It's not me, it's my brain

(random photo from my flickr: garden in re-used pond liner at Cart'm Recycling Center on the Oregon Coast)


I continue to find it difficult to get certain things done, and to make choices. Next spring I must remember this and just not take on too many things besides the Buddhist festival.

Now rather than my own laziness, I can blame the way the brain works, according to Scientific American. When we take on too many decisions, it wearies our brain. If we waste our "executive function" on little things like what movie to see, or which clothes to wear, we don't have as much capacity left for making the big decisions. That could explain why (perhaps this is a myth) Albert Einstein had clothes for each day of the week so he wouldn't have to decide. It could explain why there's a stereotype of high-powered decision-maker types liking the submissive role in sex play...maybe when we have to use a lot of brain-power for big decisions, we need to have someone else take charge to counterbalance those decisions.

This could also explain why spiritual traditions have rituals that give us focus without having to make decisions about the little stuff. You don't have to make a choice about eating a cookie, or when to go to bed, or even when to stand up. In Zen meditation, and meditation retreats, this is all prescribed. You just sit. You just do the ceremony. You just eat what is put in front of you. Those little rhythms of life are taken care of, and this allows the bigger rhythms to become apparent.

Indeed the very act these past few weeks of trying to choose what to write about next has depleted my "executive function," so I then write nothing. Perhaps I need to prioritize meditation itself to replenish that brain muscle.

I have developed a small habit of avoidance that involves shopping online, be it clothes or bags or little trinkets. (Small as in I surf around at ebags every 3 months or so.) Maybe those little decisions become more attractive than bigger decisions. So now I find myself possibly entering into that slithery world of spiritual materialism by coveting this. Is that bad? Good thing I can't seem to decide between that one and this one. It's possible I could delay that decision to infinity.

Town Hall Invitation

Because of my blogging on health and community involvement, I've been invited to a town hall on the possibility of a federally funded "biobank."

My first thought was wow, who me? Then, why of course me. Then, what the hell do I know about the implications of a genetic biobank? Well, I guess a way to find out would be to go. I'd have to ask to leave work early that day.

The Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University is holding these meetings in just 5 cities.

The local coordinator who sent me the email pointed me to two articles about the Kansas town hall, here and here.

What do you all think?

As I attend the series Unnatural Causes, I'm learning so many ways in which environment plays a key role in health regardless of genetics. Yet, if predispositions can be determined, some pre-emptive medicine might cost a lot less in the long run, thus the usefulness of a genetic biobank for research. That's not even to be begin to look at how such a database could go Horribly Wrong for those who haven't any power.

We can't get single payer national health care. I'd like to see that first. Who will this biobank end up benefiting? With politics as it is now, I can only think it will benefit those with power and money.

Testosterone and Love

I don't often talk about sex here, though I admire those bloggers that make it their mainstay, such as Chelsea Girl and Tom Paine. Talking about sex will definitely gain one a loyal audience.

I don't talk about sex much because it usually involves another person, and it may be an intimacy that other person would rather not have shared publicly. Chelsea Girl found herself confronted with karma from a past lover, and not at an optimal time. Her readers had various views on that. Some bloggers seem to feel anything is fair game, and if someone has a problem with that, someone can start their own blog. I think Chelsea Girl did the right thing for herself, including making amends somewhat by sharing the positive things about her past lover that she hadn't before.

Some bloggers write about socially taboo things, and try to protect themselves by remaining anonymous. That doesn't always work. I tend to feel that there is safety in transparency. (A friend of mine said that very thing today regarding civil disobedience. Makes sense, doesn't it?) I don't flaunt my identity, but I don't try to hide it either. I want people to know I am polyamorous, that way they can't accuse me of sneaking around. Along with transparency there must be tact and courtesy, so if I'm "working something out" in my writing, I can't just be thinking of myself. This is why I was so happy when Tom's wife C. starting reading and participating in his blog, there wasn't a big splash (publicly anyway) of hurt feelings and embarrassment. Tom has written of some very intimate stuff...and his wife has brought even greater intimacy and boldness to his posts.

