Category: Self-love

Bisexuality and Transformation

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)As bisexuals, we are often robbed of our ability to enjoy our sexual experiences by the feelings of worthlessness, shame, or guilt that follow. These feelings seem to come from an empty space within our mind and soul.  We need to fill this empty space before we can live wholesome lives. This may require a transformation.

At the root of most of our sorrows is usually the lack of attunement, which is the transfer of a positive life force from the mother to the child. The mother figure may love the child but does not demonstrate it through physical contact, focused attention, and especially eye to eye contact. It  is necessary for the child to “feel” loved in the womb and during the first year of life.  It is through this love connection that the child becomes empowered to go out and conquer her world.

Lack of attunement sets the stage for most of the lingering difficulties experienced in life. When this empty space is not filled, there is a constant underlying sense of anxiety. Lack of attunement and the resulting anxiety is  the root of most personality disorders, and it is the personality disorder that is often the cause of a person not being able to form and keep wholesome and lasting relationships. These broken relationships then add fuel to the fire of  worthlessness and expand that empty space in the heart. But it is not a life-time sentence. Even personality disorders and painful experiences can be overcome by the power of the human spirit.

The key is to change the beliefs of the mind and the ego, which means changing the neural pathways in the brain that were formed before memory, concept development, and the ability to reason. That means we have to rewire the old brain, not by changing thought and behavior patterns, but by changing our feelings..

The process of transformation has to be carried out with the combined participation of body, ego, heart, and spirit. One must make sure the body is rested and has proper nutrition and exercise, thereby restoring the immune system and keeping the brain chemically balanced. Next, one must make a conscious ego-commitment to becoming a more complete, more powerful person. One must also keep the energy levels of the spirit up by taking time during meditation for awareness, experiencing, and responding. With the will power of the ego, the energy of the body, and the power of the spirit one is ready to heal the heart.

To do this we have to bypass the thought processing part of our brain and get into the feelings.  The best way to do this is through visualization. During meditation, we create a visual image of the feeling attached to the emptiness or the pain. We then ask the body to reveal the experience behind the feeling.  We then simply acknowledge the people involved in the image and thank them for the good gifts they have brought into our lives, even if it is just that their actions have given us an opportunity for spiritual growth. In some way, we have to be able to see a positive side of the negative, the yin that exists with the yang. Then we take the negative influences they still have on us and call on the fire of passion from the spirit to burn them up and blow them away. We can visualize the negative vapours dispersing into the gentle summer winds that blows continuously in a  spiritual garden that we can create outside our bodies.

In my opinion, there seems to be two sides to each relationship, the negative and the positive. I feel we have to recognize that both are gifts, even the negative. When we allow our emotions of love to mingle with the emotions of rejection and abandonment, we can reroute the fears of the ego into the positive feelings of acceptance and gratitude from the heart. We need to visualize the burning of negative constructs as an act of kindness, a gift to ourselves and to the people involved, because it frees our souls from the negative energies we have created.

 

Sweet Music

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SHIRT & TIE [small] (final)Bisexuality should not lead to despair; it should be a source of great joy, an opportunity to live two lives and enjoy them. Facebook asks, “Whats on your mind?” Nothing. There is nothing on my mind. Just the sounds of my favorite CD. It is early morning, 5:30 AM, and I am filled with the joy of the moment, the joy of being alive.

 

Sweet Music

Sweet music,
The gentle plucking of the harp stings,
The mystical sadness of the flute,
And a harmony so soft, so sweet,
That settles into the far reaches of my mind,
Soothing, opening up the land of dreams,
The soul’s hope of eternity.

And a smile innocently appears,
And all the cares of yesterday disappear
With the rhythm of the stings,
And all the joys of today erupt
With the warm soft tones of the flute.

And I am reminded that eternity begins now,
And life is just what it is,
An endless string of moments,
A daily opportunity to be one with myself,
And with the rhythm of the ages.

 

Fathers’s Day and Bisexuality

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cc01c6b7-a6fb-44c2-90ac-256d0b2874e8 (2)When I burned the contract with my ex-wife, I realized that our family life as I knew it was also over forever. My ex-wife and I had created a family, loving two beautiful babies into existence, and adopting two beautiful, equally-loved children. They had all been a part of the contract. By burning the contract with her, I was also burning my contract with them. It meant that I could never go back to things the way they were.

