The Gospel of Pleasure (According to Leslie) Podcast

Feel like some non-election-related content?

Head on over to my writer’s Substack and podcast, Leslie’s OnlyFam!

I’ve just podcasted a vintage essay of mine over there called “How I Became a Writer,” and it’s a lot of fun.

Announcements: Free election-themed IM Community Practice

I’m hosting two election-themed 30-minute group IM sessions this upcoming Friday, November 15, from 12-12:30 p.m. EST and 7:30-8 p.m. EST. The practice is open to everyone, though—use it how you feel like using it.

Here is the Zoom link.

I’m also reviving IM Community Practice. Feel free to check that out.

And now, on to the essay.

So, let me tell what we’re not gonna do here.

We’re not gonna analyze why the election went the way it did, whose fault it was, or what could’ve been done differently.

And we’re not gonna pep-talk it out with speak of not giving up or holding on to hope or how maybe we’ve lost the battle but not the war.

Fine options, all, and necessary options, too.

And they will all flow so much more smoothly to us when we start by first being where we are.

And I promise that however desolate you truly feel: that is good news.

For your being with that feeling, with where you are: that is the key to your regaining your bearings, your sense of, “Okay. I know the next right thing to do.”

Only, you won’t be regaining your bearings so much as you’ll be growing your wings, otherwise known as your bodily sixth sense, and your bodily seventh and eighth and ninth senses and beyond—for it is our bodies that will yield us the ground and grounding we are seeking and do need. It is our bodies, exactly as they are right now, that will grant us our bearings.

That is what we’re going to talk about here.

So strap in, good boys and girls and nonbinary folk, and bad boys and girls and nonbinary folk too:).

I’m gonna keep it super f*****g real, as I typically do.

And because this is indeed the good Gospel of Pleasure, the super f*****g realness, as it typically is—as it always is, actually—is indeed Good News.

So, let’s start by just saying it.

This is all low-key f*****g terrifying. High-key, too.

We all knew it could happen. The polls had been priming us for months that it would be close.

But I don’t think any of us were prepared for the vehemence with which it happened, the swift waterfall.

So, there’s that blow.

And then there’s the reality of what is coming.

No, we don’t know exactly what it will look like, what it will actually be.

But we do know what, and with whom, we’re dealing.

And we know that that ain’t good. Our bodies know that that ain’t good.

That’s why our bodies are recoiling so wisely in fear, anxiety, panic, dread, dissociation.

Ah, but this recoiling, and any fear, anxiety, panic, dread, dissociation: this is good news, fair reader, it we will work with it.

Keep reading.

The fabric of Inquiry Meditation is made of what I call Nondoing. (If you want a deep dive into nondoing as I define it, go to my “About” page here on Substack or go to my website and put the term “nondoing” in the search bar, and several blog posts will come up.)

The concept of nondoing is quite old and, as far as I know, has Buddhist and/or Taoist ties.

It doesn’t mean we we don’t do anything. Quite the opposite, actually.

What nondoing means is that instead of acting reactively out of our pain—analyzing the past and/or reaching for hope—escaping to the future…we pause.

And we turn toward our pain.

And we be with our pain.

But what’s the point of that?

Normally, when we think of being with our pain, it seems like a useless act. What the f**k is being with our helplessness, our fear, our downright horror, gonna solve? And what if, like now, it feels like it’s too big to be with? This situation, this election, it’s so much bigger than us. Our fear, our pain, could swallow us whole. It’s happened before, and it f*****g sucked, and that’s putting it mildly.

So, best to keep that stuff at bay, best to keep it over there. Just—don’t think about it. Obsess about it, yeah, but don’t, you know, think about it because then it’ll all be too much.

What’s described above is rolling around in our pain. Otherwise known as identifying with it.

It’s such a learned behavior to identify and be identified with our pain that we think that’s just what we do when we’re upset.

Being with our pain is quite opposite from identifying with it.

Only, being with our pain isn’t opposite from identifying with it because beingness doesn’t have an opposite. Being simply is. Being, or beingness, points to oneness.

And so, beingness is in a dimension that is infinitely powerful than our doing, than our rolling around. Beingness is in, is of, the dimension of nature. Of Nature. Of life itself. Or herself, as I like to say, but life doesn’t mind what pronoun we use.

