Siren Song

¡Hola! Everybody...
Gentlemen: Imagine for a moment that through some random evolutionary adaptation, our penises grew from our foreheads instead of between our legs (after all, it makes more sense from a woman's pleasure perspective). Now, imagine how it would feel if every time you went out in public, women would make untoward remarks about the size (or lack thereof), shape, attractiveness, or unattractiveness of your penis. Complete strangers commenting on something highly personal, something you have mixed feelings about (because ti's either too small or too big, or bent at the head, etc.). Imagine that as soon as you reached puberty (and even before) women would make cruel, oftentimes publicly humiliating remarks about your penis. If you can imagine how this would feel (and let's be real: most of you would die if a woman so much as pointed at your penis and laughed), then you have a very small idea of what it feels like to be a woman and do something as mundane as take a walk.

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-=[ Listening to the Songs of the Sirens ]=-

Excerpted from Taking the Leap: Freeing Ourselves from Old Habits and Fears

By Pema Chodron

Ulysses, the hero of ancient Greek mythology, exemplifies the courage it takes to consciously choose staying receptive and present when the temptation to get swept away is intense.

When he was making the sea voyage home to Greece after the Trojan War, Ulysses knew that his ship would have to pass through a very dangerous area that was inhabited by beautiful maidens known as the sirens. He had been warned that the call of these women was irresistible, and that sailors couldn’t help but steer towards the sirens, crash their boats onto the rocks, and drown.

Nevertheless, Ulysses wanted to hear the song of the sirens. He knew the prophecy that if anyone could hear their voices and not go towards them, the sirens would lose their power forever and wither away. This was the challenge that compelled him.

As his ship neared the sirens’ homeland, Ulysses told his men to put wax plugs in their ears and to tie him tightly to the mast, instructing them that no matter how hard he struggled and gestured, no matter how wrathfully he appeared to be ordering them to cut his ropes, they were not to untie him until the ship reached a familiar point of land well out of earshot of the sirens’ song. This story, as you might expect, has a happy ending. The men followed his instructions and Ulysses made it though.

To a greater or lesser degree we will all have to go through similar discomfort in order not to follow the call of our own personal sirens, in order to step through the open doorway to awakening.

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Love,

Eddie