Pleasure & Politics

I can see a shift in my thinking occurring over the past year or so. Of course, I'm still the same person I've always been, but I can see that the importance of pleasure and joy has been increasing in my mind. I've come to believe that so much of the suffering in the world is caused by the inability of people to feel pleasure and joy.

The struggle is to express this idea in a way that people don't misconstrue it as hedonism and irresponsibility. In fact, I think that it is natural for all life forms to feel pleasure. Somehow religion twisted pleasure into something evil. How or why this happened, I do not understand, but I suspect it had something to do with disempowering the masses. Today it is perpetuated through the constant message that you can only be happy if you have lots of money and material possessions. This keeps the masses enslaved to this system.

I was conversing with a friend about these things last night and he equates it with the imbalance between the god & goddess energy (yin/yang energy). Somehow we got out of balance and we're still out of balance. It's problematic because the female/goddess/yin energy is the energy of birth and creativity.

So if you look at a situation like the energy crisis, you see that the response to the problem is to go to war, rather than using our creativity to solve the problem. Why is that? It's not just because the energy is out of balance, it's also because in the collective consciousness, we don't believe that we can be happy without hording all the natural resources. We've lost the capacity to feel true pleasure and joy and this leads to insatiable greed and addiction.

Anyway, it's a subject I feel passionate about so I've been doing a lot of writing on it. At first, I was having a very difficult time communicating the ideas. I felt these things intuitively, but I didn't know how to verbalize them. That's part of why I wanted to write about courtesans. Since religion taught us that pleasure was shameful, I was fascinated by the idea of women who could embody these things and retain their personal power.

Unfortunately, it hasn't taken off in my imagination the way I hoped it would. On the other hand, I'm having an easier time verbalizing the ideas now so have been doing more non-fiction writing on these subjects.

So in the conversation with my friend last night, he said that some people have been called to embody the goddess and I'm probably one of those people. I feel it to be true. In fact, I remember years ago, I used to go hiking in the foothills and Rocky Mountains, often for 5 hours or more, and I would be filled with an incredibly powerful energy and in my mind, I heard that I was the Earth Goddess with a duty to protect the Earth.

I haven't told many people about it, but now I think it's not so strange after all. In fact, it seems to me perfectly natural that women would embody the goddess and all that it represents. It just seems strange in our culture because so few people understand it or acknowledge it.

I'll continue to add to the blog and would love any comments or feedback either on the blog or through email. Aside from The Book of the Courtesans, I've actually got a couple new novels in the works, but will say more about those on another day. I’m also adding Epicurus to my list of subjects to research for this blog so I can respond to David M’s comment.

Approach the World Slowly and Mindfully

In our western culture, we have been trained to rush to the goal and believe that immediate gratification is essential to our happiness. Yet if speed is essential to happiness, then why do all spiritual traditions teach that slowing down is the key? The fact is that no one can tell you how to be happy. It is something that comes from within. However, if you don't feel the kind of bliss that you long for, why not at least try to slow down and be more mindful of your present experience?

Don't automatically assume that what brings pleasure and happiness must always be something big, expensive, and new, or that it must be delivered immediately. The fact is that usually the opposite is true; something small, inexpensive, familiar, and simple is often what brings us the most pleasure.

Ironically, even approaching and being with pain, discomfort, and displeasure in a slow and mindful fashion can turn out to be rewarding. This goes against everything we have been taught to believe. Of course, it is natural to want to avoid pain. It is in our genetic coding. But if you take the time to sit with your pain or discomfort, you will find that these unpleasant feelings can contain great gifts.

Now, I don't mean to imply that you should stay in that space forever, only that you needn't immediately rush to escape it. Take the time to learn what it has to teach you and then move forward with clear intention.

One of the benefits of moving slowly and mindfully is that you will make your choices more consciously and avoid the constant repetition of unconscious patterns. When you begin to move toward the full experience of pleasure, do so slowly and mindfully. Look for the small, simple things in your life that give you pleasure. Do not make assumptions about the form it should take.

Start by thinking about the things, people, or activities in your life that give you pleasure. Choose one and then imagine yourself approaching it slowly and mindfully and taking as much time as you would like to enjoy what gives you pleasure. Then allow yourself to have this experience for real. Take your time to experience your pleasure as deeply and fully as you possibly can. Enjoy!

The Book of the Courtesans

There are several reasons why I'm interested in these subjects. One reason is that I am writing a new novel that will be titled The Book of the Courtesans. The themes in this novel are related to pleasure, sensuality, sexuality, freedom, power, politics, history, spirituality, and social mores.


I haven't yet worked out the whole plot, but I know that it will be a story about a school where women are trained to be courtesans. The narrator of the story will be an older woman who runs the school and trains the woman. They are also tutored by a handsome man with a rakish character, sort like Casanova.


The novel will express a feminist philosophy, but not from the typical radical perspective. It seems that from the beginning of the dark ages, people were taught to believe that anything bodily or earthly was evil. People also associated the feminine with all things of the body and earth, but the fact that these things were considered evil by the church, meant that women were the bearers of evil. The story of Adam and Eve is a perfect example of this.


Unfortunately, many radical feminists want to make men and women equal by taking the feminine out of being female, which also means that to see women as sexual or sensual beings is "degrading." Yet, the truth is that women are very sensual and sexual beings and this is part of our virtue.

The Purpose of This Blog

Happiness and the ability to feel pleasure have always been important to me because, from a young age, I experienced mild forms of depression called dysthymia and anhedonia, which later became much worse. People with dysthymia generally experience little or no joy in their lives, while anhedonia is defined as the inability to gain pleasure from enjoyable experiences.

From my own personal experience, I learned that depression damages the lives of the people who suffer from it, and also many of the people who come into contact with those suffering from depression. The ability to feel pleasure and enjoyment of sensual existence are essential to human well-being. Not only that, but we have come to understand that matter and energy are two sides of the same coin, inseparable, which means that matter and spirit are also inseparable. In other words, we can access spirit through our connection to matter.

I have heard it said that the reason humans have caused so much havoc on the natural environment is not because we are so materialistic, but because we actually lack a deep appreciation and love for the material world. If we could truly connect to the earth and the materials derived from the earth, we would feel deeply nourished and satiated.

As it is, people don't really feel pleasure or joy from sensual experiences. That is why they are so hungry, greedy, and insatiable for more and more, and they always seem to need something bigger, better, and newer all the time. They are never satisfied with what exists in their lives at the moment.

I don't mean to imply that this is a failure of personal or social morality. In fact, I'm stating just the opposite. It is the puritanitical sense of morality that has disconnected us from our ability to feel sensual pleasure and therefore our ability to connect with what is truly divine.

This is a difficult concept to explain because the idea that we should enjoy sensual pleasure has always been associated with pure hedonism and excess. So, am I suggesting that hedonism and excess are the way to happiness, contentment, joy, and bliss?

Absolutely not. Again, I am stating just the opposite. Hedonism, excess, greed, insatiability, and addiction are the symptoms of an inability to truly feel sensual pleasure and to feel a deep connection to the material world.

In ancient times, people naturally thought in terms of a trinity. There were two opposing extremes and then the middle or balanced way. To strive for excellence and virtue meant to strive for moderation and balance, not one extreme or the other. But during the dark ages, people were taught to think, feel, and behave as if there were only two polarities: good and evil.

In other words, you could be good or evil; not something in between. People were taught that spirit was good, while the material world and anything earthly, such as the body, were evil.