And so, when we be with our pain—our terror, our anxiety, our panic, our grief—when we non-do: we return ourselves to the flow of Life.

When we be with whatever’s in front of us—happy stuff, too, because happiness can be hard to be with, too—we return ourselves to the flow of Life.

And when we return ourselves to the flow of Life, then we’re dealing with, we’re dealing in, higher-level intelligence. The intelligence behind oceans and horses and stars and the night sky that holds them and laughter and babies and creation. And onesies. ‘Cause I love a good onesie.

When we return ourselves to the flow of Life, then Life, that intelligence that is so kind and sure and knowing and, oh, I don’t know, f*****g creates everything, can speak to us.

Life always is speaking to us, though.

It’s more that when we be with our pain, then we can hear her (Life) speaking.

And we can hear her because we’re in her flow.

Analyzing what’s happened (going to the past) and talking about continuing the good fight (going to the future): these are ways to not feel our current-moment pain. Ultimately, they are distractions.

And they are innocent, of course.

We fear, quite understandably, that feeling our pain will drown us.

What I am saying, though, is that we can be with our pain. Being with our pain is a very helpful way to feel it.

For if we will be with it, then we will be befriending ourselves. Our bodies.

We will have softened. And thus, so will our pain.

The grief, the terror, the anxiety: it will give way to ground. And grounding.

We will begin firing on more cylinders.

What we need to do next: it will become clear.

And it will become clear that all we need to know is the next right thing. We will feel deeply satisfied in our bellies with this knowing.

We will be able to see exactly what is, as it is.

And we will be able to act accordingly, with calm and rather smoothly, rather seamlessly.

We will be in flow.

Which means, we won’t be running around harried and crazy.

No.

Life will be acting through us. We will have made it possible for Life to act through us.

And we will find the next right thing coming to us.

And we will find ourselves able to be truly helpful to ourselves and others.

It’s not really that our grief, our terror, our anxiety, give way to ground and grounding, though.

It is that they will reveal themselves as our grounding, our bodily wisdom, our somatic knowingwhattodonextness. This alchemy, this miracle, happens every time we be with, when we will see, our pain.

In other words, our pain is our answer. Our answer, all our answers, lie in our pain.

Our pain is our answer. Our pain is all our answers.

All we have to do is be with it.

So, how do we be with our pain?

Here is what I did on Wednesday.

I went to sleep on Tuesday feeling pretty sure that Kamala would win. I didn’t watch any news that evening.

I slept fitfully.

I awoke on Wednesday. I got online.

And literally, I cried out when I saw the news. The horror raced like sewage through my organs.

My thoughts began racing. All the thoughts we all have been thinking.

Immediately, I closed my eyes. I didn’t try to stop the thoughts from racing, though. And I didn’t try to quell the horror.

Instead, I said, “You can race, thoughts. I will be here with you as you race. I won’t leave you alone as you race. I will watch you. I’m here, little friends. And I won’t leave you.”

I said the same to the horror.

I spoke with as much slowness, softness, sweetness, and gentleness as I could muster. I had about $.06 worth. In terms of IM currency, though, that translates to approximately $3,476,932.89.

And here is the crucial bit—here is the key to Inquiry Meditation, here is what makes the practice a meditation: I paused. And I checked to make sure the thoughts and the horror heard me.

The thoughts and the horror, they were strong as stallions. But I could feel they’d heard me. If we will check to make sure our insides are hearing us, we will find that they are.

This checking, and the resulting exchange with our insides, is how we put ourselves in a state of nondoing. Beingwithness. True power.

This checking in granted me another $2 billion in IM currency.

And when you know you’re rich, you can afford ever so much more slowness, softness, sweetness, and gentleness.

Once I knew the thoughts and the horror had heard me, I had capacity to be gracious. I asked them if I could get them blankets. Tea? Running shoes?

Our insides are always moved when we are nice to them.

They calmed. I did, too.

And so, they calmed more. I did, too. By now, I was up to $10 trillion. IM will make you a rich b***h, quick.

I told the thoughts and the horror that I couldn’t be with them fully just now, couldn’t sit with them like I wanted to, like I needed to, because I had to get Arden off to school.

“But,” I said to them, “you have my full permission to race and race and race. I will be the space for you to do that, my darlings. I’m in deep agreement with your decision to race. It’s wise and it’s brilliant, and I encourage you do it, and I do love you very much.”

