Anchorhold

Welcome to a space for the spirituality of gay and bisexual men. We have within ourselves the resources for our healing, liberation, and growth. Connecting with each other, we encounter the grace to lay hold of a richer, juicier life. Losing ourselves in deep play, we rediscover the bigger, freer, more joyous selves we're capable of becoming. Here I share my interest in personal and communal ritual, making art that expresses my inner life, and an intentional practice of erotic spirituality.

Monday, January 29, 2018

My Great Experiment in Love: A Guest Post by MB

MB keeps a blog about his solosexual experience that includes some of the most articulate (and sexiest) writing I've read about autoerotic masculinity--something nearly all men have a stake in, whatever other threads run through their sexual experience and desire. I'm very glad to welcome him here.

Sometime in the Spring of 2016, I became my own lover.

I committed myself to exploring whether I alone could take care of all the needs-- emotional, sexual, physical--that I had always relied on others to fulfill. Could I offer myself the intimacy, support and loving surprises that people say are the hallmarks of a strong relationship? My experiment had an unexpected result.

I have been a masturbator for twenty-five years. The School Bully took a shine to me and taught me how on my twelfth birthday. Thereafter, I gravitated to masturbating in the mirror over my own reflection. This arousal at my own arousal was formative. I believe it was the closest I have ever been to the fully actualized me in all the years since.

My subsequent sexual journey saw me split off from that self-actualization, traverse sexual encounters, and align with an identity as a gay man because it was expected of me. Coming out, fighting homophobia, advocating for rights – I did all this! In happily succeeding, I was still flummoxed to find myself ultimately unsatisfied. Something felt unrealized.

The painful breakup of my life’s most significant relationship compelled me to take complete charge of myself. Depending on no one was easier than I thought. I took control of all my physical needs easily. I changed my diet. I grew crops. I secured fulfilling work which made me happy. I overthrew any shame associated with solosexuality and dedicated myself to my body, my orgasm and having some damn good sex. I spent great swaths of time alone, and it puzzled me why I did not feel lonely. I was so happy! And in the past when I was happy, I yearned to share that with another, as if that validated the legitimacy of it. I refused to do this. Instead I acknowledged my own happiness, and it made me beam. It sowed the seed for this further question: could I date myself and become my own lover?

Eschewing the need for romantic partners might seem novel. It has been ridiculed as a byproduct of millennial narcissism. The idea of going against a paradigm of partnering is not new, however. It goes back to Epicurus, the Greek philosopher, who in 300 B.C. laid a roadmap for happiness that rejected romantic partnerships. He even appears to reject depending on others for sexual gratification. To him, relationships brought pain along with pleasure, and anything bringing pain should be questioned. He instead promoted the importance of community and friendships and recognizing that what you have is enough. Needing brings pain. Having is no solution. Being in this moment now, at peace with yourself, and connected to nature, is all you need for happiness.

I believe there is something radical about being a masturbator in modern society. This act, which costs nothing and earns nothing, redefines values in our hyper-masculine, hyper-capitalist and consumerist times. Capitalism, by its definition, has many painful byproducts. Consumerism too. To devote a day to masturbating is to step outside a system which values capital as its core value. It therefore becomes profoundly ethical to masturbate. Masturbators embrace and fill our idleness with pleasure and defy pressure to spend or earn. There is no painful byproduct. We thumb our noses at masculine values to hunt and gather.

Masturbators are at the forefront of redefining what it is to be masculine. There is a competitive, toxic strain of masculinity that has done the rounds, of which we are seeing a rightful interrogation in society and the media right now. This is not an emasculating moment. Those who believe it is are brainwashed by the toxic paradigm. What this moment calls for is a welcome and timely redefinition of what it is to be a man and how it is we use our penises for ethical pleasure. I believe that within the ideal man, as within the ideal woman, is a coming together of characteristics of both genders. In no segment of society can I see that better epitomized than in the solosexual movement.

Joseph Campbell's The Hero's Journey is held up by his aficionados as a universal paradigm uniquely giving meaning to life. In that myth, a hero is called upon to fix the ills of his world. The hero reluctantly sets out to battle the demons and in doing so finds the elixir which will heal everything. The only way for the hero to achieve this is by facing some flaw within himself. This epic journey is inherently tied up in masculine ideals of bravery, hunting, fighting, winning, and becoming King (albeit it with a tiny amount of sensitive self-reflection).

Maureen Murdock, Campbell's student, saw missing elements from a feminine perspective and found scope to revise it as The Heroine's Journey. In her journey to be a hero, the woman must split from her true feminine identity in order to pursue masculine ideals. The heroine finds that winning the elixir is the beginning, not the end point in itself, of her journey. This moment proves unsatisfying because she has fractured her true identity, and so she must devote herself to reconnecting with the inner goddess in order to fully actualize as a heroine. I see many parallels between the solosexual experience and Murdock's paradigm. I certainly see my journey more within Murdock’s paradigm than Campbell’s.

