Tales of the Pack

This post is the second of three excerpts from my paper “The Experimental Art of Ego Dissolution,” which I presented as part of the Glaukopis Conference at Burning Man in 2008.  I’m in the desert again right now, experiencing a little secular ecstasy of my own, so new posts will start up again after Labor Day.

It is understandably hard to know what triggers ecstasy- though stress is certainly a strong candidate, which is why this state often accompanies times of great mental or physical stress: such as torture, vigorous dance or sex, fasting, sleep deprivation and so on. I’ll explore the methods of triggering ecstasy in a just a moment. First, I’d like to discuss the nature of the Ego.

The ego is a term with multiple meanings depending on the context. Here, I use it to mean the context of the subject-object relationship. It is not a “thing” – it is a set of responses based on experience and assumption. It is formed throughout one’s life as an integration of the tenets and expressions of the spheres of influence in which one resides. This sphere can be as small as a tribe in the traditional sense- an interbreeding family that shares a natural environment, resources and traditions- or as large as our globalized society and the tenets and information therein. The ego is what allows humans to understand the passage of time and maintain a sense of identity throughout their lives. It is the story that we tell ourselves about how we get from birth to our present state, despite that we are not at all the same organism we were at the beginning of our lives. The ego allows us to interact with material reality- to construct families, tribes, homes and careers. Ultimately, our ego is constructed by the tribe in which we are invested- a group upon which our existence depends and to whom our reputation is paramount. Not only is this story of self important to our individual existence but the health and expression of one’s ego is also of great importance to the tribe. The better an individual integrates the tenets of the tribe, the more likely he or she is to take responsibility for its survival and strength.

Ecstatic ritual has been used throughout time to strengthen tribal bonds and assure the efficacy of the group. Pleasure itself is a powerful tool of cohesion. Just as the pleasure of sex makes two individuals more likely to keep up the good work and reproduce for the good of their genes- the shared pleasure of a tribe celebrating to ecstatic states will carry through to the survival of their collective genes. A tribe that dances together, or dines together, or has sex together, or plays music together, or otherwise revels together- stays alive. Greater so than the shared experience of pleasure is the experience of collective ecstasy. Rites such as the fervent celebrations of Bacchus in ancient Greece, the dance of the whirling dervish, and the festivals of spectacle spanning from ancient Europe to our current celebration of Mardi Gras, Carnivale, Correfoc, and of course, Burning Man, all have the potential for, and often the intention of, fostering collective ecstasy. To experience simple pleasure within a group is to still maintain one’s ego and therefore one’s sovereignty from the group. The use of collective ecstatic ritual takes this one step further by dissolving the ego and creating intense, lasting bonds between members of the tribe. When the ego is absent, the distance between the self and the other is temporarily obliterated. It is in this decontextualized space that intimacy is fostered- when I lose my ability to understand the boundaries of my body and my soul, I lose my ability to see you as an entity separate from myself. All arbitrary classifications are rendered irrelevant and I see myself in you and you in myself with no delineation. Following the experience, as mundane reality realigns within my brain- I am more likely to sympathize with you and fight on your behalf as if your life were as valuable as my own- which it is- for I have seen the equality myself. This experience can be seen in a myriad of rituals such as ritual dance, drum circles, blood rites, certain rites of passage, group sex, celebrations of drunkenness, peyote ceremonies, and so on. (And at the really good parties- all at once). A couple common elements are the high physical stress (as seen in spiral dances or blood rites), thorough ritualization likely to aid in the “shutting down” of the more complex brain functions, and often nighttime occurrences (when the parasympathetic nervous system is at its peak).

So why is it that ecstasy is possible to be experienced while alone? What good does it do without a tribe to share it with?

Because ecstasy is also an act of social defiance. It is an attempt to assert one’s personal sovereignty apart from the group- to achieve a unique identity. The strength of a tribe is not only based on sum of the individual strength of its members, but it requires the individuals to be as strong as possible and with the greatest sense of purpose as possible.