They went on racing for their lives, tearing up earth. But they did pause to say, “We love you, too, Leslie.”

This felt love between myself and my terror, my grief, my panic, my anxiety, made ground for me out of groundlessness. Enough ground that I could get up and get Arden off to school with full knowing that the act of getting my kid off to school was the very best thing I could do for myself, for humanity, in that moment. It was good ground.

And that is what true grounding is made of, is our being with our groundlessness.

If we will be with our pain during this very strange and extraordinary moment: then we will know what to do.

We will be able to act with evermore decisiveness, insight, and authority.

We will be able to make tough calls.

We will be wise, and we will not add to the world’s suffering.

Instead, we will be a boon.

This capacity is what is needed now.

Because decisive, insightful, and authoritative action, and tough calls, and wisdom indeed are needed now.

And if we will be with our pain during this very strange and extraordinary moment: then the now moment will turn to us, drop like a great dragon before us, urge us to climb on, and there we’ll be, flown through the air by a winged creature, through the limits of seeming time, and finding we have just enough.

Our timing will be perfect, and we will find we have have the exact right energy and resources to do what needs to be done, and there will be good cheer in our bodies.

For we will feel life’s light touch at our elbow, at the small of our back, telling us to go not this way but that, to do not this but that. Even if it doesn’t quite make sense, we will feel the elegance inherent in the instruction, and we will find ourselves able to act in very strange and extraordinary ways.

And we will know that we are not only seen, but we are met, and we are not only met, but as Scott Peck says at the end of his masterpiece The Road Less Traveled, we are welcomed.

And we will know that we need figure out no thing. We will know we need only to listen, we need only avail ourselves of this intelligence that’s so goddamn f*****g cool, it doesn’t even need a capital “I”. It’s like a rock star wearing a perfect thrift store T-shirt.

And if we will say yes, we will be guided.

And quite simply, we will find ourselves able to do whatever needs to be done.

Let us close with Dr. Peck’s words, which I come back to again and again and again.

“When my patients lose sight of their significance and are disheartened by the effort of the work we are doing, I sometimes tell them that the human race is in the midst of making an evolutionary leap. ‘Whether or not we succeed in that leap,’ I say to them, ‘is your personal responsibility.’ And it is mine.

The universe, this stepping stone, has been laid down to prepare a way for us. But we ourselves must step across it, one by one. Through grace, we are helped not to stumble, and through grace, we know that we are being welcomed.

What more can we ask?”

Thank you so much for reading/listening/watching.

Feel like reading more? Check out my writer’s Substack and podcast, Leslie’s OnlyFam, to read or listen to“How I Became a Writer”.

Want to practice what I’ve just preached? Awesome. Here again is the Zoom link for the free election-themed Community Practice I’m hosting this upcoming Friday, November 15, from 12-12:30 p.m. EST and 7:30-8 p.m. EST. All are welcome.

I’m reviving Inquiry Meditation Community Practice! It’s a great way to learn and practice IM in a pretty low-stakes manner. All info here.

Last but not least, here is your post-essay chaser. (You might have to be on Substack to actually see it.) Listen even just for 60 seconds, and know in your body that you are indeed being welcomed. A single minute can make all the difference in your day, friends.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegospelofpleasure.substack.com

This podcast is a read-aloud of my previously published written essay.

If you read it and enjoyed it, take a listen! It’s a different way to absorb the content.

Here are next steps!

First, your end-of-essay chaser. The official title is, “The Only Reasonable Thing To Do When You Don’t Have Enough Time Is Dance, You Sexy Beast.”

Here’s the essay I refer to 4:40 that’s on my website.

Feel like reading another essay? Check out this one about the joys of massively f*****g up your life—it’s on my writer substack.

Thanks again for listening/watching/reading!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegospelofpleasure.substack.com

Watch above, read below, or listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

First: Shadow work, anyone?

Fun fact: I co-created a shadow-play group game called HEAT!

The game’s tagline is “Become Unfuckwithable. Play HEAT.”

You will indeed become evermore unfuckwithable if you play HEAT.

We’re hosting free public games on Zoom next Friday, Nov 1, at 1 p.m. EST, and next Sunday, Nov 3, at 3 p.m. EST. Come thru even just for a few minutes.

