Gaia and Amorous Resources: What's Holistic about Poly?

Hi everyone!

This is Serena, a.k.a. Gaia, writing from Kalikalos, a holistic community in Kissos, on Mount Pelion, Greece.

This is a stop in my journey for two main reasons: wanting to become acquainted with the mythologies of my childhood, and wanting to bring the ideas and practices of poly-amory, multiple loves, to people and communities already attuned to holistic styles of living.

Here's a quick report from part one, an introduction to the relation between Gaia, the concept of a living planet, and amorous resources, resources of love that we can share amorously if we learn a little bit about what poly people do.

We had scheduled this intro for the Wednesday morning slot, on August 4, 2010, during the Family Experience Week, for participants in two campuses, Kalikalos, where I am staying, and Anilio, a nearby village in the same area.

It was announced the previous evening at a wonderful taverna dinner, where people responded with a certain enthusiasm. Parallel activities for children and teen-agers were arranged, even though we also opened the option for their participation too.

The next day almost the whole community showed up. We had prepared the Round House, a pretty summer building made of pine, canvas, and bamboo. Over twenty people showed up, everyone with their own dosage of curiosity and enthusiasm.

The conversation went very smoothly, with everyone responding eagerly. "When people mention Gaia, what comes up for you? What comes up when you hear polyamory? And, last but not least, the million dollar question: jealousy?" The presentation unfolded from the diverse responses the group generated. And at the end it was decided to offer another session, with bioenergetic exercises that help people experience 'compersion,' in little increments. It was amazing how quickly this group got the idea of what compersion is. It was a new word for them, initially proposed as 'the opposite of jealousy.' They came up with a parallel definition that compares it to the Buddhist concept of Maddhitta, or the joy of rejoicing in someone else's joy.

Individual coaching sessions were also offered, and one was scheduled right after the meeting. It was a joy to share my knowledge and experience with this brave woman from the UK, a gift to listen to her story and empathize with her situation and predicament. Often, the internalized idea that monogamy is superior is the real obstacle to the unfolding of a happy and free amorous life. I do hope that obstacle was at least temporarily removed from her mind, at least for the time being . . . . so that her path of personal and spiritual growth can naturally unfold.

So this group really gave me a sense of wider possibility: I do feel that it is my mission on this planet to open up all kinds of holistic communities to the ideas and practices of poly love styles. One of my two purposes for being here in Greece is now very tangible and real. As for the other one, well . . . it was so magical to mention Gea, or Gaia, on the very land where this concept was created, in times so ancient that it is sometimes difficult to find their traces on the land that hosted them about three thousand years ago. Greece has been colonized and culturally reorganized various times since, by the Orthodox Christians, the Ottoman Turks, and more.

Still . . . there was one participant in the group who is originally from Greece. She often functions as an interpreter for the English-speaking group with local people. When I mentioned the Titans, or first generation of Greek deities, that were not people but forces of nature that one would interpret, second, and revere rather than control, it was clear that she knew what I was talking about. She even gave us the name of Gea spelled and prononuced in Greek! I wish I could reproduce it here, but it will have to be for some other time, since I'm too ignorant to remember the letters of the Greek alphabet she used!

In any event, it was great to see that what I came up with in relation to Greek mythology made sense to a person who was educated in modern Greece. It must be real then, and not just a fantasy of yours truly. The day unfolded with people silently metabolizing the new ideas. Facilitator extraordinaire Dorota Owen showed great enthusiasm. One could observe the afterglow on people's faces at dinner.

And on this note, my blog entry will come to a conclusion. I definitely will come back to Kalikalos for more summers and more groups. I also highly recommend these vacations. The cool air of a mid-mountain village, a nice residence, a cozy holistic community, access to fabulous beaches, moderate prices and the option of offering services, a sense of family, and healthy vegetarian food. What else could one expect from a vacation in Greece?!

For anyone reading this blog, and interested in knowing more about polyamory and holism, I recommend my latest book, Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Discount buy here.

For those interested in my life as Gaia, the experiment that lead to the Gaian awareness I have today, I recommend Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves. Discount buy here.

Fianally, for those interested in fabulous holistic vacations in Greece, I recommend the Kalikalos Blog, http://kalikalos.blogspot.com, and Website http://www.kalikalos.com. Make sure you stay up to date on what's coming up and what they are doing!

