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Archive for January 21, 2007
Sunday Meditation: Learning to Meditate
Today is for those of you who think you’re not good at meditation, or “can’t” meditate. It is a sort of intermediary exercise; a baby step towards meditation, if you will. I was given this exercise very early in my Pagan studies, on a handout with a note that it was adapted from What Witches Do. I have further adapted it.
Pick something to meditate on. It should be something you can picture clearly, and something that will be pleasurable to spend your meditation time with. Here are some examples: A tree, a flower, a bonfire, fresh bread, a stream. (For the instructions, I’ll use a tree.)
In a comfortable position, ground and center.
Visualize the tree. Don’t concentrate on it, just see it. Engage all of your senses with the tree. Can you hear the wind rustling in its leaves? Can you feel the roughness of the bark? Can you smell the scent of woods?
You don’t have stay with any one part of the tree. You can visualize the tree in a forest. You can visualize bark. You can imagine yourself picnicking in its shade. Your thoughts can wander anywhere they wish to, as long as they stay with the tree. When non-tree thoughts arise, gently set them aside and stay with your tree focus.
By giving your mind permission to wander, you may find meditation much easier. Note that you are still going to eliminate off-focus thoughts, but you may find that in “wandering” mode, wandering back is easier.
The first time you do this exercise, your goal is to maintain this diffuse focus for five minutes. Continue practicing with your tree (bread/stream/flower/fire) until you can stay with it for fifteen minutes.
Blog for Choice Tomorrow
Don’t forget.
Clinton announces
After the longest lead-in in history, Hillary Clinton has officially announced her bid for the presidency.
Okay. Fine. Whatever.
How do I feel about it really? Clinton is a compromise. She’s a good politician, in the sense that she knows how politics works, and how to work the system to her advantage. She is manipulative in both good and bad ways. She has done a decent job as my Senator in terms of representing the interests of New York.
But she’s fundamentally a false front. I don’t know if she’s as hawkish as she’s been on paper, simply because it’s impossible to know what she’s sincere about. I felt the same way about her husband when he was in office. The Clintons are people who work the game well, and leave sincerity at the door.
A year ago, I’d have applauded this, because a year ago, putting a Democrat in the White House mattered a lot more than which Democrat. But since the November elections, I feel that it won’t be a Sisyphian task to put a Democrat in the White House; I feel we can choose among our options. And I’m not convinced that Hillary Clinton is the best option.
I’m not convinced she isn’t, either. Don’t like her “moderate” noisemaking. Don’t like her hawkishness. But a politician who knows how to compromise and still get her way has advantages. Face and name recognition has advantages. And the very fact that she’s polarizing has advantages. The fact that Hillary pisses off a lot of people creates energy, gets people talking, garners media attention. And that can be good for a campaign. (Not to mention that the majority of people pissed off at Hillary are coming from a pretty misogynist place.)
So, I’ll wait and see. It’s a while before I’ll be voting.
Sorry about the light blogging
I’ve been very busy. I’m working on something for Blog for Choice day (Monday) and a special trivia quiz for the Oscar nomination announcements (Tuesday). Which is an odd juxtaposition, now that I’ve written it.
Hugh Laurie’s Acceptance Speech
Get back to me if this doesn’t work.
It doesn’t.
The Globes will be rebroadcast Saturday (tomorrow) at 8pm on Bravo.
Friday Drumblogging
Okay, I don’t have new cat pictures this week. But, I have something almost as good.
For Yule, my friend Dave gave me a lovely secondhand drum. Since the outside was a little beat up I decided to paint it.
Answers for Tuesday Trivia of 1/16
They all got solved this week. Huzzah! (Answers below the fold.)
She said “no” with her lips, and “no no no” with her eyes
Amanda has a great post up about this “Willful Ignorance” article in American Prospect. (Shakes also has a great post up from a different, and important, perspective.)
Talking about gender-stereotyped abstinence-only education (I know, as if abstinence-only wasn’t bad enough, it’s gender-stereotyped abstinence-only ferfuxake), Amanda says:
teaching that men want sex and women want love but don’t want sex means that young men figure there’s no such thing as an enthusiastic “yes” to sex. If men think all women are reluctant to have sex at all points in time, then that means that they think sex is basically always rape. If you think all sex is rape because women never reallly want sex—as this abstinence-only curricula subtly teaches—then you think that rape is socially acceptable.
That’s vitally important, and it’s an essential element of date-rape and of disbelieving rape victims. “No” only means “no” if “yes” means “yes.”
See, let’s walk away from what it teaches men for a moment and look at what it teaches women. My first reaction is that if they teach young women that only men really want sex, then women will feel defeminized when they get horny. Holy shit, I want sex, I must be a man. Or mannish. Butch. Undesireable because of these unnatural feelings. All that.
But there’s a subtler outcome, which is that a woman will not admit to sexual desire. She wouldn’t want a man to find out that she isn’t really “feminine,” that she has these “masculine” desires. So she’ll say no even when she means yes, because no is the only “female” response.
Creating the feedback loop whence comes the rapist’s mantra: “She said ‘no’ with her lips but ‘yes yes yes’ with her eyes.” You know, “She really wanted it.” Women simply cannot be empowered to say “no” and mean it and have it honored unless they can also be empowered to say “yes” and mean it and get happily healthily fucked. And these crazy abstinence conservatives fear women who enjoy fucking SO MUCH that they’re willing to rob women of our “no.” Small price, they think, for robbing us of our “yes.” Well, my “no” can save my life and my “yes” is too much joy to give up, thankyouverymuch.
Desperately needed hints
Hints added to yesterday’s trivia.
