Exposed in the Light - Post COVID-19

"When woman’s point of view receives due consideration and woman’s will is allowed adequate expression in the arrangement of social affairs, we may expect great advancement in matters which have often be grievously neglected under the old regime of male dominance—such matters as health, temperance, peace, and regard for the value of the individual life. Improvements in these respects will have very far-reaching and beneficent effects." ‘Abdu’l-Bahá says :—

Another confession I have to add on to my already many others is the fact that as an adolescent i was prone to homosexuality. Never thought that I would come out and say this in this lifetime, however if truth needs to be told then I will tell as it is and after all what is the sense of having a catharsis if there are still skeletons yet lurking in the darkest corner of my unconscious. In my later adult life i became homophobic and when i first arrived in San Francisco one of the first few places i had to stay was with a Gay man in the, ( note, how strange it is that every time i try to write about this matter the name of the most famous Gay Community in SF skips my mind, it will come or I can always Google it if takes too long.) I will see if it will pop up into my mind while I am still writing this post. While I was at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, I witnessed making it out in the Guest House as they did not have the decency to pull shut the curtains. Part of me felt disgusted yet I felt a sense of understanding at better than to judge at what is inherently within me already.  

It popped into my head as i took a break from my posting to tend to the cat's food and water; The Castro District. The man at whose place I was to put up at was Patrick Kelly the younger brother of Dennis Kelly, or Junpo Kelly the Abbot of a Rinzai Zen monastery, the man I was sent to meet by his mother who was a fellow member of the Print Club at the University in Green Bay, Wisconsin, ( another tale another time). The first bar Patrick took me for a drink to was at a place called the Twin Peaks, a Gay Bar and i felt the warning lights turned on in my mind about this man and his intentions, more out of fear than anything else. I did not know for how long i had to stay with Patrick until his older brother Dennis was ready for me, but staying with Patrick was not the most comfortable feeling i had; my phobia, my bad.

When I stumbled upon the quote above from a link that someone had posted on my Face Book it triggered this long time baggage of my sexual preferences and hangups. It has taken a very long time for me to drag this festering baggage out into the open to be air out and disposed off at least before i take my one step beyond. I know there is not much that i can do as what is done is done and what i had experienced cannot be undone as there was no Guru or teacher to turn to, to tell me or knock me on the head and say, "Hey, it is not natural to butt f..k another man. You can love a man for who he is on a higher and deeper sense of the word Love." Perhaps it has always been my own guilt feelings that had cast a dark shadow over my trust in relationship with men.  Carl Jung would have said that the animus in me fears being abused by  those who sense my vulnerability.

I remember an experience I had while hitch hiking in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ( what I was doing there and so forth is too mush to relate), I was picked up by a Latino man and we ended up in his home. He offered me a beer and we sat watching the old Star Trek series made then he started to act sexually interested in me by touching me in places that sets off alarms, like what the heck! I made a mistake of recoiling which sets off the aggression in him, however I was able to reason out with him the fact that I held no judgement for his sexual preferences and as a matter of fact I told him i sympathized as i too suffer the same and he eventually simmered down and apologized and offered to take me to where I needed to go. The experience woke me up in some ways and it told me how we all carry in us this duality of emotional and psychological entities that if not fully understood and balanced out can prove a health and mental hazard. 

Today i have a healthy respect for those who are Gays or Lesbians, not pity or worse, judgement; I have a personal taste of what it is like in me. I have raised my two children since the day they were born more so than just a father, I have been both their mother and father. I have been the Babysitter, the cook and cleaner, the house husband and wife way before my late wife passed on, She was a worker. A part of me felt trapped and angry at having to play the role but there was and perhaps more so today the realization I am in a sense a hermaphrodite but not just sexually but by my inherent nature; my Being, my Consciousness. Instead of putting up a wall, i have inadvertently learned to embrace it before the guilt of shame that has been festering all these years is able to tear me apart; yes as I have always been telling myself, I walk a thin line between sane and insanity.