Dear Friend and Reader:
First a couple of housekeeping points. I am looking for a writer to help me with the daily astrology aspect of this thread. You need to be advanced enough at astrology both to have some confidence, and to know how not to get lost in the sauce; that is, how to be salient. This is not a paid position — it is community service work (as it is for me) and an opportunity to learn astrology (mega ditto — Planet Waves is the best astrology study project I’ve ever done). I also need help from somebody who is fast with horary and event astrology so that when news breaks we have some information to work with.
Second point, Planet Waves Radio. We premiered on Tuesday night and will be back this coming Tuesday, March 3, at 11 pm Eastern Time and 8 pm Pacific Time. Despite some technical issues, the program was amazing. My second foray into radio has been a long time coming and I am very excited to be speaking to an audience instead of just writing to you. By the end of the program we had 14 phone lines lit up — obviously more than we could handle.
One little secret about Blog Talk Radio is that if you have 200 listeners to any program, your show goes to the top of the ratings — so let’s do it. Meanwhile I am working with my producer, Jakki Emery, to create a demo tape based on the program, and we are aiming for satellite radio. While I prefer small parties, I like a large audience. I do better, I have more fun and more energy. So please spread the word, and see you at Blog Talk Radio on Tuesday.
Last bit of housekeeping — I will be at the Poly Living 2009 conference this weekend in Philadelphia. As everyone but my girlfriend knows, I am polyamorous. (That was a joke.) But I am this weird kind of poly where I want to be in love with everyone. My presentation, on Saturday, will be called Compersion Immersion, a workshop on how to go beyond jealousy and possessiveness and dive into the ocean of possibility on the other side of the Special Relationship. Personally, I never disagreed (for example, with A Course in Miracles) that the search for the Special Relationship was the fastest way to hell. It was just that I was so attached to this particular outcome that it was difficult to entertain any other possibility. Compersion Immersion looks at other possibilities, exploring the emotional language that is necessary in order to relate to people from a space of freedom rather than control.
Today we have an aspect that is part of the warmup to Venus retrograde in Aries — Mercury in Aquarius is in a sextile aspect to Venus. Mercury is newly out of retrograde and Venus is about to be retrograde, hence it is slow and powerful in Aries. The theme of Venus retrograde in Aries is how we feel about ourselves. This is no small matter and for most people it’s no laughing matter. Venus retrograde is here to help us explore the many ways we feel about ourselves; this complex mix of feeling alive, needing to feel alive, and all the many ways we struggle with being held back.
Mercury in Aquarius brings an element of collective consciousness to the self-centered image of Venus in Aries. And it brings an element of down-to-Earth, intelligent communication that is integrated with emotional reality. There is only so stuck up, proud and withholding someone can be and still participate in society. That Mercury is bring Venus to a level where we can understand her — and understand that aspect of ourselves.
Of course many people try to have it both ways, that is, haughty, with the common touch. Talk about a mixed message to send. To me this aspect says that we can only have something when we share it; that it would be ourselves. The problem that many people run up against — and fast — is the feeling that they don’t exist. This sounds like strong language, but this is how I see it these days; that we are not convinced we exist, that we deserve to exist, or that we have any standing at all in the lives of others.
If we define the process of life this way, of getting to know ourselves and collect evidence of existence in the universe and in the world, at least we have a tangible way to think of ourselves and our many relationships.
Catch you later, or tomorrow.
Hi Mystes,
Thanks – and I’m not saying this whole idea is wrong either, but I know I’m not in the league of people who aren’t jealous!
My husband has been disabled since 1994. That means no sex. I think his greatest fear all these years has been that I would leave, so I had to make it clear that i am ok with the way things are, but I still would like to have a special relationship. What is amazing (to me) is that my twin spirit (who lives far enough away to not be a sex partner) lives in the same situation that I do – it took awhile for us to figure it out. From the moment we met I felt like I was him, and he was me – so it was certainly no surprise to find out our tempers and other shortcomings were also the same. I’m certain I would appreciate moving him into ‘consort’ status, and would still feel the same feelings toward my beloved spouse. But when my husband had a fling I was ready to kill – but I didn’t. It changed our relationship dynamic for a long time.
