of way here…like, not at all. When the light turns green, the cars go, and you get out of the way.  It’s kind of like ‘frogger’. If you get caught in a light change, the cars still go….and your best bet is to wait in the middle of the road, cars whizzing by, and hope no one hits you, either until the light changes or you find a chance to make a run for it.  I went ahead of Vanessa’s direction and learned that one the hard way- but the good thing is, once that happens, you really get it.  Eventually we made our way down some smaller alleyways, leaving the worst of the traffic behind.  Delicious smells of incense, Chai and curries from street vendors swirled though our senses.  Men bowing down scrub black polish into shoes, and sit along long wooden benches drinking tea.  Women in black burkas and brilliantly colored saris walk by street dogs rummaging for scraps, and men openly pissing in the street.

As we came into the marketplace, an old woman approached me with a tin cup, and I dug into my bag to offer her rupees.  But I wasn’t prepared when suddenly I was ambushed by a group of begging children from amongst a thick crowd.  I had only a few small rupee bills and two 1000 rupees in my bag- Their was seven or eight of them and I hadn’t enough to cover them all.  When I pressed the last of what I had into tiny hand, signaling for them to share what I gave, and went to move on, one of the children grabbed hold of my leg and held tight, while those remaining tried to grab my arms or tugged at my clothes motioning to their mouths.  I called to Vanessa who was just a few steps ahead and her eyes went wide to see me stuck there and she pushed through the crowd back to me.  She went digging in her bag.  Thankfully, between the two of us, we managed to find enough coins to cover them and move fast between the bike rickshaws and blend into the crowd.

Even shopping was intense.  To look into a store is to be accosted by 5 or 6 sales people in a tiny booth with fabrics flying at you from every direction.  It’s a method that worked initially; surely I wouldn’t have acquiesced on a purchase or two had I not felt so ‘under the gun’.  After a few hours, Vanesse and I took refuge, sitting with overly sweetened Chai from the street to catch our bearings.  I was a bit shaken, and purchased a beadie and smoked for the first time in months just to ground and calm myself from the intensity of the bustle.  Vanessa and I looked at each other and laughed.  “You ok?” she asked, with a raised brow.  I took a long drag and motioned to the street chai vendor for a second round.  “Yeah”. I said, smiling and grateful to have her for my first steps out.  “yeah… I’m good, thanks”.

We walked further through the city, taking in the sights and sounds, and she showed me the whereabouts of a few key places to visit when I was ready to move about on my own.  The juxtapositions of the city became clear; it’s beauty and It’s filth; Five star hotels towered over dusty lanes of dilapidated slums, framed with colorful laundry lines of stunning silks and saris.  Trash was scattered about in piles, picked through by goats, street dogs and the occasional ratty looking pony.  Old banyons and neem trees line roads where old men in turbons squat to smoke and wait for nothing.  There is so much to see, so many faces that fill my curiosity… what thoughts might linger behind those black eyes?

Yesterday I sat and sipped tea with Antoinette and Vanessa after morning Yoga.  Vanesse was watching me intently, and in response to my ‘What’?, she returned in thick French accent; ‘Yu look hayppie all thu tyme.’  I literally looked over my shoulder to see who she was talking to.  I’d never heard those words spoken in reference to me before, nor had I ever thought myself a ‘happy’ person.  It threw me off guard.   But her statement made me realize, I’ve actually been… content.  I thought in wonder…after a lifetime of entirely too much darkness, finally the last few years have slowly been transforming into light.  It’s not this experience or this place… I think it’s coming from a deep-seated feeling of finding the meaning I have been searching for, and through that, experiencing my ‘place’ in this world…the one that brings support to everyone.  Mother nature seems to lavish her fecundity onto me while I serve this community, bringing joy to all, simply by doing what I love….and accepting and being who I am.  Materially, I perhaps have less than ever.  I don’t have a car, a house, a partner, or even clarity about my next steps.  Yet I’ve never felt so contented, nurtured, and at ease.  All my life I searched for this feeling through something external… yet nothing can replace the essence of Self Love.  I feel this is only a beginning…as if just a small part of my Soul has awakened.  Every day, I feel more aware, and a subtler, quieter…deeper seeing is sinking in.  I think it is just that development that is why I am here.

Beloveds,

If you are newly arriving at this blog, there’s heaps to read!  If you scroll down to the beginning of my blog pages, you’ll come to the first blog entitled ‘Not so Sexy’.  There you’ll find entrance into my neo-tantric story.  These are unedited excerpts for my upcoming book ‘Diaries of a Traveling Tantrika’.  This blog is intended to support those who are entering into the Tantric world as clients or aspiring teachers, or anyone in question about appropriate sexual healing and relationship forms.  You may find relation here. Enjoy the reading… it’s quite a journey!

If you’ve already read and want more, I’m in process of completing my book, so taking break from weekly blogs.  However, I would be delighted to support you further upon request (and appreciate occasional diversion).  Just send an email request of you’re question or discourse interest, and i’ll consider writing that week upon such request. Remember ‘Dear Abby’, this will be ‘Dear Maya’- only, this is the Tantric version! I ask you provide a small donation of $10-$35 to support me in return.  If i find the material inappropriate, or if i am unable to follow up on your request, i’ll promptly return your moneys.  (of course, you can inquire request before making donation as well!) (:

This process takes much time and focus, so any donations sent will be gratefully received! There is a donation button on my site.

Thank you all for participating in an amazing evolution of our collective awareness!

6/12/10

It’s a new moon with an eclipse in Cancer-a time of new beginnings.  For me, I am coming into completion with reliving my past, and reliving this story.  Frankly, the idea of moving into detail of the past 5 years is exceedingly boring- so I’m going to attempt what seems an impossible task- to get to the point, complete my duty where information is due, and bury this dead duck.

Presently, I’m residing in Ubud, Bali.  I’ve lived here for six months and completed the tasks that I came for.  I’ve taken the steps of moving past my fear of traveling into an unknown place alone, knowing noone, running on faith with very limited dollars into an unknown future.  Well, not completely alone.. there was an interlude of about two months of that smack dab in the middle of the experience, to check out a short lived but beautiful romance (short lived because my inner guides were in no way going to let me sabotage my intentions and fall into old pattern with this one) with a boy I met in Australia, who came to create his own life in Bali.  Nevertheless, I completed my intended tasks solo.  I’ve made a beautiful home and successfully created a powerful Kundalini class here in Ubud, concretizing my path as teacher.

My arrival in Bali was a loosely laid plan after completion of my foundational intentions in Australia.  I was on a specific mission – to end a confusing ‘pull’ I’d experienced for the last 3 years around relationship with Daka Bob, as well as in attempt to support myself out of debilitating chronic illness and exhaustion I’d concurrently been experiencing.  Further relationship is not what I desired – but this nagging pull for so long confused me.  It was time to ‘shit or get off the pot’ – Clearly cut ties, or open to further consideration in relationship if that was my path. I desperately wanted to get to the bottom of whatever this nasty thing was within my body.  Nothing was curing it -not doctors, not my absurdly unenjoyable strict diet, not time, nothing.  My instinct was that perhaps these two issues could be solved together- so I went for the choice that remained- do what I could to create clarity, health, and happiness.

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I was born with the unsatisfied gene.

First it was the church- too boring, but probably most deterring was the smell of old ladies perfume.  But I could get past even that if there was an interesting sermon.  Occasionally –and I mean occasionally- there was.  Father Riley.  When he was on stage, I’d straighten up, cross my little hands and listen with star-struck eyes.  The man had something none of the other priests did – wisdom.  He’d walked the earth a little, seen and considered a thing or two. I could see it, even then.  Father Riley was an anomaly in the church, so the church couldn’t hold me.  I didn’t get why it held anyone, for that matter.

Home wasn’t satisfying either.  Actually, It was a nightmare.  I ran away at 14, moved in with whoever’d take me, and drank and drugged myself into oblivion for the following 13 years- minus a one year interlude in AA at 19.  The remainder of the time I was blacked out most weekends.  But as most good alcoholics do, I functioned enough to work for my food and rent.

On the year of my 19^th birthday, I received a year sobriety coin from my mother before diving in again.  Apparently I wasn’t satisfied.

So I struggled- incredibly so- to let it all go in my own way.  At 27, the debilitating levels of drinking and drugging stopped after the decision to continue or die became clear.  This was an amazing feat in itself-I could write a book about that alone.  But disciplining oneself from substances, as far as I see it, is only the beginning of the battle. (but holy shit, don’t tell anyoneenergy of it. that that is in the thick of an addiction.  Trust me- to stop feels like climbing Everest with no water and a salt lick for your snacking enjoyment) There is another climb.  That one has taken me the following 10 years and counting –and I’m not sure if there’s anyone out there that could relate to this- to let go the

Spirit has a way to make sure all the nuts and bolts are getting clean.  Just when you think it’s safe-HA!  No, silly, there’s much more work to be done!  Come on, get up now!  Do you want the red pill, or the blue pill?  I had to face the biggest one- relationships.  Fuuuck…. the red one. I took it without thinking-big surprise.  Remember the part about moving right in with men after running away at 14.  Yes, that part.  Connect that up with my little scenario of my brother’s passing and moving into the Tantric Temple 5 years ago, and voila!- We have continuation of a pattern that has just got to go, honey!  And this one’s in there deep, so let’s give you a scenario that’s so completely outrageous that you, little girl, are going to have to open those sweet little eyes of yours!   Welcome to Neo-Tantra.

When I walked into relationship with Daka Bob, I was fresh with excitement to explore polyamory, conscious relationship, travel, and understanding of the worlds of Tantra and Sacred Sexuality.  This is all very exciting stuff when you’re fresh off the boat.  I was ready, confidently detached, and feeling rebirthed after 6 months of stagnancy from mourning my brother’s passing.

This was the Rainbows and Unicorns phase.  It was nice.  As new relationships go, we spent much of our time together, and, of course, my confident detachment and initial intensions began to melt away into the sweet oblivion of our sexual and emotional connection.  We hiked, made love, worked together in sessions, held hands, made love, spoke in baby- the whole thing.  I met his family over holiday, gaining their approval by winning the pot in a tipsy low-brow poker game. For me, this was a celebration of a new path in life, opportunity, a new land and a whole new community.

Bob’s lovers began to trickle in as well.  Initially, I was good with that.  I had my own room, so if a lover was there to stay, l’d bid them adieu, and enjoy time and space to myself.  Bob was a handful-as I was coming to discover- having a much larger appetite for sexuality and attention than I wanted to handle myself, so the night to myself was a bit of a relief.

But things began to shift quickly, and I came to realize that Bob had more lovers than I’d imagined.  Bob actually had more lovers than I had any reference point to, and as soon as this began to dawn on me I became frightened.  It didn’t take long before a veil of mistrust began to shade my observations and interactions with him-both personally and within his work ethic.  I became confused.  His charisma and abilities in teaching were powerful and magnetic.  When I ‘d watch him in this place, and the response he evoked from others, I would be convinced of his beauty.  What was being said rang true and valuable.  He was powerful and magnetic, and I loved to be with that, to be sitting next to him in this place.  Yet in daily interaction, the actions and attitudes correspondent with his language didn’t ‘line up’.  Sometimes during our workshops, something would ‘slip’ – be said or done that, in my mind, screamed ignorance.  I’d look around- no one blinked an eye.  It confused me.

Nevertheless, there was a demand, there was travel and teaching plans made, and I was happily in them.  So I sat with my confusion, and sometimes confronted, and came back to sitting in it when my observations were made inaccurate.  I could always see his logic, regardless of how I felt about it- and I often felt like shit about it –but the logic was always there.  He was right – how could I argue?  I was frazzled and confused, but life would nevertheless continue.

We traveled and taught together, put on workshops and sometimes rested in quiet spaces in between.  The traveling was great.  We both loved moving around, meeting people – and most of all- good food and good loving.  There was a part of me that could see the perfection that we could be together, how we bounced easily of each other in a teaching environment, how others appreciated us together, how our bodies fit so well- friends told us we even looked like each other!  I could see the potential, and thought- if he could only slow with the other women and be with US.  I imagine that he was thinking -“If she could only chill out and just let me be with whoever I want when I want”… But it never happened.  The women continued to come – No pun intended, and I continued to contract and confront.   After months of this, I began to feel tenuous around any women -clients, friends, workshop attendees- any woman- as long as she wasn’t overweight, she was a likely candidate.  So I confronted, and my observations were made inaccurate, and so would sit with it -more.