Ecstasy, when experienced alone, defies society. It is a deeply personal experience for which even words fail. Ecstasy asserts the respect and love of the self- and one’s simple existence. It is a deliverance from ego which allows one to see the true nature of the personal ego- a unique and deeply intimate expression of one’s self that is ultimately arbitrary and able to be manipulated.

Solitary ecstasy may have the same neurological basis- the dissolving of spatial boundaries and the amplification and declassification of sensory input- but the interpretation is different. Rather than the collective- “I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together” it is a simultaneous self-aggrandizing and self-deprecating experience. The ecstatic function in solitude again dissolves the ego- thereby the traditional definitions of self-in-context.

The paradox presented by Abraham Maslow explains it thusly- “The greatest attainment of identity, autonomy or selfhood is itself simultaneously a transcending of itself, a going beyond and above selfhood. The person can then become relatively egoless.” Self-knowledge comes when viewing the self through the cracks of a fractured ego. This affirmation of self is undoubtedly important to one’s tribe or culture, as it allows for the individual to examine his or her proclivities as they apply to the tribe, take responsibility for his or her roles within the tribe, and raise self actualized and socially effective children- but it serves a further purpose. When we are delivered momentarily from the context in which we construct our daily existence, we swim in the soup of the infinite. Again, time, classification and identity are utterly arbitrary. And as the pieces of our ego reform into the self we are familiar with- we are given a choice. Seeing the unification of the universe as it is, we experience the infinite possibilities of recombination. Ecstatic experience is a mechanism built into the machinery of our brains that provides us with an opportunity to recreate our perspective and recreate our lives. After such an experience, we can give ourselves permission, if we so desire it, to change our names, assume a new identity, speak to a new set of gods, create a new path, find or create a new tribe, or at the very least, realize that those are all options for us. The ecstatic experience is, in other words, a frameshift. An opportunity that we can choose to ignore or indulge that can allow us the creation of a new life.

Part 3 coming to you on Monday.

This post is the first of three excerpts from my paper “The Experimental Art of Ego Dissolution,” which I presented as part of the Glaukopis Conference at Burning Man in 2008.  I’m in the desert again right now, experiencing a little secular ecstasy of my own, so new posts will start up again after Labor Day.

The ecstatic state is a natural state of consciousness attainable by anyone possessing a normal range of conscious agility- that is to say, one who experiences the modes of deep sleep, dream-state, wakefulness, daydreaming, meditation, orgasm, hypervigilance, mental lethargy, intense emotions, and occasional hysteria and dissociation in fair measure and in a mostly integrated way. The ecstatic state may occur spontaneously or it may be induced through years of transformative studies. It is equally accessible to all, and therefore intrinsic to the human experience.

The Ecstasy of St. Teresa

Ecstasy is a term I’ve chosen from a myriad of other similar descriptors such as “rapture,” “peak experience,” “satori,” etc. This state is marked by three aspects: A loss of the normal sense of ego, a sense of “one-ness” or unity, and a positive emotional component (often described as either joy or peace).

In speaking of the loss of the normal sense of ego- I use the term ego-dissolution where others may choose “ego-death.” My reason for this is that I believe ecstatic experiences occur on a continuum and the sensation is more often than not very temporary, with the ego returning to its normal waking state with little alteration after the completion of the experience- much like salt dissolved in water. Based on our limited neurological studies into this phenomenon, we’ve learned that part of the sensation of ego-dissolution is most likely related to a reduction of activity in the part of the brain known as the Posterior Superior Parietal Lobe (or PSPL). The Parietal Lobe is known for spatial recognition and sensory integration. The left hemispheric PSPL dictates the boundaries of one’s own body while the right hemispheric PSPL integrates sensory information to create the spatial matrix in which one’s body moves through the world. When activity in the PSPL is reduced or damaged, the boundaries between one’s body and the world fade and space becomes fluid and unified with no clear delineations between anything. The brain cannot make sense of shapes and boundaries, and it cannot even conceive of the idea of separation. The brain still receives the sensory input, but the contextualizing function is disabled- thereby losing discernment, value judgment, and categorization ability. So not only can it not determine “bigger or smaller,” “green or orange,” or “round or square” it also is unable to create the notion of “better or worse” “good or bad” “beautiful or ugly.” In the egoless state, every concept, belief, and object- including the self is seen as of equal value and composed of exactly the same “stuff.”

