The Friday Sex Blog [Openning the Heart]

Hola mi gente,
I’m taking a break from politics today… 

A long time ago, a man in charge of ringing the bells at a nearby church for years would play the opening notes to My Cherie Amor every Sunday. One day I tracked the man down and asked him why. He explained he rang the bells in that way because it was the song he dedicated to his now deceased wife when they first met. After being uprooted from my community for years, I returned to find that the bells no longer rang. When I inquired, I discovered that the man had passed away and no one else knew how to ring the bells.

Opening Your Heart

You can outrun that which is running after you,
but not what is running inside you.
-- Rwandan proverb

According to ancient wisdom, the Anahata Chakra, more commonly known as the Heart Chakra, balances the world of matter (lower three chakras) with the world of spirit (upper three chakras). The Sanskrit word implies that deep beneath our personal stories of suffering and pain lies boundless love and compassion. 

According to this map of the mind/ body, signs you may be blocked include feelings of shyness and loneliness. If you have an inability to forgive or a tendency to lack empathy, then you may be leading with your head more often than your heart. On the other hand, an overpowering chakra can include feelings of codependency, and looking outward for acceptance or fulfillment. Intense jealousy or harsh judgment of others is also a red flag.

If you fall into the blocked category, figuring out how to find balance really boils down to repressed emotions. Whether it's a traumatic event stemming from childhood that you can't even remember, or a grudge you're holding so tightly from a recent incident. When you repress your feelings, your balance gets out of whack.

I realize many of my readers, especially Marxist materialists (LOL) probably view teachings such as the chakras a scam. I won’t get into a defense of that right now because -- shit, you’re gonna believe what you’re gonna believe. In any case, the goal of this post is to explore experiential methods we can use to effect change.

I feel in order for lasting change to come about there has to be a how: actual exercises we can implement that can bring about a change in our mental software. It has been my observation that as humans we follow scripts, some of which were written generations ago, and they often cause much pain. So today I'm going to offer you an exercise. I try to offer experiential exercises because people think too fuckin' much. What I mean to say is that people confuse being overly analytical with “rational.” In fact, many of us are tyrannized by thinking most of the time. So I try to offer basic exercises you have to experience in order to begin moving you away from thinking and toward the experience of change.

See? You're already thinking. Sheeesh! Shut up! LOL

Okay! Ready? Breathe… 

Pretend you are going to kill the next person you see. I want you to try to feel this in your body. Imagine that you are really going to kill this person. How do you feel inside?

Now, imagine that you are going to have sex with the next person you see. Again, how do you feel inside? What are the physical manifestations?

Bear with me for one last time: Pretend you are going to save the life of the next person you see, but in doing so your own life will end. Imagine you are going to die as a result of saving this person's life. How do you feel inside?

Now, answer this question: which imagined action -- killing, having sex, or saving while dying -- most feels like liberation, freedom, and unbound love?

My question to you is why would you intentionally hold anything in your mind, except that which most opens your heart and soul so that others may benefit from it?

Now, if you followed my instructions correctly, I may have just fucked up your constriction. Now you know. From now on, the choice is yours. When you find yourself imagining something that results in you feeling less open, simply imagine whatever most opens you. It is that fuckin simple, believe it or not.

This is the first step that helps you get off the merry-go-round of living those painful scripts -- those childhood neurological imprints on your psyche. It might help to remember my fave “equation”:

constriction = hate/ love = openness.

This is the beginning of replacing habits that bring constriction with habits that bring openness. The other step is to hang out as awareness in space, maintaining openness without support; being openness without effort or intention. At this point, if you haven't done the exercises and just tried to think about them, you will not understand what I have written here. So go back and do them now. Not later, but now. 

Remember the feeling that most opens you? Perhaps it was saving your best friend's or your child's life. Whatever feeling most opens you, allow this feeling to dissolve into an awareness of openness, like a swirl dissolving in water. Let go of any effort to imagine anything, just be that feeling.

Another moment will come and you might find yourself once again reacting to something -- perhaps a rude driver -- that constricts you, if even a little bit. What do you do? What can you do?

