Love gun

los angeles
sunday may 2

back in los angeles
crash landing back home like a mule kick to the head

i went to an ecstatic dance group this morning and the room full of people made me recoil. i did not want to be so close to so many. i felt like i wanted to cry and so i just laid on the floor and wrapped my scarf around my head to make a tight blindfold. i laid there shutting everything out, with drawing my senses inward. then i felt like a baby laying in a crib. i realized i longed to be touched. i longed to be touched by everyone in the room. i wanted to lay there in my blindfold and have hundreds of fingers trace my body and not to see anyone. just touch for the sake of touch, for comfort and pleasure. the freedom of blindness. i realized i wanted to get off. to release the tidal wave inside me. i took off my blindfold and began a very intimate dance with a man, sniffing each other like two dogs meeting for the first time. the animal body remembers things i have tried to forget. when they come back to life i feel big.

the charge of sexual energy in the group of 16 people i am leading in a tantra circle this month builds as we practice yab yum with a commitment of celibacy.
the surge is intense and i feel so much of everything that it wants to split my skin open
like a ripe fruit offering its seeds to the earth
i want to cry
i want to fuck
i want to eat chocolate
i want to discharge this fullness threatening to devour me

i would weep if weeping could hold me
i would give all my belongings for the certainty of sadness
but it is more than that
it is sadness mingled with joy and pleasure
with anxiety and fear
they are all threatening to burst but remain clouds shifting in my inner sky
it is not one thing
it is everything
i have asked to hold more
and here it is
here are all my emotions and my students emotions
the human stories that are moving through us all like a swift river
the charge of the sexual energy accelerates the flow of current and makes us more aware of our masks

what is tantra?
it is embracing my whole self
the rising of the wildness i have repressed and the balancing of that with the laws of the world
i walk the line
i walk feet naked to my path
i walk the tightrope
and lick the honey from the razors edge
it is not this way or that
one step at a time, i must stay very awake
no one can give me a book with the answers
no religions, dogmas, philosophies
the libraries are burning
the world is morphing

there are volcanoes erupting in iceland
the earth is pushing her fierce emotions upward
splintering the skin of the known landscape with the fires from deep below
just because we cannot see the fires doesn't mean they aren't there
a student said, "i've been on so many trips, but they were all the wrong ones"
i said, "how many trips does it take to get to the center of your tootsie roll pop?"
all those trips were born of longing
it is a mystery when we will reach our destination since it is most likely we are already there but just confused by our surroundings
not matching our preconceived notions
the sacred books are burning
the sacred book is life
the sadhana, the practice, the pilgrimage, the meditation is just living
the shrine is the human being
keeping my eyes open
not slipping into old patterns of coping and surviving that have kept me numb for so long

as i awaken
my skin feels too tight
so i slither out
like a snake
the serpent who rides my spine in waves of contraction and ecstasy
and i journey on
in my shapeshifting skin
to begin again
and to begin again
to burn my last dwelling place because i outgrew it
i step lightly into the plunging skydive of the unknown
this burning pushes me to take the leap like i've got a
love gun pressed to my head
my stomach leaps like an elevator
i look for new ground
i root to expand

some things are so good that they are worth doing twice
i find an old lover and feel the heat move between us
he plays a sad song full of hope on his guitar and i finally cry
tears spilling out of my eyes and sliding like a sweet relief down my burning cheeks
and i worship him
and us
the sacred text is our bodies
and our determined attempts at unconditional love

begin again