Needs

There are many needs that are common to human beings.  The needs for shelter, warmth, security, food and water and air.  The needs for sensory and intellectual stimulation and self expression.  The need for emotional and physical engagement with others.  These are necessary for healthy bodies, minds, hearts and souls.

I have become aware that I have certain needs and that I must find ways to meet those needs if I am to live a life that is productive and healthy. 

I need my car because I need my job because I need my home.  I need Air to breathe and Water to drink and to clean both my body and my home.  I need to eat to keep my body healthy.  I need my Pwca, my Family, my Friends and my Community.  I need my Gods and my Ancestors and my Allies.  I need to write.  I need to practice massage.  I need to sing and to journey.  I need to make love and I need sex.

I have lovers with whom I engage both emotionally and sexually and making love with them fulfills important needs.  But those lovers do not engage with me in the way that my friend did because it is not an inherent part of who they are. 

Engaging with my friend not only allowed me to discover specific needs but to meet them.  And now I need to find other avenues to fulfill those specific needs.

I have taken a new lover with whom I am engaging and we are exploring our mutual enjoyment of certain experiences together.  We are still working it out but, we both enjoy the energy that we raise when we engage with each other.  I need these things and I am enjoying this new exploration.

I am hopeful that I will eventually find an avenue for the one need that is unfulfilled since my friend and I ended the sexual aspect of our relationship, my need to submit. 

I need the catalyst of someone with whom I feel safe enough and, whom I trust enough and, who is strong enough, to push me to release my control, to allow my mind and heart and body to let go of their hold on my soul.  The freedom I find in those moments to go deeper into myself and, not to leave my body in an escape but, to dive deeper into my shadows and the depths of my own abyss.  I need that release. I need to go to that place to lay bare the dark faces and to bring their voices up from the silence. I need the safety of someone whom I trust to see those faces, to hear those voices.  Someone who enjoys holding me while I cry, who takes pleasure in my sobs and who enjoys helping me regain my strength and autonomy.

I need someone who enjoys pushing me to that place without words.  I can get there on my own, sometimes, through other means.  Through fasting and sleep deprivation and physical trial but, the results are not quite the same and the act of surrendering that control to another, and sharing those tears and secrets with another, is not present in those moments.  That need by definition requires the presence of another human being.

The need is not an everyday kind of thing but, it is a need that I must meet, or a part of me may slip away forever and I am not willing to allow that to happen.  It would mean giving up a part of my own magick and power and I have work to do.  I need all of my Self if I am to accomplish my purpose.  

Learning to feel...

It has been a difficult week and I am trying to process all that has happened.  It started with an experience that opened up a lot of emotional boxes that I have kept carefully locked for a long time.  This resulted in an average of three hours sleep each night and dreams that I wish I did not remember, that made my waking hours uneasy. 

This weekend I spent with loved ones and attended the celebration of a cherished friend.  I have been looking forward to it for months.  Before the party, we engaged in a few hours of very energetic play that included pushing my limits in ways that I did not expect. 

My reaction to these experiences, before we ever even arrived at the party, was unexpected as well, although not unfamiliar to me.  My anger escaped and I felt overwhelmed by feelings.  Not specific feelings that I could identify and process but, rather simply too much feeling.  And as has been the case for the past week, my ability to shut down those feelings was missing.  It was just gone. 

The part that was familiar was an almost overwhelming desire to walk out onto the highway and catch a ride to anywhere else.  The thought that “I could be ten states away by morning” kept repeating in my brain.  The desire to hurt someone was also very strong and difficult to silence. 

I have not had those thoughts, those desires, so strongly in decades. And I returned to a behavior that I rejected years ago.  I resorted to sipping on a bottle of fire whiskey all night long to quiet those thoughts and to numb those feelings.

That form of self-medication has never proven to be very effective and, while I managed at first to regain some semblance of control and even danced and spent time laughing with loved ones, the moment eventually came when I just fell apart.

