You always find what you're looking for ...

So be sure you're only looking for the really great, juicy stuff!

Here's how:




Update:
It occurred to me as I was driving home last night that the Focus Wheel serves a similar purpose (though much, much more crude and much less involved) as the Navajo curing ceremonies do: both serve not to change the "what is", but rather to bring one's awareness and inner thought back into harmony with it.

Being in harmonious relationship is to Walk the Beauty Way.

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Gently Down the Stream

I'm an unabashed follower of Abraham, purportedly a group of beings channeled by a completely unassuming woman named Esther.

The core of the message is pretty simple: at every possible opportunity, choose "downstream" thoughts, that is, thoughts that make you feel good. Abraham's teaching is that that "feeling good" state is what makes you a "vibrational match" to your desires; you can't get what it is that you're desiring until you and it are "vibrationally matched".

Whether this statement is an accurate description of the way the world works, whether she's really channeling a group of beings collectively called "Abraham" or whether she's making it all up is immaterial to me: it works.

Life is just plain easier when you choose a downstream thought. Eckhardt Tolle says about the world, "it is as it is". My thoughts don't change the external world or its conditions (maybe); my thoughts change how I feel about those conditions, re-configure my frame of reference so that I can view the exact same incidents and external conditions and not get upset by them. Being upset is a choice that I am no longer compelled to make.

Now that's valuable juju.

Choosing "downstream" is simple, too: which thought makes you feel the best?

Generally, having expectations about a desired outcome is completely "upstream", difficult, against the flow. If "expectations are premeditated disappointments", any expectation you have immediately sets up the conditions necessary for failure.

Anticipation on the other hand, that is, looking forward to being happy in the next moment regardless of what the conditions are in that moment, is a Good Thing.

Edison had the anticipation that he would find a substance that worked as a light source when current was run through it. Had he had the expectation that Iron was going to be it, or Aluminum, or Human Hair, he would have failed miserably. Instead, he merely made note of those things which did not work and kept looking, anticipating (and, I believe, deeply knowing full well) that he would find something that did. He said, "I have not failed; I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

It's all about how you think of your world, really, how you feel about it, and not the world itself.

We believe that we can't choose how we think and feel about our world, about our conditions. I'm living proof that that is simply untrue and merely habit, that over time we can change our habitual patterns of thinking so that in every single situation there's something good that we can find in it, if nothing else than we'll be able to look back on it later and see the chain of events that led to something good coming out of it.

I have lived life lately in a state of almost constant bliss, not because things have gone completely my way, but because I've just let go of allowing external circumstances to bother me: I simply choose to not be bothered by people or by events.

The world "is as it is", and it's far more wondrous, nourishing and entertaining to simply observe it as it actually is and to see what's actually there rather than trying to see what I want to be there that isn't.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.

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Side-by

I'm engaged.

I asked the man I love to marry me, and he said "yes". He asked me, too :-)

Who wouldn't love a man who could paint like this? (And these are just crappy cell-phone pictures!)




He has many charms to soothe my savage breast, not the least of which is that we talk the same spiritual language. I feel as if I'm the richest man in the world. His name is Mr. Wright ;-D


