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Hi.
Not sure how long or far this one will go, but I’m willing.
Let’s start with the end. Which is kind of a beginning, but you’ll hopefully see what I mean soon enough.
I sent this email just now to Veronica Monet.
“Veronica!
My Higher Power nudged me to offer you help tonight. The topic of how female prostitutes are treated has repeated today in ways that can only be explained spiritually. Got any ideas, off the top of your head?
And I hope all is going very well for you!
Much love
Beth”
I’d like to tell you I wasn’t expecting this, but that wouldn’t be entirely true. I know my OneTaste experience didn’t happen pointlessly, or in a vacuum. I know I haven’t gone through shedding the layers of conditioning and shame and silence and pain, just to then do nothing with it. I know I don’t “have” to listen to this call, and I also know from experience the quicker I surrender to it, the better.
I’m breaking my 9:45 computer curfew to write this out because it’s the type of subject I should explore while the iron is hot. The type of thing that might seem “less important” in the morning. That type of less important when I’ve just given the denial the time to cool over the truth and harden it a bit. But then it hardens inside of me and I just have to have it cracked open another time in another way, anyway, so why not just keep it open now.
I had a wickedly dark sex dream last night. Murder and wife swapping and words carved into skin and police corruption and that’s enough for public consumption.
Already the other details of how prostitution and womens’ health challenges showed up today are swimming, like when I have a detailed dream and don’t write it down and it’s washed away by mid-morning.
The most impactful conversation was with NM. I’m not even ready to tell “everyone” what was said there, but it awakened a little spark in me that I wasn’t even sure was alive. See, I’ve been on this precipice of perceiving that I’m just giving up on sex. That I will never be skilled enough to build bridges with men (or even 1 man) enough to have sex involve emotional intimacy and truthful congruency, in addition to a hot sexual connection which seems to be most easily stoked when I don’t tell my truth. That’s a run-on but I’m leaving it because I don’t want to separate the words from one another. It’s a hollow place to be devoid of hope. Hollowness can create space for peace…..or peril. I wish I could take a survey of all the women who have felt hopeless and considered doing sexwork as a way to fix many problems at once, while giving up on what I can now only know through experience as a dream.
I definitely feel the part of me who loves comfort holding its hat in red agitated hands….why am I saying this, just when things are getting back to normal? Why can’t I just take the easy way? How do I even know if this is real? Am I just trying to get attention in a different way, because I can’t stand the partnerlessness? Am I deliberately trying to sabotage my business?
One of my roommates brought home a movie flyer. We’ve been talking about a house movie night, so that’s not surprising. But, seriously, how did it get to me having several conversations about prostitution today, and then she says, “there’s a sex worker film festival coming up”. I’m telling you, so much primed my attention, enough for me to finally say, okay, I surrender my defenses to this topic.
Do you know how easy it is to sell sex to men? Even a brief fingernail’s hint of maybe possible sex? My lord, VERY easy, and the currency definitely doesn’t have to be money. I do not understand you creatures. Yes, sex gets my attention and takes up bandwidth. Yes, I know it’s not ALL men that react that way. Yes, I know there’s pain and anger and hurt involved on mens’ side, too. But you can’t take my experience away with your own theories, so that’s what I’m putting out here.
I realized today what I like about working with numbers. It helps me have tracks for the train. I see the numbers as little helpers. I also see them as advocates….that when I get on the side of the numbers, then they become like a little healthy army and together we move in the right direction.
What does that have to do with this. I don’t know yet. I’m working through a spiritual call in somewhat real time. I do know I felt hesitant to bring this up because I don’t want to bring any further negative exposure to women. Especially the ones in the most vulnerable and unprotected and perilous situations. And what actual things, such as numbers, do I have to be on my side? Well, I was just told it’s not an I it’s a We.
Again, don’t know where this is going. Faith is not having to know and just putting one foot in front of the other.
Also got a nudge to share with you a list of spiritual solutions that I was given to use in my stepwork. Perhaps not directly related to the above, or else I’d share the clever transition, but sharing both of these things was asked, so I’m willing.
Service
Meta
Affirmations
Gratitude list
Pray for_______
Look for signs of God
Ask for help
Pay my own way
Grieve
Exercise
List strengths of _________
Read acceptance passage of Big Book, p 417
Set boundaries
Meditate
Tell the truth
Reconnect or stay in contact with _________
Talk about my feelings
Listen
Step work
Vote
This helps everything One of James Taylor’s best songs IMHO, done by Marc Broussard, who I’m hoping to see in SF in June. Dear Marc, please bring that little guitar player of yours so he can shred live into my ears. Thank you.
