Your Inner Temple: Deepening Male Self-Pleasure

 "Self-pleasuring is the foundation of our potential to love and be loved.... Whether we are aware of it or not, whenever we play with ourselves genitally, we are worshipping the divine."

--Barnaby Barratt, Sexual Health and Erotic Freedom

I'm delighted at the prospect of co-facilitating an intimate residential workshop with Pono Stewart, at his beautiful Skyclad Retreat Centre north of Victoria BC, August 16-19. 

In a safe, confidential space of mindful mutual consent, limited to nine registrants, we’ll explore the wonders of self-pleasure and create rituals to celebrate the unity of body and spirit. If you’re a cis-gendered man who wants your experience of masturbation to be bigger and more meaningful than just physical release, this four-day journey into deeper self-awareness is for you.

Let go of inhibition in a safe and welcoming space. Trust-building exercises will establish a strong, secure container for our experience. Sharing circles, solo and paired exercises, guided meditations, and instructions in technique will open doors into a deeper realm where body and soul are one--where desire and curiosity can blossom into wisdom and compassion.

Rejoicing in the expansive pleasure we're capable of generating within ourselves is our foundational, universal birthright. It transcends divisions of age, religion, sexual orientation, cultural and ethnic origins. 

For a full description of the workshop, follow this link.

Photo by Andrew Graham

At the Full Moon

 

Pledge; Token; Warrant; Assurance; Keepsake; Proof

The other morning, I stood admiring the rug at the foot of the bed.

Its tight, even weave; the rich colors. The thought of the days or weeks of labor that went into its creation, by whatever artisan produced it before our friend G bought it. Then, the memory of where it hung on the wall of his stairwell, before he passed it on to us--along with some wonderful ceramics, when he was emptying the house he'd lovingly repaired, remodelled, and maintained with his own hands over the forty years he owned it.

It was his garden that mattered most to me. I spent a ridiculous amount having a hinoki cypress from his back courtyard transplanted. What an absurdity: I could have bought one directly from the nursery for less. And it was the best money I ever spent.

As a teenager and into my early adulthood, I endured impatiently my mother's rehearsals of the stories behind some of the objects in her house. The memories that went with them weren't my memories. Her increasingly persistent efforts to instill them into me sparked a sometimes poorly suppressed annoyance.  I came to think of these occasions as the Litany of the China Cabinet. Now I understand better what was at stake for her. She was the custodian of other people's lives. Passing on the story of who had owned what meant keeping the dead among us. And with it, a reassurance that her own memory would endure. 

When she died, I carted far more out of her house than I needed to hang onto. I realized soon enough that I had no use for the poster bed that had belonged to her aunt--whom I also knew and adored in my teens. The pegs in the sidepieces are set up for stringing ropes to support a featherbed. The frame is an inch too short for a modern double mattress. Over twenty years later, it's still the albatross around my neck--or rather, the obstacle at the side of the furnace room. What I prize most: the hickory cutting board from my grandmother's kitchen, marked by fifty years of scorching and sharp knives. What I regret most: that none of the cowslips from my mother's garden now grow in mine. By oral tradition, they were descended from ones carried by her grandparents from Stuttgart to Indiana in 1871.

As I approach the age of 70, the question is on the horizon--where does all this stuff go next? Not to a next generation by blood. Perhaps, in some few cases, to younger friends who will remember these things not because of their extended provenance, but principally because they came from me. 

When one of my undergraduate professors retired--a "confirmed bachelor" who took me under his wing in his last years of teaching--he gifted me his Greek dictionary. At my own retirement, I passed it on to one of my students. And was overjoyed when another student picked out about a hundred books fom my office library just before she packed up to move to her first full-time teaching job.

In many cultures, the history of objects is as important as the genealogy of families--histories that sometimes strengthen lines of blood relations, but sometimes cut across them to map out the web of other, equally important bonds. We've lost much of that in capiitalist society, with its commodification of nearly everything. Once, there was your grandfather's writing desk. Now, there is IKEA. 

The love of objects isn't necessarily symptomatic of greed. Sometimes, it's born of the sense that they're infused with human memory and a thick texture of relationship. They become an extension of who we are, and a tangible sign of our connection to others. Their meaning needs to keep circulating. A gift economy isn't about acquiring and relinquishing stuff. It's about the value and the bonds that are created by the act of exchange itself.

Latin has a flexible word, pignus, that sums all this up. It can mean a pledge, or a token, or an assurance, or a keepsake, or a proof. In the usage of the medieval Christian church, it came to refer to the relics of the saints. The Veil of the Virgin Mary at Chartres Cathedral (which miraculously survived a fire in 1194). The Crown of Thorns at Nôtre Dame in Paris (which survived the fire of 2019). The Shroud of Turin. Or if you will: the shawl given to Harriet Tubman by Queen Victoria, now in the African American Museum in Washington, DC, along with Nat Turner's Bible. The shamanic staff that has passed down through a lineage of mentors and apprentices. The ancestral photographs on a Mexican family ofrenda. The beads that some random beautiful boy put around your neck in the middle of Mardi Gras, when you were everything in the world to each other for three minutes, before the crowd moved on.

The Wild God

Wild, a God dwells between our legs.

Like the Sun He rises and sets 

and rises again.

Like the Moon He grows full and wanes 

and grows full once more.

Lke the Oak in the Earth He is rooted deep within us.

Like the Oak His crown rises toward Heaven.

Like the Stag in the forest He leaps for joy and slumbers

and leaps again.

Like the River He bursts the banks.

Like the River He floods the Earth with Life.

Like the River He cannot be tamed.

At the center of the boundless temple the altar is everywhere:

Between the legs of every man.

He is the Wild God between your legs.

He is the Wild God between my legs.

He is the Wild God between our legs.

He is the Wild God who says to the Beloved,

Come away for the rains are over and past.

He is the Wild God who says,

Take and eat, take and drink.

Who says,

Become Me.

Who says,

Become what you are, become the Wild God.

Who says, 

Set Me as a seal upon your heart.

Who says,

I am the Exposed Tip of your Heart.

Who says,

I am the One who knocks and I am the Key. Open the door.

Who says,

I will transform this daylight world into the Kingdom of Moonlight.

Who says,

Set me before you as a Ladder to Heaven.

Who says,

I am the Wish-Fulfilling Jewel.

Who says,

I am the Destroyer of Illusion.

Who says,

My rod and staff will comfort you.

Who says,

I shall scatter all the Demons of Shame.

Who says, 

I am He who overcomes duality.

Who says,

I am He who teaches you that you are Not One and Not Two.

Who says, 

I am the Bridge between you.

Who says, 

Because I am in you from within you flow springs of Living Water.

Who says,

I am He who teaches you that what arises also passes away.

Who says,

I was with you from the beginning.

Who says, 

I will be with you to the end and beyond the end.

Who says,

I am the Source.

Who says, 

You are the Flowing.

Who says,

You are the bearers of Life's Longing for Itself.

Who says to the Beloved,

We are the Destination.

OM NAMA SHIVAYA 

CERNUNNOS 

SACRED COCK OF JESUS 

PRIAPUS 

PAN 

NAMA OM

Photos by Andrew Graham