little lion love bites & masturbation as meditation

They say that a lioness is one of the most fearless lovers in all of the animal kingdom. She is both voracious and insatiable when pursuing the mate that she desires most. It is presumed that all lions find sex pleasurable because of the number of times they mate over a short period and the fact that they also breed year round. A lioness will not ovulate without continued penetration. So, although a lion mating bout may be short (15-30 minutes), they often manage to copulate nearly 200-300 times over a short period of merely 3 days. Each act of sex itself may also be just under a minute. 

When two lions are coupled in mating behaviors, it is said that they create a bit of a “mating bubble” and become inseparable. They neither eat, nor hunt, and only allow for drinking to stay hydrated during their sexual enduro-race.

A female lion may flirt shamelessly with another male (and sometimes other females); laying in front of them, rubbing against them, wrapping her tail around their heads, and moaning repeatedly to get more sex.

It is rumored that the female lion will actually bite the testicles of a male lion suitor, who does not copulate with her quickly enough. However, it is actually more likely that because the penis of a male lion is barbed (see for yourself!) and its withdrawal hurts that the female may actually be attacking the balls of the dismounting male with painful vengeance! It seems the pain is necessary though to shock her system and induce fertilization.

I felt like I got shocked myself recently after the permanent withdrawal of “the lover I was used to’s” penis, after our breakup and my plans and future life decisions now needing to change since my connection to this partner was now no longer part of the picture. I didn’t feel particularly fearless though. Ravenous with lust and desiring touch, sedation and satiation and anything else that might soothe my wounded ego - yes, sure, highly likely that I desired it all. However, the message I was telling myself now that things had changed and I had to once again come up with a new life plan and path was telling me something more like a scolding know-it-all parent might say. The voice nagged at me and said, “you idiot, what were you thinking?” “How could you be so stupid?” “You almost moved to Colorado to be with this person, WTF!!!!”  I was definitely not telling myself that I was the intrepid queen of the jungle yet, indomitable in her romantic pursuits. 

In the past when I needed to soothe myself I might have chosen to get all tore up and fuck a 25 year old pool boy to help my ego deal with the pain, but there are some things that not all the flagrant sex in the world can fix and I know this now and so this type of soothe no longer works for me. And of course, it’s not that I actually have a pool boy, nor a pool, but I could have managed to do something damn similar and that is truly more of the point!

What I did instead was dance, with wild and reckless abandon! At first I was mostly dancing just for me and I needed to really shake my arms and legs with total lack of inhibition. I needed to release the sensations of failure, and defeat, and the collapse of a vision that never came to fruition. I needed to grieve the death and demise of a dream that was now merely the shattered slivers of my desire to cultivate a life partnership with another human being. And yes, dance I did - in a most glorious and beautiful way! I danced to release the energy of my heated and hurt heart. I danced fueled from the fire that had also been stoked in my now besmirched and smited soul. And it felt so good to allow myself to be primal and free and in between all the dancing there was indeed also a tremendous amount of flirting…

I flirted with boys and I flirted with girls. I flirted because I COULD and unapologetically because it felt good! I flirted with myself, sometimes simply delighting in the touch and sensation of my own body and skin. I flirted with the world because I have soooooooo much love to give and if I try to contain it rather than share it, sometimes it simply feels like torture! But at the end of this period of cathartic release combined with tremendous liberation and freedom, all the flirting simply led me back to falling deeply and deliciously in love with my darling and dear absolutely perfect shit-show self and begged to get intimate with my own center of being.

4/4/23

And as she woke up 
with a beautiful boy 
in her bed once more, 
stroking his arms 
and his strong tan skin, 
she realized how 
with absolute certainty 
all she really wanted 
in that moment 
despite this soothing comfort 
was to be totally and completely 
alone.

So, after I had thoroughly run myself ragged from all the dancing and release then that’s when the hard work really happened. When I have to sit alone in the space of my own stillness, that’s where I am confronted by the voices of my oftentimes self-flagellating and self-abusive, destructive, judgmental thoughts. The voices still scolded me and told me how stupid I was for all the time I spent chasing this most recent ex, for considering moving closer to him and most of all for once again believing in love. And when the voices got loud enough, that’s when I decided the time was now to go inward and slow down away from my outward energetic expression.

