A short little crim experiment with third.

I'd heard that some people in the world, far more advanced than I, do sun salutations and launch into third series. So, short on time and low on motivation, I did 5 A's, 3 B's and then the first four. This is my first EVER venture into a linked series of third poses. Tim's leading us into Viswamitrasana/Kasyapasana during the led Intermediate put it in my head. I LOVE that sequence and it developed my hip flexibility to the point that within a week, I balanced Dwi Pada A.

So I figured, what the hell. Let's see. The first pose was half-assed, because my swing-foot-to-hand move is half-assed. Nonetheless, I balanced it and it was ok. I love the Viswa/Kasya sequence, and was cracking up at how spinning-flying-levitating it is. The energy is just FABULOUS. I lost the FBH in the roll-up on the right side, and I lost it on both sides of Chakorasana proper (which is a damn hard pose; crank the shin TO YOUR FACE??? Wow!), so that was enough of that. Just a taste.

I learned that I can put a foot behind my head on very little warm up. Cool. I learned that EVERY pose in third is, apparently, a balance pose. Rad. I will never do this (unless I advance to that point) as any kind of regular practice, but once in a blue moon I'll pull it out. It's hella fun.

Another chapter of reckoning with the usual stuffs.

I've decided that the 8 days that I'll spend in somebody's Mysore room over in the Northwest are to be approached this way: walk in, say hello, negotiate a practice based on how things are that day. Do that practice 8 times. Then it's over. Simple, factual, so be it. Easy.

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The following is an installment of what I call "hide the children." Feel free to skip it. When you see my row of asterisks, this section will be over.

Ok: for background, J has since the child's birth a few times offered what she has called "efficient" sexual activity. It's half lubrication and half "lie back and think of England." It is, precisely, efficient. But it has no foreplay and it has really shallow intimacy. For those two reasons, I haven't been attracted to it. Somewhere around five months ago, maybe (time gets awfully subjective), I turned her down on it, just because I wasn't in the mood for that particular flavor (for the record, I'm never really in the mood for that particular flavor: I'd MUCH rather have appetizers than the main course). Nothing's happened since.

Until two days ago, when there was both foreplay and a bit more intimacy. That was nice. It took us a while to work up to it, but that just means we both saw it coming, and for me that's a big sale. I like being able to see wide and far in those scenarios. Perhaps predictably, the main course is painful for her. She, nonetheless, basically insisted on it. She said "it's fine" but her body language said, "ow motherfucker this really damn hurts." The more I think about it the more disappointed I am in it. It's like, come on pregnancy, didn't you already fucking kill me once? Do you have to keep fucking rubbin' it in? I can't say, "I think it's fine to go without this," because J gets weird about "balance" and who gets what and sort of what's "just" in this realm of activity. It'll sound passive-aggressive if I try to argue her out of it. I'm not sure if this is "the beginning of something" or if it was just random fireworks. We'll see what develops or doesn't over the northwestern vacation.

If I had my way, this would all be about J's rendezvous with her own bodymind. It would all be about re-hello, re-comfort, re-ease, re-well-hello, and so on. A total rendezvous where I just provide assistance rather than demand. I see how she feels an obligation to meet demand (but that's not how it works), and how I can't argue my way out of that, but what I want is the RELATIONSHIP, not just objects and actions and specific identifiable what's, how's, where's and when's. I want her/us to rise from the nuclear ashes that the first year turns a relationship into, and reknit the thing in toto. It's not about getting even or fixing the past or satisfaction or any of that illusory bullshit. It's about sacrificing THE SACRIFICE and finally turning face forward toward ONE'S OWN LIFE again. Time to say "I" again, time to HAVE A BODY again, time to fucking REINCARNATE!!!

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Practice has been predictably hither-and-yon; the Monday night Intermediate was tired but great, and I did up to Vatayanasana (I freakin LOVE that pose). Kapo is creeping, creeping, creeping, toes. Today was up to Bhujapidasana and then the hips in their swollen, achy from backbending way, just would have no more. Whatever; you do, you move on. Don't forget to have a life.

I've retained bits and pieces of the pranayama Tim showed us; sometimes it's just viloma with chakra visualization at night, but I do some every day.

Still reading _Essence of the Bhagavad Gita_ and getting late into it, now the final battle, the nature of reality, Krisna just showed Arjuna the divine vision. Far fucking out. I guess it's too far (?) to reach for enlightenment given the present suffering, but fuck it man, I don't know what else to do. I figure that if I reach for the highest possible goal, anything less ought to be coming without my even wanting it. Let's see what's out there.

My day-to-day includes a dose of depression and frustration; I don't want you all thinking that I'm just eyes-to-the-stars and getting through over here. There is a sense that all of this is "a phase I will recall later" and that's weird to handle in the present. Often one thinks of oneself as between phases like that, sort of in the valley. This is totally a mountain climb and I'm aware of it as such.

Briefly, Back to Backbends.

Yesterday, VERY short on time, I did 4 Venki hangbacks (long story how I know about those) for 15 breaths each, and then JUST the backbends of Intermediate--Shalabhasana to Kapotasana. Directly after that, I taught a class (which I'm going to believe evened me out; I made sure to join them for a long forward bend).

The backbends were bigger than in recent memory: Bhekasana actually had an arch, Dhanurasana was practically to pubic bone and I got toes in Kapo one and past the toes in Kapo two (I do two if I can).

Today I did the "classical," Primary and up to Kapo. Good heat in the house (79 with midwestern humidity), no misses in Primary, 8-finger binds in both sides of Pasasana (and I haven't really done Pasasana in about two weeks, so that was cool), but less backbends than yesterday.

Now, usually, when Kapo-ing at the Y, I have the Jade Harmony with me, no rug. I get good sticky and great pressups there; I even got arms straight regularly before I busted up my right rotator cuff.

In the house, I have the Manduka with the cotton rug over. Cotton rug is slippery when trying to press up hard. Manduka is too sticky for walking in, or, if covered with sweat, too freakin' slippery for walking in. So I took SIX, count them SIX, Kapotasanas to learn how much press-friction to apply and to what surface.

ONLY on the sixth, did I get toes. So that's a big freakin' difference from yesterday's backbend exploration. I was bummed about it, but if I'm doing sweaty practice, it MUST be rug season. So I must learn to pull up with the hips, rather than pressing the arms straight with the hands. Summer Kapo is different.

I followed that with three wheels and five dropbacks (not my usual three). Psoas, we make peace this summer. Length or bust!! I popped the heels and came up standing every time. In the final backbend, I dropped, walked in twice, and rocked forward onto knees; couldn't pull the super tight stand up. That's ok.

Tomorrow, if not deadly sore, I go for it again (yeah yeah, Primary day, I know, but my timescale is all "what can I learn about my so-called 'current practice' before I'm Mysore-ing it up in Seattle on July 8"), so I'm cutting myself a break on the classical time format.

A Short A-Ha Moment

Based on one comment posted here earlier, the following appeared:

Almost any time that I experience discomfort (of any kind), my reactions are to

First, NON-ACCEPT the uncomfortable stimulus and then

Second, to find a way around/behind/outside/beyond/etc it, which is always accompanied by

Third, the complete failure of there being any such option or my being able to create one.

