I got up around 6am, after being awake and making lists of things to do for quite a while. Decided I wanted to do research for my class "Owning Desire" next Sunday Dec 3rd (it's 5:30-7:30pm at Wild at Heart 1111 Leary Way NW in Ballard (206) 782-5538.
I am feeling a bit depressed. I think, now that I have slept off all the jet lag, I am a little sad to be back in my "regular" life. I do love my wonderful life, but being in another country on vacation was so extraordinary that waking up in my bed alone was not so great. I also tend to worry and obsess about my relationships. I want to know "where they are going", I want to ensure they are intentional. I want to eliminate my occassional sense of dependency and fear of abandonment. I want to feel and expereince pleasure and desire without pleasure and desire becoming the central focus of the relationships. Such a hard task for the incredibly hedonistic and self-centered pagan being that I am.
I went to the Starbucks 3 blocks from my house at about 6:45am, because it is a business that is open at that hour. I read an article by Willow pearson of the Integral Institute ( associated with Ken Wilber ) about the construction of desire. Fascinating breakdown of social interactions into: a spiral of time, levels of development across four quadrants, and lines of growth/variation within quadrants. Took me a while but I found myself able to imagine and then see this holistic model of life whihc is postmodern as compared to the "common" consensual reality of "Either/Or" reality that dualistic paradigms impose on us. I will use the division of desire into 4 quadrants in my work. Had a very interesting conversation about sexuality and desire with a homeless woman and a magnet salesman, quite fun.
I moved to Cafe Septieme for brteakfast at 9am and began reading a 2004 issue of the Buddhist magazine Tricycle. The issue is devoted to "the Riddle of Desire". It turns out that not all Buddhists advocate the elimination of desire. In fact, from what I learned in this series of articles; Buddhism is requesting that we be present with desire, neither repressing nor rushing to fulfill the yearning or obtain the object which is being "sought after". The idea is to be fully with the desire, notice its location in the body, see how and where it arises. To come fully into the emotional experience of desire itself and just "be with it" seems to be the goal. I consider learning this practice. It is shown that several people, using this technique find the desire shifting and transorming into other feelings and memories. Reaching an understanding of the origin of these sensations/feelings seems to help some people release their attachment to desire. They still feel desire as one of the many feelings humans continually experience, they just do not act on the compulsive pull to fulfill the desire.
There are several other aspects of desire I want to explore in this class. I want to more fully understand and teach about Polly Young-Eisendrath's distinctions between socialized tendencies to be either sexual objects or sexual subjects. She suggests we be more intentional and feel freer to move between these two poles.
I will also be re-reading and integrating Jack Morin's book "The Erotic Mind" which helps people look at the personal historic origins of their sexual tendencies and fantasies. Another way to frame his book is that it looks at how we come to identify desire for ourselves. I will merge this with my own concepts of "sourcing authentic desire" which for me means looking critically at any lack of continuity between what we say we want/ what we actually do sexually/ and what the common culture "will allow us" ro desire without punishment or other negative consequences.The ability to look behind the things we have been socialized to desire is rare:
Here are a few stereotypes we are all familiar with: "titties and beer" (huh, huh said in a stupid male adolescent accent like Bevis and Butthead), or young "barely legal"porn stars with blonde pony tails in videos, or Tall dark and handsome secret agents, or built up muscular gay man with a big dick etc etc etc. These are the images blared at us from every orifice of the media streams we live within.
Is there a difference between what we are taught to desire ( and thus "must" desire in order to conform to the culturally appropriate gender we have been assigned at birth) and what really turns us on physically? My understanding is that desire first arises as a physical sensation in the body, as all other feelings do. MOur culture is so body phobic and sex negative that many of us are numb and unaware of our somatic expereinces.Many people need to be brought into awareness of their own bodily sensations and be able to identify them as feeling states. Desire can be a very uncomfortable feeling especially when it is associated with weakness and potential rejection. How do we reclaim desire as our own? What is a sex positive framewrk for desire? How do we own desire and act on it without being swept up into an endless state of sexual yearning that threatens to overwhelm us? How do we learn to temper our own desires and get our needs met when partners do not share the same desires or sexual drives?
As a fat woman; as a counselor; as a sex educator who is very sexually active and a self described intimacy slut and sacred whore, these questions have been a focus of mine for some time. Most people who become my lovers have either deconstructed their desire before meeting me or end up doing so as a result of being in relationship with me. I really do not like to think about the number of times I have heard from a lover that I am the" largest person they have ever been with" This conversation is boring and predictible. I had even told one of my lovers that I never wanted to hear that and he forgot and said it to me any way. Sigh. I am not a person that is attractive to people who are steeped in the "common" mainstream lifestyle. Or this has been my belief/conversation for a long time. My relationship with David W. comes as close as I ever have to challenging this notion.
These are the topics and realms I wish to explore with the people who attend next Sunday's workshop.maybe you'll join me. I would also be glad to receive email with any commentary on these inquiries:
I have spent the afternoon and evening writing about and contemplating these things at Jeff and Rukh's house in Columbia City. Now I will go out and have a drink before turning in for the night. I am really looking forward to brunch with Connie tomorrow morning!
Blessed Be!
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