I was actually proud of myself for not engaging my emotions in his full frontal assault when in the past I might have found myself getting drawn into an argument and lobbing some of my own bombs in his direction, weapons designed to maim the other as much as win the battle. The HeartMath Institute has research that shows that any angry outburst, even if one believes it to be “justified,” is harmful to a person’s immune system (the system they tested) and takes him out of heart/mind coherence where better health resides as well as an ability to access your full intuitive nature to solve your problems. My recent reading of this has not yet made me immune to getting angry but has started to help me see anger from others in the same way that a scientist gazes into a Petri dish, wondering if I added a loogie to the mess if the bacteria I was studying would thrive or die.

The truth is that Austin cares much more about money than I do. He has enough money now to retire and still pay for his three kids to go through college and grad school and to the moon and still have some left over to join the circle-jerk with Hugh Hefner and yet he still focuses on making mo’ money, mo’ money, mo’ money.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7jukQX2pl2Q 

This is in large part due to the fact that not only his salary but also his self-worth is based on his billable hours. This has resulted in him being on various medications and going through two weeks of shock treatment that erased some of his memory to deal with his depression and anxiety that seems entirely based on his earnings and what that means to him.

I donate 10% of anything I make to charity and to others. I seriously doubt he donates the equivalent ratio, which would be around $150,000 for him to charity. And I am next to certain his vote for President has little to do with protecting the environment or foreign policy or who’s been the most creative in their cigar placement, but with which candidate will let him keep most of his money via tax breaks.

He's either Hitler or J. Jonah Jameson from "Spiderman"

While I value my freedom to move around without Big Brother tracking every financial interaction I make, my being under the radar has probably cost me more in comforts than it has gained me in untaxed dollars. I lost a good job that I had and liked for ten years at a health club. I lost two more yoga teaching jobs, one at a gym and another at a yoga studio, where “paperwork issues” were the main contributing factor to my termination. One involved a fruity Fitness Coordinator named Blake that wanted me to get on my knees in front of him in submission and I pretty much told him, “I’d get down on my knees to suck your dick before I did so to Kowtow to you,” but that’s another story.

Just about every job is run by people who have been conditioned into a system that preaches a false religion that you cannot work unless you fill out government forms that declare you are a “taxpayer,” which means one liable to the Income Tax—which you most probably are not—and that the company has the right to withhold money from your paycheck because they are acting as unpaid agents for the Internal Revenue Service. As a result, I have not been able to get any work at any institution that requires this, which are basically all institutions. I went through a financial rock bottom where I couldn’t pay my bills and my eating suffered in variety and quality; where I once ate only organic food, now this word became an otherworldly fantasy like Heaven.

And more recently, I have discovered that my cloaked status is a big wedge in my relationship with Ace, who desires a “normal” life with an abnormal man and I am seriously considering plugging back into the Matrix for love. I’m starting not to care if the Federal Mafia takes their cut anymore. I’m so tired that at this point even the pursuit of Truth has become exhausting.

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FOR THE FULL PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/full-frontal-assault

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It has become cliché to talk about a dog’s love and devotion to her caretaker. And while I don’t like to be cliché, be a part of any click, make any noise that may be called a “clack,” work with paper mache, or take the necessary time to clear my computer’s cache, I can’t help but to reflect on one particular aspect of a dog’s love for which any human would give his canine teeth to possess.

Whenever I come home to our apartment, Abandon is always excited to see me with a wagging tail…well, unless she’s chewed something up about which she knows I will be pissed, which hasn’t happened in a very long time. Sometimes her overwhelming excitement comes out as whines and whether I have come back from a meditation sitting in the snow of a chilly winter day or a sweaty jog under a blazing summer sun, my face will soon be wetter than when I first came into the room.  This is the cliché part of which just about every lover of dogs will espouse. Hang on a moment, computer pop-up. “Do you want to clear your cache?” Uh, no…and…RETURN.

Today I reflected on the other side of a dog’s devotion to love, when things aren’t lusciously long walks or chasing cars or playing fetch but rather being forced to put on a stupid Halloween costume that their caretakers think are cute or having to be washed in the tub, taking away all those beautiful smells of cigarettes and drool and poo that they have carefully accumulated like a potpourri.