I intended to talk about patterns of libido, and here I am talking about blogger anonymity. I also don't talk about sex much because it doesn't necessarily happen all that often. I'm busy, my lovers are busy, we don't get a chance for that intimate time together. Parents aren't the only ones who have to put sex time on their calendar. I can go through periods of time where I just don't think about sex much at all. I've never been one to masturbate much by myself. I prefer help. I also prefer a buildup to a big orgasm, and that rarely happens by my own hand, or my own hand holding machine. Sometimes I realize I'm blue or cranky and my body is sluggish because I haven't been flushed with the heat of desire lately, and the proper medicine is a good body-rocking orgasm.

This has been my pattern lately. I have so many other things on my plate. Other times I have been hungry for sex. Often it has been when I am flush with a new love, or about to fall in love. I've come to believe that there is a biological rhythm to falling in love, and there is an emotional ripeness to falling in love. When those two come together and happen upon an object of desire that is compatible enough, along comes "true love." That third element, compatibility, is so key to a lasting relationship. I happen to think the absence of it does not negate the validity of the love, just makes it something that is unwise to nurture. I'm getting away from my intention again...

Who hasn't noticed that people in love sparkle and glow and are suddenly quite sexy? Early in our relationship Steve pointed out to me that so often no one is interested in a person sexually when they've long been single and involuntarily celibate. That person hooks up with someone, starts having great sex and intimacy, and suddenly more people are flirting, sniffing around for some of that. I think it has all to do with those love chemicals stirring around in a person. After a couple settles in to couplehood, those chemicals simmer down and the sexiness withdraws, like coals banked for the next day's fire.

That mad sparkly time of new love can last from a couple of months to four years. That giddy excitement can't go on forever, too stressful. Those that have studied this hypothesize that's about the time a female could use a male sticking around to help care for a baby. After that, a primitive human couple could go their separate ways, and mama could take care of baby on her own. Our body chemistry possibly reflects a natural serial monogamy, or natural pattern of adultery. I wonder from that if people have a natural rhythm of susceptibility to love. Every few years, a monogamous couple might find a resurgence of passion, or a cheater might succomb to new temptations, or a polyamorous person might seek new dates and new loves.
The other part of my equation of ripeness for love is an emotional state of mind. Some wiser unconscious part of me didn't allow me to fall in love until I was ready and able to withstand gale force winds of love. Other people perhaps don't have those unconscious walls. Some people may live their whole lives, become grandmothers, and not experience that psychic awakening to eros.

While omnifarious possibilities of love abound, I'm interested at the moment in examining that sex-infused giddy time of new love. Discovery News recently reported on two studies about sex making people feel sexier. One showed that the more sex you have, the more you feel like having sex. This is due to the raised levels of testosterone that result from cuddling and intercourse, for both men and women. The second study found that monogamously partnered couples had the lowest testosterone levels, and polyamorous people had the highest overall levels, even above single people. My first thought, well that depends. I would guess those would be actively dating polyamorous couples. I would guess my own testosterone levels are kinda low at at the moment.

The Discovery article said,

The team of scientists theorizes the hormone may be involved in "bond maintenance" and in preparing the individual for competition.

Such competition may be either external, as in fending off other suitors, or internal, as in strengthening the person in preparation for a possible child. Other studies have demonstrated that sperm from different men compete with each other to fertilize the egg, although women also appear to exert some influence over which sperm achieves the feat.

That seems to me to explain that glow effect of ripe new sexual contact. Sex doesn't only make a person feel sexier, it makes one sexier. I wonder what they meant by competition. Could it be this enhanced attractiveness sparks a dance of competing sex-partners? Could it mean we're naturally inclined to 'play the field' with our raised testosterone levels? Then, when we settle for the one and only, we ride that testosterone wave, forging connections, until other bonds hold us together, like oxytocin.

Our bodies will ripen again, ready for another child, another pairing. Is it any surprise that we don't always ripen for love with the same person? Perhaps in the case of polyamory, we freeze ourselves in that moment of ripening, with multiple partners the chemistry doesn't quite settle. Maybe our bodies think we're 'playing the field.' I do know that having sexual activity with another makes me want it more with my closest lover. A self-feeding loop raises those levels of libido.

Some people have no wish to raise libido levels. They're perfectly happy being asexual. As Dan Savage so often says, "You can have strict monogamy or you can have a low libido, ladies, but you can't have both. If monogamy is a priority, you're gonna have to put out." I'm with Figleaf, the best sex is the sex you want. But if I don't want much sex, it's not fair to impose that on my significant other. If my significant other wants more, he or she is welcome to find more with more people.

