May Podcast 069 - Performing, Consent and Active Participation

Jun 1

Written By

Rope bondage is edge play, but so is being on a stage. Lee explores the differences between being professionally on stage, performing for our partners, performing for the dungeon and performing for ourselves in this week’s podcast. Are you playing as children do in your sexual self-discovery, having connection encounters, or doing the deep work of the soul? Let’s look at the differences between what we thought we consented to and how we consent in the moment, and how you too can be more of an active part of your own life.

Announcer:
BDSM and Non-Standard Relationships, Power Exchange And Polyamory, Sacred Sexuality And Fetishes, as well as Simply Fun Kink.

You're listening to The Erotic Awakening Podcast Network.

Welcome to The Passion And Soul Podcast, an exploration of personal and interpersonal desire, faith and connection.

Your host, international sexuality and spirituality author and educator, Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com, will take you on a sultry and intellectual journey through the soul of intimate experience.

Take a moment and breathe deep, and get ready for an adventure.

This podcast is a chance to glimpse into the ever increasing diverse world of alternative life.

The Passion And Soul Podcast is intended for mature audiences.

If you are offended by adult topics or prohibited by law, we recommend you stop listening right now.

Lee:
Hello, fellow adventurers of sexuality and spirit, and welcome to the Passion And Soul Podcast with Lee Harrington of passionandsoul.com.

I am full of travel and complex realities right now.

My trip to Shibaricon, which I talked about Shibaricon a little in our last podcast with Murphy Blue, was a good event as far as the classes I went to and getting to meet some amazing presenters and performers from Japan especially, but from all over the United States and Canada as well, and getting to bear witness to Baraka from Vienna, who was fantastic in his playful performance with his partner where he was an evil, clown-like, mischief creature who I expected to be on Vaudeville's stage, teasing her back and forth across the space, sometimes blindfolded and sometimes not, pulling a rope here and a rope there as she smiled and laughed.

Or seeing Aiko, the tiger girl, doing her aerial performance stage at Club Kimbaku as she giggled and smiled and stripped out of one of those Japanese big fluffy suit kind of pajama pieces down into her sexy garb between flying around in midair.

And I swear Psycho Kitty, our MC for the weekend, almost lost his kitty loving mind seeing her perform and flip around because she was beautiful and delightful.

But the real moment of beauty for me when it comes to the performers was Nawashi Kanna.

I first saw Japanese rope bondage style, like that style of stuff, when I got into the scene in 1996.

And it was really enchanting.

And I found myself looking at bondage mags and sharing them with various people.

But what struck me was these moments of dishevelment and quiet beauty.

And Nawashi Kanna on stage, I felt like I was looking at one of those magazines.

I was reading through SM Sniper, which was one of the big ones at that time.

I'm not sure if they're still in production.

I used to have a huge collection before I sold it off after I was moving out of Portland, Oregon.

But I felt like I was reading through one of those magazines, but it was 10 feet away from me because I made a choice with my partner Butterfly to sit in that front row down on the floor and see it all right up close.

See it all right there.

And we were so close to the stage that we saw the ropes slowly slipping away from the model's body that I saw her quivers of lips and a strand of hair falling here or there that we could see how the beauty had been created and was being undone, that she was undone, that this beautiful genderqueer performer who was on stage who uses the pronoun he but dances between these gendered spaces when I asked what pronoun do they prefer and they're a friend of the translator or somebody who had spent time around them said, well, the word translates as she-male.

They use she-male as their gender but use he most of the time but will work with what you use.

And here is this beautiful she-male on stage slowly untying this present, this package, tucking one piece of the kimono up into the rope as she swung uncomfortably on one side and you can see her buck from time to time.

And I felt like I was watching the magazines.

Was it as intriguing, as entertaining as Cannon and Tifereth or more specifically Tifereth and Cannon the night before in their piece where she was a nun begging not to be corrupted by the devil as he handed her an invitation form to be an active participant at Shibaricon.

It was hilarious and beautiful and straining and physically captivating as you could see how much she was challenged by the show.

But, and it wasn't that kind of entertaining, but Nawashi Kanna did have this elegance to him, this beauty.

One of the shows, however, that Sunday night was at Club Kimbaku, like I said, which was produced by the folks down in Australia, they, from House TV 8.

There was one performance that night that the performer, the model who was being used in production with the performer, it was a professional performer who was quite skilled.

