One aspect of my blissful volunteer work over the past five years has been helping a group to produce large, erotic parties for our local community. These parties were pretty special. In fact, we had several people who've attended similar parties around the country tell us that what we created was quite unique. We believe this is because we brought an energetic awareness and intention of sacred sexuality to the events. Everyone on staff was trained in holding sacred space--both internally and externally--and in energetic awareness, non-violent conflict resolution, etc. One aspect of staff, separate from security, was called Vibes Patrol. These people were trained to be energetic hosts for the event, practice empathy, and maintain awareness of people who might need encouragement or other assistance. The parties included dj dancing, performances (like erotic acrobats, burlesque, belly dancing, and a whole array of other creative performances spanning the spectrum from vanilla to kinky), a separate dungeon space, food and water to keep people's energy up, and a chill out room for those who might get overwhelmed.

The core staff group over time became a tribe in all of the best possible ways, which is what many of us miss most about the experience.

The leaders of the original group decided not to continue, leaving a void. Over the last several months some of us who miss the parties decided to start a new group that combined both the best of what came before, lessons learned , and potentially add an educational component, offering workshops on a whole array of erotic practices and creativity (I've always wanted to facilitate a body casting workshop for couples!). It took some time to get momentum going, but now we have an event scheduled in May and it's become very real, very fast. As of last night, I am now one of  three women business partners who will be the overall coordinators for the organization and its events. I am so excited! This is another blissful opportunity, like Pride, to use all of my skills in one place: leadership, administrative management, bookkeeping, organizing, art and empathy. In fact, my partners wanted me specifically because of my sense of calm and positive energy. I don't get stressed very often and am highly adaptable/receptive so that I don't get into conflict with the people I work with.

I just can't believe how fast and how good my life is changing. It's like a dream.

This morning is the first time this week that I've been able to settle down and reflect on the immense changes taking place in my life. I think I'm in shock and I'm definitely awed by the amazing creative powers of the Universe. I could have never possibly imagined the Universe would respond to my heart opening so tremendously. Emotionally I'm a little overwhelmed by the bigness and goodness of it all. Can life really be this good for the long term or am I experiencing some kind of fluke that will fade back to into the isolation and frustration of the recent past?

In the last 10 days, these are the changes I've experienced:

I've connected with five different beautiful and wonderful people, both locally and long distance, who contacted me because they find me interesting and inspiring and want to explore the possibility of deeper connection.This is potentially more than just friendship in every instance. No one has shown interest like this for me in over 8 years! Now there are five, all pursuing me without any effort on my part other than being my authentic self? I just can't believe it. Combined with the new friendships and deepening friendships I'm also experiencing, I feel like I'm no longer searching for my tribe but actually in the midst of creating it.

I am an entrepreneur. I never dreamed I'd say that about myself and it sounds weird and intimidating. I am starting a business and creating bliss work that I didn't even realize was a possibility as work of my heart. Can I really make money by creating sacred space for sexual and creative growth and connection? This is bliss work for my partners as well, so the evolutionary journey for us individually and collectively promises to be deep and exciting.

We started production meetings for The Laramie Project. Now it's not just an intellectual idea of something to come, but an experience requiring immediate time and energy.

My son is actually being wooed by Columbia University. They contacted this week and have indicated that he is in the top of his class, so they are flying him out to New York next weekend to visit the school, participate in a conference and more. How amazing is that? I didn't even know colleges did things like that.

And last, but certainly not least, I got a 90 day lay off notice from my work the day before yesterday due to the state budget cuts. Now I know this seems like something I should be freaked out about, but truly, I'm not. For one, life is too damn good right now. Also, I've known it's time to move on and this gives me enough time to create the next professional step.  I am already in the process of applying for a new position as volunteer coordinator for an organization that matches adult advocates with children in the court system. Not only am I drawn to the community served, but this position could be the perfect transition from administration to more direct service. If I get it, I'd be interviewing, matching, training and supporting the volunteer advocates. And serendipity has been at play...one of my new friends used to work with this agency and gave me lots of useful information, as well as connected me with the woman who created the position. I've never had networking happen like that for a job possibility before so I'm encouraged by the magic of it all. No expectations, but definitely some hope.

So this morning I feel stunned and am trying to settle into all this change by honoring all the emotions that arise as I reflect on each situation. Part of me wants to cry--just for the release. Part of me wants to dance wild. Part of me wants to climb on the roof and shout out my immense love for Life and God and Love and Being. Part of me wants to curl up in bed and hibernate in an effort to just slow down.

