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10 Days Of Silence: My First Vipassana Meditation Retreat

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goenka

Soundtrack: Common “Be”

A week ago I walked out of a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat. Early in 2014 my wife informed me that she was going on one of these retreats at the end of the semester in May. At that time, I couldn’t fathom myself doing something like that because 10-12 days seemed like way too much time for me to take out of my very busy schedule. However, things change.

In the months of September and October I felt a major shift happening internally for me. I felt myself changing. And when the opportunity came for me to do one of these 10-day retreats the last week of December 23 – January 2, it resonated with me as the right thing to do (and the retreats are free, that had something to do with it).

In the week after Thanksgiving, my father got very sick, ultimately succumbing to interstitial lung disease caused by rheumatoid arthritis. There is so much that I could say about the impact this had on my relationships with my family members but what I will say is that it contributed to me feeling like I had reached the end of an era in my life. My life can be divided into pre-2014 and post-2014. Everything is starting anew for me right now. Everything has changed.

Vipassana meditation is a meditation technique primarily promoted within Buddhism but practiced by people from all different backgrounds and belief systems. Vipassana means to see things as they really are. That is the goal of the meditation technique. I won’t get into the specifics of how the technique works, but I will say what impact the technique had and is having on me.

Upon arriving at one of these 10-day retreats, all students are required to take a vow of Noble Silence. You are not to speak or communicate in any way with your fellow students or with anyone besides the assistant teachers and the managers of the retreat. 10 days of not talking to anyone other than yourself is bound to have an impact on you, even if you’re not following a meditation regimen.

By the end of Day 3 I felt like I could’ve left then and the drive from Houston to Northern Cali and the whole process would’ve been worth it. I felt great. I hadn’t been so relaxed in quite some time. Enjoying the quiet and the fresh air and the woods and the bird watching and the colors of the leaves and the taste of the food; I was in sensory heaven, fully appreciating the experience of being alive. However, on Day 4, the meditation work became more strenuous, and the experience became less pleasant.

My body started expelling wastes like I was sick, but I felt fine. I wouldn’t have thought it possible for me to release that much mucus and bowels without having the flu or some kind of infection. This continued from about Day 4 until Day 10.

On Day 5, I got flooded with ideas. It was like I was swept over by a wave of creativity and all of a sudden I knew exactly what I wanted to do and achieve for the next two years. I was receiving song lyrics and new ideas on how to arrange my thoughts in my book and talking points for lectures and people I wanted to do business with and much more. It was slightly aggravating to not be able to write any of this down but because I didn’t have anything to do other than think, I was able to replay this information in my head over and over until it was burned into my memory.

On Day 6, my face started peeling. Badly. In a way that couldn’t really be explained by the moderately cold temperatures and my skin getting dry. I’ve never experienced anything like it before and I still can’t really explain the WHY or HOW. My face shed its skin like a snake. I left the retreat 8 days ago and my face just got back to normal a day or two ago.

On Day 7, I started getting sick. Normally I can be around sick people with their coughing and sneezing and such and I am completely unaffected. I haven’t caught a cold from someone since probably 2011, before I started studying and practicing Tantra. However, I got sick at this retreat. There was quite a bit of coughing and sneezing in the meditation hall where all the students practiced. I don’t know if that’s the cause, some airborne germs. Whatever the reason, I felt like crap. For all of Day 7 and Day 8 I didn’t feel like getting out of bed. It took all of my will power to go to the meditation hall at the mandatory times.

I believe it was Day 8 when I started feeling some really stupendous results from the meditation. As I said before, vipassana is about seeing things as they really are. Part of that includes really paying attention to what is going on on the skin and inside the body. As my mind became more and more calm and focused, I started feeling the sensations going on inside of my body. In the last few days of the retreat, I felt my lungs moving, I felt my heart beat, I felt the organs in my abdomen doing their thing, I felt the pull of my tendons where my hips and knees bent as I was sitting on the floor, I felt the twitching of my muscle fibers in my legs from walking up and down the hills. All of this was extremely fascinating to me.

One thing that I noticed during this period was that my lungs were hurting. With my stuffy nose making it hard for me to breathe, my lungs had to work overtime to get oxygen to all my cells and throughout my body. And I felt it. They were not happy. And on Day 9 or 10 when I was no longer feeling sick, I could feel the difference in my lungs. The sensation of their inhaling and exhaling was so pleasant. It made me think of all the smoking I’ve done in my life. I’m sure my lungs have done this silent protest on thousands of days in my lifetime and I was never aware enough to notice. I will never put my lungs through that torment again.

By Day 10, I was restless and “rets ta go”. The cumulative effect of 10 days of sitting on my butt on the floor was taking a toll on me. I could no longer get comfortable on the floor no matter what I did. I felt like I wasn’t getting anything else constructive out of the meditations and I was just biding my time until we were able to leave the following day. But the benefits that I got were something that I know I couldn’t have duplicated in any other way.

Ten days (plus the orientation day before and the dismissal day after- 12 days total) is a long time for most people to take off work or set aside in their life to devote to something like this. Which is why I can’t really promote this as something that everyone should do. However, it definitely lends credence to the idea that everyone should have some type of meditation practice in their daily life. You don’t know what you don’t know. And full awareness of who you are and why you do what you do can only come when you get still enough to hear the answers. Meditation is mandatory if you want to maximize the Bliss in your life.

For more information on Vipassana meditation, go here. I will be sharing much more about meditation in the upcoming book “The Bliss Booklet” and in my lectures at SOL System University. Stay tuned.

P.S. There will be a part 2 to this blog post in which I go into the theory behind Vipassana and my critique of that theory.

