Blog Full - Maurice Leavitt | Personal Essays, Travel Writing & Reflections

31 Jul 2016

The Restorative Relationship Experience

by Maurice Isaiah | posted in: Ask For What You Want, Eros, Ethics, Loving Well, Restorative Relationship | 0

After reading Stanley Siegal’s Book, Your Brain On Sex. I wanted to write about his “restorative relationship” experience and how we can learn to engage with each other in a place of great vulnerability based on intimacy, respect, trust and honesty. Siegal’s preference is to give attention to our self-awareness, exploration and authenticity over sexual performance or reaching an orgasm which I happen to really appreciate.

In a restorative experience a safe and consensual encounter is created in which we act out a fantasy with our partner we have imagined in our fantasy life and whose symbolic meaning we have come to understand based on an inquiry of questions from our past. This encounter or scene could be as conventional as a romantic seduction or as edgy as extreme BDSM play. Whether the scenario is as conventional as romantic seduction, or as unconventional as extreme bondage, we connect – physically, emotionally, and spiritually – with the deepest part of our psyches recovering what was suppressed or lost. It is here that we connect with the deepest part of our psyches, recovering what was suppressed or lost from our past. In this process we become restored back to our wholeness.

Siegal explains how during the heightened sexuality of adolescence, we eroticize unmet childhood needs and unresolved conflicts in a complicated attempt to heal ourselves. We turn early painful experiences into pleasurable ones in order to counteract their power over us. As we grow into adulthood, these same conflicts, which now have sexual themes, are encoded in our fantasies and desires, and in some cases, within our sexual behavior. Through our sexuality, we attempt to gain mastery over feelings of powerlessness, shame, guilt, fear and loneliness that might otherwise defeat us.

I do not condone relationships between any therapist and patient, although I do encourage acting out sexual desire within the context of growth and love which is what Siegal calls a “restorative” experience that can have powerful therapeutic potential. In a restorative experience, we create a safe and consensual encounter in which we act out with our partner a fantasy whose symbolic meaning we have already come to understand.

Of course, the deepest and most lasting healing comes when we have the opportunity to experience our true desires and work through the mastery of the conflicts behind them over time. Whether it’s with a lover or spouse, a restorative relationship assumes an emotional posture that is often diametrically opposite from the dysfunctional ones we experienced in our childhood. Characterized by openness, intimacy, and mutual respect, the new relationship allows us to derive a new settlement to old conflicts. Within this relationship, sex is not separated from the joys and struggles of daily life, nor diminished by its challenges. Instead it offers a rich and fertile ground for a meaningful and satisfying life.

A Dangerous Method Trailer from Transmission Films on Vimeo.

31 Jul 2016

ReWilding The Masculine – Part 3 – The Warrior

by Maurice Isaiah | posted in: Archetypes, Eros, Masculine and Feminine | 0

We are living at a time where warrior energy is being highly scrutinized for its shadow qualities found in warfare, aggression and actions based from suppressed anger/rage. Women have often been the most direct victims of the warrior’s shadow form and have raised legitimate concerns based upon their negative past experiences and are loudly communicating their deep uncertainty and fear against the Warrior’s aggressive energy. Men have become hesitant to opening up to their fullest masculine power and terms such as “Sensitive New Age Guy”, “New Age Dudes” and “The Soft Masculine” emerge into emasculating conversations. As with any other form of repressed (archetypal) energy, feelings or emotions that are pushed underground, the warrior will eventually resurface in it’s shadow forms, in ways that can be verbally blaming or shaming the other and violent physical actions. If the archetype of the warrior in all it’s expression is here to stay then it would benefit everyone to honor and face it.