I know exactly where I was when it happened.  The truly mystifying thing about it was that, suddenly I was surrounded by six people whom I love, and I do mean surrounded.  They were standing around me in a circle.  One moment to the next, they were just simply there.  I have no idea how they knew what was about to happen.  None of them have ever seen me in that state before, certainly not at a party.  But I could not hold it together any longer and I could not keep the feelings contained, nor could I keep them out. 

It feels as though they stood there with me for a long time.  I believe I was crying.  I know that I was ashamed.  I know that I kept apologizing for my weakness.  I know that they kept reminding me, that if it were any one of them, I would not consider it to be weakness. 

I am incredibly grateful for their support.  And for a beloved who sat in a car with me and talked me down from a very bad anxiety attach after, and for beloveds who never complained when the dreams that kept waking me, woke them as well.  And who let me remain silent on the long drive home. 

I am home now, alone in the quiet with my beloved Pwca.  My chest still hurts and I keep crying, over what I don’t know, but I am safely away from the thoughts and the feelings that seemed so overwhelming.  I will try to sleep again and hopefully the dreams will let me.  I will try to make sense of this week when I wake.  

Pain High

There are many different types of pain that human beings experience.  Let me be clear, I am not discussing the pain that results from unhealed emotional, psychological or psychic wounds.  Those wounds that I have experienced, that may be described in that way, if indeed they ever were, are no longer.  Any wounds of that nature that may linger will complete their healing in their own due time, the stronger I am, the faster they will be made whole.

I enjoy pain.  I enjoy the physical high that results from the kiss of a single-tail whip (although I have not yet felt it as directly as if my skin were the target, I am looking forward to that experience with anticipation).  I enjoy the buzz that I get from the flogger striking my skin, from a sharp edge being traced across my body, the burn of ropes, the heat of flame.  All of these things will get me high.  They will increase my heart rate and bring a flush to my skin.  They will raise my body temperature and my energy level.  And they heighten my awareness and perceptions, even my psychic abilities are improved in that state.  The release of neuro-transmitters in my brain is a very pleasurable thing.

I enjoy the pain that arouses me sexually as well.  I like the feeling of my friend’s hand slapping my leg, or pulling my hair, or gripping my arms hard enough to leave bruises.  I enjoy the feeling of his nails on my back clawing hard enough to leave marks, and the sharp pain that results when he pinches me.  I like the way my body responds to his fist against my thigh, and to his teeth biting into my flesh.  I become aroused when he puts his hand around my throat (and I have asked him to apply pressure at some point, because I want to experience that too).  These things also get me high.  They open up my energy centers and wake up my sexual center.  They arouse me in ways I have only glimpsed before.

All of these things are extremely pleasurable to me.  But they are external, and they do not push me.  I can experience a great deal of external pain and it will not push me emotionally.  It will not touch me inside.  It does not reach the deeper places.

I enjoy sex.  I have had some wonderful experiences with a few cherished beloveds who did touch me deeply, men who can and do move me emotionally and energetically by mere proximity to them and their strength and power, men whom I love deeply and who have helped me to discover that sex is a wonderful gift.  That my body is capable of so much more than I had ever realized, that I can receive and give great pleasure.  That allowing my energetic body to open to theirs is not only possible but, amazing in its beauty and power.  I give thanks for those gifts.  And I have shed tears in some of those moments because I was so touched, so moved by the beauty of them that I could not help but cry. They taught me to trust, myself as well as them.

But the sex that pushes me, that touches me so profoundly that I curl up shaking with sobs, is brutal.  When my friend fucks me in that way, he pushes me over that thresh-hold.  He gives me the type of pain that I need in order to reach that place.  Pain alone cannot accomplish that; sex alone cannot get me there.  Only a lover who is willing and capable of fucking me with brutality can push me over that thresh-hold. 