I will be watching this, and yes I pray with you too. I hope for an end to bias against sex orientation and and an end to sexual violence. A lot of the young people’s music is sexually violent. I hate it. I know a young man who was in foster care for 5 years who was raped by the foster parent (man) every day. It is sickening what still goes on in the world.
I am fascinated with this. This commentary is so energizing.
My problem with the special relationship is that it can become exclusive. Example, I am going to the observatory because it is a rare opportunity to get a glimpse of Neptune through the telescope (true it looked like a thumbprint on the lens, but I experienced what they said was Neptune), I know he would love to go because it is something we share. However, he is part of a couple and that is a boundary. Or I call a gal pal to come out and play and she has to ask the husband. Okay, check the schedule, but why do you not just tell me, I don’t want to, or I have other plans.
I feel like I spent years tiptoeing through the garden of couples.
Common interest groups are good interaction. But spectating and exploring stuff with one other: marriage seems to limit that.
Hi Jones…
How many queer friends do you have? How many are in committed relationships? My daughter was bi, I have “Bi” stamped on my passport (though I hardly ever travel there), and at least three of my life-long-loves are bi-tending-to-homo men. True polymorphous orientation has, by definition, to be comfortable with ambiguity, difference, the unpredictable.
That changes the lovin’ game in ways that are hard to eskry outside of the room. It *will* change the potential of marriage if queers/transis/bisexuals are given equal rights to form legal unions.
As for this remark :: “There’s countries in the world where it will sadly probably never ever become a reality ( most of the Middle East, much of Africa).”
I know a number of women (self included) who are vigorously working for a different womanity to emerge in those countries. For me the epicenter for that change is in what the diplomats call Afpak – the Afganistan/Pakistan overlap. Stay tuned.
mystrayogini
Hi mystes,
Of course, I totally agree that gay couples should have an equal right to team up in married bliss/hell- I just get a little bored of the ‘queer weddings are cooler than straight weddings’ vibe on here sometimes. Like we should smile on a gay couple getting hitched and sigh as another straight couple hits the road to a messy divorce. All the same things can go right or wrong in a gay marriage a straight one. Equality means accepting that alot of queer relationships are toxic too and sexual preference doesn’t make you a better person- sexual honesty does.
I’m with Anna T when she says ‘I hope I am living in the future where sexuality isn’t going to be so pigeonholed, or even an issue.’ At least in the US that could happen relatively easily- that missing page fro the Bible about Jesus being a bi-sexual poyamorist is bound to turn up sometime soon. There’s countries in the world where it will sadly probably never ever become a reality ( most of the Middle East, much of Africa).
Pat, you take jealousy out of the equation by *recognizing* what it is. All of the ‘negative’ emotions –lust/hatred/vanity/fear/jealousy– start out of the gate of the mind as pristine awareness.
How to roll back into that awareness is a whole nuther discussion, but the short form on jealousy is: invidia, envy imagines that the Other has more of what you want. And it forms a kind of psychic embolism that swells inside of the attention every time you come into contact with That Which Has What You Want. It’s not “out there” – it’s inside. Trying to deal with it as an ‘out there’ only increases one’s confusion.
Lacan says invidia is formed through sibling competition. “That’s *mah* breast yer suckling!” That may be true, but its later modeling comes through internalizing the gestural dramas of the parents (see ‘Mudra’ for cleaning that crap off of you).
(This’ll be Tantra for Bobos, Chapter Zero).
Love ya,
M
Mystes, what you said in another line of talk: “I do think that speculating on the *idea* that your mother could and would dispose of the first tbsp of “you”-ness is unnerving.”
I think this is surely one thing many men fear, consciously or unconsciously, and one of the reasons men have sought to control women and keep them down and ignorant of thier power, for lo these thousands of years!