Let’s be clear about something important. We can not disconnect from true warrior masculine power because, if it is actually a true innate instinct, it will continue to live on in spite of our attitudes towards it. We need to connect to the most life giving ways of the Warrior at his fullest expression. The true nature of the warrior is a total way of living life. The characteristics of the warrior in his fullness include…

not holding onto any defensive position of being “right” and has flexibility to alter his position
isn’t interested in his own personal gain
knows when proper aggressiveness is to be used based on the comprehensive goal at hand
cultivates his clarity of thinking and fullness of presence
has an awareness of his own imminent death

If we look over the course of human existence we can see how much war has played a role in defining our history. We need to acknowledge the existence of warrior traditions in many of our civilizations. In the last 100 years we have seen two world wars and the looming battles disputing some of the holiest lands on the planet. One side of the story says that human aggression emerges out of childlike anger and rage while the other side says it’s not that simple. Aggression is often associated with the masculine, even though there are feminine warrior legends, and it’s persistence in our culture is built into our biological DNA structure. Warrior energy is present in us men and shows its shadow side and its fullest expression in the civilizations we have constructed. The Warrior has been a vital ingredient in building today’s world and needs to be recognized because of the important role the warrior has in defining and extending the prosperity of the highest human values and cultural developments to all of humanity.

It is also true that this Warrior energy often goes awry. When this happens. the results are devastating. But we still have to ask ourselves why it is so present within us. What is the Warrior’s function in the evolution of human life, and what is his purpose in the psyches of individual men? What are the Warrior’s positive qualities and how can they help us men in our personal lives, in our communities, for our world’s benefit and in our work?

22 May 2016

Inclusion’s Lack Of Discernment

by Maurice Isaiah | posted in: Archetypes, Compassion, Lines and Circles, Tantra, Truth | 0

Everybody’s got a place in the circle.

Inside the circle, as opposed to a line quality which is about competition, everyone is always sitting face to face. That’s the circles natural condition. Where everyone has got a place. Geometrically speaking, every point on the circle is equidistant from the center. It’s the complete opposite of a line.

Why is it important that everyone has a place in the circle, where someone or something is included into a group or structure? The circle includes and welcomes all our diversity… gender, blacks, whites, jews, gays, and keeps on welcoming. One of the big movements in the evolution of human consciousness in the last several decades was to include so much that was excluded. Where all the people that were wrongly excluded get included. (Sit with that one for a minute).

Inclusion also means everyone has a representative “seat” around the table. Everyone! It means all systems of thought and belief, all great religions, all schools of psychology. Where NO ONE is smart enough to be entirely wrong. Where individuals who sit inside the circle and bring their truth to the table realize their truth is only a part of the whole. Your perspective is true, but only partially true according to the circle. It’s in that understanding where everyone gets a place around the table, and understanding that you can’t make your truth, which is only a part of a whole, the truth of the circle.

And there’s this concept inside group processes where I get to speak for as long as I want. As I sit around the circle, that goes intermittently, where everyone goes on forever and ever and ever, and no decision ever gets made. Anyone who’s ever been in that kind of context knows that kind of circle can be paralyzing because there’s no discernment when everyone gets to talk for as long as they want. There’s no sense of expertise. There’s no distinction. No decisions get made. This is the shadow of inclusion. The inability to make decisions or having a lack of discernment. Where everything gets dumped in the circle, and we lose the ability to evaluate, and sometimes forgetting that discernment’s are actually necessary.

What about art or music or writing? It’s a creative outlet we all have. Is all of it great like Beethoven and Picasso and Thoreau just because we welcome everyone and their own unique artistic expression into the etsy/facebook/flickr/blogspot circle? Not all music is the same, and not all literature is the same. Not all art is the same. When we lose discernment in music and art and literature, we lose something essential, the arousing creative desire that drives human beings.

Now that I have some of the externalities out of the way, I want to take a look deeper on the inside. The parts of myself that I excluded from myself over time. Where I have narrowed my own identity. I began this life as a full range, large scale, 360-degree whole person. And then, someone came into my life and they didn’t like some part of me, so I shut that part of myself down. And then someone else came and they got a little disappointment for some other part of myself, so I shut that part of myself down. And then a couple of years later, I had another teacher, or another bunch of girls and boys in school who didn’t like something, and I shut yet another part of myself down. And pretty soon, I’m 45 years old, waking up to living inside only the few parts left of myself because I have excluded so many parts over time.