And it is a place I need to go.  It makes me aware of my own strength, it teaches me about my instincts for survival and my need for vulnerability.  It teaches me about balance and makes me feel in ways that I cannot avoid, that I cannot hide from.  It reminds me that I am not timid or weak or small.  It reminds me that I am not meant to be silent, and that I will never be powerless.  Even when I choose submit to another, it is always my choice, my power is still there inside me, always. 

After I have re-established my autonomy, the bruises feel good.  I feel satisfaction and pride in them.  They make me smile for days, remembering and feeling clean and strong and capable.  Yet another lovely pain-high.

The Third Gate

A cherished and trusted friend created and facilitated a ritual for me recently.  The intent was for me to experience fear and struggle and pain and to discover my responses, my limits, and to push me as far as I chose to be pushed.  It was a physical ordeal designed to accomplish a spiritual goal.

My friend believed that such an experiment would help me to achieve a state where I might find a part of me that I needed to connect with.  I trusted this friend to know how to push me, and to be willing and capable of doing so, and of safeguarding me should I become unwilling to back down.

It takes a lot of courage to push someone in that way, even more when you care for them.  It is difficult to put someone we care for in pain.  It takes a lot of trust that they are strong enough to cope with the results. 

I am grateful for my friend’s trust and for their courage, and for the ritual and for the profound discovery that resulted. 

A a result of the ordeal, I passed through three Gates, thresh-holds to depths of self.  I became connected to deeper and deeper levels within myself.  

The first Gate was a state of mind, of thoughts and words and a physical “high”.  It was also a psychic high, my “head-blindness” faded until I could “see” in ways that I have not before, I could feel, hear and smell in ways I have not before.

The second Gate was a state of emotion, of fear and submission and sexual arousal, of energy and need and instinct to survive.

The third Gate was a state of Power.  This was the state that I had hoped to reach. This was the place that I needed to be pushed to.  It is a place of strength and will, of aggression and fire and the warrior spirit within me. 

When I had reached that place, words were inaccessible; emotion was irrelevant, only power existed.

Returning to the place where words are possible required me to pass through the place of emotion again.  First was what my friend interpreted as “wrath”, then hysterical laughter, then wracking sobs, then a feeling of exhausted euphoria. 

After thanking my Patrons, my Ancestors and my Spirit Allies that I had invoked to protect and guard the space and whom I had entreated to push me and my friend until I had reached the place I needed to, I put the structures of myself back into a functional order. 

I did that by putting the space in order, then deconstructing the wards and the energetic fortress that I had built to create sacred and protected space and to keep out anything that might interfere with our work, as well as to keep in all the energy raised so that it would go unnoticed by anyone outside. 

I am still processing the magick but, I know that I will not be the same.  I also know that now that I have found that place, I need to master that power.  Power without purpose means nothing.  To use it, I must master it, to master it, I must access it, and to access it, I needed to find it.  Now begins the work of practice and finding the principles of honor that apply to its use. 

Truth be told, I have been afraid of my power.  I have been afraid that I will not know how to use it wisely and honorably.  That because it resides in a place where my compassion does not, to use it would result in everyone around me ending up “dead and bloody”. 

I understand now that I have what I need to make sure that does not happen.  There is a reason that my place of power must be accessed through the place where my compassion lives.  There is also a reason that I needed to struggle through the pain in order to find it. 

I will be continuing to explore my responses to pain and my limits, the things that it teaches me and the role that it plays in my sexual identity.  But this experience alone was worth more to me than I might have imagined.

I give thanks for the courage, trust, will, and inspired magick of my friend.  And to my Gods, Ancestors and Spirit Allies for knowing my strength and their relentless demands that I finally start living up to it.  I give thanks.

Boundaries

I have been exploring and experimenting lately.  I have been meeting new people and discussing the nature of desire, and I realized that one of the skills that I need to develop further is the ability to hold strong boundaries.  To see clearly what I desire and to distinguish that from what others may desire.