Fat and Fibroids

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belly fat fibroids

Soundtrack: Olivia Newton-John “Physical”

Kanye West “The New Workout Plan”

An expanding waistline is sometimes considered the price of getting older. For women, this can be especially true after menopause, when body fat tends to shift to the abdomen. Yet belly fat is about much more than just how you fit into your clothes. Research shows that belly fat also carries serious health risks. In my work with women across the United States I have seen the causes and the effects of belly fat. I am compelled to address this topic head-on.

The trouble with belly fat is that it’s not limited to the extra layer of padding located just below the skin (subcutaneous fat). It also includes visceral fat — which lies deep inside your abdomen, surrounding your internal organs. Although subcutaneous fat poses cosmetic concerns, visceral fat is linked with far more dangerous health problems, including:

  • Cardiovascular disease
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Colorectal cancer

Research also has associated belly fat with an increased risk of premature death — regardless of overall weight. In fact, some studies have found that even when women were considered a normal weight based on standard body mass index (BMI) measurements, a large waistline increased the risk of dying of cardiovascular disease.

Belly fat doesn’t just lay idle at your beltline. Researchers describe it as an active “organ” in your body — one that churns out hormones and inflammatory substances.

“Abdominal fat is thought to break down easily into fatty acids, which flow directly into the liver and into muscle,” says Lewis Kuller, MD, DPH, professor and past chair of epidemiology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health.

When these excess fatty acids drain into the liver, they trigger a chain reaction of changes — increasing the production of LDL ‘bad’ cholesterol and triglycerides. During this time insulin can also become less effective in controlling blood sugar, so insulin resistance sets in, he explains.

Blood sugars start to get out of balance. Fats and clots get into the bloodstream, and that sets the stage for diabetes, heart disease, and more.

And research shows that abdominal fat triggers a change in angiotensin, a hormone that controls blood vessel constriction — increasing the risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack, Kuller explains.

Indeed, belly fat is a key indicator of “metabolic syndrome,” a cluster of abnormalities that include high levels of blood sugar, blood pressure, and triglycerides, as well as low levels of “good” HDL cholesterol. This combination of risks has an impact on mortality from heart disease. In addition to all of this, there is another very common effect of belly fat that uniquely impacts women.

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Uterine Fibroids are benign tumors of muscle and connective tissue that grow in and/or around the wall of a woman’s uterus. There is one major cause for the development and growth of fibroids and that is estrogen dominance, the state of having too much estrogen in one’s system relative to progesterone.

From the onset of puberty to menopause, a woman’s body is designed to have estrogen and progesterone work together to fuel and regulate her monthly cycle.

The bulk of estrogen is released into a woman’s blood circulation during the first half of her monthly cycle. Estrogen works to build the lining of a woman’s uterus to prepare it for implantation of a fertilized egg should fertilization occur.

The bulk of progesterone is released into a woman’s blood stream during the second half of a healthy monthly cycle. During this time, progesterone acts to maintain the rich lining of the uterus that estrogen helped to build up during the first two weeks of her cycle.

If a fertilized egg successfully implants into the uterine wall i.e. if a woman becomes pregnant, her body must continue to produce a large amount of progesterone on a continuous basis to maintain a thick and well vascularized uterine wall throughout the course of pregnancy. This job of continuous progesterone production is handled nicely by a healthy placenta.

If there is no implantation/pregnancy, a woman’s body stops producing large amounts of progesterone, which results in sloughing off and elimination of the thickened uterine lining, also known as a woman’s monthly flow.

This cycle repeats itself about once every month until a woman experiences menopause, with estrogen dominating the first half of each cycle, and progesterone dominating the second half.

Sadly, many women and even teenage girls in industrialized countries have too much estrogen and/or too little progesterone in their systems.

There are many reasons why estrogen dominance is a problem, but the relevant answer for this post is that having estrogen dominance causes a woman’s uterine lining to thicken far more than is healthy during her monthly cycles. This repeated, excessive thickening can result in localized growths in the muscle and connective tissue that line the uterus. We call these growths uterine fibroids.

All of these physiological facts have convinced me that addressing estrogen dominance is essential to shrinking and preventing uterine fibroids.

What causes estrogen dominance?

Exposure to Xenoestrogens is one significant factor in estrogen dominance. Xenoestrogens are estrogens that are produced outside of the body. Here is a list of significant sources of xenoestrogens:

  • birth control pills
  • hormone replacement drugs
  • condom spermicides
  • conventional personal care products, particularly cosmetics
  • Plastic cookware
  • Growth hormones found in factory-farmed animal products
  • Pesticides and herbicides
  • Foaming agents in soaps and detergents

Estrogen is produced in three different areas of the body: ovaries (testicles in men), adrenal glands, and fat cells. That’s right. Estrogen is produced by fat cells. The more fat cells a woman has, the greater chance she has of experiencing estrogen dominance.

It is estimated that three in every four American women have fibroids, with one in four women seeking medical care for the condition. African American women are three to nine times more likely to develop fibroids. Uterine fibroids can be hard to combat given the fact that women are diagnosed with the disease at various stages and when they are in various physical conditions. While the fibroids may develop slowly in some women, others may develop more aggressively. Right now, hysterectomy is the most common treatment for uterine fibroids, accounting for 200,000, or 30 percent, of all hysterectomies in the United States.

I believe that a woman having her uterus is a good thing. Fibroids and the hysterectomies that are resulting from them are a silent epidemic in this country, especially among Black women. When we look at the three areas of the body where estrogen is produced, there is something that jumps out. Fat cells and overly active adrenal glands can both be addressed with the same prescription: EXERCISE.