Namaste,

Gaia,

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, PhD

author of Gaia and the New Politics of Love, a Silver Winner for the 2010 Nautilus Award in Cosmology and New Science, and of

Eros: A Journey of Multiple Loves, a Lambda finalist for Bisexuality in 2007

Is Polyamory Revolutionary? by Micah White via Adbusters

My comment and critique to this piece.  Why bi, ecosex, tantra, and fluidity make what we mean by 'poly' and 'orgy' different today from what they meant in the 1960s.

Interesting article. 

Emphasizes importance of love revolutions, or 'lovolutions.'

Argues that the 'orgy' was your staple way of being sexually revolutionary in the 1960s, 'polyamory' is today's way.  But what is polyamory and what is an orgy?  The very concepts of polyamory and of sex with multiple partners have changed since then.

Here's how Micah puts it:

"Polyamory is an outgrowth of the free love movement but instead of looking to the orgy as the model for rebellion it is the notion of a tribe that excites their imagination. There are many visions of polyamory, but the one that many find intriguing is a world where partners are not exchangeable, relationships are stable and promiscuity is often frowned on."

Read full article here 

I'd like to comment and expand on this.  I would object to the idea that today's polyamory and the 'orgy' or group sex don't get along.  Perhaps it's the very sense of what group sex is or can be that has changed, because we are more aware of the arts of loving via tantric practices and teachings, and because we have reactivated more sophisticated ways to be erotic, and affectionate, and sensual.  This is probably due to safety and health and the awareness that a free exchange of fluid is not always healthy for people, especially when partners are multiple.  

We are also more familiar with queer sexualities, and everyone is more in tune with being a bit bi and fluid.  This has resulted in a sexuality or practice of the arts of loving that is more energetic and nurturing, with more emphasis on pleasure and less on release, and in general more attuned to the yoni, the ying, and what women typically enjoy.

We are a bit more ecosexual, to put it simply, we are more aware of our bodies as ecosystems, and of how they synergize with those of our partners too. I'd say that's party the result of a general sense of fluidity in the cultural notions of what sexual orientation is, and that fluidity, I would argue, is largely the result of the ecofriendly intentions of the bisexual movement: the idea that we love people for who they are and not based on their gender, and that this love finds it own level of erotic expression too, if you let it.

For those interested in more on this, the new collection Bisexuality and Queer Theory, edited by Jonathan Alexander and yours truly, is now available from Routledge/Taylor and Francis.  Also, of course, this is discussed in Gaia and the New Politics of Love. Finally, I am going to talk about it at BiReCon, the research session of BiCon, the 10th International Conference on Bisexuality, in London, August 26-30. 

Click here for information and to register

 — Serena Anderlini

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Modeling Choice for Children and Grandchildren

In talking about poly lovestyles, the question of 'children' often comes up. "It's ok as long as only adults are involved, but what about children? Can they be 'exposed' to such things and still grow up to be sane and happy people?" Find out all about this and more in this clip. Hear the wisdom of poly grandmothers with two generations of descendants who are happy to have them be part of the family and respect them for who they are!

Here's another clip from the Double Book Launch on 6/22.  Enjoy and let us know what you think.  And for more info on it all, don't forget to order your copy of Gaia and the New Politics of Love!

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: Inventing the Families We Need

What is a nuclear family?  How did this type of family come into being?  Whose interests does this invention serve?  When did it become prevalent and why?  What is 'nuclear' about it?  Why do some people think it's the only possible type of family and/or the most advanced one?  What are new ways to think about 'family' that better serve the future of our species?

All of this stuff came up when Taj and yours truly were reading at Open Secret Bookstore, at the Double Book Launch we held on June 22.  We promised more details about it, and here we are!

People often ask me about families, and how they became nuclear.  In fact, many even seem to think that families have always been nuclear, that there's never been another model for what a family is supposed to look like, or even that there is something inherently 'natural' to families being of this kind. 

But what is 'nuclear' about families, really? Are these kinds of families supposed to explode, like atoms? Are they an invention of the nuclear age? Do they look like atoms, and if so, which ones? Carbon? Oxygen? Hydrogen? Uranium? Perhaps they've got some nuclear energy inside, in which case they should be handled carefully, right?  If they are enriched, they can become even more unstable, and that can start the process of atomic fission, where they splinter into little particles.  In this case, they fall under George W's special category, 'nukular,' remember? The famous word that egregious president could not pronounce? 

In any event, and jokes aside, the nuclear family, explosive or not, is a very recent invention.  If we consider the infinite ways in which life has become organized in order to nurture itself through time on the face of our multifarious hostess Gaia, including all of human cultures and the cultures of other species, we find out that in the history of what we may call 'family,' the nuclear family is really a split second. Just a blink of the eye. And not the happiest or most interesting one.