I believe I was born solosexual. When I masturbated in the mirror as a teenager, this was my true self. Everything that came after has been a layering of my character, a test and deepening of who I am. Now when I look in the mirror, I see a man who is curious about life, a sensualist, a man committed to living a humble, ethical and profound life. A man who takes care of his body because he is hoping to have it for as long as possible for the pleasure receptor that it is. I find these values sexy, and I find myself physically sexy.

You may wonder what is it like to be my own lover. To grow myself and drink from my own nectar. Key to my experience is the concept of having enough. I yearn for nothing else, whether flesh or material. I yearn to make pleasure for myself. I constantly seek surprises or sensations that will magnify my happiness in this moment. I am thankful to receive it too. It may be food or an experience. It may be the joy of planning a weekend away solo. It may be a dirty promise of sexual pleasure or the sight, smell or touch of me. I wake in the night, my hands gripping lovingly around myself or stroking my chest hair. I feel secure. I feel loved. I reach out to touch my penis, hard or soft, and I am electrified to give and receive sex. I make love to myself, and afterwards I bask, and flirt that I am the hottest lover I have ever encountered.

I’d be lying to you if I said it was the easiest relationship. It requires as much work and dedication as any. When I set out to date myself, I had the same misgivings and foolish hope as I might have attributed to dating another. Would this work? Should this work? Will this be forever? But it has worked and there’s no reason why it should not continue doing so.

Ultimately the end result of my great experiment in love is love.

2 comments:

tarotbyhicFebruary 6, 2018 at 6:10 PM
May I enquire as to what is the link for MB's blog ?
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Sacred Intimacy: Companionship in Spiritual and Erotic Healing

Different practitioners use the term "Sacred Intimacy" to mean different things. It's important to remember that Sacred Intimacy work is different from therapy, and can't replace therapy. I'm not a therapist. I don't claim to offer services in any officially regulated modality. (Some Sacred Intimates are also practicing therapists, but they're clear with themselves and with clients which modality they're working in.) Put simply, I offer heart-centered companionship and deep listening.

For me, first and foremost, Sacred Intimacy means that what passes between us is holy. It's filled and enlivened with the presence of the Divine. I will do my best to be as present to you, as available to you for your good, as I'm capable of being. My intention is to be open to working in whatever modality we agree will be helpful to you. A session begins with a short conversation in which you explain to me where you're at, and what you hope to take away from our time together.

The emphasis is on healing, growth, and the expansion of your life. You may, for example, have issues of erotic shame that you want to work on, or grief, or body image, or intimacy. I may ask for clarifications and make suggestions. Together we agree on the starting point for the experiential work that will follow.

A session might unfold through breathwork, guided meditation, bodywork, intentionally focused erotic interaction, creative movement, the shared creation of ritual, artistic practice, psychodynamic role playing, or some combination.

I can't hope to be of service to you unless I feel competent in the role I assume, and unless I have the sense that what we do has potential to help you move forward with your declared intention. So our initial conversation may involve some give and take around what's possible and what's useful.

It's essential for your integrity and mine that we maintain full confidentiality and respect one another's boundaries. We enter into sacred space together at the beginning of a session. We leave sacred space at the end, and what's happened within the safe container of the session remains distinct from any interactions we might have before or after the session. What happens in the session stays in the session.

Every Sacred Intimate has his own understanding of the nature of his work. Just below you'll find a series of links to the web pages of a number of Sacred Intimates working in various cities and areas.

Finding Yourself, Claiming Yourself

I invite you to celebrate who you are, and who you want to become.

Think of the times your life as a gay or bisexual man has flowed without effort.

Think of the times you’ve struggled to lay hold of your life more fully.

Maybe those times feel like opposites. But they’re parts of a single cycle: sowing and harvest, labor and rest, preparation and enjoyment. We can’t work toward a fuller life unless we already feel some trust that life will rise up to meet us. We can’t sink deeper into our present joy and satisfaction in life without being reminded that it took a long journey to get here.

Please join me in considering a place where the two halves of this cycle come together: in the safe, empowering container of ritual space and ritual time.

What's an Anchorhold?

For centuries in Europe, a handful of men and women took a vow to devote themselves to the cultivation of their inner lives and to make themselves radically available to their communities for spiritual counsel. Committing themselves to remaining in a single dwelling for the rest of their lives, they were known as anchorites; the houses in which they lived were their anchorholds. Those who needed what the official channels of the religious establishment couldn’t provide came to the anchorhold for conversation and support.

Neither priests nor monks, the spiritual practice of anchorites and their interaction with those who came to them fell outside formal control of the Church. As a result, religious authorities often viewed them with suspicion. One of the best known of these dropouts from ordinary social and religious norms was Julian of Norwich, a woman who had a near-death experience in 1373 and spent the rest of her life thinking about what it meant, for herself and for the world at large. The book she wrote about her revelation, the first in English that we know for sure was written in by a woman, is an astonishingly daring and original rethinking of Christian theology: a vision of a God in whom there is no wrath, who is both Father and Mother of Creation, and who will somehow, by a miracle beyond our ability to grasp, eventually effect the salvation of every living being.

Men and women of spirit who fell between the cracks, anchorites practiced what in its own way was a profoundly queer inner life, following the instincts of their own experience, flying under the radar of the powers that claimed to control access to the Divine.