The situation was complex.  There was so much happening!  I was traveling the world, learning Tantra and Sexual Healing and being a teacher.  I was being seen, respected, and experiencing life larger than ever before.  And my Taurean aspect has a weak spot for good food and luxury.  All I had to do was come along for the ride and do my best.  As for my discomfort about Bob’s sexuality, the reality was that he was well versed and experienced in this reality.  What did I know?  And it was there that I sat within a major dilemna.  I felt I did know.  I knew there were two very important factors here.  One, I was full of wounds, and Bob’s work held some major keys to uncover and heal them-and that was my highest priority.  Two, I knew this man had a serious sex addiction, along with a library’s worth of words, definitions, etc, to justify to himself and those who confronted him.  He had created for himself an impenetrable wall of denial, and damn, he was good at it.  That man could sell ice to an Eskimo.

Bob continued to remind me that cultivating my sexuality would bring me into my power.  I wanted that –  more than anything I wanted to be whole.  Problem was, I began to become repulsed by him.  The level of his sexuality became gross to me that I could barely stand to even watch him say the word ‘Sex’.   I would watch the star-struck eyes of women attending workshops, and just think “god, lady…if you only knew.”  But the truth was, this wasn’t about what he was doing… as mad as I wanted to be about it – it was about what was in me – healing myself.  That part I got.  I knew he was right about that.  So I continued.  I cultivated, I continued to have sex with him even when I didn’t want to.  I punched pillows, threw my face into them and screamed, looked for the repressed parts in myself, and uncovered as much anger and resentment and judgment as I could muster.  Then I’d come back for more.  I had plenty of opportunities to look at this stuff in this situation- way too many, actually.  For over a year I did this.  I was like a one legged man in an ass kicking contest.

So why didn’t I just leave?  You know, under any other conditions I would have easily left – I’ve done it plenty before.  But this scene somehow became me.  I was in it-I was it.  We moved together, we worked together, and somehow my love was as deep as my anger.  This experience, as painful as it was, it fascinated me.  I was seen, I was learning – the whole thing was outrageous- just a completely fucked out of control three-ring circus.  That was one part of it.  The other- the part that spoke deeply into my being – when it came right down to it, was that we worked wonderfully together.  We’d sit together in workshop, speak what we knew, and people loved it.  They loved us.  They told us with tear filled eyes how much we’d supported them.  This, in my mind, was worth any amount of pain and challenge.  I wanted to help people.  If there was one thing I knew – this world can be one hell of a place to be.  It filled me to fill them.

Here’s a few embarrassingly obvious things I got from this situation –

First, this nasty little word - Expectation. It’s a good idea to create clarity, right off the bat – defining what the form of relationship that you’re about to take on actually looks like.  Any uncommunicated expectations there are fertile ground for problems.  Make that one clear-what it means to each of you.  For me, it was polyamory and Sacred relationship – I expected it meant to have a few lovers that you experience in relationship with together- communicating together, enjoying, dancing, experiencing and learning about each other on deep levels – perhaps a challenging scenario, yet seeming to hold major potential as a beautiful and growthful experience in communion.  What I got was a fucking runaway train of lover after lover- many whom I was so kindly invited to bed with within 20 minutes of meeting –sometimes within 20 minutes of him meeting.  That’s all fine and good if you want that.  It’s an absolute nightmare if you don’t.  I didn’t.

Secondly, I advise to learn about what Tantra means to the person you’re about to learn with, or have sex with, or whatever- both in word and action.  Watch that person- is he/she someone you want to be like?  If the answer is yes, fabulous!  If no, forget their words, no matter how good or right they sound – they’re not the right one-learn from someone you DO want to emulate.  These are two glaringly obvious simple little pieces of advice I could have used.

Third- Titles and language mean nothing against your own intuition and guidance.  What is right and good and yummy and juicy for one does not mean that it is for another.  Don’t try to be anyone but who you are!!!   I was so naïve and low self esteemed when I entered relationship with Bob, that because of his title and magnetizing language, I spent 99% of that year in self doubt as to why I was unable to ‘keep up’.  I had to be unconscious and selfish because I can’t just allow him his freedom on all levels.  I was too wounded, emotionally disturbed, spiritually undeveloped, fucking stupid, you name it- I was it.  I was angry with him a million times – but deep down I decided it was I who needed to change.  After all, I was the angry one here- he was the one having all the fun and doing all the loving.

Truth is, I was right- I did need to change.  And this was just the kind of  kick in the ass I needed to WAKE UP!

I stayed with this for over a year, doing my best to keep up until I was so emotionally exhausted that I no longer could.  I remember climbing a mountain with him in Vermont – one of my favorite activities.  Usually, at the top of a mountain where the air is clean and I’ve climbed all this way, everything’s clear and clean and perfect.  This time, it wasn’t- I wasn’t.  I looked back at Bob and said “you know, I feel like there’s something literally eating me from the inside- like there’s an alien in there.  I can’t take it anymore.”

Perhaps that ‘alien’ was the result my own inability to give myself credit where credit was due.  I was far from ‘wrong’ for my inability to ‘lovingly keep up with all of this’.  My pace is my pace.  My judgment, although I was constantly reinforced in this, actually may have had an edge of healthy discernment hiding in there – I just didn’t know how to wade into the muck, and after doing the work of finding the repressed and reflected parts of myself that cried for care and attention, throw a god-damn rope to the hand of discernment that was absolutely screaming for me to pull her up and honor her in her wisdom.

Instead, I was constantly trying my damnedest to understand his logic and make room for his desires.  Of course I was terrible at it- I wasn’t listening to what I needed or taking  care of myself, so how could I possibly take care of someone else’s needs and desires?   I needed things at a slower pace…I needed some room to get to know who these women were, make a relationship with them, understand and appreciate their underlying intension and energetic. ie: I needed these things in relationship with myself.  This was the external representation.

The beginnings of the final ending came when I asked this man – no, I begged – with a mediator present – to take just one month off of sleeping with other women.  His response –“I feel shacked!”  Right then and there my heart just shattered.  I don’t recall feeling anything quite like it before.  We had been through- I don’t even know – maybe a year and a half together on a constant -and I mean constant- run of other women the whole time, and I was completely overwhelmed and wasted.  I didn’t just want – I truly needed to stop and take a breath.  So I asked.  From that point on, there was no turning back.  It’s like my heart went black and I couldn’t even consider turning his way again… I had already done it too many times.  What I really needed was to be the fuck out of there.

He hadn’t expected me to leave, and after I did, he was devastated.  I felt I had finally broken the surface of the mud and was gasping for air, while he was distraught and wanting me back.  Apparently, we were experiencing different realities in this relationship.  He went out and bought a ring and asked for my hand in marriage- just for a year- to try again.  There was no way I was trying again.  I was done.  Actually, I was beyond done.

You see!  Once again, I was unsatisfied. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I lived just a few miles away from Bob for about a year after leaving, and I saw him briefly at the temple during that time.  Bob had created a documentary based on our relationship and Tantra, that began perhaps six months into our union.  The producers requested I create a final cut with Bob, so I agreed.  The film documented our personal relationship for about a year, as well as our Tantric work.  I think the idea was to create a film that documented a beautifully successful open relationship and Tantric work, but the film would ultimately transform into something very different.

The following three years I spent traveling between Oregon and Santa Cruz.  During these years, I was confused in a bizarre way- more like- psychologically ‘pulled’ around relationship with Bob.  He was always there, lurking like a shadow of my existence.  I had distinct feeling that our ties were not severed, regardless of my clarity in leaving.  He was never in agreement with that clarity.  In fact, his conviction was that I was his partner, his beloved, and that we were meant to be together.  He would tell me that  ‘it may not be in this lifetime’, and he had ‘let go’, but it was his truth, nevertheless, that I was his partner.

Not long after beginning my travels to Hawaii and within the States, symptoms of chronic exhaustion, depression and a candida-like systemic infection, began to take over my body.  I became sensitive to just about anything that was sweet-sugars of any kind, fruit, breads.  My diet became limited to vegetables and meat.  This stayed with me for several years, until the last few months, where I have been working with an Indonesian Shaman to remove the remainder of the disease.  I had gone to western doctors.. but this kind of thing is obviously not their forte’.  The diagnosis was first Scabies, then ringworm….they were missing it entirely.

Bob’s last visit to me was in Santa Cruz, perhaps a little over a year ago, where he had presented to me the latest version- apparently there had been many- of the documentary   I found it interesting, but not at all a shining portrayal of Bob, myself, or Tantra.  It was more an amusement piece, perhaps even at the expense of the Neo-Tantric world than to it’s benefit, so I though little of it.

What I did think about, was the fact that I couldn’t get this man shaken from my world.  The pull remained, and when we’d converse, regardless of my conviction that he was not for me, he’d continue to remind me of his conviction that he was.  He reminded me that he’d be going on another tour soon, in the next few months and, why don’t we give it a try, one last time?  We’d go to Australia and New Zealand, like we had in the past.  It’d be wonderful for us.  And then I’d know-I’d know for sure if I’d want to be with him again.

All this confused me because I knew I wasn’t in love with him- but my life was so big with him – but it was also a fucking exhausting emotional nightmare.  But now, life was awful, and it had been for some time! I was confused and sick and so amazingly tired I could barely move.  There in beautiful Santa Cruz, I was so tired that it was a chore just to get myself to cruise the boardwalk.  In the back of my mind I’d consider if he’d change – would things be better then?  He certainly made it sound like he could.  Was I sick because I was denying something?  Was I just completely missing the mark on how I was perceiving all of this?  Could he be right? -after all, I have been sick since I left him.  But he continued to be with his many lovers, telling me that if I came into his life, he’d stop being with all of them.  Nevertheless, when it comes to my values, my Taurean stubbornness won’t quit – live or die- and god, I was beginning to wonder if I was going to die.  But It wasn’t good enough- I was unsatisfied.  I knew that if he really wanted to quiet his sexual life or be monogamous, he’d have to be that rather than wait for someone to create it with him.  I wasn’t going for it.

Truth was, I had to be really good to myself now and make sure I made good choices.  After 3 years of this illness and exhaustion, I was acutely aware I couldn’t afford any more stress.  Something was very wrong with me, and it had been for a long, long time.  So when Bob invited me to Australia, the temptation was high.  Something had to change.  I was so sick and tired of being sick and tired.  Maybe the problem was around some denial I was in about our relationship – I was obviously doing something wrong as things were.

Two months later, I was on a plane to meet with Daka Bob in Australia.  I was determined to create clarity for the both of us, and find my health again.

The Shire of Byron is one of my favorite places to be.  I was happy I went, enjoying the Bush and its wild white cockatoos and wallabies.  Bob seemed a little quieter in his energy field, and time with him along with the rest of the members of the tour – including his lovers – was, admittedly, wonderful.  Yet, as I’d expected, I wasn’t feeling enticed to return into relationship with Bob.  Nevertheless, I gave it all I had to open into feel out the possibility on every level, even sexually, so both of us could be sure. This is one thing I was clear on – he would not rest in his convictions until I gave our sexual connection another try.  It didn’t take much- I still wasn’t interested. as I already knew, and I let him know as well.

Meanwhile, we held workshop together there in Australia, all of us presenting the final cut of the documentary together.  That was rather amazing, all of the main characters converged together, I watching the final version for the very first time, to present this documentary and answer questions accordingly.  It was a great opportunity to speak my piece.  The content had shifted rather dramatically, and I was much happier with this version – mainly because it was much more true to life- less of a Hollywood story.  The film was now called ‘Sex Magic- Manifesting Maya,’ and portrayed a part of the story that I had no idea was happening – Bob was using Sex Magic with other lovers to call me back into his life.

‘Interesting’, I thought.  It didn’t mean much of anything to me at the time, except for the fact that I was happy the film finally came together in a more honest portrayal of Bob, his life and his work.  It was a fair portrayal of humanness, allowing its viewers lots of room to think for themselves about it, without leading them anywhere.  It was done with intelligence.

