Through a Naturist Lens

It’s summer, yet somehow I woke up to a temperature of 4 Celsius outside. I woke early as is normal. By 8:45 the temperature had soared to 10 C, warm enough to be outside to capture a bit of sunshine on my body. Today, meditation is not as easy on my body as it has been in the past. My left knee is hurting when I assume a semi-lotus position. With age, it seems my body is falling apart, tiny bit by bit.

“Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don’t really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. . . . The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen; room for grief, for relief, for misery, for joy.”

I am in a good space and place in my life, and for that I am grateful beyond measure. I am one of the lucky ones. In spite of those things of childhood and youth that sought to forever break my spirit, body, mind and soul, I survived and moved on to create a different life. I had thought I had left all behind me in the past. But, I am learning that one never leaves anything. The past is not something left behind. It is always present. I used to think that memories can be safely contained as if it was a photo tucked away in some photo album. But the memories are contained in the body and the senses and as a result are as close as one’s skin.

Even though I am in a good space and place in my life, things do fall apart and I tumble back into the same space and place of past trauma. There are triggers – just ask any military veteran who is diagnosed with PTSD – the war erupts and one is again totally immersed in the traumatizing events. One learns to flow through the falls and the ascents that cycle through one’s life, the falling apart and the coming together again.

“When things fall apart and we’re on the verge of we know not what, the test for each of us is to stay on that brink and not concretize. The spiritual journey is ot about heaven and finally getting to a place that’s really swell. In fact, that way of looking at things is what keeps us miserable.”

These words help me. I stop expecting some pill, some therapy, some guru to give me the answers and the relief from the complexities of being human, of being alive and complicated and complex.

There is a real need to take ownership back: ownership of one’s body, mind and soul. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what other people think or say. One’s well-being ultimately falls to what we think and say and believe about ourselves.

In the world of nudism and naturism, there is often the same dialogue and drama about the human body as there is among the rest of the human population. There seems to be more should’s and should not’s than one would expect when the clothing falls off. There is a fear, a real fear about the unknown, the person beneath the exposed skin.

There is this idea that humans should follow rules rather than respond to their environment of people, place and time in a natural way seems to be non-existent. Humans just don’t trust each other, or themselves. We’ve somehow come to believe that humans are essentially not to be trusted, that somehow humans and their bodies are basically flawed.

With the modern psyche accepting this idea of humanity being flawed, as a central belief embedded in religion, law, and social relationships, with the exception of activities that serve economic interests; there is a built in filter that has us cover up our self-perceived flawed bodies, and our self-perceived flawed characters.

Humans work hard to present a self-idealised version of themselves, typically achieved through the clothing they wear, clothing which is carefully selected. Other strategies include exercise and diet. To do any less is to be vulnerable, to give up power over self to others – at least, that is what we tell ourselves. Yet, all of these strategies achieve precisely the opposite. Power remains with the nameless “others” and becomes even more oppressive in spite of our efforts.

We also have built in filters to cover up the truth about our inner selves. We adopt different personae to convince our various audiences that we are okay, worth the time and effort for a relationship. And, we hope like hell that the shadows we are deliberately hiding, stay hidden. We worry that no one would come within ten feet of us if they saw who we really were under our social disguises.

We work harder and harder to keep the physical and psychological truths of who we really are at bay. The harder we try, it seems the more cracks appear in our efforts which force us to up the ante and adopt newer and proclaimed more effective strategies to appear perfect in the eyes of others. Or else, we simply say the hell with it all and go nude letting the self finally become free. Caveat: going nude is problematical in a world that is phobic about human nudity. Expect to be harassed and perhaps even persecuted.

As I sit here this morning wondering what I will write about, with too many ideas racing though my head, I turned to a collection of images that are resting on my desktop. I have both taken and collected images from other places to illustrate my blog posts over the years. As I looked back at my archive, I noticed how the expression on my face and the stiffness of my body has changed. It has been only in the recent few years that my own image begins to show a level of self-acceptance.

