This is Not a Woman's World Part 3
by Richard Harvey on 11/07/15
[continued
from last week's BLOG]
Continuing
this marvellous litany of healing virtues, the next is I am suppressing the
gift of really listening to Life or the other... sometimes it gets obstructed
by the impulse of telling people what needs to be done. Nothing is
stationary, no thing stands still, everything is in a process of change and
transformation. The difficulty therefore with attempting to bring about change
is that in the very process of trying to make it happen we miss the fact that
change is already taking place. We may not be able to change the change that is
happening. We may not be able to hinder the natural processes of life, however
we may become unaware or even oblivious to them when we are caught up in the
impulse to interfere.
In healing
therapy as well as in life itself we are wise to harmonize our interventions
with the natural energies of existence. When we go against existence we are
sure to become frustrated. Therefore, the wise person only intervenes in a way
that is confluent with the forces of natural energy and change. Tell people
what needs to be done, by all means, but be clear about where this impulse is
coming from. If it is from the ego-self then it is in conflict with the natural
forces of developing life. These forces sometimes lead us into creative chaos
or fruitful stillness or a thunderstorm of change. When they do it is just like
the ego-self to want to intervene and set everything straight again. There is a
part of us that resists natural change and transformation. When the ego-self
feels like interfering bring your awareness intensely to the situation and
contemplate how you can tolerate chaos, the interruption to routine and habit,
the upsetting of the structures and template of present life, in order to
surrender to some greater change and development. If your impulse is impeding
natural growth and development then stop and tolerate the process as it grows
into fullness. The whole of life is full of a series of changes, changes that
challenge the conservative ego and our imagined sense of security. Listen to
life and be receptive to the changing events and circumstances. Meet them all
with dignity and courage. Then in the fullness of grace you will live into full
surrender and live the truth that in life you need not be angry or controlling,
frustrated or opposed, but rather you can accept the gift of life by receiving,
by listening in the fullest sense of the word and opening your heart to life's
blessings.
Next is
I am suppressing the big part of me that loves to hug, to say loving nicknames,
to hug, to caress others. Since we were young we have learned to suppress
emotions and spontaneity. As we grow older that early conditioning becomes
calcified and fixed. In an effort to fit in, to behave acceptably to the culture,
we suppress our life force, our energy, our sexuality, our awareness, our soul,
and our uninhibited spontaneity. Regain the freedom you forfeited in early life
by actively rebelling against this suppression of your life essence! Allow
yourself to behave in natural ways that are uninhibited and unrestrained. Then
and only then may you in time realize your inner stillness, the deep truth of
your connection with all life, with all beings and, following your process of
release from the conditioning, attain a place of balance in which you are
hugging and caressing the world even as the world is hugging and caressing you
and you live in the heart embrace of unity.
And
finally, When I make love I am suppressing the enjoyment of foreplay... it
almost always gets lost in favor of the urge to come to climax and get it over
with. In healing-listening it is just our ability to be with the other in
the moment that is effective. Why does this simple—or apparently simple—ability
yield such profound results in relationship, connection, and healing?
People do
not live life—they think life. We have been indoctrinated to think everything.
We think a picture of who we are. We live a narrative of our life. We live a
fairy story of our primary love relationship, a romance of prescribed events
condoned by society, hardly anyone is living outside the box. We discuss today
the topic of artificial intelligence, robots have been under discussion for a
long time, mind control, systems of belief, indoctrination. These topics are
discussed as if they are in the future, whereas they are of course here-now and
very present. Almost everyone you know is indoctrinated. It is a radical insult
to humanity. How have we created a world of people who are automatons? Who
cannot think, feel, or behave for themselves? Everything is done with an
ulterior motive. No one does anything without a view to the outcome of their
actions. Hardly anyone is present, living here in this moment at this time. No
wonder we are so alienated in our society; no one is here, not even ourselves.
