Sex and money

Steven,
A recent note:
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great blog --keep up the good work!


"You are ready to begin having sex at the point that you earn enough honest money to put a roof over your own head and food on your table. When you can support yourself."

Could you explain the connection you are making between sex and money please? My intutiotion tells me there is a problem --a significant absence of soul-- somewhere in this association.
Anonymous | 02.16.05 - 5:39 pm |
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The connection is that the decision to have sex is an adult one, one that, in my estimation, should only be made by those capable of making mature decisions.  Disease, pregnancy, physical abuse, and emotional addictions are just some of the potential problems. In my mind, the immature mistake sex for love, choose inappropriate partners, aren't as careful about birth control or as realistic about the consequences of single parenthood or rushed marriage.  But at what age IS it appropriate? I decided that the best quantifiable measurement I could think of was the point at which you have learned to focus your energy and intelligence sufficiently to create goods and services that are valued by your community.  A person who cannot support himself is a child, in my book, and children shouldn't be having sex.  EARN ENOUGH MONEY TO SUPPORT A POSSIBLE CHILD.  Sorry-- a person who can do that is just a different bloke from someone who has never put a roof over their own head.
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What if you've inherited enough to support a child?  Then get to college before you drop trou.  About 90% of the really, really bad sexual decisions I know of were made before the age of 20.  I little maturity goes a long way.

Even more specificity

Remember: stress "dis-integrates" the triangle of breath, movement, alignment. You will ALWAYS see stress manefesting in one of these three areas. If you begin the re-integrative process at the first sign of stress: (straighten posture, relax muscles, breathe deeply) you create a stimulus-response loop between stress and excellence, such that stress automatically triggers a resourceful state. Using the "chakra" model, then, if your goals are balanced, you will begin to resolve theproblems on a lower level, lay down emotional "roots" and gain more consistence in your personal evolution. But you MUST work your body, and you MUST heal your heart and relationships. You CANNOT take anger, resentment, guilt, or shame on this journey. The purging of your negative emotions, forgiveness of those who have harmed you, and a deep and abiding love for the world--and yourself--are central.

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Once you have learned an appropriate breathing technique, put it into dance,Tai Chi, yoga, martial arts--something where you can place yourself under increasng physical stress, testing that"triangle". The ability to resist stress physically will generalize to other areas of your life--if you have proper, balanced goals and a commitment to their achievement.

The Mastery technique works, if you work it.

Steve

The Mastery Technique

Let's zoom in on the very core of what I'm talking about:
1) Five times a day, stop and breathe for sixty seconds. Deep, abdominal, slow breathing. Find a teacher in a breathing discipline and invest yourself here. The FIVE MINUTE MIRACLE is great for this.
2) Have balanced goals in all three arenas of your life. Write them down. Look at your goals every morning, and every night.
3) Look at the problems of the world as expressions of universal human behaviors and perceptions. See how analogous behaviors in your own life have stopped you from realizing your maximum potential in body, mind, and spirit.
4) Remember that everyone feels alone and afraid. This is not a sin, and not a flaw. The question is: what do you do with your lonliness and fear?
5) Every day, deepen your meditative practice. Even if it is only the five one-minute breaths. This is critical, or you will not be able to change--your ego, convinced it is you, will resist with more power than you can believe.
6) Keep a journal, and/or a dream journal. This is one of the only things that can substitute for meditation.
7) Give love to your family, deepen your career, and express your physical potential every day. Every day that you eat, you should move, and love, and think.

Just seven ideas for you. They can change your life.

Steve

The Fish Tank of your Soul

A lot of folks have joined us since the last time I ran down the complete process I'm suggesting. It is powerful, and flexible. Here are some of the major ideas:
1) Write your life story, from today until the day you die. Make certain to be specific about your goals in body, mind (career), and spirit (relationship).
2) Find one person to represent each arena. Begin to learn all you can about them.
3) Clarify your three major goals (one in each arena) and write them down where you can see them morning and night.
4) Resolve to move toward your goals at a rate of no more than 1% per week.
5) Share your goals with at least one other person who agrees to be your committed listener. If you don't have such a person, use the discussion board here to create community.
6) Five times a day (9, 12,3,6,9) stop and breathe deeply for 60 seconds. Use THE FIVE MINUTE MIRACLE's "Be Breathed" technique.
7) Morning and night, listen to your heartbeat for five minutes minimum.
8) Keep a dream diary. A good idea is to keep a small tape recorder at your bedside and dictate your dreams.
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Point #8 is worth slowing down to discuss, especially if you have weight issues. If you are carrying more than about 50 pounds of extra weight, your body is an emotional toxic waste dump--you are storing all of your pain and fear in that extra flesh. You literally will NOT be able to lose that weight until your subconscious is convinced you will not suffer if you do. Where will you put all of that pain, all of that fear? Well, if you can put it on paper, you might not need to carry it on your bones. WRITE DOWN YOUR DREAMS as you begin to lose weight. Meditate regularly. This is what I've referred to as "running the aquarium filter on the fish tank of your soul." Skip this step, and you'll yo-yo between weight gain and loss until you are exhausted, and no longer believe.
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These are major components. Here's a key question: how many of you can see that every one of these suggestions is a different version of the same idea? You have to read between the lines, but if you look beneath the surface, you'll catch it...

