A tough question and a reluctant answer

On April 29th, a friend that I made on people.tribes.net, Lama Jime Gyatso, asked me a question that has been racing through my mind like a train through a subway tunnel.

>Lama-Jigme Gyatso wrote:
>
> Dear Daniel,
>
> Right now,
> in THIS moment;
> what are some of the specific things in your life
> that your heart could hunger to heal?
>
> Om Mani Padme Hum,
> Lama Jigme


It has taken me ten days to be able to come up with an answer.


Dear Lama Jigme,

I have been thinking of this question every day since you sent it to me. I am sorry that I have not responded sooner.

I was molested by a group of boys when I was five years old. I have spent years writing about it, sharing about it, being in therapy about it, praying and meditating about it, and suffering from it. There have been years when I thought the pain of it was going to drive me out of my mind. For 15 years, I tried to drink myself into oblivion over it. [Thank goodness I have been sober now for almost 20 years.]

For years I thought I was gay. At 30, I entered into my first gay relationship. It lasted for almost ten years. I thought "coming to terms" that I was "gay" would stop the pain. Instead, the pain just took a nap.

I have been on a three-year fast from sex, quieting my mind, hoping to discover the solution. Now I realize that thinking I was gay was a defense mechanism to not face the trauma of being essentially gang-raped. Believing that I had "asked for" being molested, I needed to think that I must be gay: that was how my little boy mind tried to comprehend what happened to me and why. Now I understand, that had I not been molested, I might not have ever thought of myself as gay. But that doesn't erase the experience.

I now regard myself as a straight man with a bisexual past and uncharted future. This, to me, represents a lot of healing and growth of consciousness. However, that has not removed the scars of the sexual trauma. I still feel a part of me wanders this earth, like a ghost, looking for a healing that I cannot conceive. Today I don't feel straight, gay, bisexual, or necessarily asexual; I don't fit in anywhere. Still feeling defensive, I think and behave like a sex-phobic sexual anorexic, as though that were going to cure me.

When I share this with most people, all of their sex phobias come up, and little to anything good comes of it. That just makes me feel more dislocated.

At various times in my life, I have lived as a monastic. Not surprisingly, those experiences did not address my sexual pain and shame. I have been a buddhist for a long time, but the pain remains.

I have run out of ideas what to do. But I think part of the problem is that I have been running on my old ideas. I have been running with those old ideas wrapped around me, not knowing what else to do.

Right now, in THIS moment, the thing that my heart is hungering to heal is my sexual trauma. I am not attached to what the consequences of this healing might be. What my heart hungers for healing is not about the sex; it's about my ability to connect with life and with others, who in many ways I have shut out.

Thanks for asking me this question. It's exhausted me, but I feel more heart conscious.

Sincerely yours, Daniel Jordan

Thanks for the question, Lama Jigme!

Link to Lama Jigme's web page.