The clip explains when and why the nuclear family became prevalent. What kind of paradigm it is part of, and why this paradigm no longer serves life in general, or human life in particular.  Nothing wrong with nuclear families. They serve a purpose. But to move into a Gaian future, the whole idea of what constitutes family must be placed in a much wider horizon.

Check it out!

Yours truly hopes you enjoy the video. Please help us imagine what the video does not say. What families can we invent to met our needs? Suggestions are welcome!

Families are about love, right? So a new politics of love is also a new politics about families, right?  If you're not sure what's political about families, find out all about it in Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini

Creating Poly Bestsellers: Reclaiming Book Sales Engineering for our Communities

Hi there again!

This announcement applies to action to be taken the day after tomorrow, July 25th.  It is related to Polyamory in the 21st Century, a book yours truly has read very carefully and recommends with high marks!  Here's why everyone who reads should get their online order in come Sunday!

For a number of years now bestsellers have been engineered by the book industry.  Lots of books get published every year: in fact it has never been easier to become an 'author.'  However, which books get into whose hands, who has access to them, who thinks they should, and who, eventually, get the wisdom of these books is another story.  With big conglomerates controlling a great deal of the book production and distribution, the public is often the very last entity to decide what's worth reading.  That's why the vast majority of people still believe many very natural ideas to be quite esoteric and radical and eccentric.  Like the idea that we humans can love more than one person at once and can do so in integrity!  Which is of course the very essence of polyamory and also a nugget of very ancient wisdom that has helped people whose love is abundant get by under all kinds of different circumstances.  

The so called 'social media' offer tools that help reclaim the ability to create bestsellers.  We don't have to do it the way the book industry does it, namely by investing big six-digit figures in expensive bill boards that use a lot of paper and destroy a lot of trees and induce false desire to consume what others consume too. No. We can do it digitally and communally, by focusing efforts on ordering online a certain book on a specified date.  The multiple sales made in close proximity send a signal to the digital system that a certain title is highly requested.  This gets attention to the title and author, who then get the advantage of being billed as 'best sellers' for the day!

That way the very notion of bestseller (that which sells best) gets redefined as something that certain groups of people prefer for reasons that are close to their hart, that reflect their genuine inclinations and commitments, their thirst for out-of-the-box knowledge, rather than corporate interests. This type of community action helps the book industry realize that all kinds of books generate interest among readers, even books on topics many big publishers would consider too 'niche,' radical, or marginal to invest in.  So all in all this reclaiming is a way to favor the general public with a book industry that offers a wider variety of products that respond to a wider range of interests and that presume a higher level of intelligence and decision-making abilities among book buyers and consumers.  

The time has come to activate this best-seller reclaiming system for poly books.  Deborah Taj Anapol's Polyamory in the 21st Century is coming up for its special day on Sunday, July 25th, which is also a day of very momentous astral coincidences.  So, let's all coalesce and buy our own copy from Amazon.com on that very day!

Reclaiming bestsellers for our communities is a bit like reclaiming land for sustainable agriculture from agribusiness.  Monoculture is a state of mind, as yours truly learns from Vandana Shiva, author of Monocultures of the Mind, among other amazing books.  It's a way to colonize our minds with ideas that serve interests foreign to our inherent needs.  In the mind, monocultures are just as pernicious as they can be in the fields.  Think of creating 'polycultures of the mind' as you place your order on the 25th.  You can do it directly from this website.    

Thanks for takign action.

Namaste from yours truly, Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

How the Wisdom of Love Transforms Gaia: On Being the Resources We Share

Friends keep telling me that people don't understand what I mean.  "She uses strange words," they say, or at least, "she uses words in a strange way.  Why does she do that? What does she really mean?"

"That's the point," I think to myself, very shy, very humbled, very timid, "making up new words, new phrases, using words that are unfamiliar, making familiar words sound new."

That's the power of words, the power of literature, if you will.  What I was trained in.  (Arhhhhhg, what a mistake to presume one can relinquish some ignorance!)

"These people," I think, "they really want it easy.  Not only I learned their language so I can speak to them.  But then if I use words of their language that for one reason or another sound queasy, they become suspicious of me.  There's no way to do right by them!"

"What's this fear?"  Fear of words.  One cannot be afraid of words.  Words are NOT things.  They only represent things.  Or do they?  Can words also MAKE things?  Can they CHANGE things?  Can they affect, transform, reinterpret, create REALITY?

Of course they can. All poets are keenly aware of this. Otherwise why would they spend time playing with words? 