My son, a wonderfully wise witch-man, thanked me for not aborting him, but, I was such a chicken-shit at 18 that both becomming a mother and having an abortion terrified me, so I did nothing, and let nature take its course. Avoidance, and not conscious choice. Figure he was meant to come through, and have no regret. Never did that again, though!
Reading the debates on children, monogamy, polyamory, I thought: monogamy, polyamory – both strange constructs! Aren’t we trying to say something braoder here than to pin things, or hold to, one or the other? I hope I am living in the future where sexuality isn’t going to be so pigeonholed, or even an issue. But, I guess we are the folks who’s lot is to be working these things out.
Heres a thought from atop one of my favorite soap-boxes: In a more matrifocal way of arranging things, I see the wealth and property being passed from mothers to daughters. Children automatically secure and cared for, and doesn’t matter who the father is.
sublimated hatred that comes with sexual lust? That is what I read from Eric’s comments about his parents. There are certainly a lot of damaged kids walking around, like the 11 year old who just shot and killed the pregnant stepmom. I think there is already plenty of data available regarding children of divorce, which is to say that the data is probably about children of two-timing parents, or parents who end up in homosexual relationships.
I don’t know how you take jealousy out of the equation. How do you do that? I’ve been married 36 years (and with the same guy for 39 years). We weren’t perfect by any means, but we’ve made the marriage last long-term and our kids are healthy and productive citizens who do their part (socially, politically, environmentally, work and pay taxes). I won’t say there was no straying, but I can say that the straying caused harm.
It’s your website and you can do what you want with it. Hopefully your young readers will not read comments out of context and decide gangbangs are fine and then punish the girls who complain about it. What I’m saying is, you may be projecting much greater influence than you realize, but there are a lot of people who cannot handle this! I’m reading about the the history of Australia right now, and was just a little surprised to read that the aboriginals had multiple wives who they punished with beatings and even murder. Some things do not change no matter where you are from, and overpowering women is one of the things that hasn’t changed throughout history. Now I realize you are saying that polyamory will put an end to that – but, sorry – I just don’t believe it. It sounds too much like polygamy. Someone ends up getting hurt and it is probably the kids.
We must learn our children, by learning ourselves, that there is no specific form needed to conduct relationships. The form only exists out of a need. And those needs are very different, for every one of us and are different even for ourselves during the cycles of our life. So therefore I think the best way to relate is out of openess, curiosity and love of course in whatever form we can manage to have committment to ourselves ГЎnd to others.
In other words: I don’t have the answer, I only have the advice of seeking your own truth out of free choice. And that is a struggle (very nice sometimes though), because what is truth and what is freedom and is there anyone who can relate in the same truth and the same freedom. The form, jeeeee, it’s just a boundary that doesn’t exist in love!
x Heleen
Hi Jones… you write: “Surely if marriage is such a world of lies, dishonesty with yourself, mental abuse and a messed up way to raise children, ”
Strawman arguments wandering into the room here. No one said (or believes) that Mawwage (ooooh, Mad Max is on the loose this morning) is inherently a ‘world of lies.’ But I’d like to see some proof that one-partner-for-life marriage is a viable model: let the monogamists dissociate themselves from the coercion, legal penalties, cultural force-feeding that goes along with that status. Let them declare a movement to honor their choice of mono-person partnering as free and clear of those enforcements, which taints their true intent and love.
It ain’t gonna happen. Why? I’ll bet that if you turn on your tv or open another browser or walk out your door you will find the ‘love/jealousy’ blend represented as normal five times within 30 seconds. We’re addicted to the rush of sublimated hatred that comes with sexual lust. We manage this toxin with the structure of enforced codes of relationship.
What. A. Bore.
***
And, fyi, the reason we want our Queer Folk able to marry is
a) to withhold that right is to say loud and clear that they are not fully-enfranchised, and
b) because of the nature of their struggle, they are carrying the idea of more expansive relationships in their (and our) futures. I suspect *that* is the real reason the xtian right is so dead-set agin’ ’em.