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Gemini powers, *Activate!*

• 7:40am - rise, shower, prepare
• 8:20am - business coffee with Singing Wife to discuss upcoming March 13 concert, write Public Service Announcement copy for radio spots (long and short versions) to be recorded at 10:00am
• 9:20am - meet priest and (finally! yes, thank-ya Jebus) secure venue
• 10:00am - record both long and short PSA spots for local public radio station
• 10:15am - go to University library, update library ID, search, locate and secure final piece for concert, the one STB trio to be found in Bach sacred cantatas. (For bonus points, anyone out there know the BWV#?)
• 11:30am - lunch avec Singing Wife
• 12:30pm - office to return umpteen e-mails, find/buy/download recording of said trio on iTunes
• 1:20pm - meet with architects and executive about 1,000 feet of custom build-out new space for our practice at premiere-o new cancer consortium building
• 3:00pm - AT&T store to buy cable, ask questions, get new (FAB-u-lous!) iPhone bill set up on auto-pay (and fervently hope and pray they don't screw it up)
• 4:00pm - back cross-town at office, receive call from 6'4" built, BearGod client and inform him that, yes, I do have an immediate opening (ahem) and to come on down!
• 4:15pm - field another call for another walk-in-wannabe
• 6:15pm - finish with client (no, no happy ending but don't I sometimes wish), initiate last laundry load of the day, make study copies of new Bach piece
• 6:45pm - write shamanic practice bio for web page
• 8:00pm - write to-do's for ten on-going projects
• 8:30pm - start writing this blog entry
• 8:55pm - publish, edit, shop for dinner, go home, cook, drink, read, crash.

The moon must have moved into the House of Gettin'-Shit-Done today.

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Self Care

I'm taking a class at the local Religious Science church and today as an exercise the facilitator asked us each to respond to the question, "What isn't working for you?"

I thought about it and came up with a couple of things: I'm beset about with clutter in my car, my office, my house; I'm not paying enough attention to my financial planning, balancing my statements, etc.; I'm not getting enough sleep; I'm constantly running from one thing to another; I feel harried and put off joy-producing leisure activities for the things that have piled up that I absolutely must do.

And then it dawned on me. It wasn't any one thing, it was everything: my entire system of self-care isn't working for me. Not drastically enough to impair me or to hinder me in ways other than making it hard for me to find things like socks, receipts and the like. But definitely to the point where I've become a joyless, headless chicken running around from fire to fire.

Which must and will stop.

This is one of those lessons that the universe sends me from time to time to see if I've mastered it, "gotten" it yet. Today when I saw that my dysfunctions are symptoms of failure of my self-care system as a whole and point to the fact that I've never really learned to care for my self in some very basic ways at all, maybe, just maybe I can begin to tackle this at a higher level than I've ever tried before.

Until today I've never much understood the motivation for wanting to be neat and tidy to a fault - I go through periods where I live like a wild animal, and I'm in one right now. I've never seen the point of doing certain basic chores if it's "just for me".

This morning though, I saw in a flash how this hinders every single aspect of my effectiveness, how it pervades all portions of my life and contributes to feelings of lethargy and hopelessness. My Inner Daddy reared his beautiful, bearded head for a moment then and I got it. Before I'd always had the thought that I was wasting time and energy doing these things for myself if there was no one there (such as a partner) to see them and praise me for being such a good boy.

In that daddy-flash, I deeply understood for the first time that there are two of me here in this body, somehow, and that "I" can do things for my "self". I and self can start to actually have a relationship. Seeing as how we're stuck with each other for the rest of our days :-)

I saw how stingy I've been with my very own self! I've been withholding ease and comfort from my very own self and giving in to self indulgence every time, the quick feel-good fix.

OK, since we already know how that feels, what about trying something new and different and actually expending some energy on some real self care? And finally, finally admit to this self of mine that I'm worth spending that kind of energy on me, even when there's no one else around to see it.

Radical.



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Val

Had a great VD, did not receive any deliveries from STD :-) Heard a phenomenal a capella concert in Atlanta. A happy day :-)

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Love on the Gerbil Wheel

For close to a year and a half, I've been in contact with a man via the internet. An amazing man with whom my soul really, really resonates. We share the same name and numerous life experiences. He's one year my senior, not my usual preference of Older Man. Or is he? He and I have joked that we've now become the old men we've always lusted after being in a relationship with.

We've had exactly one date, a chaste dinner in a little town one hour from his home, two from mine.

I think I've waited all my life for this man to show up, and yet now I find that I'm growing impatient. I said I wanted a long courtship. Which is, unfortunately, exactly what I'm getting. (Be careful what you wish for ...)