And I'd seen them perform before, very, very good at what they do.

But the model who was working with them, their performance partner, was someone newer to the stage, had played a fair amount, knew what pain they could take, but it was new to a stage.

And you could see where they were struggling at places.

Apparently, Dunter, who was one of the teachers that night from Canada, that weekend at Shibaricon from Canada, they had said in their predicament bondage class that in predicament, it is the top's creativity vying against the bottom's pride or will.

And on stage, the model was struggling.

There was a time when they were being handed a bullwhip.

And having been hit by the bullwhip and they were handed the bullwhip afterwards with the clear information, even though we knew as the audience, at least I knew, that the performer was from Japan and spoke some English, but not very much, understood yes and no, but did not have, you know, had to work with a translator for deep in-depth negotiation, which there had been.

But on stage, something different happens.

There is an energy, there is a flow, there is a go.

And they were using this whip as a form of consent.

Hand it back to me and you are saying yes.

Do not hand it back to me and you are saying no, no more.

And yet the model, the performer who was working with her, still handed the whip back, even though we as an audience can see, could see that it was beyond what she had expected, perhaps what she had negotiated for, technically, but not what her body was ready for.

That on the third or fourth stroke, as it hit her full force, not just with the tease of a cracker, but it wrapping around and snapping against her body, the lash cracking and digging in, we could see her drop to the floor, shaking and quivering in such beauty, but not in the way that brought her a deep smile, the way that was moving through your will, moving through her own pride, and making that internal debate, do I keep going?

And yet she kept going.

She kept doing.

Did they smile afterwards?

Did they reconnect?

Did they spend most of the weekend together and debrief and connect and become close?

Yeah.

Yeah, that performer in that model did.

But from an outside viewing perspective and from even within the concept of what is negotiation, it caused me to think.

There had already been a debate and discussion happening around the concept of what is a bill of rights for models especially.

Because when you are on stage and the music is blaring and there's a huge audience and you have to fill those 10, 15, 30 minutes of showtime, it's hard to tap out.

It's hard to be done.

It's hard to be finished.

It's hard to know exactly what is going to be happening.

And yet you are supposed to fill that time.

I've had times where as a model, I have deeply struggled with the physicality of being pierced or being pulled in all directions.

And in my mind, I am like, okay, I'm not dying.

But wow, this isn't what I signed up for.

I've had times where I am flying in midair and would I have potentially in a play situation said, sir, I need to come down.

Can we do something different?

Yeah, but I'm six feet in the air.

They can't see me.

Even if they can see me physically, the winch is happening and we have a musical cue and can we get me down?

Rope is dangerous because even if I say a safe word, we're not finished.

Even if I cut the ropes in a given moment, we're not finished.

It's not like a single tail or a flogger where we are finished in this moment.

Ropes are edge play, just like chemical play.

If I have had Tabasco put on the delicate parts of my body, even if I say stop and even if at that moment I shove my dick in a container of sour cream to try to have it cut down, hey, don't laugh.

It does help.

Because I know.

Even if at that moment I say I'm done, I'm not really done, am I?

I have time I have to navigate and negotiate through.

I have to deal with it.

And so it is in rope and in performance we add on to this.

Experienced performers, if I had been in that bottom's shoes, I might have taken the whip and I didn't want to feel shame and I knew that there was another period of time before the show was done.

I might have, when handed that whip, gotten down on my hands and knees and crawled with the whip in hand, ass in the air, slithering to provide audience titillation and to drag on the time.

I might have slithered down to their boots, kissed their boots and set down the whip on the ground, came forward and perhaps then bared my neck to give an idea of why don't we turn this into a biting thing or put my hands behind my back or in front of me saying, no, please tie me again while mouthing where the audience cannot see.

Please anything else.

I could communicate in those ways, but a new performer doesn't have that.

And when paired with someone who perhaps doesn't have something else in their back pocket, there becomes two different levels of discussion here.

Inexperienced performers on either side and pride.

But also, what else do you have in your back pocket?

When we choreograph a scene, whether that is an on stage performance or a scene in our bedroom, thing A will happen, then thing B will happen, and then, say, activity C will happen, there are pieces that we're not giving ourselves for opportunities, positively, and if things go sideways.

Now, if we're on stage, that is one thing.

