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*

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!!

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.

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.

A forum that I frequent has welcomed a member that is making some pretty big waves, and she’s not getting a whole lot of popularity votes, either.  She is arguing (passionately but poorly) that contraception has been the bane of our current American culture, and that if only we were to see sex as “how it was designed” – which is within a church-sanctioned heterosexual marriage purposefully for the act of procreation – we wouldn’t be in the shithole we are today. 

Somebody please go and pinch her nose for me.  I’m still in recovery right now.  ;-D

What bugs me the most about arguments like this is that the intention of returning sex and sexuality to a procreative act that is seen as more sacred backfires horribly.  You reduce sex to a mechanistic function and actually DE-sacralize sex into a baby-making operation.  I have no doubts that the people who make these arguments truly believe that placing arbitrary boundaries on sex down to our pensises and vaginas will help us, but they are profoundly ignorant that sex starts in the mind, not between the legs. 

And besides, if we really want to be technically correct here, procreation isn’t really about penises and vaginas, it’s about a union between a sperm and an egg.  Our external reproductive organs are multi-functional, thank you very much.

No, what really gets me is the notion that if you take away by threats of physical or psycho-social punishment contraception, pre-marital sex, extra-martial sex, masturbation, erotic art and literature, pornography, etc.  What is to stop us from demanding women have cliterodectomies?  Millions of girls around the world are subject to that every year, and WE not long ago practiced the same damned thing.  Women have a clitoris, which has but one purpose – sexual ecstasy.  Not procreation.  Soooooooo, explain that ya mindless-establishment pinheads.

Why have a menses cyle?  Why not just devolve back into mammals that only have estrus cycles where we were in heat for a period of time – we released phermones that the males picked up on, mounted us, and we reproduced.  Damn, we were efficient back then, weren’t we?  [/sarcasm]

After I pinch this woman’s nose (wait, whoops, you pinch her nose for me), I want to point her toward the possibility that our menses cycle, the development of the clitoris, and the fact that we can have frontal-facing sex as well as the development of subcutaneous fat in our breast tissue (which helped our curves become even more aesthetically pleasing)………..all this physiologically implies that sex is here MORE for pleasure than it is for procreation.  In fact,  ovulation provides such a small window during our cycle that a successful union between a sperm and an egg is actually pretty slim. 

I can’t argue this point enough, y’all.  Sex and sexuality is the culmination, practice, study, and exploration into the art of pleasure and ecstasy.  It is an opportunity for us as a species to realize what is our true Buddha nature – the one of bliss and interconnectedness.  To reduce sex into that baby-making mechanistic function only serves to protect the sad isolated idea that is the nuclear family.  No grandmama or paw-paw, aunts, uncles, or cousins to help around the house or provide income, love, structure, and guidance.  Hell, it’s horrific not having our elders so near us when we need them the most……….

But I digress.  I do that when getting on preliminary rants and my thoughts aren’t completely cogent quite yet.

OK, bottom line, blissful orgasmic ecstasy is the law.  It is our true nature.  THIS is sacred, and it is what makes us supremely humane.  To nurture ourselves and others into this state of being is what we ought to elevate to, not to how many babies we can pop out while only two adults are around to welcome the new life into the world.  And screw the idea that menopause is a death sentence for women’s sex lives because she isn’t “fertile” anymore (BTW, a hearty “fuck you” not only goes out to all the religious institutions that suggest that, but a hearty “fuck you” also goes out to evolutionary scientists who suggest that as well)………on the contrary, my dear friend, give me a sexually-liberated silver-haired woman, and I’ll show you Wisdom that is red-hot and that can perhaps show us all how to really live.

I’m done rambling for now.  I need to go take a relaxing bath after that rant.

Lest you think that Sacred Whores are limited to the beauty sirens that we see or hear about with the way they work their bodies, I heartily commend all the Sacred Whores in history that knew (and know today) how to bedevil the masses with their minds as well.

