A Weapon of Mass Seduction

"Positive Thinking"

This is the most me thing I have ever tweeted.

Celibacy and the Sacral Chakra

Someone on another forum asked what effect celibacy has on the sacral chakra. I wrote a long answer and thought I should share my thoughts publicly:

"I spent just over a year celibate up until this summer, and even now continue to re-engage slowly and with care. My celibacy streak (less a strict edict than the result of a practice of radical discernment) was coupled with an intentional deep trauma healing process and unexpected spiritual awakening, but it's hard to tell which came first - the celibacy or the process. The entire incel (involuntarily celibate) community is probably the least evolved group of people on earth, so celibacy alone without commitment to inner work won't do much.

What I did notice was that an enormous siphoning of my energy was remarkably stopped - it was as though I had been a leaky boat the whole time, unconsciously funneling energy to partners in order to maintain the sexual relationship. Without someone to focus on, my surplus efforts redirected towards my community and then myself. I got more done this year than I ever imagined possible - finished recording my album, wrote most of my next book, rebranded my coaching business, recorded 9 episodes of a web series about peaceful communication, cooked two 12-course dinner parties, attended 10 medicine ceremonies, completed a 6-week healer's training, and threw my first commercial weekend-long retreat. So, there's some evidence for you. Granted, I set intentions to do all these things, so again, ymmv.

Celibacy also functioned as a sacred space for healing sexual trauma, and to feel that there was a period of time to safely remove old sexual imprints without new ones coming along to muddy the waters. In that space I learned to listen to my body and set boundaries, because in all my prior sexual history I could only ever hear what my partner wanted. In the past I had gone stretches of time without sex, but my fantasies still always revolved around pleasing a partner, because my body understood the security of approval more than it understood its own pleasure. Undergoing multiple trauma healing modalities allowed for me to remove the false people-pleasing programming as well as the PTSD symptoms of desensitization/depersonalization and start listening to what actually made my body feel safe and nourished. I had no idea how accustomed I had become to brutality, nor how skewed my worldview had become where I felt I could expect no better because that's just how the world was. (You may have noticed the collective is also currently learning these same lessons about how bad things currently are and how much better we are deserving of. I'm far from the only one on this wave but I did begin setting intentional magick around this at the end of 2015 and it has been trippy seeing it scale far larger than I ever thought possible.)

Anyway I was kicking and screaming most of the time but looking back I really don't see how I would have been called to do all this work on my own had I been partnered, or having casual sex, or worst of all in that grey zone between being casual and being partnered. I'm grateful to be able to enter my next relationship as the better version of myself that I became during that time period (or am still becoming, spirit tells me - it's not quite over yet). If you have the space for it and you're willing to do the work along with it, then yes it can absolutely change your life."

The Energy of Your Space

How's your energetic relationship to the objects in your space?

How does one have an energetic relationship to an object, you may ask. Let me explain.

While I haven't personally used the Konmari approach to space organization, one of my understandings of her system is that it recommends holding an object in your hands and sensing whether it brings you joy - and if it does, you keep it, and if not, you discard it. That is the difference between an energetic relationship to an object and a lack of one. Loosely, it's the idea of an object having "sentimental value."

Of course, we can have negative energetic relationships to objects too - objects left behind by our exes that they refuse to pick up but don't want us to throw out, homework textbooks, family heirlooms bearing negative imprints from toxic relatives but which we can't bring ourselves to get rid of.

Part of achieving happiness comes from purposely curating the effect our living spaces have on our bodies. A positive energetic relationship with our space and the objects within it will have a significant effect on our daily sense of well-being. While we live in a time of economic and housing crises that can make this a more difficult task than it should be, there are many ways we can be more conscious about our space that require more imagination than budget.

Energetic relationships also have different flavors. Certain objects, scents, colors, and textures tell a story, evoke an emotion, or even dictate behavior - the design and decor of a cathedral, school, and nightclub all tell you how to feel and act when you enter them.

If you're especially energetically tuned in this fashion, your space will evolve as you do. When I first moved into my LA apartment, I based my living room decor on three themes: a turn-of-the-century bordello, Sherlock Holmes' library, and a hunting lodge with taxidermy and scotch. I would only later connect the dots that, as a submissive-identifying woman (at that time anyway), I had unconsciously drawn inspiration from settings where men are comfortable and in power. As I've evolved into a more empowered feminine archetype, I've slowly outfitted my space to also draw from the themes of an apothecary and witches' lair, with dark feminine elements like skull candles and jars of herbs and incense, which is more about solitary craft than pleasing others. (See where this gets interesting?)

Sometimes I go into people's homes and it barely seems like they live there - walls the same dull white the landlord painted them, standard plastic venetian blinds on the windows, drab functional furniture that exists as a non-choice, a way to opt out of making a statement. I don't understand how they could choose to live in a standard-issue prison, in what amounts to little more than an oversized cubicle. Again this is very little about budget and very much about creativity - although I also understand creative bandwidth is scarce in times of economic stress, so no judgments, just observations. This post isn't designed to denigrate anyone but rather to point out what I feel is an important factor in our sensory well-being, one that I have had worthwhile results from prioritizing.

