Companionship

Who knows your truth? With whom do you share your life experiences openly and honestly? Where do you turn for honest criticism?

As we emerge from the dark age of the Bush administration in America, it seems interpersonal relationships have regressed in quality on some levels and progressed in others. The advent of Facebook and Linkedin have perhaps diminished isolation for the more socio-phobic. However, the level of intimacy in these virtual communities is inhibited by the constraints of the new hypocrisies about sexuality and gender roles. Leftovers from the born-again days.

This is also a post-psychological era in many ways. Drug companies have subverted psychotherapy as a method of personal growth and understanding. Alcohol abuse and alcoholism are once again epidemic on college campuses and in the lives of young working adults in urban areas. Drug abuse is also commonplace on all levels of society.

The stretch to intimacy in relationships is inhibited by the sense in many circles that "getting along" in groups is crucial. This breeds stagnation and conformity in such groups. Creative relationships wither in this atmosphere, where gossip and peer pressure are governed by mediocrity, political correctness (hypocrisy) and jealousy.

Trusting, committed companionship between two or more people is a precious asset in life, which can transform and sustain lives of creativity and expansion. Honesty in such relationships is key. Respect of personal differences and individual autonomy is also essential.

The current obsession in American society is finding The One. It seems absurd to see this stated by someone on Facebook who lists over 1,000 people as their friends. If I were to have 1,000 friends and had yet to find The One, I would logically assume I am not looking very hard, or that The One is not really whom I'm after. In fact, I would begin to think I was perhaps content with The None.

This brings me back to my original questions. The answers to these questions may vary. For some, the person most intimately involved in his/her day-to-day may be someone on a computer thousands of miles away. While relationships of this kind can be remarkably sustaining on an intellectual level, they do not provide the touch and hugs of affection which most human beings relish and need to feel loved.

At another extreme, the person most intimately involved with a person's life may be a sexual partner who is not even part of that person's day-to-day. The mistress or the sex buddy may know more about his companion than anyone else in his companion's life. This is not as uncommon as conventional morality would lead us to believe.

Integrating intimacy and companionship is the skill of a mentally healthy adults. It entails commitment on some level, occasional failure and creativity. The result is greatly nourishing. The rewards eventually outweigh the effort. True companionship with intimacy makes our lonely path from birth to death less arduous and more joyful.

Love

It is tempting to equate love with sentiment. Who doesn't enjoy infatuation and sexual titillation, once these drugs are discovered during adolescent hormonal rushes? But, I have grown to see love as behavior, as a process, as a growing entity with its own life.

I believe sustaining love is planted and tended like a tree by those who love. The seed of love can be sex, sentiment, blood relationship. The sapling of love is the early discovery that comes with time and shared experience. The tree of love is the pruned and shaped understanding and dialogue which can withstand drought and storm. The fruit of love is the sense of belonging with another who knows and accepts your deepest truth.

Love is supported by commitment. It can be accelerated by sex. It is fed by communication. It is strengthened by ongoing affection. Learning to love one person deeply and completely opens the heart and mind to loving the world. Never experiencing deep love leads to mental illness and alienation from the world.

The greatest challenge of love for some is letting it into their lives. Money, role, material success and possessions are common barriers against loving and being loved. Loving requires vulnerability and sacrifice of some boundaries and barriers. It also requires the personal confidence and self-understanding to remain a whole individual while loving another completely.

Like a healthy forest, a full life contains loves of many varieties and levels of maturity. Love can be contained within a simple interaction on the street, a sprouted seed which does not grow but has life and value. Certain relationships may remain contained by business or other boundaries. The love in these relationships can grow like an elegant dwarfed bonsai, shaped by more formal manners and behaviors. Love in other relationships takes root and grows wildly from sexual passion into an ever-changing canopy of shared experience and understanding. These tall trees of long relationships lend shade and protection to new loves, planted in our lives.

The art of loving is practiced with the mind as well as with emotion. Loving is intentional behavior. Communication os essential to developing mindful love between human beings. The communication of words and the communication of physical affection have equal power. I believe any practice for human growth entails practicing the art of loving.

