How to Find Meaning: Dancing with Paradox.
This post is taken from the Pleasure Letter, the intimate correspondence I have with my email list. If you would like to receive more of this kind of content from me in future, sent straight to your inbox, I invite you to join.
It’s a very human thing to want to have meaning in our lives. If you’re a Virgo with a Cap rising like me, you may crave to have the path ahead of you be clear and obvious.
However, with my commitment to both self love and joy and collective liberation, the path isn’t always so transparent.
I've recently been reflecting on the balance that I am trying to hold as a teacher/facilitator of both pushing you to grow and affirming you for just where you are.
For really believing in you and knowing you are capable of an incredible amount of power and beautiful impact in the world, and also knowing that exactly where you are and just existing is absolutely perfect and totally enough.
Life is such a dance and a paradox. I'm seeing the paradox everywhere.
I see communities really out of balance when we forget this paradox. I see a lot of mainstream, white, cis, thin, abled bodied healers that only focus on the individual's healing and hardly at all on the systems of oppression and how this impacts healing. Their work sometimes veers into gaslighting at best and perpetuation of colonialism/imperialism at worst. (This is an area I need to look out for)
On the other hand, I see activist and social justice communities focus heavily on tearing down the systems that are the root of so much harm, so much so that they get sunk, discouraged, and forget that they get to experience pleasure and let this pleasure inform their movement.
Also, they sometimes forget that they are at least somewhat responsible for doing the inner work for upholding the values that they are asking of others. Considering power dynamics and folks just fight to survive, I have a lot more empathy and attention for the latter and it pains me to see.
I know my dance with the paradox hasn't and won't always be graceful.
The work is not and will never be about being in balance perfectly, or about always walking the middle path. It's about noticing when we feel out of balance and coming back into center. Just like meditation and mindfulness, it's not about clearing your mind, it's not always about being aware of sensations in your body.
It's about the return. The remembering.
If I am obsessing and exhausting myself about my work and service, it's time to take a break and ask myself and my body what I need. If I am feeling stagnant and uninspired, it's time to look at how I can take a break from my self obsession and lose/find my SELF through service.
Are you feeling out of balance at all? Considering there are more than two ways to lean, do you feel yourself leaning towards a certain direction? How does that feel? What are you needing?
Here are some ways the balance/paradox is showing up in my life:
1) Willow Basket Journey
I recently took a social distanced willow basket weaving class. A new skill for me (I have only made one before), but yet a very ancient practice my European ancestors have been doing for thousands for years.
Our teacher actually said humans have been weaving with willow for over 100,000 years?! After launching Boss Witch, I was needing a vacation, needing to relax. I love my work so much, but slowing down to shift gears feels like trying to slow an 18 wheeler going 70 miles per hour.
I wasn’t expecting the class to challenge me so much. Maybe it’s because I’m a Virgo, but, fuck, it feels uncomfortable doing things that I’m not “good” at. Which, is good for me. ***sacracstic eye roll*** But seriously, it is.
However, during the class, I really started feeling crappy. I didn’t want to rush the process, but then it made me get behind everyone else. Then I wanted to blame the teacher and blame the willow. The frustration shows up in my basket. BUT when I finally finished, it’s an art piece!
Sure, it’s not “uniform” or “perfect” but who’s journey is??? It’s beautiful. I am so proud. Proud to be more connected to my ancestors. Proud that I had the gumption to keep going even when I hated everything. And proud of this beautiful, funky basket that holds memories and some potatoes and onions!!
2) Golden Pleasure Platform
Another paradox that I am holding is that I have spent years investing in other’s sexuality. Coaching them, mentoring them, affirming them. But, through this process, I have created some confusing dynamics with my own.
When we monetize something we love, stuff can get weird if you don’t establish healthy boundaries.
For example, every time I try to just enjoy pleasure for pleasure’s sake. Pleasure just for me. Pleasure to share with my partner. I think about how to SHARE IT or teach it. It’s very fucking annoying. And yet, here I am, writing about how it’s annoying to want to write about that.
