The stripper pops her balloons one by one

The provocatively - or stupidly - titled Guardian article:

Strip clubs are the new normal – and that's a good thing

That young men are able to explore their sexuality safely and consensually is progress, not the downfall of the modern male

...came to my attention and after reading a few of the page comments I started writing...

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I write not as wit or repartee, entertainment or to have or voice an opinion so much as to embody a listening to the meanings and feeling of idea that is beneath the world we so easily and readily engage. In this way I would undress (deconstruct) the mind of its story - and if that appeals to you, you'll read a bit more and if not, you'll enjoy your story.

Fantasy, sexual or otherwise, is a private affair. A separating affair - that seems to be something it is not - otherwise it would be freely alive rather than using YOUR aliveness for ITS enactment. ITS fulfilment is like a drug, that hits but doesnt really fulfil and only needs repeating. The process of which hollows out or depletes joy and desensitizes feeling to ever shallower conditioned reaction regardless of the self-justifying mentality of the fantasy self that is being 'explored'. (This is different where the fantasy is in no way confused with reality - but the appetite for fantasy dissipates in true presence).

To use another for fantasy purposes who is in some sense willing to be used in exchange for using you sets up a mutual agreement that runs in place of honouring the true relational reality. (In context of a truly loving relational sense, all things - including fantasy - serve a different purpose of an awakening intimacy of being. Intimacy is not bodies - but oneness. To have the form without the Spirit is hollow show - but to have the Spirit will always have tangible effect - though the effect is not where the focus is.

Mutually using each other as consensual relationships isnt as innocent as it likes to think it is - for as soon as the Life in the other is not honoured, they are seen as a means to an end - and in that purpose, the mind is actually at war with the other so as to manipulate an outcome to its own personal agenda and will use the forms of kindness as a mask as much as it will use an overtly coercive intent such as instilling guilt or fear and taking advantage of the traction that that gives the mind of control.

Normal can be anything - deception, slavery and war and appalling inhumanity can be normal in that they can be pervasive and unchallenged.

If an addiction can be normalised, then the addict doesnt have to meet the dissonance of finding their perspective dictated by a coercive or tyrannous intent.

Ultimately, the exploring of a fantasy must realize that it costs Reality - and the Reality is infinitelty fulfilling in ways that are ever new and this Alive - and of which the little mind in its little private show cannot even imagine.

Everything is permissable to Reality - in that there is no limit on thought and action and effect spring from thought. God doesnt censor your freedom to think. But not everything is helpful to you and you (as we all) learn there are consequences implicit in every thought.

It isnt that there is a you with a free will perfecting your self (or not!) - but that the thought you accept and validate as yours by living out from it is actively filtering and defining your identification and in a sense, creates your experience out of a mutuality of thinking.

This deception or fantasy is dancing for you now as a sense of a reality that fascinates and distracts as if to become something or indeed escape something.

I watched a woman walking her dog along a beach once. the dog chased every single pebble thrown out to sea in utter futility - and yet avidly, with glee! The woman herself was bored - it went on out of sight without let-up.

Boredom must be one of the wonders of the Universe. Do you thing Angels queue to see? The power of thought is not as we think it - but as it thinks us. To put power aside like an old toy is to let love come out to play. Was there all along but I just didn't notice, recognize or feel able to allow.

So difficult for women to achieve equality?

The Global Conversation asked in

Question of the Week

Why do you think it has been so difficult for women to achieve equal status with men, even after thousands of years of humanity looking at this issue?


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The neglect of and disregard for the honoring of Life as the root of our personal and relational culture allows every kind of false or faithless thinking to enter and grow in our mind. With every loveless wish, a false promise of personal power becomes the forgetting of the power that is truly shared.

Our status or worth then becomes a matter of contest rather than revealed in true relationship and shared purpose. And relationships become a means to get from rather than awaken through.

The perspective that one views with, delivers the results that are experienced.
Such perspectives are largely invisible, in that we do not realize our mind and culture is creating the 'world as we experience it'.

The desire to achieve can indicate tares and wheat, for the desire to know and be known truly, is the Purpose of Being Itself - for such is the nature of love. In this desire we stand in and join with the Movement of Being - even if apparently outnumbered. But in reactive and vengeful search for justice, our personal status becomes justified and identified in victimhood, which gives its power to the aspects of its mind which it disowns and projects upon the world - and sees in others.

Status can be like wealth. If we agree to define wealth in material terms alone, then we can identify with poverty and feel victim amidst a great abundance of Life.

As a man or woman thinketh in their heart - so are they. To wake up to the power of this is to awaken to a joined or communioned being - whose nature is of a unified perspective and whose willingness is to see the presence of love in others (and the world) and to be the presence of love for others (and for the world).

The attempt to substitute for love with personal power has both feminine and masculine liability! And the wreckage of the attempt to use power or love as coercive intent has reflected a breakdown of heart and mind.

The willingness to extend a presently felt movement of relational honesty that arises only from being undefended to our own awareness -which is beyond our control - is the extension of trust and the foundation of true sanity. Such a quality guides and supports more than an equality of status, it reveals a oneness of Source, nature and condition.

The attempt to think 'answers' is only helpful if it brings us to a greater honesty of listening beyond thinking. For the thinking of a self-strategic protection has become disconnected from Truth and is merely expressing fear - whether with force or with guile.

Thousands of years might ripen the insanely complex deceptions of the mind to bring its foundations up to the surface to be reevaluated instead of hidden.

Why is it so difficult to question or inquire as to the true nature of the experience of a human life and world? Because the distractions of the human experience are compelling, complex and designed to keep unwanted awareness at bay!

Now I might have asked the question the other way round; " why has it been so difficult for men to achieve equal status with women? - etc".
Because there is in the feminine, that capacity to yield and embrace, that the masculine is lost without. For the power of extension is not independent except in fantasy. Unless we yield to Life, then the Movement of the Qualities of Life will not be embodied in our thought or relationships.

To see the Life in each other takes a real willingness to disinvest of the games of power that we are all unconsciously inheritors and co-creators of.

Any attempt to fix the problem in terms of the problem will tend to reinforce the reality of the problem. Ultimately the problem is always a failure of communication; first within ourselves and then reflecting in our relationships and world.

To be restored to full communication is to be restored to a shared innocence and creativity of being that harmonizes without using power. This is a practical guidance within the entangled and complex web of conditioning and triggers that so easily shuts down any real communication from even beginning.

We are called to be still of our own thinking and listen in trust and desire for the movement of awareness that rises beneath the machinations of a mind of defense.

In Peace
Brian