Adrenal glands are activated by stress. When we feel unsafe in any way then the body’s “fight or flight” response kicks in and the adrenal glands produce adrenaline to make it easier to fight or flee. When we exercise, in addition to improving the way our body looks, we also get some direct sress-relieving benefits:

  • It pumps up your endorphins. Physical activity helps to bump up the production of your brain’s feel-good neurotransmitters, called endorphins. Although this function is often referred to as a runner’s high, a rousing game of tennis or a nature hike also can contribute to this same feeling.
  • It’s meditation in motion. After a fast-paced game of racquetball or several laps in the pool, you’ll often find that you’ve forgotten the day’s irritations and concentrated only on your body’s movements. As you begin to regularly shed your daily tensions through movement and physical activity, you may find that this focus on a single task, and the resulting energy and optimism, can help you remain calm and clear in everything that you do.
  • It improves your mood. Regular exercise can increase self-confidence and lower the symptoms associated with mild depression and anxiety. Exercise also can improve your sleep, which is often disrupted by stress, depression and anxiety. All this can ease your stress levels and give you a sense of command over your body and your life.

If you’re experiencing extreme symptoms from fibroids then there is a very good chance that you’re also experiencing a high level of stress as well as carrying too much belly fat, in addition to exposure to Xenoestrogens. Everyone can immediately address a large part of what is causing their fibroids by exercising. And I don’t mean just walking around the block, even though every little bit helps. I mean exercise like your life depends on it, because it does. Swim, run, do yoga, lift weights, dance, whatever works for you. Just get moving.

Belly fat is the enemy.

The Self Guided Ones

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fard

Soundtrack: Talib Kweli “Self Savior”

In July I spent four days in Detroit as one of the stops on my Tantra Tour 2014. I was there during the time that Muslims from all over the world observe the Ramadan fast in remembrance of the revelation of the Qur’an to Prophet Muhammad. Detroit is a city of major significance for Islam in the United States.

When I was fifteen years old I was introduced to Islam as taught by the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and I decided to discipline my life to that body of knowledge. Several years later I switched my college major to Religion and Philosophy and my overall outlook on religion and spirituality changed. My knowledge of how and why human beings do religion was deepened and broadened. I was influenced to change the direction of my spiritual focus from the Nation of Islam, established by Elijah Muhammad and led by Louis Farrakhan, to the 5% Nation of Islam, innovated by Father Allah (Clarence 13X) using the foundation laid down by Elijah Muhammad.

Over time my Islam has become more and more of a personal matter for me. It is not something that I wear on my sleeve. Though this may be a crass analogy, Islam for me is like undergarments — I keep it very close to me but I cover it up with the appearance that I choose to show to the world. Being in Detroit during Ramadan was the first time in a while that I was made keenly aware of my own Islamic identity and heritage.

I stayed in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn. Dearborn has the largest Arab population of any town in the United States, 42% of the population is of Arab ancestry. The inner city of Detroit is where the Nation of Islam was founded by an Arab man named Wallace Fard (W.F.) Muhammad, who is pictured above. I went sightseeing to the location of the first Nation of Islam headquarters and other historic Islamic sites in the city. All of this caused me to think about the philosophy of Islam from the perspective of where I stand now as a Tantra practitioner.

W.F. Muhammad is regarded by the members of the Nation of Islam as the “Mahdi”. The word Mahdi means guided one, divinely guided one, or self guided one, depending on who is doing the translating. It is a prophesied figure in Islamic tradition who is expected to appear in the last days along with the Messiah, bring justice to the world, and remove all tyrants. I’ll come back to Mahdi in a bit.

The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught that “God is a man, and Man is God”. He taught that human beings are direct descendants of the Originator of the heavens and the earth. He said that Knowledge of God and Knowledge of Self are one in the same. In his talks about the Originator, he constantly emphasized that that First God was self-created, He brought Himself into existence. What practical benefit can we get from accepting that concept as truth? (I’m skipping over a lot of what I could say to provide context to these things in the interest of brevity. I hope I’m not losing anyone)

If it is true that we are created in the image and likeness of God, that we are all gods and children of the Most High God, that we are direct descendants of the Originator, then it makes sense that we share in God’s attribute of being self created. It is important that we understand that the First God was self created because that is the most crucial thing for us to understand about ourselves. We bring ourselves into existence.

It’s important that I mention that I’m only speaking for myself when I say these things. Pretty much all of the different divisions of Islam would disagree with my position here for one reason or another. This is not mainstream Muslim thought by any stretch of the imagination. This is revolutionary MJ’s perspective on what I have read and practiced of Islam for nearly twenty years.

It is my belief that there is one Consciousness at the root of the universe. There is one Ultimate Reality which is aware of itself as having existence. That Infinite Intelligence is the ultimate root of every single living being. As human beings, with our unique level of self awareness, we have a unique relationship with and connection to the Ultimate Reality. God experiences his/her/itself through us as human beings. We are God’s eyes and ears and hands. We are individuated pieces of the Ultimate Reality. We are eternal beings. We were all THERE/HERE in the beginning when the Ultimate Reality became aware of his/her/itself and decided to split into separate parts so that he/she/it could perceive what he/she/it was made of.

Before we come into physical existence as embryos in the womb of our mothers, we make a conscious decision from the Ancestral realm of what kind of body and life we want to be born into. Based on that resolute decision we attract that situation (parents, family, body) to ourselves and take on a new physical life. Even though we forget about the decision we made once we start adjusting to living in this realm of relativity and perceiving the world through our physical senses, at our core we are still deciding what life we choose to live and we attract life to us based on our thinking. We are self created.