I’m having to learn what to keep to myself and in my relationship and what I will share in service. Well, I checked in with myself and one thing I am excited to share is buying a golden shelf just for pleasure. Just for my sex toys!!!
Especially at a time where I haven’t been feeling particularly sexy, it felt like a paradox to make a purchase just to display my pleasure toys.
Yet, paradox is powerful and here I am prioritizing pleasure. When it feels energetically so far out of reach, I’m going to make it physically very close.
3) All About Love
For the moon light bookclub, we read, “All About Love” by bell hooks. It felt so good to slowly take this book and let it sink into my being.
Here are some quotes that really moved me and that I wanted to share with you:
“Being hurt by parenting adults rarely alters a child’s desire to love and be loved by them.”
“When parents start out disciplining children by using punishment, this becomes the pattern children respond to.”
“By revealing her willingness to accept criticism and her capacity to reflect on her behavior and change, the mother modeled for her daughter, without losing dignity or authority, the recognition that parents are not always right.”
“The more we accept ourselves, the better prepared we are to take responsibility in all areas of our life.”
“Taking responsibility does not mean that we deny the reality of institualized justice.”
“Often, rather than asserting what they think at the appropriate moment, women say what they think will please the listener. Later, they gossip, stating at that moment their true thoughts.”
“Whenever possible, it is best to seek work we love and to avoid work we hate. But sometimes we learn what we need to avoid by doing it. Individuals who are able to be economically self-suffcient doing what they love are blessed. Their experience serves as a beacon to all of us, showing us the ways right livelihood can strengthen self-love, ensuring peace and contentment in the lives we lead beyond work.”
“On the surface it appears that our nation has gone so far down the road of secular individualism, worshipping the twin gods of money and power, that there seems to be no place for spiritual life.”
“The cultural emphasis on endless consumption deflects attention from spiritual hunger.”
“Letting go of material desires may compel us to enter the space where our emotional wants are exposed.”
“Because we are spiritually empty we try to fill up on consumerism. We may not have enough to love but we can always shop. For example, consider New Age logic, which suggests that the poor have chosen to be poor, have chosen their suffering. Such thinking removes from all of us who are privileged the burden of accountability. Rather than calling us to embrace love and great community, it actually requires an investment in the logic of alienation and estrangement. The basic interdependency of life is ignored so that separateness and individual gain can be deified.
“Our souls feel this lack when we act unethically, behaving in ways that diminish our spirits and dehumanize others.”
“What made these individuals exceptional was not that they were any smarter or kinder than their neighbors but that they were willing to live the truth of their values.”
“Cultures of domination rely on the cultivation of fear as a way to ensure obedience. In our society we make much of love and say little about fear. Yet we are all terribly afraid most of the time. As a culture we are obsessed with the notion of safety. Yet we do not question why we live in states of extreme anxiety and dread. Fear is the primary force upholding structures of domination. It promotes the desire for separation, the desire not to be known. When we are taught that safety lies always with sameness, then difference, of any kind, will appear as a threat. When we choose to love we choose to move against fear—against alienation and separation. The choice to love is a choice to connect—to find ourselves in the other.”
-bell hooks, All About love
The paradox that I am feeling with this book reading experience is that I am feeling loved for the first time in my life. Love in this holistic kind of way. That is hurts.
That it's bringing up all of the times I haven’t felt loved. All of those painful memories. All of the times I needed something different. While love shouldn’t hurt. Love makes us feel safe and seen.
And within this safety, sometimes that means our body is ready to take the time to heal the wounds of the past.
What books have you read lately that have moved you? Why? Tag me on Instagram to let me know what is moving you right now.
I know this is a long one, but it just all poured out of me and I wanted to share that with you.
With gently fierce love from a place of dancing with all the paradoxes,
xx, Luna
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