Man On Horizon's partner died last September, a man with whom he shared 26 years of life. I know it's too soon. And yet I long to jump right in. Mostly, at night, I long to just have someone in my arms again. It's been too many years since that was a regular thing.

I know I have things about my character that need a little attention: I tend to go through the occasional period when I live like a wild animal, and now is one of those times. Seems to happen in the Winter a lot. If you saw my house, you'd be appalled. Only my two close friends and my ex get to see my house when it's in this state. Maybe the wait is good, um, at least until I can clean up my house :-) and cosmically, maybe that's what this is all about: in both our lives, we've both been prone to just jumping in without looking or thinking. This time we're each doing both and taking it slowly.

Agonizingly slowly. Our one date was weeks ago, and it looks like at least another week before we can get another one in.

I despair.

And then I get an amazing e-mail out of the blue from him like I just received while writing this, and it makes the waiting more bearable. But I still pull my hair out.

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I Have Touched His Noodly Appendage ...

"The universe was created by an all-powerful all-knowing being who came down to us in the form of a cosmic Jewish Zombie who was his own father who can make you live forever if you symbolically eat his flesh and telepathically tell him you accept him as your master, so he can remove an evil force from your soul that is present in humanity because a rib-woman was convinced by a talking snake to eat from a magical tree."
-- every Christian in America
(courtesy of Angry Buscuit)
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The Siren Call of Ethanol

A poem (nod to Ogden Nash)

The Siren Call of Ethanol

C2H5-OH,
How I love you so.
My health and happiness
do not,
though.


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Center

Every now and then a client and I will chat as I'm working with them. Of late, our conversations have turned to me and my life changes, namely the transition out of software and into singer/massage therapist/shamanic practitioner. Some are baffled by this, and others understand it immediately. I simply say that I've stopped labeling myself as an X or a Y, and have simply begun making decisions and doing things which take me closer to my center, closer to what feels like the "real me".

The more I interact with others, the easier it seems to be to find my own center, my own balancing points. I can see so clearly when others don't have theirs, and am sometimes swayed by the moods of others. More recently though, I'm less and less thrown off by being in close proximity to the whimsical moods of others; I find it easier to say to myself, "I don't want to feel like that", and I stick to what is truly my own center.

I thought about this the other day when I sadly reflected that I don't really have a robust "posse" here. I have two very close friends, one gay man and one woman (married, with kids). I've got (well, I thought I had) great friends in the D.C. area who have a wonderful cadre of friends, many of whom I've met, many of whom I've kissed. I yearn for a circle of close men friends here, and have yet to be able to build that, and have frequently sort of pined for my friends in D.C.

Then the other day I realized that this thought, too, was taking me off-center: those boys never contact me. They love me fine and embrace me when I'm there, but the communication is pretty much one-way and all uphill for me. They're not, and never will be, my posse despite the fact that we love each other.

Once I sat with that for a half a day and really let it sink in, my yearning wobble stopped and I was back to spinning on my own center again, if not ecstatically happy, then at least content and utterly OK with the what is of my life and my friendships.

I've longed for a group of gay men to call my own to hang with and call "family". Haven't found 'em yet, but I do keep looking :-)


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Blue Meanies

Got jumped on and roughed up a bit by a gang of the Blues this weekend. Not serious, just a little blue-ish for a day or two. I put it down to being tired from the trip back home from the incredibly snowy Land O' Cleve and the unearthly hour we had to leave the house in order to get to the airport, and then jumping right back in with regular work the minute I got home.

BUT, I did absolutely splurge and buy an iPhone the same day, and boy am I a (relatively) happy camper. I can at least check e-mail from my phone and respond back, my bare minimum requirement. The extras are just eye-candy icing on the cake and they make me happy. I haven't had a new toy in a while, and this one will keep me busy, I see. I'm lovin' the GPS capabilities!

