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June
6, 2006
Red Thread
I'm reading a book
called, The
Red Thread of Passion: Spirituality and the Paradox of Sex by
David Guy. The title is from a koan by a Chinese monk. "Why is it
that even the most clear-eyed monk cannot sever the red thread of passion
between his legs?" Red
threads are given at Buddhist initiations, and they're worn until they
fall off, but that thread is a blessing, and the thread of the koan is
a trial.
I'm reading it because I'm confused about the role of sex in my life. Is
it comfort and nurture? Power play? Drug - with the same rewards and encumbrances
of other good drugs? Is it a glimpse of the divine? Animal coupling, as
my ex-husband insists? How does sex derive so much power that the most
powerful man on earth can still be slayed by its call? And how do we gracefully
integrate it into our lives and bodies?
The body meditation Gretchen and I developed, seemingly in isolation from
other forms (I know that sounds puffy, but I've found no references to
it). I think I told you. We do it alone or even together on the phone.
We lie comfortably with none of that straight-backed discipline, and we
begin watching and listening to our bodies. We feel and experience them,
starting at what we call our bowl chakra, two inches below the navel. Don't
get turned off by the word chakra, because until recently, I rejected out
of hand the concept of energy until I discovered every other medical modality
embraces a system of energy centers in the body except the Western model.
Candace Pert, a neurologist at the NIH who worked to isolate endorphins
and the opiate center of the brain, came to embrace the energy/chakra system
in the body, and if she can, I can.
Anyway, if you really drop into your body, you'll notice it's boiling,
roiling and stewing. You experience your bowl like lava. You drop your
attention to your feet and feel energy racing up and down, arching from
one foot to the other. The top of your head might feel airy and comforting,
like your father's hand on your head as a boy. Your throat
might feel constricted and fearful. Your solar plexus might feel tight
and respond to your body as you breathe. And your breath. God, your breath
alone is magnificent as it moves from your toes to the top of your head,
and then out through your mouth.
Another thing about the body. When we experience emotional problems without
resolution, we store those conflicts in our bodies, so sometimes strange
emotions bubble to the surface. When I first started doing this, I was
in the car, and I thought, hey, I think I'll drop into my bowl. And right
there on the road, I burst into tears. Big sobbing,
gulping tears, and I think it had to do with how long I've neglected and
ignored my body, but maybe it was old grief I stored. It's happened since,
and I don't know, but it isn't subtle at all.
So here I am scanning my body in my new little spot upstairs, with my
incense burning and my meditative Buddhist bowl music playing, and my body
reclining in my
incredibly comfortable spot on the futon under my desk. My body burning,
swirling, racing, bubbling.
There's something I haven't mentioned. My clit and pussy. Let me tell you,
when you drop into your body, their voices are loud and their pressure
is insistent. So what about them? I started thinking about zones of okay-ness
and not-okay-ness, and the way we divide the body up. But the body doesn't
see itself that way. The body doesn't want to be segmented and mapped.
That's something WE do as a culture, but it isn't at all real.
Gretchen and I would talk about what we were feeling in our bodies, but
for ages we'd dance around the DIRTY SEX PARTS, until we
both realized how stupid it is. And that gets me back to sex. What is it?
Why is it so powerful?
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