When things are not right, and I come home to discover that Abandon had decided that my phone charger was more fun to chomp than her plastic bone, her ears will lower and she will fill with what most would interpret as guilt. And, in less proud moments, I have allowed my frustration to lead me to drag her violently in front of the chewed plug or book, yell at her, throw her in the bathroom by her scruff and close the door for what for her must have felt like an eternity.

Inevitably, when I open the door, her ears perk up and she can’t help but to start wagging her tail. She’s not thinking, “Sorry about what I did.” She’s not thinking, “I hate you!” She’s just thinking, “I love you and I’m so glad to see you.”

She only knows two expressions of her love for me. Her first is utter blissful tail   wagging, tongue lapping love. The second is a sadness that I am not in a place where I can relax into that place of blissful tail wagging, tongue lapping love with her.

I’ve done just about every abusive thing to her short of hitting her and while doing it, yes, I have at times seen what I would interpret as a certain fear in her eyes. But remaining like an eternal flame beyond the fear, and clear as a lit candle in a pitch black room, is a love that never wanes even an iota and only desires for me to feel my best so that we can once again bathe in blissful tail wagging, tongue lapping love.

It seems only humans, whether hurt or angry, fight back not only to defend themselves but more so to hurt the other person. It is as if a martial arts master was mugged and he subdued the attacker and the police were on their way but then he decided to break the attacker’s arm just to “teach him a lesson.” You could beat a dog and even if it fought back with its mouth, it would never take pleasure in hurting you.

When done with love, a dog enjoys lessons of SIT, STAY, DOWN, FETCH, HEEL. But lessons of guilt and anger are taken with sadness, with an understanding that “My caretaker’s love is shut off when I do certain things.” Through an abusive teaching system, she learns the lesson of not chewing up your plug based not on the physical trauma inflicted from a rolled newspaper but on the emotional trauma of your withheld love, which is unbearable for a creature that exists on love.

While it is easy to beam our love when we are dealt a Royal Flush, what happens if we are dealt a 7 high? If we are truly in love with the game of Poker, we will still receive a metaphoric payout whether the cards are high or low. But it seems most card players’ love of poker requires the game to be played with a specific deck of cards, on a specific table, and only when they are dealt a specific hand. That’s not a love for the game; that’s a love for things going your way.

Ace and I had an argument last night regarding something I wrote. Underneath the hurt and anger on both sides, I was like Abandon: sad that we couldn’t just stay in blissful tail wagging, tongue lapping love.

For the record, Ace's mouth isn't that big (or so I will swear on the Bible in order to assure I don't get a mandated sentence of celibacy! (though she does tend to match her shoes and dresses with equal penache.)

I have imagined my wedding proposal to Ace. I would take her to the park on a nice sunny day and kneel down and flip open a ring case. That part is cliché. The ring would be a special ring that I had designed for her, not with a blood diamond of which she has voiced her disapproval but a beautiful crystal and design that is only dreamt up by crazy swamis.

“Ace, will you marry me? I don’t want an answer now. I want you to answer me in the middle of one of our worst arguments, which I’m reluctantly assuring you will happen sometime in the future. While we are in the park now and it is sunny and you are feeling all lovey-dovey with me, an answer of ‘Yes’ is cheap and I am too spoiled and you are not a whore to give a response from such a common place. If you can tell me ‘Yes’ when your eyes are not filled with joyful tears but red with anger then I will know that your love is forever and priceless and only then will I take you as my bride.”

Perhaps Ace and I would never argue again and so she would never have the opportunity to accept my proposal of marriage. But would that be a bad thing, two people remaining in tail wagging, tongue lapping love every day of their lives? Since I am a man with human frailty, I am guessing this pipedream would be more of a pipe bomb and an explosion will happen sometime post-proposal. Like I see beaming from Abandon, even a great fight—if we stayed connected in love—would just provide another opportunity to remind ourselves of our love.

David Deida in his book Enlightened Sex said that Tantra was staying open and connected to your partner when all you want to do is close off and disconnect. Perhaps dogs are the greatest Tantra masters of them all.