Another major brain structure that most likely plays a part in ecstasy is the Temporal Lobe. The Temporal Lobes’ major functions are the primary organization of visual and auditory sensory input, language recognition and memory. A marked decrease in function of the temporal lobes will further decrease the creation of context similar to the PSPL. Moreover, the temporal lobes’ functionality for the primary organization of sensory input means that exceptional activity may cause the normal boundaries of sensory organization to skew. For instance, the temporal lobes usually filter sensory input to the limbic system for emotional reaction. It can use sensory information such as “hot” “glowing” “red” to send a unified signal to the limbic system. Add to it the language and memory functions of the temporal lobe to get “fire” and the limbic system has all the info it needs to stimulate the danger-sensing “flight” response- or in the case of Burning Man the “dance around in fuzzy costumes” response. Also within the realm of the temporal lobe is the ability to draw conclusions based on references to our memory stores. With damage to our memory stores, new sensory input cannot be contextualized as similar or different to something experienced before. Not only are the heat and color of fire meaningless in this altered state- but without temporal lobe functioning, one doesn’t even have the memory of a fire to compare it to.

As the temporal lobe is also integral to language skills we see that either damage or abnormal functioning in the temporal lobes may explain the occasional accoutrements of ecstatic experience: glossalalia, auditory hallucinations, and the fact that ecstatic experiences often “defy words.” That is, they defy words, because our word-processing cortex is malfunctioning.

Part 2 on Thursday. . .

The first book I had been planning to write was titled “Secular Ecstasy,” and was to be an exploration of secular ritual through which people enter altered states of consciousness, often called “ecstasy.”

I’ve long been fascinated with and attracted to methods of stimulating ecstatic states.  The “higher levels” of consciousness, whether through use of psychedelics, ecstatic ritual, sex (particularly kink or group sex), or dancing.

I studied neuroscience in college and was planning on continuing on to grad school to research ecstatic states, but got waylaid by the realization that I REALLY didn’t want to be a research scientist.  Oops.

But the next best thing, and one that fits in most with my lifestyle, is writing a book about it.  I read a lot of fantastic books in my preliminary research including Barbara Ehrenreich’s Dancing in the Streets, John Horgan’s Rational Mysticism, and the incomparable Howard K. Bloom’s Global Brain. These newer books were terrific assets to the work of Abraham Maslow, who could be argued was one of the first psychologists who concerned himself with such states of consciousness.

As I compiled my research, I wrote a paper for Professor David Higgins’ academic conference, the Glaukopis Conference, which was presented at Black Rock City in 2008.

This paper was the very beginning stages of a draft for the book.

Since I’ll be out in the desert starting today, reveling with 40,000 other ecstasy-seekers, I’ve decided to serialize the paper, starting on Monday.  The paper isn’t all lesbian werewolves, I’m afraid, but I’ll be back to my old tricks as soon as I’ve washed the dust out of my ears after Labor Day.

This post was inspired by therejectionist’s prompt: Is it okay to appreciate a work whose author or the work itself espouses some rather indefensible opinions? Here’s my answer.

There are two kinds of misogyny. I break it down as such: Carrie Bradshaw-flavored and Henry Miller-flavored. One makes me throw a book across a room, and the other may make me squirm a bit but sigh and keep reading.

Bradshaw is about women who claim to have their shit together- they are “career women” who claim to be “liberated” and “empowered” and “the authors of their own lives” while tottering around New York in feet-disfiguring shoes and whining about being childless at forty.

The second, Miller, is about women who get called bitches and cunts because they are often shrill and catty, and get used for sex then tossed aside.

Henry Miller cozies up with Charles Bukowski and Jack Kerouac on my bookshelves, while the Bradshaws of contemporary lit are never will. How can I stand Miller’s repeated “cunts” while Bradshaw’s internalized misogyny sends me shuffling for the lighter fluid?