Contracts with spouses involve contracts with children, making it very painful to burn the family contract, especially for men who are usually the ones that have to walk away from the home where our children live and breathe. This involves huge amounts of grief and guilt.  We have to realize that in a situation where love has been replaced by mere duty and loss of passion and drive, we no longer have anything to offer within that relationship; in fact, we may be doing more harm than good. Children absorb emotion like sponges; it affects their neural pathways.  If there is anger or resentment, they will absorb it and not be able to process it consciously, so it will get buried in their subconscious and come out as negative feelings and behaviors. Even if we continue to live together, but without love, they will also absorb the broken bond and harbor their own feelings of brokenness.

The key is to make a clean break while reassuring the children that they are still loved by each parent, and that the parents have made a conscious decision to live apart, but to still cooperate and be true to the bond each of them has made to the children. It will hurt for a while but they will adjust. It is also important for them to see the parents together from time to time as friends with no animosity or bitterness.

If you are a bisexual, and that is the main reason for the break-up, do not burden the children with this information until they are ready to accept what you have to say. This is the domain of the bisexual parent. The straight parent should never expose the children to this information; however if he/she does, simply explain your situation with information as needed, free of the bitterness of the unwanted exposure. Obey the golden rule, you never blame the other parent. Remember you are the adult and you give them just the amount of information needed so that they can understand that you still love them and they are not responsible for your choices. If you are in a new same-sex relationship, the same thing applies. Do not flaunt your sexual freedom; do not expose the children to situations they may not be able to handle. If they ask questions, just give them the information they seem to be asking for.  Be brief and to the point and compassionate.

My situation was different; I had adult children. As a parent I had set up contracts with them that I insisted they observe. Now that they were adults, they had developed contracts with me that they insisted I observe. My ex-wife had broken the golden rule, disclosing my bisexuality to my children.  At first, they were shocked and critical, even advising their mother to leave. This family conference without me was the most painful experience in my entire life. I could no longer bear the sense of shame, betrayal, and guilt; I had to burn those contracts. I wrote them up and placed them in the fireplace. It hurt like hell to watch them burn. As I watched the contracts disintegrate into red sparks, I visualized the comforting power of my spirit flooding my soul with a pure white light. The last obstacle had been removed. I set about to restore relationships with my family. My children were gracious and welcomed me back immediately.

This concludes my section on inner healing. I still have issues related to my wounded ego, but I have abolished the contracts that my ego had used to give me a sense of purpose and being. There are no more contracts to control me; I am free to be myself.  The energy released by burning the contracts of hurt and pain has become the white light that has helped me see life more clearly. I now can see the “I” that was always present and can simply let it  take over by an act of my will. Recognizing, accepting, and loving the “I” was the moment of the healing of my personality disorder. This allowed me to be compassionate, honest, and understanding with my Self.  As I continue to experience the truths of life, it helps me understand and feel compassion for people who are going through similar experiences. My understanding and the subsequent acts of compassion have become an energy source that can bring healing to others, especially my children, and a joy to my own soul.

Bisexuality, the Heart, and Ex’s

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2016-03-26_0931This is the third in a series of blogs dealing with deep inner healing. I know this may sound like my idea of the quick fix, and I apologise for that.  There is no quick fix.  Our memories are scattered bits of words, images and feelings that can be and will be triggered for the rest of our lives.  The key is to disconnect them from the pathways that lead to pain and rewire them to positive feelings – to go from worthlessness to worthiness, self-hate to self-love, and yes, even from pain to joy. This is an on-going process that sometimes takes a lifetime

In the last two blogs, we looked at relationships with parents; today we will look at ex-spouses. When I started burning my contracts, I kept the most difficult for last, my ex-wife. I believe the relationship with an ex-spouse, especially the first spouse, the other parent of our children, is held together by strong oxytocin bonds connected by that first innocent passionate love and reinforced through the birthing of children. When the raw passion recedes, we have to move on to heart to heart love or the bond begins to die and be replaced by a set of self-centered and self-serving expectations that are suffocating and eventually may prove fatal. This is the contract.  Once the bond is broken, it is broken, yet we persist. But it is not love that holds us together at the end, it is the contract.

In my own story, I had sacrificed all my own wants and desires believing that it would please her and force her to keep on loving me. I had become a shell of a man who hated himself and had embarked on a course of self-destruction. By being untrue to my Self, I had built up a massive body of unconscious resentment. I resented the contract with my ex-wife that led me to sacrifice my Self, my sexual orientation, my career choices, and even my family, on the altar of our marriage. These resentments had burst forth in gay sexual encounters as a way of escaping the pain and emptiness, placing the blame on her, and striking out against her. But in my unconscious state, the only person I was destroying was my Self.

