Nah, nothing different with me nowadays, except I’m busier than hell with outside projects.  If anyone were to ask me if I was dreaming or living my dreams – I’d say that the latter is most true.  Because, seriously, things are actually getting done toward my personal, professional, and spiritual goals.

What I find interesting is that with the theatrical work, the homeschooling group, the meditations, the sexual explorations, and the Dharma group…….I sometimes find myself waking up in the morning wondering if I’m actually dreaming – like a DREAM dream, not just some fantasy.  There are times when I feel like I’m in such a surrealistic potpourri of happenings.  Despite our finances not being outrageously huge (which I never really cared for), things are happening.  And that’s surprisingly weird.

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  I think this is awesome.  But it’s just like any play or musical or scholarship that you attain.  Once you get it, you discover that THIS is when the work begins.  It’s liberating, and terrifying, and authentic, and naked, and oh-so-wild.  There isn’t anything tame about this experience.  As far as I’m concerned, this is reality with a capital “R”.

I used to find myself daydreaming every now and then about what life would be like “if….” and then describe a particular wish that I’d have floating around in my head.  I rarely daydream now.  Why?  I don’t have time – life is too damn short, and once I had the first step toward these fantasies, there was no turning back to the little box again.  I had looked out from the precipice, saw the void, and I’ve already jumped out into it.  My feelings now fluctuate between flying and falling.  And there’s no safety net underneath me to catch me.

How utterly strange.  Honestly.  I had assumed that living your dreams would make you feel more secure.  Nothing can be further from the truth.  Liberation doesn’t have boundaries.  Once you tear down the walls, throw down your guard, pull out all the stops, and go at 200 mph, you really have no choice but to live in the moment.  You also can’t be unaware of your surroundings…….even if you TRIED,  you couldn’t be unaware of everything around you and within you.

Well, at least, that’s where *I* stand.  I’ll kiss you on the cheek if you manage to find security in blasting off into space to explore.  Personally, I can’t find any security.

But – honestly – I wouldn’t have it any other way.  What an adventure!

I nice heated debate has exploded on a discussion forum that I frequent.  The topic in question is direct, but rather loaded:  Does a husband have a right to sex, regardless of his wife’s wishes?  In other words, does a wife have an obligation to perform “Wifely Duties?”

There are two very passionate sides to this debate.  On the one hand, we have a few women who have seen the abuse firsthand what the cultural expectations are of wives who are considered some form of property of the husband.  They have lived it, tasted it, felt the pain personally.  These are female friends who understand that it isn’t just the random asshole who wanted to have it whenever he wanted it – they understand that there is a general attitude of appeasing the male sex drive as the prime directive of the sexual aspect of marriage.

On the other hand, we have a few men who understand that abuse does exist in marriages, but feel attacked for suggesting that men ought to  be considered for their sexual needs.  As much as I understand and empathize with them, this is very much a red herring.  Of course, consideration is part and parcel of a healthy marriage, and being sensitive to each other’s sexual needs is a must if both are considered equal partners.  But this in no way belongs under the argument of whether a man has a “right” to his wife’s body.  And because of this very irrelevent introduction of the red herring, there has been loads of confusion, anger, and accusations flying from both sides.  I find this amazingly depressing.

To be truthful,  it’s annoying that many times when a woman is fighting for her autonomy, we are bombarded with attempts to guilt, shame, or harass us as “reminders” that we should never forget about standing by her man.  Honestly?  That’s a load of crap.  Our autonomy allows us to give MORE and more FREELY of our love, compassion, and understanding.  Take out the “wifely duties”, and you will know for sure that your wife is giving her body and her heart to you because she wants to, not because she has to.  There’s a BIG difference there.

Now, again I ask, when do we women stop being considered property?  And when can our intentions for sexual independence be given the benefit of the doubt?

So, after chuckling a bit from reading my last post here at Sacred Whore – my month off was a little out of my control.  My computer got sick this time (not me), and spent a month at a computer shop ignored and neglected.  *sad face*

Now, I guess I COULD have blogged at the library, but there I’m only guaranteed a half-hour, and I like to take my time when I blog.  Shit.

I also COULD have borrowed the time to blog on my mother’s computer, but again, I am limited in it’s availability there, too.  Double shit.

So, I used the limited time to check up on email briefly here and there.  Sadly, I was very much into the groove of blogging when I last visited here, so therefore I’ll look at this as an ample opportunity to get back into the habit again of writing a post every day, or at least every other day.

But, for what it’s worth, Happy New Year everyone!

I’ve been on a small roll lately.  Our computer has been weird and stupid – which seems to be an annual thing for us – and we’ve been hit with a computer virus.  Also, the kids are back home again after a two-week visit with their biological dad.  Combine these with the habit of blogging most every day for a bit and you get ample opportunity to practice meditation and generating bodhichitta through patience and enthusiastic perserverence.

Tonight, Dear Husband and I will be throwing a party with our friends and some family.  So soon I’ll be finding myself immersed in shopping lists and to-do lists and honey-do lists for the man…….but I wanted to take this time to reflect a tad bit on how this year has gone.

I’ve seen some of my romances flourish and falter; my health decline and bounce back; our finances stumble, grow, and then dip again from the medical bills; our garden in the back yard bloom and then wither; Dear Husband’s facial hair grow back; and finally a Dharma group that I’ve been involved in establish itself with a steady group of regular meditators and practitioners.