My former teacher used to tell the story of her Bike Ride of Faith.
I just had my Compost Bin Roll of Faith.
I worked in Concord this afternoon. (Bookkeeping for E’s Dad! And I got to meet his Grandpa! It was awesome, lots of fun.) However, BART had a mechanical problem and it took me nearly 2 hours to get home. During that time I wrote off my little head of steam. I continued to look at the bargains I had made with God….IF The Man had worked out, oh I would have been so willing to be GOOD. And The Man has not ever worked out (according to my plan) and there’s still program to work, bills to pay, health to take care of, and it’s my week to take out the compost bin. Thanks, Jerky God, for sending me that kick to the ovaries and leaving the responsibilities piled high as if my heart were intact and fully functional. Heinous. Poor moi.
So once I got home I talked to my roommate a little bit about how my unwillingness was there, but I’d pretend like it wasn’t and I’d just roll the dang thing out. Even though life is not at all going according to my plan and I really don’t feel like following the good script. Pout pout pout.
So I’m rolling this heavy thing, taller than waist-high, through our dark basement. I’m lugging it and praying at the same time. I put my arm out in case there were spider webs and bent and softened my knees in case there were holes in the old floor boards. I get it while I’m there in the dark that it’s significant that I’m rolling this heavy thing blindly and trusting something to get it through and out to the street.
And I also get it just then how I judge God as a coward for not showing up in skin right in front of me so we can talk person to person. That seems so chicken to be all invisible and ubiquitous and anywhere and everywhere at the same time, while we’re here rotting away in bodies and not understanding jackdoodle. How on earth could man have been created in God’s image if we can’t see or touch God? This theory is just not holding up under examination for me. And I’m trying to think of a comparable scenario in which I’m God. I know I’m going to live forever and I “know” everything. I think I’ll create a big ol’ hive of little things that will die in a short amount of time and understand hardly anything at all, but think they have it practically all figured out!
A few things helped me realize that Kind Of Very Big Deal thing. (Oh, it’s just that I’ve been totally mad at The Way Things Are and I keep blaming other people, even though they’re just in their own confused rotting bodies just like I am. There’s just not any way at the ultimate level that any human beings are not playing for the same big team. Opted in upon birth, like it or not.)
Reading B’i's-recommended book (We by Robert Johnson; also got through lots of it on the epic journey home tonight), I was enraptured by passages like this.
p 61 ” We have taken the God-image out of the temple, out of heaven, and suddenly relocated it here in our midst, contained in the relationship between two human beings….In the feeling of being possessed by our loves, of being caught up in some power that completely overwhelms us, we rediscover our religious life.”
Oh! How unfair! I’ve been doing that all along, then feeling so disappointed in the Not-God human that I had such high hopes for!
p 71 “It still hasn’t occurred to Western man to stop looking on woman as the symbol of something and to begin seeing her simply as a woman-as a human being. He is caught in the ambivalence he feels toward his own inner feminine, sometimes rushing toward it in search of his lost soul, sometimes disdaining it as a needless complication in his life, a “‘wrench in the gears’ of his patriarchal machinery. This is the unhealed split within man that he projects onto outer woman, the war he fights at her expense.”
Thank you so much. I got solace from that. If I die of heart ache, put that on my tomb. (And end it with, “She tried real hard to be a good martyr, but her personality just got in the way.”)
p 78 “If a woman is ignored or hurt by a man, she will often find a way to turn his sword against him, to wound him through his own power drive. But in the instant that a man wakes up to his own need, offers his love, and affirmatively relates to her, woman has an almost magical power to forgive…..The feminine, whether in a woman or a man, will usually drop her grudges, and forget the wounds of the past if she is offered genuine relatedness and affection in the present. This is one of the most noble and beautiful instincts in woman, one of the ways that she serves and transforms life. Relatedness is her first principle, the dominant theme of nature, that for which, more than all else, she lives.”
YES YES YES
Ha! now that I’ve been granted the grace to “get” these things, now let’s look at actual behavior.
What do I do when someone turns around and actually DOES want to play with me, all of me, as I am? How often do I run or block or deflect or excuse myself for lame reasons?
What do I do when I feel genuine connection with Spirit? How often do I speed up my life to try and escape the high-octane purity of that radiance?
How have I handled my own awakening experiences, during and after which I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that all is as it should be, and I am never alone, not one of us is ever alone? Did I go back to my addictions? Did I find new ones? Did I repeat unskillful habits? Tres oui.
