word of the day: Grease is the word it's the word, it's got a groove it's got a feelin'...
song of the day: Yoga Of Sound, Russil Paul
wow, the sex blogs are generating some interes. i've gotten more emails on those blogs in the last two days than on anything i've put in the blog before. and the feedback is unanimous: Stuart, You Are God. LOL. no, it's just unanimous that everyone finds this an interesting topic. my friend akili emailed me some links this morning, and i have to say i found the article on Sprinkles the former porn queen fascinating. What Is Enlightenment has a recent article on "Women Who Sleep With Their Gurus" which i was unable to read on the site, but will look for in stores. don't get too excited, it includes no names or contact info for these women.
the funny thing is for how twisted and bizarre my tastes in sex, music, and general culture can be- when it comes down to it i'm really a puritan. maybe it's my lutheran cultural upbringing. i don't smoke, drink, use drugs, or cheat on my wife. but it's not necessarily because i'm married or i'm a dad. like i've mentioned in earlier blogs, i gave all that up (including sleeping with groupies) long before i was involved with my wife. the drift toward an ascetic lifestyle (hee hee) occured in stages:
1, gave up drugs and alcohol because i once drank a liter of Jim Beam, took a three or four valium, and smoked pot, and literally went into a state of paralysis. while in that parlysis, i went to Hell. or more accurately, the hell realms were revealed right there, where i was. while i was completely immobile in a time-less place, i was assaulted by demons. after the event was concluded, my drive for self-induced altered states was permanently corrected. i respect and acknowledge the alex greys of the world, but i can count the number of people i've met who've used drugs successfully as an entheogenic tool on one hand. some people, some times, under some conditions can use hallucinogenics and have it act as an opening or increase in awareness. but let's face it, 99% percent of the people you meet who drink, smoke pot, or use acid and such are spaced out, checked out, and benumbed from the cycle of diminishing returns. except, of course, heroin addcits. they are universally stabilized in Sahaj. people use drugs to check out. i did. everyone i partied with did. pretty much everyone i've ever met in my life and career as a musician has.
2, gave up smoking because i could not get around the fact that it had an adverse effect on my voice and body (aside from the carcinogen thing), and my capacity to deliver songs and experience / open to music, especially at live shows, was directly affected by it. here's what really sucked: even ONE cigarette a day had an adverse effect. so then i had to ask what was more important to me, music and art and the miracle of singing, or the immediate gratification of a cigarette. fucking fuck. i had SO hoped that i could just have one cigarette a day and it would be no big deal, but i tried it both ways, smoking one a day for a month or two, and then not smoking at all for a month. the data was conclusive: i had much more to offer as a singer if i wasn't smoking. but even worse was the mind fuck games cigarettes played on me, or i played on myself with cigarettes. at one a day, you're basically only psychologically addicted. but for all the times you think about or fantasize smoking, you've smoked a pack of virtual cigarettes. so i shittily had to give them up, even the one a day (i never in my life really smoked more than a few a day, and it was on and off, but it was still a fantastic addiction). drats.
3, gave up casual sex for the reasons mentioned in this week's blogs.
but the trick is striking the right balance between including and honoring shadow for its indespensible role in the Kosmos, and not getting lost in it or identifying as it. people think awakened awareness means you can do anything you want, however you want, cuz it's non-dual right? it's ALL spirit, baby. but that's one of the most confused misreadings of our higher self and non-duality.
there's two kinds of non-duality. HA!
the first is the one where people go "i'm awake, so whatever i do is Spirit, i am THAT, i do not have to avoid or omit anything, it's all suchness". that's rationalization. if you're so fucking non-dual how come you wanna smoke, drink, and fuck? how come these crazy wisdom dudes always coincidentally seem to "manifest" and "teach" their awakened non-attached consciousness through the sex, drugs, and food? come on. that's duality-nonduality. the other kind of non-duality, nothing can be said about. but if you have to listen to someone talk about that freedom, i'd pick someone who's not behaving like a preconventional adolescent.
but still, i don't think we can or should turn into dissociated, imbalanced fascists about this shit. if we get too extreme in trying to be pure and perfect, it becomes an even worse liability. how does Love spontaneously express itself? depends on the moment, depends on the circumstances. but it would be naive and ridiculous to imagine its all white light and flower petals. love is a mother fucker, and the shadow of the Kosmos is a full half of IS. shadow allows for and creates a dissonance and tension through which evolution can occur, it's the fucking treads of the Wheel, man. what i feel is i have to include it, go into those dark caves, recognize that all demons are aspects of Self. but then, in the place of clarity, the inherent, natural condition of Love expresses itself accordingly. i have never, ever experienced awakened awareness as wanting to hurt, harm, or disable any thing or any being. it is simply not how it IS. it is true that Love has no opposite, Love has no other. and in its free-functioning being, it simply recognizes all beings, all others as itself. it's not a theory. it's not a model. it just IS, simple, bare. in that place of freedom, no thought occurs, no impulse arise to diminish, separate, or harm any other. the impulse of the awakened Dreamer is to help wake up the other Dreamers (which are the same One). sometimes this means working with nightmares. we have to understand nightmares, shadows, and how they work. they don't just evaporate for other beings because you had an epiphany or an altered state. in the language of E.J. Gold, we have to have an understanding of the Labyrinth we're working in to be of help, and that's the work in the Mystery.
that, for instance, involves trying to understand things like pornography, and heroin, and genocide, but from the INSIDE first, from the 1st person perspective. until you crawl into that view and see it from the inside first, forget about anyone suffering in that condition giving a shit about what you have to say, offer, etc. the soul of any human has a bullshit sensor that's incredibly sensitive. that's why i will spit venom at a Pat Robertson and go running into the arms of a Brother Wayne Teasdale.