To list just a few:  Veronica Franco, Ninon de Lenclos, Emilie du Chatelet, and Germaine du Stael…….not to mention Marie Curie, the only person ever to win TWO Nobel prizes (in Physics and in Chemistry).

I dare anyone to challenge the notion that a man can truly be intimidated by a woman of immense intelligence.  In fact, I think what we saw is the reaction of being awestruck by women who aren’t afraid of exploring new dimensions in the sciences and technology.  Personally, I think the world craves more women who speak up and act out.  The woman’s mind is in too many regions of the world an  untapped resource of ideas and solutions.

I’ve been in and out of the hospital, and everything looks OK, but I’m just quite sick.  So, that explains my short absence.

The cool thing was that I had a super hot guy help to care for me down in the nuclear medicine department where the magnetic imaging took place.  And lest you wonder, you bet your sweet fanny that Thalia enjoyed every second of that.

But, I’d rather feel better than to go back just to see him.  LOL

Thanks for your thoughts and for everyone who is still visiting the site!  Much love and kisses to you!!

Dear Husband is on vacation.  Beware, y’all……we’re doing more de-cluttering.

And that is cool in an of itself.  I abhor clutter, and if it were up to me, I’d have a very simple stash of stuff, and only splurge on books.  I do go through my books every now and then and give what I don’t read anymore away.  But, when it comes to old clutter that we don’t need anymore, I’d rather sniff dog farts than find reasons to keep it all.

So right now, Dear Husband is thoroughly going through the laundry room where a good portion of our clutter lies.  He has let me direct him what to do with what things, and I am currently happily obliging by giving him his “honey-do” list. 

*sighs*  Thalia is quite pleased right now.  Methinks Dear Husband is getting some tonight.

For now, I’m wanting to add a bit more to the problem young girls face when they become more aware of their adolescent bodies and their own sexuality.  Soon enough, I’d like to see how boys are given their due as well in the mass media since they are affected by images of the bulging pecs, the washboard abs, the broad shoulders, yadda yadda yadda.  But at this moment, this article last year on cnn.com reminded us why we still need to talk about it:

  http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/03/15/BK.girls.body.image/index.html

What I found refreshing was the idea to provide an antidote to our young girls’ delusions on what is sexy and what isn’t……and the antidote provided in the article was to have a strong father or male role model that recognizes the girls strengths that had nothing to do with how she looked in a swimsuit.  What I didn’t like was that girls will notice that yet another adult is ignoring her body and how it looks, and that the girl will continue to look for beauty standards somewhere else.

Moms are very guilty of this, too.  It’s something I’ve noticed in the mindsets of how to deal with the problem of teenaged girls and body image – and it amounts to swinging the pendulum wildly in the opposite direction where the body is never even discussed, and if it is, a girl is inundated with platitudes of how Hollywood stars and Barbie dolls are ruining body image every day.  This does nothing but leave body image in the abstract, and a young girl is still trying to discover exactly how she is beautiful. 

Don’t get me wrong, I’m a strong proponent of pointing out a girl’s strength in her mind, in her spirit, and in her goals and achievements.  However, we simply can’t brush aside letting her know how beautiful she looks because we are afraid of pressuring her into worrying about her looks.  Trust me, the girl is already worried about her looks.  She’s also worried about how smart she is, how if she has friends to have fun with and who like her, how her parents get along, and on and on.  Yes, we parents are totally neurotic with how we appear either too harsh or too overprotective…..but the answer isn’t to “refocus” our rhetoric into giving our daughters recognition in one area and not another.

She will read into it well, and realize that she’s STILL not considered a whole person in the eyes of her mentors.  She’s a brain and an achiever, but she’s not beautiful.  And that potentially can be just as devastating.