So, a case in point is this video clip.  From The Wisdom of Love, a double book launch Deborah Taj Anapol and me held at Open Secret Bookstore on June 22, 2010.  It's a bit late to post.  I know.  Took a long time to figure, with us being a team of wise, wise, wise people.  So ancient is our wisdom that we're not all that familiar with latest tech stuff for social media. But we get it eventually.  And for this clip, we owe courtesy to Steve Hoffman of Oakaland, California, who shot, cut, and reduced for us.

So, what's the fun with words here?  Well, "RESOURCES."  People in ecology, in environmental science talk about 'resources,' right?  "Limited resources."  "Sources of energy that are 'renewable'," as in wind, solar, hydro: ways to create power that generate themselves again every day, that are commonly owned/shared.  That don't involve pollution or extinction of the source when it's most needed.  See what's happening with the oil spill.  Easy oil is almost gone now.  And we're ever more dependent on it.  While it's also turning our amiable hostess Gaia into an oven.  Ouch! I'm cooking! I'm being cooked!

So then, resources is the issue, right?  Why can't we BE the resources we seek?  Sounds Oedipal?  It is!  What happens if we begin to think of ourselves as the resources we need?  What if we begin to practice BEING resources for each other?

A whole lot!  Big shift in thinking.  Now we don't need a lot of resources.  We need to interpret each other AS resources.  And what can we trade that is, as Stan Dale would say, "free"?  We can trade LOVE, or 'amor,' or 'amore,' or 'amour' as those hopelessly Romantic, romance language people would say. 

Then we see that being POLYAMOROUS, being capable, by nurture, by nature (who knows?) of trading these AMOROUS RESOURCES with a whole bunch of people is NOT a dangerous perversion, is NOT a problem, is NOT a liability, is NOT a sign of being promiscuous or a misfit.  IT IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!!!

Yes, you heard me.  BEING POLY IS ACTUALLY A VIRTUE!  It should be rewarded as a free recycling system, as a national forest deep-ecology biodiversity sustaining nurturing ecosystem. It should be cause for being nominated for the Nobel Prize for Peace!

"But wait a minute," you must be saying, "is this for real?"  "Sounds like a trick to justify some wicked perversion."

Well, I leave the final judgment to you.  It's on the video.  Somebody in the audience at Open Secret asked "what's the connection between Gaia the living planet and open love, open relating?"

That's how I explained it!

Go ahead and listen . . . .

Then, if you like what you hear, you can get more info from the source of my wisdom, Gaia and the New Politics of Love.  This book was inspired by one who IS the pleasure he seeks.  Watch out for the book's new digital edition, coming soon.  Meanwhile, get your paper version and start practicing love's wisdom.

There will be more posts and clips.  The momentous series of events we held in Norther California in June-early July will be unfolding digitally as we post clips and snippets, with comments.

We look forward to YOUR comments too!

Namaste,

Gaia

a.k.a. Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio

What's This New Politics of Love That People Wonder About?

Could it be as simple as an ecosexual politics of love where Eros makes peace with Gaia? 

These wise women have it all figured out.  Find out from what they write and then lobby for their ideas with Obama!

Serena Anderlini-D'Onofrio, Deborah Taj Anapol, and Dossie Easton at Open Secret Bookstore in San Rafael, Ca, on July 3rd celebrating Interdependence Day as they outline the future of love on Planet Earth.

We will be back with more about this historic event where the future of love on the planet was outlines.  Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, ideas, comments, poems, rants, plans, critiques, strategies.  What's a new politics of love that would serve Gaia and us?  What does it look, feel, smell, taste like to you?  tell us and we will publish it on Poly Planet GAIA!

do you call yourself 'ecosexual'?  would you date someone who does?  if yes, or no, why?

'Ecosexual,' the new 'sexual orientation people use in personal ads, we learn from Annie Sprinkle, 'sybaritic cougar,' and participant extraordinaire.  Do you call yourself 'ecosexual'? Would you date someone who does? If yes, or no, why?

Annie Sprinkle, Beth Stephens, Cunning Minx: more love, more wisdom! 

We will be back with more about this historic event where the future of love on the planet was outlines.  Meanwhile, please send us your thoughts, ideas, comments, poems, rants, plans, critiques, strategies.  What's a new politics of love that would serve Gaia and us?  What does it look, feel, smell, taste like to you?  Tell us and we will publish it on Poly Planet GAIA!

And, don't forget to look up for 'ecosexual' dates next time you go out!

Namaste,

Wise Woman Extraordinaire, Serena