Non-duality

It's one of life's great challenges, to put oneself in the mind space of someone else. This is the great value of novel reading, because novels don't write themselves. They are written by other people who see life from a different angle simply because they are different to us.

If someone like me is reading a novel like 'the shepherd's hut' a whole new mind space opens up. I can't imagine causing violence and so to read of people who do it so effortlessly, with relish, is to attempt to understand the Other; not to necessarily understand the behavior but to acknowledge it as simply there in the psyche of some people for whatever reason.

If you are prone to looking out for the Other - helping, healing, giving the benefit of the doubt - which is also classified by some as naivete, understandably, it's close to impossible to get into the head space of someone who isn't any of those things, or is rarely any of those things; certainly not his or her default stance.

One son was in an elevator carrying a Haigh's chocolates paper bag when a colleague asked him why he had bought chocolates. My son, who already thought this chap psychologically impaired, responded that he was going to dinner at his parent's house and bringing them the chocolates as a gift.

'Why?' the man wanted to know.

It genuinely intrigued him why my son would do that.

'Because, I know it will make them happy,' he replied.

This didn't impress the colleague. For whatever reason, his brain could not compute.

The more absorbed we are with our own problems, almost insanely forgetting that everyone has problems of one kind or another, the more introspective and lacking of generosity we become.

When we focus on what we don't have, like looking through a microscope at a single drop on a glass plate, we entirely forget about the fact that we are the speck in space.

The more we notice the space around us, above and even below us, in front of us and behind us, the better able we are to put our 'problem' in some reasonable sort of context.

In meditation I encourage, with carefully chosen words, for people to feel all of creation within them and for them to enter into all of creation. In a relaxed state, both mind and body, it is not difficult to conjure this sort of  non duality where the 'I' is transcended.

When the 'I' is transcended, violence upon others is unthinkable. Still, it's not the way of the world, is it? Violence begets violence and so the wheel of violence keeps turning; selfishness endures.

I asked  the teacher I work with about Emily when at school this week, a cute and highly intelligent but troubled 7 year old. It was rough right now, I was told. She arrived back from a holiday in Bali with her Dad to discover that Mum had moved out of the house; much of the furniture had gone with her.

The teacher made this interesting observation. 'I just hope that she has the tenacity to say, 'I won't wear this failure. Whatever you choose to do with your lives, I choose success.' And, it made sense at that moment why some people become quite hard and single focused. They have to be that way to survive a life where the odds right from the start didn't go their way. It's the survival instinct at play. 'I am going to work hard and make a success of my life despite the odds against me'. Right now, school is where she can feel safe.The rules don't change, the expectations don't change.

I remember now that the Headmaster of my sons' school said exactly this to me years ago; that money was no security for some boys there; that the school environment offered them the stability and care that they didn't necessarily get at home. This reminds me of Hillary Clinton's phrase, that it takes a village to raise a child. It is the truth.

It seems to me that it is quite an art to be human; to have the tenacity to succeed, whatever success means to the individual, and the heart to feel for fellow man, regardless of personal circumstances; to be open to failure.

Objectification, again

There's a lot of material on this blog about objectification and much of it is positive. It's positive because in so many of my experiences where I am a 'doll' or a 'bimbo' or an 'object' or just 'it', it is so incredibly freeing. I love having my mind vacated and my body responds so enthusiastically to that sort of play.

For quite some time, many times, there was a feeling of being deeply connected to another person, a wonderful feeling of being intertwined in the play, because of the play. Trust is such an integral part of the play where objectification is involved and if the trust is there, that's very connecting, and soul sharing.

If my body wasn't responding to the play, just the mind, though I don't think that's technically possible, it would almost be enough. At its best, the sense of joy that floods the mind is its own reward. The facts are that the play was/is deeply arousing to the body, and much of the 'feel good' sensations come from that too. It's such a mind/body experience that it is hard to separate them into categories.

To be clear, for me it's about the Top wanting me to have that connecting and pleasurable experience as much as he wants to feel the sexual turn on and the connection himself. I operated on this understanding of the play for some time, in an intuitive sense, without spelling it out, even for myself.

I used to wonder a long time ago if I had a 'slave' soul. But, I don't. I don't have a slave soul, not at all. I've noticed for some time now, though I didn't have the words I have today to express the awareness, that if I am in fact treated like an object or a fuck toy, and it becomes very clear to me that my feelings and my pleasure have nothing to do with the event, I am thrown into a pit of despair that I don't crawl out of for some time.