It is not only a need to communicate those desires, or to negotiate what I am willing to try, but to hold clarity about myself, and to respect my boundaries. 

I have spent most of my life, until recently, complying with the wishes of others.  “People-pleasing” is a habit.  I caught myself asking whether or not I could meet another’s desire, and deciding that, I could indeed accommodate their wishes. 

I realized in that moment that, I was asking the wrong questions.  I need to be asking myself, “What do I want?” and   "Is this person’s desire compatible with my own?”

I can no longer afford to compromise what I want, or my need for autonomy and independence, to fit someone else’s dream.  This journey must be about my dreams. 

In a conversation with someone who was trying to pick me up, and who I had no desire to accommodate, I heard a gem of wisdom.  “It's not about surrendering to another person but, to your own body’s experience.  It’s about your own energy being released, and about your own power to choose.”

In an experiment with a cherished and trusted friend, I discovered that it is indeed about surrendering to my own body, allowing my own energy to flow freely, and it is about my power. 

Choosing to submit to another, in that moment, and only for that moment, is a choice to express my own power and, in doing so, to remember that power. 

The choice is mine and the power is mine. I must be diligent to choose consciously, not through habitual pattern.  And I must be diligent not to sacrifice my strength but, to choose my own desires.

Desires

There are many facets to desire. Humans are complex and complicated beings. I do not believe that anyone is truly one dimensional in what attracts, excites and arouses them.  I have spent a good deal of time recently learning about many different ways that other people find that allusive jewel.  I have been reading about others’ experiences, discussing with others how the mystery of sexual desire functions for them, even asking questions and discussing ideas about which I am curious.

I have realized that my desires are not simple.  Sometimes they are conflicting even to the point of paradox.  And I am beginning to understand that is a paradox to be celebrated, a mystery to be enjoyed and explored.  I do not have to forsake any of my desires for any other.  I can explore each and every one of them in excruciating detail. 

I still have a very painful stutter when discussing some of the more extreme desires that I have yet to actually experience.  They are not my only desires, but the fact that I have such difficulty articulating them bestows them with immense power to my thinking.  That the simple act of giving voice to them, putting them into language, is such a struggle  (for one who loves words as much as I do) suggests a great deal of meaning and power.

Perhaps it is the fear of judgment, or the fear of being misunderstood.  Truth be told, some of those desires could be misinterpreted, and indeed have been by some of the people I love and respect.  Specifically the desire to submit to someone else’s will, either by acceptance or by physical “force”, seems to invoke in many the idea of being victimized.  The desire to explore pain or fire or blood, seems to invoke concerns about my mental and emotional health and physical safety. 

Perhaps it is the fear of those desires themselves that instills them with such power. Fear is an amazing and profound emotion and the source of great strength.  I have spent much time reading and learning and exploring intellectually, soon it will be time to actually go out and discover what it all might mean.  When I do, it might be in fear but, it will not be in shame.

Romanticism

I am a romantic.  I have been for this entire lifetime, and I suspect for many lifetimes before this one.  No matter what other way I might define myself, that is a truth that colors all others.  I sometimes feel as though I should be embarrassed about this part of my nature.  We live in a cynical world.  It is not considered sophisticated or even intelligent to be romantic.  Somehow intellect and romanticism are considered to be mutually exclusive.  But I am an intelligent, rational, logical person.  My brain works just fine.  My brain does not get to overrule my heart, as much as it may seem safer to hide my heart from ridicule, my soul chooses to embrace my heart’s desires and to believe in the magick that is love. 

I have, at times, embraced the cynical, cold, hard-hearted logic the world esteems so highly.  I have, at times, clutched tightly to my intellect like a shield against the disappointment and heartbreak that comes from believing.  But, as much as I enjoy the flights of my intellect, it seems to me that my imagination has always been the source of life, of joy, of magick.  I think of my imagination as the creative expression of my heart, as the voice of my romantic self.  Intellect without imagination seems dead to me, or at best, only a half-life. 

