Ecstasy, insight, healing: 40 Days & 40 Nights is a six-week meditative journey into the heart of pussy and the transformative power of your orgasm.
If the conditions for a revolution do not exist, then it is the job of the revolutionary, to create them.
-Unknown
Women, erotically empowered, are dangerous.
-Audre Lorde, Uses of The Erotic: The Erotic as Power
Forty Days & Forty Nights, the initiation into SHEism: The Woman Worship Way, is an exercise, for women, in extreme pleasure and it requires a commitment to having at least one orgasm, every day, for 40 days.
An essential component of SHEism, is the cultivation of a tangible, body-centered point of self-reference. We employ the orgasm as this reference point, and after a time of ecstatic daily practice, begin to use it as the barometer against which we measure everything else in our lives. This internal point of self-induced ecstasy is used to determine the level of pure joy and bliss in any relationship, situation or experience. SHEism teaches that the closer a thing feels to your orgasm, the more right for you it is. Your orgasm becomes your joyometer, and as, with attention and cultivation, your orgasm expands and strengthens, so too, will your ability to wield your joy as a tool of practical earthly enlightenment.
How To Use Your Joyometer
The power of your joyometer is rooted in your bodily senses. Your joyometer is a phenomenon of the physical and feeling present. The ideologies of detachment from and transcendence of the physical body run absolutely counter to the use of this internal tool.
In order to become fluent in the use of your joyometer, you must also become fluent in the language of feelings, both physical and emotional. Your commitment to daily, meditative orgasms will help you to orient yourself, in your body, by the light of your ecstasy. You must then remain on the alert to identify both the physical and emotional feeling, or group of feelings, that constitute the opposite of your orgasm. This will make it easy for you to develop a scale of internal reference. My own internal scale lists an emotional range that flows from tragic to magic, with tragic being the antithesis of the rapturous state, and magic representing a complete alignment with my internal experience of bliss.
An example of how to use your joyometer is to ask yourself questions like: How does my relationship compare to my orgasm? How in tune with my orgasm is my job? How does this thing I want to purchase rate on my personal orgasmic scale? By asking questions like this, you will gradually begin to fine-tune your sense of what makes you truly happy. You will be less likely to succumb to outside influences regarding the choices you make for your life. It will be harder for anyone to sell you anything that doesn’t sit well with your internal sense of ecstasy.
“Problematic” Orgasms
What if your orgasm doesn’t fit into the “pure-bliss and fireworks” category? What if your orgasm is accompanied by feelings of guilt, disgust or shame? What if you are only able to orgasm to the tune of rape or incest fantasies? What if visions of being brutalized, spied on, beaten or betrayed are what turn you one? If any of these scenarios are the case for you, then here, within these pages, is right where you should be.
These emotionally, politically and spiritually complex ways of orgasiming, are all common experiences that have, for a variety of reasons, embedded themselves into our understanding and experience of ecstasy. Your responsibility on this journey, is to simply BE with whatever occurs for you during your encounters with your orgasm, even when the feelings and sensations that come up feel shameful, uncomfortable or downright degrading.
For example, if you typically orgasm to the fantasy of being seduced by your father, allow yourself to be conscious of all the feelings that come up around this scenario. Stay away from orgasm-by-rote or, the unconscious and mechanical habit of detached orgasm.
Instead, connect with the excitement, pain, confusion or shame that may be a part of this experience. Connecting and feeling your feelings, even one’s you may judge, is an essential part of being.
What Being Also Looks Like
Being is the act of focusing and holding your attention in every part of your body at once and, in this state, recognizing and feeling your natural connection to your essential Self, the earth, and her inhabitants. It is complete physical and emotional presence and union, and it takes practice. Whole body being takes a persistent and conscious commitment to addressing the fragmentation that is the natural state of women in patriarchal culture. In “Pure Lust: Elemental Feminist Philosophy,” feminist theologian and philosopher Mary Daly described this state of fragmentation: Within the virulent state of phallocracy, women have been attacked and divided against our Selves. From the earliest times of the patriarchy, countless mothers have been broken, and the resulting broken daughters have carried on the chain of fragmentation. No longer have the broken daughters been able to listen unhindered to the “mysterious” telic centering principle within and become fully Self-actualizing women. Instead, they have been reduced to responding to the fettered/fathered urge to reproduce their altered-that is, patriarchally identified-selves in an endless circle of Self-destruction… She goes on to say, Yet the sources of wholeness are within women… (but) overcoming…the programmed separation of all living creatures from the telic centering principle of being, will involve facing the horror of (patriarchy’s) workings and effects.
