Five Tips on the Sport of Sacred Sauna Sexercise

I have a friend who claims that  his favorite sport is ‘sauna sexercise’. It’s probably my favorite sport too! And although gay saunas have their many detractors I have come to the conclusion that, for me, with the right frame of mind, the gay sauna is probably one of the best venues not only for a thorough sex workout but also for the possibility of some sacred sexual intimacy.

So how do I approach the Holy Temple of Sacred Sexercise?

1 I don’t go to the sauna expecting anything other than a better than average chance of giving love, of that love being received, and, as a result, finding myself in communion with another bloke and thereby with The Divine. Namaste: the deity within me worshiping the deity within him worshiping the deity within me.

2 I attempt to cultivate a simple acceptance of every single body present at any particular time. For me sauna encounters are an opportunity to engage in unconditional love. So, no approach is rejected and there is no sense of too old, too young, too fat, too hairy, or, believe it or not, too well hung! In the sauna I’m not looking for a movie-star, a trophy or a lifelong lover. I’m simply reveling in the amazing nature of naked male sexuality, much as I would be reveling in the amazing nature of arboreal energy in some ancient woodland. (A tree however is much happier to be unconditionally hugged than is your average bloke-in-a-sauna)

3 Personally I’m not big on hunting and I’m more comfortable being pursued. However if it seems that someone is intent on being sought I can dance that dance too! With hunting, though, there is always the risk of a rejection and here again the frame of mind is crucial. If someone seems interested and then changes their mind that’s cool. If someone seems to be wanting to hurt me with their rejection I can’t take that personally. Instead I get a chance to feel compassion for the mixed-up-ness going on for that person. I’m a big believer that the most important relationship anyone has, is the relationship they have with themselves. Anyone hanging around a sauna attempting to hurt others with their rejections is likely to be struggling. Worthy of a gentle blessing and a fairly wide birth!

4 I approach (and expect to be approached by) my potential sacred lovers in a way which is respectful of emotional, psychological and physical safety. So just as I would not wish to knowingly emotionally or psychologically unsettle a lover, I would also endeavor to safeguard their physical safety too. Erotic touch can be so many things within the realm of safer sex.

5 Finally,remember if you’re going to give yourself a treat, give yourself the gift of unconditional love because (unless you encounter me in the sauna) you can be sure as hell no one else is going to give it to you!

Wanted: Sexy, Virile Youth!

Senile, grey-haired, balding elder seeking relationship with sexy, virile youth.

Me: Arthritic, ageing and forgetful with varicose veins, piles and a hernia.

You: Confident, narcissus, articulate and intelligent with a mistrust of authority and a disdain for paternalistic platitudes. Your pulsating hormones drive you to copulate preferentially with young bodies and my old carcass will disgust you.

I have nothing to offer but myself as a living example of the magnificent tenacity of life. A gnarled old oak simply existing! I have no wisdom to offer other than: ‘indispensable wisdom is un-dispensible’.

You will generate your own wisdom by learning from your own experience and by developing a sense of discernment: the capacity to judge the consequences of your actions. For this there are no prophets, no seers, no gurus, no oracles to guide you.

You will do what you do to get what you want. You will do what you do to get what you need. You will do what you do to fit in, to gain approval, to soothe a sense of having been marginalised, isolated and invalidated. With discernment, however, you will sense the inevitable direction your path must follow in spite of these influences.

In the realm of queerdom, we are one, you and I. The hurt you push on me will cause you pain. Yet every one of your new learnings will spin a thread of the finest silk to cocoon all of our tribe. Together we will crysa-lyse the ugly frog-skin of conformity and cast it from our backs to reveal the satin smooth faerie-wings of our truest natures.

The Greek philosopher Socrates said “My friends, why do you care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation and so little about wisdom, truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?” He said this not as a wise man to the youth of Athens. He did not consider himself wise. He was speaking to those Athenian elders who proclaimed themselves as wise. His gentle ridicule of the pompous was a great entertainment to the young men who gathered to watch old Socrates in action. He was ultimately accused of corrupting the youth of the State with his ideals, found guilty at trial and was sentenced to a forced suicide death by self administered hemlock poisoning.

So, as GaySocrates, I say to those elders in our gay community who put great store by material wealth, social standing and assimilation: Where is your wisdom? Find and feed your souls!

And to you my sweet, tender youth I say simply: Be who you are and become who you are meant to become!

And when I die, which I surely will, and most probably many years before you, I shall have the final words of Socrates inscribed on my headstone.

The hour of departure has arrived and we must go on our ways;

I to die and you to live.

Which is better?

God only knows!

gaysocrates@gmail.com

http://www.gaysocrates.blogspot.co.uk

SEX, POWER, and DEATH!

I’ve been giving a lot of thought recently to my Dirty Little Secret posting. What possessed me to post it in the first place and then why did I take it down?