Steve

Modeling the Masters

Just came back from yoga this morning. Hot, sweaty, great. There is a certain pleasure in doing the same sequence of 26 moves day after day. One day, your Half-Moon pose is great, but your Bow sucks rocks. Then because you've set up certain patterns of tension and fatigue in your body, the next day, the Half-moon is mediocre, but your Locust is off the hook. Sigh. What is ultra-interesting is that Yoga has idealized versions of poses. You start where you can, do what you can while maintaining the thread of your breathing (critical) and your body will open further and further.Yoga is like this--and so is dance, and martial arts and ice skating and piano playing and a number of other disciplines, where there is both form and function. If the form, the "true" form exists as a Platonic ideal, you never master it, but movement in the direction of the idea brings fantastic benifits. Our reach SHOULD exceed our grasp.
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Let's apply this to writing. I say that your goal should be a thousand words a day. That will take you past that "million words of b.s." mark rather rapidly. But there will be days tht you just can't think of anything to write (until you get better control of your flow state.) All right: on those days, just take a classic short story by a masterful writer, and type it out. That's right, just type it out...even better, write it out in long-hand. There is an imprinting on the subconscious mind that happens when you do this. Not to mention the fact that stories look different in print than they do in manuscript form. It is quite valuable to understand this distinction.
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When going through this process of imitation, ask yourself not merely what the outer form of the thing is, but what in the world was the master thinking of when he or she created the movement, the music, the words? What did the world look like to her at that moment? Don't just do what the master says, try to see what the master saw. It is incredibly harder to be Christlike than to be Christian. The master sees a different world, a world that cannot quite be put into words. He communicates as best he can--through words, actions, and general energetics. And unless he has a student that equals or surpasses him (which rarely happens) the instant he dies, his followers devolve these vital teachings into two-dimensional concepts. It is the difference between a living tree which gives fruit--and the house someone builds once they cut that tree down. One is alive, one is not, however beautiful an edifice it might become.##We can reclaim what the Master found by imitating until you have reached 95% efficiency, and then studying what another master found...perhaps in another discipline altogether. Mastering a second discipline, or studying the words and thoughts of those who have, will give you unique perspective on the qualities that lead to excellence. This is hard, hard work...But it is also absolutely worth it.

Steve

Sexuality #2

Over the years I've had the honor and pleasure of studying many arcane disciplines. None of them were more interesting, or ultimately useful, as the Quodoshka, a blend of shamanic teachings concerning spiritual sexuality. In this rendition, the native American medicine wheel contains four aspects : Body, Mind, Spirit, Emotion, and at the center, sexuality. It is the core, catalyst energy. In the chakras, the same energy manefests on manydifferent levels. Level #2, very close to the base, is sex. When I look at the degree to which sex intertwines with the other aspects of life, I believe it whole-heartedly.
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I see nothing that lifts us up or casts us down as much as sex, nothing that reveals as much about us. After all,in a good, sweaty sexual encounter, all of thesenses are engaged simulteneously. Our sexuality reveals more about us than almost any other single aspect. Because it is tied so stringently to reproduction and survival of the species, it has been controlled by almost every civilization on the planet. In Judeo-Christian teachings, massive guilt is often associated with this arena, and my observation is that this guilt causes almost as much damage as the irresponsible behavior it was intended to curb.
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Taking control of, or finding a responsible outlet for, our sexuality is one of the core challenges for an adult, and a fine, fine source of subject matter for our writing. Guilt. Wow, it is staggering how many negative references to sex creep into the language: "nasty", "bad", "filthy" "dirty" etc. are all common references for the sexually active male or female, or books and films with this subject matter. Is there any doubt why we have so many problems? One of the first signs of dysfunction in any relationship is a reduction in the sexual energy between partners. Distorted body image is often related to sexual abuse issues, which is one of the reasons that losing weight MUST be accompanied by therapy, meditation or some other form of introspection and release.
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Philosophers who have spoken on this subject suggest that the intensity of an orgasm is in direct proportion to the amount of ego released: the more you are here, the less intense the experience. This means that sex can be used as training to enter the flow zone, that magical realm where artistic expression reaches its highest limits. It is, in other words, inextricably intertwined with the physical, the mental, and the spiritual. In week #4, I welcome you to write a short story dealing with sexuality as it affects your character. Take a controversial position, and run it out. Be absurd, or fantastic.
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One subject that I simply must write a story on one day has to do with the question of male or female sexual superiority. A "war" between a man and a woman on this level could be choreographed hysterically. I know of a few bets that took place on this issue, and I promise you that the competition was heroic in nature. There are endless positive and negative approaches to this area of life, and I would love to hear your thoughts!

Week #4 : Year-Long Writer's program

Welcome back to the one-year program. Remember: if you aren't up to the progress suggested, simply stay on an earlier week until you've completed. In short:
Week One: rough-draft a short story.(#1)
Week Two: rough-draft a second story. (#2)
Week Three: rough-draft a third story. Polish Story #1 and send it out for publication.
Week Four: rough-draft a fourth story. Polish Story #2 and send it out.
See how this is to work? If you don't have the time and energy for that, then slow it down so that each "week" step takes two weeks. In that way, the one-year program will take two years.
##The core of the Lifewriting writing system are the Hero's Journey and the Chakras, and the way they interact to describe both human and writing process. It is valuable to look at simpler models. Body-Mind-Spirit is much simpler than the Chakras. The Swain model is simpler than the Hero's Journey. There is another great model, one half-way between the two. In a story with an heroic protagonist:
1) A character
2) In a situation
3) With a problem
4) His efforts to solve the problem lead to a series of revelatory increasing failures
5) Leading to a precipitating event
6) Making necessary a solution
7) Followed by a reward.
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In a story with a villainous protagonist you have
1) A character
2) In a situation
3) With a problem
4) His efforts to solve the problem are a series of revelatory increasing successes leading to a
5) Precipitating event, making necessary a
6) Failure, followed by
7) Punishment.
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Look into some of your favorite movies, and you'll see that the first pattern is often the hero's story, and the villain's looks much like the second pattern.
Experiment!