All info here!

And now, on to the essay!

At some point, we have to do something terrible.

Keep the baby. Or have an abortion.

Keep the consistent pay & benefits. Or quit the job.

Stay in the relationship or break up. Or stay in the relationship or break up the f*****g family. Even the dog. The cats, too. Jesus.

These situations can be all the harder when the conditions aren’t awful: when you have the resources, when you’re not being beaten, cheated on, abused. When you just want…more. Or less.

And there are so many of these terrible things, these terrible decisions, the ones with no way that the eggs and everyone’s hearts don’t break.

What do we do when we have to do something terrible?

The kind of thing where, either way, we’re fucked, we’re bad people, we never thought we could do x-y-z? The kind of thing where, either they’ll hate us or we’ll hate ourselves, we’ll break them or we’ll slowly die inside, everyone is counting on us or we save ourselves?

First, we can know: we are not the first, and we will not be the last, to do a Terrible Thing.

Our pain, our agony, it is real. But it is not original to us.

We can marvel that goddamn, other people have felt this way? Others have walked around Target for purple dish detergent, others have murmured mechanical b******t small talk with coworkers, others have asked after the kiddo’s homework, presenting as Normal&Okay, all as the Terrible Thing looms?

We can look at our fellow Target shopper in her schleppy sweatshirt, we can look at our coworker who won’t shut the f**k up, and we can wonder: is it possible that this person is in functioning agony, too?

And we can know, because it is happening to us, that yes, it is possible.

We can know, deeply, our humanity.

We can know we are not alone.

This is a good start.

But: what to do? What to f*****g do?

We’re agonizing.

And we can’t pull the trigger.

We can’t bring ourselves to do the thing. We might not even be able to bring ourselves to know what to do.

Here’s what to do.

Notice you’re breathing.

What the f**k does that have to do with anything, Leslie? I know I’m breathing! I need solutions, b***h! Not some soft-ass breathing nonsense!

And yet.

Some softness is exactly what is needed now. Softness, precisely when there’s no time for it, no room, no possibility of it solving anything.

And softness happens only now.

And what is happening now?

Our breath.

But I have to do this thing now!

As Byron Katie says: Is it true?

Do you have to act in this right-right-right now? Like, are you signing paperwork here in the Target checkout line? Or are you putting the purple dish detergent and your other items on the moving conveyor belt like the ordinary a*****e that you are, that we all are?

What you do have to do in this right now is breathe.

Like—you really actually have to f****n’ breathe right now or you’ll be dead and then you’ll really have a problem on your hands.

So, try it out.

Notice you’re breathing.

Notice how your breath is coming into your body. Its speed. Its contours. Its texture.

Notice your resistance to slowing down.

Because you are slowing down.

Noticing you’re breathing is like a speed bump: it slows your ass down.

Now we have softness and slowness going for us.

And now, the thing will happen: we will feel.

We will feel our pain.

We’ve been in pain, yes, for sure. But we’ve been so busy doing something about it that we haven’t really let ourselves feel it.

Makes sense. What’s the point of feeling it, after all, because it feels terrible?

And yet. If we will feel our pain without doing something to it—going into thinking mode, trying to figure out what to do, panicking—if we will sit in the car in the Target parking lot and notice we’re breathing as the pain swells, if we will let that pain rise up, let it swell like a great watering blister, or let it mushroom like a giant pink marshmallow that fills the car, the parking lot, the neighborhood, the city, the galaxy…

If we will let our hearts for real-for real break, if we’ll just give up, even a little bit, or even for a little bit…

Then we can speak the truth.

We can say, “Holy f**k, I’m in enormous f*****g pain.”

We can nod at this truth—this now-felt truth. (The nodding actually helps.)

There is something miraculous about this, our capacity, our body’s capacity, to be with our horror.

If we will stop to notice this miracle, if we will let ourselves be moved by our beingwithness:

Then we will have made way for the Big Guns, the main-stage strippers: Compassion! Sweetness!

And finally, finally, the thing we need even more than the Terrible Thing being over and done with, the thing that is most needed right now, can come through: we can be sweet, we can be compassionate, with ourselves. Toward ourselves.

And finally, armed with these mighty tools, we can offer ourselves the magical elixir we’ve been withholding: our gentleness.