Okay, at this point those of you who are “nice” are saying, woah, B, go easy, you’re just human. I know. AND it’s true! If I’m going to be all scrappy-girl-in-the-boxing-ring, I’d better be ready to fully participate in the fight!
Oh, something else I got today is forgiveness of myself for the times I’ve “broken hearts”. I saw they were just going for their own deeply religious experience by feeling that much and pursuing so strongly.
So where does that leave me on this fine mid-December day?
I can’t make anyone else open up. I can’t make anyone else play. I can’t change anyone else’s feelings.
I can love myself. I can love other people whether they are around or not. I can practice metta meditation. I can share with you the format I’ve been given for metta (“lovingkindness”) meditation.
This is not the complete instruction. (Oh! How helpful! I just learned something new from this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mett%C4%81)
But the basic format (and see further instruction for which names to choose)
May (person) be free from suffering
May (person) be healthy and at ease
May (person) be clear of mind
May (person) feel held and warm and seen
May (person) feel joyful and satisfied
May you be all those things and more.
With love to all~
My Darling,
It’s hailing, thundering, and lightning right now in San Francisco. It’s the first time in 11 years you’ve seen them all at once and just the third time of seeing any of them individually in that whole time. When people ask you if you miss the East Coast, you tell them a thing you miss a lot is watching thunderstorms from the porch. You saw a bright beautiful rainbow from your back porch this morning while you were eating a quiet breakfast.
Your relational life shifted a whole, whole lot today. Well, it had been going that direction but the deep punctuation came today. It’s kind of like that part of you that was suffering was an animal with a compound fracture and it got a mercy killing today. You send him with love and you’re doing the thing you didn’t know if you’d be able to do. And importantly, you reached out for positive healthy appropriate support when the news you didn’t want to hear came through. That’s how lasting healthy changes start….just one little action. You’re also on the receiving end of a version of the disappearing act you pulled on so many men before. Karma, my love…sometimes you put it out there and it boomerangs back to you. Oh, and don’t forget you did that to your family, too, for a while; oh yeah. Sometimes it’s the human way. Sometimes it’s the best we can do to head for the hills. You even pushed him away a lot in the beginning and you’re doing a great job of remembering that now. Bless you, Karma, for keeping nature in balance.
How perfect is it that you are on a juicy Step 2 revisitation right now? You’ve been getting so much insight from working this step lately. Some of the AA literature is now planted in your mind and you’ve been able to call on it now, specifically this passage:
“The girl we wanted to marry had other notions; we prayed God that she’d change her mind, but she didn’t. We prayed for healthy children, and were presented with sick ones, or none at all. We prayed for promotions at business, and none came. Loved ones, upon whom we heartily depended, were taken from us by so-called acts of God. Then we became drunkards, and asked God to stop that. But nothing happened. This was the unkindest cut of all. ‘Damn this faith business!’ we said.”
But you haven’t damned it this time around. You know it’s for the best. You know that you’re held and safe and protected in the Flow. You caught it that sometimes when you’re out of acceptance with something, that you’re thinking God perhaps made a mistake and you’re waiting for it to be corrected, and promptly. With restitution. Not this time around, my love. Good catch, though!
You’ve grown tremendously recently by writing on the following exercise, and then sharing it with others.
“Write what he actually said. Then write what it feels like he said.”
You have felt the listeners cringe and be kind of mortified at how your mind talks to you. You are not the weak creampuff your mind tells you that you are. You’ve coped with an abuser that happens to live between your ears and you are doing the work to turn even that over. And you know that everything inside of you wants SOMETHING to live, and that part of your work is to choose what things should be fed and get to survive and grow.
You reached a turning point of a crapton of personal work this week, actually just 2 days ago. You noticed in his absence still wanting something from him, which you rationally and evidentially knew he was not able to or willing to provide. You wrote it out to yourself, what you wanted to hear. You finally got it what other people have said about your projecting your own superego into the seeming voice of other people. WOW, what a breakthrough! (No, I’m not being sarcastic. That’s a huge deal.)
4 people you hold dearly in your heart had their positions eliminated this past week, 3 of them seemingly entirely out of the blue. F O U R. That’s a lot of loss. You knew it was “out there” but it hadn’t hit so deeply home for you until this. They are all dealing with it differently, and what a gift to be able to hear what at least 2 of them are going through around it. You remember seeing the book title when you were a little kid, “When Bad Things Happen to Good People” and you couldn’t understand for years why bad things would ever happen to good people (and you somehow internalized that if something bad happened then YOU were bad….maybe you should read more than the title of that book!)
