The Friday Sex Blog [Love]

¡Hola! Everybody…
These are the dog days of summer, lover, and you’re recklessly embroiled in a summer fling, drinking of that siren’s song of forgetfulness and autumn, with its demands for change, such a long way off…

* * *

-=[ Love ]=-

Your sleep:/ I have watched you wake/ a spectacle,/ an immediate vision of honesty./ ... And you reach out for me/ silently, without a plan/ and it is enough.

This is a test of the Ame-Rican Blogging System (ABS). This is only a test...

Can you love through the ever increasing ups and downs, heavens and hells, of life?

Can you love in all directions, inwardly and outwardly?

Even during those all-too-frequent mood swings of disgust and pain and shame and negative thought constellations spiraling into that tight knot of loneliness and despairing torment, can you love?

If you find cannot love, nothing changes.

On the flip side, if you can love, nothing changes…

Except that you love.

Nothing and nobody will ever give you anything except an opportunistic risk to love…

Now, this very moment, in this very life.

This has been a test of the Ame-Rican Blogging System. If this had been an actual emergency, someone would’ve awakened you from your life-long slumber (or perhaps not).

Love,

Eddie

The Friday Sex Blog [Awakening]

¡Hola! Everybody…
Es un dia bonito aqui in the Center of the Known Universe…

* * *

-=[ Awakening to Emptiness ]=-

Oh no,
my body used to scream and,
curse that final spasm.

Love is the process
I would proclaim,
to finish it
my crime.

The other day, I was sitting down with a casual acquaintance engaged in a rather interesting conversation. As often happens when you’re having a good time, time seemed to fly and my friend excused himself. When pressed, he admitted he had to go home because he and the wife had scheduled time for sex. He didn’t seem especially excited. In fact, he looked like a condemned man going to his execution. And… his wife is a babe. She’s, like, instant hard-on gorgeous.

Sooner or later, even sex with someone you love can become routine. It can become a dry series of rituals which one has to perform dutifully.

The irony is that sex is so full of promise. Passion with skin on fire and almost unbearable bliss. The weeping embraces of vulnerable rapture -- yeah those moments when you make that noise that sounds like a chuckle married a sob. Those moments of transcendent merger as oneness… but usually, sex is pretty much mundane.

Men get hard, pump and grunt, squirt, let out their tension and relax. Women get wet, moan and hump, clutch and weep, and snuggle in affectionate comfort. Initially exciting, sex can become quite predictable. Even good sex can become standardized: you both learn each other buttons, which you push in order to get the right responses and then… pooof. Gone…

In this way sex somehow mirrors life in general. It’s actually less than you hoped. For almost anyone who’s been around the block a few times, sex and life become a comfortable or customary enjoyment, a habitualized routine of pleasure, comfort, and pain that is neurotically consoling at best, and often meaningless.

This is a good thing, dearest. Meaninglessness is a sign of growth. When something becomes boring it means that you are ready to delve deeper. When you are humping away in dissatisfaction, you are ready for deeper sex. Sex that feels empty reveals a deeper truth: sex is empty. Just like any other moment in life.

When you surrender yourself to the possibility of experiencing sex completely, you feel two things. On one level your genitals are engorged, your breathing is heavy, and your passion is inflamed. On another level… so what? You’ve been there/ done that and nothing fundamental has transpired. This moment of sex -- like every moment -- is amazingly rich and deliciously textured, but also strangely and paradoxically empty.

What happens if you dare to venture is that you come to the realization that nothing specific is missing from your sexual life. Of course, you can improve your sexual skills -- communicating your emotions more fully and enjoying multiple orgasms that last for hours -- yet, when your preoccupation with new pleasure and achievement wears off, you are again confronted with the awareness of a sense of emptiness.

