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Originally posted January 13, 2015
So...this happened yesterday. What began as a quick audition morphed into a playful video that we shot in one-take and that inspired me to edit into a autobiographical "sizzle reel" (gotta admit, I kinda hate that term). Anyway, it was fun to create and hope you enjoy it.
PS-Bonus points to my brilliant husband who told me to ditch my lame-ass script and said, "Just tell me 5 things about yourself. GO!"
Blogger and actress Candice Holdorf shares five things about her. http://www.candiceholdorf.com
Originally posted August 14, 2014
Last March, I wrote a piece (originally for Corset Magazine) called "Why I Don't Fuck 'Spiritual Guys'." It definitely caused quite a stir and I received all kinds of comments: people thanking me for exposing these guys; people enjoying the humor; people wondering if I was talking about them; and people downright accusing me of being an angry bitch who couldn't get laid (which was shocking, considering that the latter's names linked back to several yoga retreats--I was expecting a little more "enlightenment" from them).
In any case, meet Tom Shakti, a Sensitive New-Age Guy (SNAG) who was particularly miffed at the piece. In all fairness, I did use a video of him as an example of the type of guy to which I was referring. But he does get a little, shall we say, personal in his criticism of me.
My response? Namaste, Tom...namaste.
Oh, and hey--don't give up. You can always try HippieDates.com.
Read the original article here: http://mytinysecrets.com/why-i-dont-fuck-spiritual-guys/ See toms original interview here: http://youtu.be/pK79NBfK9Qg See Episode 1 of New Age Girls here: http://youtu.be/5yG7ws7PbZk
Mike Myers as The Love Guru
Originally posted March 13, 2014
But when it comes to “spiritual guys,” I just can’t fuck ‘em. Or, more precisely, they can’t fuck me.
It’s not that I don’t fuck spiritual guys from lack of wanting. I don’t fuck spiritual guys because they don’t know how and aren’t willing to be fucked themselves.
Let's not confuse a "spiritual guy" with a mature, fully integrated spiritual man; so I'll define what I mean by “spiritual guy.”
It has little to do with whether or not he believes in God and a lot more to do with what he thinks about his own humanity. Many “spiritual guys” come with a belief that they are “better than” their physical selves and should “rise above” their baser instincts.
I often see this kind of man in “conscious communities.” He’s all about being “heart-centered” and having “slow, tantric sex.” He walks around with a glassy stare, never gets angry, talks in a creepy whisper and greets every hot woman he meets with the ubiquitous “spiritual guy” pick-up line, “Namaste.”
He professes that money is evil, believes that commitment robs him of his enlightenment and prefers eye-gazing over hair-pulling. He is a participant in a kind of “spiritual sexism” that we often see in “conscious communities,” i.e. reaching for the ethereal stillness (masculine) while rejecting the material chaos (feminine).
While I have nothing against heart-centeredness and eye-gazing, a man who prioritizes “higher” virtues ends up disconnecting himself from his lower three chakras and committing the equivalent of energetic castration.
Imagine a car with no engine or gas. No matter how “loving,” “nice” and “sweet” it looks on the outside, without the raw material to fuel it, the car won’t run.
However “spiritual guys,” tend to demonize and negate their own “fuel.” Then they use the name of tantra as a tool to bypass the “nasty” work of being human and try to get laid by pretending that their cocks have magical, healing “spiritual” powers.
Traditional tantra teachings believe that everything is fuel for awakening. Looking at tantra from an etymological perspective, tan means expansion and tra means liberation. (UPDATE: A Sanskrit scholar has informed me that tra is actually closer to the word "means;" so tantra is literally "a means of expansion").
So rather than excluding and rejecting the coarser parts of ourselves, we expand and liberate ourselves through alchemy, converting megalomania (third chakra), lust (second chakra) and anger (first chakra) into purpose, desire and power, respectively.
In order for a man to fuck, he himself must be willing to be soul-fucked by Spirit. He must fall on the ground in love with surrender. He must expose and accept every part of himself while in connection with his partner. Only then can he hold a woman in total presence and approval of everything she throws at him. The combination of compassion and animal-power is what pins a woman down and penetrates her to her aching core.
To be fair, a more “worldly” man in our society, i.e. one who is open in the lower chakras and closed in the upper, cannot truly fuck either. His lack of emotional connection, unwillingness to speak vulnerably and dependency on linear scripts of relating prevent him from deeply feeling a woman and earning her trust. His material merits may win him points in the immediate “pick-up” game, but he will lose out in the long-term.
