Truetalk has been writing since he was a teen, and only in the last five or so years has he taken himself seriously as a writer. He lives in the Vancouver area of BC, Canada, where he has lived for most of his life. He finished his degree in psychology at Simon Fraser University in ’95 when he started his counseling practice for individuals and couples. He recently completed his PhD in psychology and philosophy at University of Life in Black Rock City. His counseling practice though broad in a practical sense, is specialized in alternative relationships, including the various forms of polyamoury, polyfidelity, or what ever other poly-like relationship you may be working on. He has studied the human psyche for almost his entire life, and has a thorough understanding of consciousness, human psychology, and our current social structure and how we as individuals or groups function and dysfunction within our culture and general social milieu. He would love to hear any feedback from the readers of this community, answer questions or even take requests or topics to write about.

Previous editions of this column can be found in the Monthly Columns Archives.

Shields of love

I may start to spiral off into infinity; the things I will say are not exactly connected all the time or strongly with poly. I can usually find some kind of connection, spurious or not I will always try to inject my writing with a flavor and taste of the polyamorous relationships that we have, want and have had. Today I will be pretty on about poly, because I am talking about my own interpretation and personal living of poly relations. Some people might say that I am not living a poly life because I am not having sex or I am not physically intimate with any specific and particular woman on any long-term basis. They might agree that I am wanting to live the poly life, but until I get a partner I am only thinking, or believing, but not really being poly. My interpretation is different than that; I believe I already am living the poly life. I love multiple women already, and have varying and differing connections with each. To me sex is not the beginning of a new relationship, and we as poly are allowed multiple of these kind, rather sex is a higher involvement, adding so much to the relationship already there, with the exception of only a small number of relationships that initiate sexually. My poly existence is complete, or non-edited. Sex will enter into my life when I am ready for it as a polyamorous man. Meanwhile, I think and ponder and look and understand, I love to see love, and using light I am going to try to add another way to become aware of love and its movement among humans.

I suppose sometimes that being a painter would be easier for me when I try to express myself artistically. My craft is writing today, and I will thus take up my thoughts upon silicone, constructing an image of love. The painting though is a good place to begin with, have we as a civilization not created many painting of love? In its many and myriad forms we have painted love with light. Captured in color the image of love, the passions, the touching, and the loss and found of love, mother’s love, self love and more, there are many visual images of love which is the use of light to describe love.

Maybe that is not going anywhere; bring your mind now to our clothes. We have a history of wearing clothes, from our first donning of clothes with leaves and twigs, to what we wear and how we use clothes in our society, psyches, and visually today. This is the rub: clothes represent or even stronger put, as in they are shields against physical love. We have refined this power so well that now we use it for many things; all these things are on some kind of psychic level, a part of your mind. Today our clothes still do shield us from physical love, in fact so well that we can use the same shield against love or to pull it towards oneself. Clothes are the physical and light is being used to shield against physical love, look at our clothes and you can see the shields of love we use, these clothes we wear protect us from easy and frequent sexual encounters. Sex is the physical expression of love, thus clothes are a shield against physical love. Again this has to do with the movement of light through clothes, colors, patterns and shapes and tightness against the body. I want to just keep stroking this idea, as a painter will try again and again to brush on just the right colors to capture that part of the image, so too I will now repeat myself. Color, light, body, sex, shield: Color is the manifestation of the shield in question (because I am going to use all this to find or search for the psychic expression of love and what those shields look like), light is the power of spirit, body is the physical experience, sex is the love on a physical level, and shield is the block we have against love. This is a moving image so it seems to me, these are not static energies, and these are almost infinite if not full on eternal forces that interact creating something more— life, our life. Each word swirls, play and dances with the other, together not ever captured in motion, but understood because of how it changes each time you try to see it. Changing the order of these words I now write: shield, light, color, body, sex.

