Let's Not Just Talk About Sex (Baby)...

This is in part, picking a dialogue that is sprouting in the garden of one of my communities...and in particular, by my friend Katrina's recent fore into the topic (see here: http://tinyurl.com/ydpy68q ) and even more recent dipping of toes into the world of Tantra. (Or at least an aspect of Tantra...there are so many).

So much of the known expressions of tantra have to do with Polarity~male and female, balance. However, what if things aren't that reduceable? What about those of us that Native American traditions call the "Twin-Spirited" ones? Are the elemental building blocks really just balancing two elements, male and female? Or is that idea training wheels for a deeper revelation...into what my friend Jason Harler (creator of NestSpa at the Standard Hotel Miami, and home of the Integral Spiritual Center in Miami) calls "Resonance". Ever since he mentioned this idea, it's been rolling around inside, forcing me to question asumptions around relational energy in general (not just between humans, but with EVERYTHING), and my energy in specific.

So if you have two men or two women, it's not so much that one has to hold the masculine and the other the feminine. That's a bit a of flat-lander perspective that seems to traffic mostly through a strong dualistic paradigm. And yet life, CREATION is much more faceted than merely two perspectives, male, and female. Those are conveniences of language. And unexplored conveniences of language become traditions and traditions become measuring rods for morality so much of the time...though based on WORDS more than the actualities themselves.

In the exploration of perspectives, modern-day ontological rabble-rousers like Ken Wilber have gone on to pull back the veils obscuring the myopic belief-structures of individuals, groups, societies, and this particular world...revealing legions of ancestors and living, breathing modern-day thinkers, who've created altars to Trojan Horses. What's the Trojan Horse here? Substituting the names of things for the things themselves. Believing maps to be the territories themselves. The word Moon isn't the Moon, and will never give the experience of gazing at the Moon, much less standing on its surface.

Are we ready to jump off the "Either/Or" bandwagon where things are either good or bad, up or down, in or out, masculine or feminine? Are we ready to let go of the fear of screwing things up and landing in one of Dante's hells for simply being aligned with the "wrong" ideas?

What if there truly aren't right and wrong. What if there are infinite perspectives, and they're ALL true simultaneously? What then? What kind of inner wisdom would we need to awaken and TRUST to live and thrive in a world where there are no set meanings, no right ways or wrong ways, no pass or fail? What kind of Awareness would be expressing through a being who's given up fear of judgement? Probably...one who's given up fear of judgment has stopped using judgement to aid and abet fear within....has stopped classifying nearly everything as safe/unsafe, good/not good, nice/not nice, beautiful/ugly, profane/sacred...

This rich tapestry of sound, taste, sight, knowing, feeling, living...is infinitely deep, wide...what would it be like to live in this symphony of a world for a whole day without a name for anything, just the Direct Experience moment-by-moment?

How Do I Judge Thee...

How Do I Judge Thee

How do I judge thee?
How long have I avoided
counting the ways
means and ends
of this down-world spiral
into complete separation
from all of You.

If I would only let
one little fissure
open in
the secret chamber of
my heart
I could begin
to hear your sweet melody
chanting the chorus of
unconditional Love
through every cell of this
living world of Heart
these fluid brushstrokes of
Your art
Creating and dissolving
Forms, formlessness
Above and below
Expansion and contraction.

Oh life
would that I suspend
judgement and
accept all of Your faces
all of Your smiles
through countless rivers
gorges and lives.

Oh breath,
winding through
the labyrinth of my soul
waking memory of Your face
my face, the One face
in every face...

Oh breath,
a thousand bows
will never be enough to
honor the gift You are.

So for now,
I will just smile
at the next face I see.

Scott Patrick Schwenk 5/24/09