I think back to a number of years when I was constricted, barely able to breathe for the tightness in my chest and the vice-grips that had imprisoned my soul. None of it made sense as I had a good life as a parent and spouse with a good career that had earned me a lot of community respect. What had been responsible for my dark state of being within the embrace of family and community? What had changed between then and now when I can once again breathe without worry of the shadows that are still present on the periphery?

My writing since that time of darkness, a writing that had found its way into a number of formats – discussion groups, poetry, reflective journals, blog posts and stories that acknowledge the reality of darkness that broods with a life of its own, within the compass of my life. As the stories emerged, I found myself battling the emerging monsters and ghosts, never able to defeat them, but finding a way to co-exist with them. I created a space where whatever and whoever it is that I identify with as my self, a legitimate space hard-earned.

As the spaces opened up and breathing returned, somewhat to normal, other images of the unconscious emerged, images of those moments in time when I had previously felt whole. More often than not, the images showed a transparent self, one that didn’t hide in closets or in cardboard boxes. I saw myself without the borrowed clothing of others. Yes, I saw myself without clothing, daring to be exposed to the universe.

Of course, I was a child, a youth, and later a very young man when these rare experiences were lived. To be graced with these images bathed in light in a world and life that was otherwise darkness, allowed me to remember, to re-member that child, youth, young adult into a much older adult. And so I dared to search again for those spaces and places where I could risk being authentically and transparently myself.

My life has changed, dramatically because of my work with writing and with my risking being vulnerable. I have learned, perhaps for the first time, that it is okay to be me. I now know that I don’t have much choice but to be authentically me if I am to continue breathing without the power of the darkness once again imprisoning me so that I become only a shell of a man.

“Gender is an aspect of our individuality.”  These words from Thomas Moore got me thinking about gender and my own identity. When a person is nude, gender is an obviously physical thing as this image illustrates. But what gender are we as individuals? The obvious answers are either male or female, but as science and life teaches us, there isn’t always an obvious answer even on the basic physical level. When it comes to the psychological level it gets even more complicated.

Identity is forged individual by individual and we still don’t have a full knowledge of how gender and identity are tied in with our physical bodies. The scientific and supposedly objective criteria of defining gender by one’s chromosomal configuration falls flat on its face when confronted by bodies appearing to be male or female, which contradict what the chromosomal structure would have us believe. Hormone therapy, surgery, and other strategies used by a considerable number of people to have their bodies reflect the gender that is buried within their individual psyches.

Perhaps, Thomas Moore has it right when he says that “Gender is a state of mind, a product of the imagination.” Of course, Moore is talking about how each of us self-identifies based on psychological rather than simply physiological factors. Our physical bodies are containers, not the sum total of who we are as human beings and individuals. We experience our bodies and develop relationships with these bodies we find ourselves in.

Most often the inner self (the psychological self) and the outer self (the physiological self) are in accord and we are comfortable in male bodies with a solid masculine sense of identity, or females with a solid feminine sense of identity. But even that simplistic self-identity is charged with unnamed influences both within and without to cause confusion. We are each individuals with individual histories in unique settings and contexts and relationships.

I am a man and feel myself to be fully masculine, but . . . and it seems for each of us there is a niggling but somewhere in the background lurking . . . but what I experience as my masculinity isn’t what any other man experiences and understands. And, as I get older, I find myself, both physically and psychologically, mellowing in my grounded identity as a man and as masculine. The hard edges are being eroded allowing me to become a fuller person, richer.

I return to the second part of this series of posts that focuses on Daryl Sharp’s quote: “the license to be unfaithful”?

When we hear the word “unfaithful” the first assumption is that one partner has engaged in sexual relationships with someone outside of the relationship. Typically the scenario plays out where a man has stepped outside of his marriage to have a mistress. We assume that it is all about sex. He is deemed as unfaithful to his wife.