Miller’s misogyny stems from female characters with wants and goals that interfere with the narrator’s. The resulting anger and frustration comes from both his love and hate of these women for their power over him and his resulting inability to control these objects of his scorn and desire. Such narrators are more interesting as storytellers because of their fallibility and their self-effacing honesty. All their veiled insults or pseudo-aggressive actions are attempts to empower themselves, which makes for compelling drama. The female protagonists in these books get it, too (though Hemingway scores no points here). They, like their male counterparts, are subtly imprisoned by their own unhealthy obsessions. As a reader, we can relate until it becomes uncomfortable, then we can judge. And then we can relate again.

Yes, the world is full of men who relate to Henry Miller a bit too much to be sane or safe. Yet, as a woman reading these books, I’m in on the joke. I see how cruel all the characters are to each other, to preserve their egos and further their objectives, subtly imprisoned by their need to be loved and respected, while affording neither to one another.

Henry Miller’s misogyny is the kind of Wall Street honchos who hire pro-doms on the weekends to knowingly give their hubris a wicked and necessary dose of humility. Thus, Miller and his cohorts get a pass from me. Carrie Bradshaw can die in a fire, as far as I’m concerned, because she is NOT in on the joke. She doesn’t see her cultural vapidity, her insipid desires, and her deference to class markers and antiquated beauty standards as products of the patriarchy, not a repudiation of it.

As a queer woman reading any “mainstream” book with a central romance, I have to turn a blind eye to gender roles in order to connect with the story because so often the protagonist’s objectives are so far from my own, such as marriage and babies, swooooon. Such a vast suspension of disbelief isn’t demanded from me when reading the so-called “misogynist” texts. Happily ever after for such books doesn’t mean a kiss or a wedding. More often, it means that everyone survived with their dignity intact. Objectives like artistic integrity, escape from bourgeois cultural standards, and lots of superb sex are things I can get behind, regardless of gender or sexual identity.

Chick-lit books like to make sweeping claims on womanhood, then paint their characters as women I would never identify with. This sets me up for complete removal from their world. They tell me What Women Want, and then don’t show me one damn woman wants to wear busted up boots, to shave her head, or see Sleater-Kinney to reunite. The protagonists of chick-lit books are never written as sovereign characters who are fighting a real threat or are aspiring to a level of greatness I would want. Instead, they are half-formed characters looking for completion, whether through career success, material gains, or the love of a man.

So, give me Henry Miller’s sympathetic misogyny, with his four-letter epithets and meaningless sex. Make me cringe with his self-loathing, just don’t make me strap on four-inch heels in the name of liberation.

I’ll be gone next week, off to play in the dust with about 40,000 other folks.  Yep, it’s Burning Man, and yep, it’s awesome.

This will be my fourth foray into the intense, insane, trying and magical experience in the third largest city in Nevada.   Why I go is a complicated question that is really best answered over cheap beers in a dark and cozy bar on the edge of nowhere.   But the easy answer is that I go for authenticity- to witness the beauty of people expressing themselves in whatever way is most confronting and enticing, to be a part of the exploration of identity and personal freedom.

This self-expression takes on so many forms- some of them thrilling, some of them threatening.  I think what most people who don’t go to Burning Man find problematic about it is having to deal with other people’s unedited self-expressions.  It can be scary and ugly, no doubt.  Sometimes it seems ungrounded and unhinged- a drug-fueled orgy of disassociation.  However, having seen people move through those places and come out on the other side grateful for the space to be that ungrounded person, I believe in the power of such a method of finding oneself. And most of the time, it takes the form of conversation or intentional experience, passionate and honest and scary.

Where I’ve found my most glorious home is with Camp Beaverton.  I’ve mentioned Beaverton before, as an ephemeral place of support and a unique sense of family.  My second year as a Beaver, I was the mayor and organized the camp.  It’s no small feat, and I bow down before the succeeding mayors (yep, literally).  My hands-down, favorite experience of creating and managing that camp has been watching the women who had only heard about us, arrive at our doorstep with excitement and perhaps a little trepidation, ready and willing to let go of their facades and their judgments and allow themselves to “be” in a safe and supportive space.