Not to say that every sexual encounter needs to be a step towards a long-term relationship. This is where we women often to lie about their own desire, using the old excuse “I’m waiting for “the one” as a shield against feeling the magnitude of animal hunger that lives within us.
The feminine fable about “the one” is what makes men more apt to don the “spiritual guy” mask. He thinks if he acts humble and nice and safe and “conscious,” he can win the prize (her pussy). But ultimately he is cheating himself (and women) of an opportunity for awakening.
By acknowledging our shame, rage, greed, lust, victimhood, hatred and addictions, we get to know and love the human parts of ourselves and learn to work with these pieces as allies, rather than having these shadow bits secretly run the show and hijack our power.
When we courageously allow our soul-fucked selves to show up sexually, it invites the people we love to expose their blessed and wounded parts and sets the stage for trust, connection and intimacy. Then we come to know the true essence of tantra: that there really is no separation and that everything—divinity, humanity, ordinary, mystery, light, dark, earth, heaven—is a vital and necessary ingredient on the spiritual path.
Article adapted from its original appearance in Corset Magazine
And just so we don't forget to have a sense of humor about this whole crazy journey called life:
Meet Tom Shakti, eye gazing guru. He is new to Ojai and is very interested getting to know the New Age Girls of Ojai. Episode 1: http://youtu.be/5yG7ws7PbZk Episode 2: http://youtu.be/vZJvU7hMW3I Episode 3: http://youtu.be/FHouNGDQVWo You can get to know him here: https://www.facebook.com/tom.shakti
Originally posted June 11, 2013
Just a quick Tuesday note. I found this particularly hilarious, but not in a mean-spirited sort of way. Honestly, I absolutely adore Hendrik Ball's innocence as he shares some of the most wondrous "discoveries" in the toy industry. It's truly charming and hilarious at the same time.
Plus, once the kids are done playing, then it's mommy's turn for the fun! Enjoy!
SUBTITLES AVAILABLE These four novelty toy guns were all bought back in the mid 1980s - more innocent days as far as guns were concerned maybe. The first one was made by Vic's Novelties in the US. The soft rubber hand gun has a lead and a separate battery compartment.
Originally posted August 7, 2012
View this article on elephantjournal.com
“You think this is just another day in your life? It’s not just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you…today. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only gift you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.” ~ Brother David Steindl-Rast, from Louis Schwartzberg’s TEDxSF talk on “Gratitude”
I’ve recently started attending a weekly Native American tobacco ceremony. From the outside the ritual seems simple: everyone sits in a circle, says a brief prayer for the things for which they need help and smokes the sacred pipe.
However, within the basic framework lies an experience full of connection, humbleness and vulnerability. Through witnessing another in communion with his or her Creator, you realize that each person’s prayer is actually your prayer. To have someone speaking your heart’s deepest yearnings is a swift reminder that we are separated only by the most trivial of differences.
Which makes sense. To walk around as a boundaryless open heart all day, feeling the pain, hope and wonder of each person that breathes near us would render us perpetually incapacitated. After all, we have cubicles to inhabit, student loans to pay off and episodes of Weeds to download.
Hence this weekly sacrament of public surrender is like ambrosia for the emaciated soul. We walk around with our poker faces on, pretending like life is just “fine” and that we have everything “under control.” So simply saying the words “I need help” is enough to sucker punch us in the arrogant gut of our social deception. Yet it is through these cracks in the armor that life’s blessings can fill our cups of longing.
The thing is that most of us carry thimbles where we have room for chalices; so even when can let in a little bit of the good, we fill up quickly and look for ways to manage the excess. One common way is to expel the energy through complaint. It’s a lazy way to avoid doing the work to discover what we truly want, as well as shirks the responsibility for your happiness to someone or something else. It’s easy to be angry at your friends if you throw a party and no one attends—but if you don’t give us explicit directions on how to get to your house, you are setting yourself (and the rest of us) up for failure.
We look for what’s wrong with life. We hold onto the idea that life happens “to” us, as if we are some sad little puppet, rather than becoming active participants in the experience. We have a thousand ways to talk about what’s shitty in our lives and virtually no language for what’s good.