Now, if the same man has poured his extra-marital energy into his work, the result is still the same. Work becomes the mistress. All sorts of similar scenarios all point to the same result regardless of which partner in a relationship has stepped outside of the marriage to find a sense of fulfilment – finding something that helps to fill in the holes of the psyche. Daryl Sharp was talking about typical marriages between a man and a woman with the unfaithfulness being sexual in nature. Yet, it is obviously more than about sex, and not limited to heterosexual relationships. Any relationship can become threatened by one of the two stepping out of the relationship in search of the missing pieces of “self.“

I am a naturist. My wife is not a naturist. I drive off every once in a while to go to a naturist venue where I am naked in the company of other naked men and women. Imagine the threat that this must feel like for my wife as I hang out with naked people while she is at home. This is something that we don’t share together. I have a different set of friends and I do different activities, something that I never did in the past. We were always joined at the hip, doing everything together, sharing the belief that otherwise we would be placing our relationship, our marriage in jeopardy.

With that said, I want to shift to a different scenario which has the same relationship impact. I am a writer. Many of my friends are writers whether they are friends in cyberspace or in the face-to-face world. My wife is not a writer. I drive off every once in a while for a writing retreat or to engage in book-signing events. For example, as I write this post, I am in a city more than 500 kilometres away from home, camping alone between events. This is something we don’t share together. It is as though I have a different life being lived in the shadows. I am doing my thing while she is at home forced to find a way to do her own thing, alone.

Two different realities. Writing is my mistress as is naturism. My relationship with my wife somehow remains strong – in a way, I have the license to be unfaithful, giving time and energy to those two mistresses, time away from my wife. Somehow over the past few years we have both realised that if either of us don’t invest in our primary relationship to “self,” the relationship with each other is put an a greater risk. She tried being a naturist and suffered. I tried not being a naturist and suffered. So, what then?

Our marriage survives because we can honour the differences, allow … give license to … having separate passions that make us better people, perhaps allowing us to be better together as a result.

In the photo above a few days ago, I was in my neighbour’s yard. I strayed out of my own yard. Was this a form of cheating on my wife, to potentially allow another woman to see me nude? This neighbour has seen me nude a number of times while I was in my own yard. On those occasions I didn’t even think such a thing. And then, I reread Sharp’s book, Not the Big Sleep.

Daryl Sharp sometimes makes me feel uncomfortable, a good thing if one realises that one needs to feel uncomfortable if one is to make the necessary changes to become a better person. In the quote above, Sharp where in Not the Big Sleep, one character states that the prerequisite for a good marriage is the license to be unfaithful. I could hardly believe my eyes in reading this, a statement that seems to condone extra-marital affairs. But when I calmed down, I wondered if that was really what was being said. What did Sharp mean when he said “the license to be unfaithful”?

“No one person can fill all our needs all the time. We can plumb our own depths to some extent, but we still need others to mirror who we are.”

I know that this unfaithful business is about one’s partner/spouse or some significant other. When one invests in uncovering and discovering who one is beneath the surface of ego, and in the process uncovers and discovers more about the person with whom they have invested, the relationship changes. Does a person feel guilty for seeing themselves in a different light? It may seem that in placing self ahead of other, that is a betrayal. But, I am getting away from the topic.

I am an ordinary person. I see a beautiful-to-my-eyes woman and I respond at some level or other, physically, psychologically, and sometimes emotionally. At that moment, I am being unfaithful in a way. As my wife has often explained, it isn’t necessary to have sex with another person to be unfaithful. Women know this truth. So how then do we stay together? I mean, is there even one man amongst us who has never “strayed” in thought, dream, desire, wish, or instinct?

Hmm … I think I know what Sharp is now talking about. We need to give each other the gift of “others” who can mirror more of who we are. We need to trust that what holds “us” together in relationship has a foundation that could survive either being unfaithful.

And it isn’t just about sex, one can be unfaithful in a variety of ways such as “not holding faith” with a particular belief system or life style. When one partner adopts naturism while the other holds to a long-held life style where social nudity is held in very low esteem, the choice presents itself – accept or not accept. If the move to naturism results in a deep negative response, then one exists in a relationship where there is no “license to be unfaithful” to the original container of the relationship. It is as though one has “slept with the enemy.” So many of my friends who are naturists found themselves unable to keep their relationships together. Naturism became the mistress, just like money had become the mistress in other failed relationships where the “significant other” stopped being at the centre of the universe.