The truth is all life is like that. We spend most of life energy trying to attach to or create something concrete in a reality where the only truth is that everything changes, nothing stays the same. You are not the same person you were when you first starting reading this. Biological processes have killed off cells and replaced them with new ones. Five years from now, your whole body will have been replaced using this dying/ birthing process. If you’re even a little awake, deeply held opinions and how you see yourself has changed and will continue to change. All around you, everything is dying and being reborn and dying again. Lovers come and go, loved ones pass away…

Every moment is empty in the sense that if you try to latch on to it, it slips through your fingers like the proverbial sands in the hourglass. The truth, dearest, is that every sexual moment is empty, insubstantial, unreal. And yet it is also true that every sexual moment is full, tangible, and explosively alive. Like a vivid dream, each moment is intense, spontaneously dynamic, and just as spontaneously gone, as if it never happened. Sex can be tender, a miracle of love, yet at the same time inconsequential. Sex is at the same time intense and vanished, and even when it’s utterly blissful, it is also utterly empty.

Immature lovers get lost in the brief rush of pleasure. Depressed adults stay stuck in the unsatisfying embrace of “not enough.” The truth is that every moment is substantially insubstantial -- both tangible and empty. The mature lover surrenders beyond the attachment, naked and vulnerable as life.

But to get to this level requires letting go of your neurotic need to feel good (or bad) about sex. My father, a wise man, advised me in my young adulthood to be a selfish lover. I think he meant for me to enjoy the thrill of romance and fascination for as long as it lasts because I would have to learn how to dance in the middle years of unsatisfying but decent sexual routine.

But this is where it gets really good (or beyond good or bad): eventually, when you have been shorn of your naïve hope, you will have no other choice but to relax within the reality of the emptiness. In this way, and only in this way, you’re able to wear love’s raiment of open bliss; to withstand the boundless luminosity, and you awaken to the awareness that sex is an intense revelation of what is.

Love,

Eddie

Surrender

¡Hola! Everybody…
Busy, busy, busy…

* * *

-=[ Stopping the War ]=-

“The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

-- Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968), American actress

I sometimes am concerned that people will confuse my story for the message. When conducting a workshop or speaking in front of an audience, I always worry that some people may get stuck on my particular story and miss out on what I feel are underlying universal points.

Equally challenging for me is the possibility of people dismissing my message because they are so far removed from my specific issues, or find it hard to identify with my story. However, the deeper I look at society and the larger issues, I know that there are many who not only can identify with my story, but also know intimately the pain of loneliness and the sense of inner poverty.

Perhaps we can begin by opening up to the possibility that those considered best-adjusted in our society are neither dead or alive, just numb, zombies. When you are alive, you are more likely to question the status quo. When you are fully alive, you are constantly questioning the many insane practices of society: the racism, the polluted environment, the nuclear and biological warfare threat, the fragmented people from extreme political positions who run for office (and often win), drinking unsafe water, and eating carcinogenic or genetically modified foods.

If we can open up to this view (I promise you can go back to your default view later), we begin to understand there is a social investment promoting those things that keep us dull, keep us busy with our fixes, and keep us slightly numbed and zombie-like. In this way, our modern consumer society itself becomes an addict. I remember reading this in author Anne Wilson Schaef's When Society Becomes an Addict, and being struck by what should be a very obvious observation.

In the USA, there are at least 30-40 million drug addicts, millions more addicted to cigarettes, gambling, food, sexuality, unhealthy relationships, or the speed and busyness of work. In a way, we are all part of an “addicted society” and our most pervasive addiction is to speed. Modern society pushes us to increase productivity and the pace of our lives.

Having to live life in a society that demands it lived double-time, speed and addictions numb us to our own reality. Our pereception of reality makes it is almost impossible to settle into our bodies or stay connected with our hearts, let alone connect with one another or even our life-giving ecology. I believe there is a huge hunger for community or regaining a lost sense of connectedness. For example, we rush around all day and that leaves us little time to connect, so we log on to our computers and connect here. I’m not saying there is something wrong about this, I’m just making an observation.

If we’re honest, most of us would admit that sometimes we find ourselves increasingly isolated and lonely, cut off from one another and the natural web of life. You get in your car, drive to work, get back in your car, drive back home... you can actually very easily live your life in almost total seclusion in your climate-controlled existence and not even be aware of it.

I would submit that this is the most pervasive sorrow of our modern lives.

Folks, this is where the depression, the war with food and weight, body image, substance abuse, and exploitive sex practices originate and the only cure for it is becoming fully alive.