Fundamentalism

I am a fundamentalist.

I believe in the fundamental physicality of the human condition.

I believe we are mammals, animals.

I believe we have basic physical needs for and rights to nutrition, safe housing, cleanliness, sex, love, acceptance, community.

I believe it is right to love one another, to promote peace and to share what we have with each other.

I believe it is wrong to intentionally harm, to kill, to rape, to steal and to promote disharmony by selfishly ignoring the needs of one another in a shared society.

I am a fundamentalist. What are you?

Flowers

cut flowers, dead things,

once glorious sex pots,

then reeling in fat bees,

in vases, drooping limp,

in fungus-funky water,

sweet. rotting, fragrant

spores poisoning the air

of new lovers, courted,

soon abandoned, wilted.

Perversion

Sexuality, as an abstract concept or personal identity, is itself a perversion of a simple bodily process. Feeling the need to define oneself according to one's sexual needs or actions is a symptom of the loss of our humanity. It is, perhaps, symptomatic of population pressures, dehumanization of the industrial/electronic age, the new corporate fascism, the new resurgence of orthodox deity worship, and/or any number of other modern stresses combined.

People who are born at the ends of the sexual-preference bell curves are forced by the prejudices and hatreds of those in the middle to assert their difference politically as a form of self defense. In a post-Kinsey age, this speaks to the depth of the U.S. society's sexual dysfunction.

The need to have sexual stimulation and release is simply a human and an animal need. It is anatomic, biochemical, hormonal. If modern humans managed their bowels in the same way they manage their sexual organs, a vast portion of the human population would die of terminal constipation.

In short, sex of all kinds, like food, has been packaged and manipulated for profit and social control by capitalists and politicians. So, it is becoming increasingly difficult to have a sexually healthy life by rejecting myths and fears, fostered by media advertisers working for the powers who wish to control and/or sell sex.

In my own practice, I have grown to appreciate my sexual needs in concert with my other bodily needs. A central part of this process is the acceptance of responsibility for my own sexual needs and satisfaction of those needs. After all, do I require another person to attend to my adult needs to eat, to sleep, to digest, to eliminate? No. And, do I feel guilt when I eat to satisfy hunger, sleep to avoid fatigue, relax after a meal to digest, or lock the bathroom door behind me? No.

When we see ourselves as powerless to satisfy our basic physical needs by moderation, regulation and conscious practice, we lose our humanity and our freedom. When we deny ourselves healthy practices to satisfy the will of others, we shrink as human beings and sacrifice our own personal evolution. As with all areas of life, the person who is healthy in his/her own sexual practices has so much more to give to others when given the opportunity to share.

Marriage

The current initiatives to legalize gay marriage in the US and around the capitalist world are misdirected from a purely humanitarian point of view. The right to gay marriage is actually a right to be the same as heterosexuals. True human rights include the right to be different. When single, childless and sexually active gay men and lesbian women are considered equal, then homosexul rights, indeed sexual rights, will have been actualized. For this to happen, single, childless, sexually active heterosexual men and women would have to be considered equal to married, parenting and monogamous or sexually inactive heterosexuals. It seems this reality is a long way off.

Workaholic

I have recently read several articles about young people in America's middle class who take pride in working 70-100 hours per week at corporate jobs. In these materialistic, socially irresponsible times in America, this is seen as commendable. America ranks 5th in per-hour productivity, according to one study, behind four European nations, where work hours are much shorter and vacations much longer and more frequent. In other words, these compulsive American workers are doing less in more time. What are they trying to avoid? Are they trying to avoid conflict with insatiably greedy corporate bosses, who pay themselves exorbitantly and lavish luxury and liesure on themselves and their families? They will obviously avoid meaningful cooperative relationships with other human beings. Those relationships require time, attention and consistency. Is it any wonder that some reports indicate that sexuality among these workaholics is more and more alcohol/drug laced and utilitarian. What does it mean for a society when its educated achiever class are isolated by work which precludes quality social and cultural contact? The answer is already quite visible in newspapers and on the streets. Quality of life requires diversity of life experiences and moderation in all things. This quality lies within the Middle Path of Buddhist practice.