Oh, I can camouflage those feelings of emptiness and disconnection. I can go about my life such that you won't notice much, or any, difference in my words, my tone, my behavior or my pleasure in life. I've become so able to live in the moment, to categorize the confusion and upset in a particular place where the day is hardly effected and the relationship is not affected in a veneer sense. Even if the sex wasn't right for me, harmful to me, I can find a sense of gratitude in many other moments in my life.

However, I become skittish, you see, about wanting to interact in a sexual way any time soon. It's such a dark place I go internally when I feel that I have been used as an object purely for the other's gratification, or pleasure or sense of power, or whatever the heck it is that motivates this behavior, that I will just about walk over broken glass to avoid any such similar interaction. It absolutely does not work for me if I don't feel a sense of generosity.

It is said that those with narcissistic behaviors aren't so good at thinking about the 'we' in sex; that they can view their partners as objects that satisfy their needs. In fact, rather than more sex bringing the two partners together in the case of sex with a narcissistic bent, it can cause further separation. When I read this research finding, it made complete sense to me.

What I think is important if the kink tends towards objectification play is that both people understand what lies behind the motivation for such play. Kink is kink and person specific, but in kinky play the motivation should be for greater connection for both players. If it isn't achieving that outcome, then it's just not working as it should. No kinky play is probably a much better outcome than doing it in a way where one partner causes emotional harm and disconnection. Whether that makes sense to a person who does not see sex in the 'we' sense, is the debatable question.

I want to add that I am not just talking about kinky play here. Any lover who is inclined to take his pleasure rather often without concern for the partner's feelings and body state will cause disconnection in the partnership. Those who are divorced may well be able to speak to this.

How can I help?

I've been reading various reviews from The New York Times this morning. I've been listening to interviews on the radio. I've been trying to finish a novel All the Light We Cannot See. I've also spent a day at a Writer's Festival. It's quite fascinating to see the ideas contained in this stimuli merge, not necessarily forming one clear and complete idea, but rather reminding me what delicate creatures we are at the same time as how resilient we are; how capable we are of healing from past blows.

Richard Glover, a radio presenter here in Australia has written a memoir and as I listened to him being interviewed about the book he has written I am reminded that  without proper parenting we truly are at risk. Richard's mother clearly lived in a fantasy of her own making and his father became a hopeless alcoholic. They probably tried in their own way to be good parents but at age 15 his mother had run off with his English teacher and his father left for a time too leaving him in the house alone. As one of his friends remarked, 'Richard didn't run away from home but rather home ran away from him'. This instability in his life led to all sorts of issues, but I think writing it all down has helped him to be philosophical: If you can't get the love you need from those you'd assume would provide love, stop beating your head against a brick wall and find it elsewhere. He did.

An earlier radio interview related to Merryl Streep's most recent movie Ricki and the The Flash with a couple of local aging rock chicks remarking that they didn't feel the movie had much of a believable plot - why go work across the country leaving your family behind if it isn't creating a decent income?  Both women had managed to have their singing career and a family, though with the help of husbands and their own mothers to lighten the motherly burden.

I read a comment about motherly guilt made by Streep in an interview about the film and I have to admit I did wonder to myself, 'What if there was no motherly guilt about leaving your children? Is that an outcome we want? Does a lack of a sense of responsibility to the children we bear lead to good things?

Anne Enright writes:

When desire is in the air, motherhood becomes problematic. This despite the fact that sex causes motherhood. It is a fact worth stating sometimes that sex, in itself, cannot turn you into a whore, no matter what the nuns told you then or pornography tells you now, but it really can turn you into a mother. After which, of course, you are never allowed to have sex again.

And then a little later she writes:

And when the child grows up, and when the child becomes a writer — a male writer, ­usually — such sins will be endlessly rehearsed. Because, in the fantasized perfection (or the experienced perfection) of the ­mother-baby bond, each is entirely fulfilled by the other. There can be no one else.

It does give pause to wonder if Anne Summers was onto something when she wrote all those years ago that women could either be Damned Whores or God's Police. (I heard Summers in interview a few days ago since it is 40 years since she wrote that book, her doctorate in fact.)

Recently I was talking to a Russian psychiatrist, now retired, who shared his opinion with me after a lifetime of caring for troubled children that 'not all people are meant to be parents'. (He is a prone to making heartfelt understatements.)

To be a parent is to be prepared to sacrifice bits of yourself, at least for  a time. If you can't make some room in your life for the care and responsibility of another human being, then it's not the right time to be a parent. It may never be the right time in your life.

It's more profound than even that: You can aim to be the perfect parent but you won't ever be the perfect parent. Personally, I encourage the children to air their grievances. I heard a biographer talk yesterday who said that it was his job to reveal and that a secret was more toxic than a revelation. I found myself agreeing with him.