But how does someone become fully alive?

I think it starts from within and creating the psychological space for reflection and stillness. Stop long enough and listen to the inner dialogue in your head and you will be amazed at how crazy it all sounds. When I first tried it, I thought I was crazy until I realized that the inner dialogue in my head was not me -- it is merely the conditioned within me floating around undisciplined as a stream of consciousness. The thing is that this inner conversation has a tremendous influence on our behavior if we don't put it in its place.

We cannot change ourselves for the better through an act of will alone. This is like wanting the mind to get rid of itself, or pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Remember the studies I quoted on how many people break New Year's resolutions (70-80% quit by the third week)? When we struggle to change ourselves we only reinforce the self-defeating patterns of self-judgment and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive. Such acts of will backfire, and in the end often strengthen the addiction or denial we intend to change.

Genuine movement toward the happiness that is our birthright as human beings requires that we learn to

Stop

The

War

This is the first step, but actually, it must be practiced repeatedly until it becomes our very way of being. The inner stillness of the person who truly “is peace” brings peace to the whole interconnected web of life, both inside and out. To stop the war we must begin with ourselves.

The only effective means of change is one that has as its purpose to empower us to stop the war, not by force of will, but organically -- through understanding and gradual training. If we have an ongoing practice, we can cultivate a new way of relating to life in which we let go of our battles.

When we let go -- when we step out of the battle -- we begin to see how each of us creates conflict. We begin to see our constant likes and dislikes, the fight to resist all that frightens us. We begin to see our own prejudice, greed, and possessiveness create our suffering. All of this is certainly hard to look at, but it is there. Look deeper, underneath these ongoing battles, and we begin to see the deep-rooted feelings of incompleteness and fear. We being to see how much our wars with life have kept our hearts closed.

When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is it -- this is the beginning and end of any true effective means of change or spirituality. Only in the moment can we discover the love that we seek: love in the past is simply a memory, and love in the future is fantasy.

Only in the reality of the present moment can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with the world and ourselves. The NY Lottery has a marketing campaign that goes: “You gotta be in it to win it,” and so it is with life. Stopping the war and becoming present are two sides of the same coin. To come into the present means to experience whatever is here and now. Most of us have lived our lives caught up in plans, expectations, and ambitions for the future, in regrets, guilt, or shame about the past. Most of us have an argument with reality. Waking up is partly committing to stopping the argument – even if only for a short moments everyday.

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life force around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present -- our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes, our love -- everything that moves us most deeply. As we stop the war, each of us will find something from which we have been running -- our loneliness, our unworthiness, our boredom, our shame, our unfulfilled desires. We must face these parts of ourselves as well.

We all share a longing to go beyond the prisons of our personal fear or anger or addiction, to connect with something greater than the small ego, what we call “I” (the mini me). We ant to connect to something greater than our small story and our small self. It is possible to stop the war and come into the eternal present -- to touch a great ground of being that contains all things. For me, this is the true purpose and mission of life: to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us.

Yours,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon [The Global Trance]

¡Hola! Everybody...
Well, it seems our goober cousins from Texas have done it again. In case you haven’t heard, the good people of the Texas school board have banned Thomas Jefferson, evolution, Latino/as, and anything resembling reason from their curriculum. I know, I know: this is Texas we’re talking about and you can’t squeeze blood out of stone (nor intelligence), but the Texas decision will affect your school-aged children no matter where you live. More on this later...

* * *

-=[ Awakening from the Trance ]=-

The planetary crisis we’re facing is an awakening signal. If we don’t shift our consciousness... we can destroy ourselves.

-- Barbara Marx Hubbard

I am a radical, but I understand that the only revolution that’s going to make a real difference is one that transforms us into human beings more capable of intelligent responses to the many crises we face.

Though we have confronted major problems throughout our shared history, the challenges we face today are unique in one important aspect -- they now affect the entire globe as a whole system. Never before has humanity been on the cusp of wiping out the earth’s biosphere and crippling its ecological foundations for countless generations to come. Never before have we been faced with the very real prospect of being the first known species to make itself extinct. Never before has the entire human family been called to work together to build a sustainable and meaningful future. Never before have so many been called to make sweeping changes in so little time.