Sexuality

We've dealt with gender relationships, but we need to get more specific on this second-chakra stuff. You, as a writer and as a human being, need to have some very specific ideas about human sexuality. This is such an incredibly charged subject that it has been, and will always be, fodder for uncounted tales of glory and woe. Male-female sexuality, promiscuity, love, abortion, pregnancy, homosexuality, incest, interracial sex, masturbation---the list goes on and on and on of subjects that have been the topics of endless bestselling novels and non-fiction books, as well as workshops and billions of hours of therapy.But what is sex to you? When is it good? Bad? Inappropriate? What is fair to get a love object into bed? What is "sick" and what is "normal"? Why are male sex offenders so more severely punished than female? What would be wrong with incest between adults with their tubes tied? YOU SHOULD HAVE ATTITUDES ABOUT THESE. You should have a world-view that helps you to make sense of all of this, and allow your characters to flounder about as they attempt to learn.
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What I call the "Beauty-Power Axis" is simply the observation that men and women make exchanges in relationships. The most common one is a woman's beauty for a man's power. This is a no-brainer: just look around you. We are seeing more straight one-for-one exchanges: both have equal beauty and power. But I see very very little of the opposite: a woman's power for a man's beauty. And I bet that there's nowhere in the world that that is more common than the first equation. This is, of course, unfair, but we're not talking about fairness. Women wail: "why is it that dumpy guys can get the hot girls?" And guys complain: "all women want is guys with money!" . And a recent complaint getting a lot of play is: "why is it that older men can be with younger women, but not the other way around?" Needless to say, I have opinions on this stuff, and most of you can bet what they are, loving sociobiology as I do. However, what is important is that you have AN opinion, and be prepared to defend it, in discourse, and in fiction.
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It also helps you to make sense of your own personal history. And to use that history as an endless source of story material. Looking back over your life, what was the worst sexual mistake you ever made? The best decision? Why?
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When my daughter was about six, I realized that one day she would ask when it was appropriate for her to make a sexual decision--when it was appropriate to become sexually active. The question didn't come up until she was thirteen, but that gave me seven years to think, and I came up with the following answer:You are ready to begin having sex at the point that you earn enough honest money to put a roof over your own head and food on your table. When you can support yourself. that means, of course, that some are ready at fifteen, and others ain't at thirty. Sorry about that. But so much life experience and focus is implied by the simple act of being able to support yourself that I REALLY like that as a basic standard, and can think of much, much misery that would have been avoided if people used that standard.
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But I'd like to look at human sexuality for a few days. Here's another one: based on the beauty-power axis idea, a couple of complaints make plenty sense to me:Women complain their husbands lose sexual interest as they get fat. Men complain that their wives withdraw if their careers are nosediving. Wow. No mysteries here, but this is painful, painful stuff. I know at least six different women who specifically gained weight to punish their husbands--to deny their beauty to "unworthy" men. Do men do the same thing? Sabotage their careers to punish their wives? I'm not sure, but I'd love to hear what you folks think of all this...digging deeper in the gender gap.
Roll up your sleeves and grab a shovel!

Letter

Again, all names have been removed:

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The pain of self exploration is immeasurable.  Actually the anticipation of the pain is perhaps more painful.  Who knows.  I may move through this gracefully and look back wondering what the hell all of the fuss was about.
 
First though…forgive…Damn it! Forgive.  Forgive (EX-HUSBAND) for abandoning me when I most needed him to help me heal and grow.  Forgive him for leaving me stranded with CHILD, a house and no income.  Forgive myself for not seeing it coming.  Not recognizing the signs of impending doom.  Having not face that type of danger before, how could I have recognized the signs?  Duh!  I cannot be blamed for loving and trusting completely.  I gave my heart and never looked back.  Still, only I can take care of me, so I SHOULD have been more aware.  Forgiving us both is hard.  I so needed him to help me understand why I could not lose the weight.  I honestly think that the weight would have come, baby or not.  Just slower perhaps.  So what then?  Truth be known, the weight was an excuse on his part to cut and run when he felt trapped.  I cannot know this for a fact but subsequent behavior seems to indicate this.  I am sorry that he was not happy.  I am sad that I could not be for him, what he wanted but then again, would I have wanted to be any different than I was?  No.  So, ok, we both made mistakes.  We both hurt. 
 