Burning Man, despite many efforts to the contrary, including conscious and intentional community, is still slave to the same games we play every day in our culture.  It’s still dominated by straight white men who behave as they always do, oblivious to their privilege and its affects on everyone around them.  To provide a safe space on the Playa for women, queer and non-queer, to be able to speak and behave openly, without fear of male aggression or expectation is a gift, plain and simple.  I am happy and content to provide such a space for the hundreds, if not thousands of women that will come through the space.  We will offer a safe space to learn, to share, to communicate, to play and to grow as individuals and as a community.

So, that’s where I’ll be for the next two weeks.  If you feel compelled to help us in our endeavors, check out our Kickstarter page and consider making a donation.  You can also find us at our website, where you can read about all the crazy stuff we’re getting into next week.

Happy end of the summer, folks.  I wish that all of you can experience a little bit of magic as the days give themselves over to night in the next couple of months.  I want you to toast the sunset at least once and tell a beautiful person that you think they’re neat.  Maybe you should ask them if you can kiss them.  That’s always a good idea.  Hold someone’s hand just for kicks, even if you’re not in love with them.  Wash someone’s hair.  Thank someone for cooking you food, and earn some silly bruises.   That’s the burning man vibe, and it is just magical.

Okay, so here’s the deal. Every queerdo with a blog has been sharing their opinion in the last couple of weeks since the Prop 8 ruling came out.

I abstained for a couple of reasons- mostly because every one of my opinions on the matter has been better articulated by said bloggers.

But people have asked, so here’s my 2 cents.

Marriage is an antiquated ritual based on the exchange of property. The government shouldn’t have anything to do with that word and what it means to people, because I guarantee every single person in America has a different idea of what marriage is and who should get to define it.

The government, being a supposedly secular institution, should not issue marriage licenses at all. The government is in the business of civil regulation. Therefore, civil unions or domestic partnerships should be the only thing they determine. A gay couple wanting to own property and raise children together? Civil union. Two sisters wanting to share health insurance? Civil union. Multiple adults sharing expenses and ownership of land? Civil union. We’re talking regulation and taxation here, folks, not love and god.

Let every church or non-denominational institution define what their marriage is (remember when interracial marriage was illegal?  How about interdenominational?).  That way, all the fundies won’t get their magical panties in a bunch when people want it.  Let them not pay taxes AND discriminate on their own.  I don’t give a crap.

I think everyone has the right to take public and fiscal responsibility for their beloved.

Me at a No on 8 Rally in '08

That’s what civil unions are for.  So, wanna file a joint tax return? Civil union.  Wanna visit your partner in the hospital?  Civil union.  Straight or gay or something else- we all get civil unions.

Meanwhile, the Equality California and HRC type folks are raising a crapton of money to make sure marriage is legal for all Californians.  I’m cool with it. It’s a good fight.  However, when you can still get fired in most states for being gay, or when you can get dishonorably discharged for being gay, or you can get sent to an institution for being gay, we have other things to fight for, people.

There you go.  My philosophy on the (deeply unfair, out of state Mormon financed, cruel-hearted and bigoted) Prop 8.   Mazel tov!

My first beta reader got back to me with comments on the manuscript last week.  We had a great chat about her impressions of the book and I ran to the ms, renewed and eager to fix some of her concerns and amplify some of her favorite bits.

We sussed out one issue I had been dealing with – the nature of my villain.  She’s a radical, but she’s also a hypocrite, and I’m walking a very fine line with how I represent her.  I’m not against her politics, but I am against her lack of integrity.  It’s a tough game to play, especially as my book is about lesbian culture; I don’t want to vilify or shame any character by what they believe in, particularly since I try to represent so many different versions of feminism through my characters.

My reader mentioned to me how much she liked certain characters and how much she was annoyed by others.  Luckily, this lined up well with the way I intended.  What I didn’t intend though, was her observation that “All the good characters are more ‘butch’ or androgynous, and all the bad ones are more ‘femme.’”

It was strange to see what she was talking about at first, that my main love interest is more androgynous in temperament (whatever that means), and that Lexie, my protagonist, spends a lot time outdoors and doesn’t really understand women- therefore making them ‘butch.’  Then on the flip side, a lot of the more antagonistic characters (if not the villains, necessarily) are more femme.