Much has been said about impermanence, and 2008 has been no different.  It has provided this simple Whore with dozens of curveballs to practice, practice, and practice the Dharma.  I have nothing but enormous gratitude for these many opportunities for me to train the mind – constantly.

And therefore I look forward to 2009 to offer even more lands to explore and more challenges to meet.  More senses to delight in and more g-spots to tickle.  And whatever merit that has been created from the hopefully ever-increasing bodhichitta, I offer it to the great enlightenment for the sake of all sentient beings.  I therefore dedicate every ounce of my good merit to all of you in the universe.  May you be blessed with great fortune and happiness.

Happy New Year.  *kiss kiss*

Heads up, everyone.  I’m watching a fascinating documentary on the history of modern civilization told through the eyes of pornographers.   It’s called “Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization.”  Sounds ballsy, right?  Well, I can’t pooh-pooh the scholarship from what I’ve seen so far.  It’s incredible.  5 hours of material of erotic imagery and the politics and culture surrounding it all from the paintings in Pompeii to the age of the internet.  From French nude pictures exported to London and then to the United States, to peep shows, stag films, magazines, and the advent of video.  And, from the erotic images in Michaelangelo’s “The Last Judgement” to the many cathedrals in Europe that attempted to shock believers into sexual purity through pornographic images, to the shocking writings of Marquis de Sade…..so far, I’ve only gotten as far as just past the printing press and barely into the world of photographic images on a grand scale.

Watching the documentary, I’m reminded of an earlier post on this blog where I discussed pornography as an art, and I’m more grounded in my opinion now more than ever.  The difference is that porn is a taboo kind of art, where we are skiddish to view it and discuss it amongst our family and friends, and that we continue to this day to share in our Victorian hangovers……somehow sexual imagery is supposed to remain separate from plain view.  That if we were not only to view nudity in all it’s grand form, but images of explicit sexual activity, that we know that WE won’t be corrupted by it, but what about our kids?  Our neighbors?  Our colleagues, or our boss, or our assistants?  We still act as if we need to quarantine the imagery for the safety of other people’s minds.

It’s crazy, isn’t it?  If you really really really REALLY think about it. 

Anyway, just a heads up of what Thalia has been up to.  Dear Husband has been getting into it, but I also think when I mentioned that there was a lot of pussy in this DVD, he felt more enthusiastic to sitting down with me in support as well as his own enjoyment.

Just because I’m morbidly curious like that, I googled three terms……..penis, vagina,  and clitoris.  Guess which word won out by a long shot:

Penis.

With all the hoopla of internet porn where pussy is sought out everywhere, I was actually quite intrigued to see that there are over 158 MILLION results on google for “penis”, where as there are around 80 million results for “vagina”, and a paltry 19 million for “clitoris.” 

Why the hating?  Or rather, on a more positive note, maybe we should explore why the penis fascinates so many people. 

Is it for business purposes?  You can count the ads for Levitra and Viagra and the odd enhancement drug as part of that, so the pharm companies might have a hand in all this (forgive the pun, please).  But you know, vaginas also have stock in capitalist ventures, too, with douches, tampons, diaphragms, gynecologists, and the whole giving birth thing and the business surrounding that.

So, I don’t get it.  I refuse to play the gender card here, but I’m very fascinated with this phenomenon.  Penis, penis, penis (re: Marsha, Marsha, Marsha) – wherefore art thou, Penis?  It surely must be natural to do a whole lot of dick-waving literally and metaphorically…….

SHIT!  How appropro – not only do you have to work harder to find the clit in real life, but on the ‘net as well.  OH THE BLANK UNHOLY IRONY!!

I posed a question to a man I know.  I asked him,  “What would you think if you had the opportunity to be with two women at the same time?”  His reply was, “YAAAYYYY!!!”  Then I asked, “OK, what if you had the opportunity to be with a woman and a man at the same time?”  And his reply was, “Ehhhh, I might feel a little uncomfortable.”  I think this cultural phenomemon is still, to this day, weird.

When I asked him why he might feel a little uncomfortable, he mentioned that it’s because he’s straight and that he just wouldn’t feel right being intimate with another man.  And I think (I’m assuming here, so sue me) that the only possible visual in his mind is to have that one chick in between him and the other guy – where one is fucking her from behind, and the other is getting sucked off – and then she turns around every now and then to switch how she’s getting poked.

Apparently, that’s the only way that SHE could enjoy it?  Granted…..that IS fun on some level, but please – that’s not the only scenario that I could conjur up in my sick head.  So, I posited the idea to him and maybe the one woman in the threesome might want to see him and the other man kiss, to stroke each other, to embrace and caress each other.  He reacted as if this was NOWHERE in the realm of a heterosexual male identity.  So, the conversation ended there – after I told him that I think he suffers from the delusion that women are still on an extremely subtle and foundational level considered objects that are to be used for his pleasure. 

He scoffed.  I asked him how likely would it be for him to wish those two women in his first “ideal” fantasy to kiss and fondle each other while he’s jerking off to the visual.  He smiled. 

Yeah, he didn’t get it.  But you can’t fault him too much, you know.  This kind of objectification is so deeply embedded in our culture that many of us are still surprised when WE find ourselves doing it out of sheer habit.   Even I have found it….when I visualize watching two men – straight men – touching each other for the first time in front of me and seeing a new discovery in eroticism in themselves and each other….and I feel like I’ve been caught with my hand in the proverbial “Thou-Shalt-Not” cookie jar.