Forgive (CURRENT HUSBAND) for not being the husband that I expected him to be.  Can I do that?  After so many promises broken?  So much hurt and so much anger!!  Did we set out clear expectations in the beginning?  Not when we first got together but later.  We talked and talked and talked about expectations. Nothing appreciable happened.  Still nothing appreciable happens.  Can I forgive him for not being what I still need him to be?  Ok.  How about this?  I can forgive HIM but I cannot forgive the behavior.  Can I forgive myself for being so trusting, once again, and naïve.  For wanting to believe that he really would change?  It’s like an abusive man hitting the woman and they saying “I’m sorry!, I won’t do it EVER again”  and she takes him back.  After the first couple of times, who’s the fool?  Her/Me.  How can I forgive such stupidity???  What I see/feel, is a girl/woman who so wants to be loved and cared for that she is willing to compromise a lot to get it. 
 
February 10, 2005
 
 
I will come back to the forgiveness issue again (and again), I’m sure.  However, moving forward….
 
Today I want to talk about Love or lack thereof…Hmmm…..Steve’s advice to look in the mirror..seems on the surface to be so trite and almost silly.  I mean,  just the though of looking in the mirror and telling ME that I love ME makes me want to giggle.  More out of embarrassment that anything else.  What, really, is there to love in me? 
 
We love and cherish our children, just because they ARE children.  All of that sweet innocence is just so easy to love.   This love is so pure.  So sweet, it makes me cry with joy.
 
We tend to love and cherish others for what they give us in return, for how they SEEM to complete us OR some other imagined reason.   This is some maladjusted love.  Something masquerading as Love.
 
As we mature we develop bumps and warts, both literally and figuratively.  It becomes ever more difficult to see beyond the appearances to the innocent within.  We create shields and masks to both guard the innocent and ward off the enemy.  Eventually, we lose sight of the innocent as it is lost in the false reality we have created. 
 
So now, My fake self and your fake self try to connect.  It’s amazing!  And no wonder we have such difficulty making relationships, of any sort, work.  All parties arrive under false pretenses, using pseudonyms.    Where is the honesty of the soul in that?  How can you love what you cannot touch or see or feel?
 
When I look in my mirror I see an old and tired woman.  Maybe not old in the way the world counts old but old from misuse.  Tired and world weary.  I am shocked to see her there.  Not what I expect to see.  In my dreams and my heart, I am young, wide eyed.  Eager to take on whatever Life sends my way.  This crone before me just cannot be me.  I am not what I appear to be!!
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Steve's comment:
It is by engaging in all three aspects of life that we learn compasion  We look at others and say: "why can't they change?"  Whe we have yet to solve our own conundrms.  If we forgive and love ourselves, we can forgive and love others.  If we learn the lessons, we don't need to hold onto the pain--we can love, and yet be safe.  We can release the baggage that manefests in our bodies, our psyches, our inability to reach career goals.  And by learning to face our demons and dragons, we gain the ability to help others reach theirs.  Loving ourselves is the beginning.
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There are lessons that cannot be put into words.  But a teacher can create a context in which a student can learn for themselves.  One of my great joys with Nicki practising Yoga is that now I can teach her some of those ineffable truths.  Thank God.  I've fought so hard for these understandings--I love offering short cuts to my loved ones.  That is what all of these posts and exercises are about--short cuts.  You still have to do the work.  It is still gruelling.  But there actually are paths out of the woods.  This is one of them.
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The 10% Disconnect

One of my favorite Lifewriting principles, which has the virtue of:
1) helping to explain a wide range of phenomena, both social and personal.
2) Demonizes no one group
3) points to a solution to apprently insoluable social and cultural problems.
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Let me set this up, because it's complex.  Over the years, I've asked hundreds of people the following question: what percentage of the human race is just mean-spirited and nasty?   The average answer is about 10%.  The same estimation regarding unreasoning bigotry: I might personally put the number at 5%, but many others put it at 15 or 20%.  Adjust the number as you will: BUT ATTRIBUTE IT ACROSS THE BOARD, TO BOTH BLACK AND WHITE, MALE AND FEMALE, GAY AND STRAIGHT, LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE.  Find whatever number you can sit with, with my full understanding that you might want to attribute a little more to one group than another--especially if that other group isn't yours.  Good.  Now, whatever number you've come up with is, in my estimation, the "disconnect" between groups, the degree to which people in one group do not attribute full humanity to members of another.
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10%.  What are the implications?  Well, you can evaluate many human characteristics on a Bell Curve.  That implies that if most of us are in the middle, at one end (low 10%) are absolute monsters and at the other (high 10%) are  saints.  O.K?  So most, perhaps all of us have small aversions to the "other" while ten percent of us are absolute Haters, and ten percent of us are Xenophiles.
What are the different social phenomena that this explains?  Well, we've been talking about some of them, but let's list 'em, and some others just for fun:
1) Lack of black or Asian SF writers.
2) Lack of black or Asian male sexuality in films.
3) the rather stunningly disproportunate number of Asian newswomen to Asian newsmen.
4) The problem (if one considers this a problem) of white police officers shooting unarmed minorities.  This SEEMS to happen far more often--even allowing for percentage representation--than white officers shooting unarmed white suspects, or minority officers shooting unarmed white suspects.
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One might think that last is a contradiction.  Why wouldn't there be an identical percentage, if, as I suggest, the basic groups are equivilent? 
1) Because there are different penalties attached.  Society punishes non-whites who kill or attack whites more severely than whites who attack non-whites.  Any statistical analysis of arrests, convictions, and sentencing will reveal this.
2) There are orders of magnitude more programming Memes in our culture suggesting that whites are more beautiful, spiritual, intelligent, sexy--just plain better.  Programming works, people.  If it didn't , Advertising wouldn't be a multi-billion dollar industry.  Be honest: how many rednecks would have ever burned crosses if the Christ they knelt in prayer to had been black?  Generations of black Christians kneeling in prayer to Jesus has conditioned them on a core level to feel that whites are closer to God.  This this would have an inhibiting effect on the snap judgement made in a fraction of a second that leads to even the best cop making decisions based on threat estimate and social appropriateness of action?  It doesn't take a genius to add that one up.
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So what is the answer?  Honest discourse, such as we've been having.  And raising your own consciousness, each and every one of you, so that you shift toward the more loving side of the curve.  Each and every individual human being that does this  changes the entire curve.  We make a difference, people.  REMEMBER:  this doesn't mean to stop being wary, or not to realize that there are broken, dangerous people out there, some of whom may be beyond the capacity for reason.  Just that the problem isn't "out there" somewhere.  It's in us.  Each and every one of us.  We each have our own "10% disconnect".  Find it and heal it, and the world becomes a better place for everyone.