A few pages further into the book, another line leapt out at me:

“Partners often stay together long past the time when their relationship has ceased to be mutually satisfying.”

I think I’ll have to come back in another post to wrestle with this quote. I need to look at my own relationship and the relationships of others I know who have been married for quite some time to get some perspective.

So many people are focused on the outer world. And if one hears any of the news that is flooding all of the media, they [we] need to have a strong focus on the outer world lest it careens out of control into all sorts of collective nightmares. Regardless of what is transpiring in the outer world, it doesn’t mean that we need to abandon our private, inner world.

If we don’t maintain our own personal authority, we become puppets, just another echoing voice in the crowd yelling across a divide at opponents, a divide that appears to be widening. Rather than dialogue to negotiate, both sides harangue and heckle. The individual is powerless though seemingly engaged. Authority lays within the collective.

Naturism, daring to step outside of the collective, appears to be one portal that may allow an individual to recover personal authority. As in the past number of posts, I am returning to James Hollis’ book, Living an Examined Life. Here are a few words from Chapter 4.

“The second half of live occurs when people, for whatever reason – death of a partner, end of a marriage, illness, retirement, whatever – are obliged to radically consider who they are apart from their history, their roles, and their commitments.  …

We have to recover personal authority because the din and demand of the world is too huge to ignore, too intrusive to resist, even if we think we have rebelled and held to our own course.”

So where can we begin this process of recovering personal authority? In my opinion, one valid place to start is with the body. Our bodies have been controlled by the outer world in various forms and formats including age-old scripts that are handed down through generations. To actually confront our bodies without hiding the parts that we have been taught are not to be seen, is transformational.

It is one thing to finally come to grips with the ownership of one’s body, to recover personal authority of one’s body. Yet it is something else entirely to maintain that authority outside the safe haven of one’s private space. Many find other safe havens, naturist campgrounds or resorts, or nude cruises, or other nakations. The problem then reappears as one finds a level of comfort and once again gives up authority to the naked collective. The challenge is to push the boundaries found both within and without in order to flesh out, to uncover the authentic self and its raison d’être. It’s a long process, and often filled with detours and potholes.

One doesn’t undertake this psychological journey of self-discovery unless one is jarred from one’s old life regardless of how uncomfortable that old life was. Even when the old life comes crashing down for various reasons cited by Hollis above, most will resist the psychological journey and embrace being a victim of fate. Obviously, one can never recover one’s personal authority if one doesn’t do the work.

Probably the hardest part of coming to grips with oneself at midlife, is the realisation that one is essentially alone. Regardless of how filled one’s life is with people, there is a sense of aloneness. Though others may share the same house, or even the same bed, the space between self and other widens the more one becomes conscious.

This is a very difficult time for relationships including marriages. As James Hollis points out what we already know, “Marriages often end at midlife.”  And if the marriage doesn’t end, it becomes more of a shell as both parties invest in diversions that keep the truth at bay.

When my wife and I got married, we both believed that it was forever, that we had found the one person in the world who would complete us and meet every unspoken need, every unconscious need. Since then, we have both felt betrayed by the other for ceasing to be the person we had imagined we had married. The person we had married was a flawed human. We had to learn to take responsibility for our individual selves once we realised, painfully, that the other couldn’t.

Naturism is one of those things that define the self that is evolving within me. I am a naturist, she is not. I have dug through the ruins of my early years in order to make peace with the past. There I found a young man who had discovered a healing space outdoors in nature where he hid without clothing. That young man has aged over many decades and now finds himself again in nature without clothing in order to feel the same sense of sanctuary and well-being that had rescued him as a young man.

Couples can agree to disagree yet still find enough in common to be willing to remain together. Those points in common are vital and need to be given the space needed for a relationship to survive the differences that would otherwise overwhelm the relationship. Yet, those differences need to be honoured as well. We need to learn to take care of our own separate needs rather than expect the other to take care of them for us, and we need to allow space and time for the other to do the same. James Hollis tells us:

“There is no one out there to save us, to take care of us, to heal the hurt. But there is a very important person within, one we barely know, ready and willing to be our constant companion.”