The GaySocrates blog is the fruit of having completed Julia Cameron’s Artist's Way 2 years ago. To those unfamiliar with the process, it’s a 12 week self-directed course which involves doing a bit of reading, writing 3 pages every morning and, every week finding something you want to do to cultivate your creative self-called the ‘Artist’s Date’. The purpose is to unlock your creativity. As a life long scientist I had been pretty much trained out of doing any non-scientific creative stuff and 2 years ago I’d felt that it was time for me to release my inner creative energy. At the end of the 12 weeks I decided that I wanted to write and this blog has been the vehicle for my writing output. An opportunity to put into the public domain what started out as a hypothetical weekly spiritual advice column for young gay men. Once the blog was up and running I was accepted as a regular contributor to Brighton’s monthly LGBT listings magazine GSCENE.

In order to protect the whole process from potential attack and to allow me to freely write without inhibition I’ve kept everything secret from everyone I know.- friends, family, work colleagues, my partner-everyone. For a gay man who had remained closeted until his early 20s, it’s been a fascinating experience to develop a secret alter ego. It’s a bit like reclaiming the secret part of yourself, which you sacrificed when you revealed your true sexuality to people when you first came out.

As time went by I noticed another process too. Initially when the work involved just me and the written page it was easy to write straight from the heart. It stayed that way when I first started to blog and believed that no-one was reading me. But then I started reading other gay blogs, started linking to them and had them link to me, got emails from some readers and started corresponding with others. Then I figured out how to install Google Analytics and was getting feedback about how many hits I was getting, I got drawn into the idea of increasing the blog’s popularity. I was interested in promoting what I was writing maybe more than the writing itself. I realized that with each communication, with each link, with each analytic report, my sense of anonymity was being slowly eroded and my ego was playing a much greater part in the whole thing.

That was when ‘Dirty Little Secret’ reared its head. Just a short, graphic story about sex in a gay sauna. I’d written the story as an exercise in creative writing and wondered about posting it. It didn’t really fit with the character of the blog but then again it was an aspect of who I was so why should I self censor? A couple of weeks ago I posted it in a fit of recklessness.

Once it was posted it didn’t feel right. I started to worry that it was an obscene publication which, if brought to the attention of the authorities would be found to contravene some obscure archaic anti pornography law resulting in me being prosecuted and ending up in court!

:-)

I also worried that in spite of my ‘over 18’ blog filter, the material could still be accessed by minors. I wouldn’t have left a hard copy version of ‘Dirty Little Secret’ lying around a family home, not even in a folder marked ‘Please do not read if you are under 18’, so why am I leaving it on a public site accessible by kids?

Lastly, I felt that there was too much of a clash between my purported aim to corrupt Gay Youth with Love and this piece of writing which might be seen as an attempt to corrupt them with lust- which was something I didn’t want to do.

So I’ve taken it down. It’s still available by email, on request, but no longer as easily accessible.

So what has all this taught me? There’s something in there about how, for me, as I move away from matters of the soul towards concerns of the ego then sex begins to play a much bigger part. I’m lucky, in that, as I get older, my ‘sexual imperative’ has become more of an ‘optional extra’. Nevertheless sexual concerns remain with me as an indelibly influential aspect of my ego. In my meditations this week I’ve been reflecting on those aspects of my ego that seem to have supreme and executive authority over me -unless, of course, I can spot what’s going on before it happens.

For me the big three are: SEX, DESIRE FOR POWER, and FEAR OF ILLNESS.

None of these aspects are ever explicit but they constitute a set of implicit features of who I am. It’s great that I have begun to recognize them because I’m now working on gradually chipping away at their influence. Funny too how, as my sex drive dwindles, the other two aspects grow to plug the gap.

My ego is so good at playing tricks on me. For instance, with the recognition of my ego’s desire for power, I have deliberately avoided seeking a management position in a recent structural reorganisation at work, happily conning myself that I am eschewing the trappings of power in order to weaken the pull of my ego. In reality I know deep down that I’ll be more influential as a dissident than as a line manager! Similarly I’ve been kidding myself that because I welcome death I'm kind of somewhat enlightened yet my preoccupation with aches and pains and potential ailments belies any sense that I’ve come to terms with my mortality. Maybe I’ve developed a kind of emotional detachment from life caused by or as a cause of my illness worries. So I restrict myself from doing a whole range of things because I feel a bit ill or because doing something might make me ill. Consequently I never engage in life to the full which then makes it easier to think- Wow life is pretty hard work-so bring on death!

My challenge with this fear of illness is to see if I can engage more fully in life regardless of what my illness worries might be. Having discovered this aspect of myself this week, I challenged myself to attending a 2 hour 5 Rhythms dance meditation with excellent effect! More of this next week!!

Dirty Little Secret CHAPTER 2 is available on request Email me -just convince me you are over 18!!