Steve

Another letter

Regarding journaling:
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2/11/05 It’s amazing what a little ‘core dump’ every night will do for the quality of one’s sleep! I have reread these past couple of days and what has become clear in such brief time is that I blame myself for so much. Not just acknowledging that , yeah, I made some choices that got me where I am, but BLAME!!! Like, You Stupid Idiot BLAME. It’s as if I’ve GOT to have some place to hang that anger. I can’t , in the long run, blame the other person. Their choices are their own. But MY poor choices…I don’t just own them, I erect a freaking shrine to them. Is this where the metaphysics I was taught from childhood has backfired? A lesson taken out of context and then applied to the exclusion of the rest of the philosophy? Yeah, it looks like that. The rest of the teaching is that there are no SINS, (I’ve replaced the word SIN with BLAME in my lexicon), only choices made and made again. If you miss the mark, then try again. It’s what I tell my children but I have not lived it fully. How can something that I have studied nearly all of my life not have been clear enough? I KNOW this stuff. It is not a new concept to me. There are certain fundamental Truths about how Life works and Laws that are a result of the Truth and I have not placed them at the core of my Being. About face kiddo! The Law is Love. There is nothing else. Out of Love springs all creation. I am Love and therefore Creative. My thoughts are creative and manifest in a measurable way in my life. So change the thoughts! Easier said than done. Act as IF and take one minute at a time. I feel lighter, more energized now than I have in weeks. How much is hormonal shift and how much is authentic awakening? Doesn’t matter. Just BE in the moment and be happy now for Now is all I have. The song says, Yesterday’s gone…and tomorrow hasn’t come. This, here in this moment is all I have.
Thank you Sensei!
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You are so welcome. It will take about 10% of the time it took to screw yourself up to get back on the path. That means about 2 years of conscious effort. Not too bad, right? Don't you DARE give yourself crap for not being able to do it faster!

(Now I just need to teach her to breathe!)
Steve

Hitch: Black Eye for the White Guy

I remember watching an episode of "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" some months back, and turning to Tananarive and saying: "Wow. What a brilliant move on the part of Gay activists. They are sending a meme out into the culture: if you will tolerate us and allow us to contribute, you will get laid more often." Damn, that was clever. Will Smith is a genius. I don't know what he saw in the original script for "Hitch", but during the development process--which I suspect was painfully arduous--he and his writers figured out what I predict will be the first major successful black romantic comedy.
###MINOR SPOILERS BELOW###
We've been talking about the pitfalls of black sexuality in cinema, and Smith may have avoided every single one of them, in a way that will set a role model for films to come, and also create a building block that desensitizes the audience to some major hot buttons.
1) there is no actual sex in the movie. So it doesn't get as hot as, say, "Jerry McGuire." That is really unfortunate, but possibly an intermediary stage, preventing audiences from "disconnecting" emotionally, and doing the "er--it's only a movie--what can I criticize to explain why I dislike this? Ah! the stars have "no chemistry"" (That great, inarguable, utterly subjective excuse for not enjoying such things.)
2) "Hitch" the "love doctor" has a strong "B" story about his helping a guy get the girl of his dreams. She is rich, beautiful, blonde. The guy is white. There is no way in hell this movie would make half the money it is going to make had the "B" story been about another black guy.
3) the coming attraction featured a great gag where Smith is kissed on the lips. My standard comment about black men in film is that they are either too young, too old, too fat, too gay, or too dead to have sex. The kiss reduces his "perceived cock-block" level. Subliminally, he becomes more harmless. Hell, partner, John Wayne would never have been kissed on the lips! When I saw that ad, I was awe-struck with admiration. MAN, this guy is smart. Instead of subliminal tension at the possible expression of black sexuality, white males with "that" attitude got to look forward to a moment when a "black stud" gets humiliated. My sincere admiration.
4) there are other guys in the film presented as more "together" than Smith. They are white.
5) Eva Mendes, his love interest in the film, is neither white nor black, exactly. For some reason this is more acceptable than if she were either. A possible explanation: a white woman would be off ground for obvious reasons. Need I even go there? I thought not. But why not a black woman? A possible reason is sociobiological: a fear of being out-bred by the "other". So two black people would "breed true" to create another black person (the question of whether it is actually logical to consider Smith, or Halle Berry, "black" is for another time.). A black person plus a dark-skinned Hispanic produces something else, something not quite so threatening. Just a theory.
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No, the movie isn't perfect. It goes on a bit too long. But ALL of the films it will be compared to will be films with white actors, and EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM breaks the rules, and therefore, according to my theory, would have either died in development or died at the boxoffice had you simply transplanted black actors into them. Not one of them had to overcome what "Hitch" overcame. My guess is that "Hitch" will kill at the box office, and for good reason. Can't wait to see the returns.
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Smith deserves his 20 million dollar status. First he chose to star in "Independence Day", which was arguably the first major science fiction film in history that actually took that bit about "If Aliens attacked, all earth would pull together" seriously--all the other films just showed white people pulling together. Almost every frame in that film was composed multi-culturally, and therefore it was, for all its flaws, a MAJOR piece of sociological science fiction, and subversive as hell. When Will Smith flies out of Earth's atmosphere and said "I've waited my whole life for this," tears were streaming down my face. I'd waited my whole life for a moment like that, as well.
And now "Hitch". A minor movie. A major milestone. Wow.