If one thinks about it, the journey at midlife is similar to the transition one has to endure when passing from childhood to adulthood. A child loses the Magical Other of parent and is confronted with his or her smallness in the world. Then, as if a miracle, the young adult who emerges from childhood finds someone who then takes on the mantle of Magical Other.

Then in midlife, an older and wiser adult is forced to realise that in spite of a career, family, and societal connections, one is alone, a stranger to themselves and to the Magical Other who has vanished only to be replaced with a complexed stranger. It’s a wonder that any marriage could survive the losses of certainties about other and self.

“What is so difficult is to trust that one’s own psyche will prove sufficient to heal itself.”

The task then at midlife is to give up the idea that someone else will take on the responsibility of healing the broken and bruised parts of who we are. We need to let go of those infantile magical thinking beliefs and find an inner and perhaps an outer place of solitude in order to take responsibility for self. For me, that place of solitude is in naturism. Where is your place of solitude where you can take ownership of your own complexes and become a more conscious person who can have a conscious relationship with other?

I am sitting in my tiny camping trailer while a gentle rain falls outside. The temperature has fallen to single digits and the breeze is brisk. It definitely isn’t the most pleasant situation for me to go out for a nude walk. I tried and the walk was shortened as I hurried back to my warm, tiny trailer. There is no Internet here at Green Haven, so I spend most of my time writing, taking occasional breaks to read.

Having had the foresight to have loaded this page into my browser when I had Internet access, I can build this post to give to you later. As I mentioned earlier in my previous post, I am reading Living an Examined Life, by James Hollis. Today I returned to that book to begin reading the first chapter – The Choice is Yours. Hollis begins with a tough challenge:

“Whether you show up as you in this brief transit we call life or are defined by history, or context, or shrill partisan urgencies substantially depends on you. No greater difficulty may be found than living this journey as mindfully, as accountably, as we can, but no greater task brings more dignity and purpose to our lives.”

It is all about a choice, making decisions rather than abdicating our authority to others who would rush in to make choices for us, others who avoid finding their own dignity and purpose in life.

Naturism is one of those choices for me. Needless to say, almost everyone in my world, my face-to-face world would rather I didn’t make that choice. Making this choice creates tension with all relationships. I could pull back, in effect turning the power of my “choice” over to these others, but I don’t. Despite going against the collective who resist being authentically individual, I have made the choice to stand naked in front of the world.

I know that I am not a “fine specimen” of muscle-crafted, masculine power; and I realise that my body shows the ravages of time. However, it is my body and I have finally let go of the collective-induced shame of having a naked body that the collective tells us to keep hidden at all costs.

The dignity does show up in attitude. An example comes to mind. One bright, warm, late summer day I was trimming the bushes in my back yard. While I was busily engaged with the task, a neighbouring woman entered my yard with the intention of borrowing a tool. She was late in registering my presence, my nude presence. I had noticed her, but kept on with my task.

I didn’t try to hide the fact that I was naked, nor did I try to make myself more visible to her. When she finally saw me, she apoligised for interrupting, for invading my privacy. She didn’t protest my nakedness, nor hide from it. She accepted it for what it was. In the process, we both maintained dignity. In case you are wondering, my neighbour isn’t a naturist. I made a choice to continue working naked in my yard, and she made a choice to continue with her task – as Hollis tells us – “the choice is ours.” But he goes on to qualify that statement:

“We survive in this life by adaptation. We learn from our world – families of origin, popular culture, world events, religious training, and many other sources – who we are, what is acceptable, what is not, and how we have to behave, perform, in order to fit in, gain approval from others, and prosper in this world …”

Now obviously, this world really doesn’t want us to be present as naked people. Nudity is not acceptable unless there is an economic benefit to be made which renders the nudity to be objectively defined, rather than a subjective experience. Rather than approving human nudity, society goes to great lengths to censure nudity and those who adopt a lifestyle that includes being clothing free. Hollis goes on to say:

“We become too often a servant of our environment, given our need to fit in, receive the approval of others, stay out of harm’s way.”

