24 posts tagged “senior thesis”

I thought I had an ongoing series of blog confessions...but I can't find 'em.

Anyway...

Confession #3: whenever I re-read my thesis, the last page always makes me a cry a bit.  It's a good piece of writing, impassioned and genuine.

Through destabilization practice, Queer Dharma methodically churns up and chews through the burden of karma.  But what is destabilization practice?  Meditation, just sitting, can be regarded as a kind of destabilization practice: through repeat practice, you come to the realization that the central “I” or “me” who you believed to exist, is not as central, solid, or real as you believed, but is instead a process, always in transition, an approximation, a relationship.  However, meditation is the ground practice to which you must continually return.  Queer destabilization practice is a more intentional contemplative activity which involves exploring the boundaries of self and other.  The most visible and visceral of these involves desire and sexual intimacy.

-- from my senior thesis, page 32.

I realize that I cannot summarize any part of my thesis: it is itself a summary of an introduction to what will be a multi-volume work.  And therefore, I'm going to try to unpack this idea, but I will only scratch the surface.

What is destabilization practice?  Contemplative practices with the intent to disrupt one's sense of self as separate and contained, and to engage that disruption with mindfulness, and to integrate that disruption into an expanding sense of self.  It's a little teleological insofar as growth and change are held as intent, but it's more of an exercise and a process than a goal-oriented activity. 

Destabilization practice is not necessarily sexual in nature.  For example, examining and exploring my white privilege is definitely something that disrupts my interpersonal container.  Speaking the thought "I am a racist" and looking at how I react to that (viscerally, emotionally, mentally) does decidedly reveal the inconsistent and unstable nature of my sense of identity.  For, however open-minded and kind as I may like to think of myself, part of my dynamic of interacting in the world when encountering people of color is to Other them in a way that comes directly from my white privilege. Working with and countering my self-constructing and self-stabilizing (i.e. ego) beliefs, whether true or false, is part of a destabilization practice, and therefore can take a variety of forms.

Queer destabilization practice intentionally explores the boundaries of self and other along the lines of sex, gender and desire. Therefore, for the sake of the rest of this unpacking, I'm going to try to give a concrete example of destabilizing practice that is non-sexual and works with an ego belief, and then develops into an engagement of self/other along the line of desire.  It always makes the most sense to myself and others when I write from my own experience.

Polyamory: according to Wikipedia, polyamory is the desire, practice, or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

A burden of karma: Eight years ago, I made a sincere effort to attempt a polyamorous relationship with the woman who was to become my partner, and her then-husband.  Suffice to say, it didn't work out.  For my part, I was not yet mentally/emotionally ready to be with such a relationship in full health and consciousness.  In the intervening years, my partner remained poly, although we practiced a monogamous relationship.  In time, I grew to despise polyamorous relationships, and was harshly judgmental of those who engaged in them. For example, I once wrote, "Polyamory is a lie that the emotionally and sexually insecure tell themselves to create a false sense of comfort against the intimate isolation that is, ultimately, the human experience."

In some cases, I still believe that holds true.  But mostly, I was projecting from what was my self-judgment with regards to my actual capacity to be in multiple intimate relationship at the time I was trying to practice it. 

The irony is, of course, that now I am intentionally attempting to practice such a practice of relationship -- being open to fearless intimacy.  At this point, I cannot say that it's a good idea, nor that it works, nor that I'm sure that I actually want to do this.  But I'm trying it because this is what is arising in my life as an opportunity now, and I now have, I believe, the capacity to be this fearless, this open, this alive, this in love. 

The destabilization practice part of this is: working with myself (alone, and with my therapist) on the very topic: how can I be in and pursue relationships of fearless intimacy when so much of my personal shit about being in intimate relationship is about:

• stabilizing my sense of self/identity in that relationship 
• finding and relying on emotional/mental security in that relationship
• using that relationship as a buffer against the vertiginous effervescence of life
  
• using that relationship as an excuse to ignore the truth of my heart

And yet it also sings of her.  And her. And her.  And myself.  And my friends, all of them.  And my ex-lovers (even with the pain that lingers).  And my ex-partner.  There's so much love in this heart, and so much room as that the whole world can be (potentially) held without the least crowding.  I find that the more I sit in meditation, the more I practice, the more love I have to give.