I requested one of Bob’s lovers to stand in as mediation and witness, so I could be sure he heard me speak the truth that this relationship was fully over and we were to cut ties completely.  I wanted no more sex magic done in my name, no more pulling, no more anything.  I was excited to have it clearly finished.  We created ritual then, and we created ritual again when we found it necessary to process through it more for him.   This time, I felt he was really getting it, and we could be done.  He agreed to let go completely.  Bob would soon be in New Zealand,  I would be in Bali, and we could begin fresh with our own lives again.

And a miracle began.

I began to get my energy back.  Ever so slowly but surely, a veil started to lift from my reality.  I gained some confidence and began eating the luscious papaya and bananas of Bali.  Admittedly, I was a bit overzealous at first -overjoyed and eating half a papaya every morning.  It had been years, after all!  But the pace I went was a little  much, I could feel, so I slowed down again.  A friend gave me a number to a Shaman she reported as amazing, not far in the outskirts of Ubud.  That was interesting.  He had a translator, who disappeared soon enough to leave me with this man who I trusted completely, but as he massaged through my meridians, sent me to the ceiling in pain. ‘Hot”?  ‘Hot’?  He asked.  I looked at him ‘Tidak (no), not hot’.  More wrenching pain-I was close to screaming-  Then it dawned on me.  “OH!  HURT!  YES YES HURT”!!!  I saw him twice.  The second time there was no pain.  Same movements- no pain.  I breathed deep, so happy about that. He gave me energy work and a potion in which he prayed, and told me I could begin eating fruit again slowly- I was now awake.  Go do my work.

And he was right.  I haven’t been the same since.

Something came to me when all of this was going on.  I was so sick for all of this time, so tired.  Now, I was coming back.  What was happening when Bob was doing all of that Sex Magic? – and it hit me.  I understood.

Here in Bali, terms like ‘Black Magic’ are common.  People understand this kind of thing, and learn as a culture to recognize and honor the power of the unseen on a daily basis- hence there is a gentle peace here that permeates through everything.

Understand this ~ There is no blame or making wrong here.  That is not the point of my writing.  I take responsibility for my experiences.  I also take responsibility for expressing this experience so that others may learn from it.

I had to experience all of this in order to awaken and understand something bigger

We are all magicians.  We all create our world with our thoughts.  This is where it begins.  Our thoughts towards others affect them- so think loving thoughts –or don’t think at all.

When you pray, pray for higher consciousness.  Pray for a higher vibration.  Pray for understanding and acceptance.  Pray for wisdom.  Let Spirit work out the details of the who’s and when’s and where’s.

And if you must pray for a relationship, pray that you make your devotion and loyalty to yourself and to Spirit.  It is no other than Spirit who is your perfect partner.

Know that when you are focused on your external wants and desires, they are endless.  We must be willing to go inward.

When we say in Tantra to “follow your desires”, the point is to bring them out of repression, to look them right in the eye, so ultimately….. we can let them go.

This takes work.  It takes discipline.  It takes purification of mind and body.  It takes ruthless self-inquiry and willingness to honestly communicate with ourselves and with each other.

~ and ~

For those whom with we have experienced the greatest challenges ~ honor them ~ Not just in words ~ Know it deep inside of your body ~ It is they who are your greatest teachers.

through all these pains, joys, situations and circumstances, I now make closure with this piece, sit back for a moment, listen into the Bali evening, and feel satisfied.

**Note To reader ~

If you have made your way through this story in it’s entirety, this note is for you in regards to ‘Matthew’.  I received a message from him not long after releasing this story, and he lovingly corrected me on the following statement; “Perhaps for Matthew, our experiences brought him to ultimately seek safer and more predictable routes.  It was not his highest desire to seek the ways to find ‘higher states of being’, nor was it his initiative to understand the deepest reaches of himself and his sexuality, but rather to create a responsible, stable and secure home life.”

Matthew gently reminded me that his path of going to school and creating a family is, for him, hardly coming from a place of seeking security- that in fact he’s taking leaps of faith in doing so.  He also assured me that he has been within his sexual explorations since our relationships departure and has always pursued higher states of being.  In humble response to this, I do apologize for my assumptions, and I am assured, from the nature of his loving reminders, that Matthew has, indeed, been involved in his emotional and spiritual work .  In further note, to all that choose the path of parent and householder: many Tantrics tend to ‘talk down’ to such a path, in assumption of some kind of spiritual indolence.  For this, again, I apologize.  I do understand when pursued with consciousness, parenting and householding can certainly be a path to Self awareness and wisdom.  Thank you for your patience and understanding where I have been careless and irresponsible with my assumptions and words, and I thank Matthew for the loving reminder to remember every choice as equal.

7/5/10

It would take me no more than 2 years for a BA, completing the initial two back in Colorado, 10 years prior.  Motivated, I managed to complete all of the necessary applications and red tape in time for fall enrollment, and was in.

Practically overnight, my future outlook miraculously shifted from inescapable emotional nightmare to brilliantly flowering potentiality.  The years of hope, desire, and dreams of loving family connection, now burned thoroughly from my body and mind through the experiences with my paternal family, began to freshly sprout once again, gently from the ashes.

It was here with my brother Matt that a deeper sense of safety and nurturance was available.  The clear but unspoken underlying psychic agreement formed was that no matter what, our relationship was safe.  We played, mocked, agreed, and disagreed-even vehemently. Nevertheless, we would remain in support of each other, without fear of rejection, abandonment, or loss.  We had experienced that route as children and deep down, conscious or unconscious, I think we both understood that we were now being given opportunity to nurture that wound together.

I made my spirulina banana smoothies each morning, while Matt sat in his chair, expressing disgust reminiscent of Calvin and Hobbes.   I did my best to entice him to occasionally chew on something recognizable, and he encouraged and protected me the best he knew how.

He went to work, played video games, watched TV, and lovingly waved his finger about from his throne, in loving demand that I cover the living room walls with murals.  I painted a pan figure, intrinsically silhouetting my brother in the place where my brother spent most of his off-work hours.  There were hearts with wings, dragons, mushrooms – all horribly inappropriate for one’s living space, but nevertheless, extremely fun and satisfying to do.  Can you imagine?  A whole white-walled living room and my brother demands “Paint, Woman!”  How many personalities do you find like that!?

My brother and I stayed together for a good 8 months or so, but then as life would have it, a boy showed up – an extremely attractive, tall, blue eyed, built, musically inclined, gentle, English Major- kind of boy.  I had not chance.  I met my partner to be, Matthew in University.  Our first week together, in retrospect, was rather hilarious.  We both wholeheartedly agreed in the wisdom of holding off from sex and getting to know each other, as we’d experienced one time too many the whole ‘jumping into bed’ with the wrong person thing.   We were excited about eachother, seeing something profoundly special in one another, so we waited.  We waited maybe a week- practically gritting our teeth to hold off -kind of waiting.  My underwear would be soaked and he literally drove home twice with ice between his leggs.   We were so proud of ourselves.  Once the week was up we literally attacked each other.  Our passion was so great that first time, that I unknowingly scarred his shoulder with my nails.  When I noticed, rather ashamed of what I had done, he just looked at me with a glean in his eyes and smiled his beautiful gigantic smile, assuring me that he loved it.  He wore that scar with pride.

Within just a few months of our meeting, we had found an apartment closer to University where we could love, play, and complete our classes together.

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Which brings us round, full circle, once again.

Matthew and I would graduate together a bit over a year later, move to Arizona, and ultimately come into our experimentations with Stephen and Sara –a scenario that rather ‘bit the dust’ in one perspective.  In another, it was the very first baby steps braving initiation into as-of-yet unknown worlds within love and relationships.  Six months after my brothers passing, I would further pursue my needs to find deeper meaning and conscious forms of relationship with Daka Bob and the world of Neo-Tantra.

Perhaps for Matthew, our experiences brought him to ultimately seek safer and more predictable routes.  It was not his highest desire to seek the ways to find ‘higher states of being’, nor was it his initiative to understand the deepest reaches of himself and his sexuality, but rather to create a responsible, stable and secure home life.

As for Stephen and Sara, I continue to hold a tremendously soft and grateful place in my heart for them.   When it comes down to the raw reality of it, I fucked up big time with them.  The whole thing was like putting a two year old in front of an algebra test and expecting him to ‘get it’.  Come on! Focus now, little one, pay attention!  I have seen Stephen since- maybe twice over the years, but I don’t think he’ll ever, understandably so, be able to trust me, nor my decisions, fully again.  This one’s a little harder, but once again, I let well enough alone.

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I was only in my beginnings, relaying these stories to Daka Bob –who listened, and encouraged, constantly offering me sacred spot massage and/or made love to me- even when I didn’t want it.  If I resisted, Bob would remind me of my need to ‘cultivate my sexuality’ as much as possible.  So I, at times with a little skepticism, cultivated.   I had to hand it to him… with so much focus on sexuality, I did notice a different ‘air’ to me as I walked the streets.  It was like I was in heat, dark and dreamy in a way.  I began to feel more sexual, turned on – continually noticing my scent and my desire.

In no time, Bob was inviting me to join into sessions with him, and this was my introduction into ‘the work’.  Much of it came quite naturally to me, actually.  I was already very comfortable in my nudity and in intimate settings –sexuality was nothing I was in any way unaccustomed –it was really how I had made my way ‘around’ for most of my life thus far.  But the main thing that made sessions natural and easy, was that I’d been through so much darkness, that I had a deep sense of empathy and understanding for the wounds, emotions and vulnerabilities of the clients and seekers that walked into the temple.  I was already a survivor of many of these places, just in the beginning phases of glimpsing the light of transformation through these challenges.  When a client came to me with their wounds, I needed no technique or training to support them, but simply to relate into my own experience and bring the transformed understandings to light.

But that’s the retrospect perspective.  At the time it wasn’t half as easy as I’m presenting it, here- not at all, actually.  In my mind, I was quite convinced I needed ‘training’, coaching, workshops and courses and books and mentoring and ANYTHING to give me some structure to work with.  The rather nonchalant attitude in the temple that I could do it and ‘I already had what it took’ just freaked me the fuck out!  I didn’t ever even take a massage course in my life, nor reiki, nor healing techniques of any kind, but everyone was telling me I could do it anyway.

So my main external training was mainly through absorbing as much as I could from sessions with Bob or interactions with others in the Temple, and as many books on Tantra as I could get my hands on.  Some were filled with the words ‘juicy’, ‘ecstatic’, ‘orgasmic’, with little in them but references to sexual postures and techniques.  Beyond the occasional raised brow at some extraordinary posture, generally that shit bored me.  But I did find fantastic books by authors like Daniel Odier, Diane Richardson, Marianne Williamson, and most amazing- the writings recorded from Osho’s talks on Tantra.  These all made sense, and had some wealth and meat.  I delighted taking it in.

I read, watched, listened, and studyed metaphysical subjects of all kinds – chakras, astrology, dream work, past life regression, etc, etc.  I enjoyed the visiting tantrikas who would possessed an intriguing grounded wisdom and a confident sense of purpose.  Strong in their convictions, they knew their place.  Then, there were those tingling with bells, grabbing the asses of the men that would peruse the temple, with weak bodies and gaudy body language, reciting those words ‘juicy’, ‘blissful’ ‘ecstatic’, referring to their next ‘orgasmic’ workshop- too much so to line up authentically with their reality and what I saw behind their eyes.

I did my best to look past my judgment- I knew it was there – well, at least, I hadn’t yet understood the difference between judgment and discernment, so I lumped it all into the category of ‘judgment’- but I still didn’t understand what these women had to with Sacred Sexuality or healing work.

And in the meantime, I did my best to attempt to acclimate to the part of Tantric work that I wasn’t completely comfortable with- giving sensual massage. It was the thing that the more libidinous Dakinis seemed to focus and specialize in.  I noticed that Daka Bob gave this type of massage to every woman that came into the temple -or at least, I hadn’t experienced any that he hadn’t done that with.  So I knew that this would be an inevitable part of my work.  Bob was convinced of the healing power of this kind of intimate massage, so I, with a slight undertone of skepticism, continued to watch and listen.  There was a voice in the back of my mind that nagged at me a bit from this context – was sacred spot really appropriate for all of these women?  Was Bob really doing this in interest of healing for these women, or could this possibly be more about his own pleasures, or both?  How many of these women was he having sex with as well?  I began a process of considering how I felt around this whole thing- and I was confused, to say the least.  I was aware that I’d need to take my feelings around our personal relationship and try to separate that from what was appropriate for healing work.  That’s what he did, and that’s the situation I came into.  Yet at the same time, I still asked the question –WAS this appropriate?