And I ain’t talking about the cookie jar from the Christian Fundamentalist Kitchen.  I’m talking about the cookie jar from the so-called Sexually Progressive Kitchen.  Despite all our how-to books and Tantra seminars and sex therapists and talk shows and porn mags, we still have this notion that men-on-men action is quarantined only for the gays and the bis.   It’s why women can admit that they’re “bi-curious” but when was the last time you ever heard a dude admit that? 

And it’s not only their buddies that I suspect they’re afraid of……..how many WOMEN say that they wish they could watch their husbands or their boyfriends make out with another man in front of them? 

All right……….besides ME………how many women do you know who have freely said that to their friends and their SO’s?  This isn’t a male thing.   It’s a cultural thing.   Women are still reluctant and aren’t expected to claim the bed as territory for our fantasies that push boundaries.  Pop culture and frat parties are still inundated with the lesbian fantasy of two buxom blonde women fondling and licking each other while teasing the shit out of some lucky guy at the edge of the bed. 

Lest you think, and lest my male friend thinks, I don’t have beef with him in particular.  I just have beef with his POV.  And like I’d said, it isn’t just him that holds it like a bad habit, I do it too.   The only way, in my not-so-humble-opinion, is to go cold turkey into quitting this mindset.  It’s the most shocking, but the quickest and least painful overall to challenging the objectification of women in the bedroom.  And hey, what’s wrong with a little Zen in the form of a strap-on?

On that note…. I have in mind to liberate some men I know. I’d like to invite some young hot stud over to see if he and Dear Husband might hit it off.  *does a high-five with a fellow girlfriend*

So sad.  I was thinking not too long ago of dedicating an installment to her for how vibrant and talented she was.  But I just heard the news that she passed away from colon cancer at the age of 81. 

All hail the mighty wiki:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eartha_Kitt

Much like Mae West, Eartha started making huge waves AFTER her 40th birthday.  It was like she was just warming up to everyone, learning to stand on her own two feet, and then diving head-first into the land of sex kittens and sitting rightfully on the throne there.

R.I.P. girlfriend.

I offer up whatever merit accumulated here  to be dedicated to all for the sake of all sentient beings.  My family celebrates Christmas, but certainly not for the reason that this is the time when Christ the Savior was born.  The manger scene is certainly beautiful, but the spirit of giving and generosity is what is emphasized here, and I appreciate that my altar stands ready and waiting for me to continue that particular practice.

Sometimes, it’s OK that other well-meaning folks are confused when I light my candles and incese, fill my water bowls, put some fruit up on the altar, and do a series of prostrations while singing mantras……..it certainly LOOKS like I’m worshipping that Buddha figure up on the center top of the altar.  However, I am not.  I’m practicing.  And that’s all this is, really.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?  Practice, practice, practice.

We continue to practice generosity by giving offerings up – and not things that we could do without, but our favorite foods and scents and sights.  We continue to practice acknowledgement of our own impact on the environment and on each other by contemplating on our karma.  And we continue to practice selflessness by dedicating all our luxuries, our fortunes, and our health, to others.  

Daily practice of this generosity in the mind and on our altar, we will be better prepared to give to others away from the altar – where our attachments and our delusions can blind us so easily.  We can be better prepared to give our time, our money, our clothes, our food, and even our very lives for the benefit of others.  THIS is why I do my prostrations, why I give offerings, why I chant my mantras.  It’s a discipline that works.

I remember a Christian pastor that once told me something very enlightening………he once said, “Practice doesn’t make perfect.  Practice makes permanent.”

Now, despite my immediate conceptual argument against the very word “permanence,”  I saw that he was on to something.  Practice makes permanent in the sense that it causes a thought, manner of speech, and/or action habitual and eventually effortless.  It becomes our character, and one could say – our destiny.

So, I write this on Christmas Eve, when I’m preparing a holiday feast for family and friends, and I wish all who grace their fabulous presence here my best health and good fortunes.   I place my offering today on the altar with the thought:

I am but a simple whore.  May you be happy.  Happy Holidays!

For a good time, read “Passionate Enlightenment” by Miranda Shaw.

No, seriously.  I know it sounds a little like something you’d read on the inside of a stall at a public restroom, but after reading it a few times, I still find myself walking away feeling that much more compassionate and empowered.  Shaw not only outlines the Tantric approach to Buddhism, but she does so from historical female scholarship.  I’m not the only person in the world who has noticed that waaaayyyyy too much religious doctrine had been penned by men, and therefore have varying degrees of testosterone filters installed.  “Passionate Enlightenment” offers something quite unique – a gynocentric POV in Tantric Buddhism (what has been criticized as blatantly misogynistic by other scholars).  And to a loud Buddhist feminista like myself, this is music to my ears.

The flow of Shaw’s writings follows women in Tantric theory, to the women adepts in Tantric circles, to the women founders in Tantric history, and what is outlined in the Buddha-Tantras how to treat a woman (she adamently states that intimacy is a path to enlightenment, very Left-Hand Path here where renunciates might be taken aback at first glance).

An excerpt from the book that brilliantly describes the Spontaneous Jewellike Yogini:

Like the jewel that is her namesake, the illustrious yogini has many facets.  She is a visionary revealer of Tantric teachings received in deep meditatitive state.  She is a skilled rhetorician who dazzles her audience with a sensuous and exuberant vision of Tantric sexuality.  She is a homileticist who motivates her audience to religious discipline, exhorting them that worldly pleasures are impermanent and ultimately unsatisfying.  She is a subtle philosopher who spins and unravels the theoretical intricacies of her position…..