My daughter is turning 10 in less than a week, and she is starting to see how her hormones are leading her into the dawn of womanhood.  Right now, we’re just seeing the twilight just before the sun begins to peek through, but she has recently become a little modest about her body.  A few months ago, after helping her shop for her first bra, she was walking around the house with her arms wrapped around her chest.  I asked her why she was doing that, and she said that she didn’t want anybody looking at her breasts.  I didn’t panic, but said what came naturally to me as a Sacred Whore:

“I don’t know why, sweetheart.  I think they’re beautiful.  And they’re just as beautiful as everything else about you – your elbows, your eyes, and that really smart brain you have.  So go ahead and be proud of them.”

Her tension was gone after I said that, and she was in a better mood.  I haven’t seen her worry about her breasts since.  But I guess we’ll see if in 10 years she’s sitting on a therapists couch relaying how I ruined her life with a comment that made her feel pressured to have beautiful breasts.  LOL

You know - it’s just as silly trying to categorize a woman and a girl by a singular component in her brain as it is in a singular body part.  Nice rack?  Nice ass?  Nice teeth?  Or nice career?  Works with a team well?  Scores high on aptitude tests?  Jeez………when can we just say that she is beautiful – simply because she is confident and true to herself?

In my mind, there is nothing more attractive than a strong, confident woman who flaunts her stuff AND speaks her mind.  Not either/or….but both.  She mesmerizes with her eyes AND doesn’t shy away from giving her opinion.  This is what I want to introduce to young girls, and that is beauty is definitely in the eye of the beholder, and that it first comes from her own discerning eye.  I want to introduce to young girls and teens to pay NO attention to what others say – her peers, TV ads, or test scores.  Look in the mirror and decide how you’re physically beautiful and a bombshell, then show it without hesitation.  Look in the mirror and decide how you’re amazingly intelligent, and then show it without hesitation.  Look in the mirror and decide how you’re gifted and skilled, and then show it without hesitation.  Truthfully, I’d prefer to say that there is no time like the present to give a young girl the opportunity to discover every single part of her that is magnificent – and on her own terms and nobody else’s.

To this day, one of my favorite quotes is by Marianne Williamson, and I’ll let her do the talking from here on out today:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I have a free night tonight, it’s my time and it’s for me only, and I get to do whatever I want.

Sometimes, I love getting together with girlfriends for dinner and drinks, and maybe a comedy club or a wine bar later on.  Sometimes, I love to go to the show or the movies.  But right now, I just want to immerse myself in shelf after shelf of books at our local Borders bookstore. 

I’ll be getting some coffee first (White Chocolate Mocha, please), and walking around in as many sections as possible.  From crafts, to DIY home improvement, to metaphysical topics and speculative UFO and consipracy books, to right-wing and left-wing political talking heads, to Native American history, to gay/lesbian fiction, to romance novelists, to self-help, to religion/philosophy, and to economics/marketing/money management.  I am so far realizing my karma as someone who is so attached to acquiring information in print form.  And tonight, I am soooo indulging in that attachment, too.

Financially, it probably is better if I would use my library card more often (I do have one in my purse!).  I guess once the library starts serving coffee, then I’ll be more motivated to go there.  But until then, it’s Borders or Barnes and Noble for me.

Maybe I’ll hit them both tonight.  Go Thalia!!!

A dirty little secret here – cyber sex is not real sex.  It doesn’t carry the emotional nor physical involvement that sex in real life has.  You can’t get pregnant, contract STD’s, or wake up the next morning next to someone who’s not as attractive as the night before when you were drunk.  Cyber sex gives HIV-positive individuals the opportunity to have the safest sex out there in the 21st century.

Here’s the risk, however, and it’s the same risk that the internet gives all of us – cyber sex risks staging an illusion of real life encounters.  What to expect, however, is that even going beyond mere texting of wonderfully vivid details of sexual acts and entering the realm of webcams and near-virtual encounters as in Second Life………this is interactive fantasy and role playing.

My husband and I engage in cyber sex with people online, and we realize that it isn’t for everyone.  All couples must be honest and respectful of what boundaries and expectations exist in our relationships without any assumptions that might seriously jeopardize trust.  As in any other instance, it’s all about open and honest communication, and knowing that both of you are unique and different in tastes and turn-offs.  Once the communication is either off, rare, or misleading, cyber sex and cyber relationships (just like money issues, raising children, work relationships, etc.) could easily start leading one down a real-life “second life.”

