Tuesday, July 25, 2017

Married: go on a non-date. Searching for someone: go on a non-date.

Week Three, Day Six: ENLIGHTENMENT
LIGHT = light
Lighten up
Lighten your load
Lighten their load
Go ahead and be imperfect

Sad truth, real truth. We are not perfect. You aren’t perfect. Your partner isn’t perfect.
If you are looking for someone, they won’t be perfect.
If you are looking for someone, you won’t be perfect.

Tips for finding someone:
DON’T GO ON A DATE.
Don’t make it at night.
Don’t include dinner and any alcohol.
Don’t include entertainment where you are looking at a movie screen or a stage instead of each other.
Don’t talk about your tastes, your school, your family, your childhood.
Don’t try to impress.
Don’t interview: this isn’t about finding someone to fit your mold.

DO GO ON A HANG OUT/ FUN TIME/ DISCOVERY FEAST
Ask the person to do something you like.
You like nature: ask them on a hike or a canoe ride.
You like books: ask them to hang out at a book store.
You like quiet conversation: ask them to coffee or to small meal for lunch at a quiet place that has cheap and high quality food.
You don’t like high quality food?
This book probably isn’t for you.

DO ASK ABOUT: WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU?
DO SHARE: WHAT’S IMPORTANT TO YOU.

LISTEN AS MUCH AS YOU TALK.
MABYE WITH A TIMER.
MAYBE NOT.

Ask questions.
Give them lots of time for the answers.
Be happy.
Explore what happiness means to you.
Explore what happiness means to them.
Be present: what is going on right now for you.
Ask about their present: what is going on right now for them.

And what good is that going to do?
Well, let’s get real.
Sex is great and it’s only so many hours a day.
What are you going to do the rest of your time?
What makes you happy?
What do you enjoy about being with another person?

If it’s only going out to dinner and movies and whatnot, you’re going to have to stay busy to be happy, and your life is going to be a somewhat empty blur.
If that’s good enough, you wouldn’t be reading a book called Love, Lust and Enlightenment.

So, what's the game in the non-dating strategy:

Enlightenment Game # 14: Go on a Non-date
If you are married, have the non-date before or after the date, because married people tend to get stuck in stay at home and do nothing (which usually means wasting time on the Internet).
And after or before the date, spend an hour really getting to know each other.
Look for the light.
What is great about the person you are with?
What would you love to hear more about?
What vulnerable wish or desire would you like to share? (No complaints, or secret victim crap. But a desire: more love making. A vacation in Moscow. A Saturday in bed)

And if you aren’t married and don’t know each other yet:
Make sure it’s not in the evening and doesn’t include dinner nor alcohol nor any entertainment.
Talk.
Take turns talking.
Talk for five minutes each.
Ask questions in your turn if you want.
Talk about your deepest wishes for the most amazing life possible.
Do not complain, talk about, or “share” your prior romantic messes.
This is not the point.
This can come later, when there is a reckoning of “I’m not so perfect, let me tell you my prior fuck-ups.”
Not a good idea for the first non-date or two.
Just be pleasant.
Just be curious.
Just be honest.
Just be present.

That’s a lot.

Good.

And then, how can we get more to the “light” in enlightenment, and have our non-date be in the light, or the pre or post non-date for the married couple, how can we use this time together to be moving toward our greatest life purpose?
Ask.
Explore, not explain.
Be okay with the IDK.

Enlightenment Game # 15: Explore your and their biggest Life Purpose.

What is your biggest Life Purpose?
For many people, it is to understand their Life Purpose.
This is a very fine Goal.
This is a very fine purpose.

This can be the non-date that will change your life.
This can be the non-date that will eliminate the superficial person you are going to hate in three years.
This can be the time for married couples to fall back in love.
We always sense a deeper and amazing part of someone we commit to marrying.
And usually, we get lost in the busy-ness of our life together and forget the deeper purpose.
Our deeper purpose.
Our partner’s deeper purpose.
Our mutual deeper purpose.