I would soon reach deeper into these questions, for Bob and for myself, as I’dsoon enough begin explorations of sessions on my own.  I was out of money and it was time for me to bring some in.  With much resistance, I placed an ad in a rather shady website that advertised Tantric work as well as prostitution.  Everything was Tits and Ass, and again, I wondered what this had to do with healing work.  In fact, nothing about my stupid value system fit into this Tantric work!  There were only two choices of websites that advertised tantrics.  One offered only Tantric work, but was still covered in Tits and ass, and run by a drug addict who was an absolute nightmare to do business with.  The other had great business and organizational practice, but you had to get through the prostitute section to get to the Tantric section-which was still flashing pictures of tits and ass.  Welcome to the world of western Tantra.

Nevertheless, I thought to myself, these were things I would need to begin to accept.  I didn’t know anything about this world, and perhaps I was just too conservative.  I was after all, raised Catholic as a child.  Admittedly, I must have been a nightmare for both my Mom and the Church -even when I was very little, I never ‘went for it’.  Although I occasionally (and I mean occasionally) heard a sermon that I appreciated, I generally found the whole scene absurd, but was forced to go until I was old enough not to.  At one point in CCD (a Wednesday night class for the church), I went too far with my curiosity in a discussion on creation, asking about the dinosaurs- When did they come along?  Shit-that was the wrong question to ask. The whole class turned to me angrily as if I was Satan herself.  I didn’t get it.

Nevertheless, the conditioning was probably still there in ways that I wasn’t even aware, and that’s what I was here for, right?- to find out about these things.  When I inquired about it, how other Tantrics felt about the whole T+A thing, they mostly responded ‘it’s the carrot that brings them in, then you show them something better’.   Well… ok….I could see the logic in that- like, Coyote’ energy, I thought.  Trickery, even. That was kind of cool, actually.  Besides, I was a stripper not long ago, and I got over my judgment towards that, now I’d need to become comfortable with this.

With much nail biting, questioning, reading and studying at a maniacal pace, I began my solo sessions with clients.  It was only a few weeks into my arrival at the Temple, but it seemed the only one that questioned my readiness was me- like, big time- but I nevertheless began.

For a good month in the beginning, I managed to skirt the issue of sensual massage.  I learned how to ‘screen’ my email requests and calls, and sent the bulk of them to someone who ‘just did sensual massage’.

In this time, I became fascinated with my self-discoveries, as I came to uncover some of my previously hidden abilities.  The more sessions I had, the more confident I felt.  When people came to me seeking help, I deeply wanted to help them, and, naïve or not, I just did what came naturally.  Sometimes energy would come through my hands that surprised me, and the more experience I had, the more I seemed able to energetically detect in which chakra someone might be blocked.  I listened to  people’s concerns and issues, and often felt I had some helpful information to support them.

Inevitably, though, most of the people that called for session were looking for sensual massage, and as far as I understood it, I would have to ‘face the music’ if I was to be a real Dakini.

It wouldn’t be too hard -No pun intended.  I knew I could handle lingham massage, although I was curious and unaware of ‘techniques’ here, but I was more concerned about this whole idea of ‘sacred spot’ for men.  That’s prostate work…which meant I’d need to put on a glove and insert a digit into a man’s anus to stimulate his prostate.  This was supposed to be correspondent to a woman’s G-Spot, and stimulation would support energetic release and healing to the area.  This made a lot of sense to me, actually.  There’s no arguing the rampant prominence of fear around safety and survival, as well as creative, sexual, and emotional blockage and repression within the culture.  As I had learned, these were all first and second Chakra issues, so it made sense to stimulate this area for healing.  And prostate cancer is being diagnosed in 1 in 6 men in the US.  For those reasons, I was willing, if not even beginning to look forward to doing it.  So I began.

Reunions 6/28/10

It is one day before this next writing is due, according to my own standards of discipline – One day before the set ‘Monday’ where I continue to fill you in on the embarrassingly intricate details of my past – and for whatever reason, find it appropriate or perhaps even beneficial to do so.  Yet I must admit, I’m shy to continue here.  I’m feeling my first pull of hesitancy.  For I have an innate distrust, in the words asking to be put forth, that they will be received in complete objectivity.  I fear you may be something like myself – that you may create a judgment of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ towards myself or my reflections, and decide to gather evidence to whatever means serves those ends, that exist nowhere in truth but within the involved reaches of your mind.

So I suppose that’s all I can do – point to it, and beg your finest attempts to practice a strategy of non-repentance towards anyone’s apparent folly that, in its obscure perfection, is simply a part of what created this very moment.

So with that said – most likely a rather inflated introduction to the remainder of the story, and hopefully without instigating lurid expectations- I’ll go on.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Bob and I were together whenever he was home and available, and we spent a large percentage of our time hidden tucked into his bed in the back of the temple.   We’d be either making love or engaging in ‘sacred spot massage’ or ‘processing’ through my past -or some or the other combination therein.   Being with Bob intimately, seemed to naturally induce deep emotional states within me.  I felt I had every permission, and even encouragement, stated and unstated, to recall and feel everything….and so I did. It was as if there was a well of pain so contained within each and every cell of my body, that to turn the faucet on at all, created a seemingly endless flow.  I trusted in him, in what he knew and how he could hold the space for me, and so told him everything –and most specifically my challenging experiences around sexuality and the nature of my upbringing.

When he’d ask, I’d sometimes do my best to keep the subjects lighter than honesty demanded of them.  I’d smile at coyly at him and say ‘what upbringing’?

I was, honestly, an embarrassingly miserable child, that never really got to be a child.  I told him what details I could in our processing time, and especially those incidences that were more obvious influences to my pain and fears, yet most of it was simply not in the memory banks and up for review.  Nevertheless, we found out just as much, if not more about each other’s early experiences, through our daily incidentals.

Bob, myself, and two of his cousins went trekking on a hike up a mountain trail that was not far behind the temple.  The hike was fabulous- we were all in good shape and could move quickly and easily up the steep, rocky trail.  Yet there was a certain point up by the peak, where there was a sheer drop that we had to traverse just a few steps over in order to continue.  Everyone stepped easily over to the other side, yet I froze – in complete horror.  I could do nothing in that moment but glue myself to the rock and sob.  In a split second. my perfectly enjoyable mountain climb had turned into a nightmare, and I wanted nothing to do with moving over that drop.  It was not that daring of a move, yet I simply could not traverse it.  But a memory came then – not the memory of the experience itself, but the memory of a story my mother had told me, of an experience.

She said I was two or three years old- not long after my father had left us.  I had made my way from the kitchen to the top of a set of solid cement stairs that led down to the basement, and stood there at the top, staring down at them.  She looked over to find me teetering, facing down into the ominously long set of stairs, and I just let myself go – and fell all the way down to the basement.   My mother panicked, running after me, thinking I would be dead at the bottom.

I had always wondered after she told me that story if I had meant to do that to myself, even at that age.  Although I don’t remember being with my father, I know intuitively that I loved his calm and his quiet ways.  My mom told me that when I was born, I fit perfectly into his big hands.

And so it explained some things – at least about hiking over sheer rock cliffs, anyway.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

But when Bob and I lay there in bed, I began to tell him more of my story- jumping around in order of what was appropriate in the context of each conversation.  He wanted to know more about my father, and my relationship with him, so I began with my most recent story, 3 years ago, beginning in April of 2002.

Even at that time, I had been on a determined quest to find the ways to feel better and find happiness.  I was 30 years old, yet being only 3 years into a certain degree of sobriety after 13 years of severe drug and alcohol abuse, admittedly, I was something more of 14 year old walking around in a 30 year old body- right where I had left off before I had begun ‘partying’.

I was well aware of my need to experience a father figure and some familial connection, and heal the wounds of abandonment and fear that seemed ever present and ever-woven into my daily realities.  I had reached a point where I had to give up on the hope that my father would initiate contact or relationship with me, so I decided to eat my pride and initiate what I could, myself.  At this time, it had been nine years since I had participated with any of my family beyond a day visit from my father and his family some 3 years ago as they passed through my area, and another from my mom in Colorado for my engagement to a man who I ultimately fled due to our mutual inescapable cocaine addiction.

So I called him with the notion, and he invited me, telling me that he and my stepmother could certainly use my support with some projects around the house, so, yes- why don’t I just come and stay a while!  I wholeheartedly and excitedly agreed, fully elated at the possibility of having my father back into my life.  Really, It was what I wanted more than anything- ever since he had gone away.  All of my life I had yearned for this possibility, and I felt that through this meeting, surely I had an opportunity to be at peace in myself and become a healthy, whole person.

The day soon arrived, and I drove myself from the Yurt where I was temporarily living in Vermont, through the winding wooded roads of remote NH, to my fathers second home.  He lived there with his wife, my two younger half sisters and half brother.  I pulled into the driveway in my old Honda, which I had taken the time the previous year to enjoy painting bright red, yellow and orange flames with house paint on its sides, to give the old beater some personality.  My car’s paint job had been praised and cheered as I traveled it through the west coast, yet reaching the east I found quite a different environment of reception, ranging from shy glimpses, to frowns of disgust, especially amongst the wealthier domains of New England.

My heart pounded as I pulled into the driveway- I had finally arrived into my dream of being part of a family.  The whole thing felt quite awkward, actually, as everyone came out to greet me.  In my discomfort, I seemed to stumble on my own words and want to start all over again.  Awkward or not, I was greeted warmly and soon invited in to relax into their home.

I desired to prove myself a valuable part of the family, so was ready and motivated to help out as best I could.  My stepmother was brilliantly creative, something (amongst many things), I had worshiped about her on the summer I had come into her acquaintance as a child.  She created beautiful porcelain pieces for a living, and was, apparently, very busy making these each summer, so my support painting and staining them was a welcome relief to her load.

I saw great benefit to myself in this position, as well.  I had recently come to discover my own talents in working with clay- it was, in fact the creative factor that supported me in the beginnings of my path to sobriety just a few years earlier.

Regardless of never having taken a class or given any instruction, I was told by many of my freinds that my work was amazing.  I had to agree, actually.  A friend had generously gifted me a block of premium white clay a few years back, and I was shocked at what came from my hands –and the expression that was available within my own creative spark.  I had poured over this first project, using only my fingers, with the focus and sensuality of a divine lover.  What came out was a stunning and ferocious bust of Kali, snakes in her hair, tongue protruding from a violent, yet somehow beautiful grimace.  I felt her- no-I made love to her- as I created her.  I had no idea what I was creating when I began, yet she eventually showed herself, and I put all of my passion into completing her.  I had never felt anything like it before, and I wanted more.  Certainly staining and painting was not the same show, but I looked at it as a kind of apprenticeship, and was excited to learn whatever I could while I was there.

My father had plenty to hand off to me as well.  He occupied his time away from his career with yard and garden work, so presented to me a project that would keep me busy for quite some time.   I found his yard hobbies quite honorable, actually.  This is a man who worked as an environmental consultant, and would do what he could to save some of the plants that may find their fate through a bulldozer before an area would be converted into the foundation for homes or office buildings.

So I got to work right off, knowing that when I would have some hours to myself, I’d also have some opportunity to create my own pieces in clay.  This prospect, both to be in family connection and further uncover and develop the talents that I was sure were there and waiting, was truly my dream come true.

I was determined to take the opportunity to its fullest potential.  I was down to $250 for the summer-enough to buy myself organic produce for a little while – and I was aware that I was once again headed to the seemingly never-ending nightmare of yet another meaningless 9-5 option.  I’d been doing that since running away at 14, and for whatever reason, my being had very little tolerance- actually, I had only repulsion remaining- for the notion.  I desired meaning and creativity, something I could put my heart and soul behind, whatever that would mean.  My feeling had nothing to do with being lazy, as I truly loved to work.  But I couldn’t grasp the custom of just going to work for the sake of the dollar for the remainder of my time, nor could I understand how or why anyone could continue the practice.  I had survived most of my employed years by working with organic produce, and that had felt meaningful enough to tide my needs, but my satisfaction with it was done.  I would rather die– and yet the few hundred dollars I had saved from my previous job was running out as well, and I was faced, once again, with this sentence.