Becoming a naturist or a nudist has a person, at least for the moments he or she is clothing free, make a choice to not fit in, to stop being ruled by the fleeting approval of others. And as long as we hide our nudity behind privacy fences, or behind closed doors and draperies in our homes, or behind the gated barriers that separate a group from the outer world, we can stay out of harm’s way. Yet, for a good number of naturists, there is a compulsion to be more authentic with the world.

Another personal example that comes to mind is my tendency to step outside the safe boundaries and risk. For the past few days while it was warm and sunny, I left the naturist grounds carrying a small bag on my back which contained my wrap – a cover in case I would be seen by others. I would then hike down the public gravel road to a junction where I would then follow a dirt road to reach a point about five kilometres away from the naturist site.

I would then return following the same route back to reach my trailer. Everything I did not only wouldn’t have met with the approval of the world outside the gates, even those within the naturist community would have disapproved – my actions could have put their comfortable life within the confines of the site, in jeopardy.

I make choices, not always good choices in most other people’s opinions, and sometimes in retrospect, I have to admit that my choices aren’t always about being mindful or dignified in terms of my soul’s needs for authenticity. Regardless of the choices I make – to do or not to do, to be or not to be – I learn to become a better version of who I am, a more conscious person.

I am at Green Haven, a naturist campground/community that is my home club. I have the opportunity to spend eight days at this site, engaged in a writing retreat, a skyclad writing retreat. I am rewriting the final book of my autobiography. I have pulled the old version off of bookshelves in various stores and have consigned more than a hundred copies of the book to the recycle bin. The old version was more of a soap opera badly written and acted out. My hopes are that the rewrite will be worthy of being read. Speaking of soap operas, I found this quote of interest this afternoon.

“We are, after all, the only constant character in that long-running soap opera we call our life. Therefore, it might well be argued that we are somehow accountable for how it is turning out.” [James Hollis, Living an Examined Life]

I’ve started reading a new book in my collection, Living an Examined Life, by James Hollis, a Jungian analyst I deeply respect. He never talks about naturism, at least not in his published body of work which is considerable. He focuses on the journey that each of us takes through life as individuals. For me, that journey includes naturism. As I wrote many times over the years, naturism has been instrumental in making me a better, saner person. And as such, I do less damage to the world and the people around me.

I opened this new book on my second full day at Green Haven Sun Club in southern Saskatchewan as I took a break from my current writing project, a rewrite of book three in the Broken Road series. In that writing, I can follow the slow evolution from being damaged goods to a man who now respects himself. In that story of evolution, nudity and naturism plays a large role.

“… for each of us to recover for that which abides deeply within … we will not be spared disappointment of suffering, but we will know the depth and dignity of an authentic journey, of being a real player in our brief moment on this turning planet … on the journey of the soul.”

Is naturism a journey, an authentic journey? Or, is it an acting out of a dysfunctional psyche, the mark of someone who is no more than a deviant? Of course, in my opinion – and it is my journey – I am on a personal pilgrimage of sorts, a journey that demands much of me. The only way to find the energy and will to walk this journey is to find places and spaces in time to recharge through being fully vulnerable to the planet and the sky that surrounds the Earth – skyclad.

For each of the past two days I have walked ten kilometres without the need for clothing. The sun shone, the traffic on the country grid road was absent, and the longer dirt road showed little evidence of recent use. I owned the road and the dirt trail. I carried a hiking wrap which I could put on if a vehicle began to approach. After all, the hiking wasn’t meant to challenge others with my nudity. Luckily, there was no need to put the wrap on and the two hour hike became just myself, the earth, a few wild deer, the sky, and the glorious sun. I knew that I was engaged in a real “journey of the soul.”

I will try to follow-up with more from Hollis’ new book in future posts. I won’t rush the reading of the book as I have the feeling that what is to be found there will deserve a fuller attention that can only come with being read in bite-sized pieces. For now, I return to living without clothing during my stay at Green Haven.