Love, Lust & Faking It

by Jenny McCarthy

  That’s the power of an unquestioned thought. You can be in heaven and think, “That guy is playing his harp too loud,” and the instant you believe it, you have kicked yourself out of the awareness of heaven. The difference between heaven and hell is believing a thought that is untrue for you. It’s the only difference. Earth is actually heaven; our unquestioned thoughts about it can make it seem like hell.

  JENNY: Describe self-love.

  KATIE: You know what it’s like being in love with someone. You think that he is the most wonderful person in the world, you admire him, respect him, adore everything about him, even his quirks and foibles, even what seem to other people his “flaws.” Well, it’s like that, except that the person you’re in love with is you. You’re in love with what can never leave you. It’s a constant state. Your heart is always open, because your mind is open, and your mind is open because you don’t truly believe anything you think. When you love what is, when you love whatever life happens to bring you, of course you love yourself. You realize that everyone is a reflection of your own thinking. If you’re angry or sad or disappointed in yourself, you have to project that onto your partner or your parents or your boss, but if your heart is at peace, that peace fills the whole world. You can’t help loving everyone, because you love the mind that perceives them. I love everything I think, so I love everything I see.

  JENNY: Some people might think that what you’re talking about is narcissism.

  KATIE: Actually, it’s the opposite of narcissism. It might seem like selfishness, but it’s beyond self. What you’re in love with is not your little ego, it’s your true self, who you really are, without any concepts or stories about reality. Personalities don’t love; they want something. Love doesn’t seek anything. It’s already complete. It doesn’t want, doesn’t need, has no shoulds (not even for the person’s own good). So when I hear people say that they love someone and want to be loved in return, I know they’re not talking about love. They’re talking about something else.

  When I walk into a room, I know that everyone in it loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet. Seeking love is how you lose the awareness of love. When you believe the thought that anyone should love you, that’s where the pain begins. I often say, “If I had a prayer, it would be: ‘God spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.’ “To seek people’s love and approval assumes that you aren’t whole. But you can only lose the awareness of love, not the state. That is not an option, because love is what we all are. That’s immovable. When you investigate your stressful thinking and your mind becomes clear, love pours into your life, and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.

  JENNY: How can we increase self-love?

  KATIE: The only reason that people don’t love themselves is that they’re believing stressful thoughts about themselves. “I’m not good enough.” “I’m too fat.” “He doesn’t really love me.” “I should …” “I shouldn’t…” “He should …” “He shouldn’t …” And on and on. When you identify and question thoughts like these, you always come out of that inquiry as a kind, happier person. I don’t know of another way.

  JENNY: Can you be in a healthy relationship without discovering self-love first?

  KATIE: The short answer is no. Romantic love is the story of how you need another person to complete you. It’s an absolutely insane story. My experience is that I don’t need anyone to complete me. As soon as I realize that, everyone completes me. The only relationship that is ever going to be meaningful is the relationship you have with yourself. When you love yourself, you love the person you’re always with, the person you have woken up with and gone to bed with every day of your life. But unless you love yourself, you won’t be comfortable with someone else, because they’re going to challenge your belief system, and until you inquire, you’ve got to do war to defend it. So much for relationships. People make these unspoken contracts with each other and promise each other that they won’t ever tamper with the other person’s belief system, and of course, that’s not possible. But when you come to the place where you don’t want anything from your partner, it’s like “Bingo! You just won the lottery! “If I want something from my partner, I need to take a look at my thinking. I already have everything. We all do.

  JENNY: How do women heal themselves after coming out of a rough relationship?

  KATIE: Judge your ex, on paper. Download a Judge-Your-Neighbor Worksheet from www.thework.com and fill it out with the harshest and pettiest and most childish judgments you can come up with. Fill out a dozen worksheets, a hundred worksheets, and thoroughly question the statements you write. Question everything you think about him. It works!

  Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners—alive, dead, or divorced—are always our greatest teachers. There’s no mistake about the person you’re with; he or she is the perfect teacher for you, whether or not the relationship works out, and once you enter inquiry, you come to see that clearly. There’s never a mistake in the universe. So if your partner is angry, good. If there are things about him that you consider flaws, good, because these flaws are your own, you’re projecting them, and you can write them down, inquire, and set yourself free. People go to India to find a guru, but you don’t have to: you’re living with one. Or you just broke up with one. Your partner will give you everything you need for your own freedom.

  JENNY: How do you know when you’re ready for the next relationship?

  KATIE: You’re ready for the next relationship when the next relationship appears, and not one moment sooner. How do you know that you’re ready? There he is! How do you know that you’re not ready? There’s no one you’re attracted to, or the men you’re attracted to aren’t interested. That’s how it works.

  JENNY: How do you not confuse feeling spiritually ready with just needing companionship?