W.F. Muhammad, the self-guided Mahdi, represents a frequency that we can all tune into. He’s like a tuning fork and we’re all musical instruments. He sets the tone and we can all tune up according to him. He represents a body of knowledge that allows us to fully remember that we are gods and then function according to that knowledge. The modern world is making it very difficult for the major western religions to maintain their grip on the minds of the people. The theology and mythology of these religions was developed at a time when people were ignorant to many scientific truths. The people needed some sort of explanation about natural phenomena in order to put their minds at rest. Now, technology and the information age are quickly making these ancient inventions obsolete. The people are yearning for something that matches their modern minds.

Elijah Muhammad said:

“Master Fard Muhammad aims to raise the Lost-Found (so-called Negro) into the knowledge and wisdom—the very ideas—of the Gods of the past.

“He also aims presently, to raise His people into His own ideas, in Himself, that the scriptures may be fulfilled: that those to whom He reveals Himself become the sons (and the daughters) of God—sons and daughters in the wisdom of God.

“He aims not only to reveal His ideas for the present creation of the universe, but also to give to man the nature and the creative wisdom to produce creative ideas as The Father of Civilization.

“This is what was prophesied: that God would make man like Himself. He aims to make The Nation of Righteousness, who will rule in the Hereafter, with the potential knowledge of producing and bringing into action, or existence, that which He has been able to produce. We call this ‘ideas.’ He aims to make each one into a God.”

The people of the future will no longer rely on books of scripture, priests and reverends, or divination systems to access the mind of the Divine. We are moving toward a time when humanity will be reunited with our true identity as extensions of the Ultimate Reality. We will remember how to consult our heart and our feelings as the Messenger of God. We will learn to trust our intuition. We will become the self-guided ones.

Let’s Talk About Squirting

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Before you read this blog, you are required to watch the short introductory video here.

Soundtrack: Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz: “Get Low”

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Let’s talk about squirting.

A lot of my work revolves around female orgasm or orgasmicness (don’t know if that’s a word but it is now). I’ve been getting a lot of questions about female ejaculation lately ranging from the people who are freaked out and think it’s urine to those who are begging and wishing to skeet skeet skeet. I’ve found that very few people actually know what female ejaculate is, where it comes from in the body, how it is produced, and why it happens. Which isn’t surprising because most people know very little about human anatomy in general. So I’ve been inspired to shed a little light on this subject and clear up some misconceptions and give hope to those who think they’ll never be able to squirt.

Squirting, or female ejaculation, refers to a stream of clear fluid coming from the vagina during sexual arousal. This fluid comes from what are called the Skene’s glands, or the female prostate. The Skene’s glands are located on the upper wall of the vagina, around the lower end of the urethra. They drain into the urethra just as the urinary bladder drains into the urethra. These glands are surrounded with tissue, which includes the part of the clitoris that reaches up inside the vagina and swells with blood during sexual arousal, usually known as the G-Spot.

The Skene’s glands are homologous with the prostate gland in males, which means that they are basically the same thing. When an embryo is forming, that part of the body either becomes a prostate gland if the baby turns out to be a boy or it becomes a Skene’s gland if the baby turns out to be a girl. In men, the prostate secretes the fluid that, combined with sperm from the testicles and fluid from the seminal vesicle, becomes semen. The fluid from the Skene’s gland is identical to the fluid from the prostate.

To be clear, that means that this fluid is not urine. Urine comes from the bladder. Ejaculate/Amrita comes from the Skene’s gland. They both drain out of the same hole at the opening of the urethra, but they are not the same thing.

There are a few common questions about squirting that I want to address. Let’s get into those.

Q: There is too much fluid when women squirt for it to not be urine, right?

A: Well, about that…glands produce fluid. That’s what they do. Sweat glands produce sweat. Adrenal glands produce adrenaline. Skene’s glands produce amrita. We all know what it’s like to pee. We all know what it’s like to be required to pee (drug test) and you just don’t have anything to give. The bladder is not a neverending supply of liquid. Either you have urine in you or you don’t. Glands, however, are always ready to go if they receive the right messages.

Q: What exactly is the G-Spot?

A: As stated earlier, the Skene’s glands are located on the upper wall of the vagina. The tissue surrounding the glands is connected to the inner body of the clitoris. When a woman is sexually aroused, the clitoris fills with blood and becomes engorged and erect. This slightly changes the structure of the vagina and makes it possible for the Skene’s gland to be directly stimulated. What is called the G-Spot is actually the spot where the Skene’s gland meets the internal body of the clitoris. This causes two things to happen. First, it feels really good obviously because the clitoris has an abundance of nerve endings for the purpose of pleasurable sensation. And also the gland starts to produce fluid which then drains into the urethra. There are two things happening simultaneously from directly stimulating the same small area. Sometimes stimulation of this spot leads to orgasm, a different kind of clitoral orgasm, a G-Spot orgasm. What can also happen is that the fluid in the urethra builds up pressure that needs to be released which is what we know as squirting. The most magical moments happen when the G-spot orgasm and the squirting happen simultaneously so that it becomes identical to the male version of orgasm which includes orgasm and ejaculation at the same time. The release of the pressure in the urethra is a pleasurable sensation in itself which adds to the clitoral orgasm.

Q: What is this internal clitoris stuff all about? 

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A: There is more to the clitoris than what you can see from outside of the body. As this diagram shows, the clitoris goes behind the clitoral hood and extends up and then down on either side of the vagina. The whole dark pink area is the clitoris. This entire area fills with blood upon sexual arousal. And any part of it that gets stimulated produces deep pleasurable sensations. I’ll let the diagram speak for itself.

Q: What exactly is the nature of this fluid that comes from the Skene’s gland?

