The Friday Sex Blog [Riding the Horse]

Hola mi gente…

It’s the holiday weekend, and I wish you all the very best in the coming year, but, whatever you do, please -- please: Don’t. Drive. Drunk.

NO excuses, people. Don't drink and drive -- and don’t ride with anyone who does.

Tipsy Tow offered by AAA (You don't have to be a AAA member): from 6pm to 6am on New Year's Eve/ Day they will take your drunk ass and your car home for free. While not a nationwide program, a number of AAA clubs offer Tow-to-Go or Tipsy Tow service during certain holidays for members and nonmembers. This service is not available everywhere. AAA strongly encourages family and friends to pick a designated driver before they head out on New Year’s Eve.

Save this number: 1-800-222-4357. Click here to find out which clubs are participating. Please re-post this if you want to help save lives.

And just in case you didn’t hear me the first time, here’s some Stevie Wonder reinforcing the message:

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One day I went with a girlfriend horseback riding. I had ridden before, but, my companion at the time warned me, we were going to ride “real horses,” real horseback riding. I was just horny to see her ass perfectly shaped ass on a horse, so I somewhat exaggerated my horse riding experience.

Big mistake. Out they came with this huge, black, fire-breathing-from-flayed-nostrils animal, and no sooner than I got on it and kicked, it just took off. No matter how much I pulled back on the reins this motherfucker wasn’t stopping and we were headed straight to a fence that, it seemed to me, this horse was determined to jump. Luckily, another rider was able to put his horse in the way, causing a collision that threw me off the horse. Fortunately, no one was hurt. That animal just looked at me and it seemed to me it was laughing at me. They asked if I wanted to switch horses for a tamer one, but I refused. I got some lessons that day on how to ride, but when I got back on that magnificent animal, I held the reins so tight it couldn’t move.

Eventually, my friend taught me enough where I became a pretty good rider and over time I developed a close bond with that horse, admiring (while respecting) its spirit and strength.

Of course, you know there’s a metaphor in here somewhere, right? LOL! Your growth is like that: in the beginning you’re holding on to the reins, white-knuckled, hanging on for dear life, afraid of the full power of your emotions. But if you go outside that comfort zone, you begin to explore the more meaningful, and infinitely more rewarding, emotional landscapes. You learn to relax in the saddle, to ride, motherfucker, ride!

For most people most times, violent emotions are destructive. People fly into rage, for example, and say things they don’t mean and later regret (can I get a witness?). We sometimes may lash out and hurt someone, or when hurt by rejection, we mope and eat and lay in bed, our hurt festering in the murky waters of self-destructive depression. Most violence is a form of self-abuse or other-abuse.

Therefore, at the earlier stages of psycho-spiritual evolution or self actualization, growth means cultivating compassion and less emotional violence toward yourself and others. My experience has been that the more self-awareness you attain, the more you are naturally motivated toward peace and harmony. At this stage, when upset or angered, you learn to take a few breaths and calm yourself. You try to practice kindness rather than hate, acceptance rather than judgment, joy rather than anger.

In this way, you can become harmonious -- and frightfully bland.

In adopting the stereotype of a harmonious individual, all smiles and acquiescence, you forfeit your depth of love power for the sake of a safe but superficial calmness. Yes, you may have progressed from irresponsible violence and poor impulse control to a practiced tranquility, but growth doesn’t stop there.

After you have developed the basic skills necessary to breathe through your emotional reflexes and to act graciously, there’s another world. There is a whole new experience, lover, out there waiting for you: you can learn to open as your emotion. Rather than striking out in self-destructive, knee-jerk ways, and rather than merely breathing through your anger in order to achieve calmness, you can actually use anger, or any other emotion, as a gateway to a deeper love, a deeper expression of truth and your lived experience.

If you look back to a time when you felt you wanted to hit someone, punch a wall, break something, you will note the presence of an overriding sense of feeling trapped, restricted. Whether by your own limits or by external circumstances, you most likely felt imprisoned and loveless. Violence is always a dysfunctional attempt to break free, an unskilled effort toward greater freedom or love. Openness is freedom and love. Even the most violent or self-destructive emotions are based on our need for openness, to be free, to give and receive love.

When you are open, then you are able to give and receive love fully, and you are free. However, when you don’t practice how to be open, then you’re unable to live as love, then your chi, or vital power/ love-energy, backs up and roils as emotional mayhem. You feel trapped and alone, powerless, unable or fearful of riding that magnificent and powerful force, to ride free like the wind. Your emotional energy becomes constipated.

Embraced skillfully, intense emotions can be a quick path to a deeper experience -- to a more profound openness. Ever heard of “angry sex”? Anger can provide you with the sharp clarity and thunder necessary to awaken from moody distraction, if you can release and really feel your love that moves as anger.

Sadness, something we all try to avoid at all costs, can expose your heart, too. Sometimes we harden ourselves against sadness, in the process creating dead zones in our psyche and body. It’s as if in our fear of unleashing our full potential, we’ve numbed ourselves against feeling fully. We have the reins tight in our hands, and we’ll never let go, lest we lose ourselves, we think. Soften yourself and feel your sadness. Really feel your sadness. Softness is like the ocean, while it is yielding, it is not weak. Yield, surrender, to your sadness without falling apart. Soften your belly, feel the tidal swells moving through you, the heaves of gasps for yearning. There’s an astounding depth of love released by sadness. Ever heard and experienced the raw beauty of the blues art form?

Love can transform all these previously destructive emotions into something powerful and alive.

People mistake my work in politics or social justice for anger. But aggression for love’s sake is passion. Even the word protest uncovers some this. Pro means being for something. Test is to speak, as in testify, or testimony. To protest is to speak for something, to stand for something.

In order for you to take the next step, you have to come to the awareness that true spiritual and sexual passion demands your capacity to open as wild as the moment does. Just like with me and that horse. Sometimes the force of our emotions can scare us, and we need to be careful, to develop psychologically safe spaces. But not to do this work is deny yourself life.

Smacks and shouts and dark desires can wield love as powerfully as gentle kisses, mild-mannered moods, and pats on the back. And yes, this takes practice, and you might want to hold on to those reins a little tightly at first, or until you feel safe. It might take years to open freely in this way, but until you do, it’s as if you’ve entered an amusement park but have refused to get on the rides.

C’Ya on the rebound…