I'm realizing my lesson in Presence is changing. Instead of working in isolation to keep negativity at bay by being in the moment, I must instead maintain presence so that I don't get carried away into all this activity without intention and awareness. I don't want to slip into the all too common busy/stressed American role.  A full life is good if it  is managed consciously.  But I have to be aware of my need for downtime...10 straight nights of commitments is not the best way of being for me!   

You darkness from which I come,
I love you more than all the fires
that fence out the world,
for the fire makes a circle
for everyone
so that no one sees you anymore.

But darkness holds it all:
the shape and the flame,
the animal and myself,
how it holds them,
all powers, all sight -

and it is possible: its great strength
is breaking into my body.

I have faith in the night.

-Rainer Maria Rilke

April is national poetry month and the poems are flowing in all kinds of places. I love this one by Rilke. I had never seen it before today.

"Life has been your art.
You have set yourself to music.
Your days are your sonnets." Oscar Wilde

Do you ever have one of those weeks where nearly everything you read seems to have a serendipitous message and/or validation that your journey is headed in the right direction? This is one of those weeks. Perhaps because I'm so tired, it's hard to muster my own words for how I want to communicate the amazing experiences that I'm living. So I'll use others to help me...

"Seek out that particular mental attribute which makes you feel most deeply and vitally alive, along with which comes the inner voice which says, "This is the real me," and when you have found that attitude, follow it." William James

I think I have finally found the real me and I'm so much more than I imagined. I am wild at heart...wild in that I am adventuring into emotional wonderlands that defy most our culture's conditioning about relationship and sex. The more time I spend in relationship to others who respond to my authenticity, the more I understand what my own unique nature is that seeks to be manifested in the world.

Some from the new tribe got together for dinner the other night, and to watch one of the most wonderful and authentic movies about sex and relationship ever made: Shortbus. Some of us had seen it before, some of us hadn't. But to watch it with a room full of people who groove with the movie and each other in such a beautiful way was just amazing. Most of us were a big cuddle pile in front of the tv. There's something magical about so much friendly contact: cuddling, leaning into one another, laying heads on laps and running fingers through hair, everyone's hands making contact with at least two other people's skin at all times, just touching lightly with fingertips or massaging...the kind of contact that makes you feel cherished.

I feel cherished. I feel so incredibly loved. I can't imagine life can get much better than this. And yet I imagine the Universe's laughter at such an idea. Many of these are new friends, so much more is yet to come as the connections deepen. There is so much yet to come from participating in providing our with community a creative, healing and sacred experience. There is so much more bliss to be lived.

"Remember, there is one word you are here to say with your whole being. When it finds you, give your life to it. Don't be tight-lipped and stingy. Spread yourself completely on the saying. Be one word in the great love poem we are writing together." Oriah Mountain Dreamer

I thought I had found my word, but I'm beginning to understand that there is much more of me to be integrated into one word than the ones I've picked before. I thought it was generosity. Or empathy. But maybe my word is relationship. Maybe it is openness. I am experiencing bliss near daily because I get to hang out and care for some of the most remarkable souls I've known. People who are courageous, rebellious, freaky, smart, funny, conscious, and so incredibly open to loving. People who want to evolve through relationship.

I feel it now: there's a power in me
to grasp and give shape to my world.
I will sing you as no one ever has,
...streaming through widening channels
into the open sea. Rilke

I feel a new power in me and I am aware it is only beginning to emerge.

"When an old culture is dying, the new is created by a few people who are not 
afraid to be insecure." Rudolf Bahro

Yes...and where do our deepest insecurities lie? In intimate relationship: where we are afraid we will be truly seen to be lacking in some way; where we are afraid no one wants to love the real, authentic us; where we are afraid there is not enough love and affection to go around.  

I am beginning to understand my role as artist and community leader is also the role of cultural healer. Everything I am drawn to do is about healing....healing our fears about sex and intimacy, healing our fears about play and spontaneity, healing our fears of and wounds in the queer community.