See?  How fucking awesome is that?

Anyway, the book is far more worth than the $15.00 or so that I paid for it.  It is exquisite, daring, and illustrious.  For this moment in time, it is my personal Tantric feminist Bible, and it calls me to courageously access the Bodhisattva to help others in my uniquely womanly way.

Happy reading!!

Dear Husband and I had two holiday parties to attend this past weekend – one with his family, and the other with his company.  Now, the company party was in a convention center/hotel where we all could feel safe to get trashed with no driving involved.  Just stumbling here and there to get from point A to point B.

I’m a lightweight when it comes to alcohol.  I love wine, and that is my drink of choice 90% of the time except for the occasional Crown and Coke.  But I can’t have a whole lot before I start slurring my words.  One glass of Cabernet, and I feel warm and toasty.  Two glasses, and my shoes are coming off and I’m hitting on the owner’s wife of the company.  Three glasses, and I lose all inhibitions and usually need a babysitter.

Saturday night, I had three glasses of wine.  Silly Thalia.

I do remember not only hitting on the owner’s wife, but the owner himself AND Dear Husband’s immediate supervisor.  Yes, my shoes came off and I boogied my way through the “We Are Family” songs, the “Yeah!” songs, and the “You Shook Me All Night” songs.  But I also kept kissing everyone and cozying up to them in my Marilyn Monroe-style low cut dress.  And I joked that the owner was trying to get me pregnant – some people thought that was funny.  Most people didn’t and found it a little awkward.

So, let’s just say that Thalia was throwing caution to the wind.

When the party was over (and after I scored the owner’s wife’s phone number, WHOOT!)…….Dear Husband asked me if I wanted to continue partying with some friends at a local bar that’s right next door.  I knew I’d already had enough to drink, and that if I had any more, I probably would be camped out by the toilet.  So, I only wanted to suffer embarassment and not my health, and I declined the offer.  He wanted to go, however, and so I told him to be careful and to call me if he was going to be more than an hour or so.

A couple of hours later after I had crashed on the bed in our suite, I get a phone call from a woman named Carla telling me that I needed to get some jeans and a t-shirt on since we’re all going to Steak and Shake.  The room was spinning, and I was feeling a little queasy, so I knew I was coming down from my drunkenness.  I asked to speak to my husband…..it took a few minutes since she was drunk too.

Dear Husband gets on the phone and asks if I can come along.  I can hear a group of people in the background yelling “THALIA!!!  THALIA!!!  THALIA!!!”  Understand that rarely am I a party pooper.  But that night, I didn’t have it in me, and the suite itself was super-awesome with the king-sized bed, the jacuzzi tub in the huge bathroom, the safe and the bar in the living room area…….I wanted Dear Husband to come back and spend at least a couple hours with me in a little lap of luxury before we fell asleep for the night.

So, Dear Husband heeded my call to come to me despite the protests from the crowd.  He’s a good guy.

Back at the suite, we’re both drunk and hurting, and I swear there ought to be a medical term for “whiskey dick.”  I wasn’t all that sexy either, since I was tired and my speech was slurred, and I didn’t make that much sense when I tried to seduce Dear Husband with my words. 

So, we wound up giggling our way through the sex with our stumbling and bumbling.   About four hours later after we had our fair share of orgasms and had fallen asleep, I woke up wanting a shower, and Dear Husband woke up wanting to vomit. 

The rest of the day yesterday was spent recovering from our hangovers, getting something to eat, cleaning up the house, and then having sex while sober. 

Maybe we were making sure we got it right the second time and that we hadn’t lost our touch. 

Well,  I could just sum it all up and say – I don’t like it.  In fact, I don’t like it one bit.  I had written earlier on Sacred Whore that a bad taste in my mouth sits here concerning Obama and equality for the GLBTQ community, and this choice for his inauguration just makes my stomach acid worse. 

While I respect the views of those who feel that Obama used gays/lesbians/bi’s to get elected, I disagree.  He had made it perfectly clear that he has always believed marriage to be between a man and a woman, so did Joe Biden, and so did John Kerry back in ‘04.  In fact, rarely have we found a Democratic presidential candidate that truly stood up for full equality for gays and lesbians – it’s for that reason that I have felt tenuous relations with the Democratic party.  Or both parties for that matter.  I just don’t like either of them.  LOL

What gets me is that Obama has spouted the “separate-but-equal” crap since the dawn of his campaign, and yet now he is inviting Pastor Warren to give the invocation at his inauguration.  This is the same guy that has been quoted as such:

For 5,000 years, marriage has been defined by every single culture and every single religion – this is not a Christian issue. Buddhist, Muslims, Jews – historically, marriage is a man and a woman. And the reason I supported Proposition 8, is really a free speech issue. Because first the court overrode the will of the people, but second there were all kinds of threats that if that did not pass then any pastor could be considered doing hate speech if he shared his views that he didn’t think homosexuality was the most natural way for relationships, and that would be hate speech. We should have freedom of speech, ok? And you should be able to have freedom of speech to make your position and I should be able to have freedom of speech to make my position, and can’t we do this in a civil way.

And….