This is gold. Hang out here and deepen and deepen and deepen.
Summary of Week Three, Day Six: ENLIGHTENMENT

If you are single, go on a  non-date.
If you are married, go on a non-date before or after the “date.”
Seek the light.
The light of purpose and glow that is central to you and to them.
The lightening up that comes from being heavy handed with ourselves and allowing ourselves to be children again: what is the heaven we want?
What is the big dream?

How much fun to explore this together.

Monday, July 24, 2017

forgiveness = enlightenment, sort of

Week Three, Day Five: ENLIGHTENMENT
FORGIVENESS makes a huge difference

Letting go of resentments makes a difference
Getting back to now makes all the difference
Emotions are often the slave to our thoughts
We are often the slave to our emotions
No freedom often means no love
Forgiveness is a path to freedom

Today is the day to return to the earlier experiment/ game: Do we want to be free/ present, or do we want to suffer.
We’re going to be a little clever and create three charts today: The Believing the Story/ Suffering Chair
and the Pretend Forgiveness with Qualifications Chair
and the Who Would I be without the Thought: as Inquiry, not demand

This is a strange and powerful world.
The lead motivation is curiosity and learning.
The incentive to start this process is a familiar one: we are sick of our suffering and want a way out.
And, here’s the ass kick: the way out is NOT TO ATTEMPT TO STOP OUR SUFFERING.
Nah.
It’s to get curious: HOW AM I CREATING AND MAINTAINING MY SUFFERING.

And you don’t have to believe the usual new age deep wisdom, that is actually ancient wisdom: we create our own suffering.
Or, as the Buddha would say: attachment to delusion is the cause of suffering.
What is the delusion: that what we say goes.
As in: My father shouldn’t have been so mean and critical.
I can say that.
I can believe that.
A whole bunch of fellow children of mean fathers can agree. We can all whine together, or pray together, or whack on pillows together, or even go for pseudo forgiveness together (he did his best).
And here’s where the rubber hits the road.

Is my set of words the TRUTH?
This is a question for curiosity, not belief system.
Is it TRUE that my father shouldn’t have been mean and critical?

The honest answer is: I don’t know.
I can wish he wouldn’t have been that way.
As I just said, I can get a lot of fellow “abused by mean father” folk to agree: you are right.
And being right won’t do shit to change reality: he was mean and critical.
So my statement, “My father shouldn’t have been mean and critical” comes up for me, when I ask, Is it true?  with the answer: I don’t know.

Aside, but a very important aside: the I don’t know, aka the IDK, is an extremely fertile, vibrant and creative place to live. If we knew everything right away, we’d be God, or bored. To not know, is to have more to learn.
To have more to learn is one of the aspects of why life on Earth is so heavenly.

Back to the WORK of Byron Katie, which is the work of Buddha, or the work of Jesus, or the work of anyone who wants to be free from suffering and/or love their enemy.
PS: they are the same.

The second question: Is it absolutely true? that my “father shouldn’t have been so mean and critical, brings up a big fat No.
If I’m God, and I absolutely know what right and wrong in the universe, then I can say the should and the shouldn’t.
Since I’m not God, to demand that my father have been different is to demand that God have done a better job.
Which gets tricky.
Is God a sadist?
Or was I given a father to teach me what I needed to learn?

The third Question: How do I react when I believe the thought?  of “My father shouldn’t have been so mean and critical”  gives us a chance to play in two chairs.

Suffering Chair #1: Sit in a new chair and totally believe that “my father shouldn’t have been so mean and critical.”
Feel what happens.
Write all that down.
Sad, hurt, angry, cheated, not trusting older men, wanting to trash him with my words, constricted, small, victim.
The usual. (You’ll discover the consequences of believing the various shoulds and shouldn’ts are remarkably similar. They are the pattern of the Victim we have each chosen.)