What story are you telling when you walk into your home? What feelings are you evoking in yourself? How do you want others to feel? What is the energetic flavor of your space? Living, resting, working, falling asleep and waking up in a space that makes you feel good is a large part of finding everyday, bodily happiness. Surrounding yourself with objects with which you have a positive energetic relationship will recharge your stores of joy on a daily basis and give you a better baseline level for happiness.

I'm particularly talented at evoking an aesthetic with home decor. I've not only done this within my own space but also for friends who were moving into new spaces, whether I helped organize their furniture or just made them a Pinterest board based on the themes and moods they wanted to achieve.

I'd like to offer that as a service too someday, but I'm still working out the details. If you're interested though and want an earlybird low price to help me practice for you, let me know.

But please don't miss out on the opportunity to really live where you live, and not to merely treat yourself like a temporary tenant of earth (even if that's what we all are in the end). Having a home that feels like home, if you can swing it in this dire age, will have an enormous impact on your well-being and is well worth any effort you can put in.

Captain's Log, 12.5.17

I just got off the phone with one of my clients, who gave me permission to write about her experience. I'm astounded at how she's turned around her energy a complete 180 degrees in the last two weeks. We spent most of this fall trying again and again to get her out of a toxic spiral, and when she finally felt she reached a pit of despair, she said "I just don't want to feel so awful anymore." "Good!" I told her. "Don't! Let this be your rock bottom. Let this be the moment you've had enough. You can turn this around."

Today on the phone it was like speaking to an entirely different person. Her energy was upbeat, hopeful if nervous, and more self-aware of her patterns up front than she'd ever seemed before. She told me she's trying multiple things to get happy - new friendships, classes, workouts - trying whatever looks helpful and then mindfully examining the results. She's using online dating to practice her ability to see red flags, not necessarily looking for her next relationship right away but rather meeting a high volume of dates so she can practice her skills of discernment as to who cares about her feelings (and she already compassionately showed one fuckboy the door). She was asking me how she could know to trust in a better future. I told her it might take time, but that she was doing everything right, and that if she can continue to trust in the process she'll see results. "But I'm so happy you're asking that question," I said. "That's exactly the question I was asking a year ago. I'm still trying to figure out exactly how it worked, but I know it did, and I see it happening for you too. And for some reason, the more you relax and focus on attuning to what makes you happy, and the more you leave space for it to show up, the more quickly and easily it goes."

I'm thrilled because I know what has worked for me these past 2 years as I set the intention to drop all my bullshit, my favorite teddy bear beliefs, my workarounds and excuses, and to finally surrender to a deep inner healing that I couldn't possibly even understand at the time - but would I be able to explain and coach someone through their own journey? Would my personal path be universal enough to be helpful to others on their own paths? Would I, now, be able to explain to the me of 2 years ago that hope is possible, and guide her through the process toward happiness? If I didn't understand what was happening to me back then, would someone in that space now be able to understand what I'm trying to tell them - or would they even have to understand it at all, could they just trust in it and let it unfold?

I don't know exactly what caused her to decide that she'd finally had enough pain, and I definitely can't take credit for it. All kinds of material instruction (dump him, block his number) were useless until she made the decision that she wanted to feel better. What I do know is that at some point she made that decision, and the shift between rock bottom and hey-I-feel-pretty-good-lately happened within the span of two weeks. I can help her along the way in practicing discernment, reflecting the emotions I hear her express, analyzing the situations she describes to me, suggesting next steps, identifying the things that appear to be working in her favor and encouraging her to let go of the things causing her stress. But I'm just a guide, giving suggestions based on what has worked for me and what I'm hearing from her. She had to make the choice to do the work herself.

I'm just so happy because I now see her in exactly the place I was a year ago, and I get to tell her "YES. This is absolutely possible. You can feel this much better and more. You can make space for your wildest dreams to show up for you. Yes, this is real; yes, healing is possible."

And - because now that I see that my own case is not just a fluke - because I also get to tell it to myself.

Captain's Log,12.4.17

Last weekend at the Witch Haven retreat, we created sigils, carved them onto candles, and then lit them in a sacred circle we called in the park while a flock of geese slowly came out of the water to watch us.

I decided to sigilize for "My soul mission brings me financial prosperity."

I just got a phone call from a producer at a major label I'd met over a year ago at one of my shows. We had exchanged numbers like you do when you're drunk and just played a great show and imagine you'll one day do some networking, and then of course never followed up with one another.

Today he called out of the blue to say, "Hey is this Arden? I know this is going way back and I'm not sure if you remember me, but I was just going through my new phone and saw I had you in my contacts as Arden Singer, I think I heard you perform at a showcase last year. I'm working on some new tracks and I'm looking to hire someone to sing on them. In fact some of them require classical training. Would you be interested and could you send me any recent stuff you have so I could check it out?"

Magick is real, folks.