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THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM THE PAGE “LET THE DEAD BURY THE DEAD.” FOR THE FULL PIECE, PLEASE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/let-the-dead-bury-the-dead

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“Jesus said unto him, Let the dead bury their dead: but go thou and preach the kingdom of God.”

—Luke 9:60, King James Bible (Cambridge Edition)

Why is it so important that we “make our mark,” that our legacy lives on, that we achieve some form of fame, even if it is only on a local level as the girl who had the biggest North Star zit? When I showed my mother the short poem I wrote called “When The Day Comes” [http://rebelyogi.com/when-the-day-comes.html] about leaving no trace of yourself when you depart from this world, she responded with something like, “That’s not what we want—we want to leave an impression.” Why?

My sister-in-law’s father has said to his grandkids such things as,“Remember this about me when I am no longer here”; I assume he meant when he is dead and not just out of the room. Why? Why should you influence what these independent souls think in the future? It’s bad enough that you try to nag and control them into obedience as a mini-you while you are alive, perhaps sickly inspired by the Austin Power: The Spy Who Shagged Me, but after your dead as well?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkmi_UTsjtE&feature=fvst

It’s because you fear death and have given up any hope of finding Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth but instead think you can have a touch of immortality by planting tumors of memories in the younger generation. Just leave the little bastards alone and die!

[AS OPPOSED TO HOW I USUALLY POST HERE WHEN I HAVE A LONGER PIECE TO SHARE, GIVING YOU THE BEGINNING OF THE PIECE AS A TEASER AND THEN SENDING YOU TO THE "PAGES" TO READ THE REST, THIS IS THE END OF THE PIECE. I'VE BYPASSED MOST OF THE "NONSENSE" AND WENT RIGHT TO THE "ENLIGHTENING." MAYBE THIS WILL MAKE YOU TO READ IT TWICE--OR NOT AT ALL.]

FOR THE FULL PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/swami-x-eats-the-meat

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I used to have a pattern of taking everything to extremes. While others were becoming vegetarian, I was looking into how to become a breathearian. “Enjoying your carrot sticks? Yeah, that is a bit heavy for me. But I must say, this air in here is just delightful!” When my friends started to shave their faces, I would shave my whole body. “If you saw the movie ‘Powder’ you’d friggin’ get it.” While others were seeking to get laid, I sought to be laid from a chicken. After rupturing a few hens’ rectums with a shoehorn, I gave up on this dream and relegated my shoehorn solely for tongue depressing. And it’s worked, my tongue, once happy and carefree, has every since been depressed.

My vegan dogmatism resulted in me not having a winter coat for a couple of years because the huge and heavy warm coat my Dad handed me down had a few tiny strips of leather around the sleeves. It resulted in me throwing out or donating anything that had a touch of animal on or in it, including my detachable Rollerblades that were totally convenient for me to convert to boots and go into stores that don’t allow you to roll down their aisles—which is most—and then pop on my wheels and roll to my next destination with ease because one day rolling I looked down and realized the boot was made out of suede and while I never ate suede, I would be damned if I would support the slaughter of a flock of suede with my rolling advertisement. By the time I realized the error of my ways these Rollerblades were discontinued.

Not to mention it slightly inhibited my ability to enjoy a time out with friends, as I was constantly “boycotting” that restaurant for serving foie gras and protesting that store because they sold fur. I even dropped wearing my 9/11 WAS AN INSIDE JOB T-shirts and sweatshirt and talking about this obvious FACT as I grew tired of ruining dinners.

Whether you are committed to a job or justice, a cause or country, and sometimes even a person, usually you are just one step from being committed to an asylum. I rather cut out the middleman and just submit myself to a loony bin where I can blow spittle bubbles and smear my shit on the walls with reckless abandon.

I have come to a point where I have questioned if following anything—be it a religion or eating pattern—in a fundamentalist way does not make you free…but only a douche. Forgetting what it does to others—from burka’ed beaten Islamic women, to pedophile priests, from book burning bastards to President I’madoucheandfag of Iran proudly declaring that there are no gays in Iran after his gay burning Bonfire of the Faggeties—what does it do to the individual?

