Beyond Mountains, More Mountains

-Vedic Texts, from Charles & Caroline Muir: Tantra, the Art of Conscious Loving

What I can’t support

Living in harmony and balance seems impossible in New York City. It’s an active practice. If my aura isn’t full and my boundaries aren’t seamless, the values of the city will start to permeate. In New York City’s defense, there is clarity in its identification with its values: it’s the city of conscious assholes. In the service of keeping my aura clean, here are my rejections:

• That I need to prove myself to deserve my joy.
• The Nuclear Family.
• Gender Roles: we are human before being defined as man/woman.
• Consuming more art than producing it.
• Ownership: gifting should replace buying. This is all stolen land anyway.
• Optimizing for time efficiency, and feeling bad if one step is slower than it needs to be. We all turn to mulch anyway. So what’s the rush?
• Identifying with only one career: I can be an engineer or an artist depending on the moment.
• Being in romantic love with only one person at a time.
• Having my sensuality and sexuality be permanently labeled.
• That I have to live like a monk in order to be spiritual.
• The obsession with youth, which goes hand in hand with an ignorance of elders
• Putting the concept of nation before local, before the earth and her associates.
• The notion of Empire.

In an empire state, the capitalist capital of the world, where adultery is illegal, consuming certain plants is illegal, and draft-dodging is illegal, these are heavy. But change is on its way.