Defining and Living your Personal Code of Mature, Noble, Authentic, Responsible Masculinity.

What does it mean to be a Conscious Masculine Dominant?

Ultimately, it is your own personal path to develop, not what anyone else tells you.

For me it means to be clear about, and aware of the values I live by, my personal code, and if my actions in the world, are in alignment with  these values .  Am I walking my talk!  Would a submissive woman be proud, trust, feel safe, cared for, listened to and honored to serve me?

Being Conscious also means to be aware of my shadow aspects. As a Dominant for instance, if my intention is to aspire to leadership, responsibility, integrity (walking my talk), or accountability, I have to be aware of, own, and examine all aspects of the ways I may not be in integrity, accountable, responsible or in leadership at times. I will need to learn to address the underlying reasons why I am falling short of my stated intention. What is causing me to get off track. Is there a pattern here? What is it about?

The archetypal shadows of the Dominant or King archetype, are the weakling on one end of the scale and tyrant on the other. The King’s energy rests in balance between them. As a man, are you aware of these unconscious shadow parts of you, and how and when they may get triggered in your relationship to women.   How do you respond if your submissive or others challenge your authenticity, competence, authority or safety as a Dominant?  How well and clearly do you set and hold the boundaries or protocols you establish? How readily can you own your mistakes and sincerely apologize if you have been unfair or unjust?

Here’ some more considerations. Are you mindful, present, in your body, can you be vulnerable? Do you tell the truth? Honor and keep agreements? How deeply are you taking in the submission being offered? Do you allow yourself to really feel the power of it deep in your being?

How are your skills at intimacy and touch to connect deeply with your submissive physically and emotionally,  and make her melt.  Do you practice the art of blessing your submissive? Can you honorably hold the space for both the noble dominant and cruel sadist? Do you understand the sharp distinction between D/s and BDSM? Are you aware of the personal erotic mythos that drives your erotic passions. Are you aware of your submissive’s erotic mythos?

These are some of the things that will be explored and examined in this workshop. We will also share experiences, questions and issues specific to Het Male Dom led relationships.

There will be many tools and techniques offered in support of defining and developing your own personal practice of Conscious Masculine Dominance. The intent is to support each man to define his own path.

Being a Conscious Masculine Dominant is a practice one can develop and continually aspire to. It is an ideal to aim for, not a destination one will ever arrive at.

There is no perfection in this. We will all fail if we are striving for perfection. But we can develop a strong intention to live up to our own personal code, even if we stumble, and develop practices that help us continually renew our connection to our intention to be Conscious Masculine Dominants.

Some Topics Covered:

Defining Your Personal Code of Masculine Dominance

Intention, Presence, Ritual, Mythos, Archetypes, Sacred Space, Symbols, Metaphor – tools to understand and deepen your relationship to yourself and your partner.

The Important Distinction between D/s(relationship) and BDSM(dark eros)

The Dance of Masculine and feminine in relationship

Resolving the Paradox of Noble Loving Dominant/Cruel Sexual Sadist  – How both aspects can be true…and noble.

Understanding, Owning and Resolving the Shadows of the Dominant (often Tyrant/weakling) and learning to effectively deal with your submissive’s(often needy/defiant)

Authentic Dominance Means Embodying Your Dominance – getting out of your head and deeply into your body. Tools and techniques to get connected to your embodied masculinity…and your sub  into her full feminine presence.

Using Mindfulness Practices s to Build Intimacy, Trust, Safety, Connection,  and Presence to Resolve Deeper Conflicts in your relationship with your submissive

Date:  Sunday, July 1, 1-5pm

Location: close-in sw pdx – address given upon registration.

Space limited to 12 men, so reserve your place asap

$40 or sliding scale if space available.

If you have a sincere interest in attending, and have a financial challenge, please contact me directly to discuss sliding scale, trade or other options.

It is possible this could form into an ongoing support and connection group.

