THE DAILY TRAVESTY | Compersion Part 3, Valentine's Brezsney
THE DAILY TRAVESTY for February 11, 2000
    Volume 1, Issue 29
 
 
 
            Love has no other desire but to fulfil
        itself.
            But if you love and must needs have
        desires, let these be your desires:
            To melt and be like a running brook
        that sings its melody to the night.
            To know the pain of too much tenderness.
            To be wounded by your under-
        standing of love;
            And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
                                --Kahlil Gibran
 
A CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED...
 
Part 3 of 3 by Eric Francis
 
And how do we get there?
 
Start by telling the truth.  This is what we need anyway.  Sharing this truth we possess in our hearts, the essence of our being, is supposedly why we got involved with this other person in the first place.  It's important to tell the truth gently, clearly and without the fear or the intention of hurting the other person, but not holding back, either.  Then, because we are claiming the birthright of love, we must love them through their reactions and responses.  This is a commitment it's best to go into the situation with.  And we must love ourselves through their reactions, which is to say, not feeling guilty about who we are.  So listen carefully, and let your partner own his or her feelings.
 
We must be ready to put love -- real love, which I am calling compersion -- above any given relationship.  So we must, on one level, be ready to let go of those relationships in which we cannot be free, if what we seek is the freedom to be who we are.  This does not hold just for sex and affection; it holds for those walks in the woods and those paintings that never get painted and the short stories that never get written.  It has to do with not living where we want and not following all our other dreams.  It is all part of the same thing, and it never ceases to amaze me to what extent sexual freedom parallels all these other freedoms.  And freedom means that change is possible; freedom by definition implies change.
 
In the context of a close relationship where these matters arise, it's important to stay focused on selflove.  Selflove is the basis of all love anyway.  If the process of your relationship is moving toward compersion, what you may notice is that sex with your primary partner was never hotter.  Aware of the potential for change, we tend to appreciate what we have even more.  So enjoy these enhanced experiences, and don't expect them to end as long as you're really being honest, because honesty leads to intimacy and intimacy is a good doorway to erotic passion.
 
But selflove is an extraordinarily powerful tool in this process.  I suggest you masturbate together, one at a time, without touching.  This will assist greatly when both partners are willing to work through a jealous crisis because it creates a very clear picture that the other is sexually independent of us.  And it is a fairly easy vision of sexual independence to see the beauty in.  Let your erotic energy and that of your partner wash away the fear, the discord, the pain and the insecurity of what you once called love.
 
Feel, if you can, how erotic a jealous experience can be.  When you are feeling jealous, swim into the core of the experience.  Encourage your partner to do the same.  Help them if you can.  Right inside the jealous episode is a fiery core of erotic passion.  It may surprise you how good it feels, and if you get there, you can be sure you're stepping right into compersion.
 
Last -- or actually first -- ask for help.  Talk to understanding friends who you know will not encourage you to lie about your feelings, or judge you for being honest.  But if you are on a spiritual path, ask your inner teacher for help.  Whether you call this teacher the Goddess, God, the Holy Spirit, angels or by any other name, the only way spiritual agency responds is if we open the door.  The movement from jealousy to compersion is one of the most direct spiritual paths there is, because we are learning so much of what spiritual programs attempt to teach: unconditional love, surrender, forgiveness, freedom, safety, and, most important, loving the way Spirit loves us: equally with everyone else.  Loving this way may be the only spiritual lesson there is.
 
We know we live in a harshly moralistic society which serves to deny creativity, love and pleasure at every turn.  The very fact of being willing and daring to explore another person's sexual responses, ideas, desires, feelings and realities is a challenge to this morality and control.  To do so outside the bounds of a one-on-one relationship is even more daring, but, it seems, for many people, to be an inevitability.++
 
more articles and essays by Eric can be found at www.planetwaves.net
 
For a Change of Pace
Rob Brezsney's REAL ASTROLOGY for the week of Feb. 10, 2000
Put a little tantric soul in your Valentine's Day.
(Eric's horoscope available at the link above)
 
 
ARIES (March 21-April 19)
 
 
I'll tell you what my type of love nut is if you tell me yours. I like funky pagan singer-songwriters who relentlessly face down their demons and lovingly cultivate their wild abandon. If they're smart rebels and kind nurturers, so much the better. What about you, Aries? What's your type? With Mars about to burst into your astrological House of Fertile Surprises, I bet you'll soon discover some brand new answers to that question. By the time the fairy dust has settled in early April, I predict love and lust will have conspired to deliver a gift you didn't even know you desperately needed.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20)

Who are God's chosen people? I really don't know. I'm not qualified to say. Same thing with Allah's or Brahma's or Ahura Mazda's favorites. I'm at a loss when it comes to grokking the preferences of the Big Guy. The Goddess, however, is a different story. As a life-long worshiper of the Divine Feminine and the proud possessor of a case of Venus envy, I'm much better qualified to kibitz about Aphrodite's chosen people. And I say that it's your birthright, Taurus, to be one of this select group. I am also quite sure that if you have yet to fully claim the privileges of such membership, now is a perfect moment to do so. Devote the Valentine season to maturing your Goddess-given potentials for seeking spiritually luxurious sensuality, having your soul fed by robust beauty, and finding yourself by losing yourself in ecstasy.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20)

The true meaning of Valentine's Day? Never having to say you're sorry for being totally uninhibited about love. So go bay at the moon with your partner in crime, Gemini. If it's cloudy or the moon hasn't risen yet, howl at the blue glow of a distant TV. Put on each other's clothes and dance in the dark to the most heart-rending music you know. Visit a fortune-teller together, and be sure to ask all the scary and thrilling questions. Talk baby talk to each other in a public library while scrawling love notes on dollar bills. Give each other new pet names like Squeezie Poo, Rubber Duckie, Tickle Monster, or Painkiller. Create secret hand signals you can use to communicate private giggles to each other while in the company of fuddy-duddies.