If anyone, whether unfaithful spouses, or unmarried couples, or homosexuals or anyone else think they are smarter than God and chooses to disobey God’s sexual instructions, it is not the US government’s role to take away their choice. But neither is it the government’s role to classify just any “loving” relationship as a marriage. A committed boyfriend-girlfriend relationship is not a marriage. Two lovers living together is a not a marriage. Incest is not marriage. A domestic partnership or even a civil union is still not marriage.

Well, Pastor Warren, pardon my French, but that’s a really fucking stupid argument.  We all know that a Civil Union is not a marriage, that two lovers living together is not a marriage, etc., but heterosexual lovers have the option and the freedom to get married.  Homosexuals do  not have the freedom to get married.  And people like you are standing in their way because of your religious beliefs.

Here’s something else Rick Warren has stated:

Much of this debate is not really about civil rights, but a desire for approval. The fact that 70% of blacks supported Prop 8 shows they don’t believe it is a civil rights issue. Gays in California already have their rights. What they desire is approval and validation from those who disagree with them, and they are willing to force it by law if necessary. Any disapproval is quickly labeled “hate speech. Imagine if we held that standard in every other disagreement Americans have? There would be no free speech. That’s why, on the traditional marriage side, many saw Prop 8 as a free speech issue: Don’t force me to validate a lifestyle I disagree with. It is not the same as marriage.” And many saw the Teacher’s Union contribution of $3 million against Prop 8, as a effort to insure that children would be taught to approve what most parents disapprove of.]

No, you are wrong again.  The GLBTQ community could give a rat’s ass about approval from your community.   It’s the civil liberties that are at stake here, not begging for you to approve of a lifestyle.  In fact, go ahead and preach whatever you want – I’ll defend that right until my dying day.  Preach your disapproval – I’ll support the rights of our Rinpoches to teach us about the living Dharma, too, that says that certain attachments and ignorance (including yours) will ensure that we will continue to return to the samsaric realm of desire, suffering, and delusion.  However, I will not push to legislate my beliefs to limit your attachments.

Oh, and here is the source of Pastor Warren’s comments from Beliefnet:   http://blog.beliefnet.com/stevenwaldman/2008/12/rick-warrens-controversial-com.html

But I digress…..

I dunno.  These are just my initial thoughts.  At the moment, I’m not happy.  Life goes on.

I’ve posited before that sex is a valuable tool for contemplation, and I still see it that way.  Both the sexual act and meditation are powerful tools for realization and bliss, and with that potency in it’s cut-straight-to-the-source of non-duality, the practice of mindfulness is of the utmost importance.

We can approach sex with wishes to pursue, to capture, to claim, to possess, with someone – with some other Self.  And during the act, we can find ourselves in the bliss of love and orgasm that the practice offers, but it soon ends, and it’s back to real life again and doing the laundry.

In meditation, we can approach it with wishes to understand our mind, our thoughts, our feelings, our habits, our actions – to get a snapshot and claim this picture of our aggregates as our Self.  And while sitting, we can find ourselves in the bliss of the moment of NOW.  We are aware of the stream of thoughts flowing in front of us or through our hearts.  We are aware of the bodily sensations, and we can remain unattached to these karmic manifestations.  However, this also soon ends, and we are left to deal with real life and doing the laundry.

I say this because in both practices – sex and meditation – we can be very unaware of the subtle wish to capture either our own Self or another Self for even a moment.  And both are futile because of the extraordinary fleeting nature of impermanence.  But if we do our sitting and/or our screwing with the mindfulness of emptiness – that all phenomena does not exist inherently on it’s own side – we can continue to touch on our non-dual nature and possibly open the door a little further to enlightenment.

I’m consistently drawn to Buddhist Tantra not so much because of how “sex-friendly” it is with it’s thangkas of explicit yab-yum depictions and all, but also because of the esoteric poetry that fully acknowledges how masculine and feminine qualities complement each other.   It’s very easy for the dogmatic religions to outline these same facets publicly and without shame, however they also tend to be quite rigid when deciding which gender should do what.

And that’s a recipe for disaster as we’ve seen.  Hence, I think many of us are hesitant to discuss masculinity and feminity because there is apprehension that such a discussion will lead to defining gender roles.  Most of us don’t like being boxed in when we don’t fit.

Recently, I’ve familiarized myself once again with a book by Mark Epstein, M.D. called “Open to Desire.”  One passage has stood out to me concerning this very topic:

The copulating figures that adorn much of Tibetan art represent the interpenetration or intermingling of the male and female approaches.  In this tradition the active male desire, chastened by the gap that desire creates, becomes empathy or compassion:  the ability to reach into the experience of another and feel what they’re feeling.  The desire to possess or control becomes the ability to relate.  The beholding desire, represented by the female partner, is a metaphor for wisdom, as exemplified by the capacity to be.  This formulation has always impressed me because it reverses the conditioned way of thinking.  Compassion is male and wisdom is female.

What’s important to note here is that we truly HAVE been conditioned to think that men are naturally wise and women are naturally compassionate, based on our patriarchal gender role system where men have taken leadership positions in government and in religion, and women’s caretaking for children, the sick, and the elderly have been seen as the hallmarks of compassion.  In Tibetan Buddhist Tantra, these strengths are quite the opposite – the skillful means and potent strength of the probing nature of masculinity make it quite suited to be the path of compassion (”I understand what you feel”); and the reality of emptiness, the physiological make up of feminity, the unlimited potential (”there is no inherent difference between you and me”)………..such qualities make feminity very suitable as the path of wisdom. 

One could even say that the masculine must learn to understand others, but the feminine must learn from within. 