But when we're in the play space and we expect it to be like that performance, we are expecting our partners to have negotiated through everything ahead of time, and we're just going to tough through whatever happens, that is very different than performing for our partners, or that becomes a performance for our partners, or a performance for an audience, and perhaps not necessarily a scene.

Am I having a scene in a theatrical sense?

A scene is a piece on stage with a beginning, a middle and an end.

A scene of a play.

Are we playing together as children, or are we playing as if being performers on a stage?

Both are valid choices, but they're very different experiences.

Are we playing as children allows us to take everything in our sandbox, in our bat belt, and just see what happens?

Let us play as children do.

Remembering, of course, that some children are cruel.

Some children are not sweet, and some children are not kind.

Some children are dark and have tastes that range from stealing your truck to wanting to build one from scratch, from wanting to share, to maybe saying, I don't like trucks at all.

You're gross.

To, I don't like trucks, but do you want to play with my dolls?

Or, I don't like trucks, but you can play with your truck next to me, and I will play with my dolls, with no attachment to what genders might be there.

Now, if we are in an encounter with a partner in perhaps our bedroom, there might be a difference between, to consider between each type of play we are doing, or are we doing intimate work of the soul, or are we looking for tools and opportunities to connect with those that we cherish, those that we love, those that we adore.

Is this a cherishment encounter?

Is this an intimacy encounter, in which case what is intimate to the person that you are with?

What is the point of this experience?

But this is different than being on a play, being on a stage, being in performance mode.

If I am performing for a room, does my partner know that?

Did we all sign up for this, and do we all know what we mean when we say, no, I can take an intense whipping?

Do you mean a whipping with a slow warm up, a build up of potential, kisses?

The leather barely touching the flesh, goose pimples popping up against the skin, a moan escaping, a groan erupting from the hips, moving up through the spine and escaping through the throat, that I can see your calves tense up and your body thrown back into mine before the lash hits harder and harder and harder, and I build until now.

Now, or are we not doing that at all?

Are we aware that this will be a full force experience from the very beginning, that this is a buckle up and in for the ride, six hit strikes against the flesh until I buckle my knees going down and I will be hit as long as I stand?

Consenting to a whipping is very different than consenting to a whipping.

And add a stage to it.

I have consented to providing audience to the stage.

Now, is there entertainment that is available through giving care?

Absolutely.

But there is also an agreement that we have with those who are bearing witness to our performance.

On stage at that event, I had seen people all week talking about how neck ropes have a potential for being dangerous.

There is a potential that if I throw something around someone's neck and they pass out, that they could die.

And yet, on stage, I saw individuals who time and time again were throwing tight ropes, or ropes of some sort at least, around a partner's neck, cinching down, tightening down, or putting it there and having someone balance on their tiptoes, and if they lost their footing, they were going down.

I saw people wrists attached up to their throat.

I saw these things and was I titillated?

Was I turned on?

Yes, I was.

I acknowledge that my groin does not always agree with my sense of safety.

And do I acknowledge that different individuals have the capacity to make their own choices for that safety?

Yes.

Like safer sex, we are all making choices.

We all make choices.

And I've talked about that idea of choices before on this show.

Just like we as ethical beings have different structures of what is ethical.

What you find to be an ethical experience might not match my agreement.

What you see to be as a right and spiritual practice may or may not agree with the person next to you.

What I see as good quality work may or may not agree with someone else.

The number of times I see sex workers especially encounter this dilemma and this difference of opinion is striking and sad and understandable and harsh and upsetting all at once.

I get it.

But it hurts.

I own that it hurts.

When I see someone say, You are wrong because you provide pleasure in exchange for a dollar amount.

That your arms to hold and cherish and nourish that person.

No, you cannot ask for that.

You cannot do that for a living that will especially take care of your children.

You cannot do that because you are wrong or immoral because you want to keep a roof over your head in exchange for your time and skills.

Because the skills you offer are clearly not skills.

I get it.

We have different belief systems, but ripping someone down for their belief systems doesn't help them and certainly doesn't help you.

And so people make choices.

I get that.

But when we as performers are on stage over and over again throwing around dangerous, hot things, how do we expect our students and our audience to not go home and emulate what they see on the stage?

Now, on the flip side, we say, oh, we are performers like a Hollywood movie.

We provide entertainment.

If you watch Sweeney Todd, you don't expect your audience to actually go home and get a straight razor and set up shop where they are making meat pies, having slit people's throats and grinding them up.

We don't expect that, right?