The summed-up effect of this tripartite system is that I simultaneously
a) Envision and proclaim total revolution against that stimulus and
b) Accept it anyway in my actual behaviors

So it's as if I
a) Think with one mind, world and vision and
b) Act with a totally unrelated body to the same stimuli.

This kind of amuses me. My PRACTICE is acceptance but my THEORY is revolution.

Dissertation: constantly complained about and damned to hell, but written.
Marriage: constantly immolated in my rhetoric, but lasted seven years
Loan Payments: constantly blasted out of existence, and yet, regularly paid.
More Recent Developments: ceaselessly complained about, yet borne.

See? Over and over and over.

That big enlightenment rant? Its flavor is "I do not accept this" and yet its concluding point, in fact its entire justification, is to answer "How do I live with this?"

I don't want to give up my monkey-ranting. I LOVE it, I'm good at it, and it reminds me of myself, it's who I see in the mirror. Maybe I can just see it for what it is, which is a monkey flinging poo and having a good time.

The First of a Series of Short Posts.

Ok, enough with the Unified Field Theory (that's a habit I ought to keep in better check, but I do like it).

1. I freakin' love that it's 9:20 pm and still largely light outside.

2. Two days ago I had what felt like a hella hangover from consuming TWO PINTS of 6.4 ABV beer. That NEVER happens. Not before, not since, not EVER. Two used to be my usual, per the Guinness ad: "It's a wonder what toucan do!" Well, chalk up that habit....

3. Based purely on time constraints, Primary to Marichyasana A, six backbends, three valid attempts at dropping back (slippery mat needed towel assists, I did drop back but slipped on landings). No shoulder pain; all jumps fine. The rest of this week, time permitting, we add back in the Intermediate.

4. Continuing my Gita reading and loving this stuff. "Desire is not based in the body, as in Christian belief, but in the mind." Do you have any idea how that helps turn around how I've believed certain very important things work? And further, it agrees with the science on the subject (have a Google of SES/SIS).

5. Students of mine are in Boston, were in Chicago, are headed to Ann Arbor and to Portland (OR). I consulted and recommended yoga in all locations, and I'll advise on Portland (yeah you know who you are, and so do you) before the summer ends. I like the weird web that is developing. In May I taught 71 students in a month's worth of classes. I have regulars; we have a scene. In 2004, my partner and I WERE the ashtanga scene in this town.

6. The best way to turn faith, in a post-baby relationship, into certainty again is to look around at ACTUAL people (well, that is, people you'd wish to admire, not just ANY people) and see them not having to run on faith. It's like loan payments; it's like dissertation writing. The terror and doubt DO PASS.

7. Seattle, Mysore-style, July 8-19 probably. I don't, this time, demand to get to pose Q. This time, I don't know where the hell my practice is/will be, and it'll be interesting to see what someone else says. I'm going to try to learn this for myself over the next two and a half weeks and then I'll take my show on the road. I'm remembering, with experience, the massive increase in flexibility in summer heat (forgotten because in large part I don't remember summer 2009 at all). Curious and open. Good.

Let's get Enlightened, Shall We?

Ingram says, several times, something to the effect of "May all beings become free in this life." Maehle says something, about belief, that sounds like, "There is no faith; the believer KNOWS. There is no trust that needs to be involved."

Do we actually BELIEVE in this Enlightenment about which there is so, so, so much verbiage? Yoga is a science, right? It leads to enlightenment by stilling the mind and raising the kundalini and so forth, right? But are we just SAYING THIS because it's "yoga-ese" and it's proper class lingo for the sendoff before we see those students next week?

What would it be to REALLY MEAN IT?

"Well you'd take a full course of all eight limbs." Ok, sure. But what levels, what do we emphasize? Cleanliness and non-violence? Pranayama? How, what, is there a freakin' BOOK we can get on this? My new theory: one is the book. Or at least one is the set of pages on which the book is written. EXPERIENCE MATTERS. The question need not be: "WHAT does one do to get enlightened" but needs be: "What can ONE do to get enlightened?" Bodyminds have history (and if we buy the whole nine yards, they have long, ancient karmic histories). This means that while the formula for enlightenment (which depending on who and what you read is something like "still the mind" and/or "give the ego to God") is consistent, the PRACTICE of that formula is going to vary from karmic load to karmic load (and that seems sensible, no?).

Yes, I'm noting here that that does NOT mean running hither and yon from practice to practice. What I mean (and Satchidananda's Sutras commentary hits this well) is that someone given to violence is going to get a lot more KEY practice out of ahimsa than someone who is working out concentration (dharana) or someone who is experiencing the lesser samadhi on a regular basis. Karmic loads VARY and this needs to be integrated into one's practice, as a guide to figuring out what is most productive and what is most challenging in an eight-limbs practice.

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That said, I want to dip back into the usual (quick! cover your eyes! hide the children!) and set some strategies for what yesterday I called an "open war of enlightenment".

1. There is obvious and long-running suffering from this relationship frustration situation.
2. How does that actually work? What can be known about it?
3. How can this be "stilled" or "surrendered"? What would that be?
4. What strategies and goals can be set, concretely, from this knowledge and this vision?

I think that this quartet would be useful to ANYONE who is handling some kind of suffering: WHAT is it, HOW does it work, HOW can it be made still, and WHAT strategies result from the difference between those two.

Let us proceed.

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As is tiresomely obvious to my regular readership, the current suffering comes from lack of virtually any intimacy in my major relationship. This doesn't bother me (much) when it goes on for a busy week or even a busy month (hi, November, April). But when it goes on for twenty-two months, it becomes problematic. So this is the current situation in (1).

(2). This is much more interesting and complicated and, eventually, I think, productive. I've basically done all the footwork here in earlier posts, but here's the digest form:

My ego (that is, my sense of myself, my "I", the individual that I think I am) seems to have what I've elsewhere called a "computer virus" which sets my sexual identity as "unsatisfied" by default. I'm pretty sure that this comes, historically, from long deprivation in adolescence and from too much thinking about it (i.e., what Maehle refers to as "meditating on our suffering" in his Sutras commentary). But in more metaphysical terms, it's clearly a samskara, it's clearly a blooming seed from the ancient past.

To be unsatisfied-as-identity means that there is what Christians call a "God hole" in this ego's own selfhood, or an unsatisfiable need, which the Marxists analyze as "commodity fetishism" in capitalist cultures. One always needs, and one never can be satisfied, and least of all by the very experience which this "need" seems to demand.

This is worth pulling out in some detail, because it's important: for a self which is DEFINED as unsatisfied, there can NEVER be satisfaction. That self might think it craves satisfaction, but in reality, the "lack" of satisfaction is STRUCTURAL. That self is, structurally, COMPLETE BY MEANS OF ITS OWN LACK. It's as if 80 percent of the thing is 100 percent of the thing. Yes, this makes no sense, I know that.

