I Can't Live- If Living is Without Lesbians; I Can't Live, I Can't Live Anymore...!

“The ego’s goal is […] autonomy.   Its purpose is to be separate [...].  It is the symbol of separation.” 

                                                                                                   -A Course in Miracles

The ego is one thing, but it’s my monkey mind that expends my energies and sends me off on tangents.  I spend so much time assigning parallel tasks, and then it comes back with these brilliant ideas that are way more interesting than whatever is going on in my world.

               

                “We harvest the sweet potatoes from the fields next door…”

                “We coat sand to crack the earth…”

                “We distill alcohol...”

Actually, this stuff is pretty interesting.  My early days in manufacturing allow me to like processes,watching disparate parts make something useful.  The other day I was watching a video that our team created for a grocery store distributor.  I welled up a few times while these fit but sweaty young  men raced pallet jacks to stack goods.  Together, humans make it all work and inadvertently meet each other’s needs.  What would the world be like if we all won the lottery?  Who would make my 1/2 Caf, Skim, heavy froth, upside-down Caramel Machiatto?  Who? One of the other millionaires? I don't think so.

In the meantime, this is what my monkey mind hears:

               

“I hate when my mom puts marshmallows on the sweet potatoes unless they get that crispy carbon coat like when we were on the beach and made a trash can of hurricanes.”

The truth is— it’s not my ego but my monkey that separates me from my pursuits. It's like a beacon, always scanning the perimeter and looking for things to get into.  It's the reason I find reasons to be embarrassed about being gay.  Unfortunately, I’m a bit of an empath, so it picks up on other people’s energies and I briefly borrow their homophobia. Being a pseudo-psychic lesbian can make a person say things that sane people don’t say.  And, it’s my ego that saves me from making a fool of myself.  It has integrity. 

The Molotov cocktail is perfectly stirred whenever my monkey mind seduces my ego.  Logic races against the clock like the almost-hero in "The Hindenburg."  It must turn back the hands of time and separate the parts of “us” before the bomb explodes.

Thinking of this idea—that the ego is separate—makes me realize that my monkey mind is separate too.  I think the author of the Course of Miracles (who was heavily influenced by “the Voice” and a man with a PhD from a formidable institution) got it wrong.  There are lots of mes who are doing lots of things. So, I have to disagree with the quote, but I often disagree with scriptures written by humans when they don’t proof their pudding.  Truth has to be sound, I say. 

“Ego is not an enemy to be broken or demolished […].  We don’t want to get rid of the ego, we want to soften it, make it porous and receptive, so information, thoughts, and compassion flow in and out.”                                    -If the Buddha Dated

This sounds nice and it makes more sense to me—assimilate the ego—, but the title of the chapter is “Be Guided By Spirit, Not Ego," and she spends more time on the “rigid ego” and “inflated ego” than the healthy ego.  I have to say, I think she’s speaking from the popular position which is pound the ego.  Worse, I think she’s derailing from her message—which overall is great throughout the book—for the purpose of introducing a concept that was birthed by a man who has a completely different world view than most people on this planet.  If everyone has an ego, mine is different than Freud’s.  (I would like to strongly encourage all the ladies to take their ego out for a walk, once a day and get to know it, find out what it's got cooking.)

Maybe the people who are outspoken about pounding the ego have egos that need to be wrestled like a 100-foot python that’s wrapped around and ready to swallow.  If that’s truly their problem, I say pound it into submission and get its attention.  But, for me and for most lesbians that I’ve met—even Bear when she has that wooing confidence—, we don’t need to pound any part.  In fact, I would say that we need to invite the personalized ego out and say, “I’ve missed you old friend, and I’m sorry that I didn’t listen—since, ummm, 6^th grade—when you said I was smart enough to be a rocket scientist, or doctor or lawyer.”

I’m stoked that I’ve had >300 hits in 1 ½ weeks; but, I’ve only had a handful of comments and I think that 90% of the comments are from non-lesbians.  (That’s a words you don’t hear often!)  I had to ask my non-lesbian Dim Sum friend (who still doesn’t have an alias) if she thinks lesbians have been conditioned to not contribute to public opinions.  Maybe we’ve done such a good job as females, minorities, and slanderously-labeled degenerates that we’ve learned to not speak first or to not speak at all.  I hope this isn't true.  Lesbians have much to offer the world.  Most of us live in predominantly female groupings, so we’re more in touch with our Goddess nature than heterosexual females who continually swap energy with males. Is that a stretch?

I heard a statistic once that Lesbians and Gays make up 50% of the health care industry.  That’s a ludicrous statement but it’s probably a higher percentage than the 5-10% of the population which is our statistic. So, I Google’d “What percentage of…” and am offered a list of options.  I continued with, “What percentage of lesbians…”  Nothing.  Google offered nothing.  That’s not right.  We should have at least 1 statistic on Google—just one.  

It would be good if feminine power could manifest, and influence collective thought more often.  Let’s empower our dormant and/or discarded egos, pick something that is unique to our minority, and populate this question for Google.  Where should we start?

We have much untapped time, love, tenderness to offer the world.  So, when you're out with your ego in the park or mall, look around and ask, “What percentage of lesbians can the world do without?”