Today monarchs, dictators, or even elected governments no longer control the world. We live in a world controlled by multinational corporations. Most of us work for them, we eat and drink their products, we are exposed to their pervasive assault on our senses via their advertising campaigns, and we live on an earth that provides the raw materials for their endless “production” and the storage for their endless garbage. Corporations have become more powerful than the governments that are supposed to regulate them, and in fact, they pay for the process by which a government can afford to be elected.

Throughout the world McDonalds, Coca Cola, Nike, and corporate marketing are invading local cultures. The danger of this encroaching corporate presence lies in its basic motivation. Corporations are primarily responsible to their shareholders. Profitability has more value than the health or well-being of a population. Creating and satisfying short-term goals and profits are more important than environmental sustainability or social justice.

In this way, the gifts of the earth are all being patented and made into commercial products.

Oppressive regimes such as the British in India or Nazi Germany exploit a population and can be eventually rejected by revolution or the intervention of an outside force. The power of commercial interests, however, is more insidious. It’s a power similar to the relationship between a drug pusher and an addict, a power that runs on the addictions of a population, without necessarily serving their deeper well-being. This is the collective trance of a consumer society and the global economy it creates. It works only because our collective feeling of lack. It thrives on the inner sense that something is missing, that there is something wrong with you and your life.

It’s quite simple, you’re compelled to believe that you need to buy their product. Drink this soda, this machine or pill that will make you less fat, this car, this house, this grill; fly to this great place for a vacation and you will feel better. Look at all the happy people smiling in this photo here. They feel better. See?

The global economy as we know it would not work with a contented population. You would have a hard time selling endless plastic gizmos to people who feel connected to themselves, to their environment, and who feel whole, who feel generous and grateful, and who know they have enough. This trance of lack recreates itself endlessly; it never reaches a level of contentment. You want more, and more, and more... and it does not bode well for our future. We live in this trance from birth to death.

It will take only a very small percentage of the world’s population to wake up for there to be a global awakening. This isn’t some pie in the sky optimism. There is evidence that one man’s stand against gang violence, for example, was directly responsible for the decrease of overall violent crime in New York City. The more people raise their consciousness and wake up, the more those people will be affected by a collective awakening. And the more they are open to that, the more it will facilitate their own awakening, and that of others. So it becomes a positive feedback loop. It is like a snowball gaining momentum as it rolls down a hill.

If you awaken from the trance, then one of two around you will resonate with your awakening. They in turn will affect one of two around them, and that’s how real change happens. It’s always been like that and it is the only thing that will save us.

Love,

Eddie

Stopping the War

Hola Everybody, I'm off to a horribly boring, all-day training with a beauracrat. I hate these things with a passion. But since the ma'fucca gives me money, I have to attend and act as if I like it. I'll be away all day. Have a great one, people. I wrote the following four years ago.

* * *

“The only thing I regret about my past is the length of it. If I had to live my life again, I'd make the same mistakes, only sooner.”

-- Tallulah Bankhead (1903–1968), American actress

I often grapple with one issue in my work: I worry that people will confuse my story for the message. When conducting a workshop or speaking in front of an audience, I always worry that some people may get stuck on my particular story and miss out on the underlying universal points.

Equally troubling for me is the possibility people may dismiss my message because they are so far removed from the issue of addiction, or find it hard to identify with my story. However, when I study society and the larger issues, I know that there are many who not only can identify with my story, but also know intimately the pain of loneliness and the sense of inner poverty.

Those considered best-adjusted in our society are those that are neither dead or alive, just numb, zombies. When you are alive, you are more likely to question the status quo. When you are fully alive, you are constantly questioning the many insane practices of society: the racism, the polluted environment, the nuclear and biological warfare threat, our dunce of a president, drinking unsafe water, and eating carcinogenic or genetically modified foods.

Therefore, there is an investment in our society to promote those things that keep us dull, keep us busy with our fixes, and keep us slightly numbed out and zombie-like. In this way, our modern consumer society itself becomes an addict. I remember reading this in author Anne Wilson Schaef's When Society Becomes an Addict, and being struck by what should be a very obvious observation.