Put another way, the fullness of this self is to lack. Lack is not the absence of something, but is, itself, a presence. But I understand my lack as the need for "more," when actually, no matter how much "more" I get, I never answer the lack, and that's because this lack CANNOT BE ANSWERED, because it only THINKS that it can be filled in. In reality, it cannot.

This only-apparent-desire is NOT HUMAN. My what-you-might-call "biological" desire for intimacy/sexual contact is not linked to this, but sort of overlays it, and moves in the regular somewhat unpredictable cyclical ways in which human desire moves. But this "computer virus" is ever-steady, like something mechanical that never runs out of oil. I've also, before, called it a "techno beat." Onward and onward it goes.

The result of living with this sort of built-in ego-lack is that "I" always need something outside me, in order to "be complete," which of course never happens, for two reasons:
1) The lack is structural, and thus can never be satisfied by anything and
2) Actual reality doesn't work like that anyway. Remember that things are "temporary, unsatisfying and not you"?

So in a way, this unceasing techno club in my ego is actually a gift, because it reminds me of how reality works anyway. What goes WRONG with it is that I believe that the lack both NEEDS to be addressed and further that it ever CAN BE.

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So the suffering takes this form: "Ow, ow, I need thing X and I can't have it, ow, ow, make it stop."

What can be done to make this be still?

1. Still the need for thing X (defer, look away, or make it unimportant).

No, no, wait, why isn't "GET A LOT OF THING X" an answer?

That's not an answer because, to put it in sexual terms, if I stop seeking the Path when I get well-shagged, then whatever it is that next TAKES THAT FROM ME is going to plunk me into EXACTLY the same pit of pain and despair that THIS does. It could be jobs in different cities, or chronic illness, or mortality. SOMETHING is going to bring an end to however much "Thing X plenitude" I can EVER get, and when that happens, this pain, with interest, will fall like a house.

That's why that's not an answer.

2. Find a self that's not based on the ego (basically, turn off the techno).

3. Center the Self on something else; involute (i.e., go to God, et cetera).

4. Withdraw emotional passion from the state of Thing X (i.e., basic nonattachment).

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That's the answer to (3): how can this be made still?

Now then, to the chewiest part of all: WHAT STRATEGIES can be deduced from the difference between (2) and (3)?

Here are some things that I do NOT wish to do:

1. I do not wish to forgo all sexual contact. That's too much discipline and it would backfire terribly if I tried it.

2. I do not wish to go without the relationship. That, again, is too much discipline, and again, it would backfire monstrously.

Ok, strategies:

For "still the need for thing X," it's not about putting off or deferring a biological need, it's about not hearing the techno from the computer virus. It is literally about changing my attention, sort of "hearing something else more loudly." As I get older, I'm starting to be able to tell the difference between when I'm ACTUALLY (if you will, biologically) interested in sex stuff and when I'm just riding the techno beat's attention to it.

So if my stilling-the-need here refers not to desire, but to obedience to the beat, then ANYTHING that refocuses my attention, will do, and it doesn't matter at all on what I refocus my attention. Do a headstand. Pat a cat. Wash dishes. The only criterion is that the NEW stimulus must be LOUDER than the old stimulus. So right now, seated meditation won't do unless I pull in some INTENSE physical sensation (like retention with bandhas) to drown out the beat.

"Make it unimportant":

This is an interesting strategy. Remember my "rock star" metaphor from a couple posts ago? Sex is something that young revolutionary "rock stars" do and ordinariness is the result if you don't do it a lot? Sort of an avant-garde theorization of sexual activity? To make it unimportant is to undo this, to restore sexual activity to its proper householder location. There is nothing to be granted from it, no paradise to be accessed. It is not more special, more reserved, or more powerful than ANY OTHER KIND of householding.

Things that work against this? Capitalist fetishization, privatization (basically, making sex "a secret" which then has the allure that all secrets have), Freudian repression (again, repression gives power and mystery to the repressed), shame, guilt, all discussions of normal/abnormal, all asexualities (such as those of the Moral Majority, et. al.: the nuclear family, abstinence-only, persecution of sexual minorities), and all hypersexualities (i.e., Dr. Phil's show, Jerry Springer's show, actually MOST of American TV, yeah Real World I mean you too, and almost all magazine ads or really, any media whatsoever from most any Western nation).

TANGENT:

Something fortuitous is that my sexual stuff is connected to all of the rest of my life. It's in my spiritual inklings, it's in my religious stuff, it's in my intellectual stuff; it is TOTALLY IMBRICATED in my existence in toto. Sure, you'll say that that's true for everyone, but I think not to this degree.

I think that many people, particularly those who really like privatization as I've defined it above, see their sex stuff as living in a sort of "box" that they keep in the set of boxes into which their lives can be divided. Example: THAT box contains "work" and THIS box contains "leisure" and THAT box contains "politics" and THIS box contains "relationship" and THAT box contains "extracurricular relationship" (example: got a fantasy life? Does your partner know about every little wrinkle of it? No? Then you have a separate box for it, yes?) and so on and so forth.

I tried to analyze my early frustrations in terms of culture and awareness and wound up academicizing/intellectualizing my own sexuality. I study sexy art cinema today, in part because of that process. The conflict between my own body and my parents' Catholicism put a profoundly sexual/embodied streak in my own spiritual quest (witness my "fascist tendencies" vision from the post prior). The long abusive marriage in which I stayed too long, gave me feminist politics (even moreso than the ones I already had) and got me reading about rape culture (because there is rape in that partner's history) and got me doing hardcore gender analysis and so on. For about two decades, my relationships or lack of relationships colored everything: choice of friends, choice of chemicals, all of the courses I taught, all of the things I elected to or tried to believe, and so on. My sex stuff is FOUNDATIONAL in the various people that I became.

But this obsessiveness also means that if I can pull this thread far enough, it will UNDO THE ENTIRE SWEATER. Because that "virus" is in my ego itself, my sense of myself, it means that pursuing my sex neuroses can eventually lead me right to a vision of the ego and then (perhaps) to surpassing it. Discriminative knowledge about my sex stuff is POWERFUL and DEEP magic.

It just might take two decades or more of careful attention, to undo all the doing that I've put into it.

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So, back to strategies:

"Find a Self that's not based on the Ego." Indeed. Find a way to act in the world that is not "I" acting. Give up the fruits of actions.

(But how does that answer this specific suffering?)

This suffering is ego-based; recall, the virus is in the ego. What would actual SILENCE be like? The end of the techno. Try to hear this silence. Hear reality beneath/beyond the techno.

(But it's my desire, it's my relationship, it's my...)

NO, it isn't. It profoundly is NOT YOU. Remember? You told me this yourself. The techno beat is a VIRUS, it is a MACHINE, it is NOT HUMAN.

As a matter of fact, I'll bet you can have all kinds of sexual contact with your partner and NOT NEED THE TECHNO AT ALL to make any of it happen. Try working with THAT for a while and see what happens.

And as a corollary, you might not need the LACK to do it either. Imagine ACTION without PSYCHOLOGY.