The individual soul is already trapped by it’s jailer—the Ego’s identification with the body’s shape and sex, religion, means of employment and thoughts and beliefs—to add one more steel-tipped Doc Martin wearing guard at the gates of the jail cell is not going to help one liberate himself from the jail of self-identity. I made the declaration that I would extricate myself from my jail cell at all costs—even if that meant leaving it in a body bag—as even with the pleasant curtains and Hindu goddess wall hangings of the New Age, living in a jail cell is no life for a free soul but just another trick of the Ego to keep you from seeing that the prison guards and walls and bars are INTOLERABLE.

What is harder for most to see is that the prison guards and walls and bars are not outside obstructions to freedom but are built and maintained by one’s own continually fed identification system with his small self. The only hope for freedom is to abandon your inheritance of a religion, a belief system, a moral code based on dead men printed in dead books and to be born again, coming out of the Universe’s beautiful womb and realizing that you are the Lord and “there is no other.”

“I am the LORD, and there is no other; apart from me there is no God. I will strengthen you, though you have not acknowledged me.”

—Isaiah 45:5, New International Version

“And let me declare my one Law: Only Mormons are getting into Heaven.”

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“Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.”

—The Golden Rule

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“Piss on another if they will piss onto you.”

—The Golden Shower Rule

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It was yet another typical aftermath of Ogre and I butting heads like rams where not only did I think it would serve us best to have some space from each other—I didn’t want to talk to that bitch either [See White Hole: Part 2 at http://rebelyogi.com/white-hole] This resulted in the next day me receiving a text message from her saying that my lack of contacting her the day before was a clear “Fuck you!” and more words to essentially say that I was a douche and we were through. I probably should have cut my losses and said, “You know, I had a bunch of free dinners and even got laid here and there—okay, time to go!” But due to my persistence (and love for free food and pussy), we played the “let’s try again” card probably ten times too many.

On another night, I told Ogre via text that I didn’t want her texting me if she was going to be multitasking during the exchange and I would have to wait about 5-minutes between texts for a response like, “LOL!” feeling like a stand-up comedian having his audience remain dead silent after a joke that he thought would kill and then, apparently on European time delay, burst into laughter when he is in the middle of telling his next joke. We ended up talking on the phone and she was very “tonal,” meaning socially correct but subtextually a total condescending cunt. She explained to me that this is what text messaging is about, half-assed communication, and that if I wanted full-assed attention I best find a black chick as “baby’s got back.” We parted not in sweet sorrows but wishing death and destruction on the other.

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FOR THE FULL PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/do-unto-others

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Gimme head with hair

Long beautiful hair

Shining, gleaming,

Streaming, flaxen, waxen

Give me down to there hair

Shoulder length or longer

Here baby, there mama

Everywhere daddy daddy

Hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair, hair

Flow it, show it

Long as God can grow it

My hair

—“Hair” from the musical Hair

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I had worn long hair not only in my nether region but also on top of my head for some time now but never really figured out how long it was. And then I saw the picture on my fridge of my and my oldest nephew as a baby. My hair was long then and he is now 16 years old. After a few more calculations using a protractor, calculator, a compass of both the “pointy draw a circle” kind and the “point north” kind, a straight edge, a plum-bob, a level and a few chicken feathers I figured it out:

It had been about 18 years since I had a real haircut.

Think about that. I am 43 years old now, which means that (hang on, let me get out my calculator) I was about 25 years old when I started with the long hair. That means that most people who know me today NEVER knew me with short hair. Then again, most people who know me today don’t know that I planned to walk 100 miles in the Sahara Desert naked but had to call it off on the third day due to severe sunburn of the penis.

Back in college I played with the mullet, which is a white trash haircut that soccer players seemed to find in fashion and since I played soccer, I couldn’t pass up on the latest trend. The mullet is a long in the back, short on the sides and front haircut that makes one look as if the first words they are going to say when they open their mouth is, “Now that is the best garbage can soup I’ve ever tasted!”

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FOR THE FULL PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/project-bald-swami

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“I like your smell,” said Ogre. For most people such a comment would make them feel warm and fuzzy but for me it said something very different. If there was concern for accuracy Ogre would have said, “I like the smell of the essential oil cologne we picked up from the Indian guy at the New Life Expo and am glad I can smell it on you.” But this was a relationship masked in insecurities and power plays and accuracy was the last thing of concern.

