The Wedding, the Ex-Wife and the Kids

Lately I’ve found myself– sometimes standing in the living room, sometimes during a walk, sometimes while reading, sometimes lying in bed late at night– I’ve found myself reflecting on the happiness of my life, the contentment I feel, and the fact that every single day I feel a deeper connection to and love for my husband. Does this come with age? With experience? With a spiritual (as opposed to romantic) understanding of love? With unconditional love?

A second chance. It can and does happen. We had it, and we took it. And we’ve never regretted it. There have been times of deep and grinding pain caused by my husband’s former wife and his children. There have been deaths in the families. There has been a serious illness that threatened to cripple. So we have known sadness and frustration and challenge. But we feel more connected, move loving and more supportive after each of these times than ever before.

I was in my fifties when we met; he was in his forties. A life well lived always leaves marks; not all baggage is heavy. But second love is more realistic, deeper, more aware of its rarity. It requires patience, forgiveness and tolerance. And acceptance of what cannot be changed.

Curiosity, I supposed, and nostalgia, no doubt, led me to read some of the e-mails between my friends and me when my husband and I first got together.  Here is one of them, from me to a friend of over 30 years.

Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2003
From: R K Silipo
To: “DuRand, Le Clanche”
Subject: From the wilds of suburban Surbiton

Dear Che,

Been ill the past few days with a mystery illness that required sleeping
all day,  moaning at intervals, the sleeping again. Feeling marginally better today,  going to hear Jill Purce, a healer who uses sound, speak tonight at the Siddha Ashram.

We’ve been going to satsang at the ashram on Saturday evenings. It’s very interesting how they have structured the satsang like a Protestant church service, presumably to make uptight English people more comfortable. It begins with chanting, has a little reading and talk, then more chanting, and finishes with food being passed around. One time it was home-made Turkish delight, another  chocolate brownies. Just small bites, but more body than the traditional Host. It’s a nice way to spend two hours, and the young (he looks like 15 to me, but is probably something between 30 and 40) leader of worship is very open and friendly, and a transparently sincere and earnest seeker.

On their altar, covered with beautiful silks, are pictures of their teachers, going back several generations, various Indian deities, Jesus, something vaguely Muslim (no graven images), ditto something Jewish– very ecumenical. In their garden there is a lovely BVM statue, not sentimental or prissy like so many of them are. I quite like her. Other holy people’s statues in the garden, as well.

Don’t know if I told you anything yet about the wedding. We kept it very small, so it was just I’s  father and step-mother (his mother died about 6 years ago) and sister, and my friends Rachel , Julian and his long-time woman friend. We wanted the children there, and they were looking forward to coming, but their mother had other ideas.

The ceremony was very sweet and very brief, about 10 minutes. The
registrar had a great sense of humour, so we were chuckling a lot. But
the actual words we said with such depth and in such a reality as I
have never known before.  We were in the registry office, but I definitely felt the movement of the Spirit shoot through me as we said our vows. It was pretty amazing.

Afterward we went for tea at a place called the Original Maids of Honour tea room, in Kew Road, directly across the road from one of the main entrances to Kew Gardens. The place has been there, in one form or another, since Henry VIII’s time, and ‘maids of honour’ are a pastry created  especially for the old libertine himself.  The current owner of the place inherited it from his father, who inherited from his father, and so on, since 1868.

The weather  was uncharacteristically sunny and warm for the afternoon. The goddesses and gods were smiling on us, I’m certain of it.

Things go well here. Got my passport stamped a few days after the
wedding, so I can work here;  so have been poring over ads and sending
out resumes. The only fly  in the ointment is, of course, I’s former
wife, who uses her children like clubs to try to manipulate him. The
only comfort I take is that someday they will be very angry with her
because she kept them from the wedding and is currently keeping them
from seeing him on any regular basis. She allows an hour here or there
on a Saturday .