I did three meditations in the end before my heart and mind felt clear. The first one was a practice of self love while self-pleasuring where I imagined my cosmic connection to the earth and its animals and ultimately my place in the larger picture of the solar system. I imagined my ankles were being bound by ivy and a beautiful vine was wrapping around my body. I pictured my pussy as part of the plant and visualized it being a soft and perfect flower responsive to my hands now stroking. Then I fantasized that my fingers were part of the long beak belonging to a hummingbird drinking in nectar. And I orgasmed and came while creating these paradisiacal images in my mind, I projected the picture of this serene place of tranquility truly being part of the interconnectedness of our planet. In doing so, I was no longer so sad, and I had created a soft, kind glowing sensation within myself that was at ease. 

However, a few days later after having a particularly hard day learning to kiteboard in Mexico I was back to allowing my mind to whisper the cruel and harsh words that judged me and told me I was incompetent. I knew this had something to do with blaming myself for my recent breakup too. So, again I leaned in and self-pleasured to explore this more because I no longer want to wallow in the mire of my own malicious madness. I used this time alone to deeply focus on what it felt like in my body to be incompetent.

In order to do this, I purposely told myself that I was stupid. I said these words to myself, over and over again until I could really feel the hurt and pain as it began to register in my skeletal system and my muscles. I felt the tension and the freeze. I felt the way it sunk down in my chest and in the midst of it all, I realized that there was a kinky little part of me that was kind of stuck on thinking in this way. That sometimes I liked the way that this feeling has held me back and how it has played into my patterns of having bossy lovers and (I hate to admit this) sometimes enjoying being a victim. Once I saw this little dance I was doing I made it extra hot and I even imagined a little group sex scenario where I was being held down in bondage with restraint. I watched this promenade play out and breathed into my story of incompetency until I orgasmed and felt the self-pleasure in the degradation all simply wash away. Once it did, I opened my eyes after my solo journey, still in post-coital bliss and the resounding words now ringing in my ears were, “you are in love with fear!” I wasn’t sure how yet, but I knew in my heart that I was. 

So, a few days later I did something that was both hard and scary. I actually met with my ex and we had a conversation where we FINALLY tried to use our adult communication skills and engaged in reflective listening and tried to show one another empathy and understanding. Our goal was to come to some sort of resolution and dissipate the charge from our future interactions. It didn’t exactly feel good, but it did help alleviate some of the toxic stagnant energy from our breakup. 

Knowing I might feel kind of yucky after this meet up, I was really proud of myself that I had chosen to do something nourishing as a follow up. One of my meditation groups was congregating for a zoom call and the dharma topic at hand was about working with our emotions, as led by Gil Fronsdal https://www.audiodharma.org/series/12086. So, I listened in on this talk and meditated once more as they talked about using the acronym (RAFT) to work with strong emotions as they register in our minds and bodies. The acronym refers to:

Recognize hard emotions when they come up. This can be freeing. 

Allow for emotion to be experienced and make space in your heart for it.

Feel the physical experience of the emotion with no story attached to it. 

Tease Apart the emotion. Where is it coming from? Is it coming from something actually happening, or someplace from your past?

As I listened to this talk I realized that I was STILL ANGRY, and so I simply allowed myself to feel the anger and I gave myself full permission to feel like all the sensations were totally ok. When I was the captain of my body and allowed myself to fully feel the anger, I realized I wasn’t actually angry at my ex so much as I was truly angry with myself. And when it came time to tease apart the emotion I knew that the anger and loathing were actually coming from my desire to love, connect and belong. So, I tried using a little tantric trick with the sensations that gives you permission to turn up or down the volume on any emotion you want to feel. I imagined my anger looking like a flame from a beautiful and brilliant gas fireplace with bitchin’ LED backlighting. I imagined that I had control over the intensity of the anger and that with the turn of a knob I could make my anger stronger or choose to gently dissipate it. I played with my anger, like a child reveling in a bit of adolescent wonder and after the talk was done and my meditation was completed the new message I heard speaking to me in my head was, “how brave you were” rather than how stupid. 

And it stuck this time, the little voice telling me over and over how brave I was instead of clawing at me like a helpless piece of meat. Neither meditation or masturbation holds all of the answers, but these practices can be about creating mindful spaces to allow ourselves to truly drop inwards and feel into what is going on in our bodies, as well as our hearts. They are about connecting to our intuition and they can help us heal from the inside out. I am so lucky to have amazing guides and teachers in my life helping me with this hard process of inner healing. It would be an honor to be your guide and teacher too, so please join me for a program I am launching this month called “Love Your Darkness” if you are curious.