Upon closer inspection, I’m not sure I agree with my reader.  Perhaps superficially, yes.  And after having a pretty intense conversation about female masculinity and writing as a representative for a whole community and movement, then I’m sure we were both more apt to be sensitive to such things.

My point in telling this story isn’t to hash out whether I’m gender profiling my characters.  It’s to point out the importance of good reader feedback.  My reader really liked the story- we had a long conversation about the intricacies of it, and while it started by me asking certain questions (“How did you feel about the love scenes?” “Could you tell who was talking without the use of names?” etc), it quickly evolved into a conversation about the book as a whole.  We ended up chatting about it as if we were in a book club together- exploring the text, parsing out its meanings

In short, this conversation gave me exactly what I was looking for- perspective.  By seeing her enthusiasm for the book (she has a crush on the love interest – YAY!), we were able to get into it as if it were its own entity and not my version of Gollum’s ring (preeciousssss).  I could talk about it both emotionally and objectively, reading the text as a text, and not as some vestigial organ.

Reader #2 is in my kitchen now, and we’re gearing up for a big ol’ convo about it.  She’s a professional editor, and judging from her color-coded notes, I’m gonna get a brain full of input.

Choose those readers wisely, kiddos.  Find people in your demographic and outside of it.  Find people who are not only invested in you, but invested in story telling and a culture of reading. Find people who want your book to shine.  I’ve got them, and they’re making me better for it.

The mythology of a culture acts as its repository of mores, ethical codes, expectation of roles, and ideas of redemption and success.

Despite our continuously globalizing culture, our tribes still tell stories specific to our identities.  These stories are most often woven into various religions or faiths, but of course are part of our more popularly recognizable stories in the form of fairy tales, movies, novels, and TV shows.

Queer folks often feel excluded from the mythology of our world.  Few Western/European folktales include variation of gender or sexuality and the gender binary is most often assumed to be a universal and fixed truth.  Rarely do we get any variation on these themes.  While queer people have undoubtedly inhabited the world since the beginning, looking at the majority of myths, it would appear as though we don’t exist at all.

Steven Kenny "Leda and the Swan"

The occasional story of gender-bending or queerness is nearly always a cautionary tale.  In such stories, gender-bending is used as a weapon to trick another, as with Vertumnus and Pomona and same-sex desire is often punished with death.  Zeus loved to shape-shift, often so he could get close enough to women to rape them.

Nevertheless, there are some stories out there, that by simply rejecting the traditional gender binary can be called “queer.”  Most of these stories involve shape-shifting, a quality that the gods of many cultures possess.  Often in these stories, the god will shape-shift to cross genders and “trick” their object of affection into loving them, or to hide from would-be attackers.  Such a story is that of Iphis as told by Ovid.  Iphis was born to a father who demanded a son.  Her mother prayed for her sex to be “hidden” so her father wouldn’t murder her.  The Egyptian goddess Isis granted this wish, and Iphis was raised as a boy, though she remained a girl.  Eventually, she fell in love with another girl, and was once again visited by Isis who changed her sex so she could marry her beloved.  Amazingly, they lived happily ever after. Read the rest of this entry »

How do we measure personal success?

In a highly scientific poll*, I asked my friends to fill in the blank:

“I will know I have arrived when. . .”

• ‎…i get there.
• when I no longer ask that question.
• i realize there’s no destination
• I feel I’ve arrived but I can’t remember how- !
• I can relax in this moment
• When I’m greeted at the door with a piece of apple pie.
• I’m already there.
• My GPS tells me… unless I’m in the middle of the woods.
• i’m dead
• I want what I have.

Granted these are all rather general, and my own answers may vary when looking at different aspects of my life.  But professionally, the answer is quite clera to me.

I will know I have arrived when I randomly see someone I don’t know reading my second book.

What about you?  How will you know when you “have arrived?”

* via facebook and twitter, natch

The endearingly-incendiary Pharyngula has turned me on to a new love-affair with Alas, a blog. Check out this splendid Male Privilege Checklist.