Good morning.
Jones, very good point. Everyone should be able to make their own choices, however.
It is all about honesty, starting with yourself. What grows out of that will be positive, imho.
It would be really interesting to see if more children of divorced parents than those of parents who stay happily teamed-up find themselves ending up as polyamorists.
Planet Waves tends to come across as ultimately anti-marriage (or at least very skeptical)- except when it comes to the issue of equal marriage rights for gay couples. Surely if marriage is such a world of lies, dishonesty with yourself, mental abuse and a messed up way to raise children, why would we want that for our gay friends too?
Hey Victrola… You write: you dabble in “eastern mysticism”?
Hmmm… no, V, I dabble in *Western materialism*; I’ve mastered (or Mystress’d) the rest (*guffah*).
The traditions we sometimes think of as “Eastern” are in fact at the root of our roots. Sanskrit is one of our foundational languages (hence the term “indo-european”), and is no more exotic than Celtic or Latin or Ebonic. Examples: Skt: ek, do, teen, char, panch = Lat/Eng: ex/un, do/two, trin/three, quar/four, pent/five. See?
And you ask: “What I am curious about is the mandala. Is the mandala related to this multi facetting or am I off base there?”
Yep, you’re right on target (targets are, by the way, just somewhat stupid mandalas). It’s one aspect of a three-pronged approach to Waking Up: mandala is the visual component; mudra is the tactile component; mantra is the auditory component. Each one has a little bit of the others embedded in it, cause as you come into direct perception (uh, that’d be liberation/enlightenment), you are actually using an awareness *in between* the conventional senses. That awareness always here, just hanging out waiting to be tapped. Mandala/mudra/mantra(and a nice, long kiss)’ll get you most of the way.
Visual / tactile-haptic / auditory… there’s a dynamic balance in each. . .
The rest? you come ovah here hunny and gimme big dollar and I tell you aaaaallll about it. Well, I’ll cook you all about it (hinthint).
Y’asm.
*8^D
Is there a best expression of the mono relationship? I know couples who run parallel lives, each doing their own thing, who struggle to get their needs met in the middle. I know couples where one gives over and takes direction from the other. And I know couples who work together, literally. And of course, couples who focus on raising the kids and then split the sheets (the most honorable in my book: two people wanting to have children together). What is keeping the mono relationship together? What’s working out there? I’m a commitment hog. I’ve never really wanted to go outside of my mono relationships for sex. But then again I’ve never gone over the 9 year mark. Even with the raging winds and snow, spring must be coming, I am talking about mating.
mystes, you dabble in “eastern mysticism”? Everytime I hear this poly thing, I keep getting in touch with the many facets of expression in the individual being, ie myself. Now maybe this is a personal struggle for me, i don’t know. It is about honoring all that I am, and manifesting the different forms of the one. I tend to think this is a struggle for me because of the monotheistic model conditioning, reinforced by the repetition of the “what do you do for a living” question. The need to explain myself, label myself, say what I am. My brother in law said the coolest thing to me once (apparently my eccleticism is a topic of discussion: what is it she does anyway?), he said Victrola (his pet name for me) is just Victrola. It made so much sense.
What I am curious about is the mandala. Is the mandala related to this multi facetting or am I off base there?
carecare7, ya kids do process their parents unhappiness, they really do. They get it all. It’s not just what we see them do and say, they feel too. Some even think it is their fault and spend their whole lives trying to fix everything for everyone else, and smothering, I mean, mothering others to death. Maybe that’s a better approach than just buying the blame and living in the bottle.
Care Care
It is a myth that monogamy is stable. Indeed, it’s a massive cultural lie. What we call monogamy, usually is not. Both of my parents are conventionally monogamous and after they divorced each had a parade of about 10+ partners, with no ethics involved. My father is monogamous and has been married five times, with several live-ins besides and many other girlfriends. But it’s cool, because he is monogamous.