I have so much love to give.  It sounds like .so. .much. .bullshit.

The practice is: critical self-examination, which is to say, really looking at myself.  Finding the sharpest edge of my experience and pressing there, until I am cut by the truth of what I see about myself, or what is pointed out by my therapist, or what reveals itself in meditation.  The truth is:

• I can't rely on relationship for my identity, sense-of-self, emotional or mental security
• Life is always arising with an exuberance which cannot be denied, ignored, or suppressed
  
• The truth of my heart is that it is always open, unconditionally, to all that is arising.  The filters exist only in my head, but my heart always already knows what the mind cannot grasp.
• All that I long for may never be mine, but what I receive in each moment is what I need for the next.
  

What occurs in my life now, this moment is: the love and the pain are one.  With a mind torn between the two but a heart that knows them as not-two, I return to the cushion, to sit, to sit with, to breathe.

And I wonder if I might ever let go of my desire for her to simply just breathe with me and let the breath take us where it will.

. . .

this is still a work in progress...

Now that I've completed my thesis and gotten a good night's sleep, I'm going to soon recommence blogging regularly.  I'll have some complicating time-consumers in my way, such as packing up and preparing to move, and then moving around June 1.

Oh, and graduating.  And a lot of party-attending. 

At work, my load is about to pick up with scheduling Spring 2008 classes and all that.  And redrafting the scheduling policy proposal.  And integrating that into the new space utilization committee's work.  I can't think about "space" without hearing my friend Amelia's* way of saying it.  I'm going to have to get a recording of her and post it to this blog to be held in the internets for perpetuity.

I have some blogging goals, but let's start small:

1. Write a summary of my thesis

* I simply have to mention this because it's so damn sexy-- Amelia's BA Intersdisciplinary Studies thesis is titled "The Potential of a Dying Evil: Eroticism as Ethical Self-Creation"  And I have a copy of it :)

My thesis is done.  Done done.  Really done.  Like printed and bound and ready to turn in done.

All 47 pages of it. 

Okay, only 33 of it is actual text.  The rest is things like the cover page, acknowledgements, dedication, table of contents, references, etc.

It was inevitable that I'd get a migraine with a) the amount of time I've spent at the computer lately, ham-fistedly banging out my thesis b) the amount of dairy I've eaten lately, which is to say: some every day and c) sleeping in a bed that is not my own, even if it is very comfy and occupied with a delightful, warm and cuddly sleepmate (who is not a cat).

With regards to c, I'm sure I'll find a way to work with that, since I'm reluctant to give up that particular delight in my life for any reason as mundane as a migraine.

However, I recently received not one but SIX boxes of two-dose Imitrex shots, so I am STOCKED UP for the coming year of migraines.  And! I got it for only $80 through my health insurance mail order prescrip program. 12 shots for $80 is an unbelievable improvement over $118 for two!  Holy shit!

So, a shot of Imitrex, and some Dagoba Eclipse (87%) chocolate has made a major improvement in my body state of being.   I did kinda have to lay around on the floor for a couple hours, tho. I think I'll take a hot bath tonight before bed.  Or sooner.

Now we're up to 29 pages (and that was after careful trimming late last night, when I freed up approximately a page).  I'd originally had a max of 30, but today I got an additional extension to 35 (max.  period.  that's it.  no more extra pages), so I should at least be able to flesh out the nascent section where I integrate Nietzsche's doctrine of eternal recurrence/Sacred Yes with the Four Dignities as a way to describe the sort of being/aesthete who practices the Queer Dharma, which then segues into a conclusion (which is barely sketched out at this point).

Whew.  I just need to finish it by Wednesday so I can get 3 copies of it bound (2 to turn in, one for me to keep/share around).

I've been up since about...oh, 7:45am, working on my thesis.  I'd only gotten to bed around 1am, so it's no understatement to say that I'm a bit tired.  However, I've been taking a break for the past hour, eating lunch, drinking a lovely beer, and reading Bataille (which makes it not quite a break, but close enough).