The courts here are at least 25 years behind California courts, where they automatically would be granted joint custody, barring any verifiable reason that one parent should be in control. I see a court battle in the future, but not very soon. We must settle into a house big enough to have the children with us first.
–
Neither charm nor patience nor endurance has ever wrested power from those who hold it. — Frederick Douglass

“Tantric Sexuality” – A Stunning DVD Course (Beginning Tantra)

©Ramona K Silipo. All rights reserved.

Over the weekend my husband and I

watched an excellent DVD beginner’s

course in Tantra. This is the first I’ve

seen (and I’ve watched many) that I

can recommend without major

reservations or qualifying statements.

The Beginner’s Guide to Tantric

Sexuality, written by and featuring

Leora Lightwoman and Roger Lichy, is a

good beginning for many reasons.

• The DVD is organized in six separate lessons which you can do in your own time, at your own pace.
• If you follow the instructions closely, you will have developed your own Tantric ritual to create your sacred space and to begin and end each practice.
• The exercises show you basic Tantric principles, and you learn by doing them. The focus is on doing and experiencing rather than theorizing or intellectualizing.
• The pacing of the lessons is good, giving plenty of time for you to try each element before moving on to another one.
• The design, direction and print quality are all excellent (unlike many Tantra DVDs and tapes I’ve seen which are amaeturish and seem to be shot by someone’s granddad with shaky hands). This is a beautiful film to watch.
  

The DVD is published in The Mind Body Soul series at www.newworldmusic.com

You can find out more about Leora Lightwoman on her web site, www.diamondlighttantra.com

Beginning Tantra: Gazing

©2008, RK Silipo. All rights reserved.

Gazing, the simple act of looking deeply and lovingly into your partner’s eyes for an extended period of time, seems to be very difficult for Westerners, and, in my observation, more difficult for men than for women. But it is an extremely important part of Tantric practice and should always be part of any Tantric ritual that you devise for yourselves.

As with most spiritual practices, gazing requires discipline– more at first. But once you’ve experienced it and have established it as part of your ritual, you’ll want more and more. At first, it might help to think of it as a preparatory meditation. You’ll be focusing on the act of looking at your partner for an extended period of time. If you used meditation techniques to keep returning you to your partner when your eyes wander, you can discipline yourself in the physical act of looking into your partner’s eyes.

Even after over five years of Tantric practice, my partner, who has done yoga for about thirty-five years and various forms of meditation for almost as long, still has trouble with gazing. His is a very active mind; he’s a lawyer, a teacher, a writer, an historian– among other pursuits. His mind is always full of thoughts, and he finds it difficult to simply BE, which is a big part of what gazing requires of us. He is not very physically active in that he doesn’t play team sports or handball or any of the fashionable gym or country club games for middle aged professionals. He takes long walks and does his yoga; that’s it. I’ve occasionally wondered if a big burst of physical exercise a few hours before Tantric practice might make him less fidgety during gazing, but haven’t suggested it.

My teacher says the only way to learn to gaze is to DO it. (That’s what Jia generally says: Just start doing it from where you are, and you can only get better at it.)

To begin, Namaste your partner and sit comfortably facing each other. Although the cross-legged lotus position is usually shown in the books, it isn’t a required element. (It is, in fact, NOT a good idea for people with circulatory conditions, for instance, diabetics, or people with hypertension.) You can sit in chairs facing each other, or sit in a half lotus (one leg extended, with the bottom of the other foot against the inside of the extended leg.)

Take several deep breaths, breathing in and out through your mouth. Then start breathing deeply in slow, steady breaths in and out through your nose. Fill your belly with air and release it slowly. Look at the clock and quickly write down the time.

Now, look into your partner’s eyes. LOOK. Don’t speak, don’t touch. Just look into each other’s eyes. If you think anything, think love for your partner. Keep gazing. Don’t look away. You’ll want to look away, but don’t! Keep gazing. The need to look away will be intense. Keep gazing.

