I’m about to take a sabbatical from my internet and professional life. Starting in the middle of next week, for 90 days, I won’t take on new coaching clients, write essays or fiction, read books, or use Facebook. Instead of getting my income from coaching and writing (as I’ve done for the past year), I’ll be working as a barista in a coffee shop.
Why?
Because Rachel Cherwitz (a very powerful bad witch if I ever saw one and a leader in the Orgasmic Meditation movement) said so.
Allow me to explain.
My Orgasmic Life
A big part of my witchery is my practice of Orgasmic Meditation (“OM” for short) and my participation in the Pittsburgh OM Community (which involves not just OMing, but also putting on TurnON Pittsburgh every week and doing a lot of community-togetherness stuff that I love). Several times a week, often multiple times a day, I have gentlemen friends stroke my clit in a highly specific and contained fashion. With gloves. And lube. And a timer set for exactly 15 minutes. My strokers don’t expect any reciprocation. They know that they’re there for the sheer benefit and pleasure and electric infusion of getting to stroke me.
(This is an Orgone Accumulator. It is cool.)
OM isn’t about climax. It’s about female orgasm as a cyclical, sinuous, full-body energetic experience with peaks and valleys and strange psychedelic twists and turns. It’s about learning to open to sensation and connection, unconditionally.
OM ups my witch power because witch power is essentially just the sexual-spiritual electricity of the body, i.e., what Eastern yogic traditions call “kundalini” or “tummo” and what Wilhelm Reich called “orgone.” OM tunes up my limbic system (making it loud and steady), floods my body with oxytocin, and makes my whole bodily system burn hotter, which means that I can more readily uncover and dispel my mind’s bullshit stories and limiting beliefs. It also means that I’m just plain turned on more often, which means I’m more magnetic and charismatic (the age-old witch’s glamor and fascination).
I learned just about everything I know about sales and business from Rachel Cherwitz’s teaching (she’s the head of sales at OneTaste, the organization that teaches OM). So when Rachel came to lecture in Pittsburgh last week, I took the opportunity to ask her what I could do to improve as a business woman. She immediately told me to stop coaching and writing and go work in a coffee shop for 90 days.
To my rational mind, the prescription doesn’t make much sense. Like, what? How am I supposed to enhance my business fabulousness by slinging espresso? But my whole body lit up and felt joyful when Rachel gave it to me. So I know that it’s true and right. That’s another thing OM does for me: it greatly sensitizes me to my body’s intuition. If my body feels gross about something, then something is gross. If my body feels great about something, then something is great. Pretty simple.
Alchemical Abetting
To my magical mind, the prescription makes a ton of sense. I know (a little) about what Rachel’s doing – she’s inviting me to stop coaching and stop writing so that I can actual feel my desire to do those things, instead of doing them out of a sense of obligation or just-have-to-hustle-to-make-a-living-scarcity. Her advice goes hand-in-hand with an alchemical principle discussed by Catherine MacCoun in her excellent book On Becoming An Alchemist – to stop something (in my case, my resistance to growing my business) you have to first abet it, which means to help it along. This sabbatical is like saying to the part of myself that doesn’t want to do the business hustle: “You don’t want to hustle? Awesome. You are not allowed to hustle for the next 90 days.”
And of course, as soon as I am not allowed to do something…. surprise, surprise, I really really want to do it.
My Fancy Self
Rachel’s prescription also invites me to get out of my head and into the world. There’s something very grounding and humbling about giving up (at least temporarily) my comfortable identity as Fancy Online Coach and Writer and Editor Who Works from Home and Makes Her Living Via MAGIC! to … minimum-wage barista.
The identity piece is huge. My weirdo magic friends all tell me that I’m a four on the Enneagram – and fours are all about their (romantic, idealized, inflated) sense of identity and individuality. Basically my special rare artistic unique snowflake-ness is often a prop that I use to keep myself feeling separate and alienated from others. It’s my favorite tool of non-enlightenment and disconnection.
(Me in my past life as the long-suffering and highly romantical Mary Shelley)
I imagine that not being able to hide behind my Fancy identity will bring up feelings of vulnerability and exposure that I’ll need to face. Which is awesome. And kind of horrible.
This is an orgasmic surrender for me – because I’m opening up to the flow of turn on and trying not to question it too hard. So I bid you briefly adieu, internet friends. Here’s hoping I return to you a shifted and more connectable woman.