Now go the the Suffering Chair #2, which is Pretend Forgiveness.
Ask “who or what would I be without this thought?”  and then replace it with a bunch of qualifying thoughts:
Like, “if all fathers were like that, what would the world be.”
“If I let him get away with that, I’ll be weak.”
“Not to be upset about that is to give up all my values.”

The list goes on and on, and the net result is: you haven’t given up the should or shouldn’t thought, you’ve just converted it.

And write down: how do you feel in the pseudo-forgiveness, staying right chair.

This is inquiry.
It’s about what thoughts we put into our mind and what are the results. If you know math, it’s kind of the definition of a function: put in something for X and what happens when you do Y = X to the third, plus 3?
Have the "Yes but, I’m still right…” formula in your mind and what happens to your emotions.

The old phrase is: you can be right or you can be happy.

How not to be right?
Don’t have any thought.

So question four and the third chair is Who or what would you be without that thought?
Go to the third chair.
Don’t have the thought.
Be present.
Follow your breathing.
Think of gratitude.
Do an energy/ happiness exercise.
Don’t have the thought for even three seconds.
What’s left?

You don’t HAVE to give up the thought.
You can, if you want freedom and the ability to love, GIVE UP FOR A FEW SECONDS the thought, and SEE WHAT HAPPENS.
THIS IS DISCOVERY.

A new function. Put “no thought” into the you of you, and see what happens.

Note. This isn’t “Ah, shucks, my father had some great moments.”
Nope. This is heavy duty inner experimenting: I imagine my father snarling at me, his face all red and mean.
And I don’t have the story that he should be any different.

What happens.
I don’t take it personally.
I’m free.

And more.
I keep watching without taking it personally. He keeps ranting.
I can now, since it’s not about ME any more, see how much pain he is in. How trapped in his habits. How cut off from loving me, which is what he really wanted to do. How much training in self and other hatred he’d had.
So, I feel sad for him, compassion in a word, and not sad for me.

He was trapped. Probably believing lots of stories in his head, and having been trained in suffering by them. And he couldn’t get beyond that.

I can.
If I chose this chair.

And, this is about learning, not about “fixing it.”

So I go back to chair #1 and believe the story. How do I feel? Wow, it all comes back, all that suffering.
I go back to chair #2 and keep the being right stance. How do I feel? That cold and protected suffering comes back, the pain of the righteous.
And back to #3: who are I without the thought?
What is left.
Nothing.
And it’s a big and very freeing nothing.

Be still and know I am God.
When Carol and I had our twelve hour discovery session, we shared Bible verses. Two of my favorite where “Love your enemies” and “Be anxious in nothing and rejoice in everything and give thanks first, before you petition God for anything.”
One of hers was Be Still and know I am God.
This is when I was pretty sure: we are going to be great together. Because being still is the way to the silence that sets us free, or is the real present, or is the core of meditation.
It’s lots.
It’s the path to God.

It’s also what happens in the third chair, from the “no thought” of “Be still and know I am God” which is presented as: “Who or what am I without the thought”….
We can be who we really are.

Which is????
Find out.
Find out.
Find out for yourself.
Over and over and over again.

Take all your troubles and run them through the three chairs. 
Drag them though the four questions.
Get deeply curious about how you cause your own suffering.
Be deeply curious about who you are when we get still and allow yourself to be God.
Not the God that some present: the one who KNOWS ALL>
No, this is a quieter, more amazing God: the God of no thought, and all…..
All what?
You discover.
It’s the core of you.
It’s worth the “work” of un-doing all our suffering to find out who we really are.

Enjoy.
Delight.
Expand.
Get free.

Good.