Email from Antarctica

I got email and photos sent to me from McMurdo Station in Antarctica. My friend Tina shared that she just finished survival school. This mom, adventurer, scientist, pacifist...I could go on...said, "The weather was very fine, clear skies and around - 9 C so we had plenty of opportunity for recreation, thus Amie and I built the meditation maze."



That and this next one are my favorite pictures she sent. The only way you know who's inside is by the name patch. That tickles me for some reason.



She confirmed for me that her patch says "United States Antarctic Program National Science Foundation." She said, "The local nickname for the parka is 'big red,' as in "you can use your big red as an extra insulating layer over your sleeping bag." She's using snowmobiles and airplanes to travel to different camps, and has email when at McMurdo, unlike her last expedition 14 years ago.

It's all about Love

I have been feeling particularly useless lately because my mind keeps coming back around to one thing. Of course I have done other things besides dwell on this thing and go to work in the past 2 months:

• went to my first Portland Beavers baseball game with the girl I mentor
• went to the 2nd annual Interfaith 24 Hour Chant for Peace at Great Vow Monastery
• wrote my articles for the Dharma News (a friend suggested I put the more interesting ones here, I think I'll do that)
• visited with my husband's parents
• attended and volunteered at another Darklady party
• organized a Peace Crane folding event sponsored by the Portland BPF (brainchild of Rich Mackin)
• discovered a neat website that's all about new words and phrases that are making their way into the English language (how I found it? searching for the word 'earworm')

and too important to be a part of a bulleted list, took care of my husband while he recovered from minor surgery. Being there for my husband, and doing so along with his other significant other, was meaningful to me not only as the first time I experienced such a wifely rite of passage, but because I did so with Krissy. Significantly, this was the first time she and I had ever spent time alone together. We got a balloon for him that said "We love you."

I guess I list these things to remind myself that I haven't been completely useless. Falling in love ain't easy. I happen to be reading two books that are useful at this time of highs and lows, obsession and intensity, yearning and focused attention. I sent for them before I met him, and have been reading only a little at a time. When I do read, they help me confirm my own thoughts about myself, and love, and falling in love.

Why We Love outlines what we think of as 'romantic love', or as polyamorists would say, NRE or New Relationship Energy. I've got all the symptoms. According to Helen Fisher, the chemistry of love is dopamine, and could include a chemical derived from dopamine, norepinephrine. Thus the sweet ecstasy, tremendous energy, lack of appetite, sleepless nights. Also, when there are high levels of these two, the levels of serotonin drop. Thus the depressive lows, especially when the love is not reciprocated. BBC has done a miniseries documentary based on her book, I hope it makes it to the US soon.

I sent for the eBook version of Spiritual Polyamory by Mystic Life. [link removed 02/07 due to author's actions towards me] Who knew it would be so hard to get the Adobe Reader to work on my Palm, and then I had to get a memory card for the thing. Perhaps the delay was meant to be. I decided to get the book because the author, also known as Chris, says such useful and even-handed things on the yahoo group he set up with the same name.

This guy I've fallen in love with, not the sort of guy I'm usually attracted to. Usually the sort of guy I would have advised a friend to steer clear of. Certainly the sort of guy my friends hear about and advise me to "be careful". Certainly the sort of guy that my husband would rather I chalk up as a life experience and move on. But I can't. I've fallen in love. I think there's something to this love. Something for me to learn. Something for him to learn. When I first met him he told me he is vain, egotistical. But how vain am I, thinking my love can do him good? So I am thinking my noble thoughts about love are just my own egotistical self-justifications, when I pick up Spiritual Polyamory again and discover someone else has had similar noble thoughts.

This instinct, this drive to mate that fuels a new love, causes all sorts of need to find security, thus all the obsessiveness. (And jealousy, though I'm not inclined that way.) Yet I also have a strong spiritual background of letting go, of learning to be comfortable without that certainty. When these two collide, all I have is a faith that the deeper love, the unconditional love, will prevail. As Mystic Life says in his chapter on the polyamorous journey, "True love arises out of an absence of control."

My spiritual path is known for renunciation. Often the form it takes is mistaken for the process itself: give up a lay life, shave one's head and become a monk, renounce worldly matters, and sex. The process itself is about letting go of ego, about cultivating egolessness, and that can be done by any person, lay or monastic, even a polyamorous sex-loving person like me. Mystic Life makes the point that it is the monogamous folks who make a big deal about sex, that sex should belong to just one other person. Sex is a bodily function, an instinctual drive that certainly is capable of bringing ecstatic moments into our lives, but it's not necessary to be possessive about it.