Steve

Hitch (2005)

This romantic comedy, starring Will Smith as the "Love Doctor" who helps lame dudes find true love, might, by the cynical, be re-titled "Black Eye for the White Guy." I couldn't blame 'em, but I thought is was great, even NOTconsidering the cultural hurdles we've been discussing on this blog--we'll go into aspects of what I can only call Smith's genius later (the script was in development for years at his company. While "Hitch" is probably five minutes too long, the work really shows!) I flat loved it, and give it a solid "B+" even before I cut it cultural slack. Eva Mendes is the dazzler who catches his eye, and she is wonderful.

Steve

The LAPD shooting of Devon Brown

I've been listening all week to screaming about the shooting of Devon Brown. Because I have been nauseated at the number of times I hear of white officers shooting unarmed black folks, I listen very very closely. This 13 year old boy was in a stolen car which led the police on a brief freeway chase. The driver fled, and apparently Brown backed the car toward the parked police car. The officer opened fire. These are pretty much the facts. What disturbs me is the fact that everyone reporting the facts embroiders one way or another. Everyone. they skip over vital information, they inferr without clarifying that they are playing with facts, they obscure, they sensationalize. THIS BOY IS DEAD. It appears to be part of a pattern of white officers (and for hte purposes of this, until proven otherwise, Officer Garcia is going to be considered white--until I see a picture that indicates he is more Asian or African in genetics) having a dangerously cavalier attitude toward unloading their sidearms on unarmed dark people. Not that I say "appeared." I don't know. What I DO know is that dark-skinned people can point to a multi-century pattern of abuse and murder that has rarely been acknowledged, and continues to dishearten them. Has it ended? Some say yes--but curiously, many of those who say "yes" imply that nothing much negative ever happened at all. I do know that when the Rodney King beating was caught on tape, every black person I knew held their breath. EVERY ONE OF THEM knew of other cases like this--that had not been so well documented, and therefore denied by whites. When it was caught on tape, we thought: "Wow! At last it can't be denied that something horrible happened." But it was denied. And the jury did bring in the non-guilty verdict. And all over L.A., black people felt that this was solid evidence that the deck was stacked, that their lives were not valued, and that only a fool would play a rigged game--so they kicked the table over. It was self-destructive, criminal, regrettable--and human as hell. BOTH sides indulge in denial. BOTH sides pretend that they hold the virtue. Cops are high-testosterone Alphas who stay in a hyper-excited state enough of the time to make them hair-trigger. Garcia's adrenaline must have been running sky-high after that chase. Is that an excuse? No. Did he do wrong? I don't know--but I can imagine myself behaving in a similar manner, and THAT is enough for me to say: hold on. Both sides. Let's see how it's handled. There is always time for hatred and violence. The boy is dead. Let's not honor him with more death. Every time a tragedy like this happens, there is a possibility for a bit of healing. Anyone who says "nothing has changed" (as I heard over and over on the radio) is ignorant of history--but I hear ignorance on BOTH sides of the issue.
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We are building a better future. Don't politicize death. That is as evil as a deliberate murder. Let's hope Officer Garcia was a good man making the best decision he could. And if that's not true, let's hope he goes down in flames.

Better him than Los Angeles.

The Core of all things

Is the breath. Learn to breath properly, and your metabolism will normalize, your fears will release from your body, your endurance will skyrocket, your energy triple, your ability to remain in flow state go through the roof. There are so many more things that I can hardly believe it myself. There are many wonderful breathing techniques. Find a teacher, learn one (or several--experiment!) and practise them, briefly, five times a day. Or buy the FIVE MINUTE MIRACLE. It's not the only way--but it is excellent.

End of today's ad.