Nowhere do I see more of this than in the arena of sex. It’s an area loaded with confusion, shame and resentment smothered by a lacquer of bravado, victimhood or just plain avoidance. It’s also the place where we are most desperate to be touched and where a mountain of excuses resides to keep us small and safe:
I’m not getting enough
I’m too old/fat/inexperienced
No one knows how to touch me
I can’t last long enough
My partner is blocked
I’m fine, but they have a problem
All the good ones are taken
It’ll never happen for me
The art of receiving what you want is something we are rarely taught and yet it’s the foundation of sexual maturity (and is required for vibrant and nourishing sex lives). First, we must have the courage to admit that we are hungry and that it is no one else’s responsibility but our own to feed us.
Once we decide to follow our desires, rather than live in the world of complaint, we must then undergo the task of expanding our thimbles into chalices. If we want more, we need to grow big enough to hold more.
Again, I take my inspiration from the pipe ceremony. There, the way we are taught to pray is that before you ask for what you want, you must first express gratitude for what you have in your life right now. It changes the perspective, so that your desires come from a place of abundance and attraction, rather than lack and rejection of what is. You mentally and energetically set yourself up to receive.
Think of it this way: each time you say “thank you,” you find your location on the map of desire and widen the net for the universe to bring you more. Conversely each complaint is energy wasted that could have been used to express yourself and surrender deeper into pleasure.
Recently, I was making love and towards the end, I found myself in a state of overwhelm—the energy was high, I was feeling physically exhausted and my mind was flipping out on whether or not he was happy. We’d lost the connection and I started crying and blaming myself for ‘fucking it all up.’
“Do you want to check in with me?” he asked.
“Ok,” I simpered.
"Well, the first three-quarters of that was some of the most amazing sex we’ve ever had together.”
Oh. Well that changes things.
Because I was approaching our sex from fear-based, life-or-death-stakes mindset, all I could see was the negative: any perceived ‘fuck up’ was going to lessen my value as a human and I would end up dead and unloved in a crappy studio apartment in the Tenderloin (fear-based mind also tends to bring out the drama queen).
Had I been in my abundance and gratitude, I would have stood up on the bed, ripped off my chain & turtleneck sweater and sang “I Just Had Sex!”
Which brings me to my second point: the importance of cultivating humor in sex.
We’re all human. Being able to laugh at ourselves in the face of our sheer incompetence is what makes being alive bearable. Humor takes the life-or-death-stakes view on sex and infuses it with space and permission. As one of the clumsiest people on the planet, I’ve had my fair share of teeth-banging kisses, cum & snot-nosed BJs and mid-coital pussy farts. You just gotta laugh at that shit because we’ve all been there.
You are allowed to make mistakes. You are allowed not to have the answer. You are allowed to curiously fumble into the unknown. In fact, that is where the best sex happens. When your rational mind throws its hands in the air and says ‘Fuck it! I’m just gonna let it all hang out and have fun,’ you go from being a warrior on the battlefield to a child in a sandbox—totally unaware of people’s eyes on you and unattached to what is created.
Play for the sake of play.
And really, why have sex for any other reason other than for fun? Of course there’s also procreation and shared intimacy—but if you’ve lost the spirit of play in the process, then I suggest slowing down, re-evaluating your desires and re-connecting to your own pleasure.
Because ultimately sex is fun—and silly and weird and confronting and undeniably human. We should celebrate that: the slips, trips, bumps and falls as well as the bliss, joy, ecstasy and intimacy.
So no matter how your sex expresses itself these days—whether you humped three people this morning or haven’t kissed anyone in ten years—take the time to be thankful for your sexuality. You are alive, right now, a sexual being on this planet, and you have the unique opportunity to go on a rich and hilarious journey into the heart of your own desire.
Just don’t forget to pack the Gratitude…
May this presentation on the life-changing gift of living in "Gratitude", bless you .. AND .. everyone you come in contact with ;) ~ Louie Schwartzberg is an award-winning cinematographer, director, and producer whose notable career spans more than three decades providing breathtaking imagery for feature films, television shows, documentaries and commercials.
…and Humor.
Buy at iTunes: http://goo.gl/zv4o9. New album on sale now! http://www.turtleneckandchain.com T-shirts! http://www.thelonelyisland.com/store The first single of The Lonely Island's 2nd album!!! Featuring Akon, Jessica Alba, Blake Lively and John McEnroe! The Lonely Island is Andy Samberg, Akiva Schaffer & Jorma Taccone. Twitter: @thelonelyisland