When the man she had fallen in love with disappeared, she too had held on to the contract.  When I had failed to keep my end of the bargain, it was the end of the marriage. She burned her half of the contract. When the marriage ended, I felt I was a hopeless failure. I kept this feeling of failure buried deep within my soul. Even after two years, I was still holding on to my half of the contract, believing it was the one thing that could save me from myself. I finally came to the point of accepting that the reconciliation was not going to happen; in fact, I finally understood that I could not even let it happen, because it would destroy what was left of me. I also understood why I had let the gay encounters happen; I had subconsciously forced myself out of my poisoned contractual relationship before it literally killed me. I had to burn the contract. But I realized that there was still some good there – good times, good memories, and that she was still the wonderful girl I had fallen in love with. I had to do it as an act of love for myself and for her. It took one whole sixteen hour day to write the contract. It was necessary for me to lovingly go through each positive and negative item of this contract so that I could see, remember and weep for the things I had enjoyed and lost while burning the guilt and failure.

I lit the fire and watched the written contract burn in the real fireplace as I visualized it being consumed by spiritual flames in the spiritual fireplace I had built inside my inner room. As I watched the last disintegrating pieces float up the chimney and out into the open sky, I felt the weight and guilt of having failed her lift off my shoulders. Then it all became clear. There was no failure. A marriage that dissolves is not a failure; it is merely an accepting that the bond has broken and that both need to move on in order to survive and thrive. There was no more shame; my sexual orientation was a powerful part of my body and the basic foundations of my mind.  It simply demanded to be expressed; it was okay to accept these urges and enjoy the sensations of my body. There was no more guilt; I had done the best I could under the circumstances. I had held on for thirty-three years and kept my family together free of the knowledge of the struggles I was experiencing until all my children were well established adults. I did not have to apologize to anyone or forgive anyone, particularly myself and my ex-wife. It was just a matter of being conscious of the truth of the situation and then moving on to a more wholesome life.

As the last black fragments of the contract disintegrated into the final spark that floated up the chimney, the old me departed. It left a hollow feeling behind, but I was ready to begin again. I was ready to love again, perhaps really love for the first time. I was now free to be me, to enjoy wholesome relationships with men and/or women, and to reconnect with all the people I had loved, with all the people who had tried to love me   But his time it would be as an honest man, free of guilt and shame, I would be true to my Self.  I would just be ME.

The Heart and Abuse

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2016-03-26_0931I would like to address a comment I received regarding the ending of my last blog. What do we do if we do not have a parent who truly loves us, and in some cases may have inflicted physical or sexual abuse? For healing to take place, we have to somehow find some aspect of love from our parents or at least a reason to love them even though we cannot feel being loved. Remember love is the only emotion powerful enough to overcome deep inner pain. I believe that if we dig down deep enough we will find some aspect of love from our mother even if it was just a weak and painful connection buried beneath neglect and abandonment. With parents who do not love or who inflict severe damage through abuse, this becomes a very difficult but not impossible journey. In this case we have to find a reason to forgive.

 

The best visualization for this process I believe comes from modern views on reincarnation. Whether you believe in reincarnation or not does not matter. It is the visualization that is important. According to spiritual teachers we are eternal souls who keep coming back to Earth to seek opportunities to grow. Part of that process is the planning session where we plot out our lives so that we can experience certain trials and hurts that do not exist in the eternal world. As part of the plan, we call on souls who are part of our circle of eternal souls that we associate with through various lives. We ask them to take on certain roles so that we can achieve our goals. We count on souls who are mature and close for the difficult roles like abusive fathers and mothers because these roles are very difficult for loving souls to play. These roles are acts of love.

 

When we enter our present life, all memories of our eternal souls are erased and we have to struggle on through our preplanned trials until we come to a sense of awareness of who we really are, powerful beings filled with beauty and light. During this stage of awareness, we begin to sense the other souls in our life as spiritual beings, not at the physical level, or even conscious level, but as a vibration between our souls. At this point we can forgive and receive the love they have sent us by playing their roles for us. Now, if you have no other reason to love and forgive, I highly recommend this process as a healing of the inner soul, as a healing of the heart.