The thesis is going quite well.  I've reached page 30 (the first 9 pages don't count), so in theory I can fill up to 9 more pages.  I think I'll just squeak by at my max of 30, and trim down a bit here, flesh out a bit there, and it'll be done by tonight, with phases of revision to come in tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day, and then...print & bind a minimum of 2 copies.  Perhaps I'll make a third for folks to thumb thru.

After Thursday, I'm done with my BA career.  After which I will hopefully find a place to live.  Soon.  That is  not too expensive. And has everything that I need, including space for my cat.  And is in comfortable biking distance to the places I want to be, such as: work, grocery, downtown, etc.

It's a gorgeous day.  I'd rather be frolicking outside.  But soon this thesis will be done and there will be time enough in the world for all of that.  Aside from moving, that is.

Here's the table of contents for my thesis (so far), by the way:
Queer Dharma: Identity as Initiation & the Aesthetic of Being (working title)
(Introduction)
Queer Dharma: Method
   Queering Identity
   Integrative and Intimate Approach to Breaking Open
Initiation
   Problematization
Problematizing Identity: Human Sexuality
   Denial and the Closet
   Sex Negativity
   Revolutionary Identity
   Deconstruction
      An emerging conceptualization of the self as a lived experience emerges from the practices of problematizing and deconstructing the self.
Performing Identity: Gender, Sex and Desire
   The Performative
      Gender is not pregiven; gender is performed.
      Identity is both a conceptual framework for lived experience and the lived experience itself.
The Death of God, the Death of Self
Desubjectivization: The Cocoon
Bursting the Shell: Destabilization Practice
   Limitless Eroticism
Aesthetics: Ethical Self-fashioning
Integration: Meditation
Fearless Intimacy, Convulsive Joy
Identity is a performance: don’t expect applause.