It’s then I realized that I started my life’s journey as a whole person and then begin to question how I allowed myself to fearfully narrow my own identity so much by excluding certain parts. I start re-including parts that I had dismissed over time. The embodied pleasures of the previously dismissed body begin to get re-included as part of my human existence. The dismissed pain of old broken hearts and the protection mechanisms I built to keep myself from hurt, begin to soften, as I continue to re-incorporate parts of my lost self. I keep developing a new relationship with my negative self thoughts and realize the inherent goodness in my hearts desires and my entire being. The parts of myself I dismissed outside the circle begin to get re-included. That is the start of re-inclusion as it begins to do it’s shadow work, where we must take a look at what we placed outside the circle.

And at some point, as we continue to do our personal and group shadow work and we include all that has been excluded from our lives, we realize we can be individually (and as a group) whole again with only the most life affirming positive intentions, actions and thoughts towards self and others.

(This teaching on lines, circles, unique self and hieros gamos is sourced from Marc Gafni’s presentation at Shalom Mountain Wisdom School. Spring 2014)

17 May 2016

The Inter-Marriage of the Line/Circle

by Maurice Isaiah | posted in: Archetypes, Eros, Heart Opening, Loving Well, Masculine and Feminine, Mysticism, Tantra | 0

One of the tantric living principles is the “Intermarriage”. The intermarriage of the opposites that bring possibility for unity and infinity. These opposites in the inner marriage represent our dualistic human nature and is helping us evolve to get us to this reality of where we are today. We are at a place where men and women are breaking traditional gender norms more than they ever have in human history in order to find more balance in our inner (and therefore outer) marriages. We can see these opposites at work all the time in our lives. The light and the dark, the yin and the yang, the poles of a magnet – electricity and the earth, masculine and feminine energies, and the qualities of the line and the circle, are only just a few examples.

Let’s just say for the sake of this writing that the new vision of enlightenment is “Hieros Gamos” (1), the intermarriage. And the intermarriage is where I can awaken to the integration of these polar forces that represent the unique inner marriage configuration inside of me as they live as me. Bringing balance between the energies of the qualities of lines and circles is the awakening that is happening in our culture in every situation, every moment in time, every dynamic there’s actually a play of line and circle always happening.

Now it is important to remember what the lines and circles are – the circle is the sexual expression, or the erotic expression, of the feminine. The line is the sexual, or the erotic, expression of the masculine. From there flow the principles. The point I’m making, as the Hermetics taught, “as above, so below.” That it’s not a coincidence that actually the erect line phallus exists in the world or in the round circle of the great mother.

And we begin to identify the line and circle qualities in ourselves and how we can play with these energies. Where are those qualities relevant in your life? How strong or weak is my deployment of a particular quality in its light aspect? How much or little do I have of the shadow of that dimension? Where can I find it in its light aspect in my life? Where can I find it in its shadow of that dimension?

Friedrich Nietzsche said, “How could something arise out of its opposite? For example, truth out of error? Or the will to truth out of the will to deception? Or selfless action out of self-seeking? Or the pure sunny look of the wise man out of greed? Origins like these are impossible. Anyone who dreams about them is a fool, in fact, something worse. Things of the highest value must have another origin peculiar to them. They cannot be derived from this ephemeral, seductive, deceptive, trivial world, from this confusion of madness and desire! Their basis must lie, by contrast, in the womb of being, in the immortal, in hidden gods, in ‘the thing in itself’— their basis must lie there, and nowhere else!”

To the extent that there’s a lack of integration, there’s also an imbalance between my line and circle qualities, that I’m very weak on a bunch of line or circle qualities or they don’t balance properly – where my lines and circles aren’t penetrating or receiving each other is that precise extent where I am imbalanced, playing in shadow, un-integrated. I’m not going to be fully in my Eros…I will be de-eroticized… I will be alienated, imbalanced. All of that is going to produce all sorts of shadow results in my life which actually appear fully, powerfully, potently in the world. I need to appear as my best undivided self, which means that I’ve realized the intermarriage in the unique configuration of lines and circles as they appear in me. This realization causes the emergence of some larger mystical understanding and merging of the properties of lines and circles in our reality. And that intermarriage in me participates in the evolution of love.

“Our greatest moment comes when we find the courage to rechristen our evil as the best within us.” Nietzsche

1. This teaching on lines, circles, unique self and hieros gamos is sourced from Marc Gafni’s presentation at Shalom Mountain Wisdom School. Spring 2014

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