You wondered if Agent could be a good job for a Projector (from Human Design). The fabulous experience with that was completing the marketing letters for the children’s book illustrator. AS YOU WERE WALKING TO MAIL THEM, a friend you hadn’t heard from in months happened to call you. When you told the friend what you were up to in that moment, he said, “I’ve written a children’s book, and have been looking for an illustrator! Would you put us in touch?” Wow wow wow wow wow
You had a wonderful experience yesterday babysitting 3 little girls, 6, 5, and 2 years old. When you were playing the White Winged Dove of Peace Queen game with one of them, you asked her if she would share with you her magical powers and give you the ability to use them on other people. She thought about it, and then carefully said,
“No, I can’t do that. When you give your power away, then you only have half a heart. If you were able to find one of those people with 2 hearts who could give you an extra one, then I’d consider it. Otherwise, I need to keep all my heart so I have power to help other people.“
You heard a great share of someone’s early recovery and what helped them. Before she did the addictive thing that she couldn’t stop, she would take at least 1 healthy action. So even though she was acting out, she was building the muscle of taking healthy action. Nice!
You had your first directly professional writing experience this week, which felt wonderful.
You remembered and got solace from the program axiom,
“I don’t have to like it to accept it.“
Your birthday is on Monday. You are going to work your damndest to not focus on what you DON’T have and instead focus on the gratitude of what you do:
-loving friends
-spiritual practices across a wide range that you can do any time
-willingness and ability to sit with feelings
-people who read what you write on this thing (thank you thank you thank you, readers!!!!!!!! you’ve already given me my gift, to be seen!)
-physical health
-renewed love of tennis and motion
-mended relationships with family that feel wonderful
-business and clients that have come your way with ease
-interesting future business partners in a range of fields
-active volunteer position that directly impacts an issue of large significance to you
-massage trade partners
-people to be “real” with
-a home in your favorite city
-and most importantly, connection to spiritual guidance
Bless you at all ages.
You are loved, and wonderful, and you are exactly where you are supposed to be.
Texas cheerleader suing – didn’t root for attacker
Bob Egelko, Chronicle Staff Writer
San Francisco Chronicle November 5, 2010
If you’re a high school cheerleader, you cheer for the whole team. The stars and the scrubs. The nice guys and the jerks.
But what about a player you’ve accused of raping you?
You’ve got to cheer for him too, according to a federal appeals court, because you’re really speaking for the school and not yourself.
The court dismissed a free-speech suit by a Texas teenager who was kicked off the cheerleading squad for sitting silently, with her arms folded, while her assailant shot free throws in a playoff game.
The former cheerleader and her family are appealing the ruling by the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans, which includes an order to pay the school district’s legal fees on the grounds their suit was far-fetched and frivolous.
A case that has gripped a small town in southeast Texas also provides a window into the diminishing state of free speech on campus.
More than 40 years after the U.S. Supreme Court declared that neither students nor teachers “shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech … at the schoolhouse gate,” the former cheerleader’s judicial rebuff reflects a shift in perspective that has the courts showing more deference to school authorities.
“What I want out of the whole thing is for somebody to admit they were wrong,” the 18-year-old woman, identifying herself by her initials H.S., said in an interview last week. After undergoing therapy and graduating from high school, she’s taking a semester off before college, where she plans to study forensic science, partly because of what happened to her.
The basketball player has pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, received a suspended sentence, and is making plans for college and “going forward with his life,” his lawyer said. He has denied raping H.S.
Court’s backtracking
The Supreme Court issued what appeared to be a declaration of free-speech rights on campus in 1969, when it allowed high school students to wear black armbands to protest the Vietnam War and said schools could clamp down only if students disrupted the educational process.
The court started to retrench in 1986 with a ruling allowing a high school to censor a student’s sexually suggestive speech at an assembly. Two years later, the court upheld a high school principal’s authority to prohibit articles on pregnancy and divorce from appearing in a student newspaper.
The Constitution does not require a school “to promote particular student speech,” the court said in a ruling that became a precedent for the H.S. case.
In 2007, the justices allowed a school to suspend a student for carrying a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus” at a school-approved parade near campus, saying the message could be interpreted as promoting drugs.
These days, “student speech is not given the respect it deserves. …There’s a mind-set that school officials are in total control,” said David Hudson, a Vanderbilt University law professor and scholar with the First Amendment Center who has written about the H.S. case.