1. Barthes, R. (1998). A lover’s discourse. (R. Howard, Trans.). New York: Hill and Wang. (Original work published 1977).
2. Bataille, G. (1989). Theory of religion. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.    (Original work published 1973)
3. Bataille, G. (1989). The accursed share: Volume I. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Zone Books. (Original work published 1967).
4. Bataille, G. (1991). The accursed share: Volume II & III. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Zone Books.  (Original work published 1976).
5. Beasley, C. (2005). Gender & sexuality: Critical theories, critical thinkers.  London: Sage Publications.
6. Bornstein, K. (1998). My gender workbook. New York: Routledge.
7. Boucher, G. (2006). The politics of performativity: A critique of Judith Butler. Parrhesia, 1.  Retrieved March 23, 2007 from http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia01/parrhesia01_boucher.pdf.
8. Butler, J. (1993). Bodies that matter: On the discursive limits of “Sex”. London: Routledge.
9. Butler, J. (1990). Gender trouble. London: Routledge.
10. Butler, J.  (2004). Undoing gender. New York: Routledge.
11. Clement, C. (1994). Syncope: The philosophy of rapture. (S. O’Driscoll & D. M. Mahoney,  Trans.). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. (Original work published 1990).
12. Cross, M. & Epting, F. (2005). Self-obliteration, self-definition, self-integration: Claiming a homosexual identity. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 18.  Retrieved March 16,  2007, from PsychARTICLES database.
13. Daumer, E. D. (1992). Queer ethics; or the challenge of bisexuality to lesbian ethics. Hypatia, 7 (4). Retrieved January 19, 2007, from Academic Search Premier database.
14. Deacon, R. (2000). Theory as practice: Foucault’s concept of problematization. Telos, 118. Retrieved February 23, 2007, from Academic Search Premier database.
15. Degges-White, S., Rice, B. & Myers, J. E. (2000). Revisiting Cass’ theory of sexual identity formation: A study of lesbian development. Journal of Mental Health Counseling, 22 (4). Retrieved March 16, 2007, from PsychARTICLES database.
16. Dollimore, J. (1991). Sexual dissidence: Augstine to Wilde, Freud to Foucault. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
17. Eliade, M. (1987). The sacred & the profane: The nature of religion. (W. Trask, Trans.).  San Diego: Harcort, Inc. (Original work published 1957).
18. Foucault, M. Discourse and truth: the problematization of parrhesia.
19. Foucault, M. (2005). The Hermentutics of the subject: Lectures at the college de france,  1981-82. (F. Ewald & A. Fontana, Eds.). (G. Burchell, Trans.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan. (Original work published 2001).
20. Foucault, M. (1990). The history of sexuality: An introduction. (R. Hurley, Trans.). New York: Random House. (Original work published 1978).
21. Halperin, D. M. (1995). Saint Foucault: towards a gay hagiography.  New York: Oxford  University Press.
22. Hoffman, R.M., (2006). Gender self-definition and gender self-acceptance in women: Intersections with feminist, womanist and ethnic identities.  Journal of Counseling & Development, 84 (3). Retrieved November 10, 2006, from PsychARTICLES database.
23. Hoffman, R.M., Borders, L.D., & Hattie, J.A. (2000).  Reconceptualizing femininity and masculinity: From gender roles to gender self-confidence.  Journal of Social Behavior and Personality, 15 (4). Retrieved November 10, 2006, from Academic Search Premier database.
24. Irigaray, L. (1999). When our lips speak together. In Price, J. & Shildrick, M. (Eds.). Feminist theory and the body.  New York: Routledge.
25. Jackson, P. A. (2000). An explosion of thai identities: Global queering and re-imagining queer theory.  Culture, Health & Sexuality, 2 (4). Retrieved March 23, 2007, from Academic Search Premier database. 
26. Jalas, K. (2005). Butch Lesbians and desire. Women: a cultural review, 16 (1). Retrieved January  16, 2007, from Academic Search Premier database.
27. Jagose, A. (1996). Queer theory: An introduction. New York: New York University Press.
28. Klein, C.  (1995). Meeting the great bliss queen: Buddhists, feminists and the art of the self. Boston: Beacon Press.
29. Leyland, W. (Ed.). (2000). Queer dharma: Voices of gay Buddhists (Vols. 1-2).  San Francisco: Gay Sunshine Press.
30. Lorde, A. (1984). Sister outsider. Berkeley: The Crossing Press.
31. Milchman. A. & Rosenberg, A. (2007). The aesthetic and ascetic dimensions of an ethics of self-fashioning: Nietzsche and Foucault.  Parrhesia, Vol 2.  Retrieved March 16, 2007 from http://www.parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia02/parrhesia02_milchrosen.pdf
32. Ray, R. A. (Speaker). (2003). Buddhist tantra: Teachings and practices for touching enlightenment with the body [CD Recording]. Boulder: Sounds True.
33. Ray, R. A. (Speaker). (2006). Sacredness in everyday life: Reflections on the Shambhala  teachings of Chogyam Trungpa [MP3 Recording]. Boulder: Dharma Ocean Foundation.
34. Ray, R. A. (2006).  Touching enlightenment.  Tricycle Magazine, Vol. 15 (3). Retrieved January11, 2007 from http://www.tricycle.com/issues/tricycle/15_3/on_practice/1874-1.html.
35. Rubin, G. (1984)  Thinking sex: Notes for a radical theory of the politics of sexuality. In Vance, C. S. (Ed.). Pleasure and danger: Exploring female sexuality (267-319).  London: Pandora Press.
36. Sandoval, C. (2000). Methodology of the oppressed.  Minneapolis: University of Minnesota  Press.
37. Simmer-Brown, J. (2001). Dakini’s warm breath: The feminine principle in tibetan buddhism. Boston: Shambhala Publications.
38. Somé., M. P. (1994). Of water and the spirit: Ritual, magic and initiation in the life of an african
    shaman.  New York: The Penguin Group.
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        and community. New York: The Penguin Group.
    
40. Taylor, M. C. (1984). Erring: a postmodern a/theology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
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Note: this is after I pared it down to things I would actually cite, or things that, in my reading of them, genuinely influenced the creation of my thesis.