And what specifically is today’s game?
All the above. 
Enlightenment Game #  13
Take a should or a shouldn’t that you are unhappy around.
Write it down.
Ask: Is it true?
Ask: Can I absolutely know that this is true?
Ask:
In Suffering Chair #1, totally believing this: how do I feel and react?
In Suffering Chair #2: When I have “smart” reasons to be right, and how do I feel and react
Try out, as curiosity, and for even a small amount of time
Question four/ The freedom Chair: Without the thought, who or what am I
Keep Learning: Keep bouncing between the chairs and learn what there is to learn

This is Work.
This doesn’t happen magically.
And… 
it can save years of therapy.
And..
it can create an inner and almost instant tool to de-attach from our suffering
And..
it can help us realize the power of curiosity
And…
it can show us how quickly freedom and ease, aka forgiveness, can be part of our joy and freedom


Summary of Week Three, Day Five: ENLIGHTENMENT
You don’t have to be stuck.
Play the game and discover:
One, how you make yourself miserable.
Two, what else you could do.
Not, you “have to” do.
Not, you “should” do.
But, you could.
Curiosity and learning are tools for a good life until the day we die.

Good.

Friday, July 21, 2017

Don't read this unless you want an amazing sex life

Week Three, Day Three: LUST
Life is Good
Stroke Her Clitoris
For Fifteen Minutes


This is weird.
This is wonderful.
This is a game and life changer.
If done in the context of Love and Enlightenment. 
If done as a wonderful, slightly bizarre addition to your sex life, it WILL make for some great pleasure. 
WILL make for some daily oxytocin. 
WILL make for a deeper connection between a man and a woman (or two women. Sorry Gay guy couples: This is a clitoris thing. Imagine your own version. It will work).

And, without the love to help you communicate and forgive, it can make things more volatile and out of control.
And, with the commitment to and joy in the now of the everyday Enlightenment we are aiming for in this work, it can turn into a delightful addiction, much safer and cheaper than almost any other addiction. And still: without commitment to presence, not really connecting you to your deeper layers.

And you might be having so much fun, you don’t care.
Oh, well.
For awhile, too much fun is just the right amount.

And, what’s this hooey all about?
Let’s call it the Female Orgasm and Awareness Meditation. It’s got other names, but FOAM has a certain charm to it.
The important highlights are:
Orgasm.
Awareness.
Meditation.
(Female kind of goes with the clitoris territory, AND the emphasis on her, and the one way-ness of this meditation make it powerful in subtle ways that build and build and build.

Female>  It’s about her.
She has zero attention on pleasing him.
She might feel in her being his pleasure at her pleasure, but that is not her goal.
So much of sex is one person worrying about the other, and women, as the caretakers, often fall for this deeply.
Not in this mediation. She lays back. The other strokes. She is saturated with pleasure, which we’ll call…

Orgasm.
Is not climax.
It can include climax, but is basically the flooding of pleasure.
And the acceptance of that flood without needing to blow it out the top with a climax.

Awareness.
Of the touch.
Of the stroke.
Of the pleasure.
Of all the places in the body the pleasure is being felt.
Of the breath.

Meditation.
All that awareness is for both partners.
It’s in the now.
It’s not trying for anything.
It’s not holding back because of “too much” pleasure.
It’s not grasping for “more” pleasure.
It’s just right now, breath, touch, sensation in both partners, in both bodies in this moment.

Meditation, 2:
As this builds, each partner will feel not only what is happening in their body, but in the body of their partner.
This is strange.
This is wonderful.
This changes a lot about a relationship.





How does this work?
This is a starter explanation. Individual coaching is a good idea. And… any slow stroking, for a timed amount, that is very light, and not climax oriented will get a couple moving in an amazing connecting and deepening and waking up to now together experience.

So, here goes:
He/ she/ the one who is stroking the clitoris, keeps all their clothes on.
The stroking person sets up a “nest” of various pillows on a blanket on the floor. Not on the bed.
At first.
The ideas is to have a game that’s different from the “usual” sex of two naked people connecting at the genitals. . (I learned just recently that this kind of sex, with a man and a woman is PIV sex, Penis in Vagina. )
So, we have our sex in bed.
And the FOAM game is on the floor.
It’s different. 