Letter from a student

Again, all names have been removed:
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The pain of self exploration is immeasurable. Actually the anticipation of the pain is perhaps more painful. Who knows. I may move through this gracefully and look back wondering what the hell all of the fuss was about. First though…forgive…Damn it! Forgive. Forgive (EX-HUSBAND) for abandoning me when I most needed him to help me heal and grow. Forgive him for leaving me stranded with CHILD, a house and no income. Forgive myself for not seeing it coming. Not recognizing the signs of impending doom. Having not face that type of danger before, how could I have recognized the signs? Duh! I cannot be blamed for loving and trusting completely. I gave my heart and never looked back. Still, only I can take care of me, so I SHOULD have been more aware. Forgiving us both is hard.
I so needed him to help me understand why I could not lose the weight. I honestly think that the weight would have come, baby or not. Just slower perhaps. So what then? Truth be known, the weight was an excuse on his part to cut and run when he felt trapped. I cannot know this for a fact but subsequent behavior seems to indicate this. I am sorry that he was not happy. I am sad that I could not be for him, what he wanted but then again, would I have wanted to be any different than I was? No. So, ok, we both made mistakes. We both hurt. Forgive (CURRENT HUSBAND) for not being the husband that I expected him to be. Can I do that? After so many promises broken? So much hurt and so much anger!! Did we set out clear expectations in the beginning? Not when we first got together but later. We talked and talked and talked about expectations. Nothing appreciable happened. Still nothing appreciable happens. Can I forgive him for not being what I still need him to be? Ok. How about this? I can forgive HIM but I cannot forgive the behavior. Can I forgive myself for being so trusting, once again, and naïve. For wanting to believe that he really would change? It’s like an abusive man hitting the woman and they saying “I’m sorry!, I won’t do it EVER again” and she takes him back. After the first couple of times, who’s the fool? Her/Me. How can I forgive such stupidity??? What I see/feel, is a girl/woman who so wants to be loved and cared for that she is willing to compromise a lot to get it.

February 10, 2005

I will come back to the forgiveness issue again (and again), I’m sure. However, moving forward…. Today I want to talk about Love or lack thereof…Hmmm…..Steve’s advice to look in the mirror..seems on the surface to be so trite and almost silly. I mean, just the though of looking in the mirror and telling ME that I love ME makes me want to giggle. More out of embarrassment that anything else. What, really, is there to love in me? We love and cherish our children, just because they ARE children. All of that sweet innocence is just so easy to love. This love is so pure. So sweet, it makes me cry with joy. We tend to love and cherish others for what they give us in return, for how they SEEM to complete us OR some other imagined reason. This is some maladjusted love. Something masquerading as Love. As we mature we develop bumps and warts, both literally and figuratively. It becomes ever more difficult to see beyond the appearances to the innocent within. We create shields and masks to both guard the innocent and ward off the enemy. Eventually, we lose sight of the innocent as it is lost in the false reality we have created. So now, My fake self and your fake self try to connect. It’s amazing! And no wonder we have such difficulty making relationships, of any sort, work. All parties arrive under false pretenses, using pseudonyms. Where is the honesty of the soul in that? How can you love what you cannot touch or see or feel? When I look in my mirror I see an old and tired woman. Maybe not old in the way the world counts old but old from misuse. Tired and world weary. I am shocked to see her there. Not what I expect to see. In my dreams and my heart, I am young, wide eyed. Eager to take on whatever Life sends my way. This crone before me just cannot be me. I am not what I appear to be!!
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Steve's comment:
It is by engaging in all three aspects of life that we learn compasion We look at others and say: "why can't they change?" Whe we have yet to solve our own conundrms. If we forgive and love ourselves, we can forgive and love others. If we learn the lessons, we don't need to hold onto the pain--we can love, and yet be safe. We can release the baggage that manefests in our bodies, our psyches, our inability to reach career goals. And by learning to face our demons and dragons, we gain the ability to help others reach theirs. Loving ourselves is the beginning.
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There are lessons that cannot be put into words. But a teacher can create a context in which a student can learn for themselves. One of my great joys with Nicki practising Yoga is that now I can teach her some of those ineffable truths. Thank God. I've fought so hard for these understandings--I love offering short cuts to my loved ones. That is what all of these posts and exercises are about--short cuts. You still have to do the work. It is still gruelling. But there actually are paths out of the woods. This is one of them

Korea's Nukes

Well, we now know that Kim Jong Il has nuclear weapons. The right will say: "see, we told you this would happen. Axis of Evil." the left will say: "See, we told you this would happen if you took your eyes off the ball and attacked Iraq." I thought I'd weigh in. There are so many things here that I don't know, and I don't want to display ignorance. So I will take the balanced approach, and that is: "If I was Korea, would I want nuclear weapons?" Well, I think that the only reasonable answer is "yes." If Saddam had had Nukes, we all know America would have picked on someone else first, and used diplomatic pressure to get Saddam to disarm...and he would still be in power. American can no longer claim that we have never attacked anyone who did not attack us, or one of our allies. We lost that. BUSH LOST THAT FOR US. You might decide that what we got in return was worth it, but please don't lie to yourself about the trade-off, O.K?
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And no weapons of Mass Destruction were found. Which means that if I was Korea, I would know that not having Nukes is no protection against being accused of having them, and being subsequently attacked. No, the only defense is to be up-front and say "Yep! I've got 'em!" In fact, if I DIDN'T have them, I might still lie and say I did. Mr. Bush did that, too.
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The world has changed. I still pray that the overall strategy is going to weigh in as more positive than negative, that he and his NeoCons are implementing a genius-level coup agaisn the dictators of the world. It is possible that freedom will sprout like mushrooms after a summer rain-it really is. But folks, that had BETTER happen, because it is undeniable that America did something drastic here. Someting potentially as dangerous as any action any country has ever taken in the history of the world.
We'd better pray it works.
Steve

Loving Yourself

Just had lunch with an old and dear friend, and during it was reminded of one of the core principles of changework:
change must begin with love. Love of yourelf, love of the world. You cannot move forward in life while holding onto hurts, grief, anger--they weigh us down massively. The reason you hold onto them is that your subconscious believes that without the pain, you will make the same mistakes again. In other words, if you learn the lessons, you can release the pain. More on this later.
But for right now, if you are having trouble making change, ask a simple question: "Do I love myself?" If you have any hesitation answering that a resounding YES, then one of the best things you can do is spend ten minutes a day looking at yourself in the mirror saying, "I love myself. I like myself." Peer into the mirror until you can see the child you used to be, and talk to her. God knows, she needs to hear this. Say it a hundred times a day, until you GET it. Only if you genuinely love yourself, and forgive yourself for sins real or imagined, will you be willing to go through the fire. And believe me--genuine change work is a burning away of ego like you wouldn't believe. Love yourself. And let you know it.