"Center the Self on something Else"

Involution: go to God, find the Shining Self. The basic statements of all sacred texts, from the Sutras to the Gita and on and on. This single piece of advice, this one strategy, really encompassses and is bigger than, most of the others, and its advice is the same. GO BEYOND THAT EGO and its techno. Or, another way, YOU ARE NOT YOU. Or, as I put it a while ago, there's NO INTERIORITY. To even be able to imagine "centering the self on something else" is a defiance of everything we are told and know about "who we are." How deep does the rabbit hole go, Neo???? Seriously.

And finally:

"Withdraw emotional passion from the state of Thing X."

The Gita commentary I'm reading invites us never to underestimate how powerful our emotional role in all of this, is. The emotions roar forward: Thing D rocks! Thing G sucks! And so on, we know this.

And sex stuff is SO very emotionally magnetic. The ecstasies, the pain, the disappointment, the eagerness, and so on. On and on and on. A whole life of Top Gun silhouettes and ballads and blue light. The unknowable magic of attraction and then it's all poetry and erotica about electricity. It is, in a way, mystical, but not in terms of mystical experience; more like mystification. We aren't supposed to know how it works, we aren't supposed to understand it, to be able to manage it. That ruins the game, doesn't it? This is one mythology.

A friend of mine once said, about kink communities: "Don't think that just because these people are very self-aware about their own practices, that they're self-aware about anything else, necessarily."

Being able to make smart and aware relationship choices doesn't do a damn thing to the ego's sense of self. Maybe makes for less pain (provided all parties are self-aware of themselves and the other), but doesn't change the selfhoods of the parties involved. This is one of the great discoveries that I've made about 2003. There is self-awareness and then there is SELF-AWARENESS. Recall last post that I said that the mystical states associated with past sexual experiences (mine, anyway) are "wrong method": union with Prakriti. Feels great and has mystical character, but will never result in enlightenment.

If there is an eternal buzz, than anything that is a temporary achievement of it, is minor by comparison.

That's meant to answer the emotional access to joy, to relaxation, to whatever it is, the pleasures that are temporary. "What is WRONG with that?" Well, nothing except their temporariness in comparison to what is permanent.

And from this, the final strategy in full form:

Temporary pleasure taken as permanent, wished to be permanent, hoped to be permanent. If I get enough (money, relationships, orgasms, automobiles, tracts of land, conquest, friends, and so on), then I will have AS GOOD AS A PERMANENT (security, buzz, family, whatever). Except it's never true.

And there it is: can't get Thing X, bummer! Ow, ow! Get Thing X: Victoire! Joy and pleasure! And it's a ping-pong match between one and the other, or, if you're me, there's ALWAYS a note of "can't" even in "can."

I want to--as I said before, I've said almost all of this before--downplay the whole act, the whole relationship. I wouldn't say I'm "passionate" about washing the stuff in the sink, but I certainly have phases of "This must be done!" and there is relief associated with having it done. See the same pattern there? Oh, you're insulted; how dare I compare the two? Have no fear, it's only an emotional parallel. There is tension and release. Trust me, it's the same.

(But it's not so...intimate!)

No? Serving the household, is it not? If we were to treat dishwashing with the same privation and the same secrecy and to ladle onto it all of the same responsibility for our "innermost being" that we do our sex stuff, then it would BECOME THE SAME.

I deny that the intimacy is in the sensations, although there are things to be said about eye gaze and such, the "soul" of any human proximity. But I especially deny that the intimacy is in the DESIRE for the sensations. Remove the elements that are like cats in heat (no disrespect to either cats or heat intended) and you get compassion and kindness. Or at least a basic level of affection.

So the ego's techno beat should be able to be answered (although it is by nature unanswerable) with feeding people at soup kitchens.

Strategy summary:

a. Redirect: headstanding, talking to neighbors, cleaning a basement.
b. Un-Ego: right action. Do something "I" doesn't want to. Act without "I."
c. Involute: give it all up. Surrender "I's" actions; take them from "I."
d. Dispassion: maintain calm. Indulge ferociously, sure, but with calm at the center. Tricky. But essential. Or be restrained (against will), but with calm at the center. Restraint "isn't you." It doesn't harm you and it doesn't even restrain "you." In an ego storm, calm is "somewhere else." Make the drama into householding (which by dualist contrast is anti-dramatic). Collapse the ego's dualities; learn what they are and then collapse them.

(What if I just want it, though?)

Change I. Change it. Change want. All of this can always be done.

Fascist tendencies, wrong method, desire and enlightenment.

A while back, in comments here, I said, "Dude I HAVE fascist tendencies, are you kidding me?" It can't be reconstructed here, but it was funny and informative. Anyway: This morning on the drive in I was thinking about my fascist tendencies, and we have to dip into the "wrong method" to get there, so here we go.

I've always had a mystical streak, which from adolescence on, I labeled the desire to be "the witch doctor." Nomadic tribes, seeking wisdom from the unseeable, chemical intoxication, dances with wavy-bladed knives, face paint, animal totems, wisdom, vision in lightless temples, human sacrifice, all that kind of shit. That's how a bored suburban kid escapes.

LSD experiences in college showed me that I "bleed out" of my boundaries, into everything else, a mutual permeability. I am the limestone, the grass, the announcer's tower by the soccer field, all of that. Sexual experiences (which happen beyond college, let's remember the history) showed me a like permeability: waves crashing on the beach, to and fro, parables about a drop of water and the ocean from which it comes, of which it is. Stuff like that. It was all very psychedelic, and it still is (well, maybe it'll have changed if it EVER HAPPENS AGAIN, but that's a tangent).

In Yoga Sutras terms, this unification, this bleeding out and mutual permeability, is "union with Prakriti" and it is a mystical state, to be sure, but it is also "wrong method," because it doesn't bring union with the Purusha; it precisely misses this. One doesn't end up observing Nature and separating from it, but winds up in union with it, very much The Observed, in fact All The Observed.

See how this leads to fascist tendencies? Let me elaborate.

Say you've got a handle on a mystical state (as I do). Say you have modes to access it (as I do: chemicals and intense sexual experiences). All you need is some charisma (which I have), some determination to find a site and some advertising, and TA-DA, you've got a commune situation into which you can lure the hungry Americans (because all Americans are hungry for something spiritual which they cannot name because commodity culture constantly revs up such desire and always fails to grant the answer; thanks capitalism) and Christianity fails (doubt me? Look for counter-evidence; I fucking DARE you to find any; Owl, you're excepted from this).

Anyway:

Soon I could become a charismatic semi-mystic, who masters the language and hands down the rituals, and it would become a combination of Charlie Manson and Otto Muehl in no time. We'd all be high as kites and well-shagged in any configuration you could name or wish for, but none of us would be enlightened, and like most religion, it would be a sham for someone's ego power.

That's where my fascist tendencies lead.

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So I'm not going to do that.

I am living under fairly intense compression with seventh series, as anyone who reads here even a little bit, knows. At Maehle's suggestion, I've been putting a LOT of sacred texts into my head the last few months, which I think are clarifying my desires and my methods (witness all the writing above).

I'm always drawn to union-with-Nature as a mystical method. It's my instinctive desire, and so I seek methods that permit it. More understanding about union with the Purusha is growing, but so much of it (especially in Kriyananda's lingo) is sort of post-body or anti-body that I can't seem to build a base from which to launch into it.