[Register Here][shop.tetrussyogaswing.us/Accessories-Upgrades/Conscious-Het-Male-Dom-Workshop.html]

If you have any questions, please email me at Galen@DakaDom.com

Testimonial

“Galen leads his workshops with a humble authority that is true to his extensive experience in BDSM. Eloquent, intuitive and worldly in his perspectives, Galen generates a learning environment that is safe, authentic and open to all.” – Ms Savannah Sly – co-founder Kink Academy

About Galen: Galen brings nearly 15 years experience in guiding and facilitating men’s workshop to help men connect to their core values of mature authentic masculinity. He has been involved in the work of the Mankind Project (mkp.org), and Weekend Leader of the Boys to Men rite of passage weekend for teen boys(www.boystomen.org/), and the Inner Mentor weekend for men who wish to mentor teen boys.

In addition he has led workshops all over the country on Conscious Kink practices, appears at numerous Kink and Sexuality Conferences, and has been interviewed in numerous publications for his innovative views on conscious sexuality.

Galen is currently in graduate school in psychology, researching and developing a new therapeutic model of sex-therapy for individuals and couples.

Learn more about Galen and his work at the Conscious Kink Blog – [DakaDom.com][DakaDom.com]

Galen is also the designer of the Tetruss Portable Dungeon Suspension Bondage Rig and Sex Swing [Tetruss.com][Tetruss.com]

“One foot out the door into my sexual truth, and I plunged into the inescapable darkness I had no idea was waiting for me.”

I could describe my most significant “dark night” 15 years ago, as like an earthquake…aftershocks still reverberate in my life and can still shake my foundations, if not my soul.

But according to Dr. Gerald May, a psychiatrist and author who explores the connection between our darkest times and spiritual growth,  our darkest hour is often a “time of deep liberation.”

My dark night occurred during the tumult that was my divorce from my ex, after she brutally outed me to one and all over my D/s-BDSM oriented sexuality.

Pre-divorce my soul was heavily shackled. I was in this deep groove of aspiring upper-middle class psyche/lifestyle. My channels of expression were playing in sports leagues, and  a beer after the game at a bar or a buddy’s man-cave. My other was devotion to my sons, through coaching their school teams in baseball, basketball and soccer over a 12 year period.

My task was to make money, and then more money for new cars, summer vacations, weekends away, an arsenal of gadgets and toys, home décor, club memberships and a hefty mortgage payment for the 3400 sq foot mansion on 1.3 acres…oh yeah that needed to be fenced, gated and thoroughly landscaped.

I soldiered on through this 17 year period. My ex’s only real concern about me was that I keep making more money as she certainly intended to spend more. She seemed to find nothing else about me of any interest at all. She was always trying to keep up with her older sister who had a skill at landing financially successful men, who kept her well provided for.

When I decided I was going to divorce, I had this well manicured vision of how that would unfold. I would prepare our jointly owned business so that she could operate it, or someone else could with the systems I had in place. Sell the house,  divide the assets, share custody, and I begin my new life of being who I was…especially around my sexual desires for fetish, D/s-BDSM and other perversities. I had hidden this aspect of myself all of my life up to that point. It was clearly unwelcome and harshly judged in the world I live in.

So, post divorce, I envisioned still being who I was in my community of some 27 years, still have the same buddies, work out at the club, use my contacts and professional associations to hustle up some consulting work, and find a partner who was into the same D/s-BDSM interests as I was…but exclusively in the privacy of our home.

Funny how far off the mark this vision was!

One foot out the door into my sexual truth, and I plunged into this inescapable darkness I had no idea was waiting for me.

After 17 years, hanging on as long as I could for my son’s sake, I finally had enough and decided to leave my miserable marriage. A male friend of mine, after I told him my plan quipped, “The only thing worse than being married to C, is going to be divorcing her.”  The man was a prophet.

This was also the moment where I began to step into my sexuality and exploration of BDSM and fetish sexuality.  This simply consisted of some personal ads on fetish sites and a rather involved email correspondence with a younger woman into Daddy/daughter play, as perverse and taboo as you could imagine. I had yet to have any real time exploration.

Long, very long story, but my ex invaded my computer at my office, and discovered my fetish profile and correspondence. She downloaded this “evidence”, turned it over to her lawyer, and now made the whole divorce about my pathological perversity, me being a sick, fucked up man, and that I  ruined her and my sons lives. She told the most horrid, lurid, disgusting tales about me and my lifestyle she could conjure, with no truth at all to them. She spread these slanderous accusations to all her family, my family, all our couple friends, professional associates, all the employees of our business, her lawyer, and worst of all my kids. I became  a persona non grata overnight. The courts treated me like a criminal despite no crime. I lost my business, all my assets, and my income.  I did not see my sons for a year as a result.

