The lens of the spiritual activist. Pt. 1

Many of us have been rejected by the Church, or the Church-State that has existed in the past as an oppressive force.  We are scarred by the teachings of Christianity as propagated by greedy politicians who sing hymns with us by day and steal our money by night.  Our searching spirits have been thrown into the secular world- a world ever changing but always fueled by popularity and commodity.  Our bodies and minds are marketed and sold at the expense of our hearts and souls, leaving our spirits to surrender or reject this lens through which to view the world.  And if we surrender to this system of spiritual denial, we are forced to view ourselves as either helpless victims of this oppression or solely responsible for all its consequences.  Our world cries out for our help but our only tools are a false sense of strength through pride and a struggling secular community.  So called social justice lies in the hands of a fallen race.

 

Disgusted with corrupted religion, many social justice activists, anarchists, feminists, and the like approach the world through nothing but a secular lens, given no tools in which to draw an example or figure where to start.  These well-intended individuals and communities set off to find solutions in a fallen place with fallen minds- having rejected the Spirit of the Church synonymously with the State.   Some of these activists with past religious lives have rebelled completely, drawing on substance abuse, hypersexuality, and codependence to offer an illusion of sustainability.  They look through the world through a lens of rejection, intoxication, and narcissism- yet try to help.  However, some of these passionate individuals recognize that truth seeker within them.  Their passion starts to light them up, piquing their curiosity in what it is that makes it all worthwhile, and their suffering is no longer a source of bitterness but drawn on for action.  These spiritual activists begin taking a critical look at what it is that has oppressed them, such as many women begin confronting the issue of surviving in a male-dominated society.  Through a secular lens of social justice, Christianity is criticized for its close relationship with oppressive figures of government, but then also for its its sacrifice through the Spirit of Christ.  Upon recognition of the true Church, one that has created a community based on the love and teachings of Christ, true spiritual revolution begins.

 

Happiness = Corporatized Joy?

Patient endurance kills the despair that kills the soul; it teaches the soul to take comfort and not to grow listless in the face of its many battles and afflictions.
+St. Peter of Damaskos

This is my biggest struggle.  The patience for the beauty and grace to come?  Sure.  I’ve wasted a lot due to haste, but I try not to spend too much time beating myself up now for impulsive decision making and being reactionary.  That turns out to be a part of the wasted time.

So, what am I doing now?  Making more plans, I guess.  I feel a pull that I’ve been neglecting though.  I can feel the shadow of my neglected spirit eating away at me like a cavity in my jaw, rotting away due to too much neglect.  I’ve been neglecting my spirit, and I’ve noticed that, keeping in mind the four tiers of holistic healing [physical, mental, emotional, spiritual], if I take care of the two extremes [physical + spiritual] then the cup usually fills itself.  My body is the mechanical makeup of weeks of neglect.  I’ve been hasty in my healing, turning to vices to fill the gaps in my heart. 

I’m in love and I’ve put that on the line for my sense of immediacy to happiness.  None of this has to do with joy.  Could I simply just be joyful to be around him?  He’s got such a beautiful spirit- could I share that with him and let parnership lie where it falls?

From an angle of dissent, I feel like we aren’t taught patience and that this is all simply a symptom of my modern, westernized cultivation.  I feel mechanical in my pursuit of happiness [doesn't it seem routine to us all by now?], as if I’m just learning what joy comes from.  Is happiness an emotional byproduct of a spiritual state called joy?  I should start at joy, right?  The light of my spirit..

But it’s just as easy to blame it on the state as it is difficult to take accountability for my emotional cavities.  I’ve fallen victim to the rotting monster of corporatized happiness- greed, sloth, glutony [once lust and vanity.. I've been there and done that, too].  And I’m exhausted with just beating it back.  I need to blind it with light.

 

my radical slut discovery

“Being in a monogamous relationship in a radical community has its struggles.  Identifying as ’sex-positive’ has uprooted a lot of insecurities in my partner, and we have had a lot of conversations about what this means.  When we first starting exploring this topic, his associations with it had a lot to do with being promiscuous, which is an association with behaviors of mine before we met.  But sex-positivity, to me, isn’t synonymous with promiscuity.  It’s more synonymous with consent.”

I started writing this many moons ago when I was in Denver with my sweetheart, who I am since distraughtfully departed from.  Still, I’ve been thinking about this so much.  There was a copy of the zine “Radical Slut Discovery” at the Pitchfork [the collective I was living in] which confronts the sex-posi view that usually slanders monogamy as inherently abusive and oppressive, sorting it into this dominant-superior dichotomy.  While most of the relationships with men that I’ve been in have followed this format, I am starting to think that it’s a ’straight’ format of ’relationship’.  I’ve never identified as straight, despite the majority of my relationships in the past being hetero-monogamous.  And coming out as queer had challenged me to think of these past experiences in a more critical way, but not of my own choices [which I'm proud to own] but of my conditioning within them.

I don’t think I need to be polyamorous to be queer.  Or be with another woman, or a trans.  Being queer for me is freedom to be whatever works.  Consensuality, then, is my sexual definition, because I’ve been with males in relationships that were queer as FUCK, and I totally fucking loved it.  I almost got married, and when we broke it off, I was met with a lot of relief from the trans-radical community and I felt the need to defend myself and the choice that I considered making.  Would I still get married?  I don’t know.  As a queer person, I’m pissed that everybody can’t get ‘married’ and would feel guilty reaping the benefits of an non-inclusive institution.  But I’m also a spiritual person..  All of these things were presented to a rather stand-offish community of polyamorous trans women who carried a sentiment of ‘back yr queer shit up, grrl’ when I proclaimed it as my identity.

A year ago, I probably wouldn’t have been able to.  Now, single and relatively abstinent, I feel pretty solid.

 

MANIFEST

In an attempt to reach more people than I could by intimacy, I start this blog, this catalogue of sorts of my life.  My intent is to inform, share, open discussion, and pursue my callings and let these things speak as an extension of myself, for what they are.

‘Spit Bath’ is a term that is used in duality- to express a maternal instinct, something that mothers have been doing to generations upon generations of children, as well as an inferred anger.  When we are compelled to scream in somebody’s face to get our voices heard they run a risk of having their faces covered in our spit.

This is a feminist journal, with my focus in health and well being.  I am also a spiritual revolutionary, and this ideal will manifest itself in my bloggings.  The Orthodox Church, many anarchist discussions, collective and indigenous life fascinate me, as well as a matriarch model for society.  I want to explore all of these ideas in my work, and let my life serve as a manifestation of the purity that can be found in all of these ideas.

I’m interested in healing and loving.