First, consciously visualize or feel whatever opens your heart, softens your body, and relaxes your mind. For example, you can visualize making passionate love with a superior lover, your bodies entwined in emanations of light. Then allow this visualization to dissolve into an authentic feeling, like an ocean of openness, alive and real as this bright moment.

This is a way to replace unloving (constricted) mind formulations with loving ones. With time and practice you will be able to allow all mind forms to relax open as love's clear light. Repeat this two step process whenever you happen to notice that you're closing up, so that openness becomes the default state in every moment that you are conscious of. 

This is the practice of opening your heart and throwing away the old scripts -- of undoing the deeply ingrained childhood imprints that force you to sabotage your life. Many of you say you want to be loved, but as long as you're closed, you will wait forever to be loved.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [Surrender and Devotion]

Hola mi gente…
I’ll be at the Loisaida Festival today. Come join us!

Surrender & Devotion

You all are probably sick and tired of my constant references to surrender. But you see: there’s no way around it: if you want to be happy for once in your fuckin’ life you first have to surrender and surrender completely. This is no, “Well, I’ll surrender a little bit, then later I’ll surrender sum more” surrender. No, that shit doesn’t get it. You’ve been doing that long enough and half-assed surrendering got you half-assed results.

No, I want nothing more than your total, unconditional, utter surrender. And I don’t want it for myself (though my world would be made better by it), nor do I want you to surrender to me (though that would be nice).

I guess I should start at what I mean by surrender. The word “surrender” gets a bad rap in our culture, with its almost obsessive and exclusive focus on the individual. Surrender is often interpreted as giving up, weakness, ceding, as in defeat. While I am referring somewhat to giving up, I use it in a different way. Surrendering to me means letting go of our resistance to and fear of the total openness of who we really are. Allow me to reiterate:

Surrender means opening up to the fact of the total openness of who you really are.

Yup. You are total open consciousness. You may not know it, but everything you need for your freedom exists within you right now, in this very life, this very moment. You just need to stop resisting this very important truth.

Surrendering to me means giving up that little mass of tensions you call your “self” -- the story you created as a response for the need to feel real. All that bullshit: your horoscope, your Myers/ Briggs categorization, your social security number, your ID card -- all that shit is bullshit. It’s your little telenovela, your personal soap opera. That is not who you are. That whole thing -- that “personality” -- is a bundle of tension you chose to take on in order to separate yourself from everyone else’s telenovelas. You can actually feel it: it manifests itself as a contraction in your body.

You cannot be vulnerable nor can you surrender while immersed in your personal soap opera. You cannot love, nor know love, nor be loved while you’re all twisted like that.

Soften yourself, breathe -- luxuriate in your free space… 

Surrendering to me means to open with no boundaries. Shit, you cannot say, “I love you,” when in a state of surrender. There is no “I” -- no “you” -- that loves. There is only love. Quick! Think of someone you love totally without condition -- a son or daughter, or a lover… 

Feel that?

That is what you are. It’s palpable -- you can feel this thing that you are -- it’s always there even when you lose sight of it. That’s who and what you are.

Surrender to me means loving without limits. It means to break down your walls and to let down your guard so that your lover can feel your genuine, naked, and unhidden core without defenses. Your belly becomes soft and your breath becomes full. You willingly open your body and heart to your lover. When you reach this level of awareness, life unfolds differently. If you are hurt, you experience the hurt, but you remain open and full. You live your life as open like the sky, the ocean, the trees. Surrender to me is the gateway to the deepest possible way of knowing.

You might say you have opened like this and I will challenge you. You may have surrendered to someone or something but I have met very few people who have surrendered to the notion they are love. What I mean by surrendering is the practice (not the thought, or analysis) of surrendering. In this context it is not surrendering to your fears, nor the demands of another, but directly to love. If you tell me you have no resistance to any of this, then I’m going to call you on your bullshit because if you have ever tried surrendering in this way the first realization is that there is a huge resistance to it.

True surrender, in the manner in which I use the word, is not adapting in order to please people. Nor is it even momentarily sacrificing your emotional needs. These are all secondary needs and true surrender is about breaking through veil of these secondary needs and amplifying the primal and very human yearning to give and receive unlimited and unbound love.