Steve

Note from a new student

A lady I've known a long time recently asked to study with me. After our initial meeting:
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Hey Steve, Thanks a million, once again. It was so good to see you after all of this time and to get some insight in to the why’s and wherefores of the changes in your life. I so appreciate you listening to me and my tales of woe. I KNOW I have some very hard work ahead of me and I find it all pretty daunting.
Beware, opening this Pandora’s Box as it may be difficult to close again. I spite of my tears, I don’t want pity. I need and want your guidance and your patience. Be my teacher. Scared….scared…..scared….keeps whirling through my mind. Geez, it’s almost paralyzing! Fear is such a strong motivator – in all directions.
I have denied my pain for such a very long time. I did not grow up ‘broken’. I don’t know how to admit that kind of pain. I AM the strong one. The one that others come to for help. How can I be the one that ‘needs’??? I am uncomfortable taking emotionally from others. There is a pride there. I have ALWAYS known what to do to heal myself. Until now. Until the last 13 years. Has it been that long? And even then, I thought I knew what to do. I was strong. I declared my independence. I prayed. I played. Somewhere, I lost ME. Did I get so caught up in ‘helping’ others that I forgot to tend to my Soul? Did I forget or was it just too hard and easier to look outward rather than in? Do any of these questions really matter? Today’s topic is forgiveness. The ever present demon. Like that damned birthday candle that won’t go out, no matter how hard you blow on it. Just when you think you’ve got it handled, it roars back to life, bigger than ever. Like a life devouring fire storm. The inability to forgive sucks the essence of joy from me and renders all attempts to create happiness futile. How to forgive? What to forgive? It isn’t about forgiving ‘them’, at least not yet. It is about forgiving ME for being in that time and place. For not seeing the duplicity, not seeing the error of being in relationship with them. For allowing it to happen in the first place. Where is that mirror when I need it most? What is it about forgiveness that doesn’t’ completely go away? I think that I’ve covered the ground thoroughly and dug everything up and turned it all over. Fine. Good. Yes, I feel better about things now. I can move on. THEN, seemingly from nowhere, that anger is there again. It screams in my ears, drowning out every other emotion. How could THEY do that to me? How could I let them?? Stupid, arrogant, fool. Please, please, please…I pray/cry. I don’t want to hurt anymore. Shut it down. Turn it off. Stuff if away in the corner. No one will notice it there, least of all me. At least for a while. Tonight I will meditate on this. I will talk to my Creator. I will reach an understanding and THIS time I will succeed. THIS is the first step.
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Beautifully put, and a note that shows genuine insight into process. My reply:
Dear XX:
Anger is a mask over fear. Go deeply into your fear, deal with that, and you will be able to release the anger. At any rate, you don't need to be rid of fear in order to evolve--as long as you are very clear on what you love. Put your fear behind you, your love in front of you, and run like hell!Steve

Barnes' Heuristic

You'll notice a bit of conversation about my contention that men and women are basically the same--or that the differences are "teeny."  Yep.  Now, obviously, one could fill shelves with the differences, or shelves with the similarities.  It's very much a "Is the glass half-empty" thing, where the answer says more about the answerer than the situation.  So let me address that directly, since one of the major purposes of this blog is to give people an honest view into what happens if you apply the theoretical model I'm proposing to life itself.
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The human mind tends to work in two basic ways (viewed from one perspective): to seek similarities, and to seek differences.  In human interactions, seeking similarities always seems to me to unite, while seeking differences divides.  Also, the natural human tendency to try to hog all the good stuff, especially characteristics, for whatever "your" tribe happens to be (male, female, gay, straight, black, white, American, British, whatever) makes this particularly dangerous.  I've known too many people who were told in youth that their group was superior.  They might meet many people who apparently violated that rule, but under stress they revert right back to their childhood teaching. 
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I see no weakness in offering others the exact same humanity that I claim for myself.  Master martial artists often feel enormous love for their opponents--it does not weaken their ability to kill in defense of their tribe.  And I see great disadvantages for dwelling on the differences--including underestimating people who are worthy of respect.  So I tend to start by assuming similarity, and then move outward from there to the differences, rather than the other way around.  This is just the way I think, and it works for me, and allows me a great deal of consistency as well as rapid and (my my estimation) accurate judgment of people and situations, even in contexts of violent stress.
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So when I look at black and white, American and "foreign", gay and straight, males and females, I concentrate on the vast number of things they have in common.  Dealing with women as if they want the same basic things men want has worked rather well for me (he said modestly).  Some of the people who disagree with me on this--including some who have posted here, are among those I respect most in the world, so I don't think its the only way.  But it honestly works for me.

Steve