Except for my one male friend quoted above, everyone took her tales as truth, without question. Not one person out of all my old friends, pals and acquaintances, of the previous 27 years,  ever called to ask me my side of the story.  Some did take it upon themselves to call and scream at me for how disgusting I was to ruin my family like I did. It was a very dark period.

The brutality of it was stunning. Overnite my ex was able to launch an all-out assault on my reputation, sanity, pathology, humanity, fatherhood and financial well-being. It was a lightning strike of court orders, mandates, restraining orders of FAPA level, locked out of my business, locks changed on my home with all my possessions, asset accounts frozen, credit cards canceled.  Worse I was slandered and vilified in terms and stories so unbelievable, but yet believed,  about my involvement in child molestation and rape, hundreds of thousands of dollars blown on prostitutes, that I even left my sons 13 and 15, abandoned in a hotel while I went out and got a prostitute. All my friends, family and professional associates were duly notified of the monster I had become.

I was caste out of my community…an outcaste. To be so vilified was the most devastating and painful experience of my life. And I had yet to develop any friends or community in the sexual realms, and I was suddenly utterly alone.

A good friend from my current life observed recently, that I still carry this “community” wound in me.

The worst blow of all,  was being cut off from my sons, which lasted a year. I got had gotten an email from them telling me they did not want to see me until I got counseling for my sickness and give their mom more money. My ex was clearly standing over their shoulders dictating this letter.

I feared what they must be going through and was devastated about what they may believe about their father. They were immersed in and assaulted with her victimization and my vilification on a daily basis in gatherings at their house with my ex’s sisters and parents, and her girlfriends. They were at an age where it was an inappropriate or not even a graspable discussion I could have with them about what was going on.

This was not at all what I had ever imagined.  Had I known what was coming, I can’t imagine I would ever have had the courage or the daring to brave this gauntlet.

But the blessing of course was a liberation, I never could have even envisioned…that I would ever live this freely in my truth.

Now that I was outed, to all and everyone I would have planned to hide my sexuality from, the gateway to really explore and research and express this highly compelling aspect of who I was swung wide open. I have gotten to hike deeply into the wilderness of Eros for the last 15 years. It has been exhilarating to have so much freedom to explore, not to mention the intense primal passions I have gotten to engage in with others.

This liberation has brought my sense of mission into crystal clarity. I get to legitimately study, research, explore, speak publicly, openly advocate for, a topic that is relevant and completely absorbing, and work with people directly to help them untangle their authentic sexual desires from all the conflicts that hold their desire back.

I am so happy to say that after a lot of work and love, my sons and I now have a stellar relationship, and there is nothing I hide from them.

My dark night of the soul was my greatest blessing.

Tantra and Dark Tantra, Sacred Sexuality and Fetish,  Alike and Not

Do you like your sex holy or nasty? Do you desire the bliss of merging with the divine mystery, in a state of transcendent, ecstatic, universal love, or would you rather feel captured, preyed-upon, taken, dominant, predatory, slutty, wild, perverse or primitive? Can you go both ways? Is one path right, and one wrong? Have you even thought about your sexuality in these terms before?

These are relevant and complex questions for anyone seeking to finally get real about who they are sexually. These questions seldom get examined in much depth.  But they could become quite relevant.  

Human sexual desire is being unchained globally in unprecedented fashion. More and more men and women are being exposed to a freedom and opportunity for sexual exploration that neither they, nor any previous generations, have ever faced before.

Millions of us are opening to the unexplored depths of our Erotic psyche. This is a wilderness area with few maps, but with compelling tales of tantalizing riches and pleasures. Throughout history, these pleasures have never been available to the mass of humanity. The sexual arts, sacred and profane both, were only available to aristocratic jet-setters of the day,  or through the esoteric, spiritual or occult realms.  Here they have been actively, but secretly researched and explored for thousands of years.