The second you look away, look at the clock and write down the time. This is your beginning duration.

Do this exercise every single day, with the goal of increasing the time by thirty seconds each day. Write down your starting and breaking times religiously. Don’t beat yourself up if you don’t improve every day, but do make the effort to keep going a little longer each time.

This sounds mechanical because, at first, it is. Gazing is a meditation. It requires a quiet mind and a loving heart. Once you master the mechanics of it, the real purpose becomes clear, and you begin to feel the bonding that happens while you gaze.

Beginning Tantra – Woman is Served by Man

Letter to a Friend – Opening Heart and Soul with Tantra – Being with the Love of My Life

So much is happening these days, I can’t remember what I’ve shared with you already and what I haven’t yet.

I’s visit was like one long, deep meditation. We touch each other’s most secret, protected, wounded places and heal them even as we do simple things like taking a walk or eating junk food and watching sci-fi movies. Being with him is continuing revelation.

We have the most astonishing conversations as everyday chit-chat: the Kabbalistic Tree of Life, Druidry (he was a Druid priest for awhile), the Knights Templars, Stargate SG-1 (and other sci-fi, our mutual secret vice), which roses grow best in which climates, his daughter’s artistry, his son’s math wizardry, what colours we like best in a house. Everything comes up in seemingly unrelated threads, but, to us, it’s all connected in the depth of the connection between us.

The other night, we repeated in an instant message, that hilarious first act scene in Earnest, in which Gwendolyn says, “I feel it only fair to tell you that my answer will be yes.” This, because his dad (at seventy-nine) got married last weekend, and I was best man. He began to talk about what he wants our wedding to be like, and I said, “Well, I haven’t been asked, yet.” We get silly, sometimes, too.

Lovemaking is something else altogether. He’s been studying Tantric yoga with a teacher in London.  I’ve always been interested in Tantra and read about it on and off for the last thirty years. We decided within days of meeting that we want to practice Tantra seriously. That first week we were together, we did, in fact, ask the Goddess/God to be with us in lovemaking. I wouldn’t have believed what a difference that simple intention can make in the qualities of lovemaking– a kind of fulfillment that is much more than physical satisfaction or emotional feel-good afterward.

I found a teacher and have been working with him for two or three hours about every two weeks. When I was here, we had two sessions together with the teacher. Even after only a few sessions, I am conscious of shifts in my thinking and emotions. It’s quite amazing. No talking, no dissecting every tiny detail of some past incident. Just breathing; deliberate, ritualized massage, chakra opening and connecting…. and blocks are shattered.

The breathing practices are the most astonishing to me. It is literally true that you can reach the pre-orgasmic plateau and hold it indefinitely by breathing in a particular pattern. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. Apparently this is a common astonishment among people who are beginning to learn Tantra.

The key element in Tantra is what first spoke to and attracted me: In Tantra, the woman is served by the man. The feminine creative power is revered. Men and women are equal in the eyes of God/Goddess, but man’s role is to honour, protect, serve the woman. In the different lineages (oral tradition, which Tantra was until the nineteenth century) there is greater or lesser emphasis on this aspect, but in all, the feminine is highly valued and served by the masculine.

When I showed Hysterics* to I, the first words out of his mouth when it ended were, “I want to meet her.” One of his oldest, closest friends is  a little (under five feet tall), pushy, highly intuitive, eighty-two-year-old lady. He’s known her since his Cambridge days and adores her. Besides his children, she was the only person in his life that I met during my first stay with him. That’s the thing about him: he loves women and does a lot to nurture his own feminine qualities. But then the boy stuff comes out in very funny, charming ways.

©2007, RK Silipo. All rights reserved.

*Links for the play, Hysterics, by Le Clanché du Rand:
www.dramaticpublishing.com/AuthorBio.php?titlelink=9230
www.womenshealthonalert/hysterics.htm