The explorations into sexual fantasy by use of images (whether it’s physically 5 feet away from you or in your head) is nothing new.  Critics of these explorations have long railed against strip clubs and private lap dances, peep shows, pornography, 1-900 numbers, and Hustler and Playboy mags.  Internet chat rooms are the latest invention of sexual exploration by use of fantasy, and I truly believe that these explorations are excellent opportunities for us as humans to understand ourselves psychologically as a SEXUAL species.

Here’s the catch, though – in order to safely take advantage of these opportunities, it’s VITAL to remind ourselves that all this in front of us is first and foremost an illusion.  As easy as this sounds in theory, there are countless well-meaning folks that forget this basic and simple fact.  People have left their real life spouses and partners because they’ve allowed themselves to get caught up in this illusion and have gotten married to each other.   It’s already easy enough to get caught up in this illusion in real life when your partner at first gives you the idea that they’re stupendously perfect in all respects during your courtship.  On the internet, behind the cloak of anonymity, it’s that much easier to become attached to these illusions, too.

Second, and this is just as important, remember that what attracts you to a certain online personality says more about YOU than it does about your potential cyber partner.  Me?  I’m intensely attracted to brains, a quick wit,  kindness and empathy,  and a sense of humor.   Give me a personality like that online and I’m a quivering mass of orgasmic goo.   And yet, these very things that attract me are aspects of my own personality that I reveal when I’m at my most open and vulnerable state.  In other words……know thyself.

Should you choose to meet after an encounter online?  Oy, take some advice from my own husband - your date will NEVER be what you expect.  I haven’t ever met any of my cyber friends/partners except for one (and I never had cyber sex with this fella), but he has his, and none of them have ever been anything like he experienced online.   Remember the illusion?  Both of us came back after our meetings rather surprised to see the “real” person behind the screen.  If approached with a good attitude of a healthy dose of adventure without any sense of attachment to an outcome, these encounters are a LOT of fun.  But if you’re looking specifically to get some nookie or to get married or be your partner’s be-all and end-all to happiness (or vice versa), be prepared to be incredibly disappointed.

One could realistically say this can be applied to anything, really, when contemplating the Four Noble Truths.  LOL

In short, cyber sex is a great tool for the 21st century love life.  Just like anything else in this world, however, you gotta be smart about it.  And the first step to avoiding stupid mistakes is knowing yourself and knowing the internet.  This isn’t just a one-time deal, either, but an ongoing stream of observations focused on both ends of the line of interaction.  The worst thing one can do is to suspend this contemplation and self-evaluation (in other words, willingly suspending reality while engaging in fantasy, LOL) while one is exploring the world of cyber sex.  It’s what has gotten spouses in trouble for years when strippers, calendar girls, porn stars, cabaret performers, and prostitutes are objectified into pawns for patrons who grasped at any means of escaping pain, worry, loneliness, rejection in the bedroom, etc.  The ignorant then fool themselves into believing the fantasy, ignore their own selves, and then attach themselves to this illusion.  Groundedness and honesty are both thrown out the window.

But before you go out and try to get “virtually” laid, wait until you get some advice on cyber sex ‘netiquette.  I’ll spell out a few things for you next.

And more Sacred Whores from history.

Jane Elizabeth Digby (1807-1881) was an adventurer first and a promiscuous fireball second.  Her explorations took her from her noble upbringing as a Digby in 19th century England to Munich to Sicily to Greece to Albania and finally to Syria.  Her adventures in the bedroom shocked the Victorian senses out of everyone when it was revealed that she had divorced a total of three husbands:  Edward Law, the Governor General of India;  the Bavarian Baron Karl von Venningen;  and the Greek count Spyridon Theotokis.  She had numerous affairs between and during her marriages, and Jane also gave birth to four children in her lifetime, tragically losing three of her children while infants or as a young child.

