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 (Time and Healing)

¡Hola! Everybody...
It’s winter in America...

* * *

-=[ Time and Healing ]=-

“What I’m talkin’ about is a game... A game that can’t be won only played... ”

-- The Legend of Bagger Vance

These days I am reminded that even in the worst of times, there are lessons to be learned. There’s a saying in prisons that goes something like, “You can do the time or let the time do you,” meaning that one presumably always has options -- even in the worst of times.

We’re all doing time. Actually, some of us are doing time, while others are letting time do them.

I know I’m losing some people right about now. LOL! Just bear with me, all this might make sense later.

With respect to time, have you ever noticed how it seems to pass differently under different situations? For example, I am fortunate that my work involves my passion. I’m able to focus all my talents -- my intellect, my passion, my creativity -- into my work. There are times when I’m so deeply immersed in my work that time seems to stand still. I get into a “flow” and it’s as if I’m on an extended downstroke of a delicious fuck. Or sometimes when I’m writing, I can enter a creative state in which time and space meld and it’s as if something else is writing through me. I become a vehicle for this creative flow that results in this writing. My best writing comes from those moments. Sometimes, I look back at things I have written and I’m amazed! I swear that I’m reading the output of a different person! LOL

Maybe this is a better analogy: have you ever been in love? When you’re in love, you love every beat of your heart. In fact, “falling” in love is the healthiest thing you can do. Not only is your physical heart strengthened, but also your entire physiology -- all the glands, organs, immune system, etc. -- is sparked on to peak performance. Life takes on a deeper meaning. In other words, you’re living for something beyond yourself. In this state, time and space morph into a healing force that we’re only beginning to understand.

If, on the other hand, you’re allowing time to do you, life becomes a series of flight or fight episodes. In fact, much of the way conservatives rule is by activating this fight or flight syndrome. Sociologists call it the “Culture of Fear.” But I digress...

If you’re letting time do you, you probably wake up each morning to an alarm -- with a start. The first thing you might notice is that you have too many things to do in too little highly segmented blocks of minutes and hours. The true irony of modern life is that despite all the time-saving technology at our disposal, not only are we more anxious and worried, it’s as if we’ve placed our brains into a pressure cooker heated by powerful social forces. Our socially-induced exhaustion, combined with time pressure and noise, warps our perception of time, which drowns our spirit in a sea of despair. All of this creates a tremendous amount of hardship for our nervous system to handle.

Erectile Dysfunction! Frigidity! Shaking Leg Syndrome! Memory Loss! Dating! Debt! Stimulus Package!

We live in a zero-sum society that conditions us to perceive life as a contest in which something or someone is to be won or conquered and it’s all a very elaborate and illusory game. I was reading recently that our brains are bombarded daily with over 5,000 instances of logos, advertisements, and commercials. The brain’s reticular activating system simply shuts them from our consciousness as a defense against neural burnout. The bad thing is that it leaves our nervous system frayed. Long-term exposure to high stress levels will not only age you, it will weaken the body systems you depend on to stay alive. If I define stress as “the feeling that your ability to perform is exceeded by the demands you must meet,” then it follows that stress kills -- literally.

The first thing you notice when you try to sit still even for a moment is the wild, undisciplined nature of our thought-stream. Becoming more conscious of what is garbage -- hand-me-down religious beliefs, for example -- and what is our own, is an enlightening and healing process. Thoughts have a physiological component. To put it simply, thoughts are chemicals. These chemicals can poison you and confuse you, or they heal and bless you.

While time presumably passes the same for everyone, not everyone is affected in the same way. If time is doing you, then so do high levels of stress hormones, which inhibit the brains ability to use blood sugar in the brain’s memory center. Not only is your memory adversely affected, so are your brain cells. Cortisol breaks down the function of your brain’s neurotransmitters, resulting in a state very similar to a dysfunctional national electricity grid -- the power lines come down. Your biocomputer breaks down during emotional storms.

If you want to do time rather than have time do you (in), there are a few things you can do. This is especially true when times are difficult. For one, set aside to meditate daily, even if it’s only for 5-10 minutes. Meditation drops your oxygen requirements by up to 20 percent -- that’s twelve percent better than a good night’s sleep -- helping counteract the oxygen-depriving effects of high stress levels. It also decreases blood lactate levels responsible for anxiety.

Also, some physical activity (preferably real exercise), even if it’s something as simple as walking, will help counteract the suppression of the immune system.

Finally, remember falling in love? Well, you can attain that level of inner physical well-being right now. You don’t have to wait until you fall in love. That potential to heal, to nurture, to make whole is your birthright. That healing force of love is the Divine within you -- what or who are you waiting for to bathe in all that glorious light?

Love,

Eddie