Just a few summers earlier, I had rather boldly joined into a performance group-something I had no previous experience with, and succeeded wonderfully at it.  That experience was my first taste of utilizing my natural talents, and being something bigger, and ever since, that feeling of what was creatively possible lingered with me like a sweet scent.  I had a reference point.  I knew there could be more.

I’ve given you way too much detail here just to get to the point – I was highly motivated.

So I worked… and I worked hard.  For 2 months I painted, stained, fired, dug, mixed and planted for my father and stepmother.  My half brother and sisters came and went as they did, and we enjoyed many moments together.  Yet the moments, especially with my sisters, often felt awkward to me.  I had completely contradicting feelings about them.  The overriding being that I enjoyed them, found them sweet, innocent in a way I could only wish I could be, and rather brilliant.  The other was an underlying envy.  They had my father’s love and care – a roof over their heads and everything handed to them.  They were completely sheltered from the kind of nightmares I had lived thus far.  They had their own rooms, plastered with pictures of the things and people they enjoyed.  They went to special schools that my Stepmother and father worked to pay for.  They were a normal family together.  They did not have to work here as I did.  They were, in essence, much more my father’s children, and the joy and innocence in their faces reflected their ease through this.  I felt I was little more than an intruder of sorts.  I had to watch my language and my behavior to make sure I did not reveal any of my more ‘shady’ side to my half siblings.  I had to do my best to remain within the personal boundaries that were comfortable.

Nevertheless, these feelings were only temporary internal uprisings in moments when I was tired or got into my head about it.   For the majority of my moments, I was excited and grateful for the opportunities that were there for me.

When my stepmother and I finally came to the ending of her work, I had chance to enjoy making more of my own pieces, and what came from my fingers once again surprised me.  Somehow my creative inclinations moved from intense Eastern Mystic, to Gary Larson.  I created miniature wizards with long beards, gnarled magic staffs topped with marble crystal balls -their faces in determined concentration, invoking the gods and casting spells.  I made Goddesses with holy blessed expressions, arms reaching far into the skies.  There were animated dragons, and little bald men, basking in awe at the worlds they observed around them as they hatched from human eggs.  There were sperm with excitedly smiling faces, and couples kissing that, in the heat of their embrace, melted into the ground from their torsos down.  Frogs with crowns on their heads and puckered lips, or with eyes turned askance, supporting their own contemplative faces with suction cup finger-tipped hands.  The air of my pieces was fun and silly, animated, and in awe at the possibilities of creation.  This was not what I expected….not the ‘me’ I knew at all.

I had put my all into it in every free moment I had, and although my work was quite novice and elementary, I ultimately created enough pieces in that summer to dare and participate in a low-end art show, just to complete the process.  My brother Matthew, understanding my desires, supported the process by investing $100 in a booth space for me.  In three months time, given the experience of opportunity and family support to hold the space for my expression that occurred in that summer, I was able to pull together enough work to proudly participate in my first art show a month after leaving my fathers house, in late July.  The show was tiny, and I sold very few pieces, yet the response of those who came and the pleasure of the process itself was profoundly supportive to my being.

And thank goodness for the self-gratification that arose through my efforts that summer, for in the remainder of the experience with my family, things rapidly began to fall apart.

It was now a good two months into my stay, and much work had been done on everyone’s part.  My family and I had certainly become more relaxed in our interactions.  However, my father was sometimes a little too relaxed with me –even when I had visited him as a child –he had often mirrored the sexual focus and insinuations that I had so often portrayed at that time in my life.  It was something I was becoming vaguely aware of, yet it was just part of how I was…. with men, anyway.  Yet I didn’t offer that towards my father.  I didn’t want to… as he was forward with me.  Two moving forwards only had one direction to go into-forward.  So I kept that part of myself quiet with him, and often felt a tang of discomfort in between my pretended laugh and roll of the eyes that I’d respond to his intimations that seemed to be a regular part of his being.  But in a completely unexpected fashion, the affections suddenly shifted in their nature.

I was sitting outside, doing yard work for him, when he approached me, hugged me, and grabbing a handful of the sand mix I had just put together, playfully shoved his hand up my shirt to rub dirt all over my breasts as I sat in a kind of frozen stupor, still laughing with him, but now somewhat stunned, not knowing what to do or how to feel in the situation.  He then left me.  I shook off the shock, shrugged it off as insignificant, and continued with the yard work.  Perhaps, I thought, I might be over exaggerating in my mind what this was about.  He was just being friendly in his own way.  So I sat relatively comfortable with that for the next month.

Yet the intention behind that action was confirmed in the direction that I did not want it to go.  For at the end of that month, my father proposed, very casually, that we sleep together.   I sighed and told him no, hoping that he innocently meant to just literally sleep together, rather than be sexual.   But when he asked me “why, was I uncomfortable with my body?” – that question seemed to confirm my concern.   I simply looked down and responded that I didn’t desire that because I am his daughter, and the conversation stopped there, nothing more, nothing less.  I was disappointed but- no real harm done, I felt, and I got up and walked out of the room.

Meanwhile, regardless of how hard I had worked, I was apparently overstaying my welcome, and I felt it.  Tensions within the family dynamics were happening –mainly between my stepmother and I, yet nothing was spoken of it until the air was so thick it could be cut with a knife.  When information finally came to the forefront, I came to understand that she felt the same challenges I was feeling economically.  I was frustrated that the organic groceries that I’d get for myself were being quickly taken up by my three siblings when I had very little to live on.  Of course my brother and sisters were completely innocent.  They had no idea that just taking a little of something added up to a lot when there was three of them and I only had a little to begin with.  Apparently my stepmother felt I was ‘nickle and diming’ her.  And beyond that, my going out of my way to retrieve organic food was a sore spot for her.  She looked angrily into my eyes and in a low tone I had never heard from her, pronounced ‘I can’t afford organic food’.  Our tensions only rose from there.  I justified my rightness.  She could afford Bundt cakes and box wine, I thought to myself…. but not organic food!

The problem really was, none of this was relevant.  There was so much underlying and unspoken shit going on for everyone in the family, it all turned into resentment spoken in ridiculous terms of ‘nickles’, ‘dimes’ and ‘food choices’.  I knew my part in that, and I knew that showing up with anything without being generous about it wasn’t fair, but I just could not get past my own safety and survival fears-as well as the challenge of feeling that my siblings already had everything given to them, so I wanted what I got special for myself to be left alone.  I felt guilty and selfish for that-and angry with myself for not having more to give.  One of my dear siblings had even gone so far as to sacrifice her bed and sleep in her sisters room or at her boyfreinds, where she often was anyway – but I just couldn’t see it all at the time.  All of this was compounded with the nagging incidences with my father in the back of my mind.  I held a kind of distorted compassion for my stepmother, in that I could not bring myself to speak about what had happened with my father and potentially create any further disturbance in the family.  It was simply time to go.

So I left.  I took my box full of the pieces that I had made that summer, and angrily left my happy family dream, in shambles.

Some time passed, and I shrugged these occurrences with my father off as irrelevant, just another thing to accept- ‘the way people are’.  The whole thing saddened me, but was also so non-violent and natural that I spoke nothing of it for some time, trying to understand in my own mind if it was really even a ‘big deal’ or not.  I understood that perhaps my father simply had never seen me as a real father-daughter relationship, as he hadn’t raised me.

I suppose it really wasn’t all that big a deal, yet in the months that would follow my visit, my psyche made it so anyway, and I began to brake down emotionally over it.  I had retuned to my boyfriend, Nate, the Yurt in Vermont, and began working at night at the local co-op as a deli assistant manager.  I really didn’t want that job, but, it was a job, and that’s just what we do, right?

My family dream was really dead, and I was angry about it.  I managed to ‘buck up’ for a little while, for the newness of a job and environment could hold me over for a period, but this thing with my father just seemed to bring my verve down a notch- maybe more like a notch a month, actually, because I began to come home from work each night, only to crawl into bed with Nate, and cry.

For if I had already a loss of faith and trust in the masculine some time ago, these demons were digging themselves deeper into my already plagued psyche around appropriate behavior and roles around love and sexuality.   I sank into a familiar feeling of being a victim.

I felt that a good Life, my father, and God were here for others- but it had become obvious that those things were not available for me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I told Daka Bob this story, but honestly I felt the emotions of it were already past.  I had remained with Nate in the Yurt into the beginning months of winter, but was rather tortured the whole time around all of this, and so constantly bringing my misery home to Nate.  It got to the point where it became obvious I had to leave.   Fortunately, I was able to tell my mother everything, and she suggested I come and stay with my brother, who had always invited me to be with him.  And so I did.

Poor Nate- I could feel the relief come over him when I informed him of my going.  We loved each other- that was obvious, but I had no light or joy to share, or support and encouragement for him.  We both knew that, so our parting was gentle, easy and sweet.

The gift of all of this was that it lent me some time to spend with my brother, which I really hadn’t had the chance to do before – nor had I desired to.  As a child, Matthew had it worse off than even I did.  He acted out, while I remained quiet, and for this, he ended up placed in foster homes.  But not just one… somehow he was ‘too much’ for most, and moved around, unwanted, from home to home.  To compound matters, he was a rather sickly child, constantly in and out of the hospital with allergies-with just about everything.  From my perspective as a child, he was a menace, and he seemed, nevertheless, to receive so much more attention than I did.

We had, my brother and I, spent a summer with my father, stepmother and younger siblings when we were just little – I no more than 9, he 11.  This was out of duty due to the fact that my brother was ‘too much to handle’ for my mom-and she demanded my fathers participation, so my father came to pick us up to spend a few months with him, and she was given some time without us.  I hadn’t known my father much prior to this, so the whole occurrence was rather bizarre. But to make it more strange, upon our arrival, my brother was doted on and given gifts- and I nothing.  I couldn’t figure it out, why someone who behaved as he did was loved more.

Interestingly enough, on a day when I was painting my stepmothers pieces with her, this subject was brought up.  She admitted to me that she had always felt bad about that – that she hadn’t explained to me that they were buying things for my brother because they wanted to help calm him down.   Yes, she was right…that may have been useful to explain this to me.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

My brother Matthew had found some solace recently through my Uncle, who had offered him a space for good rent in a condo building that he owned, just an hour away from my mom.  I moved in with him, not realizing that the kind of appreciative family I was looking for was right here and available to me.  It was my brother that invited me and desired for me to be with him, and it was he who, I would come to find out, would ‘watch my back’ and encourage me in the best ways he knew.

And so it came to be.  Matthew and I would finally become the best type of friends that siblings can be- unconditionally loving and supporting of each other.  My brother lived off of pizza and Dunkin Donuts coffee… so I did my best to give him the type of nurturing he needed, while the comfort of family and stability he offered to me gave me the space to successfully get myself into University.

6/21/10

And so a flame sparked and lit the way down a thus far unforeseen path.  I packed what I could jam into my big blue camping pack- a sturdy, faithful bag that I had taken the summer previous on a several week journey of the Appalacian Trail- from the top of Massachusetts, and half way through Vermont.  It was on that journey that Vermont proved worthy of settling in-at least for a while-due to the fine combination of it’s trails, beautiful mountains, and world class down home pancakes.   In some ways I am a very simple girl, and it might take little more than the potential vicinity of those pancakes to keep my legs moving at the latter end of a 15-20 mile hike.

That experience was one of the fonder memories that traversed my thoughts and recollections as I passed through each room of my house before departing.  I said my goodbyes to Matthew, to the club, this town and to all of it’s experiences-good and not so good- and headed out to catch my plane.  I was somewhere between nervous-well, maybe some part of me was bordering on terrified- and totally excited for all that was to come, as I boarded my plane in anticipation of beginning a new life within a Tantric temple-whatever that would mean.  Granted, Bob and I had made several visits to each other over the years, and he’d already introduced me to several of his Tantric friends, so I felt I had an idea of the kind of energetic I was about to embark upon-and frankly, I liked the idea.  Bob was harmless…and the tantrics I had met were warm, comfortable, open, loving, and accepting of me straight away.