 

Of course there is therapy, which I highly recommend. But the therapy cannot just be used to dig into the past; this will accomplish nothing but reinforce the negative neural pathways. It has to somehow connect to love for self and to a reaching out to the abusive parent to reshape the bond so that we can feel some form of love. We will never understand their behavior but we can simply acknowledge it as a painful flaw in their personality, probably as a result of a deep wound they have themselves received physically, psychologically, and neurologically as young children. They may have made really bad choices, but they were probably responding to powerful destructive pathways within their own mind and brain. We have to acknowledge their pain and try to empathize with them, which is the first step to love.

 

We then forgive and turn to find the love we need within ourselves. We can begin to praise the inner spirit which has survived the abuse, and the courage of our own heart which keeps on caring and searching for love. We have to fill that need for love from our own heart.

Unfortunately, because of the abuse, the heart is wounded and may not be able to do this. This is where the second visualization takes place. It is the higher power that works so well in AA. Whether you believe or not in a god based on traditional religions does not matter; in fact, it may be detrimental as most tend to be male dominated and may be linked to feelings of abuse. You simply have to believe in a power, which spiritual teachers refer to as a universal spirit of life. You have to see the divine design in things and the beauty of life which we can sense when we are quiet and open up our own souls through the powers of awareness and mindfulness. We then join ourselves to this divine presence believing it to be the source of good which we can experience in our pleasure systems, thereby releasing our own opiate, the endorphins. This is the emotional feeling that we refer to as love. We can sense our Self becoming a part of this flow of universal love. We do not have to believe in any god, just open our hearts to sense a presence of peace and beauty.

 

After we begin to experience this presence we can begin to use the love power within to heal. When the old feelings return and the old images try to occupy our mind we simply take these five steps:

 

  1. Acknowledge the feeling, and replace it with your memory pathways of universal love.
  2. Acknowledge the abuser, but gently inform the image that it no longer has any power of over you.
  3. Forgive the abuser and thank the abuser for playing the role that has helped set you on the path to becoming a powerful spiritual human being.
  4. Close the door (you can visualize an actual door) to these memories and open the door to universal love. Walk through it and feel the power of universal love.
  5. Give yourself a hug.

 

We have to love ourselves. I could write books on how to go about this process and of course hundreds have already been written. But it is your own book, your own story that matters. Deep within yourself you have the power to do this, and deep within yourself you have the knowledge. Be patient with yourself. Acknowledge your pain but connect it with the positive from within and without. Seek a friend who really cares and share your feelings, and end each session with a hug. Acknowledge, accept, and embrace the truth: you are no longer a victim; you are a powerful, beautiful human being.

 