In the USA, there are at least 30-40 million drug addicts, millions more addicted to cigarettes, gambling, food, sexuality, unhealthy relationships, or the speed and busyness of work. In a way, we are all part of an “Addicted Society” and our most pervasive addiction is to speed. Modern society pushes us to increase productivity and the pace of our lives.

Having to live life in a society that demands it lived double-time, speed and addictions numb us to our own reality. In our society, it is almost impossible to settle into our bodies or stay connected with our hearts, let alone connect with one another or the Earth upon which we live. In a way, I believe that is a big reason for the community or network we have tried to create here: we rush around all day and that leaves us little time to connect, so we log on to our computers and connect here. I’m not saying there is something “wrong” about this, I’m just making an observation.

Honestly, sometimes we find ourselves increasingly isolated and lonely, cut off from one another and the natural web of life. You get in your car, drive to work, get back in your car, drive back home... you can actually very easily live your life in almost total seclusion in your climate-controlled existence and not even be aware of it! For me this is the most pervasive sorrow of our modern lives.

Folks, this is where the depression, the war with food and weight -- body image, substance abuse, and exploitive sex practices originate and the only cure for it is becoming fully alive.

But how does someone become fully alive?

I think it starts from within and creating the psychological space for reflection and stillness. Stop long enough and listen to the “inner dialogue” in your head and you will be amazed at how crazy it all sounds. When I first tried it, I thought I was crazy until I realized that the inner dialogue in my head was not “me” -- it is merely the conditioned within me floating around undisciplined as a stream of consciousness. The thing is that this inner conversation has a tremendous influence on our behavior if we don't put it in its place.

We cannot change ourselves for the better through an act of will alone. This is like wanting the mind to get rid of itself or pulling ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Remember the studies I quoted on how many people break New Year's resolutions (70-80% quit by the third week)? When we struggle to change ourselves we only reinforce the self-defeating patterns of self-judgment and aggression. We keep the war against ourselves alive. Such acts of will backfire, and in the end often strengthen the addiction or denial we intend to change.

Genuine movement toward the happiness that is our birthright as human beings requires that we learn to:

Stop.

The.

War.

This is the first step, but actually, it must be practiced repeatedly until it becomes our very way of being. The inner stillness of the person who truly “is peace” brings peace to the whole interconnected web of life, both inside and out. To stop the war we must begin with ourselves.

The only effective means of change is one that has as its purpose to empower us to stop the war, not by force of will, but organically -- through understanding and gradual training. If we have an ongoing practice, we can cultivate a new way of relating to life in which we let go of our battles.

When we let go -- when we step out of the battle -- we begin to see how each of us creates conflict. We begin to see our constant likes and dislikes, the fight to resist all that frightens us. We begin to see our own prejudice, greed, and possessiveness create our sufferring. All of this is certainly hard to look at, but it is there. Look deeper, underneath these ongoing battles, and we begin to see the deep-rooted feelings of incompleteness and fear. We being to see how much our wars with life have kept our hearts closed.

When we let go of our battles and open our hearts to things as they are, then we come to rest in the present moment. This is it -- this is the beginning and end of any true effective means of change or spirituality. Only in the moment can we discover the love that we seek. Love in the past is simply a memory, and love in the future is fantasy.

Only in the reality of the present moment can we love, can we awaken, can we find peace and understanding and connection with the world and ourselves. The NY Lottery has a marketing campaign that goes: “You gotta be in it to win it,” and so it is with life. Stopping the war and becoming present are two sides of the same coin. To come into the present means to experience whatever is here and now. Most of us have lived our lives caught up in plans, expectations, and ambitions for the future, in regrets, guilt, or shame about the past.

When we come into the present, we begin to feel the life force around us again, but we also encounter whatever we have been avoiding. We must have the courage to face whatever is present -- our pain, our desires, our grief, our loss, our secret hopes, our love -- everything that moves us most deeply. As we stop the war, each of us will find something from which we have been running -- our loneliness, our unworthiness, our boredom, our shame, our unfulfilled desires. We must face these parts of ourselves as well.