Give it some thought.

In case one wasn’t aware of what I routinely do at the end of each and every meditation session, puja, offering, mantra, or prayer….I dedicate all the merit acquired to the benefit of all sentient beings.  Such a practice is wonderful for continuing selflessness – and especially so since we tend to view giving with strings attached.  Ultimately, we should give freely without hoping to be paid back or even noticed.  Usually the dedication goes like this:

Due to the merits of the these virtuous actions,

May I quickly attain the state of a guru-buddha

And lead all sentient beings, without exception,

Into that enlightened state.

May the supreme jewel bodhichitta

That has not arisen, arise and grow;

And that which has arisen not diminish

But increase more and more.

___________________________________________

Ultimately, we should not even be patting ourselves on the back for being such a noble and kind person.  This isn’t about us, because the self does not inherently exist on it’s own side.  This is about remembering why we do what we do on the path to enlightenment.

It’s about dancing forever on the bridge between you and me, with my heart open to you.

First, if you  have not checked out the DOMAI site that features very tasteful and beautiful nude pictures of women, please take the time and look it over.  It’ refreshing, needed, and outstanding.

www.domai.com

There.  Now on to my thoughts on a conversation I had with a very good friend of mine about a pic on this very site.

A little about my friend, however – she is a 40-year-old confident and feisty woman (of course, I love her for those qualities in and of themselves) who also shows remarkable kindness toward her fellow sisters when they need it the most.  She also channels some fierce Kali angry energy at times when she comes across a topic she feels passionate about.  When it comes to our livelier conversations, we tend to debate  much about the business of pornography, titty bars, and prostitution.  She feels passionately about these very topics, as do I.  However, we normally happily sit on opposite corners of the proverbial boxing ring – each of us pointing out why we have women’s best interests on our side. 

Segue to one particular pic on the DOMAI site – where we both viewed a picture of a nude woman sitting on a floor with her knees up to her chin, her labia clearly in view.  My dear sister-friend mentioned that the woman was very pretty, but seeing her labia was distracting.  I thought differently (of course), and that seeing her labia was wonderful and showed a sign of confidence.  I mentioned the conversation to my Dear Husband, and he naturally summed our disagreements up in a single statement like he usually does due to his daily word quota:

“You two just have different tastes.  What’s the big deal?”

Well, he’s right.  We do.  I’m bisexual – and it would stand to reason that I liked seeing the beauty of a naked woman because I’m attracted to it.  I was curious if it went deeper than that, and that perhaps there is a point to my friend’s reaction to the labia that was worth exploring. 

She’d said at one point, “Why show her labia?  It doesn’t define HER.” 

She’s right.  She’s absolutely right.  I decided to shed my POV for some time and meditate on her opinion, for I do try as much as possible to give my dissenters an audience.  What I discovered was an appreciation for culturally where we are in terms of how we value women – still, in the 21st century – as either castrated males in the workforce or as mindless vessels for baby-making and mothering or for providing holes for males to masturbate in.   The angry feminista bubbled up again to the surface, and I began to fully appreciate where my dear friend was coming from.  We still have as a culture a very neurotic obsession with the human vulva.  It’s private; it’s dirty; it’s best not talking about it; it’s where women bleed; it’s where we give birth; it houses the clitoris as the one human organ designed specifically for sexual pleasure……aesthetically, it’s extraordinary too, looking and feeling like delicate flower petals of a rose or a lotus – blooming open during arousal revealing ever more mystery and beauty beyond in the vagina.

Not only are our sexual organs powerful physically, but they are powerful symbolically as well.  Currently, talking about pussy usually tends to either evoke mostly school boy fascination and humor or mostly embarrassment and shame in women.  I think this profund lack of reverence for the female genitalia is what my dear friend recognizes culturally, and she is rightly sensitive to it. 

It’s a lot to appreciate.  Yes, we do have quite a ways to go.  But I’ll still like viewing labia regardless of what my dear friend thinks.

I realize that whenever I tell this story, my mother revisits her anxiety.  So, my apologies go out to my mother for bringing her grief.  As a mother, I too understand.

My family went on a vacation up to the Wisconsin Dells (which I don’t remember too much of except it was very lush and green).  I was 8 years old or so,  and watching my older brothers begin to enjoy the preteen years and newfound autonomy gave me something to look forward to.  My oldest brother had even watched over me and our other brother while our parents went out on a date on this same vacation.  Honestly, it only seemed right for me to run away from my family willingly for the first time.

One day during our stay, we decided to take a small hike along one of the many trails that are available out there.  Mom and Dad were walking together, but we kids were enjoying games of Hide and Seek along the trail we were on.  My oldest brother had found that parts of the trail would split off into small tangents and join up again with the main paved trail.  He used that to his advantage when it was his turn to hide and I was “It.”  One time, when it was my turn, I saw another split, and so I took it to hide from my brother.

I ran down the trail as fast as I could, so that I could be as difficult as possible to find.  There’s something to be said about the feistyness of youngest siblings when trying to establish themselves as competent next to their older siblings, and I was no different.  I wanted to be just as savvy and as proficient a player that he was at Hide and Seek, and so I went as far as possible down the new trail in order to make my brothers wonder.  Besides, the other trails joined up with the main one, so it stands to reason that the one that I was on would eventually join up with the main one, too.