Polyamory is, among other things, a system of imposing some order on this; of applying the concept of sustainability; of studying and working with the impact on children. Monogamy works if it’s really monogamy, and polyamory works if it’s really polyamory. Both have fake permutations. But what our culture calls monogamy is nothing of the kind, and believing that it’s inherently moral or stable has damaged more people than it has helped.
e
Carecare, you raise some good points. But there’s something to be distinguished between
*people parading in and out
*being in love with two or more people
*and the “ploy” –as you say– of free love (eh?)
As long as being monogamous is *compulsory,* having more than one lover will be an unstable and destabilizing condition because of the lying involved. I’d just like to see monogamy celebrated as an option that has no loaded gun pointed at its head.
When I lived in the McAffrey household –my legal guardians as a young teen– we were 4 kids, three primary adults and a wide variety of guests. It was loud, crazy, often chaotic, but highly functional. I loved it. My pseudosiblings are all accomplished, balanced, funny. Worked for us.
jones,
You make a good point, one I discussed with eric way back in 1997 when I read his Compersion article on Star Navigator. I am especially concerned with people that decide to get into the ploy (free love) lifestyle AFTER they already have kids. From everything I have read ( and now studied in child psychology and development) kids need security and consistency; they do less well when there is a parade of people coming and going into and out of their lives.
Kids also require a lot of committment and focus on the part of the parents; free love IS “inward-looking, self-gratifying, spirit nourishing” but that may not be what is best for kids. Already, our society is far too adult-centered; our children are not priorities with their parents and have not been since the “me decade” of the 70’s. The damage that self-indulgence on the part of parents has cause in kids has been terrible. To me, if a parent wants to be poly, they need to ask their kids (or if the kids are too young, ask themselves) how will this affect the children? And no “if I am happy, my kid is happy” self-talk because therapists and researchers have found that for kids, it doesn’t work that way. Children are naturally self-centered, they must be to survive. Adults are supposed to be able to delay gratification and if they are parents, they need to be other-centered for a lot of the children’s growing up. Kids don’t often think about their parents’ happiness, they are too busy growing and changing. Sure, we need to teach our kids to think of others’ happiness, we just shouldn’t do it by ignoring their needs so we can fulfill our wants.
Dear Jones…
“Should we raise children to see polyamory as the best way to conduct relationships?”
I’m not sure about the ‘best way’ notion, but certainly it is a legitimate way.
When I was married, both of my kids were aware of the fact that I also had a tantric consort and creative partner. The boyo is integrating this easily — in fact it is almost the *only* thing he respects about me right now (he’s a teen). I think this has to do with knowing that his dad, as well as my consort, hold their own nicely with the ladies, that there was no loss of status for either of them.
My daughter was more of a romantic about it. She saw that I made a place for the consort no matter what, which she read –correctly– as a particular kind of devotion. The ‘poly’ scarcely registered.
Children love truth. That’s the fact of the matter, and it is pretty simple. Most of my son’s friends have a very light-handed relationship with jealousy. I see it fading away…
M
…”this complex mix of feeling alive, needing to feel alive, and all the many ways we struggle with being held back…” oy… i feel like if i get started talking about this, i might never stop. the molasses seems ever-thicker around my ankles the last few days even as i feel the ever-mounting weight of knowing that if i don’t move into doing what i’m here to do soon, i’ll have my lungs full of the molasses, too…
All the best for the Polyamory talk Eric- wish i could be there. Could I be the first volunteer from afar for the ‘Any Questions?’ part of the talk and ask, ‘Where do children fit in with polyamory?’ Most of your articles come from the inward-looking, self-gratifying, spirit nourishing point of view of sex (or ‘Free Love’ as i believe it was once known)- which is fine- but what about that old fashioned human urge to make babies and nurture children? Should we raise children to see polyamory as the best way to conduct relationships?