We all share a longing to go beyond the prisons of our personal fear or anger or addiction, to connect with something greater than “I” (the “mini me”), greater than our small story and our small self. It is possible to stop the war and come into the eternal present -- to touch a great ground of being that contains all things. For me, this is the true purpose and mission of life -- to discover peace and connectedness in ourselves and to stop the war in us and around us.

Love,

Eddie

Sunday Sermon (Cosmic Accident)

Hola Everybody,
It’s a balmy day today in the Big City. It’s in the 40s, with some clouds and I think I’ll stroll the city streets and browse bookstores, perhaps take in a movie (There Will be Blood or The Savages). We should have longer weekends.

As soon as I get situated, I’m going to begin planning a huge 360/ Internet get together here in New York City. I used to do it every year, but last year was a wee bit unstable for me. Stay tuned…

* * *

Cosmic Accident

“They lied to you, sold you ideas of good and evil, gave you distrust of your body and shame for your prophethood of chaos, invented words of disgust for you molecular love, mesmerized you with inattention, bored you with civilization.”
-- Hakim Bey

I once read a very interesting short story called “Pedestrian Accident.” It was part of an anthology of experimental fiction a girlfriend gave me and which quickly changed the way I read and wrote. The story is told completely from the perspective of a victim who has been struck by a truck and can’t move. His body is on the ground, halfway under the truck and he’s unable to move or talk. He can’t even move his head. All he can do is observe the happenings and there’s this whole inner dialog going on inside his head. As the reader, this is your perspective also. The story, apart from being hilarious at times, is also very profound. In my opinion, the story is also a very apt metaphor for life.

Like the unfortunate protagonist in the story, it seems that we too have awakened to an accident. Our birth and lives surely seem this way. We don’t remember asking to be born or come to this planet and yet here we are innocent observers and victims alike at the scene of a grand cosmic accident. Numb and in shock, we weave and wander our way through the traffic of our lives, trying to remember the details. Furthermore, we seem to have suffered brain damage, having no memory of how we got here and even less about where we’re going.

Many of us live our lives traumatized, by accident, accepting the circumstances of our “fate.” Like the protagonist in our story, we’re at the whims of everybody around the scene of our accident pretending to be officials and authorities. While we may seem to make choices, we are really just treating our life as an accident and complaining about our bad luck, or trying to act cynical and witty and shrugging it off and settling for less. It could be worse, right? Or at least that’s what we begin to believe.

Numb and adrift we never become fully healed, never fully alive, never setting out to see what would happen if we didn’t live our lives by accident. However, the fact remains that this is your life and in the end you can’t say, “Ooops, it was an accident.” Then again, maybe you can. The choice is ours.

You must become who you are. A life lived chaotically at the whims of fashionable beliefs is not a life really lived at all. That kind of life is like a role inhabited by a stranger. It’s a life headed with a head-on collision with anger, regret, resentment, and self delusion. By treating your life as an accident, and therefore worthless, you cheat yourself. Only when you understand this will you experience the rage and anger at the forces within you and outside of you that keep you from your true self – your true potential. It’s not only your right but also your responsibility to reclaim your true self from the scene of the accident and to live your life fully, no matter the cost. We all have the potential to recover from the discovery that we are alive and that it’s not going to last.

Too many of us rely on belief systems that appeal to our deepest fears and longings as answers to our questions. Most belief systems are nothing more than the fossilized and t=rotted remains of what one person did for themselves. To examine our lives and make them worth living is the first step to acting deliberately and not accidentally. The word “deliberately” comes from the word “deliberation” which means to think. If we think our lives are accidents, then they will be.

Belief systems all contain very important truths, questions, and sometimes even some answers. However, at a very deep level they are not your truths, questions, or answers. By accepting the second-hand truths of others, we cheat ourselves of our true fulfillment. The hunger for fulfillment can only be satiated by our own efforts, by the planting of our own questions, by the harvesting our own answers, by the cultivation of our own truths.

Will you be content with the secondhand crumbs of someone else’s labors? The unexamined life is a life not worth living. You too can take charge of your life and reach deeply enough to discover what gives us joy and meaning.

Love,

Eddie