expansion, discomfort and revelation, part 1

the sky breathes vast and blue after three days of rain, wind, cloud and cold. we traversed the dimensions, moved into the mists and became avalon in these days. i have facilitated ceremony for myself, my community, and my tribe this weekend, all the while shuddering beneath the weight of experience as it invites me into my edge and beyond. i am still shuddering beneath this weight, but i will not break, for i am in motion, carrying what is mine to hold with as much grace as i can.
i am becoming power where i had been strength.
i am becoming wisdom where i had been intelligence.
i am morgaine, heiress of the isle, priestess woven between worlds. i am naked, wild, lustful, and starved.  i am feral, ferocious, tender, wounded, raging, glorious, and sorrowful. i am magical womon, thrashed in the waves of experience. i am grateful, suffering, growing.

i am.

the story so far...

when i was nineteen, i grew two inches. it was such a strange experience! i rode a bicycle every day then, so when my legs started to ache, i thought that it was just that one hill in brookline (the one that made me quit smoking cuz i almost puked trying to ride to the top) kicking my ass. but it kept on and spread from my lower legs into my thighs and hips, into my lower back, and i thought something was Wrong. then i realized, one day, putting on pants that had previously dragged in the dirt when i walked, that my legs were longer than they had been. that i had grown. i was really excited! i had been disgruntled at the idea of being 5'8", and had been working to stretch myself to at least 5'9" (you know the way, yeah? standing there with my eyes all squeezed shut, popping myself energetically through the top of my head) actually hoping for six feet, but we didn't get that far. this is the blueprint, and it's perfect.

but what i remember in this moment and for the sake of this thought line is the pain and confusion of growing, i remember the ache in my legs, and the feeling that maybe i wouldn't get through it, that something was damaged or in danger.  and i remember the soothing calm that came after the process was complete and i could rest in the satisfaction of the transformation.

i'm in that process again, with my spirit.

i think a lot about the ways that our natural tendencies are manipulated in social programming to guide us into modes of existence that are constrictive, slavery-based, or useless for transcendent experience and peaceable communion in the third dimension. like the urge to eat sweet foods, or the urge to secure an area of territory for ourselves. the urge to be angry at trespass, or happy with praise. the urge to be embraced as special and unique, which becomes the urge to deeply bond in mating. all of these urges are natural elements of the human (and animal) being that are contorted into ideas like "there must be a dessert at the end of every meal", "i must procure an enormous space for only myself and my family and put barbed wire fences around the whole thing", "i must destroy those who have offended my honor" and so on. it is exceptionally difficult to program people around ideas or energies that are totally alien to them - it is relatively easy to contort the natural tendency into an unnatural expression.

the one that i'm wrestling with in this moment is the mating one.

i am polyamorous, and always have been. polyamory means, literally, "to love many". it is a way of relating that is commonly referred to as "having an open relationship" or something along those lines. there are so many ways to do it, i won't even attempt to summarize. i didn't have that meme to work with until recently, so i've only recently cultivated any sort of grace with the dynamic. and now i am engaged with a polyamorous lover, who is currently engaging in polyamorous experience with a mutual friend of ours.

my goodness, i feel that quite strongly, in quite a few ways. many of them are peaceable, and many of them are not. 

so while i get to have my third dimensional experience of processing this with my lover and my friend, i also get the awesome opportunity to delve deeply into myself through the portal of this discomfort. my emotional response has been varied and dynamic. when he told me what was happening, i had a sinking, crestfallen feeling, tears and weariness, pain. he asked me how it was landing for me and i said in truth, "i don't know. it's so emotional, i don't know how it feels, or why it feels that way." the next day i felt such love for them both and for how i had been cared for and considered, that i expressed that and blessed their journey.  the day after that i went into ceremony with myself, sound healing and deep prayers with my body and my world, and didn't feel anything about it through my mind. then yesterday i felt such heart ache that i cried and yearned to completely withdraw into myself. but i couldn't, as well, because i had a group ritual to help facilitate, and thank the grace of being for it. if i had spent the day feeling like i did when i woke up, i would have been suffering too much to even move through it in any usefull way, and would have been driven towards all sorts of extreme measures to secure the sanctity of my heart, most of which i probably would have had to unravel from a more balanced state of energy. hail, ritual. and now today i got a communication from her, and felt acid in my belly. felt retreat in my heart. i feel wounded.  and loved.  and more.