When we
eat we are elsewhere, when we drive the car we are fantasizing being at our
destination, when we are studying we internalize a picture of the grades we
will achieve, and when we are making love we are oriented to the climax of the
act.
Life is
desired and desirable only if it is a copious ejaculation, a mighty orgasm of
imagined delight. We move ahead with one idea only—toward purposeful ecstasy.
Yet ecstasy is not purposeful and a fantasy is not really authentically
delightful; it is merely a thought.
Try
taking this insight to people and they will glaze over. They will deny it
inevitably. They have been pre-programmed to eat the menu, to enjoy the
vacation in the glossy brochure. They see their friends, their partners, and
their loved ones through a veil of idealized fantasy, the product of a lifetime
of pre-programmed propaganda.
Take a
group of people who are willing and conduct a process workshop with them
together. Have them become aware of breath, aware of their bodies in movement
and in repose. Have them eat and taste food, the textures, the experience of
the eating and the digesting. Have them look into each other's eyes and occupy
the soul-space behind the looking itself. Have them learn again to touch and be
touched, to hear each other, to listen to the sounds of life, of their own
bodies, of voices, of birds, of music. Have them look and see with new eyes in
order to not merely look but to see without expectation, assumptions, or
pre-programming for the first time what is before them. Have them walk in
truth, holding another's hand and feeling what it is like to be together, to
talk and breathe and hug and love with another human being and then another and
finally a group. Have them learn to speak truth from the heart, from the depths
of their being, from their soul, speak truth to each other without guilt or
shame or repression or inhibition.
You touch
on something very important here—in fact several important points. You say When
I make love I am suppressing the enjoyment of foreplay... but this is not
making love. When you suppress you are not making love When there is no joy you
are not making love and when there is no play you are not making love. Perhaps
what you mean is duty, going through the motions, energetic release, the
machinations of sexual intercourse but it is not truly making love. I suspect
it is a picture, a picture created by the mind, a kind of inner movie that is
played out in physical life—an inner movie of making love. Just these clues are
enough to transform the fiction of "making love." No suppression, no
lack of joy, no lack of play. Without these what is there? The essence, the
soul, the truth, and uninhibited spirit, the wildness and ecstasy of human
connection and psycho-physical, emotional, spiritual communication: the great
depth of wild joy, illimitable enjoyment of the dance of pure ecstasy in the
moment and the lightness, the humor, the innocence and freedom of
playfulness and play for its own sake, without anywhere to go, not with any
goal in mind other than present delight.
You say it
almost always gets lost in favor of the urge to come to climax and get it over
with. When we lead life with a view to outcome, orientated to the future,
to the goal, to the end result inevitably our fantasy collides with the
ending... and the ending is death. Strangely enough there is nothing quite so
comforting as death, the end of effortfullness, the end of pain and sadness,
anger and fear... nothing quite as secure and sure as death with its resolve,
its resolution, its fantasy of eternal rest and heavenly happiness.
This too
is a picture and if you were raised in the west it is the indoctrination you
received about life. Live and endure the pain, the suffering, and receive your reward
in heaven. But the indoctrination of heavenly rewards has driven us to be
end-orientated. We make love to climax and get it over with, we live through
the year to get to the last day and get it over with and start all over again.
We are happy when Christmas has finished and we get it over with, happy at the
end of the working day, when the long school summer holidays have ended, when
our periods of study or training or commitment or even holidays and breaks are
over and we get it over with and can get back to work. We "look
forward" to what?
The
remedy is to try life, try living. Embrace life. It is a mystery you will never
fathom. But to live in this mystery without indoctrination, because that is not
living is to risk, is to be alive, feel alive, to breathe, to
experience, to not conform, to be true to yourself, to stop chasing your
orgasm, the climax of life, but live!
If you want to try a very powerful exercise with yourself and/or close friends, try discussing how you make love. Contained in an honest account of how you make love is everything you need to know about yourself or another. There is nothing else... nothing else other than the real experience of sacred-spiritual life lived freely... with no limits.
BLOG entry #17