We can do what we absolutely must in the midst of our fucked up swirling morass of absolute mess and messiness.

We can be nice to ourselves.

This self-niceness carries the profound consequence of space.

Being nice to ourselves at our messiest, it creates space.

And ohhhh is this space Good News. Like, it really might be the best news ever.

For this space is Space. Like, the big deal Space.

For this space, which becomes available with our self-niceness, our self-compassion, it returns us to the flow of life.

And our return restores our capacity to remember: yes, other people have been here. I’m not alone in my suffering.

And from there, we have capacity to remember, we can feel, that life does indeed love us, and will take care of us, wouldn’t dream of not taking care of us.

We can know that we don’t yet know what to do, or we can’t pull the trigger if we do know, because it isn’t time to know what to do. It isn’t time to pull any triggers.

We can know that when it is time, we will be ready.

We can know that if we are not yet ready, it is not yet time.

Perhaps best of all, we can know that the very best thing we can do right now is to chill the f**k out and drive the f**k home.

Just go home.

And as we humbly pull out of the Target parking lot, the sky darkening as it does this time of day, we can feel life, the very power of the multiverse, beside us in the passenger seat, loving us so hard, so fierce, stroking our arm, our cheek, telling us, I’m here, darling. I’m here.

Thanks so much for reading! Here’s your post-essay chaser.

Feel like more?

Check out my new essay called “What to do when you don’t know what to do” on my OnlyFam writer’s substack.

And don’t forget to check out HEAT.

Thank you again!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegospelofpleasure.substack.com

In this post/podcast/episode, I share the fantastical frame-by-frame story of one of my own recent Inquiry Meditation sessions, and along the way, I share a pretty thorough explanation of what IM is all about.

Watch a few short clips here.

Sorry that the lighting is a bit low in the video.

Coupla quick notes: I use the word “incrimination” somewhere along the way. I think I meant to say “recrimination” lolol. It’ll all makes sense, though.

Also, I forgot to add that as part of a given IM session integration, you’ll find some area of your life clearing. Sometimes the clearing is obviously related to the content you worked with during a session. Often it is not, which is super-cool because you get to experience that everything truly is connected. Whichever way your clearing manifests, you feel a little happier, a bit more spacious, free of reason.

In my case: I did the session I describe on Monday. The next day (yesterday, Oct 15), my afternoon cleared: both the appointments I had scheduled cancelled. And I had the impulse to call about a medical bill and get it straightened out. I’d been very wisely avoiding the s**t for months and months because I knew it would be a long-winded affair that would involve multiple calls to both the medical provider and my insurance company, and that kind of thing typically leaves me scream-declaring in a cold and certain and trembling Cersei Lannister murderous rage that the representatives’ bloodlines must be wiped. I do mute myself during these rages.

But yesterday, I found myself with the time, energy, and space—and nothing less than open-hearted willingness to call my insurance company, and then call the provider, and then call the insurance company again and add the provider to that call, which lasted over 40 minutes. Miraculous stuff.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegospelofpleasure.substack.com

I was revising my “About” page here when I thought, why not make a video of me reading it to you?

So come get this news, dear card-carrying Citizen of this Multiverse, ‘cause it is indeed Good.

Read the “About” page with me, or feel free to simply listen/watch.

Please note that in a burst of inspiration, I renamed my website yesterday—yes, yet again!!—to thegospelofpleasure.com—but all the other domain names work. (I mention this bc at the end of the video, I say it’s now pleasure.energy, ‘cause that’s what it was at that time (that url still works). One thing about me: I will change a website name.

Wanna try out a bit of what I’m talking about in a truly low-stakes and powerful way? Check out the Gospel of Pleasure Audio Library!

Last, I refer in the video to this blog post from my website. The reference in the post is to "the victim," but the principle applies to all pain and problems. And the ideas comprise the core of what IM truly is about.

If you choose to read, though, do buckle up, good boys and girls and nonbinary folk—and bad boys and girls and nonbinary folk, too, absolutely and of course—'cause we're leaving Kansas with this one.

Thank you reading, listening, and/or watching!

Here is your end-of-post chaser. Dancing wildly is wildly encouraged.

Enjoy, and if the spirit moves you, share this post, and/or subscribe!

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit thegospelofpleasure.substack.com