It's the argument that is offered around a Grand Theft Auto.

It is the argument provided there that just because you're in a fast car driving over people and getting different point values for the value of their life, that this innocent is worth a different life than this evildoer.

It is the argument offered there that some say, no, don't, we shouldn't be using this as children's entertainment.

And others who say, no, it's entertainment, who cares?

Only that it's entertainment, it's okay, it's not that big of a deal, is it?

I don't really know.

I struggle with it sometimes too because it's part of the human journey to struggle with these things.

Do some cultures say, no, this is right and this is wrong, this is black, this is white, there are no subtle shades of gray, but I live in a world of and, and I struggle with this question.

I am uncertain of the answers here.

And so I sit with them.

And yet I saw here on stage that night, here it was in its starkest contrast.

I see some of the top performers and top educators in their field offer things that say, but this is what I do, and this is what is hot.

Consider ignoring what I've said.

Now, in some cases, what we say in our classes is some people make these choices.

They can lead to death, but it's an equation.

Okay, fine.

So be it.

But when we add this into a performance level, what happens if on stage we have a neck rope around someone and they do pass out?

Now, I own that when I have been on stage, I have done inversions with a not entirely tied off rope line spun and fallen while my head was upside down.

I landed on my shoulder.

I had somebody just off stage as my assistant who came forward to see if I was okay.

I grabbed her by the shirt.

I lifted myself up.

I kissed her hard on the lips and pushed her away and kept the show going.

Because it was my social contract with the audience that said, I am entertaining you till the end of this song.

But that's not why.

The why was also because, because this is an and, not an or.

The why was also because I was in a predicament scene.

Option one, give in to my moment of lack of skill.

Give in to that moment where I did not live up to the full potential of my skill set.

Because this was like 2001 or 2002, something like that.

I don't know.

Somewhere there, it was like the first Shibaricon.

And I was flying around upside down.

I think it was the first one.

I don't know.

Maybe it was the third.

Somewhere in there.

I had a choice there.

Right?

That is option one on the predicament.

Option two, stand up and make some shit up.

Just keep going.

I chose to move back into my show, pick up about 30 seconds where I would have left off.

And I had a reviewer in the audience come up to me later that night after I was back down.

From my room, a room where I had finally cried and told myself all of the dark things.

I'm a bad rigger.

I'm a bad top.

I'm a bad performer.

No one will ever believe me again.

Who am I joking to teach?

What am I thinking?

Why am I even in kink in all of the stories that unravel from there?

But in that room, I said I can think those thoughts or I can put on a shiny black latex cat suit and get my ass back down there.

And so I slithered into a black, actually, technically, probably stretch PVC or latex laminated fabric, something like that from Tanya Winter's or House Of Gore, somewhere in that range of stuff.

And Tanya's work is great.

And I slithered back into that outfit and I went downstairs having put on a strappy pair of high heels and I went back downstairs because I have a choice.

So that's all option one.

Option two, go on with the show.

And so we are in a predicament scene, folks, on stage.

If we treat our scenes like we treat our stages, we make every encounterment a predicament encounter with our own beloveds.

Is that what we really want?

Is that how we really want to be with our lovers and our friends and our connections and our hot dates?

Maybe.

Maybe what is hot for you is to tough through it.

Maybe what is hot for you is to see your way to the end of it.

Let your will struggle against your body.

Feel yourself pushed up against your own skin wondering, will I do this?

Can I do this?

Let me see if I can.

You become a scene against yourself, not a scene with your partner.

So be it, but own it.

Know it.

Know that that is what you are signing up for and that is perhaps what your partner is agreeing to.

Asking a partner, push me.

I'm not going to tap out here.

And yet, even in a performative scene, we have the chance and opportunity to tap out.

We should.

And so there is an opportunity on a stage as well.

Let me set down that whip.

Or take a moment to clear within your own mind, to stop it by coming up with something new and creative, perhaps of running away and seeing what new thing they will do if you react a little differently.

But it's hard when you're coming from a place of submission, when you think a stage, and I do not know the story of what was happening inside the head of that woman because she was beautiful and moving and all I know is that they had only met each other recently, but on stage they had a fascinating chemistry that was still playing out because they were new to each other and something does happen.

Interestingly, based on the chemistry and the history of two people, so it is with any encounter.

That hot date you picked up that night at the bar?