  KATIE: Well, sweetheart, the wonderful thing is that you can’t make a mistake. If you’re doing The Work on a daily basis, questioning your stressful thoughts about your ex or your father or mother or past lovers or boss or employees or children, you come to see whatever happens as good. Maybe a new relationship is premature, maybe not; maybe it will work out, maybe it won’t. You look forward to it all, because you know that anything that happens is an opportunity for waking yourself up.

  JENNY: What do you do when you’re hurting from loneliness?

  KATIE: I can find only three kinds of business in the universe: mine, yours, and God’s. (For me, the word God means “reality.” Reality is God, because it rules. Anything that’s out of my control, your control, and everyone else’s control—I call that God’s business.) Much of our stress comes from mentally living out of our own business. When I think, You should love me, you should be with me, you should do what I want, I’m in your business. When I’m worried about earthquakes, floods, war, or when I will die, I’m in God’s business. If I am mentally in your business or in God’s business, the effect is separation. That’s where loneliness comes from. It has nothing to do with whether you’re with a partner or alone. You can’t be lonely unless you abandon yourself.

  JENNY: When a girl looks outside herself for love and gets fed love through her companion, why does it feel so good even though it’s not the “correct” way to experience love?

  KATIE: The ego loves being adored, even though it knows that what he is adoring is a facade. If I don’t want to have sex when he wants sex and I pretend that I want it, he is attracted to the woman who wants sex right now, not to me. When he thinks of “me,” it’s the wrong one. When he rewards me and I feel what I interpret as his love, it isn’t me he is loving, it is someone I was pretending to be. His affection has been bought with my inauthenticity. This may feel good for a while, but it is fragile and never lasts. It’s not a question of the “correct” or “incorrect” way to experience love. What you’re talking about is something other than love. Approval? Validation? Love is serene; it’s fearless; it’s complete. If you’re looking to someone else to fil
l you, you can be sure that what you’re looking for is something other than love. Nothing outside you can ever give you what you want.

  [7]

  Masturbation: The Other Kind of Self-Love

  I hope no one who is reading this book is judgmental of those of us who masturbate. If you are, please burn this book in the nearest fireplace and say a prayer. For those of us who have experienced lust upon ourselves, let’s get it on!

  I went to Catholic school all my life. We had sex ed, but it consisted of a nun saying, “Don’t have sex or you will burn in hell,” and then showing us pictures of deformed genitals due to STDs. One gruesome deformity after another, which to this day I’m sure don’t exist. I mean, how does a penis mutate into two penises? How can a vagina grow actual grocery-store-quality mushrooms? So gross. Maybe it was a doctored video the Catholic Church sends to all the schools. Anyway, it was disgusting and scared the crap out of every fifth-grader. I remember thinking that maybe I should become a nun so my odds of having a deformed vagina would be zero. But by the time puberty kicked into high gear, I threw away any thoughts of wearing a habit after Tom Kolajaczek gave me a hickey. The hormones that unleashed made me want to dry hump every altar boy that walked by. Then a miracle happened in my life, and his name was Tubby. Tubby was a stuffed bear that my mom bought me on sale at Kmart. Tubby accidentally got caught between my legs one night while I was trying to close my window and HELLO! Tubby set off an earthquake all over my body. I lay in bed, shocked. How did this bear that only cost $5.99 give me so much pleasure? I had heard about masturbation from my friends, and they talked about how disgusting it would be to touch yourself, so I avoided the idea like the plague. Then I thought, What if I’m not touching myself, but Tubby is?! Poor Tubby had no idea what he got himself into that night, helping me shut the window. The chubby polyester bear’s new job lasted years. It was like he was working in a North Korean hard labor camp. I could swear the once-smiling bear actually lost his smile.

  To me, Tubby was brilliant because I knew he didn’t have an STD and I didn’t have to feel guilty about getting off because I wasn’t touching myself, Tubby was. Let him burn in hell for being bad, I was going to heaven. I was a senior when Tubby and I ended our relationship. Not because I outgrew him or found a replacement; it was a forced separation. I came home from cheerleading practice one day and saw my mom having a YARD SALE! And someone snatched Tubby up!!! I was devastated and horrified at the same time. My Tubby was gone, and the thought of the poor jerk that actually bought a puberty-scented bear made me want to die. It wouldn’t actually surprise me if I happen to turn on Jerry Springer one day and see Tubby telling his appalling tale of abuse.

  I finally graduated to using myself to “release built-up pressure,” but after a while, even I bored me. Luckily, I then discovered something called the pocket rocket. And listen to me, ladies, if you don’t go online and order it right now, you are missing out on the most incredible orgasms of your life. If you think your husband will feel insecure about you getting a vibrator, then just be sneaky by giving it to him as a present and tell him you are going to “perform” for him. I’m not kidding you when I promise you will hunt me down and thank me for giving you the best experience of your life.