CANCER (June 21-July 22)

Just in time for Valentine's Day, you've perfected your Scorpio imitation. Not only are you courting magical states of mind and body. You're also flirting with obsessive passion and cultivating an intimate familiarity with your own personal darkness. Perhaps you're ready, then, to seek that weirdly beautiful hybrid of pleasure that Scorpios specialize in: where breathtaking heights overlap with smoldering depths. Are you wise and crazy enough to try it? If so, I guarantee that erotic experiments will lead to spiritual insight, and vice versa.

LEO (July 23-Aug 22)

This Valentine season would be a perfect time to take inventory of how you've fared in the Mating and Hating Games over the years. Why? Because I believe you're ready to graduate to a new phase of your romantic destiny, and the best way to lubricate the transition is to gaze at the big picture. So please answer these questions. Do your purple hearts outnumber your yellow streaks? Does your true blue loyalty more than make up for the wreckage wreaked by your green-eyed monster? How many times have you loved and lost? Loved and won? Loved and tied? Is puppy love still on barking terms with pitbull lust? Have the rigorous sweat and tears of rapture nourished the strawberry fields in your heartland? Or has your heart become surrounded by fortifications akin to barbed wire, mine fields, and ditches of burning oil?

VIRGO (Aug 23-Sept 22)

Virgos have the most well-hung minds in the zodiac. Scorpios may deliver the moistest heat, and Capricorns may win the prize for endurance, but you are by far the brainiest sensualists. A surprisingly high proportion of phone sex operators are Virgos, which is testimony to your power to turn people on just by talking to them. Why do you need to know all this right now? Because in the coming weeks you'll be especially skilled at getting what you want out of love on the strength of your wit alone. Others may have bigger bank accounts or more irresistible lips, but your seductive powers of persuasion should ultimately win you at least 60 percent of the blessings you crave.

LIBRA (Sept 23-Oct 22)

It's a perfect moment to atone for any time in the past you committed the sin of lovelessness. You also have a fine opportunity right now to correct for any honest mistakes you've made in the course of looking for romance. To get the festivities underway with a bang, I suggest that you declare a truce with your evil twin--and then reach out and touch the kind of beautiful people your evil twin has always scared away. As you proceed with ever bolder and wilder acts of redemption, keep this formula for success uppermost in your heart: For every way you improve your relationship with yourself, you'll earn a desirable new kind of attention you weren't worthy of before.

SCORPIO (Oct 23-Nov 21)

They love you...they love you not. They want to turn you into their erotic deity...they call you by the wrong name. They love to hate you...they don't even care enough about you to despise you. Enough, Scorpio, enough! You must find a way to be less dependent on your fellow game-players' reactions to you. You've simply got to stop your eternal obsessing on where the next kamikaze tingle is coming from. Solutions? First, learn how to feel perfectly fine about being totally alone. Second, give as much as love and inspiration as you can sheerly for the pleasure of giving, with no thought of what you'll gain in return.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov 22-Dec 21)

Many people have both a lover and a best friend, but few people have a lover who's a best friend. The innocent intimacy of friendship is often incompatible with the now-you-see-it-now-you-don't power struggles that tend to dominate romantic relationships. That's the bad news. The wonderful news is that you're in an astrological phase when all that could become almost irrelevant. I predict that you'll attract lots of cosmic assistance if you rack your imagination conjuring up ingenious ways to be the very best fuck buddy you can be.

CAPRICORN (Dec 22-Jan 19)

The Hallmark Card Cabal has conspired to hypnotize us all into celebrating February 14 as a feast of romance. But is this a conducive time for your love life from an astrological point of view? Not exactly. It ain't bad, but it's not stupendous either. If I were merely going by the astrological omens, my advice this week would be to spend money in order to make more money. But since I feel the need to adjust for the effects of the Hallmark Conspiracy, my revised advice is to spend money in order to generate more and better love.

AQUARIUS (Jan 20-Feb 18)

Slipping away from the grind for a rendezvous in a broom closet? Delivering yourself unto a righteous temptation you've always resisted before? I hope so. After playing it safe for too long, you're primed to make several feisty breaks with romantic tradition. Familiar old partners had better come up with a few new shticks if they expect to earn your inspired attention. And you yourself ought to meditate long and hard about how to turn yourself into the best possible lover you can be.

 
PISCES (Feb 19-March 20)

Just in time for Valentine's Day, I've decided to give you a sneak mini-preview of a self-help book I'll publish some day, Sex Tips for Saints. Tip #1: Give up all desires to control your lover. #2: Ask your soulmate to present a dissertation on how to make his or her imagination throb and shudder with rapture. #3: In a lyrical, gushing proclamation, tell your sweetheart how he or she has changed your life forever. #4: Conspire together to unravel the most frustrating knot in your dreamboat's life. #5: Coin a slang word, to be used only by the two of you, that means both sex and laugh. #6: Act out this word.

Copyright © 1997-2000 Rob Brezsny  
lyrics last issue by Everything But the Girl