I have not updated for some time, as I wanted my writing to adhere to new standards. The goal is to write about my sexuality only if it is reflective of a deeper truth, and if it leaves me vulnerable.
I haven’t written because I was too scared to share a new truth with the world. I didn’t understand my own experiences and feelings enough to discuss. And in many ways I still don’t.
For me sex had been an act of play, exploration and an expression of love. When that love grew, it shocked me to realize that sex had become a prayer, a meditation and in many ways sacred. As my capacity to love expanded, I found new levels of openness. For brief moments I allowed complete access. To what did I allow access? When the doors to my heart opened it’s as if my soul poured out.
I’m not talking about orgasm here. This is an emotional sensation that manifests, if anywhere, in my chest. I felt unconditional and limitless love not just for my partner but it seemed for the entire universe. I felt like I was part of everything. It seemed to me that our reality was an illusion of separateness.
What a trip! That experience obviously scared the shit out of me. I couldn’t articulate it without sounding mad. My partner didn’t understand. Although I draw, and enjoy fantasy, I’ve considered myself an evidence-based atheist. This undeniable experience could not be ignored, nor was there a scientific explanation. Suddenly the subjective experience was as valid as the objective. I was so confused I wondered if I had a psychotic episode or some similar malfunction.
I’ve long enjoyed Jung’s ideas, and the connections he discusses between mythology and psychology. I enjoy understanding my subconscious through dreams, and translating my emotions into archetypes and images in my art. Naturally I draw a scene that represents feelings my subconscious has been mulling over. This is what makes my art an expression. By contemplating my artwork I gain insight into my own feelings.
Draw first, explain later. Often I draw something that I don’t fully understand, and as I start to understand the piece it strikes me as eerily prophetic. Obviously it’s not predicting anything, it’s my intuition whispering on canvas, and later my rational mind catches up. I like making mistakes and confronting problems because they are a source of inspiration and growth.
Even Jung says that the tension of ego (illusion of identity) and the unconscious can result in neurosis. He goes on to say that “Resolution of the tension causing this type of neurosis involves careful constructive study of the fantasies. The seriousness with which the individual (ego) must take the mythological aspects of the fantasies may compare with the regard that devoted believers have toward their religion. It is not merely an intellectual exercise, but requires the commitment of the whole person and realization that the unconscious has a connection to life-giving spiritual forces. Only a belief founded on direct experience with this process is sufficient to oppose, balance, and otherwise adjust the attitude of the ego.
When this process works, this type of neurosis may be considered a life-guiding gift from the unconscious, even though the personal journey forced upon the individual sometimes takes decades. This may seem absurd to someone looking at a neurosis from the attitude that it is always an illness that should not have to happen, expects the doctor to have a quick cure, and that fantasies are unreliable subjective experiences.”
Admittedly it’s highly probable that I’m misinterpreting what he means. It is convenient that I reference myths when exploring my emotions. I think Jung is saying that by using metaphors to describe your deep feelings you can look at them somewhat objectively. Being adopted metaphors you don’t believe they are real people in real situations, but you can’t belittle them for being fictional characters because they are very much a part of you. Through personification of unconscious emotions we can learn how they might be balanced, and learned from.
To someone else this all sounds rather wishy-washy and unimportant. To that person they may listen to my interpretation of myths and dreams and still say, “When I ask you how you feel, why do you tell me these stories instead?” It’s because I don’t know how to explain my emotions just as they are in sentences. I have to paint them, or act them out through a play or dance, or tell them like a fairytale.
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| Eros and Psyche |
The name Psyche means soul or self in Greek. In the past I have alluded to this partner as Eros, thus it was only fitting our relationship transformed me into a woman who could acknowledge her soul.
I had been working on a new mythological painting for some time. It’s still not finished, probably because I haven’t played out the whole story. The painting discusses the struggle between the ego and the id (or the animal). It features the characters Pan and Echo from Greek in the moment when the two characters of very different tales chance upon each other. Echo is a character that sacrifices herself for love (for Narcissus), and becomes one with everything around her when she turns into an echo.