And that my friends is devotion.

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

Sunday Sermon [The Witness]

Hola mi gente,

Hardest thing in the whole world: try getting a place to live in New York City. Wow… I’m off to meet with someone in my quest for a place to live.

The Witness

Today I’m going to try to offer something of practical value. After reading this, you’ll be able to use it (or not) and perhaps effect some change... 

Too often external factors have such a huge impact on our lives. Someone steps on your toes, or looks at you in a certain way, or cuts you off on the highway, and that just sends you over the edge. Even something as simple (and beyond our control) as the weather affects our perception and how we feel. It’s all so random, it seems... 

... Or is it? Hmmmmm.... 

Imagine, if you can, that you are mangled in a car accident. Your body is crushed amidst tangled, jagged metal and you are lying in a pool of blood.

Now, imagine sleeping in a large, comfortable bed. Switch back to being mangled in a car accident. The difference you feel is made from the same thoughts that create your personal suffering.

Confused? What does this mean? How do you discover the cause of your suffering and the source of genuine happiness? And, what the fuck does this have to do with being mangled and beds?

LOL! Bear with me and try the following and see if you get any answers:

Go between the two feelings: relaxed, lying in a big comfortable bed/ mangled, lying in a pool of blood. Picture each, feel both, then one and then the other. Mangled body -- soft bed.

Now, pay attention because this is the important part. Feel the “who” that can feel both images, and relax as that “who” now.

You -- the real you -- are this capacity to witness.

The images are merely objects for your attention. The true you is the awareness of being aware. Your genuine self is the feeling-awareness that notices the movement of attention between the images. I call this The Witness, others call it witness consciousness. Different spiritual traditions have different names for this awareness of awareness, but they all point to the same thing, regardless of the terminology.

You are the space where the pictures happen, where attention moves between a mangled body and a soft bed. The imagery changes but the feeling-awareness -- who you are -- always maintains this openness to feel. Awakening to your true self is being able to relax into this capacity to feel, whatever picture is happening now. If you can develop this awareness into a freedom to feel, no matter what is happening, you become free to act as love.

If you forget this openness of feeling even for a second, then you become trapped again. The inconsiderate driver, the discourteous interaction, the real and imagined insults, all will have power over you again. You will go around life renting this precious space to other people -- many who are strangers and insignificant. If you can learn to remember this essential openness, who you are, you begin to discover that love acts spontaneously, unfettered by the present picture of your life.

But don’t take my word for this. Discover what is true for yourself when you do this exercise. See if you change with the picture, or if you are this open awareness where the picture happens, the openness who feels what happens.

Test it now. Mangled body/ soft bed. The images have changed, but in what space does the light of your imagination shine? Is this feeling-awareness any different? Are you aware of your awareness?

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…

The Friday Sex Blog [The Big Bang]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Some may find the first part of this post offensive. No apologies offered. I want to thank a dear friend and former lover for allowing me to use her photo and part of our story for today's blog. She read it in advance and actually enjoyed it (helped me edit some of it) -- thought it was important to share. She doesn't live in the US, but we had an intense, loving affair one summer a few years back...

* * *

-=[ The Big Show ]=-
... I feel like a storm, like the ocean, the waves... I want to fuck everything into my womb. A woman suffers not giving her love. To be fully satisfied, she must absolutely live in the depth of her love.
-- Jennifer Garcia

She’s beyond beautiful, she’s feminine sexuality itself, but throughout all our sexing, there’s always this holding back. Sure, she does everything to please me: she happily goes doggy-style and lets me penetrate her deeply and she revels in my deep thrusts, looking back over her shoulder and urging me on, thrusting back herself. She takes me into her mouth to the point of gagging and even swallowed my sperm -- all for my pleasure. But somewhere inside, this is all something dirty and she’s afraid to be a slut for me because some part of her is ashamed.

I want her to show me, to tell me what she wants. I want to know her -- the real her. I want her to grind her cunt against my face and take her pleasure. It’s a gradual process. Little by little we talk, communicating openly, talking about what we like and what we want and who we are and she begins to open. At first, it’s just a little bit -- like when she looks into my eyes while we’re fucking. Or when she squeezes the opening to my cock and smells it, or licks at my pre cum greedily -- all things she was ashamed of doing before.