"You can think of the groundlessness and openness of insecurity as a  
chance that we're given over and over to choose a fresh alternative. 
Things happen to us all the time that open up the space. This spaciousness, 
this wide open, unbiased, unprejudiced space is inexpressible and fundamentally
good and sound. It's like the sky."  Pema Chodron

My heart is flying. And serendipitously, my horoscope from Rob Brezny last 
week only affirms I'm headed in the right direction.  : )

"CANCER: In recent years there has been a rash of climbers shedding all their 
clothes on Mount Everest. A sherpa by the name of Lakpa Tharke claims the 
world's record for high-altitude nudity, having stood skyclad for three minutes 
at the 29,035-foot summit. Some Nepali authorities are seeking a ban on such 
displays, believing that it defiles the revered mountain. "How would Westerners 
feel about people stripping in church?" they ask. Not meaning any disrespect to 
them, I urge you, Cancerian, to make "in the buff on the holy mountaintop" 
your power metaphor of the week. Blend sacredness and nakedness in any 
way that appeals to your imagination, especially if it's in high places or 
makes you high." Rob Brezny

I am having a whole different struggle with ego now. I'm finding that sometimes, like earlier today, when I don't have anything planned for the evening and there are no more emails to respond to (and I'm not in presence), I feel disappointed. Between the spaces of awareness, I am forming an attachment to being in relationship to others. It isn't that I'm becoming attached to one particular person, or even a certain kind of relationship, I just want to be relating all the time.

I can see multiple sources for the attachment. One, it has been so long since I've felt like part of a tribe, or even a family. My family is tiny--kids, me, ex, mom, dad, sister, that's the whole kaboodle--and mom, dad and sis live thousands of miles away. I have always compensated by forming bonds with large, extended non-bio-related families/tribes, until I got married. Then I withdrew into home and a one-on-one relationship. Because of my lack of boundaries with my empathy, I became as fearful and anxious around people as my ex was, which kept the friendships I had from being nurtured. The tribe experiences I did have during my marriage--my writer's group, my spiritual community--were not quite the same as previous had been. I held back. We only spent time together once a month or so. The intimacy was limited, the physical connections even moreso. I like having a network of intimate friends who spend a lot of time together in various configurations.

Two, my authentic self is being so incredibly validated as beautiful and desired and interesting and even awe-inspiring. I've had multiple people tell me that they are in awe of me for various reasons in the last couple weeks. My friends, new and old, mirror the best parts of myself back to me. I no longer feel like I need to hold back. I don't feel like a dork or weirdo. The more I am myself, the more loving reflections are given back to me. I've been so hungry to be loved for who I really am, I just can't get enough. I think I'm also afraid it's going to go away, so I should get as much as I can when I can. I need to relax into it and just let it be, take it as it comes and find joy in the times of solitude in between. Because really, I need my downtime. I need space to write, to read, to just be with and in awareness. 

What's comforting is that this ego struggle isn't big or overwhelming. It's just something I'm aware of on the edges of my consciousness, little thoughts that pass by now and then. I get a little pang of emotion with them, but I can tune back into awareness and a feeling of being loved and held by the Universe fairly easily.   It may take some strong attention to maintain it at first, but I can get there. If this is what it's like to live in oneness most of the time, I wonder what it's like for those who experience it all the time?

"Once you start to awaken, no one can ever claim you again for the old patterns. Now you realise how precious your time here is. You are no longer willing to squander your essence on undertakings that do not nourish your true self; your patience grows thin with tired talk and dead language. You see through the rosters of expectation which promise you safety and the confirmation of your outer identity. Now you are impatient for growth, willing to put yourself in the way of change. You want your work to become an expression of your gift. You want your relationship to voyage beyond the pallid frontiers to where the danger of transformation dwells.[…]

When you begin to sense that your imagination is the place where you are most divine, you feel called to clean out of your mind all the worn and shabby furniture of thought. You wish to refurbish yourself with living thought so that you can begin to see. As Meister Eckhart says: Thoughts are our inner senses. When the inner senses are dull and blurred, you can see nothing in or of yourself; you become a respectable prisoner of received images. Now you realise that 'eternal vigilance is the price of liberty' and you undertake the difficult but beautiful path to freedom. On this journey, you begin to see how the sides of your heart that seemed awkward, contradictory and uneven are the places where the treasure lies hidden. You begin to become true to yourself. And as Shakespeare says in Hamlet: To thine own self be true, then as surely as night follows day, thou canst to no man be false.

The journey shows you that from this inner dedication you can reconstruct your own values and action. You develop from your own self-compassion a great compassion for others. You are no longer caught in the false game of judgement, comparison and assumption. More naked now than ever, you begin to feel truly alive. You begin to trust the music of your own soul; you have inherited treasure that no one will ever be able to take from you. At the deepest level, this adventure of growth is in fact a transfigurative conversation with your own death. And when the time comes for you to leave, the view from your death bed will show a life of growth that gladdens the heart and takes away all fear."  --John O’Donohue

"The power of love came into me,
and I became fierce like a lion,
then tender like the evening star." Rumi

I am learning much about myself as I open myself to the polyamorous lifestyle. I am seeing how much I have evolved concerning relationship, intimacy and attachment. And I see how I still need to evolve, let go, claim presence.