Within just a few hours, my flight was landed and I had arrived at what would be my new home.  The temple was gorgeous, wonderfully spacious, and equipped with hot tub, steam room, watsu pool, cold pool, and 9 luxurious bedrooms.  Truly, it was a beautiful dream home.  Setting my bags down, Daka Bob –my friend and now something of a savior- welcomed me in.  He introduced me to the few staff members who were present, and without hesitation, invited me to accompany him into his bedroom in the back of the house for snuggling.  That’s what Bob always wanted to do when we met –snuggle- and whatever else I might be open to in the moment.

The way Bob felt towards me felt like it filled something so deep and necessary to experience within my being – namely that he saw me as special, and he made it clear that he wanted me as someone special for him.  I was aware that he was poly, yet from our discussions, I understood that I would have a uniquely safe and special place in relationship with him, and that his other lovers would not be a threat towards our relationship.  Not only did I understand that, but he made it clear that his other lovers did as well.  The set-up was satisfying to the complexity that I was –having a need to be close, intimate, and feel safe in being someone’s everything, yet having the freedom to explore what life would bring, without restriction.

I was honest with Bob from the beginning – that although he was certainly beautiful,…. for whatever reason, I was not deeply attracted to him, nor did my heart feel ‘in love’.  His response about this worked well for both of us, that with his lifestyle, he really needed someone that had this kind of detachment, anyway- so, apparently all was good!  The thought never occurred to me to inquire as to what ‘his lifestyle’ might actually mean, but rather made my assumptions based upon what I had seen, which really wasn’t all that much.

I certainly was intrigued with Bob.  I was excited about the learning that this relationship offered towards exploring what Tantra meant, and what healthy ‘Sacred Sexuality’ and polyamory might look like.  It was obvious to me that I was being offered an amazing opportunity here to learn and grow into new and amazing ways of understanding myself and experiencing relationships.  I was excited about my new home, with the prospect of traveling and teaching together, and I liked the intensity of his interest, and the degree of his attentions towards me.  The attention filled me, and indirectly, my position with him offered a kind of automatic ‘in’ within this new community, and they possessed a world of knowledge in which I knew nothing, but was totally intrigued.  I imagined what our lives with two or three other lovers, all enjoying deep connection, intimacy, and enjoying life and love together, might be like.

So I began my journey with him, feeling open to him and everything that was being offered through him.

~ And that evening, we made love ~

We connected deeply and enjoyed each other, gently, sweetly and powerfully….

…..profoundly, actually.

And on that night, we fell asleep so comfortably wrapped within each-others arms, and I dreamed.  The vision in my dream was vividly colorful in a way that I had never experienced before.  It was pure, simple and profoundly beautiful…. a brilliant image of a double rainbow.

I awoke from this dream, sweetly surprised to find that we’d remained there, tenderly embracing each other, throughout the entire night.  I was so luxuriously comfortable with him, being held in his strong arms, in his gigantic bed covered with soft pillows and feather blankets. The sensuality of our bodies divinely intertwined together combined within such profound vision,… transformed our loving, and the whole night, into an experience of divinity.

My heart began to fill.

And I understood- that I was absolutely in the right place at the right time, doing just the right thing- and that I would put my all and everything into this.  For I trusted the messages of my dreams more than I trusted anything or anyone.  There lives no lies or deceit there –only truth and vision.

Yet as sweet as all of this was, there certainly remained places of very new and unusual terrain for me to move through, here.  I had no work, no money, and no plans but to put my entire life into all of this now….all which was really in the hands Daka Bob.  I was in a huge house, with a big man, with big plans….and all I could really do was be there and see what would happen.  I was awkward in my lack of understanding of what tantric work was really all about.  Nevertheless, I would have some time to settle into all of this.  Bob would be headed out soon, as he had already created plans some time ago to leave in just a few weeks for a trip with a lover on a cruise ship for the following month.   Unfortunately for him, he found himself in a bit of a quandary, as he’d been awaiting my presence in his life for some time now, and now that I was finally here with him- he was leaving.

But I felt all right with that.  The Temple was an amazing home and sanctuary and there seemed to always be someone wonderful there, or something going on, where I could participate.  I was given responsibilities of a few hours of work a day, in trade for my living space there, and I was ambitious to learn about becoming a Dakini in the remainder of my free time.  I would have plenty to keep me occupied.

In the meantime, Bob would take time throughout our days together to work with me.  It seemed that every moment he found opportunity, he’d request we take some time together in bed to snuggle, make love, and/or do some tantric session work together.  He was generous with me –he would massage my body, offer me ‘sacred spot massage’, and hold me when I needed to be held.  He was inquisitive and would do what he could to get at the heart of my experiences.  He encouraged me to look into my past, searching for the keys to my emotional guilt, shame and fear around my sexuality.

This was not in the least difficult to find!  I had plenty of meat for him to chew on in these realms, and was quite relieved to have someone to share this past with who seemed to honestly care and understand the depth of their implications.  We began with what was most recent, and worked into earlier times from there.

All of this is what I searched for within each and every one of my relationships for years – a connection where I’d be loved and adored and given some room to be heard and understood- a space where all of me was invited, and even encouraged!  He wanted to hear my story.  He wanted me to rage, to cry, and to feel everything!… And, shit, there was a lot to feel!  I had understood my need to heal from a lifetime of pain, abuse and intensity for so many years now, but never knew a way to do it.  I had given up on conventional routes long ago.  But now, it was being offered to me, it was right here!  I was so excited at the prospect of understanding and working through all of the past and all of the things that I wanted to understand with Bob –anger, resentment, jealousy,-all of it

6/14/10   ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’

After several weeks on the east coast with my mother, I made my way home.  Matthew was already there, having left after just a few days, in order to give my mother and I space to complete funeral arrangements and be together in our mourning.   I went home, and six months of darkness followed me.  I vaguely recall anything that happened during that time.  Actually, I don’t think much of anything did.   I went to work at the club enough to get by, and came home to become part of the living room furniture.  I bought another bed and put it in the extra room intended as an office for Matthew and I, and slept there.

However my internal reality was unavoidable – I was raging.  The passionate fire within my life-blood was insidiously coursing through me, despite, and perhaps even spurred by, the monotony of my existence.  I wanted to rip and tear at my skin, screaming “Don’t you see I am on fire!”

Matthew experienced his own meltdown in all of this as well.  Our experimentations with Stephen and Sara had begun pushing him past his emotional threshold, yet now with the degree of pain I was in from my brother’s death, he practically avoided me altogether.  I was devastated, seeing his shutdown as an amazing cruelty.  After all, this was when I needed him most!   He was available sexually, but I felt no interest without the fires- and they just weren’t there.  So we came to easy and natural agreement to maintain our friendship and support for one another, living as friends and roommates, until I found another living situation.  We could function well enough as friends in this space, yet deep down I still held some resentment for the timeliness of his shutdown.

Stephen was also sexually available, yet he was more of a challenge for me to deal with, for his presence stared right down the gun barrel of the most intense of contradictions stirring within me.

Now, more than ever, I wanted a MAN.   In fact, I wanted something of a brutish angel of a man.  I wanted raging Seraphim.

Where do you find that, anyway?

I wanted him to take me, control me – show me his strength and power.  I was a raging chaotic mess, and needed his steady hand to hold me – hold me down, even – and show me the confidence of his force.  God, how I wanted a man to show me something rich and something Real.  I wanted him to love me passionately and calm the yearning rage I felt to be met within such intensity.

I could not just have sex anymore.  The concept terrified me with the threat of its agonizing monotony!  There had to be others who were capable of intimate sexuality on the full spectrum of human power and emotion!  I mean, I Needed it- Like a fish needs water, I was beyond desperate for some deep intimate connection with someone…fucking anyone!  If I saw one man with that kind of depth in his eye- if I could just find one!  And when you have never experienced and have no reference point to what you need, and only know about it somewhere in the deep dark reaches of your unconscious, you’re fucked.  And that’s exactly how I felt-  For 6 months- I felt completely- fucked.  My internal fire was absolutely screaming for this need, and my only comprehension of this internal message was the most intense of sexual desires.

So there I was, with two absolutely beautiful men available to me.  I was absolutely raging in my sexual yearning, yet I wanted nothing to do with either of them, and I didn’t have a clue how to understand or articulate what I did so desperately desire.  But who would even know this mess I was so deep inside?  I sat there in silence with it all, unable to give it voice and validation.  I felt completely insane.

So my painfully simplistic and unenlightened message to Stephen was “You’re too sexual”.  The real message was something along the lines of   ‘Please…. See me!  There are universes within universes within me!  I need you to see something besides my body.  I don’t know how to, but God I desperately need you to!  I don’t know my worth for anything besides sex, and I fucking hate it.  I hate it! I don’t know how to do anything, I don’t know how to take care of myself, I’m a mess, I’m worthless.  I don’t deserve your love and kindness-you certainly can’t love me, what the hell is there to love?  There is no validation for someone like me… I’m nothing but a slut, a whore!”

But I was deaf and unconscious to these voices.  They were stored and locked away, covered in cobwebs in some dusty and untouched corner of my mind.  My only translation was a repulsion to anyone that might threaten to stir and shake me and unlock them.  And there, Stephen stood before me, smiling, with a shiny silver key dangling from his hand.

In fact, that key was one of the most precious keys I had ever set my eyes upon.  He handed it to me upon my return back home, along with an intricately carved and decorated wooden box.  The box contained a vodka bottle, an old AC/DC CD, the snub of a joint, a bag of ashes, and a long set of ‘death beads’.  They were the remainder of a ritual for my brother’s passing that Stephen had so kindly and carefully enacted in response to my metaphysical concerns I had conveyed to him about the treatment of Matt’s body.   This was, perhaps one of the most compassionate and selfless acts I had ever experienced from anyone.

And it was all way beyond the scope of what I could receive and register within my reality at the time.  Stephen’s love was like one of those Spanish ships that was steadfast approaching Hawaiian shores, unseen by native eyes that had thus far no experience with such a profound and ominous human creation.

So just a few weeks after Stephen presented to me the ritual box for my brother, and that kindness could not prove to continue to be able to fill the emotional gaps within me – and by now all had fallen apart with Matthew and perhaps things could get better again if I just let go of this whole thing with Stephen, …..what came out was simply, “you’re too sexual”.   I remember his astonished repetition of my statement -  “I’m too SExual!??”

Yes.  I was convinced of it.

It was the natural course of unconsciousness.  With no understanding of my internal world, the hidden aspects continued to stoke my fires…moving my arms, my leggs, and speaking their piece through my mouth, in altered expressions of projection and blame.

So my simple truth was Stephen was ‘too sexual’, and I had become repulsed by it, so I pushed him away until the pleasure of his reflection was gone.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

There comes a time when life gets so painful that you simply have no choice but to get up and find a new way to live – or die.  This was, indeed, one of those times.  I had to consider what could bring some happiness into my life, what interested me.  I had to go past what I thought was possible and do something new.  If I had to move to an Ashram somewhere to get some peace, I’d do it in a heartbeat.  If I had to be in debt the rest of my life, I’d do that too, if there was chance to bring some happiness in.   I was willing to do anything.  I just needed to have some direction and focus as to where to go and what to do.

So I began.  I popped my head out of the murk and mud and started looking for something that would bring some depth and value into my life.

The most apparent route to me at the time was more schooling.  I have always loved to learn.  Although, sitting in a classroom was far from my cup of tea, learning about things that interested me was the double mocha with whipped cream.  People and psychology fascinated me.  Alternative Medicine and the mechanisms of the body fascinated me.  And more than anything – Spirituality, religion and culture fascinated me.  I desired so much to understand the meaning behind things, and the reasons for why people do what they do.

This was part of the reason I walked into the club for the first time.  I had to attempt to look past my own judgment and ask myself “what is it that makes me feel this way about this place?  And what is it that makes this so fascinating for anybody”?

Alternative Medicine seemed the most responsible and respectable way to go.  As far as I understood, it wouldn’t just be a career- it was a way of being, and that sounded great- a new way of being.  So I began to look into Chinese Medicine and acupuncture.  I had a BA, and perhaps this is why I had gone through all the work to receive that degree- so I could continue on to something bigger.  With my University credentials as they were, and loans easy to acquire, I was accepted in no time to my school of choice in Austin, Tx.   Finally, I was becoming excited to be something in the world, to be someone who mattered!  I felt my interest in life returning, and went and bought a book ahead of time, and began pouring my attentions into it.