My soul is the part of me that mediates between my mind and my heart.  And when my mind wants to be a bully and insist on safety and cynicism, or my heart becomes afraid that what it hopes will never come to pass, my soul chooses to be courageous and to insist upon believing in the dream.  My soul is a romantic.  So is my body.  My body responds to that which moves my heart and my soul. 

I find my body wanting physical intimacy, sexual intimacy but also the physical intimacy of touching, of skin against skin, of lying beside someone and feeling them breathe, of sleeping beside another body, of conversation and laughter and shared food, of simple companionship, and sharing energy.  This too is an expression of my romanticism.

What I Know Now

What I have learned this past year is that most of my beliefs and fears have been inaccurate.  I have, through repeated experiments with people that I care for and trust, and whom I believed to be strong enough and skilled enough to protect themselves from any damage they might suffer as a result of contact with my energetic self, learned that I am not in fact dangerous to those I touch nor to those who touch me.  I have learned that my fears about being incapable of responding to another sexually are not real.  I have learned that I am capable of giving and receiving profound pleasure.  I have learned that in order to experience these wonderful gifts of this physical body, trust and emotional and energetic connection both with myself and with my partners are absolutely necessary.  I may not be monogamous or strictly heterosexual, and there are other aspects of my nature that I need to explore but, I would not be exploring them at all if it were not for those beloved friends.  For them and the joys of this journey, I Give Thanks.

The Parts of Self

The parts of my Self experience the world in different ways.  My mind, my intellect, appreciates aesthetic beauty and that is easy for me to recognize.  The human form is beautiful in its incredible variety as is the natural world.  I appreciate the beauty of artistic expression, color, light, line and movement.  There are so many beautiful sights, sounds, tastes, smells, textures, thoughts, and language.   A beautiful woman, a beautiful man, is a joy to behold.  I experience these through my physical senses and appreciate them with my mental self.

This appreciation might then become an emotional experience.  It might elicit an emotional response.  This is also relatively easy to recognize.  Even when it turns back upon my body, returns to a physical experience, a visceral reaction.  It is still an aesthetic appreciation.  The human form is aesthetically beautiful.  I have a mental and intellectual appreciation for that beauty.  It may on occasion become an emotional or visceral experience but that is not a sexual one.

Interacting with another person, one whom I actually know, is another kind of experience.   Generally speaking I experience others through my emotions.  My emotional responses might be affection or repulsion, but they affect how I perceive others.  Those whom I love are beautiful to me.  I experience them through my emotions primarily and I can see the beauty of them more clearly as a result.  I can also see those who are not, no matter how aesthetically pleasing they might be to the world.  My emotional response to someone I care for is real but, it is rarely a sexual one.  While I have experienced a sexual attraction to someone I care for, I have never felt sexual attraction without an emotional connection. 

It is more difficult for me to recognize the difference between emotional and energetic responses.  I believe that the sexual attraction I have felt for a loved one has been due to my energetic response.  The emotional connection has always existed first but, my energetic reactions seem to determine if I respond to my loved ones as mother, sister, friend, daughter or “lover”. 

My energetic response that results in sexual attraction does not seem to be determined by the gender of the other person nor their sexual orientation.   So how do I define my sexual orientation?  I read a definition the other day of a word I have never been exposed to.  Demisexual is somewhere between bisexual and asexual.  Maybe I do not need to actually define it.  I believe that I have primarily heterosexual preferences but, I have found myself at times sexually attracted to a woman whom I know and care for.  I have even had erotic dreams about other women on occasion.  But I do believe that for me, emotional affection and energetic responses are the crucial factors in the equation. 

One of the many things I need to explore is what exactly can take me from sexual attraction to that most elusive state, sexual arousal.  But that is for another day.