Smell is our most primitive sense, not meaning it is the least technological of our ways to process the environment but that it was our first sense to develop. While most people function predominantly through their sense of sight, just remembering the smell of the brownies that your mom used to bake when you were a kid is enough to send just about everyone into a state of heavenly glory. It sends me into a coughing fit but that’s because my mother burnt just about everything that went into her oven and by “oven” I actually mean oven and not her vagina.

We tie different associations to different smells. The smell of buttery popcorn to the movie theater; smelling stale beer and puke to waking up in the alley by the bar last Saturday night; the smell of flowers to a field of blossoms. Even if it is just in our mind, smells can transport us to places and times of which not even Star Trek’s teleportation technology was capable.

My friend Dave hates the smell of patchouli. I think he was once with a girl who was wearing it who chewed up his face during a make-out session and thereafter he could never smell the scent without shouting at the top of his lungs, “FOR GOD’S SAKE, WOMAN, STOP USING YOUR TEETH!” This once caused an unnecessary argument between he and his wife when she was giving him a blowjob and the scent of a woman who must have bathed in a tubful of patchouli walked by on the street below and the smell of that bushy herb from the genus pogostemon wafted up and entered his apartment window.

I suppose it is natural for people to associate smells with people. I remember my first martial arts school and how the teacher always smelled like musk from his underarm deodorant. Years later I was training in tai chi chuan and my instructor smelled the same musky way and I was instantly brought back to those early days of training.

But I am a guy who prefers things a little more “natural” in the sense of “close to nature” and less so to mean “common.” I don’t like a woman wearing tons of make-up, unless we’re role-playing and she happens to be playing the part of a whore or a clown or a whorey clown. And I prefer a woman not to wear any perfume, as I like to imbibe the smell of her—her skin, her sweat, her pheromones—and not any store-bought cover-up. If I go down on a girl I want it to smell and taste like pussy and not some peppermint castile soap that she douched with because she is insecure about her smell. Now don’t get me wrong, if I had to choose between the smell/taste of peppermint or rotting tuna it would be a hands down decision for the former; by “natural” I also don’t mean “rotten.”

With more distance and more reflection it is clear to me that there is little about me that Ogre really did like, especially regarding the physical. She liked my body, that much I will concede. I suppose she liked my cock, that is if it was stimulating her and saving her electric bill from using her vibrator each night. But she didn’t like my dress—and not just the red one with the bow on the lapel—buying me clothes that she would rather see me in, never asking me what I actually liked; she didn’t like my hair, suggesting I cut it; she didn’t like my smell, suggesting I cover it; nor did she like my sarcasm, suggesting I shut it the fuck up.

Today it was raining pretty heavily when I took Abandon out for a couple of walks. She came back soaked and smelling like wet dog. Now for those of you who don’t interact with dogs, the smell of wet dog is like a cross between the elephant house at the Bronx Zoo and a horse’s ass. As I dried her with one of my towels, I wasn’t concerned that she would get her funk into it. I just smiled at her looking vulnerable, all wet with her tail hanging between her legs, gave her a kiss on the snout and took a deep inhale to smell her scent. At that moment I realized why dogs smell each other’s privates. They don’t have the human quality of judgment and desire only to smell the essence beyond the Frontline flea and tick collar and shampoos of the ass in front of them.

But more importantly, I actually like Abandon’s smell. She smells like a dog and that is what she is. But more importantly, she smells like her and that is who I love. I am not saying one has to eat their mother’s burnt cooking because, “That is how she cooks.” I am just saying that if one is going to eat his mother’s burnt pussy, he should accept it for what it is and not expect it to be a French soufflé. Did I say, “eat his mother’s burnt pussy”? Now that’s just unnatural!

I look forward to meeting someone who desires to smell the me beyond the body suit and not to cover it up with more barriers.

Between working 1-on-1 sessions, teaching a class and taking an advanced class, it was a busy Tuesday night at New York San Da for me. Seafood had just paid me in greenbacks and I put the money in the Velcro enclosed pocket of my street shorts and put them in my locker and changed into my faggy, flowy “san da” shorts. Just then Fagstone popped his head into the changing room and asked, “Do you have a 7:30?”