Rod Jones wrote The Mothers, a story in part about a young girl who was forced to give up her baby for adoption when she fell pregnant at a young age, and all the repercussion around that one decision. In his book, the adopted child never blended with his adopted parents despite their best efforts to love him and care for him. Of course, many people have very different experiences with their adopted parents.

I read recently of a woman writer who cared for her dying parents and nearly stopped reading altogether. She read a little of  many stories but could finish nothing, as if endings were too difficult for her. Nine months after their deaths when she did start reading again she read 'coming of age' stories, as if she had to somehow come to terms with beginnings again before she could go on with her life.

In an interview Lorri Moore talked about "creating ruptures" as a writer; interrogating ways people observe and talk to each other, "where unbearable and lovely humanity dribbles through".

Hugh Mackay says that a happy life is made up of selflessness; forgiveness.

All these people saying something similar in their own way, something that Clarie Underwood of all people used to say to Francis often:

How can I help?

Happiness

Although so many of us live in abundance when compared with previous generations research suggests that this abundance has not meant that we are happier. This phenomenon has been researched in depth now and the findings are worth our attention.

It seems that about half of our state of happiness or unhappiness is 'set' or pre-wired. We have a set point of a state of happiness that we tend to return to, regardless of what happens in our lives, good or bad. So, the 'happy go lucky' personality or the 'depressive' personality is relatively stable from birth. What actually happens to us, our life circumstances, make up about 10% of the happiness quotient and the other 40% of the reasons for our  happiness quotient is under our control. In fact, happiness can be learned, just as we might learn to play a musical instrument.

Gratitude for what we have makes up  an important element of a sense of happiness, thinking about what we have rather than giving too much thought to what we don't have. This is a particularly fruitful thought since the difference in the possible happiness quotient between a person who earns $50,000 and a person who has $50 million is not significant. Being generous of spirit, according to the best research, is a more significant indicator of feeling happy.

In my late 50s now it has slowly become obvious to me that beauty isn't a particularly strong indicator of feeling happiness. As we grow older and less value is put on external appearances we see so many examples of people who are content within themselves. A documentary on happiness that I saw over the Christmas break told the story of a beautiful American woman, a mother of three children in a good marriage who lost her beauty in an horrific accident. She explained that she is happier now, more settled and at peace than she ever was before the accident.

Of course, she went through a nightmarish time, nearly died and had to endure endless procedures to her face, but her new partner (the husband divorced her) tells her how beautiful she is now and together they lead a very peaceful, spiritual life. In writing this I am reminded of the man in the documentary that made the point that there is no pleasure without pain, and it is worth remembering that sometimes we have to experience the darkness if we want to reach the light.

Of course, it is harder to age peacefully and contentedly if one is not well and there is no denying that good health plays into a sense of happiness. Studies of Okinawans and the Denmark model demonstrate that there are factors within our control and to which we should heed. Eating lightly and  healthily, getting enough sleep, staying connected with people, family structures, a good health care and government supported educational system can all play into a sense of fulfilment, peace and happiness.

Personally, I get a huge boost to my happiness when I am living as I was meant to live, in a way that is right for me. There is no doubting that I do best with an authority figure in my life and in the past few days, as I have been driving along country roads on my own I've given thought to this fact. When there is a clear authority figure in my life, someone to whom I am accountable, my flow of emotions is much more smooth and regulated. I guess you could say that with a clear authority figure in my life I am much more happy.

Yes, when and if I am disciplined, that's a time when I might 'buck up' but I'm not less happy really. I'm just mad in the moment that I behaved in a way that means that the discipline is necessary. I'm no less happy with the arrangement, once I work through my energetic emotions. In essence my energetic emotions are bashing up against the this very strong immovable 'wall' and this keeps me centred and content.

Of course, there are times when I need to be that 'wall' as well, to allow my husband's emotions to wash over me and for them to be cleansed with my understanding of his distress. Just before I left on a sojourn he was bothered by a little exchange of words with someone at the gas station (petrol station here) and I listened and then quietly said, "don't let it upset your day, just let it go". This is a very normal and regular part of my life, but I'm very grateful for the times when he steps up to be my authority figure. I feel a tremendous sense of peace and tranquillity in my soul when I can share this dynamic, as I have with my mentor for a number of years now.

As trite as it sounds, happiness comes into your life if you want it enough. It's a decision one makes, I believe, to be more happy. It's a wonderfully democratic concept, anti-consumerist in principle, that we can all be happy regardless of wealth, the circumstances of our lives or our physical presence. I get the sense that the world is becoming ready to hear this message and that we are starting to move away from the thought that possessions can make us happy. It's a good thing.