The animal is unpredictable, the way he fiercely looks through the Echo (ego) it is left uncertain if he intends to rip out her throat or kiss her lovingly. She is caught by him and struggling to escape. The expression on her face is sweetly suspicious, and yet on the edge of surrendering to love. She’s pushing him away from her and just barely rising to meet him.
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| Leloir, Jacob wrestling with the Angel (1865) |
Even in the very fields of ego and instinct study are at odds with each other.
“The characteristic animosity between the adherents of the two standpoints arises from the fact that either standpoint necessarily involves a devaluation and disparagement of the other. So long as the radical difference between [Adler's] ego-psychology and [Freud's] psychology of instinct is not recognized, either side must naturally hold its respective theory to be universally valid (Jung, [1921] 1971: par. 88).”
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| Pan and Psyche |
When I found a photo of a bas-relief featuring Pan and Echo I was ensnared by the interaction of emotions they embodied.
Pan, a satyr, is more or less Dionysus’ wingman. The god Dionysus is in many ways akin to Eros in that he is passionate, and erotic. Dionysus is the beast-god within, or the unconscious mind. Dionysus and his cohorts represent basic instinctual drives. Drives we both repress through inhibitions and social constraints, and are overtaken by when not vigilantly guarding against them.
Invocation of Dionysus (from Orphic hymns)
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| Pan and Echo - Bas Relief |
"In intoxication, physical or spiritual, the initiate recovers an intensity of feeling which prudence had destroyed; he finds the world full of delight and beauty, and his imagination is suddenly liberated from the prison of everyday preoccupations. The Bacchic ritual produced what was called 'enthusiasm', which means etymologically having the god enter the worshipper, who believed that he became one with the god".
“The rationale for the Dionysian Mysteries was to affirm the primeval, bestial side of mankind, while integrating it into civilization. The dual role of Ariadne (as Mistress of the Minoan Labyrinth and consort of Dionysus) and the Minotaur story may derive from the mastery of mankind's animal nature. The self-mastery thus achieved was not one of domination, as in similar cults (George and the Dragon, and the original Minotaur myth), but one of integration. While the Mysteries lightened the cult's darker aspects, they failed to reassure its civilized critics and were regarded as dangerously liberative (particularly in their egalitarianism).” -wikipedia
Ariadne is another favorite character of mine. I’ve made reference to her when I felt abandoned by a love. She fell in love with Theseus and helped him slay the Minotaur (inner beast) and navigate the Labyrinth (puzzle, logic). Theseus was sailing home with her when they stopped on an island. He convinced her that he loved her, and that she should not wait until their wedding to sleep with him. She acquiesced to his demands so to speak, and woke up the next morning to watch him sailing away without her. Lucky for her Dionysus appeared to claim her. Which is an allegory for partying and allowing the façade of civility to drop. In order to heal from a broken heart, one must confront the pain, and that requires a descent into the shadows to confront the injured beast.
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Baco e Ariadne, de Antoine-Jean Gros (1821)
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Ariadne fell in love with a man that was rational, but not in touch with his unconscious. She on the other hand was in touch with her emotions, but it’s likely for this reason that he left her.
It was also discussing the dancing control of submission and dominance. If you allow yourself to submit, aren’t you the one in control? It’s about fighting vulnerability, and sacrificing yourself to the uncertainty of love and death. In order to move forward you have to decide to let part of you die.
Many of us willingly invoke this Dionysian nature through dance, music, sex, alcohol, and psychotropic drugs hence the ritual trance of Dionysian mysteries. Through those trance-inducing rituals, ego death can occur. Ego Death is depersonalization, a perceived loss of boundaries between self and environment. Other ways to achieve the mystic experience are through starvation, meditation, isolation, sleep deprivation, and prayer.
I’d like to note the use of psychotropic drugs that are used to induce this experience. Dimethyltryptamine (DMT) is a naturally occurring psychedelic compound. DMT is classified in Canada as a Schedule III drug. It’s often mentioned when discussing LSD and Psilocybin mushrooms.
DMT is hypothesized to be secreted by the pineal gland during sleep and induces dreams. There is also a huge release of DMT right before you die. The Pineal Gland is seated in the absolute center of your two brain hemispheres and between your two eyes (ie. third eye).