“Yeah,” I replied, ignoring his lingering look at my Johnson and hussled my butt out of the dressing room, inadvertently not locking up my locker. Now I am pretty much the only one on staff who puts a lock on his locker. Well, Spandex does but he never locks his lock so I’m not really sure if that counts. I’m guessing even the most moronic reader at this point knows where the story is going—and it ain’t Kansas, Dorothy.

FOR THE COMPLETE PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/400-lesson

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I had enjoyed a long ride of free wireless access in both my last apartment and this one but just like at an amusement park, the ride came to an end. Also like at an amusement park, it wasn’t all fun and games but included the occasional man in a trench coat who would tell you he’d like to share a “hotdog” with you, that would break up the monotony of good times; often the connection was spotty and I would find myself unable to connect or the connection so slow that it was chemotherapy painful. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this seemed to parallel my connection with Ogre—at times high-speed but often no signal.

So the other day I took my laptop during my walk with Abandon and went to McDonald’s where they have free wireless connection. I prefer to go to the bench outside and connect but did not get a signal there and so I had to venture inland. I told Abandon to sit outside and she said, “I wouldn’t go in there even if you offered me transfat fries!”

As I started to go through the double doors, some shady looking character started eyeing Abandon, mostly admiring that she was sitting there obediently waiting for me. He said to me, “I’m going to test her” to which I responded, “Please don’t. Just leave her alone.” It was my polite way of saying, “Kindly fuck off.” But he didn’t kindly fuck off.

FOR THE FULL PIECE GO TO:

http://rebelyogi.com/the-stew-of-nonsense

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“This huge event is hers and everybody knows it’s hers, including him. A marriage that starts off that lopsided, crippled with debt, mired in animosity, is already dragging one leg behind it when the couple walks down the aisle.”

—“The Wedding Trap” by Matt Teel in Rebel magazine, Summer 2011

Yesterday was my parent’s anniversary, marking 49 years that they have been married. Together, that is. Almost half a century. Through about twelve Presidential elections. Most of those years with my pain in the butt self in their lives. What is the secret of their longevity? In a word: Oil Of Olay.

I called them on the phone last night at around 10:00 p.m. I would have forgotten about their anniversary altogether if it weren’t for my sister’s reminder emails about all-important events in the X family household. She may be annoyingly organized but without these friendly reminders both my brother and I would never remember anything family related.

One year my brother forgot to call my mother on her birthday—again. He said to me, “Can you imagine what it’s like to forget your mother’s birthday two years in a row?” I told him to ask me next year.

At 10pm my Dad was already asleep. I was thinking about making a joke to my Mom about her sexing the energy out of the old man on their special day but I found the thought of them banging each other a little nauseating and I didn’t want an eruption of the Mt. Vesickius bile volcano that was already rumbling in my gut.

I asked my Mom how she and my father managed to stay together for so long. “Companionship. Similar interests.” Now “companionship” told me one of the benefits of a committed relationship but it was nowhere close to the ballpark of “HOW.” It wasn’t even in the parking lot. And I knew the “similar interests” line was just formula recitation and more parking lot Pinocchio and I didn’t let her get away with it.

“Similar interests? That’s crap. For instance, Dad has always been involved in sports and you had no real interest in that. And you’ve been involved with…uh, you have always…did you ever needlepoint? No? Well, if you did Dad wouldn’t have been interested.”

She told me it was late and that she’d have to think about it some more but did offer me a few nuggets, all of which I forgot because I was multitasking. But I did remember one thing she said.

While she acknowledged that, especially when they were younger, they had some knock-down fights in their time, “We were committed to each other; we knew neither one of us would abandon ship just because of a fight.”

There were many times in my relationships where the girl or me would get in a fight, and one or both of us would eventually abandon ship and jump overboard. Had we made the same commitment my parents made to “stay on deck,” maybe we could have remained dry…and enjoyed the complimentary buffet as well!