That's not quite true: insight meditation asks how we FEEL, and WHAT we feel. Classical Siddhasana (if understood to be about brahmacharya, as my whole fucking life right now is about fucking brahmacharya; oh sorry, did that sound bitter?) is about placing the heel at the base of, essentially, the spongy tissues that so many find to be such fun.

I pulled into a Siddhasana a few days ago and actually enjoyed the lighter-than-you'd-expect sensation. It provided a grounding-ness for my mind, the same way that breath retentions with bandhas do. Sucked the mind right to the site. As long as I have a physical anchor--some sensation to put me on the earth--I can chill, I can try for a concentrative-meditative state. If I'm just sitting and I can't ground my mind in an earth sensation, I can't get anywhere.

I think that by the time J comes out of her mommy-brain-work-baby-housework trance and realizes that I exist again, I'll be busy with the Enlightenment channel.

So be it. I'm ready, man. That relationship is just part of the householding, and in a comical way, householding's long-duree-hell is what's driving me to really seek an enlightenment that isn't my typical (and more familiar, more comfortable) channel.

There is a certain denial of J (and in that, of my frustration and desire) in seeking enlightenment. If I'm seeking my union-with-Prakriti style, I need her; she's a quintessential part of it, hell she's part of the doorway itself. But if I'm after involution toward the Purusha, I do *not* need her, and that releases a lot of anger and tension and frustration, or at least it asks me to take back and redirect the energy.

So in a way, my relationship going completely to self-negating hell, is a strange gift. I may lose my climbing practice, my sex life and eventually even my asana practice to seventh series (have practiced once in the past five days), but it'll crank up my desire to be enlightened; at least it can't take THAT from me.

I'm trying to turn all of the "me" channels down in things like dishwashing, householding, baby care, the little side trips that J insists on taking "for his development" as she tries both to live up to her ideal parent dream and tries to deal with reality as it is (hint: those two don't get along) so that daily life can just be a series of movements. Dances and bodies, but no one's there. The best way to survive all of this negation is to not be there to negate.

Non-attachment whichever, I think it's V.

I used to have a series on "non-attachment" but it's been so long I can't recall which "episode" this is.

I've been reading _Essence of the Bhagavad Gita_, which is mostly commentary by Paramhamsa Yogananda as recreated by Kriyananda. I don't care for how "God this" and "God that" it is, because I'm so Christian-o-phobic, but I really like it overall. Every chapter has great chewy stuff in it.

The Gita is, of course, about the "inner struggle" between, (let's grossly paraphrase), the senses and the shining Self. One ceases to "evolve" (go out) and instead "involves" (goes in) and then achieves enlightenment. During this process, fruits of action are surrendered and right action is preferred to inaction (that's why Arjuna has to fight).

While this has been going on, seventh series has been continuing, and it's been a rough week of sore throat and coughing and bad sleep for the kid, which means we ALL get bad sleep, and that makes me and J grumpy at each other, and work stress does not cease, and my practice takes a downhill turn. On a certain level, that's all fine, because it's both familiar and quite undeniable. It is the truth.

But my asana practices during seventh series and work have been RADICALLY roller-coastering. Full Intermediate one week, partial Primary with aches galore, the week after. Missed days when kid is sick, practice devolves, stress from baby crying, hips tighten up, deadlines come due; it's MADNESS to practice while you're doing seventh series, but it's also totally essential.

Primary to Marichyasana D today. Tight, slow, but also humid, summer: 78 in the house with windows wide open, and good sweat, decent flexibility (environmentally speaking). So the days of the Y are over, because over the summer they air condition that place to 70 degrees and now, that is COLD, man.

"Detach from the fruits." This is useful. A section that I read yesterday was saying that, "The yogi does not understand the body as 'I' but simply as that with which one is working: the mind is now intellectualizing, discriminating; the senses are taking in stimuli; the body channels are taking in, moving out, and so on." One watches it all, detaches from it all. The body is a thing one KEEPS FUNCTIONING in order to achieve enlightenment through ACTION.

This runs up hard against "My practice, the pose I got, the point I didn't get to, why can't I do THAT pose" and so on and on and on. You know, the asana reports.

So at first, after practice, I was ticked at the forces that be, for making my practice so rollercoaster with seventh series. But then I tried seeing the body as simply a thing that "I" (ahem) moved through space, and that detached from the anger, straight away. Cool. What's asana practice for? Focus, mantra, breathing, a "model" of sorts. In my current body, it also channels emotional pain and frustration out of my glutes (where that stuff stacks up miles high) and back out into the world as energy, where it all belongs.

I have NO IDEA what I will tell teacher(s) in Seattle in a month, as to "where my practice is." Here are some potential answers to that question:

1. Well, two years ago I was doing up to Kapo in a Mysore-style room and I really haven't been in one since then.

2. Practice varies between partial Primary and full Intermediate, as seventh series either demands or makes possible.

3. What I'd like from my practice is to make Kapotasana a more comfortable psychological/emotional experience no matter how deep or shallow it is.

4. I can do whatever my seventh series/hips/shoulder are willing to handle on any given day.

And so on. Who knows.

Forwards and Backwards.

In an Intermediate done outside, I have officially re-lost the Kapo toe grab and officially gained the Dwi Pada balancing portion (Dwi Pada A). I am now surrendering the whole practice, because I've been reading too much Bhagavad Gita commentary.

Really this makes two solid years of Kapo determination, with somewhat of a lukewarm, experimental third year of curiosity before then. Two Years, Kapo? Seriously? And while in April you were letting me slowly, SLOWLY sneak the hands up the feet, today you plunk me into the mat, with the old claustrophobia and the hip flexors that feel like shiny unbendable aluminum?

Perhaps it was the move outside, or the move from sticky Jade to unsticky cotton rug, or the fact that I've only dropped-and-stood one time this week (although I have backbent every day since Monday).

I'm so sick of myself BEING sick of that pose that the whole business makes me want to toss my cookies. I don't want to plan about it, research it, do it, get it, not get it, I don't fucking want anything to do with that pose anymore, ever. And it's not just the pose at all, it's like I don't want to be in my Kapo headspace anymore, I'm so fucking sick of the whole quest that I wish I could just lobotomize the entire memory and desire complex associated with it.

I'll breathe, bend, take my ten (Kapo A and B) and then get on with everything else.
No more. I'm fucking finished with sweating that pose.

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Tim showed us the research poses (duck head under knee, while in Vira A position, take Viswamitrasana and exit, enter Eka Pada from Kasyapasana position) on Friday last week.

Today--which is a Thursday--the ability to balance Dwi Pada A showed up. It was a cool entry, because the sun was slightly behind me, and so I could actually SEE the left foot for once NOT SLIP OUT, and I could WATCH the bind happen. "Holy crap, this is going to happen. Right now." And then it did. I had to pin my gaze like a laser on a little loop of red cotton on my rug, but then the gaze "held me up" as I took the hands off and up to prayer position. 12345. Balance.

So that was cool. Six days for a new pose to show up. True, my feet are flexed and clasped, not pointed as is ideal, but what works, I will take.