Bisexuality and Contracts with Parents

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2016-03-26_0931

In the last blog, we looked at gift giving as a heart-based visualization process for changing negative feelings to positive. With the people closest to my heart, gift giving did not work; the pain and sorrow kept coming back over and over again regardless of how many gifts I gave them. My heart was broken. When it came to these relationships, I had to seek another way of healing my ego so that my heart would be free to command and heal the core of my wounded inner soul.
Pain from powerful bonded relationships involve huge neural constructs containing intense emotions and feelings. They form a complex safety net of rules and regulations agreed upon and imposed on each other by our fragile egos. These constructs can become unhealthy thought and behavior patterns. We can become hooked into expectations and roles that we play for each other rather than being true to our inner self. When we allow our egos to control our relationships and our sexual orientation, we create impediments for the heart. Our relationships can become twisted and destructive. This often leads to thought and behavior patterns involving deception, evasiveness, mistrust and disappointment. The ego then becomes desperate in trying to resolve these issues and maintain these relationships that have become part of our wounded identity. We have to burn the contracts that we have made with people we love through our egos, so that we can be free to love each other unconditionally from the heart.
In a healthy person with healthy relationships, the heart is in control and can allow the ones it loves to enter and leave according to its own wants and needs. We do not want to remove our parents, spouses, and children from our inner souls but we do not want them to stay there all the time as part of our identity. We want them to come and go in positive interactions so that both our souls can be enriched by each other’s presence. If we can remove the pain-filled patterns, we can continue to experience them and their precious gifts inside our inner soul, not as part of our identity, but as part of our network of love. We need to be free to live our own lives, to come and go out of each other’s inner room by mutual consent, so that we enrich each other’s lives.
Contracts with parents evolve naturally with the development of family roles and responsibilities. They seem to become a part of our identity and sense of self. Any attempt to alter these contracts will be met with fierce resistance. One of my prime contracts had been with my mother. I had never experienced my mother’s unconditional love. According to the contract I had written, if I was the perfect son she would have to love me. However, she, too, had a badly wounded soul. She was a single-parent mother with nine children and a husband who had abandoned her before I was born. She could not fulfill the expectations of my contract.
During my year in Costa Rica, sitting on my patio on my volcanic mountain, I went over all the aspects of my relationship with her. I wrote up all the benefits that I had enjoyed from our contract and thanked her for each one. I then looked at all the negative aspects, including her twisted view of sex as “the real apple” (poor Eve), and her attempt to push me towards becoming a priest. I tried to see the reasons for each clause, acknowledged that she had done the best she could, then thanked her for trying to do her best for me as she saw fit as a mother.
I then examined the role my mother had played genetically and socially in shaping my bisexual orientation and then thanked her for that gift. In the process, I realized that I had tried to hide my orientation from her and that a large part of my shame was feeling that I had disappointed of even betrayed her. I then forgave myself and acknowledged the heroic struggle I had gone through to be true to her while being true to myself. I then dealt with my role in the contract and realized that I too had done the best I could under the circumstances. After bringing the contract to the conscious level, I realized that I had outgrown it; I no longer needed the security it had provided. I was even able to thank my ego for the contract realizing that it had been necessary for me to survive.Then I burned the written contract in a real fireplace as well as the visualized contract in the fireplace I had created in my inner room. As I watched the last sparks fade out, I felt a quiet peace flood my soul.
But there was still something missing; my heart was still not involved. Now that the contract was gone, I had no platform on which to rebuild my love for my mother. Now that the false self with its false identity was gone, my heart seemed lost and confused. During the summer in Canada after my first year in Costa Rica, I consulted a spiritual therapist. She put me in a state of relaxed consciousness through hypnosis. She took me back to that moment just after my birth when I lay nestled in my mother’s arms. It was not until that moment that I felt just how much my mother had loved me. My mother had died four years ago, before my mental crash. I had not shed a tear. I visited her grave. I sat there until I finally felt that bond that I had never known, but had always existed. And then the tears finally began to flow. I stayed there all afternoon, just receiving my mother’s love and loving her back with powerful sobs of grief mixed with joy. I wept for all the moments we had had and yet did not have.
I let this love for her and from her flow into my inner sanctuary and heal the broken heart of the child within. While I allowed myself to grieve, my heart led me to the truth which had always been there. I suddenly realized that my mother and I had always been connected through the power of love, but our damaged egos had prevented us from immersing ourselves in that love. I realized that our love bond was real, had always been real, and was still real. I now know that my mother and I have always been, and always will be, connected through the power of love. My connection with her is different now, but it is still very much alive. The love between a mother and her son knows no boundaries, not even death.

 

 

Bisexuality, the Heart, and Gift Giving

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2016-03-26_0931It is very difficult to live a thriving spiritual and emotional bisexual life with a wounded soul.  Yes, we can try to stay in the moment, but our ego-minds keep dragging us back to past wounds and fears. To live a victorious life we have to come to terms with the ego part of our soul. This means trusting the heart and using its love power to heal the bisexual mind.

I searched my soul and began to trust the feelings from my heart. I knew these feeling would lead me to the true path where I could find peace and understanding. But to get to that place, I would have to retrace my steps one more time, but this time with the creative powers of self-love in stead of the destructive powers of self-hate. This meant going back into my core relationships and into the heart of my wounded inner child. It also meant going right back to my biological make-up, my sense of identity, and my bisexual orientation, and reconnecting these thoughts and feelings through unconditional positive regard for my Self..

 

During my two years in Costa Rica, surrounded by peace and beauty, I stopped hating myself and began the healing process which immediately focused on my past relationships. I came across this image of gift giving. I did not want to destroy the thoughts, images, and feelings connected to the people I had loved; I just wanted the pain part to go away. I still wanted to give them the gift of my love and receive the gift of their love. I needed to separate the good parts from the bad; I had to destroy the connections to pain.

 

One of the most powerful tools of healing is imagery. Imagery bypasses the thought processing part of the brain and gets us directly in touch with our feelings. One of the best strategies of imagery that I have found is gift giving. Most of our struggles are related to past and present relationships.  I believe we can best rewire negative social patterns to positive ones by accepting the contributions people have made to life as it is and by thanking them for their gifts and by giving them gifts in return.