I thought about how whenever Ogre and I have gotten into a fight, it would usually end with her storming out of my apartment or telling me on the phone, either via voice or text, “I’m fuckin’ done with you!” While I totally understand the feeling of, “I’ve got to get the hell away from this person!” and the need for space, when a relationship is based on a foundation of quicksand, it doesn’t leave either party really feeling secure enough to commit to building a skyscraper together.

Now I’m not one who happens to believe in marriage. I think it is based not on love but on insecurities and a desire to possess another human being. If they legally enforced “’Til death do us part,” with about 50% of marriages ending in divorce, a mandatory “spousal suicide pact” would certainly keep population growth in check—even with Dominican 20-year olds spreading their seed like a drunken farmer who hit the sauce and then the seed bag.

But I do like commitment. Commitment to Self-Awareness; commitment to finishing a task at hand; commitment to another. That is, of course, if the commitment is based on a higher principle and not based on some obligatory construct, one where you want to see it all the way through not as a default mechanism resulting from it being too difficult to fill out all the paperwork, and pay lawyers, and find another man who is not (at least initially) completely annoying again, but because you have an inexplicable drive from inside that tells you, “This is the one I am to grow old with.”

I have always looked at the marriages of my brother and sister, who have each been married for about 17 years, and my parents whose marriage has just about made the half-century mark, as examples of a legal plantation where there are no masters and only slaves. I’ve seen the resentment, the ball-busting, the petty nonsense and the fights, not to mention the stress of each family raising their three kids, which includes financial as well as emotional turmoil. To me it looks like a nightmare, only one that you never wake up from “Until death do you part,” which would involve at least one of the two parties not waking up at all.

I still don’t see their marriages as anything that I would wish upon myself. What I wish upon myself is an independently wealthy deaf mute supermodel who will support me, feed me, sex me and keep the “f” quiet.  She could let the other letters of the alphabet make all the noise they want but that “f” is just such a blabbermouth!

I would also want both of us to be committed to something even beyond each other, for if you are only committed to each “other,” the next step is to be committed to an asylum. But if you are committed to Love, to Truth, to the expression of Creativity, Joy and Self, then, on some level, it doesn’t matter who the “other” is—both of you are just there enjoying Love, Truth, Creativity, Joy and Self and it is gravy that there is an “other” body there with which to share it.

Otherwise the honeymoon will end, hormones will dry up, penises will lose their vigor and little idiosyncrasies that you once found cute will now be grounds for you to fantasize about the other’s “death doing you part.”

It sounds like New Age cheesedome, “It’s all love! We’re all love! Let’s make love!” but I honestly think it is more than that. Unless you make a commitment to LOVE more than you do to the concept of loving an “OTHER,” you are diving off the high board into a pool with no water and you will either have to be prepared for a life of paraplegicism or misery or both.

“But what about those couples—like your parents—that ‘make it’?” This will probably sound unfair but I think that the only thing most married couples “make” are babies. The rest is survival but not thrival. And those who convince themselves they are, in fact, happy are sleeping at the wheel and only “death do them part,”—meaning their death—will open their consciousness to grasp the limited perspective that they had believed to be expansive.

At times I wish for this level of unconsciousness for myself. I’m sick of seeking Truth, seeking Self, and just want to have some basic happiness that isn’t so fleeting. And at times the God of Atheism grants me this wish: like when I have been making love with Ogre and it is not just about physical pleasure but about connecting to something deeper than our genitals. In those few and far between moments, life seems to make sense and I feel truly at peace. Other than that, my life is bursting with misery and I might as well be married.

But when Ogre and I get out of bed, the insecurities, the resentment, the ball-busting and the fights are picked up just like our clothes, to be worn as a covering to naked LOVE…and this has become an unbearable burden to me that has made even my bed no longer a safe haven, for it is hard to lose oneself in love when you know misery is hiding just around the corner with a pipe and is planning on braining you.

49 years. Wow! I wonder what that level of commitment for another even feels like. Through the countless struggles, perhaps there is a sense of peace knowing that you have found your partner and neither one of you is going anywhere, through changes in waist sizes, to graying of hair, to forgetfulness, to health challenges, through even disagreements and arguments…until death do you part.

“When love became the lord of my life, I became quite fearless.”

—Living With The Himalayan Masters by Swami Rama (p. 4)