Note, here is a link to today’s Daily Oracle.
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Yesterday passing through New Paltz on the way out of town, I ran into an old friend who asked me where I was going. I told him I was presenting my theory of ‘The One and the Many‘ at a conference called Poly Living 2010 in Philadelphia. The theory challenges both conventional monogamous and polyamorous thinking. It describes how there’s not really such a split between this thing called ‘polyamory’ and this other seemingly totally different thing called ‘monogamy’.
He’s happily married, though I was happy to hear him open up and say that if he could, he would have two wives with totally different interests. He felt he could handle that, and maintain both relationships just fine. It seemed perfectly logical to him.
I asked him the next logical question, whether he would be into his wife having a boyfriend — which to his credit, he said he would not be able to handle; the jealousy would be too much. This supports my theory that the real issue behind the obsession with monogamy is really the fear of jealousy. I believe that most people would openly have multiple relationships, if they wouldn’t go into total reaction when their partner did the same thing. Most of us are slaves to jealousy, without understanding what jealousy really is, or what to do with it. [Here is an article that presents a theory.]
Most polyamorous folk would agree that in a nonmonogamous situation, compersion is where the rubber meets the road, so to speak: compersion being that factor that allows a person to really love that their partner is being sexual with, or loving, someone else. The pain of jealousy can become the pleasure of embracing someone you love (and also embracing existence), though for a while, that is like surfing on fire. It takes a lot of self-awareness and self-esteem, two factors distinctly missing from many lives at our time in history.
Mysti – isn’t it funny how sometimes a note, a song or just the music can convey so much more than a sentence…? Thanks for posting. Not surprised at your response, it caught me.
Woke up in the earliest a.m. to this note from one of the Consorts … wept with amazement, poignancy, confusion, joy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STwVx6ynYjk
“Like a bump on a bump on a log, baby
Like I’m in a fist fight with a fog, baby
Step-ball-change and a pirouette
And .. and I regret, I regret
How I said to you, honey, just open your heart
When I’ve got trouble even opening a honey jar
And that right there is where we are
And I been ‘fessing double fast
Addressing questions nobody asks
I’ll get this joy off of my chest at last
And I will love you ’til the noise has long since passed”
Joanne Newsom
ah thanks for that blessed Mystes, makes brilliant sense right now.
Kelly – yes – and – part of how we go there is through experiencing jealousy. In many ways it is a fundamental encounter with self/nothingness of being/intimacy with existence. Jealousy is a form of intimacy; of confrontation with the intimacy of another; with self-knowledge and learning.
Kelly, I’ve only been in a monogamous relationship once in my life. It sucked. We adored one another, were married for a number of years. But it was a fiasco.
Across a thirty-eight year amorous landscape I have never been in love with less than three people (myself included) at a time. By “in love” I mean a) my time, money, talent contribute to his/her survival and spiritual maturation, b) I understand and participate in the vital exchange we call ‘sexual’ and c) I hold his/her/my aloneness as a sacred necessity.
My experience has shown me that it isn’t One or Many that tips the canoe. It is very simply this: when it comes time to let the Beloved find his or her way, can you leave them the hell alone?
I know that sounds like an odd criterion, but it is my absolute touchstone. Deep devotion has built into it a ‘let be’ button. Find that, and the One/Many question becomes moot.
M
It’s not about jealousy, it’s about intimacy. When you are truly intimate with your Self, not looking for the other/lover to complete or fulfill you, your ability to be intimate with an other/lover is exponentially expanded. At this level of intimacy, you are not jealous of their intimacy with others. You experience joy at their joy and learning and growth.
And when you experience this level of mature, healthy, evolved intimacy with your Self and another, unless you are genuinely an extraordinarily evolved human being – not the “pseudo” kind that’s become so prevalent – you do not want, or need, sexual intimacy with anyone other than your other/lover. True, transcendent intimacy is way too vulnerable, powerful, and transformative to share with more than one person at a time. We simply aren’t energetically – “physic-ally” – or emotionally evolved enough yet for that.
Kelly Grace Smith
And loving more: no is as valuable as yes in context, important raising children and in honest relationship…
Well…….we are all in a constant relationship to nothingness…to the nonexistence that we think lurks, or that actually lurks, behind existence.
Dude, we’re all surfing on fire whether we know it or not. Do you realize how thin this planet’s litho(stone)sphere(ball) is? Ha! All us monkeys running around with so much noise in our heads we can’t feel the ground under our feet.