This is love on a physical level, but we also love psychically, and we also have shields against love on this level too, and often our clothes interact with that energy. Thus, I believe that we can look at the clothes and maybe get an idea of what kinds of psychic shields we use against love in a personal and intimate way. But there is more, there is a parallel nature to love on its various levels of manifestation, thus as we understand the physical we are also learning about the non-physical, when it comes to things like love and light. I am still not able to actually see this psychic shield we all have against love, that energy that closes our hearts and keeps us guarded against others, but I know that it is in that some way that clothes are a physical shield against sex, so I can use the knowledge to look and tease out the psychic shields we use against connections. Maybe it does not look like anything, and I can not describe it to you visually, because it is invisible, but this is the power of words over colors, words can describe the invisible because they function on a psychic level.

The question is: what is this shield that we use to block out love, how does it form, what is its form and function. In the past these questions have been ignored because it was thought impossible to answer because of the non-physical nature of the topic of question. Today we have come to realize that the non-physical can also be explored in very scientific ways. Let’s start with changing the words over to the non-physical or psychic form. Personality is the colors and patterns, shield is still shield, light is love, body is ego or mind, and sex is the psychic expression of love, say relationships, connections intimacy, stuff like that. So now we have for the psychic expression or blocking of love: shield, love, personality, mind, and relationships. I think the key thing we learn in this is that it is our personalities that we use as shields against love. We already know that there is a body mind connection, thus those words at not too unexpected, and love and light have also been described as complimentary, and sex is connected to relationships by definition. It is with color and personality that we see something new.

I realize that I have chosen the word personality and that it could be replaced with other words. Remember though as we search that we are capturing the nature of clothes, their form and function in humanity, especially in relation to love. Thinking of clothes and moving from the physical nature of clothes, such as fashion, color, trend, and moving more towards the psychic, we find style, individuality, and clique. We might use ego, or culture even, and I believe that each of these energies do indeed have an effect upon the manifestation of this shield. Not wanting to complicate this topic, I will end this tangent by saying you can see what words fit in that spot, and you are free to find one that fits your liking better if you are at all questioning the idea of personality as the psychic manifestation of our blocks put up to stop ourselves from loving too much.

Could it be that simple, that our personality is a psychic shield that keeps love coming and going to the individual’s comfort zone? Some people like lots of love, and I suspect that their personalities will reflect that reality; then others will want only a small portion of the potentials of love, and they too will have a personality that will be a sign of the kind and or amount of love they seek. How the personality forms is a long and complicated process, thus the complexity of this shield, and the depth of its connection with us; really it is an integral part of who we are as individuals. Personality has always been understood as such, but now to call its purpose so specifically is to take the concept into a new realm of utility and practical knowledge. To understand your own personality or that of other people is to not just know yourself or them, but also to see how you and they accept and share love. Start with your own personality, have a look at it and see what it is like in relation to the amount and kind of love you share. I will go first.

I am, my personality that is, because what I am is more than just that, so I will remind everyone that this is a description of my personality, nothing more except in relation to where we can now take it in understanding our use and blocking of love. I am curious, friendly, intelligent, a bit outgoing, a healer, writer, and people kind of person. I soak up knowledge as much as I can, and have many thoughts of sex, love and relationships, many of which I share in my writing, I am attracted to almost all women, I respect my family, friends and work mates. I like to be with myself as much as I like to be with others, I like food—but not too much, I love music, but can not play instruments, though I have sung in a choir in the past. I like to move around and have nomadic tendencies, I get along well with children and animals, especially pets, I dislike the government (state), religion (church), and institutions that hold down, control and block human activity. The media I also distrust, and do not like to spend much time (if any) watching TV. I read a lot, I like to walk and ride bikes, I used to rollerblade a bit, and I have never been too attracted to sports as a player, I just like to have fun and run around once in a while in what ever sport we are playing. I don’t seem to be able to make too much money, just enough though to live a nice and comfortable life, and I am okay with that. Money does not stress me out too much, except with the debt I have through student loans, because that means one of the largest institutions—namely the state has a hold of me as an individual, and I must submit to their controls until I have paid off that debt. I am a dad, I have been married, I am now divorced, I want to be single, and I want to be connected, and I want them both, thus I am poly.

Truetalk is a contributing writer as well as a member of this online Community. He can be contacted here or through our message board Forums.

Truetalk ; November 11, 2007

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