Totally different than the person that you've been doing tantric breathing work in a circle and you have eyed them and seen how they breathe and read their energy and said, yes, I would like to dance with you one on one.

Will you dance with me?

Is different than the person who has been under your thumb in service to you for the last eight years and you say, boy, will you dance with me tonight?

And they say, yes, sir, anything for you, sir.

Three different dances, three very potentially different outcomes and I do not know her story.

I will not pretend to know her story.

But it can be hard to know how to dance if you don't know the dance steps.

It can be hard to move on a stage.

It can be hard to know whether this is supposed to be a waltz or a tango.

That I respect.

There is no, quote, something wrong in a given scene or a show.

Something cannot be going as you expected, but it doesn't make it bad.

Perhaps it is even going wrong.

Perhaps even for you it might be bad.

Perhaps even for both partners, the words can escape and be challenging, right?

But there's always something there.

And so there is a discussion right now around bills of rights for performers and understanding consent in rope and really fascinating dialogues around what do we agree to and what do we do.

Do we fill out a form side by side that says, yeah, this is what we're agreeing to?

I've had times on stage where I have negotiated before going on the show.

I have negotiated again with that person, walked through the show, and yet been informed one minute to showtime, I'm sorry, we need to change this act.

Wow, okay, my name's about to be called.

We're going on stage.

What do we do?

And so it is with scenes too.

I remember having negotiated ahead of time, me and another top that we were supposed to co-top, this amazing person that we knew.

We had signed up, this is back when at Kinkfest, we had one suspension point in the entire play space.

And some people are like, wow, a dungeon with one suspension point, and only that or wow, that's so little, that's such a whatever, at a national level conference.

But at that time, awesome, there's at least one, we win, right, different time periods.

And I'd made agreement with these two that, yeah, this is what we're going to do, this is going to be awesome, two tops rigging one bottom, this is going to be so much fun, we got this whole vision in our head.

And, you know, our time period, because you had to sign up on a time slot, we'd signed up maybe even the day before.

And we get informed a few minutes before our time is to go, right, their other scene is starting to wrap up, that she can't play.

Because she got covered in nettles.

Consensually.

And I'm like, okay, that's cool, but yep, I can see how you don't want more sensory information.

Like I said, chemical play, no safe word really.

You can stop adding chemicals, but you're in for a ride for a while.

And so I looked at the other person and said, do we cancel?

And she said, no, let's do something.

And so I ended up self suspending and getting up in the air a little bit and luckily I was wearing a kimono and so like I was able to get up in the air.

And so the other person decided to lift herself in the air next to me and I lifted myself a little more.

Here we are hanging in the air, you know, doing this double self suspension thing.

And I said, and she said, you know, she said, gosh, you have a great view of your jandals from here.

If only I had a pair of scissors to cut off your underpants.

And I whipped a pair of EMT shares, emergency scissors, out of my cleavage.

And she cut off my underpants.

And I said, if only you had some gloves and lube.

It ended up being this double self suspension, midair fisting thing.

That was negotiation on the fly.

But that's because we weren't performing for anybody.

We were having fun.

Was it apparently entertaining slash highly confusing for the people in the play space?

Yeah.

But they weren't our audience.

But they were our audience.

It's a complex relationship when you play in public because people are watching.

It's one of the things that happens in a social contract with presenters, that there is a social contract with the entire event that says, even if it's not in writing, you are representing this event with the play you do, with the agreements that you have, with the fun you're enjoying, that, no, really, if you taught a safer sex class and say that you shouldn't have pick up play, you know, unless blah, blah, blah, or even if you're here with your partner, people don't know that.

And you've just been talking and teaching an entire class on that.

You should be walking your talk.

Well, actually walk it.

Show us in the play space.

It's problematic in some ways, but also a really good reminder that we should be walking our walk, not just talking our talk.

We should be the people that we say we're going to be, whether we're in front of a room or not.

It's an opportunity to actually be the person that we are.

And the person we say we are, that these things be in alignment.

For every person, this should be a reminder that when we are in public, it is an opportunity to remember our truths because we are excellent and we as individuals are amazing and we need to remember that we are amazing individuals, every single one of us.

And so with this, we get a chance to be beautiful and amazing and we roll with the punches and we change up our scenes and we change our performances.

But know that the person who's in front of you on a stage is performing.

It's a play.

They're not in a scene.

You are not glimpsing into their scene.

You are seeing them on stage.