I’ve heard polyamory described as a fear of commitment. Why can’t one be committed to more than one? The one loves the many, isn’t that the formula for existence? Oh yeah, we love bullshit like nothing else. Humans with snarly gnarly brains spinning webs of bullshit in their heads while they strangle the biosphere with their technosphere.
Monogamy, monotheist, monopoly. One God has to know who the mother of HIS kid is so He can maintain control. One God is full of shit when he goes on saying that he’s the only one. It’s called confusing the planes.
That bullshit gets into people’s heads and makes so much noise cause it isn’t true so you have to make noise to ignore the falsity of it. Children who haven’t been beaten or yelled at yet or given debilitating conditions by the habits of their parents in utero know this. One god fills their heads with propaganda because One God is a war god. Children lose their ability to sense the world and take on training to sense only what Authority says is real. Child loses hir center of gravity, or awareness of it. Cramped postures raise the center and make us easy to push around. He uses the Prince of Peace like a carrot on a stick to get people to beat the shit out of each other. Less than 75 years from the machine gun to the atom bomb, a nauseating string of compensations for an epistemological phallacy. One God is as One God does. He’s a war god.
Anytime anyone tells you there’s One God and his/her attributes are _____________
they’re transmitting the monoculture’s epistemological phallacy. That’s why Lao Tzu said that it can’t be named. As soon as Adam goes calling everyone names the wars get hopping. Tao is certainly nothing to fight about. Du rien. Mu. It’s nothing. Let it drop. If you have a center of gravity, you’re a One God too. We can all be true. Mono is bullshit at least this far down. Gaia loves diversity. You want One God, go pitch a tent on Mars.
Eric thank you – d’you reckon the answer is the same for all insecurities and unknowns? – to love more
Those of us who grew up near the ocean learn respect for the ocean; there’s always that subtle awareness that it can take you in a second, and that’s where a healthy relationship begins.
Sex sure does play a large part in Eric Francis’ makeup. It’s such a fleeting feeling when push comes to shove. I don’t think men really are made for monogamy. We are victims of society, some more than others. I think it depends on just how high of a level you want to work on. The notion of jealousy of the sex act with another is tricky. I believe a woman can “accept” a man’s sexual daliance, if it is truly just sex…but therein lies the rub, for sex is a very powerful energy, although, again, it is fleeting. I think what is not fleeting is the mental awareness of it.
I don’t know just what it is that men are looking for with their constant focus on sex. A Scorpio (of course) once told me he wanted to crawl back into the womb. That statement could go beyond something sexual to something more akin to many points of view, eg: protection, re-birth issues. I don’t see the sex connection to being back in the womb, but it was important to him.
What a man may describe as “jealousy” if his partner were to engage in sex with another man, could be another word for ‘ownership’. Sexual intimacy is probably one of the most intimate levels two people can achieve. With the right partner, one can actually “float” together, during this most physical act. But the floating part requires an emotional factor in the equation. I’m not talking just orgasm – it’s a climaxing of the body and heart.
This then becomes a minefield of emotions. Unless one is speaking of sex with multiple partners, at the same time, in other words, a good time was had by all, what we are normally encountering is a “relationship” and that implies people depending on, believing in, trusting in that the other person involved is aware of the lines that surround and if crossed can hurt another human being. Are the reasons why important?
Regardless of what the mores of society dictate, an emotional relationship with someone is like a contract. It is, or should be, a meeting of the minds. ‘If you do this it will hurt me, it will hurt us and what we are trying to build and describe as our life”.
In ending, my feeling is very simple about this subject. Do what you have to do, but I’m going to do what I have to do. I know what I need, and if what you need, or think you need is different, then Godspeed. There is no blame, just don’t play baby games. Men need to be alot more honest with their mates, and women (just keeping things simple here) need to accept their truth. But…everything….everything comes at a price…most especially to oneself.
Eric – do you ever discuss Sabian Symbols?
“that is like surfing on fire. It takes a lot of self-awareness and self-esteem”
surfing on fire, indeed.
i keep trying to remind myself that these paths to self-awareness & self-esteem, like the path from healing from any pain, are not a straight shot up & away. they really are like learning to surf: there’s a lot of unsteadiness, practice, falling off & getting back on, falling off and getting back on, falling… all along getting closer to feeling steady.
even veteran surfers wipe out and end up pummeled by the occasional big wave they weren’t expecting or didn’t enter quite right.
but mixed in with the faceful of sand & salt, the momentary fear of drowning, and a deep respect for the awesome power of the big, big ocean, there seems to be a sense of home.