The more I have been on this polyamorous path, the more I appreciate it as a spiritual path that complements my Buddhist path. I have the wonderful opportunity to learn how love manifests in its many unpredictable and in its predictable ways. The more opportunity I have to experience this, the more I am convinced the key to selflessness and compassion in this universe is love. Now I have met someone who really puts this to the test. He cut right through my pacifist, compassionate outlook, challenging me with, "You know you really are judgmental." I don't think he believed (or believes) I could love and accept him as he is. Perhaps he has me right where he wants me, but yeah, some part of me takes that as a challenge.

Mystic Life said, "Nonjudgment in a relationship is an important aspect of what makes it work. The ego is tempted to judge constantly and assess whether or not another's behavior is benefiting one's self. Of course the ego is only interested in whether or not it is gaining strength, not about the evolution of one's true self. The ego likes control, power, attachment, guarantees. These are the illusion that keep it around." I found most of my judgments of my new love have been based on self-protection, and protection of my other relationships. Certainly that is healthy in this real, non-abstract world. I think it is also healthy not to be ruled by fear, and to find that all-encompassing love wherever it may be.

If I am to learn something about this love, it is to love without conditions, without expectations. I was inspired to go back to my the spirituality of my upbringing. One of the favorite passages of the Protestants who taught me is I Corinthians 13. In a poem I had written to my new love, I said:

if there is a glue that binds
this universe together
perhaps that would
be Love.

I would do well to remember these things in Corinthians about love, not only with my new love, but with all my loves: "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." Later, "when perfections comes, imperfect disappears...Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known." Sounded awfully Zen to me.

I think a more full knowledge of love begins when we are able to fall in love. This biological drive, an animal instinct, is the very thing that can propel a person to an even deeper love beyond the confines of the ego.

Matter and Consciousness, Part 2

My Zen teacher had a problem with the movie What the #$*! Do We Know? because one of two spiritual scholars associated with it is a 30,000 year old channeled mystic. I asked him, and anyone else in my sangha that's online, "how about spontaneous appearance of relics from Kashapya and Ananda? what does that do for you? anybody?" and shared my already written thoughts on that. No one responded. Oh, except for my buddy The Twerp (he's always messing with me). He said I channelled him with that question.

I really liked the movie and want to see it again. The movie used fiction to demonstrate the science in a nifty way. Nine out of ten viewers agree, Marlee Matlin was awesome. While there are some problematic things in it, when I googled the scientists and "junk science", the only problematic science was that found in the fictional part of the film, the notion that water responds to words and prayer. (Oh my gosh, the author is coming to Portland.) While it can be delightful to see a movie which appears to validate wisdom passed down through the ages, I think it's important not to accept it at face value and investigate the science, since it does rely on science to make its point.

I really liked the stuff about the brain, and the notion that we become addicted to emotions. To me, the science of peptides associating with certain thoughts that trigger certain emotions fits right in with my experience of Buddhist practice. People generally are subject to negative habits of emotion, but it is possible to change these deeply worn grooves through the creation of the habit of meditation and of loving-kindness. The movie appears to make the point that consciousness can effect the physical world, and asks us "how far down the rabbit hole do you want to go?"

The rabbit hole it leads me toward is this notion of matter and consciousness. Suppose we do rule out charlatanism in the case of the Buddhist Relics, and suppose our thoughts do have a measurable effect on our own bodies, even on water? What if it really is the case that enlightened masters reached out to us from beyond this time and space and gave us the gift of relics to revere? How is that so different from a 30,000 year old disembodied mystic channeling himself through a middle-aged woman? By going down the rabbit hole, I keep myself open to the possibilities, but at the same time, I'm a pretty smart girl, just as Alice is. For the most part, I figure there might be an easier explanation, but there also might be things I just don't know about the mind and the universe.

There was a time in my life and my Buddhist practice that I paid close attention to my dreams. I shared with friends a frightening dream where I was killed, and I knew it had something to do with my being a prostitute and with money the killers were searching for. To my surprise, they took seriously my joke about it being a past life, and so did my other Zen teacher. Was it a past life, or rather, death? More on this human body, consciousness, and the notion of self and past selves coming soon.