Incident at party
H.S., then 16, attended a party in her hometown of Silsbee, Texas, in October 2008. She said she was dragged into a room, thrown onto the floor by several youths and raped by Rakheem Bolton, a star on the school’s football and basketball teams.
Bolton and a teammate were arrested two days later, but were allowed to return to school after a county grand jury declined to indict them. They were later indicted on sexual assault charges, but in the interim came the February 2009 incident on the basketball court.
H.S. joined in leading cheers for the Silsbee High team. But when Bolton went to the foul line, and the cheers included his name, she stepped back, folded her arms and sat down.
“I didn’t want to have to say his name, and I didn’t want to cheer for him,” H.S. said. “I didn’t want to encourage anything he was doing.”
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/11/05/MNDQ1G1R78.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz14imYxHww
You have perhaps heard of Revenue Producing Activities (RPA)?
I’m thinking today of Joy Producing Activities (JPA).
Lots of research today on getting good conscious touch. Hop on over to the new Touch page (see above if you are in the blog, and if you’re getting this as an email, check it out here http://wp.me/PEv4w-82).
Anyone want to check out a Biodanza class with me? : )
Today my JPAs were
*speaking in front of a large group of friends about my JPA
*breakfast at The Grind in the Haight with friends. Omelette with spinach bacon and avocado (nom nom nom)
*revisiting a very significant meeting place….my first one ever, actually
*Warm sunny North Berkeley hanging out with a good friend. We had directly from her garden: strawberries, plums, kale, blackberries, cucumber.
*She also cooked for me from the Cafe Gratitude cookbook.
*Recovery talent show where I heard some amazing musicians and also was in a silly skit.
Go forth and be joyful!
I am blessed to have surrounded myself with this message lately.
I mean, really, all over the place.
Client A has a mug that says it. R E S P O N S I B I L I T Y I drink Good Earth tea from it. Forming an even more positive association!
Hi-5 talks about the Victim/Accountability loop. Each time he says it to me, it’s a surprise somewhere in my mind. Usually when I first hear it I feel shame. (“Crap. I did it again. I hate it when he sees me being a victim.”) Sometimes I feel anger. (“Oh yeah? Well at least I’M *fill in the blank with a shallow and usually unrelated defense*.”) Most times it’s like the first rays of sunlight in the eyes….yeh, it’s pretty but it sure is bright!
The Storyteller and I have been texting about the topic, as well. A gem from that exchange:
“There are absolutely no enemies.”
I’m reading the 3 Laws of Performance. That could be a Bible of personal responsibility. I really like it. Right after I write about my orgasm, which I still intend to do, I want to write and clear away the “default future” that the fear mind – well, change that around – the fear mind doesn’t trap me in anything, I allow myself to be trapped in it, for whatever reason. And change that around from I want to write about it to I will write about it. (Oh, the book is also big on the power of language. I am inspired.)
Yesterday, talked with FriendWife about why I haven’t fully closed out, in my heart and soul, of my OT time. She encouraged me to spot some places where I could take even one more ounce of responsibility than I have to date.
As I was searching for material on the Victim/Accountable loop, I found these.
This one I chose because it’s British and I like to associate myself with that culture. I thought maybe you’d think I was smarter if I chose a more proper source. They are as proper as it gets!
http://www.ibenrowe.com/?p=97
But the site that I really enjoyed was this one. I love the quotes. I almost left it off of this post because it says Metaphysical and I didn’t want to incite someone to poke at California spirit hippies again. But I’m including it for my own records and delight.
http://www.inlightimes.com/archives/2005/02/accountability.htm
So, to practice, I’ve chosen how much money I earn.
I chose how I had my college experience.
I’ve chosen every person that I’ve dated or slept with, and how long I stayed with them.
I fully chose to step out of mainstream society and integrate very deeply into counterculture.
I fully chose to step out of the counterculture lab and with that came the truth that I don’t know exactly what’s next for me. That I don’t know how far “in” or “out” I’ll choose to go.
I’ve chosen to focus heavily on 12-step work because I like the spiritual connection I get from it and put a higher value on that than anything else.
I’ve chosen to step away from OMing, after 4 years of practicing it.
And I just realized that even saying “I have chosen” isn’t really using language in its strongest sense.
I chose to step away from OMing. It happened already. If I chose to step back towards it, that’s another thing. But the choice is not in progress. I made it already.
I chose to start studying style. Because I haven’t completed the whole thing doesn’t mean that it was a “good” or “bad” choice. The fact is that I did choose that and take steps towards it.
Opinions are extra.
Opinions are the lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise of the burger that is the Choice.