That’s a start.
Here’s more…

The one who is getting stroked, takes off her panties, and pulls up her dress or takes off her pants/ jeans. She keeps her top on.
The stroking person keeps all their clothes on.
Let’s call the one who is getting her clitoris stroked, the Receiver.
She is on her back, with her legs spread out, butterfly style, knees resting on two pillows.
She is rather exposed, and it’s just for twenty minutes.
The Stroker sits in a weird way, facing toward her feet, with the left leg over her belly, and the right leg under her right leg.
This doesn’t have to make sense.
There will be a picture sooner or later.
There is a towel under the Receiver’s bottom.
There is a jar of coconut oil nearby.

There is a two minute warm up. Which means we hold off on the coconut oil and the clitoris for a bit. The Stroker settles down and warms up and otherwise connects with the receiver by rubbing her legs and feet.
It’s pretty nice.

Then it’s time for the coconut oil and ten to thirteen minutes of stroking.
Where to gather the coconut oil?
Good question:
The right thumb, into the jar. It’s juicy.
One of the left fingers, from big, to middle, to ring finger, is dipped in the coconut oil.
The right thumb goes VERY SLIGHTLY in the bottom of her vagina.
The left thumb pulls back slightly the hood of the Receiver’s clitoris.
The left lubricated finger ( I use my ring finger, most people use the biggest finger) slowly, slowly, gently strokes the clitoris up and down.
This is weird and “hard” at first. Sometimes it’s not so obvious to find the clitoris. Keep exploring. Use your eyes. Feel for a little bump. Or you might see a fairly big one. It’s there. She may need time to realize where it is and how wonderful it will feel when it’s singled out.
That’s okay.
After awhile, you’ll feel different areas on this clitoris. It’s a whole amazing world. That will become a big part of the meditation— noticing the various areas of the clitoris and the difference responses each get.

Go slowly. Vary the pace. Vary the intensity, but always keep it very soft. The Receiver can request:  firmer/ softer, and can request faster/ slower and can request longer/ shorter.

This is a meditation, kind of a huge trick, because if meditation is about keeping awareness in the present, stroking the place on the human body with the hugest number of pleasure receptors is pretty good incentive to stay present.
And the stroker. He or she can feel a lot. A lot. A lot.

Both people can stay present and blissful and then a timer tells them 8 minutes or 10 or 13 minutes.
Then they go very slowly, and come to an end. Have an approximately two minute slow and calm down.
There’s techniques to all this, and the idea is to stay present.
To go slowly.
To follow your breathing.
To feel the electricity.
To NOT strive for climax.
To slow and speed and back off from climax.
To enjoy.
A lot.

Why do this?
Try it every day for a week and see what happens.

So that’s it, the zowie lust game. Well, one of two zowie lust games.

Lust Game #8 : FEMALE ORGASM AWARENESS MEDITATION
One of you (possessor of a clitoris) take off your lower clothes.
The other leave them all on.
Set up a situation where the Stroker is facing her feet, and has pleasant access to her clitoris with their left hand.
Stroke her clitoris with one finger and coconut oil very lightly.
Stay present.
Breathe.
Have a two minute warm up, an eight, ten or thirteen (or you pick) minute stroking, and two minute relax on down.

When it’s over get up and take a walk.
Then, if you want to, have sex.
Good.
If you don’t want to have sex, good. For awhile, it might be a good idea not to. Wait until that night and see if the arousal and connection is different and more subtle and more magical.

For the Receiver, this is an experience unlike any other.

For the stroker, the ability to GIVE is greater than you might imagine.

Alas, words don’t describe what you’ll feel and enjoy
So, try it seven days in a row and see what happens.

Summary of Week Three, Day Three: LUST
Stroke her clitoris.
Slowly.
Gently.
For a small amount of time, that is enough to be amazing.
Lots of attention and awareness.
Be present to this present for both of you.
Good.

Week Three, Day Four: LUST
Noticing differences is the root of intelligence.
Noticing differences in FOAM brings magical intelligence.
How?
Discover for yourself.