In my opinion, there seems to be two sides to each relationship, the negative and the positive. I feel we have to recognize that both are gifts, even the negative. When we allow our feelings of love to mingle with the emotions of rejection and abandonment, we can reroute the fears and hurts of the ego into the positive feelings of acceptance and gratitude from the heart. We simply acknowledge the people involved and thank them for the good gifts they have brought into our lives. Then we examine the negative influences they still have on us, wrap them up into a second gift, and place it on an altar we have prepared just outside the spiritual room we can visualize and create in our soul. We then call on the fire of passion from the heart to burn it up and blow it away. We can visualize the negative vapors dispersing into the gentle summer wind that blows continuously in the spiritual garden just outside the inner room. We need to visualize the burning of negative constructs as an act of kindness, a gift to the people involved, because it frees their souls from the negative bonds we have created.

As we do this a miracle takes place. We begin to become conscious of the fact that we had done our best under the circumstances.  We begin to see patterns of behavior that we had established to survive.  Then we begin to understand that these patterns involved others who may have unintentionally wounded us, especially during the early childhood developmental years when we were innocent and vulnerable. We become more understanding, patient, and even loving with our Self.  We give ourselves credit for having done a remarkable job just to survive.

After giving gifts to some people with whom I had had more intense, intimate relationships, I could almost sense a release of their pain and confusion. I realized that I too had given them gifts, some good gifts from my heart and some bad gifts from my wounded ego. As my ex-wife said to me ten years later, the break-up and dealing with the truths of my secrecy and deception had made her a stronger person.  At that moment, I stopped feeling guilt and shame.  I realized that we were just two souls trying to thrive and grow and that for thirty-three years we had helped each other become powerful human beings. I also realized that our parting, painful as it was, was also a necessary part in that path to self-awareness and Self -actualization, which for me meant accepting and cherishing the gay part of my bisexual orientation. We are now friends once again and we have  rededicated ourselves to working together to make the lives of our adult children and our grandchildren just a little bit easier and a little bit better.

 

Bisexuality, the Heart, and Transgression

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2016-03-26_0931There is a dilemma, in fact, almost a paradigm shift, in sexuality that needs to be addressed, especially in how it affects bisexual men and women. In years gone by relationship would lead to sex; in today’s generation, sex seems to lead to relationship.  In days gone by, we seem to have been guided by thoughts of transgression which prevented us from engaging in sex in a care-free manner in spite of the powerful desires of our bodies. Today, many of us engage in sexual acts without any feelings of transgression. Is this healthy?   This is a question that no one wants to ask today in fear of somehow offending the rights and freedoms of the modern generation.  Perhaps it is, but it does need to be viewed on a conscious level.  We must not throw out the baby (used to be literally) with the bath water.

Today’s women particularly seem to be exploring bisexuality as a natural flow of their sexuality.  As we have seen in a previous blog, close to 50% have experienced some form or bisexual desire and behavior.    According to the same set of studies, 95% of men tend to believe and act upon the belief that one should be either gay or heterosexual and most of them choose to be heterosexual. There is little room for accepting bisexuality. This brings us into the field of transgression.  Fifty percent of women and over ninety percent of men choose not to be involved in bisexual exploration, many of whom believe bisexuality to be a transgression which is a polite word for perversion. For us bisexuals, what others believe should not be important unless, of course, we are living a secretive life and have to deal with these people on a daily basis. The real question is what do “we” believe, and if this belief system needs to change in order for us to thrive mentally and spiritually.

Let’s look at transgression from a body, mind and soul perspective.  The body hormone system, once turned on by the brain,seeks sexual gratification and pleasure according to its sexual orientation, which for most of us bisexual men and women is same sex copulation or other sexual gratifications. There is no judgment here, therefore, no transgression. However, the mind or ego operates according to rules and regulations, and therefore is influenced by its environment and sets of moral and physical experiences. It produces thoughts which can be the source of  transgression. On the other hand the heart or soul seeks love in all its forms.  It is the heart that must choose between the desires of the body and pleasure seeking center of the brain, and the moral concerns of the ego. This is where the concept of transgression becomes just a feeling, and needs to be clarified before we can thrive as bisexual men and women.

Bisexual women tend to look for connection with other women and seek skin on skin with some degree of emotional involvement.  As long as they can detach from or train their egos to accept this behavior as  normal and satisfying, they can enjoy the eroticism on this level.  There is a danger here in that the act can become satisfying for its own sake and does not lead to the deeper emotional connection of love and compassion for their sexual partner.  They may shut down their feelings of transgression from the heart.  Over time, these feelings can become magnified and lead to disillusionment and possible dissatisfaction with life. This may be the cause of an extremely high number of suicides and suicide attempts among bisexual women.