Meanwhile, I was conversing further with Daka Bob.  He was my cheering crowd in the backgroud, supporting me to come back alive again.  He really was the only one to talk to about much of anything at this point.  He understood my laments about the urgency of my sexual state, the intensity of my desires, and the need for change I was feeling.  Bob was there all along the way with sweet and supportive words in emails and telephone calls.

Yet, he also brought in a sudden swirl of confusion into the steps I was taking.  Seizing the moment, Bob placed an interesting fork into my path with a proposition …one that was rather difficult to ignore.   Bob had always told me that he was interested in relationship, and thus far, this was of little interest to me.  Nevertheless what did become appealing was that now, he was suggesting the idea that we travel the world together to teach Tantra.  After all, I was what he called a Dakini, and he was sure of that.

Admittedly, I had heard these words before.  In Santa Cruz, there was a fascinating and magical man who told me I was a dakini as well.  He was the one who first pointed out the meaning to my last name- Yonika –the Great Spirit of Yoni. Somehow it happened that he would come to my house, pleasure me, and leave with no interest in receiving anything in return.  He was a very enigmatic man, indeed, and I saw a deep and unusual knowing and wisdom behind his eyes, but honestly knew nothing surface about him besides that he was the cute ‘cheese guy’ at work.  This same elusive and magical nature seemed to ooze right out of the titles that Bob possessed ~ ‘Daka’, ‘Tantric’, ‘Sacred Sexual Healer’ – I was so curious about all of this.  Perhaps the content within these titles held the keys to depth of intimacy within sexuality that I was so deeply yearning for?  What if here was the answer to all of this that I was experiencing- inviting me in, right now?  I did not see Daka Bob as a man of deep wisdom, yet undoubtedly one of knowledge and character…and his words certainly held intrigue and value for me.  But most importantly, his insights had helped me to make it through the tumultuousness of experiencing poly and working in the club all of this time.

I was, actually, rather excited about acupuncture school, and the changes this could bring into my life,…. yet this…this option was something quite unique and special indeed!  Travel the world and teach Tantra.

Well- I wasn’t sure how that would work considering I knew absolutely nothing about Tantra, but I left that little detail to work itself out, considering Bob was the guy who knew his stuff, and he was, after all, inviting me to go.  So my choices were thus -It was travel the world with a somewhat strange and perplexing man that really had a thing for me, or go to school for four years.  Granted, I was really interested in Alternative Medicine, but with this other option in hand, suddenly four years in the classroom became slightly less appealing.

Regardless of what might look like an obvious and easy decision, I nevertheless pondered this heavily- no- I obsessed over it.  I went back and forth in my mind, for over a month.  The practical, responsible and respectable side of me had been unleashed for the first time in who knows how long when I made the decision to go back to school, and choosing to travel with this man felt like I may be stuffing her back into hiding.  After all, traveling and teaching Tantra with my tan, long- haired hippie friend who seemed rather infatuated with me sure felt like the more exciting way to go-but somehow much less responsible.  Nevertheless, I was no newbie at jumping into some completely unknown realm and ‘making it’.  Hearing of my confusions, Bob suggested I talk with a Dakini friend of his, Genine.   After a few meetings with her, and a little more back and forth, she reminded me that “school will always be there as an option- but an opportunity like this may come only once in a lifetime.”

That was it.  I was going.

5/7/10

It was the hospital.

Discreetly, my mom informed me that she had just spoken with a doctor on the East coast.  My brother was there in the hospital, and his condition was bad.  He’d had something called a ‘brain aneurism’.

“How bad?” I asked.

I don’t remember the words she told me, but when she immediately got busy on her phone looking to find out about emergency flights home, I had already decided the whole thing was being over-exaggerated.

I made my way back out to the back yard with Matthew, Sara and Stephen, took some sips of my wine, and paced back and forth, not knowing what else to do at the moment.  I apologetically informed them of the news, confidently clarifying for them that Matt was all right, and that this was, indeed, just the wake up call he needed to get him back on track.  I explained that He’d been working for over a year in a management position at Verizon- working way too much, actually, and that he’d begun his ‘all American dream’ of making money, buying the house, the jeep,  the motorcycle and having the dog he always wanted.  My brother wanted a family more than anything, and seemed to be preparing for that -something I just couldn’t relate with-and how could he possibly create a family anyway?  All he did was work and play video games for the remainder of the time.  He was living on Dunkin Donuts coffee, junk food, and beer.  It certainly didn’t seem like a healthy or happy life.   He certainly needed this kind of kick in the ass, right?  I noticed I was shaking a bit now, but I was also confident of his need for a wake up call, so I wasn’t really all that worried, I told them.

Matt was under a lot of stress lately.  This was all perfectly understandable.  He had, actually, recently announced to the family that he was planning on getting married to a woman he hardly knew.  His dream was coming true, but in a backwards way.  He had gotten a woman pregnant, after only knowing her for a few months.  The woman’s mother, a devout Christian, had demanded that the two be wed, or he would not be allowed to be part of the child’s life.  Due to my brothers’ experience being abandoned by his father, he had formed a solid hatred for men who abandoned their children.  Now, he had himself within quite a circumstance – go against his own immovable moral code, or marry a woman that he hardly knew, placing all that he was just beginning to gain in his life into jeopardy.

He decided on the marriage.  When we, as a family, caught wind of this, we all fervently disagreed.  Matt had actually deluded himself deep enough to be excited about the whole notion, and our disagreement was hard on him.  He did, however, hear the logic within the opinion of the family (we didn’t hold back on this one) and had changed his mind on the marriage soon enough.  Really, no matter which way he went within this circumstance, it was really hard on him.  It hit way too close to home with the intensity of his emotional wounds with this particular issue.  My brother would soon be beginning a family-his life dream- yet apparently was told he would not be welcome to participate.

A few minutes later, Matt’s best friend since he was no more than 16-John, who was now his roommate, called my mom and I, in hysterics.  He informed me through my assured disavowal that Matt was ‘gone’.  He was in a coma, his heart was beating- but he was gone.  He had seen the x-rays of Matt’s brain, and through the intensity of his sobbs, pleaded to me; “It looks like a fucking bomb exploded inside his head”!

I wasn’t convinced.  Those were intense words but- it was Matt.   Of course he would wake up!  I reminded everyone that the whole thing was being exaggerated and he would be fine.  Stephen and Sara stayed with us for just the appropriate amount of time in a circumstance such as this, and upon their departure, I began to play John’s words over in my head, shaking my conviction…. “Like a fucking bomb exploded”.

Fortunately for us, Matthew took over like a night in shining armor.  He got onto his computer, made the right phone calls, and invited himself to come with us so I’d be comforted.  We had to wait until the following day to catch flight.  I don’t know if we slept or talked that whole night- it’s all erased from my memory.  Nevertheless, the following morning we were on a plane to Boston.

As we landed, I called my father who I hadn’t spoken to in quite a while.   I had been keeping my distance from him due to the negative psychological impact I had experienced upon our last meeting.  (This is a whole book within itself, and not one I care to share in hopes to protect a beautiful and kind, yet obviously confused man).

In a rather nasty tone, I let him know that his son was dying and if he was interested in seeing him, (sadly, I did actually question if he’d come), we would be at the Leonard Memorial Hospital.

Regardless of taking an extra day to get a flight and arrive at the hospital, we found ourselves waiting for what seemed an eternity, once we were there.  My grandparents on my mothers side were there waiting, as well as John and my brother’s lover, Jenna, (not, obviously, the pregnant mother), who none of us, except John, was acquainted.  Apparently, she was there with him when he fell sick.  She relayed to us the story- that he had told her he had a headache, and would she retrieve his inhaler for him?  By the time she returned with it, he was on the floor convulsing.  Terrified, she made the call for an ambulance.  My Nana and Grampy filled us in on the remainder of the details they were informed of from the hospital staff, which wasn’t much.

When we finally were allowed into my brother’s room, the whole scene went surreal.

There he lay, unconscious and full of tubes.   His top lip was swelled out unnaturally like a ducks bill, and his breath was mechanical, induced from a machine. Any confidence I was holding for his recovery quickly faded as the doctor relayed the information that Matt was ‘brain dead’.  He gave us understanding of this by opening his right lid, shining a flashlight into his eye and revealed that there was absolutely no pupil response.  His body was only alive due to the machines keeping his breath moving and his heart pumping.  They were awaiting our arrival so they could turn the machines, pronounce his death, and harvest his organs as was instructed from his license.  We would need to stay and make arrangements with them.  The doctor left us with that.

The remained of the time was a bit of a flurry.  I remember flashes of family and a few of Matt’s friends coming and going.  John remained with us the entire time, devastated, closer to Matt than any of us had been.  My father arrived an hour or 2 after us.  I didn’t know whether to yell at him or hug him, but I chose the latter.  I noticed a tear flow down his cheek, and that softened my stance towards him.  At 33, that was my first deeper understanding that my father cared.

For several hours, while the others faded in and out, I watched my brother lying there, his beautiful long dark curls covering his naked shoulders.  I stroked his hands and forehead, assuring him as much as I could that everything was all right, and that we’d always be with him.

John and I spoke with him, letting him know we loved him and that it was safe for him to go, sobbing and wishing him peace in his journey home.  As I wept, I braided a lock of his long hair and cut it to hold with me.

In a way I was relieved for my brother.  He looked tired, he almost always had.  He wasn’t enjoying his life, and I knew this.   Behind all of his tattoos and armor, Matt was so sensitive.  It’s what made him beautiful.  He was always beautiful, no matter how tired and sickly he could look, he was always beautiful.  Perhaps he would finally be at peace now.  Perhaps he would now find rest from his mess of a whirlwind of a life.

We all went home that night knowing that tomorrow we would return to turn off the machine and begin to make his arrangements.  This was something I had no experience around- death-never mind making decisions around what to do with my brother’s organs and funeral arrangements.

Indeed, this was quite a process of decision-making.  Matt had marked his license as an organ donor and this brought some questions to me.  I saw both the beauty of this as well as feeling an innate discomfort with separating any of his body and keeping some parts of him alive.  I questioned whether that might impede his soul’s journey.  I felt that his organs, his heart especially, held part of him, his memories, his emotions, his genes.  What if keeping these parts alive would leave him somehow torn between this world and the worlds unknown?  As a major in anthropology, I had studied the death rites of many cultures.  Most people in the world hold deeply attentive and reverent ritual around treating the body to support the Spirits journey to its destination.  I was all too aware of America’s funeral business, and the lack of spiritual essence to its procedures.  The worst part of it was, I was adamantly against much of what the industry offered.  Now, this was right in my face, and it was my brother I was responsible for.  But my brother had already made some of the decisions, such as the use of his organs to support others.

I certainly understood this, but I didn’t want to sign the dotted line for it.  For scientific reasons, I wholeheartedly agreed, yet for my own Spiritual reasons, I did not.  There were further difficult questions.  Did we want contact with the donor families?  Did we want a burial, and, yes, he’d legally have to be filled with chemicals, and we’d need a cement vault as well as a casket.  Or we could cremate, but we’d still need to burn a casket…

The next morning all of these questions swirled within our heads.  We had to make many big choices right then and there, and we were far from able to think straight. My mother and I, after some contemplating and feeling the circumstances in consultation, agreed to honor Matt’s choices about donation, and did our best with the rest, preparing our selves to pronounce his death.

When we later returned to Matt’s room, there was a machine now attached to him.  Its volume was up, and we could distinctly hear the sound of his heart beating.  There was something magical and precious about this, as the sound of his heart permeated the room.  It was the last sound of his life, the remainder of such a beautiful part of him.  It was a watery and strange, with an almost alien like quality to it-not quite like the sound you hear with your ear to a beloved’s chest.   I don’t know how long we stood and listened in that surreal space, but eventually, the machine was quieted, and my brother was pronounced dead at that moment- at least by paper, anyways.  For even upon that pronouncement, his heart remained alive, as it does to this day, beating within the chest of someone we’ve never met, somewhere out there in the world.