Anytime you see someone on a stage, there are people in Broadway who are wearing those high heels and doing the show anyway, even if their toes broke on their way onto stage, even if they are currently bleeding.

On with the show, as it were.

Now, are there cases where this is highly inappropriate?

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And this should not be done.

We all have rights.

And sometimes producers of shows need to know that, no, really, they can't physically do that thing now.

I know you signed up for me to do a midair inversion, super flip, double self suspension, whatever, but I threw my shoulder out of socket.

You cannot send me back up there.

It is not an option lest you risk the chance of liability for me potentially falling from that height and dying.

And you know what?

I don't consent to that.

I don't consent to harm to my body.

We have rights as performers.

But all good producers of shows and emcees know that.

I love it when I'm an emcee, love it and hate it.

Simultaneously, these are not mutually exclusive statements.

When I'm given those opportunities for bullshitting, because that's what it is, artistic, beautiful story weaving is the same skill set as beautiful bullshitting.

Same stuff.

And being on stage and saying, I know you're all waiting for such and such, but you know what?

This is our chance to come up and have an audience game.

You make stuff up on the fly.

Or you look over to the performer who was supposed to go after them and say, hey, are you game?

If it's not the closing show.

Can't you switch it around?

Is there an opportunity for doing something different?

We can go on with the show because only the performers and those who have done stuff together really know the plot line, unless it's scripted play that has been done over and over and over again.

But in the case of most kink community or what not community spaces, so be it.

If you are a pagan musician and you are on stage and it's supposed to be a song you've done a thousand times before, but you know what the person you wrote that song about and you just broke up off stage or three weeks ago and you can't sing the top song, know what you can do?

You can go on and say, I know you love that top song and want to sing along, but you know that one by heart.

You know that well.

Go home and listen to it.

This is a chance for us to learn new stuff, lovingly said.

Now, some audiences don't take to that well, so other opportunities are start the chords and sing a handful of the lines and let them sing it.

Hell, I've seen bands like Indigo Girls do that.

I don't know why they did it, but you know what?

I think our audience sang with the mic pointed at us, not to them.

I don't even know if they were singing the words at all.

It was for Galileo.

I think half the lines.

And you know why?

It's because they have been singing that song since 1996 on stage.

At least maybe even earlier.

I think that's when Rites of Passage came out as an album.

Right?

They have been singing that over and over and over again.

And I don't know if they are sick of it, but I'm betting they are.

Because for us, it might be brand new because we've never seen it go girls before.

But they've been singing that song since 1996.

When someone has been performing that same sting or has been doing that same kind of scene over and over, saying, Sign me up for that ride, sir.

I want to do just what you did with them, sir.

Make me feel like they felt, sir.

Or, Boy, I know you can do this.

Boy, I know you have this skill set.

Boy, I've seen you do it.

It's different than, Let's do something together.

Neither is better or worse, but we do have the ability to either make something new out of it, to craft something beautiful, or to know that we can say no, or to acknowledge that we're buckling up for this ride.

So be it.

We're singing Galileo.

Again.

Or even before the show goes on, knowing that there's a possibility you're going to have to sing Galileo.

We're going to have to put one of the top five hits in this show.

Where are we putting it?

All right.

Two-thirds of the way through the show.

We're going to, as a recipe, we're putting one of our top songs, but to have us tolerate it, let's cycle through them.

Once every five days, we take each of the once of the five songs so that we don't sing Galileo every single night.

You don't have to sing Galileo every single night.

And if you're doing a one-off show or a one-off scene, dear tops, your partner doesn't know what the plan is.

Dear bottoms, even if you think you know what the plan is, you don't.

Or you have the capacity to be an active participant in your scenes.

The vagina is not an empty sausage tube that receives.

I heard that line recently and it hit to my gut.

It is an active participant in a sexual experience.

You are an active participant in your sexual experiences.

You are an active participant, bottoms.

You are an active participant, models.

You are an active participant, every single person listening in your life.

Be an active participant in your life.

Own where you are going.

Even if it hasn't been what you want, even if you didn't sign up for the package you got, even if it has sucked in life.

Because you know what?

Some people really close to me who I adore have been dealt some really bad hands.

But you know what?

They have chosen whenever possible to be active participants in their own life.

And step by step, they are making choices of how to be an active participant in their next step forward.

Because they have that power.

And I will enable them every step of the way to hold that power, whatever that looks like, whatever choices they make.