Bisexual men on the other hand can detach the sexual act from any sense of connection, to the self or to others.  We can seek glory holes in Adult Stores (common in the USA), or bath houses, or paths in the dark in wooded parks, where we are not even aware of the person’s face.  In my opinion, this is very destructive and can lead to deep feelings of transgression even to the body and brain that seeks deeper sensations of skin on skin.  We can also seek dating services where we can find skin on skin with no strings attached.  This allows for deeper physical connection but totally shuts down the heart.  Again, as with women, we can enjoy the pleasure of these experiences if we can convince  the mind that wants some system of understanding, and, of course, the heart that seeks deeper emotional connection.  Over time, we may experience deep feelings of discontentment and emptiness which may lead to depression, drug and alcohol abuse, and possible suicide.

The question on transgression then becomes whether or not we are being true, not to the voices of others, not to the voice of our mind or ego, but to our own inner voice.  If we feel that our behavior is somehow a transgression of our inner values, then we must not silence that voice, because that voice is trying to lead us on to deeper truths and feelings.  These feelings can only come through deeper connections within the self and with others, and, of course, we call this feeling “love”. Love is the root of genuine positive feelings for the Self, our self-concept, and our self-esteem. It leads to a higher state of being where we thrive instead of just survive. In my opinion, the shutting down of this voice leads to meaningless sexual acts that numbs the mind and soul to sexual experiences that are meant to be full body-mind-soul experiences, and therefore, much deeper and healthier. Can we still be bisexual and experience these sensations with both men and women? Of course, but  we have to be selective in the kinds of acts in which we engage, and we have to let our heart lead us to the kind of people where we can share on a body, mind and soul level.

The key to thriving in all aspects of life is to learn to listen to the heart, to trust our inner feelings, while silencing the corrupted thoughts from our wounded egos. This includes our sexuality. This is different from the “if it feels good, do it” from the body and the pleasure center of the brain.  A better statement from the heart would be. “If it feel right, do it.”

The Bisexual Heart

Published on by Bi-Ed: Bisexual EducationLeave a comment

2016-03-26_0931(Before we start this blog, a brief explanation: self refers to the ego self, whereas Self with a “capital S” refers to the soul Self.)

With this knowledge of the ego and the mental issues we face as bisexuals behind us, we can now look at the solutions and beyond to how we can not only survive but actually thrive as bisexuals. That means we leave the ego and all its issues behind and enter into the realm of the heart. I believe that the soul is more than just a function of the body, the brain, and the ego. The functions of the ego can be explained by brain structure and neural pathways, but our desires, feelings, and behaviors related to those feelings, seem to go beyond the basic foundations of the mind. That takes us to the heart. The heart is that part of the soul that lets us sense and create a higher view of life, reality, and truth. The heart appears to be the inner sense of being which operates by feelings rather than thoughts. Feelings are different than thoughts and emotions. Emotions arise from our thoughts, basic drives, and the anxieties of the ego, but feelings are the unspoken words of the soul.

The ego and the gut direct the self towards self-actualization with the emphasis on the self. The gut seeks pleasure, and the ego seeks harmony, peace and self-centered happiness.  Normally, these are great things and lead to purpose and contentment.  However, as bisexuals, we often live double lives that make it very difficult to find peace and harmony thereby throwing the ego into a state of anxiety. On the other hand, the heart seeks mutual unconditional joy and love with others. Through the guiding power of love, the heart creates heart-values which are the unconditional worth we place on living things, ideas, and people. The bisexual heart needs to function in connection with others and the seeking of a greater good. Guided by the heart, the bisexual soul creates dreams and goals that it hopes will lead to good feelings and the path of love.  By experiencing love from life and others, it is able to increase its love for Self, leading to ever greater levels of Self-fulfillment. It is these acts of love that are the ultimate expression of the bisexual soul which keeps us rooted as whole human beings rather than just seekers of sex from our bodies and anxieties from our ego.  As bisexuals, we must let our heart guide our thoughts, emotions, feelings, and actions, and leave behind the struggles with sexuality.  That is the only way we will and learn to accept ourselves just the way we are.

But to do that we have to first heal the heart. The mental issues we face are more than a disease of the mind; they are diseases of the heart. They are based on the failure of the heart to love itself. As the soul struggles to understand and repair itself, it does not have this resource to endure the hurts of the present because of its brokenness from the past. The healing has to occur in the heart. The heart has to learn how to love itself.