Way back in the beginning, I shared with you my good fortune and delight to have first discovered, and then trained in the Feldenkrais Method®. This method of learning and transformation heals backs and shoulders and necks and special needs children and transforms musicians and athletes to a whole new level of learning, ease and coordination. And more, with the core of it being not “fixing” or “training” but creating conditions for our brains to learn, at a non-verbal level, usually, how different / new/ non-habitual/ novel  movements create different possibilities for our ease, and our grace and our coordination. 

Kids are full time learning machines.
The Feldenkrais Method® returns us to that state.

We can experience this right now in our necks.
Which seems a bit of a diversion from orgasmic awareness meditation, and then again, awareness is awareness is awareness.
And learning is learning is learning.

Let’s play like such: 
Lust Game #9: Neck improvement via novelty and awareness and learning
This is a game of learning.
With three stages.

Stage One: Turn your head easily right and left.
Notice differences.
Go less far, and notice differences with more ease, since you aren’t straining.
Pick a direction, right or left, to improve.
Let’s call this the “happy” direction.
Now, turn from the middle to the happy direction and back to the middle a number of times.
Feel how this is.

Stage two:
Turn both directions, but in the happy direction do two things differently from the midline on:
One: go slower
Two: go with more ease.
Go back and forth, with the slower and ease being part of your turn to the happy direction, and doing the other direction at normal speed and normal effort.
Rest.

Stage three:
Continue to go both ways, with the happy direction being slower and with less effort and add on this:
From the midline to the happy side, smile.
And breathe more deeply.
And do the other direction without a smile and at normal speed and effort.
Rest.

Test:
Go both directions.
See if these small steps made a difference.

Most “lessons” contain at least ten different variations, so avail yourself of a Feldenkrais course in whatever city you live. They will help your brain and ease and coordination. They are very unlike yoga, and can vastly improve yoga.

And now, back to touching your partner. The clitoris, yes, we’ll get back to that, and first, let’s make life more simple, and practice touch and listening and being present and variation in a slightly less zowie spot.
The feet.

Lust Game #10: Rub each other’s feet.
With requests and offerings.

This seems simple.
Oh, well. 
It is a chance to learn what most people are really truly awful at: asking for what they want.
And, offering something new.

Get a timer.
Set it for five minutes.
Partner A rub partner B’s feet for five minutes.
In this time partner B spends a lot of time simple enjoying this.
And, occasionally, partner B will make requests:
Faster or slower
Harder or softer
Bigger strokes or smaller.
In this place more, please.

Always say please.
Always be content to the request to be granted slowly, not a jump to thing, but an easing in to something different.
The requests aren’t to practice being the big boss, they are a chance to ask for what you want.
And the giver of the requests gets to practice noticing that the other person can enjoy variation.

Then, go the other way.
Same deal, five minutes. Some requests.

Then, smile and take a little walk.
Then, another five minutes each way.

This time the Giver of the Massage makes offerings.
The Receiver can say, “Yes, please.” Or, “No, thank you.”

The offerings are some possibility.
“Would you like firmer?”
“Softer?”
“Faster?’
“Slower?”
“On the heel/ middle/ toes?”
“On the big toe?”
“Longer strokes?”
“Shorter strokes?”

This is all a warm up for variations in the delicate and ecstatic touching of the clitoris.
And all this is a wonderful chance to practice asking, or offering.

Lust Game #11: Do this with the Clitoris Stroking.
Make requests.
Make offerings.
Go slowly.
Enjoy everything.

Good.

You don’t need details.
You need to be present.
You need to feel what you feel.
Remember: you’re not gunning for climax.
Remember: this is a lot and it’s going to get better and better.
Discover: different ways of wonderful.

Welcome to real sex.

Summary of Week Three, Day Four:
Variation is how the brain learns.
Feet are good.
Learning is good.
Life is good.
Stroking the clitoris can be a meditation.
And a learning.
Make requests.
Make offerings. 

Be present to it all. Don’t try for climax.