She opens slowly and I wait patiently for the day when the floodgates open. She tells me she’s never met a man who was so curious and interested in her sex and at first it frightened her, but she enjoys the openness, the permission to be what we want.

One day, while I’m fucking her from behind, she pleads for me to stop. She throws me on my back and tells me, “It’s my turn,” and proceeds to ride my cock in the way that brings her most pleasure -- on top of me, facing me and all I ask is that she stays in the moment with me, looking into my eyes. I lay back, a passive tool to her aggressive grasp for pleasure, and she takes the reins of our sexing and rides me for all she’s worth, not caring, throwing caution to the wind. I feel her moistness. She scrapes her fingers against my chest. Eventually, she takes me on waves of bliss until she comes in violent bursts, her petite taut body trembling, pulsing, and I can feel the walls of her vagina vibrate, exquisitely wrapping my cock in a tender and tight moist cocoon...

All sex, in fact all life, is about the meeting of masculine and feminine energy -- the yin/ yang of life. I envision masculine energy as consciousness and feminine essence as light. This does not mean that men always embody the masculine, or that women only embody feminine energy. What it means is that sexual union is always about a conscious (masculine) presence penetrating a yielding, loving surrender. With some couples, one partner holds more masculine energy, and the other feminine. Some more sexually conscious couples will alternate who is the leading, masculine polarity and who is the yielding feminine polarity. This has very little to do with physical positions and more to do with attitude -- disposition.

As soon as a woman becomes more assertive, initiating, and penetrating with her presence, and as soon as a man relaxes, waits, becomes soft and vulnerable the sexual polarities have been reversed. This can be a great thing to practice intentionally, to experience more deeply the opposite sexual essence. For a couple that has learned to polarize and merge, sex changes from merely a personal act for intensifying pleasure into something quite different. Orgasm is a glorified sneeze when compared to the potential that arises once we step out of the box of rubbing genitals to release pressure or to connect.

When partners are willing to manipulate and cultivate sexual energy, they both arrive to a sexual meeting of fullness. In this scenario, the man has not only realized himself as empty consciousness, but he has also brought that realization down into his body. The woman has not only experienced love and connection, but she has also practiced opening so much that she radiates love itself, from her whole body. She actually becomes the body of the divine feminine: the supreme strength of absolute surrender.

This is not a matter of imitating or acting out in a certain way, rather it is relaxing into your natural essence -- to your genuine essence. This takes no effort at all, only conscious practice. In this form of sexing, the couple isn’t meeting in order to get something from each other. They are not meeting to get off on waves of physical pleasure. They are not even meeting to love each other in the sense that we normally think of love. Sex in this context is being offered at the altar of spirituality itself.

This is why I pray... LOL

This form of sexual union is the “human replication of the union of consciousness and light.” This union can occur within an individual and in our hypermasculine world, this was as good as it got. People became unified within themselves and presented themselves to the world. But the sexing I’m speaking to here is quite different. When we consciously choose to embody the union of consciousness and light, both partners are releasing a gift that is universal, rather than personal. When a man and a woman sex in this way, the two offerings become a full circle, and there is a unification of consciousness and light, of yin and yang, something much greater than could ever occur within an individual. The masculine gives the feminine a deep trustworthy consciousness presence, through one’s body, and the feminine essence gives the masculine deep love and light. In that way, ego boundaries finally break and they pour into one another.

Man, freed by the realizations that, no matter what, he can still fully give of himself is no longer afraid to open into life and finds the union of consciousness and form. Woman, finally freed of her longing to be fully penetrated by God, allows a fuller love to move through her. She realizes, in the unconditional giving, that her world is already fully penetrated by divine consciousness all the time, and always has been. In a way, she becomes the Divine Goddess, the feminine principle itself, open in radiant love. By consciously surrendering to the masculine principle, she is transported beyond her longing to be loved into being love itself.

Love,

Eddie

PS: Sex is good for you.