A: Female ejaculate, which I like to call amrita, is equivalent to prostate fluid as we said before.  It contains a mixture of blood plasma, proteins, and enzymes. It is generally clear in color and has a scent unlike anything else that the body secretes. Again, when this fluid is combined with sperm in the male body then it becomes thicker and is known as semen. The fluid minus the sperm is amrita, the goddess nectar. By the way, there are many physical and spiritual health benefits for a man who drinks the amrita. 

Many women are uncomfortable with allowing squirting to happen because it produces a sensation like the need to urinate. Of course no one wants to pee on their partner during sex. Well, maybe some people do, but that’s taking the discussion in a very different direction. I suggest for women who are trying to experience squirting for the first time to urinate before they have sex so they can trust that the bladder doesn’t need to be emptied. Then trust the process. Understand that high levels of sexual arousal leads to the urethra filling with amrita, it’s a natural process, and if you let go then the magic is going to happen. When you feel that pressure building up, just relax and let it flow. Don’t tense up and try to hold it in. In part 2 of this blog post we’ll go a lot deeper into the need to relax during sex for optimum pleasure and the negative effects of stress on sexual arousal.

For now, take solace in knowing that amrita is not urine. You’re not going to pee when you feel that sensation. Every woman is able to squirt. It is a very healthy and fun part of a quality sex life. Awww skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet skeet!!!

(Update 05/18/15)

I received the following question on Facebook regarding this blog post: “So what are your thoughts on this latest study that’s saying it’s really pee because the bladder went from full to empty with the participants?”
That question is referencing this article first published in the Journal Of Sexual Medicine on December 24, 2014. The study was conducted by a French team led by Samuel Salama from Hopital Privé de Parly II. I responded to the question by saying this:

“I think the researchers in that study are idiots.

Two points. First is that the biochemical analysis showed that urine samples before sexual stimulation contained no PSA (prostate-specific antigen), and the squirting as well as the after-squirting urine both contained PSA. So just with that alone, it is clear that these substances are not the same thing. If you know what urine is made of and then you find that squirting contains significant amounts of something that is not in urine, then squirting is not urine. That’s simple.

Second point is that the skene’s glands empty into the urethra. The urethra extends out from the urinary bladder. If a fluid rushes into the urethra and doesn’t immediately get emptied then it is going to flow back into the urinary bladder. There is nowhere else for it to go. The urinary bladder becomes a repository for the fluid that the skene’s glands have emptied into the urethra. Once the woman allows the fluid to come out then the bladder is empty again, as the ultrasounds in the study shows.

Of course if there are trace amounts of urine in the bladder then that will get mixed in with the squirt fluid and that explains why trace amounts of urea show up in the biochemical analysis of squirting. That means that it’s a really good idea to empty your bladder before you have sex so you can minimize or eliminate the amount of urine that gets mixed in.

But the bottom line is that sexual arousal leads to the release of fluid from the skene’s glands and that fluid can be squirted out of the urethra. That fluid and pee are two different things.”

Love Without a Limit

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Soundtrack: Mary J. Blige “Love No Limit”

The Isley Brothers “It’s Your Thing”

I am in love with three women. Saying that now takes me back to 2009 when I first broke the news to my closest friends that my wife and I had decided to have an open marriage.

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People told me that it’s impossible to truly love more than one person at the same time. People told me that my wife couldn’t possibly be ok with this; she must just be repressing her true feelings so she won’t lose me. People told me that one day, one of us would explode in a jealous rage and they didn’t wanna be around to witness it.

None of those objections have turned out to be very valid in the five years since then. A couple of years ago I began a long distance relationship that remains very loving and serious to this day.

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And the impossible happened. That woman and my wife (along with a couple of other wonderful polyamorous women) became best friends. The two of them probably talk to each other more than either of them talk to me. They have a rare and beautiful sisterhood bond.

A year ago, my relationship with my wife became a long distance one as I moved to Atlanta from Houston. We will be reunited in Atlanta very soon but the past year has been an emotional challenge and a proof of our love and commitment. She and I have both developed very serious relationships with local lovers during the year that we have been apart. I can’t imagine how we would’ve survived this year emotionally if we hadn’t had love to sustain us from other sources.

About three and a half months ago I met a woman in Atlanta who changed my life.

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During our first in-depth, face-to-face conversation, while eating seafood, I felt that Source had brought her into my life for us to work together as a team. I knew that my life had changed that day. I hadn’t felt an instant bond with someone like that since my first date with my wife. Over the course of that day I went from thinking that she and I would be excellent business partners to business partners/friends to business partners/friends/lovers to Life Partners who share in every way possible. That day turned into like three days before we separated from each other. But we’ve been together ever since.

My relationship with my newest lover and my life as a full time entrepreneur started around the same time. She has helped me with every aspect of laying the foundation for The SOL System as a brand and a business.

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And now all three of my lovers are fully involved in the business with me as a team. And it just so happens that we make a really good team. Between the four of us we have pretty much every skill that we need in this business from the healing practice to marketing to accounting to product development and more. I am completely overwhelmed with how blessed I am and how obvious it is that I couldn’t have assembled a situation this perfect if I tried.

I was inspired to write about this because I’ve felt bombarded with messages about how difficult/impossible polyamory is, from those who shun it and from those who practice it. My life is a testimony that open relationships can be healthy and loving and functional. When love is multiplied, it only gets better. It gives me joy to share random laughs and conversations with my lover’s husband. It gives me joy to have a Skype conversation with my lover while she sits in the bed with her ex-boyfriend. It gives me joy to know that even though I’m hundreds of miles away, my lover is able to share her bliss with another man who cares for her deeply.

There are two philosophical points that I want to make on this subject.