At one point, I stopped to listen.  I heard nothing.  Silence.  I crept a little closer to where the trails forked, and then I heard my brothers start calling for me.  At that moment, I made a decision.  Part childlike naivete, part rebellion, part seeker…….I ran away instead of heeding my brothers’ call.  If I was going to win at this game, I was REALLY going to win.  ;-D

And again, to reiterate, I wasn’t worried at all about the trail meeting again with the main trail.  So, I ran without a care in the world, free at last as a growing girl ready to seek adventure like Lucy in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

After a while, it dawned on me that I was not going to be joining up with the main trail.  The realization was slow and organic – and not comforting in any way, but strangely liberating.    This wasn’t a game anymore.  I was lost,  but I also saw this as an opportunity to explore.  So, do I retrace my steps back to my family?  Or do I carry on the way I was going to see where it would lead?

My decision to continue on gave me new life and adrenaline.  I didn’t want to retreat – that was for babies.  I wanted to be on my own and to call my own shots for once (I thought).  And so on I went, and the trail narrowed as the forest around me became thicker and thicker swallowing me whole as I trekked forward.  Yet, instead of feeling claustrophobic, I felt more at one with the forest.  It’s critters, bugs, shrubs, and trees all around me became my adopted family during that time. 

This grand playground provided the kinds of sights and sounds that I could only dream about in our backyard.  We had a small wooded area behind our home that my mother would allow me to explore every now and then, but only to a certain point, and I had to wear my hat all the time in the woods to keep the ticks off my head (although they seemed to get there anyway).  But HERE……..there was no home or mother or backyard that kept me tethered to it.  I felt completely free and alive and happy. 

Then, suddenly, the trail came to a dead end.  There was nothing in front of me except a stream of water cascading over rocky terrain, and thick brush beyond that.  I stood there staring at what seemed to be the end of my adventure, and it didn’t look fun anymore.   I looked up past the trees, and saw that the sun was beginning to go down.  I had been walking and running and playing for almost two hours without my family around me, and I knew that it would take at least that long to get back to the main trail, not to mention assuming additional time would be spent trying to find my family afterward.  I began to think that I had made a very grave mistake.

And for the first time, I was scared.  I stood still and began to sob quietly.  The adopted family forest didn’t comfort me, nor soothe my fears, nor offer any solace for my anxiety.  The growing darkness began to turn this dream into a nightmare, and I was worried about packs of wolves coming to hunt for 8-year-old girls.

Some more time had passed while I shed my tears, and after a while, feelings of hunger and thirst overcame me that shocked me out of my grief.  While I stood in silence trying to cope with the human instinct of survival, and wondering how I was going to find something to eat and drink, I heard a noise…….

I thought to myself…….I KNOW that sound……..

The noise grew louder and louder as it closed in to my proximity……..

………it was a car.

My head bolted in the direction of the car, and I became aware of where I was.  I realized I was very close to the road that we drove on to get to the head of the trail.  I burst across the thick brush, scraping my legs to get to the road.  I crossed the rail that separated civilization from the wild, and I felt back in the realm of humanity again, walking on the road and recognizing one bend in the road here, the sign saying “Falling Rocks” there……I knew I was going in the direction where people were likely to be.  And I knew I was going to be passing by the park ranger’s office, too, and so I decided that that was where I was going to get something to eat and drink and to ask for help finding my family.

The sun was starting to touch the horizon when I reached the office.  One van stood alone in the parking lot, so I knew somebody was there.  A man walked out of the office, saw me coming, and asked -

“Are you Thalia?”

I remembering nodding my head,  and I then saw him open the van door, pick up a CB radio, and watched him say into it:

“I found her.  She’s here.  She just walked up.”

He asked me to come and sit in the van, and then brought me a Pepsi to drink.  It didn’t take long until I saw one of my brothers walk up to the van and yell:

“WHERE WERE YOU?!?!? We couldn’t find you ANYWHERE!”

I didn’t answer.  I just drank my Pepsi, but I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face.

Let’s have a moment to do a gutcheck.

Just like any intention to pursue any path – including Sacred Whoring – one MUST be sure what one’s motivation is.  If I whore myself out to be a doormat, or to simply get my rocks off, or to validate my own attractiveness, or for competition…..all these examples come from a place of self-cherishing.  And in Tibetan Buddhism, the aim is to be anything BUT self-cherishing.  To have such motivation behind one’s actions results in being unskillful and clumsy to varying degrees.

No, my motivation as a Sacred Whore is as of the Bodhisattva.  I seek nothing for myself, but to liberate you, and to bring you happiness.

To cherish the self, when it is viewed in our tradition that there is no inherent self that exists on it’s own side, is to continue on the hamster wheel of samsara.  We get so attached to the ego, but the realities of our mortal and sexual nature provide us potent (and risky) oppportunities to transcend our ego.  Sex and death, creation and dissolution, merging and liberation – ultimately I contemplate heavily on both in my Whoredom.  But I also seek to contemplate on both with the same courageous selflessness that a mother would have when she must rescue her infant from the inside of a burning house.

THIS is the kind of selflessness that I am talking about.  It is strong, brave, and moral.  I’ve heard of criticism from others about this approach to “self-cherishing”, and that in our culture, seeking to abolish it amounts to reducing our dignity.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Reduing our own dignity or worth is STILL being self-absorbed – albeit it’s being self-absorbed with more angst and tears.

Sacred Whoredom is not your typical street-walker by any means.  It is not even your typical high-priced escort.  These emanations are culturally encapsulated in certain causes and conditions where women are abused and degraded  by society, by pimps, by madams, and by their patrons.  No, a Sacred Whore approaches sex with the highest and most noble motivation without care for self-cherishing concerns like money or status. 