And so it should be for each of us.

Whether we are a performer, whether we are having a scene, whether we are casting a circle or a spell, whether we are falling in love, because even in the flood of chemicals in a moment, we can still be an active participant in our lives.

Every single moment.

Now, are there moments where life will deal you a messed up hand?

Yeah.

Are there moments where you have to fill the next 30 minutes with someone that you deeply dislike right now?

Are there times when a hurricane lands, emotionally or physically?

And the answer is simply survival?

Yeah.

Sometimes the answer, emotionally or physically, is simply survival.

But sometimes that active part of being you is taking a moment, breathing in deep and releasing and saying inside your mind, survive.

Go.

Even if it's for you, even if it's for one other person, survive.

You get to be an active participant in all of it.

And in the joy too.

Don't just take, and this is me proselytizing a bit, and I own it.

I own it that I want to create contagious joy, contagious participation in our presence on this planet.

Because that includes our joy too.

Yeah, it's another beautiful day.

See it, know it, own it.

The sky is blue.

Go, yeah, the sky is blue.

Wow.

And do I fail at this sometimes?

Absolutely.

It's a practice.

And you know why a practice is called a practice?

It's because you have to practice.

I have to practice every day of my life.

It's a practice.

And just like we learn to forgive each other, now mind you, difference from forgiving people as compared to accepting and acknowledging and having them haired us over and over again.

Again, go back and see the toaster episode and objectification episode.

But it's a practice, which means we get to practice forgiving ourselves too.

Practice forgiving yourself.

If you were the rigger who messed up and ended up hurting your partner but you didn't know it because they didn't tell you because they thought they were supposed to tough through it and be silent and you thought that they were going to tell you if there was a challenge, yeah, you get to make amends.

But you also then eventually get to forgive you because you're not a bad person.

You just were.

And so you were in that scene and you didn't tap out because you thought you were supposed to do through it and you ended up causing damage to yourself in this collaborative experience.

And now your fingers don't work for a while and it's a problem and you get to forgive yourself too.

We move forward by practicing these things and making it better next time.

Don't just do it again.

We actually get to learn from them.

A child learns in an average development of the human mind that if you touch the hot stove, it burns you.

And if you try to touch it again and it hurts you again, don't do it.

Right?

Don't do it.

Now, is there possibility that there are things that you were burned on because of a person and there's always exceptions, et cetera, et cetera?

Yeah, but after a while, that equation doesn't work.

There are some types of sexual experience that you just don't like and it's okay.

There are going to be certain types of, you know, spiritual or emotional exploring that you just aren't good at or don't want to do and it's not about the fact that you need to do more work.

It's just not what you want to do.

There are some types of therapy where people say, oh, you need to dive into this, you know what?

Maybe you don't need to.

Or maybe you do need to.

Right?

Own it.

Do it.

Be it.

Whatever it's going to be.

But know that you get to forgive you, too.

You get to be an active participant in all of it, including love and loving you.

I have the word love tattooed down my belly.

Love.

One of the dirty four-letter words of the English language and one of the many names of all that is.

Love.

Whether the word love means a forever with one person or love is that emotion you feel looking at a small child, or love is that emotion you feel towards the blue sky, falling in love for a moment with a passing cloud.

Love has a thousand forms.

It is a feeling with a thousand eyes and a thousand young.

Love.

It is a dark force.

It has a balance called anger or rage or jealousy.

It has a sister called beauty and a brother called delight.

And it has a cousin named sorrow and fear and hope and dreams.

Love.

And you get to love you too.

Now, is it all eco hippie bullshit?

Perhaps.

But, take it with a grain of salt.

Fonder it.

And see what works for you.

See where you want to go as an active participant in your life.

My name is Lee Harrington, and this has been The Passion And Soul Podcast.

You can find our information on passionandsoul.com.

And if you click on the audio button, you'll be able to find all of our information on other podcasts, as well as subscription to our RSS feed.

iTunes listeners, go ahead and go over to iTunes and subscribe by clicking in Lee Harrington, H-A Harrington, and you'll be able to find our podcast there.

You can subscribe lots of different ways, and all of the things we talked about today, the various events, some of the performers I mentioned, clothing distributors, et cetera, can be found over there as well in the show notes.

So thank you so much for joining me.

Until next time, stay cool, have fun, be an active participant in your life, and be authentically you.
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