I recommend watching the documentary “DMT: the spirit molecule.” The film can be found to download on torrent sites like isohunt.com or Piratebay.org. Please use discretion, as the subject is highly debated between spiritualists and scientists. And experimenting with the drug incorrectly is not a good idea. I caution you that it is illegal, but also because it is said to change people’s lives forever.
The description of the experience in some ways resonated with me. Though I did not experience an alternate reality, or see anything. I was NOT under the influence of any intoxicants when I had my experience; I was making love. I also wasn’t deprived of sleep, water, food etc. But I won’t say that I wasn’t exercising, sweating, praying or meditating.
Eckhart Tolle has claimed that he underwent the experience after having suffered from long periods of suicidal depression. He says he woke up in the middle of that night and thought,
“I couldn’t live with myself any longer. And in this a question arose without an answer: who is the ‘I’ that cannot live with the self? What is the self? I felt drawn into a void. I didn’t know at the time that what really happened was the mind-made self, with its heaviness, its problems, that lives between the unsatisfying past and the fearful future, collapsed. It dissolved. ”
Tolle recalls going out for a walk in London the next morning, and finding that “everything was miraculous, deeply peaceful. Even the traffic.”
The Night of Pan refers to the process of spiritual attainment at during ego dissolution. How fitting is it that I should chose pan to represent the inner animal that looks through the ego (at the unseen self) with love and murders the ego. Pan means All, all-begetter, and all-devourer. He takes life and gives life.
When the fearful ego is murdered in a vicious torrent of screams, unification with the All takes place. I propose that All is love. Which coincidentally is a Bjork song with a beautifully crafted music video that serves to better illustrate this point. Interestingly enough Pan is also the only god in Greek mythology to ever die and not be brought back to life. The word ‘panic’ is derived from this name as well.
When for a moment, the boundary is lifted that makes us insist of I, I, I, me, me, me!
Oh- this is all you. This is all us.
You are the breaker of our hearts.
The knowledge of truth is within every human being. We know it all, we have access to it all, Jung may have called it the subconscious, through this through dreams, (lesser death) temporary death." - Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf: Lose your ego, find your compassion
View the TED talk at http://www.ted.com/talks/imam_feisal_abdul_rauf.html
In the moments that I truly felt connected to both my partner and existence I surrendered as if to total annihilation. It’s sounds insane, even to me, but in those moments I loved him so much I would have let him kiss or devour me. Love wholly transcended fear.
After one such experience I roughed out a painting that seeks to explain what happens when Echo sacrifices herself to Pan. In the painting a nymph is entwined with a human who is grounded in reality. The man is reaching inside her chest, and she delicately guides his hand. In that moment he holds in his hand her heart, soul, essence. He can destroy her, and yet he chooses to feel its warmth. Light explodes from her, and beautiful colour and forms radiate outwards. This is the universe shining.
That painting has remained largely untouched. I sought to share my experience with my lover, and it felt like I was explaining consciousness to a calculator. He was more or less tolerant, even if he didn’t feel the same.
Now for somewhat related reasons my relationship with him became quite strained. Probably because I felt like Echo debating surrender, and yet being entangled with an all-dominating Pan. The only moment of equality was in complete surrender. I wanted this new height of love to be mutual, but I refused to expect it. Putting semantics aside, I tried to believe that although he feared the words ‘romance’, ‘partner’ and ‘lover,’ that his passionate expressions of love, and commitment to friendship were emotionally equivalent.
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| Eros and Psyche - Jacques Louis David (1817) |
Submission to love, especially unrequited love, is still subservience.
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| Echo and Narcissus - John William Waterhouse |
Finally the imbalance was brought to surface. That was some time ago, and it’s yet to be seen if that disparity can be reconciled.
What I took away from that year is so valuable. The price was high, and entirely worth it. I may have momentarily lost my self, I may have lost the man for a lot longer, but I found everything else was already inside.
I discovered my soul, even if I laid it at the feet of someone who didn’t want it. The heartbreak I felt set me packing my things, and cloaking my true self in ego and stuffing it tightly back into my chest cavity.
But that is my next adventure. Learning to direct the boundless love I unearthed towards not just one person, but towards all of creation. I hope to share my experience, for it has changed every aspect of my life.