I used to be obsessive and clingy, even when I attempted polyamory the first time around. I didn't know how to just let a relationship be, without trying to box it up into some defined experience. I didn't know how to be in love without trying to make it my primary relationship in some form or fashion. I had lots of expectations about what words, actions and behaviors were supposed to mean and imply about the future. I lived in attachment.

What I'm experiencing now is very interesting. Mostly, my witness sees attachment arise now and then, or old ideas about how relationship is supposed to be (or the need to feel special), and then I realize that those attachments and ideas are not who I am anymore and I can just let them go.  Most of the time it's as if I'm immediately responding with what I think I'm supposed to feel instead of what I actually feel and then I realize: hey, I don't really feel that. Like jealousy. My cultural and other conditioning says that I should be jealous when the person I feel a very deep connection with tells me about time given to other lovers; I should worry that there isn't enough to be shared; or I should compare myself to the others and try to come out on top as more special in some way. Something will be said or done that my ego immediately reacts to, but usually the witness follows almost instantly and I realize that is not who I am anymore.

And then there are the few moments where the thoughts and feelings to be processed go deeper. There are moments when old wounds echo in my heart, old fears arise, and the desire to belong overwhelms me. There are moments that I realize I am forming attachment to someone and it is not the right or best thing for either of us right now.

I happened across this today...

"When we are attached to a certain person, place or thing we lose perspective on the purpose they serve in our lives. For instance, if you are attached to a person you leave little room for growth as that attachment will lead you to your fears of jealousy, betrayal and abandonment. It is when you let go of these attachments that they become free to show you who you really are, as they are but a mirror of who you are in life. And so let go of all attachments and this will help you to move forward in life. There is no one person who is anymore important than another, as We are All ONE. ONE in God's eyes, and ONE in your own eyes if you recognize the Truth that ALL is LOVE, from LOVE and of LOVE. There is so much love and respect for each and every one of you, let go of your attachments and find God in each and every person, place and thing you come into contact with." Kathleen Mulligan

Ultimately, I know I am loved, cherished, appreciated and desired. What more do I need than that? How much physical relating I do doesn't diminish that reality. Whether my lover shares themselves with others doesn't diminish that reality. The love and friendship is there no matter how much time we spend together or who else we share ourselves with.

"We are creatures who are married to the great unknown,
we are creatures who are married to loss...

Life is making a house of belonging...

Life is infinitely merciful and it is constantly coming to our door
to invite us out into much larger homes than we imagine
we can belong to in the first place."  David Whyte

I've been writing about the new business that I am involved with as a partner. The Impropriety Society finally has a decent website so that you can see what it is I've been up to and the unconventional service we provide to our community (warning: the site has adult content).

My greatest contribution to the organization is creating the content for the conscious energy awareness aspect of our staff trainings. I am also drafting intention statements that will begin all of our staff meetings. It's vital to me that everyone who chooses to work with us is committed to consciously participating in creating a safe physical, emotional and energetic space for people to explore their most authentic creative and erotic selves. We are honored and privileged to hold the trust of our community to provide sacred and safe space to play in, and everyone who is participating in producing our events needs to realize that if we are to succeed.
 

Our Mission:

The Impropriety Society is a Humboldt County based group aimed at promoting sexual self-awareness, providing opportunities for the exploration and celebration of erotic ideas and desires while respecting the boundaries of others, and showing community acceptance and support for a variety of sexual preferences and lifestyles.

About Us:

The Impropriety Society is a pansexual organization open to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities. The Society was started by a group of open-minded and open-hearted individuals who represent a slice of the surrounding Humboldt community. Members of this group are no different in their daily lives and interactions than anyone else. We are your neighbors, friends, colleagues, and co-workers; we are part of this community. What makes us unique and brings us together are the kinky or otherwise sexually eccentric ideas we discuss and act upon both in our private lives and within the local pansexual community.

Sex is so potent, powerful, and special that we feel it should be acknowledged and celebrated as an enormous force capable of creating good in the world. The Impropriety Society is committed to nurturing sacred space for sexual expression in all of its glorious manifestations. Things deemed sacred are regarded with reverence and generally thought of as good; however, many people have ideas about sex that set it apart from the sacred, and view it as dirty, bad, sick, nasty, and evil. Our goal is to remove the negative stigma around sex. Through active, conscious creation, we aim to create space in which sex in its many forms can come out of the dark taboo of profanity and into the light of the sacred through dance, music, performance, play, kink, f**k, and love.