Friday night my singing wife and her very crafty friend, Lydia, made a duct tape body form for me. It was quite the bondage experience and fun after I got used to the sensations of being bound. I kinda liked it. And mine is made out of red duct tape, so it looks all shiny and kind of latex-y. This is all so that I'll have a body form to help me fit shirts (which I've begun to make again) to my own body shape.

Getting creative and making things with my hands helps lift me out of the blues.

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Gospel of Thomas

Boy, do I wish I had read this in my earlier years. It's what I believed all along anyway and would have spared me a bit of heartache and anguish.

...the Kingdom of God is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living Father. But if you will not know yourselves, you dwell in poverty, and it is you who are that poverty.


I am the light that shines over all things. I am everywhere. From me all came forth, and to me all return. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift a stone, and you will find me there, ...

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Saddleback, Saddlebacking

I have no wish to redefine marriage. I'm much happier helping to redefine other things instead. From Dan Savage over at Savage Love:

My life's purpose over the last week was reading thousands of proposed new definitions for "saddlebacking" sent in by my readers. As with the new definition of santorum crafted by Savage Love readers ("the frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes a byproduct of anal sex"), the new definition of "saddlebacking" has to be some act that 1) needs a name but doesn't already have one (we can't just rename "reverse cowgirl," people) and 2) is naughty enough to discomfort, say, a Reverend Warren, but something that actual people might actually do because that's the only way the actual word will actually get used.

So I've disqualified proposed definitions that were too literal ("putting an actual saddle on someone's actual back and actually riding them"), too gross ("to crap on someone's back and then sit on it, moving forward and back while making horse-riding-related noises like 'giddyap!' and 'whoa!'"), too complicated ("one person on all fours with a strap-on strapped to their midsection, a second person riding said strap-on, and a third person hitting the first person from behind while holding on for dear life/giving a handjob to the second person"), or too bitter ("when you give someone some kind of basic human right, like marriage, and then take it away again after a few months"). Here are the proposed definitions that made the cut:

1) Logically, if "barebacking" means having butt sex with no condom, then "saddlebacking" should mean having butt sex with a condom.

2) Saddleback (verb): to submit someone to any kind of humiliating, unreciprocal sex act, either literally or metaphorically, consented to by passive partner due to submissive/masochistic tendencies, desire for approval, or other darker motive. E.g., "I don't know why Obama is letting Rick Warren saddleback him into presiding over his inauguration."

3) The saddleback position involves placing your lubed dick between the butt cheeks of your partner. This position can be performed on your sides or on top of a facedown partner (maybe with a pillow under his or her hips). My favorite way of finishing up the saddlebacking is to lift up and come on my wife's sweaty back. The saddleback is a nice compromise position when your partner won't allow anal entry.

4) To saddleback is to rail against gay sex in public while secretly indulging in the same in private. Ted Haggard? Total saddlebacker. Larry Craig? Saddlebacker. Rick Warren? Probably a saddlebacker.

5) "Saddlebacking" should be the term for the phenomenon of Christian teens engaging in unprotected anal sex in order to preserve their virginities. "After attending the Purity Ball, Heather and Bill saddlebacked all night because she's saving herself for marriage." Please, please adopt this definition!

6) Saddleback (verb): to ejaculate on the back of a partner at the culmination of doggy-style anal sex.

7) Before being invited to give the invocation, Mr. Warren was most noted for his book The Purpose Driven Life. Therefore, "to saddleback" is to fuck with a purpose, i.e., to procreate. A heterosexual couple asked if they're trying to have children could reply, "No, we're not ready for kids yet, but we'll probably start saddlebacking next year."

Those are the nominees, ladies and gentlemen. But before we open the polls for a vote—you're going to pick the winning definition!—let me quickly handicap the candidates:

1) I like the idea that "sex" is understood to include condoms and that sex without condoms—bareback sex—needs a special term. But tons of people suggested that "saddlebacking" should be the opposite of "barebacking," so here it is.