To put it bluntly, a Sacred Whore opens the door to Nirvana for her consorts.

I’ve always stated that the war between the sexes ought to be a grand food fight.  That way, it’s not only more fun, but you can lick the food off each other during and after the battle.

I had a conversation a couple nights ago that was started by the two of us relaxing on the couch with the movie “Transformers” on.  The two young leads in the movie are played by Shia Lebouf and Megan Fox.  It’s a Hollywood standard to pair an average-looking man with a woman who is a cookie-cutter model.  Normally, I really don’t care, but that night, something bugged me about it.

I casually mentioned that it would be nice to see more movies where you see the two leads comprised of an “average” looking woman with a young hot stud that could put Brad Pitt to shame.  Dear Husband didn’t argue, but responded that he doesn’t watch movies to see the pairings…..that’s a chick thing.

*chuckles*

The next time we turned on boob tube, I got my wish – “Dirty Dancing” with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey.  Victory at last!  Or is it?

Aaahhhh, it could be a hormonal moment I was having, where I’ve been known to break out in tears over pancakes.  Or it could have been a moment of clarity of where our society is still behind when it comes to portraying women equally as subjective beings with our own desires, goals, and skills – and not just pretty little cheerleaders for the leading man.

The conversation kicked up again when I asked Dear Husband if a woman in this day and age could achieve the same freedom, status, money, and notoriety as Hugh Hefner.  Part Thalia’s own fantasy, and part social pontificating, I wanted to get his view on the situation.  Mr. Hefner freely has multitudes of young (and I mean YOUNG) women in bed with him, and they all agree to the situation that he has set up.  Could a woman here in the states – or anywhere around the world – have the same opportunity?

“No,” says Dear Husband.  “She’d be looked at as a slut.”

FUCK!!!!!

Actually, I already knew the answer.  I just wanted to hear him say it, although he did follow it up with some musings that it SHOULDN’T be this way.  A woman ought to have the same opportunities and freedoms as a man.

We see this modelled still to this day in our culture…..a man can get around and be cheered on by his buddies.  But once a woman gets around, gossip ensues about her in less than glowing terms from men AND women.  A loose woman can’t be trusted.  She’s either incapable of commitment or fidelity, or she likely will have STD’s, or she’s not going to be a good mother to your 700 future children, or what.  

Now, women will certainly gossip about the man who gets around.  But Dear Husband admits freely that there’s a subtle code of ethics in men’s circles not to denigrate a man-whore’s decisions publicly.  Now, is this how it should be across the board for Whores of all genders and orientations?  Hmmmm…….

I find this view so incredibly fascinating that it bears further investigation.  I haven’t come to any conclusion, and Buddha knows that I doubt I’ll get to one soon.  But these lively conversations I’m having with Dear Husband is allowing me to probe the mind of a man who is married to a woman who not only has gotten around, but is STILL getting around. 

I’m going to have to chew on one of the last things he concluded – “Honey, the way I see it, males and females have different ways of approaching mating.  It sounds primitive, but I’ve seen it this way more often than not.  Males are hunters, and females are seducers…..not 100% of the time, but enough to notice a trend.”

And before I could ask him what that had to do with today’s cultural conditioning of woman’s sexual status and acceptance, Dear Husband practically passed out after talking so much.  For a mostly quiet man, he nearly doubled his daily quota with that one conversation.

I’d like to focus a bit on Rachel Felix – performer extraordinaire.  And around my height too at 4′11″.  WHOOT! 

Rachel was known mostly by her first name only, but she was brilliant as an actress in works of tragedy.  Back in her day in theatre in the early 19th century, most theatrical works were overloaded with stylistic sweeping arm gestures and body swayings and grand posture changes.  Rachel revolutionized this style by keeping her movement kiniesphere to a minimalist standard, all the while broadening the depth in her acting in her voice.  For the patrons, this shook them to their core, and Charlotte Bronte was quoted as saying that she “shuddered to the marrow of her bones.”

That’s some pretty heady stuff.  And that’s only how she affected people while she was ON the stage.

Her personal life was much more interesting and passionate.  Rachel took on many lovers, and never married in her short life.  Born in 1821, she grew up quite the gypsy, singing in public for money at 9 years old.  She was taken off the streets by a stranger to the Ecole de Musique Sacre to train as a performance artist.  Once there, she flourished, albeit with some stories of her trouble-making as a growing feisty young woman.

She dared to call her own shots while still in her primary education years.  And by the time she was 17, after being transferred from school to school, she was mentored heavily by Svengali, and she debuted in the show Horace.  She was an instant hit in Paris.

She shortly became involved heavily with Dr. Louis Vernon, but she was never monogamous.  Dr. Vernon was entranced with her, and cared little of her infidelity with other men.  This was never meant to be out of disrespect for her lovers, but more of a commitment to her autonomy and independence.  She has been quoted as saying, “I am free…and mean to remain free. I will have renters, but not owners.”

After many trips around Europe and a final trip to America and Broadway (where her wild sex-capades were discovered by the Victorians, and demonized her at every whim), Rachel lost her long battle to tuberculosis and died at 36.  In spite of her long illness, she never once stopped ravishing and seducing the world.

Wiki has a good entry of Rachel Felix  -  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rachel_(actress)

R.I.P., girlfriend.