After a long, exhaustingly emotional day, we finally left the hospital.  We had further arrangements to make, but we had covered everything we could in one day.  I’m not sure we ate or slept the night before… I’m not sure of anything that was going on.  And, to my dismay, I found myself arguing with my mom on the ride home in the car.  I have no idea over what at this point.  There was much stress and anxiety, and we were beginning to let it out with each other.  It actually became bad enough that she told me to stop the car, and she was getting out.  I did.  I let her out, drove a block or two, and turned around to pick her up again.

I was in tears, and almost as soon as I let her out of the car, my cell rang.  The caller ID stated it was my mom.  But when I picked up the phone to respond, there was nothing but a strange static sound…nothing like I’ve heard before in a bad connection.  I gave a few weary hellos with no response, and hung up.  Then another call.  Again, the ID listed my mom, with the same sound.  When I made my way back to my mother and picked her back up, we maintained our bickering…both of us knowing this was ridiculous, but we were somehow past our threshold of reason, gone into stress overdrive and into anger.  A few minutes later, the phone rang again, this time an unknown number.  I picked it up, and the same sound was coming through.  I was exhausted and confused, but for whatever reason I put the phone to my ear-something I never do with my cell- and listened deeper, paying more attention.  I breathed deeply as I listened into the next moment, noticing.

My heart melted as I came to realize what I was hearing.  The sound was the same as what we had heard in the last moments of my brothers’ life.  It was the watery sound of his heartbeat on that machine in the hospital.  I said nothing, but passed the phone to my mother to allow her to hear.  She listened and handed the phone back to me…seeming to pass it off in disbelief.  I listened more until I was through,  and silently hung up the phone.

In retrospect, I come to realize that without any efforts, my mother and I have not had an argument-not once- since this day.

5/31/10

‘One Big Happy Family’

NOTE TO READER: The following post is from Monday of this week, and is part of a ongoing story. If you have not read the blogs previous, i recommend you scroll to the bottom and start from the beginning. (The beginning post is entitled ‘Not So Sexy’). Otherwise, this post standing alone will either make no sense, or be easily misconstrued. Enjoy reading,…and let me know what you think!

It was that phone call to Stephen and Sara, that opening into invitation, which   eventually brings us round, full circle, to the beginning of this whole convoluted story..…that, really, only gets a whole lot more convoluted – like, way more.  So if you’re up for it….

Matthew and I did our best in a domain in which we possessed no guidebook – no ‘Polyamory for Dummies’, or even any reference point in which to proceed.  Our emotional support was red wine.  I didn’t want this as part of our interactions- drinking together- past the awkwardness of our initial experiences.   It was a part of my life that I wanted to be good and done with in every arena.  But in this context, it always showed up.  It was just what we all did, and I did not, apparently, have the strength and solidity within myself to completely refrain, so I partook as well.

Nevertheless, for the most part, we were having a great time together.  We enjoyed the stimulation of each other’s company and the promise of new experience and pleasure without strings, attachment, or pulls.  I would, on occasion, feel the pulling of my own jealousy and fear, and at times it could erupt out of seemingly nowhere.  I recall Matthew at one point innocently commenting on his attraction to Sara.  I was taking a good long stare in the belly of the refrigerator, searching for something to quell the fire I was experiencing within my being.  I found nothing, and reacted to Matthew’s comment by slamming the door shut, yelling “Is THAT supposed to make me feel GOOD!?”, and stormed off into the bedroom.

A tip – to attempt polyamory when one does not have a clue about conscious communication or a clear sense of self-direction, is a really fabulous way to bring out those truly charming and refined aspects.  But, hey, in between those rather embarrassing moments, you’re at least having some fun and it’ll give you something else to think about than just your own bag.  Sometimes, that’s just what the doctor ordered.

The ironic part of the situation was that I was the one who initiated the whole thing, and so carefully with hesitant Matthew.  Yet it seemed he was doing just fine…having a great time, actually, and I was the emotional basket case in all of this!  God, I couldn’t stand myself!

….Until the day came that I found out differently.  As it does, the busyness of life had caught up with us, and we hadn’t seen Stephen and Sara for several weeks.  When we finally got round to inviting them again, we prepared dinner and eventually found them at our door.  That night, Stephen seemed overjoyed to see me and, bounding in my direction, shot Matthew a passing greeting, with a look of ‘God, I know you understand, dude’, and met me with his zealously grateful kisses.  Sara followed in to meet with Matthew, but I barely caught glimpse of her- or anything else going for that matter- before Stephen and I were in the shower making love.  And make love we did, with devout passion- the kind of making love that is effortless because your bodies and hearts fit perfectly.  The kind that is with someone whom –at least at that moment, you see as God.  We were completely oblivious to anything but the raw ecstasy of our moments together.

When we finally began to land back on planet earth, holding onto each other, in a little shower, in my apartment in Arizona, we took pause.  Without a word we laughed, realizing that all that constituted the ‘real world’ had blissfully disappeared for quite some time.

Now that’s all fine and good in most contexts.   But when I had a partner in the other room, and perhaps I hadn’t been making just those kinds of sounds with him alone anytime recently, the kind that I don’t really know what kind of sounds I was making because I was oblivious, then maybe it wasn’t all fine and good.  Perhaps they were just the kind of sounds that he didn’t want to hear from me at the time, so of course they would mentally play round and round in his head, perfectly, to the T- over and over and over…..

But, as I said, I was oblivious.  So when I came too, and realized Sara and Matthew had temporarily fell from my sites as well, I desired to make way back out to them.  It was all of our deepest intentions to include each other within everything- not necessarily needing to be together for our sex -we enjoyed the intimacy of exclusivity in pairs, yet we saw our intentions, thoughts, desires, and sharing of experiences as inclusive.   Stephen and I made our way out, excited to join and share with them, yet I was surprised to round the corner and find Matthew, fully dressed, lying on the couch with his head in Sara’s lap.  She was sitting up, in skirt and bra, stroking his forehead, offering comfort and support to him.  Matthew had, apparently, become so upset upon hearing the intensity of my pleasure, he could not be in his own.

So I wasn’t alone.  The whole thing was a big contradiction.  We wanted this… and we didn’t want it.  Our trials and tribulations continued, yet I must say, we did rather well in all of this, especially considering our lack of experience, communication abilities, or awareness in ourselves.  Regardless, what seemed to keep us in motion was that we had the foundation of two years of relationship, and, no matter what, we were undoubtedly the best of friends.

I suppose there may have been some kind of indirect comfort for him in the awareness, over time, that my relationship with Stephen was not quelling the fire that I was experiencing internally.  At least my distress was not just about my relationship with Matthew.  In fact, I was still finding fault even within this scenario.  Now, I was disapproving of the drinking that we were all so often doing together, and, I continued to crave something emotionally deeper.  And yes, I still had no idea what that meant or how to do it.  But from my perspective at the time, it meant something was wrong with Matthew or Stephen.  ‘They just wanted sex’.  ‘They weren’t going deep enough with me emotionally’.  ‘Sara had to be in some kind of denial’.  Him, they them.   It’s becoming obvious now, no?

Nevertheless, my fascination with Stephen was far from done.  I knew the depths that were in him, past what we were experiencing together.  I saw him. I knew his soul.  I would fantasize about going deeper with them, being part of their marriage, and our exploration of the world together. (God, Am I just weird?  Most people fantasize about sex.- I fantasize about deep connection and traveling the world!)  At the same time, I still didn’t understand how they could maintain their relationship as it was.  I would look for the signs of WHY their marriage was open, where they were unhappy together, or what was wrong in their relationship.  After all, she had to hate this whole thing with him being with other women.  God knows, I certainly would!  Granted, I was loving the position I had in this relationship.  It was a new one for me – that I felt no obligations, no strings, no expectations- except all the ‘good stuff’.  I could simply come and go as I pleased.  I loved it, and I loved them.  But he was not MY husband.  No, I sure wouldn’t want my husband to be ‘that way’.

Yet this was something I wanted gone about myself.  I wanted to get to know Sara more because, if this was all genuine, I wanted to be like her.  I wanted that kind of generosity within me.  I spent a few moments in the car with Sara alone on one hot, Saturday afternoon, and took the opportunity to ask her how she felt about her husband being with others.  Her response was that Steven was a very sexual man, and who was she to hold him back from what he wanted?  There was not a hint of upset or jealousy in her voice or tone about any of Steven’s relations.  Nevertheless, a part of me didn’t believe her.  Surely this was upsetting to her and she was hiding it.  I decided on my own that deep down she was unhappy.  But if she was happy, I mean, to be able to offer up your husband to another woman-now THAT is love.

No, I didn’t have that in me, but, yes, I wanted it.  Imagine the freedom that comes along with such a way!  But was it really love that was the motivation, here?  Perhaps she was in denial.  Maybe deep down she was really hating it, but just going along with it- because that’s her husband.  I don’t know.  I wasn’t finding anything ‘wrong’ with them.  They truly seemed to love and respected each other.  I just couldn’t see any evidence to the contrary.

Anyway, the whole thing was intriguing, and I like intriguing.   And, I had to admit, I was having a little fun, and I loved the attention.  Admittedly, I was still horribly depressed in between our time together, and only falling deeper and deeper into that pit as my external solutions refused to soften my soul’s cry-for only god knows what I was crying for.  But hey, at least this offered some moments of relief from the cacophony of feelings that was eating me from the inside- out.   And, lo and behold, I was a polyamorous stripper now.  Brilliant!  Big life dreams come to fruition.  ‘HEY mom!  Look at me now!’

Speaking of Mom….

It was May 9, 2005, and it was my 33^rd birthday.  My mom, whom I hadn’t seen for several years, had made her way from Massachusetts to celebrate my birthday with me at my home in Arizona.  Well, with me….and my partner Matthew, and my lover Stephen, and his wife Sara -all sitting under the stars in my back yard, drinking wine, on this comfortably warm, breezy evening.

My mom’s such a trouper.  We had- her and I, apparently signed quite a contract before we floated down into this incarnation.  I have to wonder if our little angel wings weren’t shaking with anticipation as we put feather pen to papyrus, because we had certainly been through the wringer of mother and daughter dynamics together.

Brief synapse: Beginning around age 14, I had run away from home several times, decidedly unloved and unwanted.  My only hint of my mom’s care or awareness that I was gone came from a police officers mouth, a few states away, who informed me I was on the Missings person’s list.  It wasn’t enough… I stayed gone.  From a distance, she watched me move through deep alcoholism, cocaine addiction, and an incalculable amount of pain, anger and resentment- much of which was focused right at her and my absent father.   My addictions and emotional issues would continue in intense severity until I began the process of weaning myself, ever-so-slowly, into sobriety beginning at the age of 27.  That factor continues to amazes me to this day… a good 13 years of being ‘gone’ from my own development, and absent from interactions with any of my family.  Needless to say, I was a mess… for a long, long time.

But now, my mother was gracefully sitting with me in my back yard, with all of my ‘new friends’, while I happily shared pole-dancing stories.  Now, this is a woman who brought me to Catholic church when I was too young to rebel against it, and who watched my begrudging face as she fixed healthy whole wheat pancakes with nuts and seeds.  She did her best.  Truly, the woman is a trouper.

The five of us had gone out to my favorite sushi restaurant.  We were all having a great time over dinner, sharing as we indulged in a fine bottle of red.  I was pleased to take note at how well my mom was doing with all of this.  I imagine everyone noticed the look of skepticism in her eye, and, indeed, I decided she wasn’t completely fond of Stephen.  Yet she put on her best cordial face and held the conversation in genuine interest without pokes or prys.  When we completed our meal, Steven and Sara presented me with a gorgeous engraved pastel, glass leaf necklace.  It was such a fine gift, I was rather floored.  I was still becoming accustomed to grasping the level of affection he so generously and openly showed me.  Yet regardless of how loving and attentive he was, I didn’t fully believe it- that this love was all ‘real’.

Yet I certainly wanted to.  I wanted the foundation, the solidity of it all.  Perhaps I hoped that inviting this meeting, all of us together with my mom, somehow qualified it all, made it real.

Eventually, we all made our return back from dinner, and continued our conversations and celebration on the lawn chairs in our back yard.  The night was sweet.  I was grateful to everyone that we had so gracefully been making it through the potential awkwardness of such a meeting.  We drank and enjoyed. All was well.

I barely noticed my mom excuse herself upon receiving a call on her cell.  She left the room and her conversation felt uncomfortably long.  I turned to see my mother, terribly distraught, and pale as a ghost, motioning me inside