Did up through Karanda, tried to lower the lotus to 90 degrees, did so but could not sustain the balance, and then did backbends. Two sets of three, four dropbacks, no stand ups (trying to "inch toward it" as Owl recently wrote).

Tim Miller II: Bandhas, Pranayama, Practice

Now that I've covered the weird and mystical and fabulous bit, more breakdown and more specific pointers and mods and methods. Hah! AS IF bandhas and pranayama aren't esoteric, weird and mystical :D

Bandhas per Tim: the moola bandha CAN be taught as a muscular action, although it is also energetic. PC muscle (your "Kegeler" if you're a chick). Imagine drawing the bottommost tip of the tailbone, to the pubic bone. Back/bottom to front. That's the MB. It's also, base chakra to the one directly above it (and we know from before, that chakras are "intersections" of the sushumna/ida/pingala nadis).

Uddiyana? Imagine drawing the pubic bone to the navel. Just think about it and it happens. Put four fingers on that space while it's lightly contracted. Feel the "bow chicka bow" energy? Sorry, that's me taking a detour (hah!) for a second. But seriously, the spongy muscle that's involved in the physical practice of MB and the low sort of medulla-reptile abs that are involved in the UB? Don't doubt that there is some SERIOUS serpent power to be had there, my friends.

ANYWAY....

Tim led us into uddiyana kriya (that's the famous photo you see where the slightly spine-flexed super-thin Indian guy has his belly sucked up into his rib cage), and then into agni sara (which is basically rolling the belly up and down while doing uddiyana kriya, and which built CRAZY heat in my insides, just like it's supposed to) and then finally into an attempt at nauli, which right now doesn't behave for me at all, so it's all visualization. Eventually, the rectus abdominis will roll side to side (and both, if you will, right to left and left to right).

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Pranayama

After the Friday 12:30 Nadi Shodana class, Tim led us into nadi shodanda pranayama (alternate nostril breathing) which went badly for me since I was overheated and feeling some defeat in numerous poses; too much mind, too little calm. So I also didn't grok how to do it, but if I'm going to be retaining breath, I want some freakin' bandhas involved, and NS doesn't seem to call for that. I don't know, maybe it does. I'll have to catch it next time.

In the pranayama class which began at 6, however, after much talk about the pranamaya kosha and the energetic version of the bandhas (which goes back to chakras and to nadis and thence to kundalini and thence to Shiva/Shakti and thence right into mythology), Tim showed us the first two ashtanga pranayamas. For some reason I INSTANTLY thought of Owl's ashtanga bio, where she says that Rolf showed her the first two pranayamas..."pucky!" :D

Anyway: pranayama one is retention on the exhale. Then retention on the inhale. Not of the same breath. It's in-out-ret, do as many as you do, and then it's in-ret-out, do as many as you do.

Pranayama TWO is combining. In-ret-out-ret, repeat.

Jalandhara bandha when retaining inhale; unnecessary when retaining exhale.
I don't feel like giving away the ratios here (because you should learn this from a teacher, not from a blog), but hold the inhale retentions longer than you do the exhale retentions. Don't make yourself freak out, unless it's purely mind panic (that's fine, you get a chance to overcome it).

Tim also, as a demo prior to the pranayamas, had us do what is essentially viloma pranayama with chakra meditation. Exhale all the way, breath goes to muladhara at the base of the tailbone. Inhale TO the next chakra (pubic bone), pause; then TO the next (navel), pause; to the heart, pause; to the throat, pause; to between the eyebrows, pause; to the top of the head. Then we did a whole set moving "down" as well. It ROCKED. Got me suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper chilled out.

I loved doing the actual retentions, in large part because I've wanted to learn the official ashtanga pranayamas (any of them) for about two freakin years. Tim said we'd hold them long enough to maybe get some mind panic, but no physical damage could occur. I got no mind panic. Bandhas in retention just SUCK my mind down into my belly. That feels freakin AWESOME.

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Practice

The Intermediate led half practice kicked my butt. Too hot, no relaxing-between pauses like the ones I take at home, and so I was feeling defeat in Laghu, in Kapo, in EPS right side, in Pincha, in the Urdhva Dhanurasanas (although my mid-spine on Sunday was telling me they were big wheels). Still, from the heat and the human energy, I had good flexibility and good power (when I had it).

Heat turns me (and most of us, I think) into cooked spaghetti. Cook it just a LITTLE and you get wonderful bendiness with still good strength, muscle tension. But cook it past al dente and you just get a floppy uber-flexible mess. And right now, I'm used to YMCA practices at 70 degrees. None of this 90 and humid nonsense; that's silly talk.

Nonetheless I had jumps back and through everywhere I needed them, but no straight-arm pressups in Kapo, and way-too-burning thighs in the long Laghu hold. Too hot, too fast, to keep breath. By the twists, I was panting to get cooler, calmer, to reassert ujjayi. Same with the wheels, although I did all six that Tim led (two sets of three). I seem to still need to find the line between shradda (strength/faith) and bravado. So be it.

The Primary was cooler and earlier, although the room was more full. 9:30-noon, and we probably started practice around 10:15. Wonderful sacred text intro about ishtadevata (personal deity) and dedication, and the bhakti to be had in action. "God doing" and all that. Marvelous stuff.

No soreness at ALL in the shoulder; full jumps back and through, every pose. Lotus jumpbacks, big ones, both here and in the Intermediate. Eight wrist binds in the Marichyasanas; hadn't done THAT since April. Quick Navasana counts, for which I was grateful. I was parked in a corner near two plants, so poses like Kurmasana and Upavistha Konasana were a bit of a guess as to angle of thighs, but it all worked. No "traffic accidents" with neighbors or any of that :D

Tried the Intermediate entry to Supta K and lost it twice; too slippery, too much overcooked spaghetti in my muscles, from the heat. Fell apart literally like a pile of well-cooked semolina noodles. Got on my belly, swept the hands under and clasped, crossed the ankles and took the remaining three breaths there.

Again, too hot by the wheels. Lost the Urdhva Mukha Paschimo and couldn't achieve Setu Bandhasana. Did, nonetheless, all six wheels. No standing up, either here or in the Intermediate. Will have to work on that.

So in short, it rocked. I don't know how or where I will see Tim again, but I officially intend on it.

Tim Miller.

I went to Chicago--YV this time, not MYC--Friday morning to do Tim's "Exploring Nadi Shodana" and "Roots and Wings: Breath and Bandhas" and then a Saturday morning led Primary, before shooting back here, to teach what turned out to be ten people in my Sunday class (where I too, led Primary; well, 75 minutes worth of it).

What is meeting Tim like? It's very...strange. Let me attempt to explain. This part especially is difficult, because it's going to turn all Jedi. I will try to stick language to it; it's a writer's challenge.

I got to the studio early, checked in, reparked my car, and had a seat on the floor with my characteristic "yoga bum" mat and rug rolled up next to each other, bound with a loop of red-white-striped climbing cord and a big metal carabinier (the kind that'll support your weight in a fall, not that cheap aluminum knock-off look-at-me-I'm-extreme nonsense you keep on your keyring).