 

In the next blog we will look at the nature of the broken heart and why it is necessary to be broken before we can enter into mindfulness, consciousness and Self-love.

 

Bisexuality and the Ego Revised

Published on by Bi-Ed: Bisexual EducationLeave a comment

2016-03-26_0931Bisexuality is more than just sexuality, or how to have better sex, it also involves the soul and turning confusion into understanding, self-hate into self-love, and then, best of all, developing passionate, committed, and intimate relationships with  men and women.  There is an art to living a great bisexual life, and it begins with control of  the twisted thought patterns of the ego. Before we can truly enjoy our bisexuality, we have to come to terms with our links to pain created by our ego-mind. We want to enjoy sex with other mentally healthy bisexuals who are free to enter into a relationship with us without the negative energy attached to guilt and shame. But first we need to get rid of our own guilt and shame.

According to statistics that we have discovered in previous blogs, bisexuality is a hotbed for growing numbers of mental disorders and suicides, and for everyone that shows up as a statistic, there are several others who just plain struggle with their bisexuality. Many of us simply have a difficult time coping with the anxieties related to our sexual orientations, the back and forth male and female relationships, and inconsistencies of our sexual desires and our need for love.  We then accumulate a string of mental or ego anxieties that can vary from person to person in range and intensity.  At the far end of the curve, we label these struggles as disorders which usually require some form of medical or therapeutic intervention. The two most common disorders are clinical depression and generalized anxiety. However, there is another disorder common to many bisexual men and women that is the root of these other two more common disorders.

We bisexuals often have some mild issues that may lead under crisis (like divorce) to a personality (ego) disorder. Let me be clear.  NOT every bisexual has a personality disorder; in fact, many do not even have any mental health issues. That is great; that is where we all want to be.  However, a very large number of us do have issues related to personality.  In most diagnostic instruments, the following symptoms are listed:

  • Liability to become involved in intense and unstable relationships, often leading to emotional crisis;
  • Disturbances in and uncertainty about self-image, aims, and internal preferences;
  • Excessive efforts to avoid abandonment;
  • Chronic feelings of emptiness;
  • Recurrent threats or acts of self-harm;
  • Impulsive behavior, e.g., speeding, substance abuse.

Two of these symptoms are needed to determine if the person has a personality disorder.

So how is this disorder formed? The mind creates powerful constructs and schema during times of stress and anxiety in childhood, infancy, or even back into the womb. People with a personality disorder have corrupted neural pathways or schema connected to strong emotions and feelings.  They feel inadequate; they believe they cannot succeed; they feel they are a failure. As a result, they create destructive defense mechanisms like denial and repression. Most importantly, reality is too painful so they make up their own reality, their own fluctuating version of truth. In other words, as troubled bisexuals, we tend to be dishonest with ourselves and others about our true wants and needs.

Many individuals with a severe personality disorder also have an attachment disorder. They cannot live with love because they link love with pain. They cannot love themselves; therefore,  they trust no one, love no one, and  cannot bond with others. They create artificial bonds to fill their needs. When they feel threatened or perceive that their needs are no longer being met, they detach from the relationship.  On the other hand, because they feel worthless and fear abandonment, they may feel the need to sacrifice themselves and hang on to a relationship even though it is destructive to their own mental and physical health. In the case of us bisexual married men, this detachment often takes the form of periodically seeking an anonymous gay encounter where we can feel detached from the stress of the relationship we have created.  However, these encounters are usually enjoyed is secrecy and followed by more guilt and shame.

A mind with a severe personality disorder may direct its anger at the self. In time self-anger can eventually turn into self-hate. Hate is different from anger. The healthy mind uses anger as an impulse to provide the body with the energy needed to take actions to protect the self. The unhealthy mind employs anger as a state of being where anger smolders and lingers. This anger may evolve into self-hate and self-loathing.  As bisexuals, we often have only three choices: detachment from the needs of the self, forcing discovery by their partner by careless behavior, or becoming consumed with punishing and destroying the self.

Bisexual men with a personality disorder may also have a sexual identity disorder.  We tend to attach self-hate to our gay sexual orientation. We have to learn to accept and love our whole self including the gay or lesbian self. True healing of a personality disorder accompanied by a sexual identity disorder is often beyond the scope of psychotherapy for the mind. True healing has to take place in the soul or the inner self that is often neglected. This inner power is the higher power that we seek to heal the soul. Next week we will begin working on the ego and bringing it into harmony with the soul or this inner Self.

 

(For my personal story check out my posts on Celebrating Creativity through Poetry)