First, your life is a product of what you believe about yourself. I won’t go too deep into trying to prove that point. I’ve done that in other posts on this blog. But the Law of Attraction is just as real and omnipresent in our lives as gravity and electromagnetism. You attract to yourself whatever you think about most often. If you believe that jealousy is a basic part of life; if you believe that people who share the same lover cannot peacefully co-exist; if you believe that monogamy is the natural way of relationships and polyamory is an “alternative lifestyle”, then that is what you are going to get. However, if you believe that love can truly mean freedom and joy and honesty and abundance, then that is what life will give you.

The vast majority of people who practice open relating meet with all kinds of challenges because they are not clear about their beliefs. They only sort-of buy in to the idea that open relationships are ok. They have a lot of residual monogamy in their subconscious minds so they manifest confusion. Polyamory, or any new way of life, can only be successful to the extent that you fully remove the beliefs that you used to operate under. Becoming healthy can only work to the extent that you remove the beliefs that used to reinforce an unhealthy lifestyle. Becoming peaceful can only work to the extent that you remove the beliefs that used to reinforce a life of violence. My life in open relating has blossomed as I have successfully brought all of my beliefs about love and relationships into alignment with this new paradigm. I truly believe in this, and it is working for me.

Now moving on to my second point. As I said earlier, two of my relationships are long distance. I’ve been separated from my local lover for the past 8 days as she is taking our #TantraTour2014 to the west coast. None of us could make it if we were relying on someone else to be the source of our happiness. And now, a message from Osho:

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We are able to operate from a place of Abundance because we find our happiness from within Self. If your partner’s love is the source of your happiness then it can be very scary for your partner to share their love with someone else because it feels like now you have less of the source of your happiness. But you have a neverending source of joy/peace/love/bliss within your own soul. You are a piece of the Ultimate Reality. You are one with the Universe. Any limitation that you think you have only comes from losing sight of the fact of who you really are. When you know that you are one with The All, then you have nothing to worry about. It is impossible to lose a lover because there is nowhere to go. We are connected to everything else in existence.

Because we have our happiness from within Self, we can only add to each other’s happiness, not take it away. This is why interacting with all three of my lovers feels so damn good. Happy on top of happy on top of happy. This is heaven. This is bliss. This is what life is all about. I really want everyone in the world to feel what I am feeling. That’s why I can’t be quiet about this any longer. I have to share my joy with the world. Come get some of this.

hearttat (This tattoo with the infinity sign going through the heart is generally considered to be the symbol of polyamory. I’m serious about this)

Got Tantra?

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Soundtrack: India Arie “I See God in You”

Raekwon “Heaven & Hell”

My life’s work recently has made me more aware than ever of just how much emotional trauma and spiritual damage the women of America are dealing with, especially women of African descent. And I have also become acutely aware of just how much bad advice women give each other for how to deal with that pain. Ways to numb it or mask it but not ways to heal it and do away with it.

But real healing is available. Like a thief in the night, Tantra has emerged in this country with real tools to transform our lives and restore what was damaged. But for the most part, the women (and men) who have benefited from Tantra are not standing on the rooftops and declaring to the world that they have been healed. I’ve wondered why that is and I’m starting to see some of the why. 

There are not enough people who have gone deep enough with Tantra to have real life-transforming, restorative change take place in their lives. They haven’t completed the process. The vast majority of people who have come in contact with the power of Tantra have had one or two powerful experiences with it and noticed some changes in their lives and that’s as far as they’ve gone with it. People are giving lukewarm testimonies because they are seeing lukewarm results.

There are not enough examples of a woman, for instance, who dealt with molestation as a child, rape as a teenager, low self-esteem and body issues and reckless behavior as a result of all of that, and then received thorough healing of all of that trauma to the point where it’s like it never even happened. This CAN happen, but it is not happening ENOUGH. Why not?

Because thorough, complete, holistic healing requires some effort on the part of the person being healed. It is a collaborative process between the healer and the person being healed. I can point out to you the beliefs that you have accepted that are not serving you well, break up the pain in the spots inside your body where you have physically stored the memory of your trauma, and even restore and balance your chakras and clean out your energy channels. But you have to make the CHOICE to reinforce all of that work by accepting new beliefs, habits, and behaviors that will produce a new life experience for you. I can’t do that for you.

The norm is for people to put in just enough self work to have some significant breakthrough and then they’re done. That breakthrough might be healing fibroids or healing a prostate or achieving better digestion or having orgasms for the first time. Not many people are diligent enough to follow that road all the way to Bliss.

Bliss requires that you live fully in the present; not dwelling on past pains or overly focusing on future pleasure, but finding the joy in the Right Now. Bliss requires you to be fully aware. Bliss won’t let you go through life with your head down, aimlessly wandering from task to task and never really stopping to fully process what you’re doing or why you’re doing it or if you even want to do it. Bliss requires you to ask questions like do I want to live in this house?…do I want to work at this job?…do I want to be in this relationship?…do I want to look this way?…do I want to be this weight?…do I want to feel this way?…what do I feel?…

Anything in your life that doesn’t feel like joy has to be let go of when bliss is your focus. And there is a core belief that has to be addressed that stands between people and their ultimate bliss. Most of us don’t really believe that we DESERVE to have complete happiness. We don’t believe that it is possible to have complete happiness. We think that we are supposed to have pain and shame and suffering. It never occurs to us to form the thought of “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make every negative experience go away because I don’t want them anymore”.

In life, we accept what we believe that we deserve. And life gives us whatever we expect to get. What is your core belief about what you deserve? This is why I am eternally grateful to the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, and others of his ilk, who taught us that we are gods and goddesses. Because gods and goddesses are supposed to live in Heaven, that is their domain. When you really, truly, deep down inside believe that you are a god then you cannot fathom accepting anything less than a heavenly daily life.