Her fourth husband was a Bedouin sheikh by the name of Abdul Midjuel el Mezrab, and she was 17 years older than him at the time of their marriage.  In her lifetime she explored the lands of mountains and caves, raced thoroughbreds with her husband Midjuel in the desert, loved passionately with whomever she pleased, and shunned political correctness and proper female etiquette.  She has been quoted as saying: “This was freedom!  This was life!”  She died of a heart attack in Damascus at the age of 74.  Odette Lind in 1999 spoke of this fearless Lady Jane Digby:

Jane Digby had everything: beauty, aristocratic connections, money, and as revealed in her letters, poetry, and intimate diaries, a highly original mind……..She was an intrepid traveler and finally found she [sic] happiness in Arabia, where she married a sheik and divided her time between the oasis of Damascus and the hard life of Bedouin Nomads. 

She was a remarkable woman.

Her life was a she [sic] desired.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Jane_Digby

R.I.P. girlfriend

More Sacred Whores from the history books.

Sidonie-Gabrielle Colette is perhaps best known for her novel Gigi which Broadway nerds like me know was transformed into a totally awesome musical.  But what some people aren’t aware of is this woman rocked the love world for decades, and especially in her later years.  Madonna, who just turned 50, might not even be able to keep up with Colette herself.

 

Not only did this woman successfully manage herself to respect in literary circles, she had her way with men and women back in the early 20th century.   One performance of the Rêve d’Égypte  at the Moulin Rouge in Paris showed her passionately kissing another woman on stage (in 1907 no less, WHOOT!).  Unfortunately, not only was this performance banned, but Colette and the other woman – Mathilde “Missy” de Morny – were banned from performing together as well. 

Apparently that didn’t stop them from loving each other off-stage, though.  Their relationship lasted a few years afterward.

Colette also had relationships with other men and women throughout her years, but another scandal erupted when she took on her stepson from her second marriage, Bertrand de Jouvenel who was only 16 then,  as her lover.  She herself was in her late 40’s by then.

Still, despite the scandals, Colette created many works that earned her wads of respect throughout Europe – including collaborating with Ravel to stage L’enfant et les sortilèges: Fantaisie lyrique en deux parties in Monte Carlo in 1927 after it originally appeared as her work for the Opera de Paris……..which, by the way, she only needed 8 days to write the text.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colette

As enormously successful as she was as a writer, I admire her courage to strut around as a strong and sexual woman and to be unashamed about her bisexuality.  She passed away in 1954.

R.I.P girlfriend

I have recently come to the conclusion that we can use some of our feisty drumming and dancing in our feminism toward defining ourselves as uniquely divine because of our “femaleness.”  It has become tiresome to both me AND men that I have had discussions with to see women as a whole in our culture trot around like castrated males in the hopes that it would help us to realize truly equal opportunity and equal pay for the same work. 

Would this be better suited as a temporary means for a temporary solution.  It certainly got us somewhere, but now what?

The “castrated males” comment brings a sadness to my heart.  It intuitively perpetuates the suspiscion that feminine traits are no more conducive to work, family, and more specifically, what is divine than a toaster oven.  It’s too bad that the very thing that women have been derided for outside of us is the same thing that we ourselves have derided inwardly for the better half of a century. 

To be “motherly”?  “Sensual”?  “Multi-orgasmic”?  (although the latter is finding increasing acceptance, thank Buddha)

We have within us the makings of finding the moment of clarity, the “awakening” within samsara, that what is of this world is already divine and already beautiful.  Women don’t have to resort to Jungian archetypes in order to find a realization of any holy trinity…….we already possess these traits in our cycle of life in the maiden / mother / crone “Trinity.”  Our hormones in flux from puberty on allow us to find moments of youthfulness and laughter, nurturing and compassion, and finally wisdom and reflection.  