Being Begins With Breath
For once we begin to feel deeply all the aspects of our lives, we begin to demand from ourselves and from our life-pursuits that they fall in accordance with the joy which we know ourselves to be capable of. Our erotic knowledge empowers us, becomes a lens through which we scrutinize all aspects of our existence…
-Audre Lorde, Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power
One of several techniques we will use on this journey of healing the fragmentation of the feminine self, is cultivating the ability to still the mind so that we might listen to and honor the experience of the body. Most of us spend our days using our bodies, to walk, eat, read, exercise, gossip, pray, work and have sex, without ever actually checking in to listen to her wisdom or see if there’s anything special that she needs. The female body houses the greatest untapped resource of wisdom, information and intuition, but we generally keep ourselves too busy to listen to her until we have some kind of a breakdown.
In the exercise that follow, you will be given instructions for how to harness the full power of your body and her intelligence in the service of your ecstasy, healing and evolution.
As you move through the work of 40 Days & 40 nights, please keep in mind the first principle of SHEism: The Woman Worship Way, which is: everything and every way you are is holy and all the ways you come are part of your sacred earthly journey.
40 Days & 40 nights is a vehicle to examine, heighten awareness of and transform your relationship to your coochie, your orgasm and your most powerful and creative self.
If you’d like to come on this journey (pun intended) you will need a hand mirror, a blank notebook, something to write and draw with, a vibrator and whatever else you need in order to have an orgasm (a quiet room, massage oils, music etc.) You will also need to think of the time you spend coaxing delicious orgasms from your body as a meditation. To that end, it’s a good idea to set a consistent time that is long enough and private enough for you to relax into your bliss.
This week:
1. Give yourself an orgasm every day for the next seven days. This is an exercise that you will do alone. Prioritize and be persistent with this goal, commit to having your daily orgasm by any means necessary. Rearrange your schedule, cancel an appointment, pick the kids up late, hire a babysitter, rent a hotel room, take an extra long lunch break, lock the door to your bathroom. Do whatever you need to do, to fit in your daily orgasm.
2. Meditate on your breath for 10 minutes first thing in the morning, and right before you go to bed. The best way to do this exercise is to sit upright in a comfortable chair, with the soles of your feet on the floor, your back straight and supported, and your hands resting loosely on your thighs. If it is more comfortable for you to sit on the floor cross-legged, this is ok too. Close your eyes and bring all of your attention to your nose and the breath flowing in and out of your nostrils. As you settle into this exercise, be aware of when your mind begins to be agitated, starts daydreaming or generally starts to squirm as you focus on your breath. Gently and persistently bring your mind back to your breath every time your attention wanders. Sit for ten minutes.
3. Essentialized Orgasm: Write the autobiography of your orgasm in 24 words, no more and no less. Try to include everything that has ever happened to your orgasm, from her conception to the present.
4. When you have completed writing the autobiography of your orgasm in 24 words, below it, write the autobiography of your orgasm in 12 words. Feel free to use some or all of the same words from your 24-word autobiography, but you may also use completely different words. Perhaps there is something you forgot to say your first time around, or there’s a point that needs more attention. Go ahead and use these next 12 words to either repeat, expand or bring clarity to your orgasm’s life!
5. Beneath the 12 words, now write the autobiography of your orgasm in six words. Same instructions as above.
6. Beneath the six words, write the autobiography of your orgasm in three words.
7. Beneath the three-word autobiography, please tell the entire life story of your orgasm in one word! All the joy, all the sorrow, the ups and the downs. If you had to tell her whole story in only one word, what would that word be?
8. Now, go back to the top of the page and write, as your title, “In The Beginning: _________.” Fill in the blank with your one-word autobiography. Congratulations! You’ve just written your first SHEist scripture!
9. Read your scripture aloud to one, supportive witness who is kind and whom you trust. Try not to give too much explanation around the exercise. Notice the feelings that come up for you as you share this intimate experience.
10. Every day this week, with the help of your hand mirror, draw a picture of your coochie. Use this time to bring awareness to how you feel about your coochie from moment to moment. Notice when your attention drifts or when you become bored. Notice the feelings of discovery, revulsion or delight you may experience.
If you’ve never had an orgasm, or don’t know how to generate one on your own, read on, the next post is for you!
Copyright Christa Bell 2010
This photo, by my girl Sienna Shields, reminds me, that deep, nurturing and intimate friendships between women must be restored, if we are to ever reconnect with our primal state of innocence, self-love and creative power. I am reminded to keep at the fore of my consciousness, when working with women both personally and professionally, the question, Who did she have to become, to survive patriarchy? And just as importantly, who did I?