When I sat down to write this, this is the point that I wanted to make. I am here. There are others around me like my teacher Master Yao Morris, Shantam Nityama, Rakhem Seku, Sirius Brotha, Akin Olubusola…women as well like Kenya K Stevens, Sasha Cobra, and others. There are tools available to address anything we have going on in our lives that is less than desirable. If you have been the beneficiary of the healing work of any of these people that I just listed or ones that I didn’t mention, go back for more. And commit to the process of doing the self work to make the healing “stick”. And tell as many people as you can about the benefits you have already received and about the work you’re doing now. Spread the word!

If you have never experienced the benefits of Tantra do yourself a humongous favor and seek out a healer with good references. It’s time to let go of your pain. Whether you have to travel across the country or bring the healer to you or whatever it takes, it is worth it. You deserve it. Bliss is your divine birthright. It is time for us to properly value ourselves as gods and goddesses. Let’s sit ourselves in heaven      

They Don’t Really Care About Us

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Soundtrack: Jay-Z “D’evils”

“Tantrikas are threatening to those who would wield power. One who has realized his true nature cannot be subjugated to the will of a religious or political power structure.” – Sunyata Saraswati

“There are three things that the slavemaster would never teach to the slave, because if they did then we could no longer be made slaves: the science of business, the science of warfare, and the science of mating.”

Elijah Muhammad

“The men of greatest achievement are men with highly developed sex natures, men who have learned the art of sex transmutation; the men who have accumulated great fortunes and achieved outstanding recognition in literature, art, industry, architecture, and the professions, were motivated by the influence of a woman.”

Napoleon Hill

            For as long as history has been recorded, there have been some people who wanted to have power over other people. In fact, in the western educational system, history is completely a retelling of the stories of how certain groups gained power and kept power over other groups. In the news today, some of the most virulent political debates are about regulating sexuality e.g. abortion, gay marriage, etc. The elites have always been hyper-concerned with the bedroom activity of the masses. In the hundreds of laws found in the Old Testament, many of the ones with the most severe punishments were about sexual acts, forbidding adultery and fornication and such. In those days, religious power and political power were synonymous. The leaders of the religion were also the leaders of the state. But as we have seen, even in these days of separation of church and state, the powers that be seek to determine who should be having sex and how and when. Why?

            Those who have power in society have always understood the enormous power of sexual desire and sexual activity. They trade the knowledge among themselves of how to use sexual energy to manifest their desires into reality. It only makes sense that they would desire to prevent the masses of the people from having this same knowledge. This knowledge is their leg up on the rest of the people. This leg up is maintained by their making the masses of the people believe that sex is dirty, sinful, and something to be feared.

 Why do we yell at small children because we see them touching their own genitalia? What makes it so horrible to touch yourself? For that matter, what makes it so horrible to touch other people? When are we going to examine the hypocrisy surrounding our sexual views? In 2013 it is still unlawful to teach high school students about sex. Sexual education is mandated to include telling the students to abstain from sex. How many of the people giving this message abstained from sex until marriage, whether it be in the home or the school or the church? Why do our bodies produce this flood of sexual hormones in our early teens when we begin puberty if we’re not supposed to have sex or even think about sex until we’re 20-something? What is the logic in that? How many national and world leaders have to be humiliated into hiding because it was found out that they had an extramarital affair before we ask the question that maybe these people are doing what comes naturally? Maybe these people are so compelled by this sexual desire and are willing to risk reputation and livelihood because human beings are made to have sex…

            As part of demonizing sex, femininity and womanhood had to be demonized as well; because women are naturally sexually superior to men. Women naturally have more sexual desire, stamina, and enjoyment than men do. Women had to be made to think that it was not ok for them to be the way that they naturally are. So women were covered up. The natural adornment of a woman’s body, her lady lumps (shout to will.i.am), got covered up with excessive amounts of clothing so the power of her beauty wouldn’t show and arouse a desire in men to have sex. One half of what human beings have to offer has been devalued and hidden away. And the world is suffering as a result.

The feminine qualities of transparency, receptivity, tenderness, and harmony are shunned in favor of competition, rugged individualism, machismo, and brute strength. So we dump toxic waste into the ground and into the air with no regard for the impact it will have on the ecosystem. We cut down the rainforests which are really the lungs of the planet and we expect to still have clean air to breathe. We steal the natural resources from beneath the feet of those in developing countries and then we act surprised when they resort to violence as a way of making their voices heard. The world needs a feminine touch. 

            It seems that every day, somewhere in the world, there is a conference or meeting about how to get the powers that be to respond to the needs of those who have no power. I am suggesting that a primary part of the answer to that question is that people need to have more, and better, sex. Sex is the most powerful mental stimulant that we have available to us. Sex brings people closer together in a world that is desperately in need of intimacy and basic human compassion. Sex can be used to alleviate poverty. Sex can be used to bring people to spiritual heights that prayer and fasting have never attained. Sexual energy can turn ordinary men and women into geniuses. We can no longer afford to deny ourselves this most wonderful of gifts. We must teach our children to embrace their sexuality rather than to run from it. But as part of this embracing we also must improve the quality of our knowledge of sexuality. We must have conscious sex. We must learn HOW to use this wonderful energy in these wonderful ways. Because what we’ve been doing is simply not working. 

Let’s Talk About Sex

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Soundtrack: Salt n Pepa

            I stressed before that Tantra isn’t all about sex. So that begs the question of why is Tantra associated so often with sex? Why do people who teach, or claim to teach, Tantra mention sex and sexuality so much?