2) Seems a bit tortured and unlikely to come into common usage, but I like the point the reader is making with this definition, so I included it.

3) Technically, this kind of assfuckery—butt-cheek fucking à la titty-fucking, with no actual penetration—is a form of frottage, but like a woman doing a man in the butt with a strap-on dildo (dubbed "pegging" by Savage Love readers), this particular brand of rubbing off could use a name of its own.

4) One of my favorites—but does a Haggard or Craig tumble out of the closet often enough for the term to come into use?

5) Hilarious—and an entirely appropriate way to honor Reverend Warren, who is a proponent of abstinence education, the "sex ed" that has convinced so many Christian girls and boys that buttfucking isn't actually sex.

6) A common move—and not just in porn—that could use a name.

7) Makes sense, so here it is. But I imagine Warren would approve of this definition—except when lesbians used it. (Even you, Melissa E.!)

Okay, Savage Love readers, "saddlebacking" is in your hands now. Vote for your favorite definition from the list of nominees by sending an e-mail to saddleback@savagelove.net. You must include "saddleback" and the number of your preferred definition in the subject line to have your vote count ("saddleback: 1," "saddleback: 2," etc.). Vote now!

Download the Savage Lovecast (my weekly podcast) every Tuesday at thestranger.com/savage.

mail@savagelove.net

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My schedule is your plaything

One unfortunate result of this erratic economy is that the frequency of no-shows and last-minute cancelers has gone up rather dramatically. I'm no fool: I know that people don't have extra spending money, or at least because their 401(k) savings plans have lost paper value, they perceive that they don't have money to spend. But last time I looked, salaries have maintained, most people have kept jobs here, and gas has gotten cheaper.

Wealth has never trickled down to me, but having my income cut certainly has. It does seem to be true that shit is the only thing that rolls down hill.

Being self-employed in a field I adore, the only thing I can think of is to cast a wider net, work harder at marketing, and get the word out that I'm here at all. I left a corporate software job and its concomitant stress a decade ago and I don't wish to return to that sort of daily life. Quirky as it is, I prefer the life I live that has less work in it. I don't prefer having the smaller income, but I sure like being loads happier and way less stressed which is *highly* valuable to me. And being single, I have no dependents so I can live rather simply and please myself.

Though this not-showing-up-without-calling and canceling-at-the-last-minute stuff is not pleasing me much right now. I work by appointment, which means that time is the actual commodity that I sell. My time. And after years of denying it, I'm coming to the inescapable conclusion that my time is quite worthy, indeed.

This hasn't been such a problem with clients in the past, but presently it has the feel of a lesson the Universe wants me to learn so it's being presented over and over again. I need to decide, without a shadow of a doubt, just how valuable I am to myself in order to be able to telegraph that to others. Self-worth, worthiness has always been a tough one for me, but I think that 2009 is the year to finally get it.



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I'm in love!

My new love: a Mahalo Soprano ukulele! It's so cute. My dog has fleas.

I can play a C chord, a G chord, an F chord, a C7 chord and a G7 chord.

WooHoo! This is a ton of fun for $24.95!



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Mele Kalikimaka

And here's one with house lights synchronized:



And a totally unrelated, hilarious one:



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Bah Ho Ho

So I have a little ambiguity about this holiday. Sue me.

But seriously, I love Winter, the Solstice, Yule, and all of the other New Age wannabe holidays that have co-opted this time of year, like Christmas. I grew up Christian yet have always been more enamored of the celestial mechanics of the Solstice and the winter stars and constellations that appear in the night sky. Christmas is fine and Jesus was a nice guy and all (love the words attributed to him about love, not so hot on his followers or "his" bible), but there's something more deep and primal about the turning of the wheel of the year.

This year is a bit more special since during my healing intensive course back in September I was directed by my allies to do a Solstice vigil. It seems right to me to do that and I'm looking forward to it :-)

Cheers,
Raybob

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