Overall, we find these moments clumped together on the linear scale as we age, but mostly we find these moments as part of a larger web that make up our very complex and layered feminine psyche.  Not only do we find the maiden before motherhood,  and the crone after menopause – and not only do we find our trinity in various points in our menses cycle – but we find bits and pieces of each part of the trinity within us at varying points of the day and as a coping mechanism to varying circumstances.  I can still see the “Maiden” in my 89-year-old grandmother when she bursts into laughter after watching a Disney cartoon.  

I like that.  This Holy Trinity of Maiden / Mother / Crone is something completely female and is our own.  It is both deliciously of this mundane world AND divine for it’s power, influence, and mystery.

In the Bible, Matthew 28:19 says – “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.” http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=matthew%2028:19-28:19&version=31

It’s male, male, and male, isn’t it?  Although some would argue that the Holy Spirit is more feminine in nature than the other two aspects of the Godhead.  However, the entire Trinitarian doctrine – which I had been taught as pretty much the standard and core doctrine that defined the Christianity that I grew up with – just reeked of testosterone and chest hair everywhere.  Even as a child who was raised in a home with a mother who stood her ground as a staunch feminist (I helped her stuff envelopes as a girl during the ERA campaign), and then being driven to church every Sunday to hear about Jesus the man this and God the Father that, and the gospel according to John the man elsewhere…..it was no wonder that my mother held fast to her love for Mary the Mother of God. 

I was one of the only girls in my neighborhood in my youth, and despite the fact that I adapted to it well by playing along with their games of wiffle ball, snowball fights, and making skid marks in driveways with our bikes – I yearned for a feminine sort of deity to at least complement my views of what is divine.  It was always a given……..God was divine.  God was the Father.  God is a “he”. 

And even after more progressive interpretations of Biblical scripture became more popular with appointing a gender-neutral stance on God as neither he or she (I guess God was an androgyne now?), there still remains that Jesus, the only begotten son of God, was a “he”, too.  And Jesus was divine. 

Point being – Woman was not, is not, and never will be divine.  It was never drilled into my head directly per se, but the suggestion was always a strong one.  The purpose for woman was to be man’s helper, his mate, a vessel for procreation, and I ultimately came to the emotionally crumbling conclusion that no matter how materially important I was as a woman, I must accept that “man” was made in God’s image. 

That was hell.  Trust me.  I had a brain, but it was never by definition a model for what I felt God was most pleased with.  Living with the notion that I was nothing but a second-rate male left me with an inner rage that I could only feasibly channel in one direction if I wanted to remain compassionate to others.  I channeled that rage inward and began a long period of self-loathing.  Basically, what could I celebrate about being a woman, really?  Honestly?

[sarcasm]Oh goodie!  Maybe I can finally meet a man who will validate my self-worth![/sarcasm]

Misogyny is oftentimes a slow and compounding disease, and in my case this was exactly what happened.  My descent into the horrid self-loathing kind of depression wasn’t the result of one or two traumatic instances as a young woman – it was the result of that last straw that broke the camel’s back.  A hatred of all things feminine from the Bible to reading Shopenhauer to Barbie dolls that say that “math is hard” and surprisingly even to women who despise dresses…….what was left was an empty shell with a uterus, and subcutaneous fat in miraculously the “right” places that defined an hourglass figure.

My mind, my sexuality, and my dreams?  Ultimately, they are secondary.  It was atrocious living day to day trying desperately to cope with this situation.

Ladies, it does NOT have to be this way.  I hope to point out that we do have our trinity right here in this world, and as an archetype that we can aspire to……And we can even find gratitude for our menses (*snort* I know, bear with me).  This wisdom can be divined from the three stages that we live through in a relatively short amount of time for the first 50 years of our lives.

Mother – Maiden - Crone………Father – Son – Holy Spirit

My purpose at the moment is not to somehow show that major doctrinal study was ripped from the three personas that women mostly experience naturally.  But to parallel for the sake of feminine sanity that we DO have a model in our relationships with not only the other women in our lives but with our own selves, too. 

More to come…..