People began to arrive, some of whom (as always in a studio setting) came with hair properly coiffed and wearing Yoga Gear(tm) from the nearest Yoga Gear Shoppe(tm) so as to do the Proper Yoga(tm). Heh. A few of these people knew Tim when he walked in, and there was some chitchat about "Tulum" and so forth, which I'm sure is a marvelous retreat, but it's got Yoga Vacation(tm) written all over it.

My head was maybe at mid-thigh level to someone standing, since I was sitting in a loose Siddhasana on the floor, hanging out and asking the three-and-a-half-hour car ride to get out of my hips. Tim walked past me probably three times before he looked down, and we had some brief eye contact and the hint of a nod. Silent greetings.

As I think about that (and I thought about it more and more as the weekend went on), I am pretty sure that Tim took an "energetic read" of me, sort of scanned me, like you see alien vessels do in Star Trek. No, seriously. Nothing was said, not even a hint of a sound, but there was this PRESENCE of conversation. It was the WEIRDEST damn thing and I still can't get a handle on it (about which I'll say more soon).

One of my students also came up for the Nadi Shodana, so we set out mats at the far left end of the room, for a 12-2:30 session on the second floor, during a day that would hit 85 degrees later that afternoon. Room not full to capacity, but at least 25-30 people, I'd say. It got HOT in there. I'd estimate at LEAST 90 degrees with humidity, by the time we got to the twists.

Tim speaks sacred texts fluently; it's possible that he only carries around a pocketful of the proper Sutras, but I think that's not so. He told us about sushumna, ida and pingala, about how chakras are understood to be the criss-cross meeting points of those three channels, and the story of Shiva and Shakti, separated in the human being, wishing to be united. Unlike Maehle, who is very VERY big on separation (that is, of Purusha/Prakriti, in his Sutras commentary), Tim is very big on union, with the Atman/shining self/call-it-what-you-will. I wound up being very glad that I've been putting all kinds of Maehle into my head as well as sections of _Essence of the Bhagavad Gita_ recently, and that I'd also read the Pradipika and was well acquainted with Satchidananda's Sutras commentary as well. I felt totally at home with all of the sacred texts discussion, and I learned some things too, which I could fit into my base knowledge (like that bit on chakras being sort of "energy intersections" for the three big nadis).

I'll probably do an "asana porn" retelling of the led Intermediate sometime soon, but I don't want to take up this post doing that right now. We did a counted Intermediate, with added research poses for Pasasana, Bhekasana, Kapotasana and Eka Pada Sirsasana. Counted Intermediate in 85+ degree heat is HARD. I was pretty freakin' smoked by Laghuvajrasana, but I kept on. We all did.

After the class, and still in the room, Tim approached me, very much extroverted in energy now, without that uncrossable wall of "observer's mind" with which he walked into the studio, and asked my name and where I was from. That was it. No who have you practiced with, no have you been to India, simply who am I, where do I practice. Indianapolis, I said. The conversation was as with someone he KNOWS, and I also felt that. This is so, so, so hard to make coherent in language.

Let's assume there are koshas. Annamaya, physical form. Food body. Pranamaya, energy body. Moola bandha, that sort of thing. Tim led a practice which I committed with varying degrees of skill. No trouble aside from endurance; Kapo to toes; bailed on EPS on the right side (lateral ligaments aching). Here's what he led for Eka Pada Sirsasana:

1. Reclining pigeon.
2. Virabhadrasana A feet; duck the head under bent knee.
3. From there, Visvamitrasana (which I understand is now called Vasisthasana).
4. From there, the classical Advanced A exit (Eka Pada Koundinyasana II).
5. From there, Eka Pada accessed reclining (which is basically Kashyapasana).
6. From there, the classical exit (kip up the extended foot and come up seated).
7. From there, fold into classical Eka Pada Sirsasana.

8. From there, with lefty back, I lifted to a Chakorasana-ish vinyasa.

All of that on the left side was focus and flow for me and it all worked; fluid, easy, even familiar. I felt the line of energy in Visva and moved my hips to enhance it. Thigh pressed practically against shoulder. It felt GREAT. The Chako exit was near effortless.

Shortly after that, it took me four tries to lift into Pincha, but the asana highlight (if one need be selected) was that series on the second side.

Anyway:

When I get focused in a practice (either for a hard sequence or when I'm gifted with intense focus in any class), my gaze maintains dristi, but I don't sort of "use" my eyes to see with. Someone has said, "feel the pose with the whole body, not just with the part that's stretching." It's like that. There is movement and presence and often joy, but quiet, muted. I can hear myself breathing but I can't think about it. There is the organism processing information, and I'm aware of my body in space, but nothing else is happening.

In a word, that's pratyahara (or a taste of it), but if I just label it without trying to convey the experience in language, it's meaningless. Someone says, "Oh dude I got some pratyahara there." It means nothing. How, to whom, what, is there a measurement we can take? See? Without the experience, it's inaccessible in whatever language.

When Tim came over to me after the class, it was THAT bodymind to which he spoke. I knew this somehow, instantly. And I was aware, as instantly, that my vocal chords and mouth and brain, even, DON'T KNOW HOW TO MAKE THAT LANGUAGE. In the bandhas class, Tim would compare the mind to "putting a child down for a nap." I found that compelling and hilarious, for obvious reasons. But telling him later that I have a one-year-old I need to get back to, felt sort of "trite." Not informationally, but in that the LEVEL of communication was not the, if you will, SACRED ONE. That factoid was spoken in English, not in ________________.

Does that make ANY sense at all?

After that "who are you, where from" chitchat, Tim regarded me with what I felt was friendship, familiarity, but it wasn't "me," it was That Practitioner Whom I Also Am When I'm Not Thinking About It. I just can NOT put language to this.

I felt like, with training on my part, we could potentially communicate telepathically. That's NOT a metaphor.

I felt, after the bandhas and breath class, that I'd found some cool stuff and that he knew that as soon as I did. There was nothing I could tell him about my experience that he didn't already know. It was as if he communicated to (and saw) a more clearly envisioned version of myself than that which *I* communicate with. That blows my freaking mind, ok? Pure and simple!

I'll have another chapter up soon; the bandhas workshop rocked socks. But right now I just cannot push my mind into reckoning with the energy dynamic. It was super cool, but I just can't pin it with language.

The Boy is One! And Stuff...

The boy is a year old: May 31, 2:18 am is his official to-the-minute birthday. Sure, most of his birthing happened on May 30 (starting at about 8 am) but as J will put it, that last 20 minutes makes all the prior hours look easy by comparison.

He's walking, managing a little solid food (mostly play, not much actual eating) and making noises that are obviously some kind of language but not yet English. And apparently he's HUGE: his 3-year-old cousin with whom he spent much of the holiday weekend is only 1 1/2 pounds heavier than he is.

So in short, the boy is pretty fabulous.

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We remain too busy (both teaching summer classes) to dedicate a lot of energy to our relationship. I don't feel any danger in this anymore, but it's still not flattering to describe our dynamic. J will say that there is an intimacy to be had in both doing the same thing (baby care, co-parenting, basically), but I think that that same kind of intimacy can be found in ANY people who work the same hard job together.