            We’ve established that Tantra is an energy management system. We use our energy to improve the quality of our lives physically, emotionally, spiritually, and materially. Sexual energy is the most powerful form of energy that we are able to access at any given time. It is always available to us and it is very highly charged. It is our greatest spiritual gift.

            Just as new physical life comes from the act of sex and the exchange of sexual energy; all new things come from sexual energy. That energy is the raw material, the building blocks of all manifestation. In the classic book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill says the following:

“Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop keenness of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of course, the accumulation of riches.”

            Enlightenment and achievement produce the same chemical processes within the brain as a physical orgasm, the release of hormones like oxytocin and endorphins. The physical process of arousal, followed by a buildup of tension, followed by an ultimate release and climax, is the same as the process of achievement. We become aroused with a new idea, a vision of something that we want to achieve. We experience the tension of struggling against resistance to bring our vision into fruition. And when our goal is finally achieved then we have an emotional climax and we feel the tension released and there is nothing but bliss. Taking something from an idea into a physical reality that can be observed is the ultimate orgasm.

            Life coaches and experts on creating wealth often speak of the benefits of “self-suggestion” or “autosuggestion”. These words basically mean making a statement to yourself that the subconscious mind accepts as truth. The two emotional states best suited for suggestion are — deep relaxation and emotional intensity. Sex can easily get us into both of those emotional states. The reason these emotional states make it easy for us to “program” ourselves is because of the way the brain works. I don’t have space here to fully explain the science of that but I will state that if the brain is slowed down then it becomes easily suggestible and if the brain is made highly active then that’s the best time to form new neural pathways that make it easier for us to perform certain functions.

            I’m saying all of this just to make the point that this energy is very powerful. And the following might be why it’s so powerful. In mathematics, if A = B, and B = C, then A = C. Every time…if all things come from God, and if all people and 99% of animals come from a sex act, then God = Sex. Math doesn’t lie. Sexuality and spirituality/divinity are intimately connected and it is the separation of sexuality from spirituality that makes most spiritual practices ineffective.

            The Tantra master Shantam Nityama says:

“…the relationship between spirituality and sex is like the relationship between a butterfly and a caterpillar. If the caterpillar is not in good health and not strong, then you’re not going to have a butterfly, or you are going to get a very weak and scrawny butterfly…in order for people to open up spiritually, they had to come back and totally embrace their sexual energy and be clear about it in order for them to take that same energy and transform themselves.”

            Tantra teaches us how to fully embrace our sexual energy and begin to consciously use it to transform our lives. 

Let’s Get It Started

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Soundtrack: 2Pac – “Changes”

When most people in America hear the word “Tantra” they think of Kama Sutra, sexual positions and toys, and general freakiness. It’s like the sensual side of pornography in the popular imagination. I am a Tantra practitioner. However, that doesn’t mean that I am a sex therapist or sex surrogate or anything of the sort.

Tantra is a Sanskrit (Indian) word that literally means “system or doctrine” and comes from the root words tanoti “stretch, extend, expand” and trayati “liberation”. The originators of the Indian system of Tantra saw it as a systematic way of expanding the consciousness toward liberation. However, Tantra was not solely developed by the people of India. Every people on earth since the beginning of humanity have had a system of Tantra, under different names, and sometimes not bothering to give it a name at all.

Tantra is based on a recognition that everything is energy, including and especially human beings. By coming up with intentional ways of manipulating/managing the energy within ourselves, we increase our ability to manage the energy around us and thus create a reality for our lives in the way that we choose. Most of tantric practice is about doing things like yoga, chanting mantras, doing breathing exercises, and eating a healthy diet. The sexual things that are associated with Tantra will not yield results for you if you aren’t doing these other things that appear to not be sexual at all. In truth, Tantra is more something that you “become” than it is something that you “do”. Once you “become” Tantra then everything you do becomes orgasmic, especially your sex. As my Tantra teacher, Master Yao Nyamekye Morris says, “Tantra is about becoming the highest and best version of yourself.”

My intention in creating this blog is to give commentary about my experiences doing Tantra energy work and the implications of this work for the world that we live in. In the Grand Trine Tantra system created by Master Yao, we use tantric energy projection as a healing modality, similar to massage or acupuncture. This energy projection works with the client laying on a massage table or bed. The practitioner sends their energy into the energy body of the client, allowing the client’s energy to flow more freely than normal, pushing through blockages in their energy channels.

That last paragraph presented multiple concepts that many people have never heard of before. What exactly is this “energy”? How do you send it to another person? What is an energy body? What are energy channels and how do they get blockages? All of these concepts will be explained fully in subsequent blog entries. For now, can I just say trust me? LOL…The main point that I want to make at this time is that when we experience pain in life, whether emotional or physical, it often gets stored in our bodies, causing these blockages. And the body/spirit seeks to find ways to not experience that pain anymore. This is the root of what psychologists call “defense mechanisms” and it causes our personalities to change. The vast majority of us are not living the way we were born to live because we are attempting to adjust to this cruel world that we live in.

Tantra seeks to help us live according to the blueprint for our lives contained in our DNA. The process of healing these past pains and returning to our natural selves calls attention to the sources of our pains. It forces us to look at the things in society that cause us to develop these defense mechanisms. It indicts all of the institutions that are supposed to serve our best interests and in fact do just the opposite. And by all I mean all. Our families, schools, religions, and governments have all contributed to our not living the highest and best versions of our lives. But as we see the causes of our pains we also gain insight into solutions for those problems. This is what we’re going to be talking about, ways that we can change ourselves and change society so that we move from lives based on fear and scarcity to lives based on love and abundance. Complete constructive change.

Ride with me…