August 15, 2007
Greetings, Pleasured Sisters!
By the time you read this, I’ll be luxuriating in a week off, luscious time for gardening, meditating, and taking my daughter to the day spa for massages, facials, and pedicures.
I'm so glad y'all are enjoying the Pleasurefesto! In case you missed it last time, here's the LINK to the PDF download.
Bryan the webwizard has reformatted the newsletter. You can now print it out to read in your own sweet time.
May all your late summer ears of corn be crispy, sweet, and ripe-
With love and pleasure,
FEATURE ARTICLE: First, The Bad News
First, the Bad News: Pleasure won't protect us from pain, death, loss, or illness. Pleasure cannot inoculate us from our own pain or the pain of the world. Pleasure isn't a magical amulet we wear over our hearts to prevent them from breaking.
Opening our hearts and souls to pleasure guarantees that our hearts and souls will be open to pain, too.
But wait, all is not lost.
Here's the Good News: being a pleasurista allows you to surf waves of pain just as you surf waves of pleasure, neither clutching nor resisting. This means pain can move through cleanly and clearly.
Being a pleasurista also empowers you to find pockets of pleasure and happiness even when pain has shown up at your door.
The way of the pleasurista is not some Madison Avenue fantasyland of adolescent beauty, endless sunsets, and nonstop Crest smiles. The way of the pleasurista is about learning to trust the process of life, living open hearted and curious, willing to step into adventure and Mystery.
And romping with pleasure wherever, and wherever, she shows her luscious face.
Great theory, I hear you say. But how does that really look? How do we keep returning to, and remembering, pleasure, even in illness, loss, death, and the profound pain of both our culture and the world?
First, a couple of stories from my clients;
Blake subscribed to a flower delivery service during a painful divorce, treating herself to beautiful weekly flower arrangements (her favorite pleasure). After mediation finished, she continued to send herself flower arrangements once a month. The best part was that with menopause brain she kept forgetting that she had set up this automatic treat, so each flower delivery was a surprise!
Georgia decided to journey through chemotherapy as a pleasurista. Her friends gave her hand and foot massages during her treatments. During one chemo these generous pleasuristas gave hand massages to the four other patients as well. "It was like a love feast, and the high point of those three months," Georgia told me. These same pleasuristas gave her weekly pedicures and manicures.
Georgia told me these times of being cared for by girlfriends were like oases in the desert she had to cross. Knowing an oasis was coming soon helped immensely when the desert crossings—the nausea, the bottomless fatigue, the fear—got really tough.
And from my own life:
The Way of the Pleasurista recently sustained me during the darkest fourteen months of my life: both parents suffered and died (Parkinson's and breast cancer); my daughter left home; my homeland, New Orleans, was devastated by Katrina and politics.
I chose to find pleasure wherever I could. I allowed David (The Husband) to cook me scrumptious meals, even when I didn't feel like eating. I watched funny movies three times a week, finding that sometimes I could laugh even when I thought I'd never smile again. I wrote gratitude lists. I lit rose-scented candles and meditated.
Surrounding myself with pleasure and love and beauty reminded me of a piece of Buddhist wisdom. Grief is like a fistful of salt, they say. If you dissolve it in a cup of water, just try sipping it: what you have is some pretty damn gaggy stuff (my words, not theirs). If, however, you take that same salt and dissolve it in a lake, the gag factor plummets.
We can't make the salt go away. What we can do is to dissolve it in the biggest container possible. Pleasure helps us make that bigger container, a container made large with love, caring, and beauty.
Knowing how to dissolve the salt of your pain is one of the sweet powers of a pleasurista.
After 45 years on the planet, our losses pile up, sisters: children leave home, illness finds us and those we love, marriages end, and parents die. We can shut down in the face of so much pain (many of us do, unfortunately, for the rest of our precious lives), or choose life, pleasure, beauty, and love even in the midst of sorrow.
And the final Good News: opening to both pleasure and pain (in other words, opening to life as it moves through us) makes us so much more grateful for the pleasure, the joy, the happiness, when it shows up.
We post-45 pleasuristas can celebrate pleasure, and beauty, and joy as the divine gifts that they are. Let sorrow and pain come, as they most certainly will.
Let us keep returning, as we can, to love, and beauty, and pleasure.
PLEASURISTAS TALK BACK
Pleasurista Sally (SalliesForth@gmail.com) keeps a pleasure basket by her bed: creamy hand lotion, lavender-filled silk eye pillow, a tiny vibrator, favorite relaxing CDs, rose-scented pillow spray. “My basket can even make insomnia an occasion for pleasure!” says Sally.
Let’s share the pleasure: What lights you up? Send me a quick email and let me know what makes your toes tingle and your heart soar. I’ll share it here for the pleasure of all!
ABOUT Pleasure and Soul
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Contact me at Melissa@MelissaGayleWest.com
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This newsletter and all content within it is Copyright(c) Melissa Gayle West 2007 except where otherwise noted. All rights reserved. I encourage you to share this newsletter or reprint material from it in other electronic or print publications, provided a link to http://www.MelissaGayleWest.com and copyright information are included in the credits. Please send a copy of the publication.
COACHING SESSIONS WITH MELISSA
If you would like to:
- Experience deep and authentic pleasure in your life
- Create a life that sings for you, free from struggle and efforting
- Free yourself from damaging cultural myths about growing older that limit your aliveness, creativity, and unique genius
- Making a meaningful difference in this time in your life
- Deepen your spiritual journey in a way that reflects who you are now
- Reclaim curiosity, gratitude, and wonder for your journey
Read more about how you can benefit from private coaching with Melissa: http://www.MelissaGayleWest.com
If you're interested, contact Melissa at Melissa@MelissaGayleWest.com, or 206.427.1325
Melissa Gayle West
106 NW 104th St.
Seattle, WA 98177 |