Queer Praxis | Dharma Practice
ethical self-fashioning
aesthetic of being
radical subjectivity of the body
the self who is not one
and the endless, entangling dance with the Lover

Today, I am without skin.

I'm having a lowgrade migraine today, which means (possibly) my mindbody is integrating a recent shift/realization with an alacritous speed, I need to spend about an hour intensive sitting, and sleep more.

Why would anyone want to go through this kind of queer praxis/dharma practice?  I mean, really.  In this method I am developing and practicing and will soon describe in my thesis, the positive unfoldings/changes/transformations are nascent, emerging, yet-to-be-truly-seen, unrealized, merely a possibility, possibly beyond attaining.  Why would anyone want to practice the dharma in this particular way that works with destabilizing identity around the all-too-human aspect of desire?

This is not an easy path: there is pain, there are tears, there is little ground, much risk, and no sure reward.  But I am queer, I cannot be otherwise.  This is my method for making not only the best of my lot in life, but also for testing the very limits of the possibilities of being.

Queer Dharma necessarily deals with the entanglement of relationship as part of the practice, part of the path, part of the realization: there is no one being doing this work.  The practitioner is never alone; the practice is never all about oneself.  The Queer Dharma practitioner is multiple, diverse, changing.  Subjectivity is plural.  Self is ultimately unbounded; boundaries are set by the mind only.  The subjectivity of the body trumps that of the mind; the body the body the body is infinite.  What is cocooned in safety, the Dharma will break open.  Relationship, intimacy, vulnerability and the violence of rapture: songs on infinite intersecting iterative and incremental remix.

There are benefits, however.  These are not the point of the practice, per se.  For example, the point of meditation is not to become a good meditator with stable meditation--if you think that's the point, your meditation will always and forever be stuck.  Likewise, the point of queer praxis is not to have sex (which is extraordinarily good because of one's capacity for awareness, attention, perceptivity, and openness of heart).  The ethical queer is not the same as the ethical slut; the enjoyment of pleasure is not the purpose nor the goal of queer praxis.  Sex is a practice like meditation is a practice: things one practices to be fully present to/for/as. The point is to develop those and other capacities for the sake of being authentically in the world and interacting with others genuinely, receiving them as they are, and acting in the world with full integrity. To be a person whose very being is enlightenment, whose sincerity and earnestness invites that of others, whose vision and view are so open and free that others seem themselves there mirrored with that very clarity, whose presence is as vast and rooted as that of the earth, whose embodiment is a ceaseless dialog with love. 

None of this carries a prescription for specifically what it is that one must do--queer ethics is never a formula of if A, then B.  Through dharma practice/queer praxis, one develops the aesthetic of being in the world as a self who is not one.  But the capacity, ability, and opportunity for extraordinarily good sex is a definite plus of queer praxis.

Who am I?  This unanswerable question may be addressed, if inadequately, by describing all that may be perceived in the span of a given moment.

I am the headiness of memory of the intensity breathing into a pause between two paired lips parting and meeting again, as reminded by the twinge of soreness lingering in my muscles.

Issues to address:

• queer dharma is immanently, perhaps even violently personal, and yet i'm presenting it so transpersonally.  it's so easy to go to the expansive vision, and ignore the work.
  
• there's so much space for very personal and intimate love in the more expansively inclusive, bodhisattva-ideal sort of love.  and yet, it doesn't seem apparent in my reflection on it.  these are non-exclusive.
  
• subtle solipsism: am I just trying to create an elaborate justification for polymorphous perversity and parallel non-monogamy (aka fucking around) which is an easy way to avoid issues around intimacy, while feeling like/believing that I'm not avoiding such issues by apparently (from the outside) testing those limits? 
  
• Sex is such an easy way to avoid being seen while convincing yourself that you're actually seeing and being seen, when what is happening is that you're dancing naked behind yet another mask: this is me as a sexual person, aren't I sexy and self-assured and powerful, and don't you want me (this mask)?
  
• anything, anything, anything can be hijacked by the ego for self-gain.  may I be be devoured by Mahakhala with ferocious delight if/when this occurs.