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!!