so what is it in me that is wounded? there is something that exists in me that receives the wound from this scenario, something that is not just triggered by programing.  but i am not clear about what that is yet, and that's the driver of my curiosity.  the essence of truth is difficult to distill from the information load, because what is programmed to be hurt is wrapped around what is actually hurt. what is it in me that is wounded?  i don't feel betrayed or suprised about them.  the human aspect of it all makes sense to me.   i think it is that within me which does yearn towards the essential communion which is wounded.  there is an urge in my being towards the communion that i can completely trust and rest in without guard.  that is natural.  and there is the way that that has been manipulated by social programming so that in a scenario like this, there must be some kind of betrayal, or some kind of wrong doing, or something poisonous.  and that's not natural.  that's not truth.  but it is there with all of it's energy to offer its two cents to the process.  and that kind of voice makes an eclipse of noise.  it takes a lot of patience to sit with it until is loses its power and then be with the more subtle, more complex and more loving truth of what is.  

which is that even if i don't like, i understand it, and no one did anything wrong.  my hurt is my hurt, and only mine.  the choice to be here or move out of it is mine to make, and all of this is an invitation to step beyond my comfort zone into the work of freeing love from the slavery of modern programming.  and who knows, maybe that would free the whole world to love and care about everything enough to save us from species extinction.  i'll go there for that.  hell yeah.

and there's more.  i think also that it touches into every way i have been disrespected, undervalued and tossed aside, all of those unhealed wounds that i don't even realize are still tender until something like this rises to scratch their surfaces again.  the primal wounding of the opening heart.  i've been through a lot, and i've been hurt a lot in my journey.  all of that memory is there to tap when my heart aches, and all of it still cries the primal cry for healing.  that, in itself, is an awesome thing to realize.  i have that much more work to do inside than i understood.  i am so glad to know.

i desire to be seen completely and revered for the magic that i am in this world. that's natural. but the contortion of that is the desire for the severity of it's expression - the idea that my special beauty would be all encompassing, and if it's not, then it's not being appreciated at all.  and i know that that's unnatural, because i don't move in honor of that program at all.  when i am experiencing from the inside out, i honor the individual beauty that is every being, and recognize that there is no such thing as replacing one being with another because we are all so wonderfully different.  every kinnexion answers a different breath that flows through being.  every kinnexion is its own experience.  the difference is that when i'm having the experience, i'm getting what i want.  i'm getting my loving attention.  right now, i'm not.  she's getting the loving attention, and i'm getting to sit in my wanting him and knowing that he's with her. 

that sucks.  that's the hurt.  last week i just wanted to be held.  and there were people here who wanted to hold me, but i didn't want to start stories with them.  i wanted him.  simply.  purely.  and when i finally got to kinnect with him, that was what we talked about.  that he was with her.  whee.  i'm going somewhere else now.

one of the things that polyamory really challenges is the bridging between the transcendent and the terrestrial.  in the transcendent, the divine essence in me sees the divine essence in another and moves towards communion.  that, unto itself, is a purely driven beauty - it is the movement towards source which is one of the highest beauties of this worldly experience.  the catch resides in the fact that we are all traumatized by the radical relational ineptitude that has been forced on us through social and cultural programming.  as soon as two bodies merge, the linear story of each body is activated, and that story is almost always full of hope and fear, unhealed wounds, innocence and ignorance and tender beauty looking for a safe place to exist.  we are conditioned to relate in awesomely unhealthy and completely counter-intuitive ways from the time that we first begin to be domesticated as children.  so through relationship, where we are all looking to heal and be free and be full, we are usually traumatizing ourselves and each other  and usually every step we make into intimate space threatens to take us into shadowy forests where we believe monsters to be.  which is scary, regardless of how high and pure the spirit is.  that terrestrial fear and the desire for safety that it surrounds make transcendent divine communion a very difficult thing to honor with grace.  we get attached.  we get hurt.  we get whatever.  we yearn for more.  i have yet to see it be simple and flowing from inception to completion.  obviously i'm willing to give it the sporting chance to be that way.  

i often remember something i read years ago about an eskimo tribe who holds no bonds of responsibility between lovers.  people love each other as they are moved to, and when a womon becomes pregnant, there is not one father, because she could have conceived through any one of her engagements.  then when the child is born, it has not one mother, it is the child of the tribe, and is raised as the child of the tribe.  everyone is responsible and available to that process.  imagine growing into sexuality in a setting like that.  how different would that be?

i think there is a balance to be held between absolute freedom in tantric expression and commitment to a deeper exploration between people.  from where i'm sitting, that seems to be the way from where i am to what i feel is an honoring of the truth.  i know what i want.  i want a partner who is dedicated to me and to our journey, and for us both to be in our freedom in honor of that primary communion.  i don't know if that can be the way with this being who is catalyzing this process of consideration for me.  we'll see.  but all of my experience with him is helping me to clarify what i do and don't want to experience and spend my energy on, through creating the conditions for me to look more deeply into myself for the sake of awareness and purification.  so it is the good work for now, and i get to drop in ever more deeply with a good sistar and do the miraculous work of healing the wounds amongst womyn.  for this, i am so grateful.

i just don't want to do it like this all the time.

may it serve...