  Some guys feel so threatened by a woman masturbating, like we prefer the vibrator to him. Well, the truth is… sometimes we do. The first of the two reasons I think we prefer to masturbate is that we enjoy not having to return the favor. We just want to get off and be done with it. The second reason is that we can orgasm when we want to. Sometimes we feel bad if our man is down there too long, so we end up faking an orgasm for fear that he might run out of air and die.

  Besides the obvious enjoyment that comes from masturbating, I’d like to share with you the many health benefits associated with it. Some Web sites claim that women can build resistance to yeast infections, relieve chronic back pain, and help PMS and bad period cramps. (I just had to test out this last one, considering I get cramps like a sixteen-year-old girl. I usually fall into a fetal position one day a month and scream for hours. Sure enough, when Aunt Flow arrived, I crawled to my bedroom, grabbed the pocket rocket, and completed the mission. As soon as the orgasm had subsided, my cramps disappeared for a full hour. It freaking worked! Okay, so it was only an hour, but if you get cramps like I do, an hour is like heaven.)

  There are also health benefits for men when they choke their chickens. It’s a great form of stress release, improves sleep, is a mood booster, and cleans out their pipes, which helps lower the risk of prostate cancer, so say the Web sites. Maybe that information will help you women out there who are against your husband masturbating be a little more open to it. I’ve met many women who have a problem with it because it feels like they are being cheated on. A lot of guys use porn to get off when masturbating, so to the wives it seems like they are lusting after someone. I used to be like that in my twenties. Now when I’m not in the mood to have sex, I’m begging a guy to order Big Honkers on the pay-per-view porn channel.

  Many cultures and religions frown upon the use of masturbation. They even label it as sinful. Throughout history they’ve convinced people that you could go blind and/or deaf, grow hair on the palms of your hands, get acne, and even burn in hell. Some went so far as to create contraptions for your genitals that had locks on them so you wouldn’t touch yourself. In older dictionaries the definition for masturbation was self-abuse. Unbelievable. I also found the most amazing literature on steps to overcoming masturbation. It’s not a joke. This is a Mormon “guide,” circa 1970. It’s called Steps in Overcoming Masturbation by Mark E. Petersen, Council of the Twelve Apostles. I was laughing my head off reading it. I don’t mean to make fun of it, but the suggestions they offer to stop masturbating actually make me want to go masturbate. Check it out.

  Never touch the intimate parts of your body except during normal toilet processes. Avoid being alone as much as possible. Find good company and stay in this company.

  If you are associated with other persons having this same problem, you must break off their friendship. Never associate with other people having the same weakness. Don’t suppose that two of you will quit together, you never will. You must get away from people of that kind. Just to be in their presence will keep your problem foremost in your mind. The problem must be taken out of your mind, for that is where it really exists. Your mind must be on to other and more wholesome things.

  When you bathe, do not admire yourself in a mirror. Never stay in a bath more than five or six minutes. Just long enough to bathe and dry and dress, and then get out of the bathroom into a room where you will have some member of your family present.

  When in bed, if that is where you have your problem for the most part, dress yourself for the night so securely that you cannot easily touch your private parts, so that it would be difficult and time consuming for you to remove those clothes. By the time you started to remove protective clothing you would have sufficiently controlled your thinking that the temptation would leave you.

  Go into the kitchen and fix yourself a snack, even if it is in the middle of the night, and even if you are not hungry, and despite your fears of gaining weight. The purpose behind this suggestion is that you get your mind on something else. You are the subject of your thoughts, so to speak.

  Never read pornographic material. Never read about your problem. Keep it out of mind. Remember—“First a thought, then an act.” The thought pattern must be changed. You must not allow this problem to remain in your mind. When you accomplish that, you soon will be free of the act.

  Put wholesome thoughts into your mind at all times. Read good books—church books—Scriptures— Sermons of the Brethren. Make a daily habit of reading at least one chapter of Scripture, preferably from one of the four Gospels in the New Testament, or the Book of Mormon. Above anything else, the Bible can be helpful because of its uplifting qualities.

  Pray. But when you pray, don’t pray about this problem, for that will tend to kee
p it in your mind more than ever. Pray for faith, pray for understanding of the Scriptures, pray for the missionaries, the general authorities, your friends, your families, but keep the problem out of your mind by not mentioning it ever—not in conversations with others, not in your prayers. Keep it out of your mind!

  Tried ’em all. Didn’t work. I’m so gonna burn in hell.

  To end this chapter, I thought I would show you some of the funniest names guys have come up with for their masturbation ceremony:

  Unloading the gun, feeding the dog, milking the prostate, churning butter, dishonorable discharge, punching the clown, Uncle Gary’s spray hour, beating the meat, polishing the Bishop, milking McNuggets, slapping the monkey, playing Yahtzee, throwing the dice, wrestling the one-eyed serpent, feeding the ducks, five against one, greasing the weasel, one gun salute, summoning the genie, varnishing the flagpole, whaling the dolphin, and my personal favorite… making sock babies.