J does this combo teaching/administration gig, and just got a request for a book draft (due in May of next year) which she never expected to have to write (it was part of filing a tenure dossier, and to have it on paper made the dossier look more attractive, REGARDLESS of whether or not said book existed). And then as soon as the Trustees OK'd the tenure (yay!) the potentially-interested publisher asked for a full draft. Hah! Irony! You win AND you still get to write the big task. So J's time is given to work, which makes her feel that she doesn't get enough baby time, and then all of her spare time goes to the kid to make up that deficit, and now she has to come up with a book draft on top of all of that, and work's not going to let up when it re-begins hardcore in September. That's a lot of work stress and very little time, and it's all tied up in desire for family intimacy and such, so I'm happy to sit back and not add to the list of things that need energy.

How in the world am I doing that, you ask? An excellent question:

At the start (fall 2008 or so) J and I moved away from each other psycho-emotionally as she/her body began to do a sort of "pregnancy involution" which at first just manifested as massive discomfort (morning sickness, etc). This presented me with two tasks. First, the very common father-to-be task of "hey, what am I going to do with the loss of the frequent sex/intimacy connection to which I am accustomed?" but second, and more interestingly, a whole revisitation of bad-marriage sexlessness and sort of "bad intimacy" from that same relationship (basically, that relationship maintained intimacy, but only as a channel for emotional poison). Flashbacks and bad demonic business, stuff that would have remained quiet if not for a reappearance of long-term sex/intimacy frustration.

Feel free to check any post of mine from about October 2008 to April 2010 for how difficult I found this task and at times how completely badly I handled it.

When breakthroughs came in this, it was all about what the Yoga Sutras call "discriminative knowledge." The solution was not finding a sexual outlet, but instead rechannelling the energy, separating the desire from the self. Yeah, sounds esoteric and in a way, like nonsense, I know.

A friend (and ex) of mine who is a sex educator working in the northeast, has a blog that I won't link to here, but which is loaded with actual useful information about various sexual mythologies (part of her job is to advise and educate college-age women, so you see how hard that can be: merely say "body image" and you start to see the kind of media stuff that she has to try to undo).

Her most recent handful of posts are on (as she put it to me once) "why the term 'sex drive' is bullshit." The answer, to be brief, is that sexual desire is not a drive, like hunger. Hunger is something you feel, the satisfaction of which, returns you to baseline state. It's sort of a numerical binary, 0 and 1. 0, hunger. 1, no longer hungry. Sexual desire, she argues, doesn't work like that, basically because it's not based on lack, and the satisfaction of it doesn't return you to a baseline state. Yeah, it LOOKS like a drive, and it ACTS like a drive, but it isn't one. As she more usefully put it (and I'm paraphrasing), sex is like a tasty candy that is OUTSIDE you, something you're attracted to; it is NOT a "hole in the soul" that needs to be filled with some experience.

Now, if you do theory, like I do, this echoes, because Lacanian psychoanalysis (which is like the Freudian version, just replacing the body with language) tells us that identity is based on lack. You look in the mirror, you seen an "ideal" self and then your own identity doesn't and can't measure up, so identity is constantly threatened with lack and constantly seeking a stability it can never achieve.

It takes a MASSIVE amount of writing and re-theorizing to get away from that toxic idea. An example: Deleuze and Guattari's something-like-FOUR HUNDRED page ANTI-OEDIPUS, where they have to re-envision all of metaphysics in order to undo the privilege of language as detaching us from reality and establishing identity as lack.

And if you read a lot of the Yoga Sutras (or for that matter, even a little Daniel Ingram), it also echoes.

Sutras: The Seen exists for the benefit of the Seer. When non-attachment is mastered, the things of the world do not touch us.

Ingram: (Things are) transient, don't satisfy, and ain't you.

See?

See how this TOTALLY changes the question, and how THAT ALONE is the answer also?

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Here's how it works:

If sex is a drive in an identity based on lack, then it's all tied up intimately with "who we are" and it becomes, potentially, "an answer" for the lacking soul. "If only I can have a relationship, if only I can have a stable sex life, if only I can have blah blah blah...." What does Foucault say in his first volume on the History of Sexuality? We look to sex for "answers" to our innermost questions! And then he spends the whole volume trying to figure out WHY we'd ever do that!

If, however, sex is a sort of tasty candy which is OUTSIDE us and to which we are DRAWN like undisciplined children, then interiority VANISHES, and with it, all of those indissolvable questions about "who I am" and "what I need" and all of that unsolvable nonsense.

KAPOW!!! Did your head just explode or WHAT???

If sex is a THING, and not a DRIVE, then it's basically a shiny automobile, or a new suit, or any of the other objects that draw us in, and that means that it can be both UNDERSTOOD and REFUSED in the same way that those things are.

By "disembodying" the "drive," we see the Lacanian identity house fall down as if it were made of cards, or, as Karen once put it in a quote, "what was so fearful is shown to be made of paper, and can be lightly lifted off."

Then the "lack of intimacy" becomes a FACT, not a felt interior PAIN. It becomes something I can TOUCH, something I can materially RECKON with, not a structural column on which my innermost identity stands, constantly under threat.

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To return to our story,

The way that I'm managing our new relationship-as-parents is to simply SEE that there's not much candy on offer. When I wish there was, I do something else. I read the sacred texts, I read a book for the cool research I'm currently trying to do, I wash baby bottles; whatever. Anything'll do. Sure, sometimes I entertain the desire for a while, and feel it drain away, which is pretty liberating.

And with this comes an understanding I can grasp now and make my own:

I think that for a householder's relationship (let's assume that it's long-term and monogamous because mine is), sex is basically a householding activity, rather like washing dishes. It's just something you do as part of your householder's life. What "was it" before that point? Well, I'm going to speak from my own experience and beliefs, but I used to think that it was something RAD that crazy people did, and the more of it you had, the crazier and more "detached" from boring day-to-day reality you were, and also, the more detached from that boring day-to-day, you could get, the more sex would accrue to you (this is basically the "rock star gets a lot" philosophy). Sex as the EXCEPTIONAL activity, as more PRIMITIVE, as CLOSER TO REALITY, than householding. An act for young people, rad people, revolutionaries. Something that only FAR OUT people do.

And I think that many long-term monogamous relationships (particularly those which turn nearly or totally asexual) actually MAINTAIN sex in this definition. The problem becomes that, as life turns more householder, the idea of sex-as-liberation becomes further and further from reality, and thus, sex becomes something that can only be had on vacation (when you're "away from it all") or in affairs (how secret, how exciting, how transgressive!) or in drunken flings (how "out of control"!) and so on.

So:

It isn't as rad as we think it is, which is fine because

It isn't a building block for identity, which means

It isn't going to make us revolutionary/far out/liberated, which is a relief, because

Our identities don't depend on how much and what kind of sex we get or don't, because

Identity isn't based on lack, and boy howdy are we thankful for that, because

Tasks and desires are simply things in the world, which means

Our enlightenment isn't secondary to our sex "drive" or any drive, for that matter.