This newly unbridled Eros is a powerful magnet, and it is drawing out millions of people all over the world from the ferocious grips of highly repressed cultures. These millions are the vanguard of a new wave of sexual expression and exploration. There is now an unprecedented percentage of the world population who are choosing to no longer ignore they are sexual beings. This has never happened before. They are making their sexual rights, a valid part of who they are. People are deciding their personal sexuality deserves as much care, education, expression and nourishment as their physical, emotional, rational and spiritual needs. They want most of all for their sexuality to be granted the nonchalance of normalcy, no matter the content of their sexual identity.

The problem is, human sexuality, beyond the functional pro-creative aspect, is highly complex, nuanced, and mysterious.  For the most part these aspects of our personal sexuality, have been ignored, repressed, vilified, outlawed, and hidden from view in most ways in most cultures. Most of us don’t really know much about it. When we finally escape the grips of our repressive sexual upbringing, how do we find, explore, express, create and integrate our authentic sexual desires into who we are overall?  How do we deal with the deeply imbedded fear, inadequacy, shame and harsh moral and spiritual judgments that will still effect how we express, or do not express our sexuality.  How will we recognize when we feel unjustly righteous in our judgment about the sexuality of others. Will we find our sexual truth through one of the newly visible portals of Sacred-Sexuality, Tantra, Taoist, Fetish/Kink, Quodoshka, Polyamory, Trans/CD/TV. Bi-Sexuality, Celibacy, Sex Magic or some combination of them , or some entirely new path yet to be revealed?

I have had the good fortune to have been immersed in the Fetish world for over 14 years now as participant, teacher, guide, advocate, workshop leader and researcher. For the last 10 years I have also been closely involved with the Sacred Sexuality/Tantra community. I feel that both Fetish and Sacred Sexuality are two of the most important and emerging aspects of our sexuality that are gaining prominent expression in the world. Is one sacred and one profane? Do either apply to you? If you think one or both might, check out my upcoming blogs. I will review how both can be important in learning about, safely exploring, and engaging in your deepest sexual truths. It is an empowering and healing journey.

My Conscious Fetish and Sacred Sexuality Workshop is coming to SD 7/30, LA 7/31 and SF 8/20….upcoming workshops are being planned for Portland, Seatlle, Chicago, NYC and Boston for this fall. Check the Workshop Tab for details about the workshop. Please contact me if you would like more info.

The Cost of our Sexual Dishonesty

Can you imagine how deep the sexual shadow in our culture must run? The three politicians referenced above are just the most recent, in a long unending stream of politicians, religious leaders, entertainers and other celebrities, caught in the act. These are people in the public eye, under intense media and staff scrutiny, whose positions and careers require impeccable character,  who have a lot to lose, who may even preach about morality and family values…yet even with all this at stake, their secret sexual desires could not be reigned in. And they got caught.

Secret shadowy behaviors, sexual  and otherwise, do have a tendency to blow up right in our faces like that.

Now imagine all the rest of the population who have no media hawking them every day, who have a far vaster freedom you might say, to indulge their sexuality in secret shadowy ways. This is the rest of the ice-berg. From the astronomical stats on all manner of extra-curricular porn surfing, and Craig’s list casual hook-up ads and such, there is an enormous amount of sexual expression and exploration going down. And most people are trying to keep it secret…while taking risks, in some cases very high risks, to indulge their sexual desire.

The sad, ruinous, mythic drama of the fall from grace, gets played out over and over. The perp is relentlessly and publicly shamed and ostracized. Their partner is often shattered but stoically loyal…at least publicly, or initially. The perp’s team throws out every spin, subterfuge  and dodge imaginable to forestall getting to the deepest truths lurking on the edges of what is known. Some have the power to keep the damage under control, some do not. And later, of course,  there is often the attempted  redemption, resurrection and comeback saga.

These politicians, religious leaders, sports figures et al, are just a minute reflection of the unconscious, repressed, vilified, shamed, demonized, secret,  and conflicted views about sexuality prevalent throughout the minds of the collective culture.  The issue of our sexual dishonesty is systemic.

The shadow of sexual dishonesty plays out just as relentlessly on our local and personal stages as well. Partners cheating on their partners behind their back, secretly chasing after every perversity imaginable online or in real