An Artist Awakening

Published on by LS Harteveld

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

I feel that despite having gone over the scenario of what the f went wrong, not making my first career in yoga a success, despite being talented, skilled, schooled and experienced in every and any area that would be relevant for such a thing;
The rockhard bottom of it managed to knock the breath right out of me, regardless.

I woke up this Saturday with a two decade long hangover, thinking:
“My God, I really never stood a chance. No one does.”

Plus I identified there was an extra complicating factor, which I managed to overlook as well, but I’ll get to that later.

First:
Why does no one teaching yoga in the Netherlands stand a chance making a living out of it?

This is because teaching yoga is at a toxic crossroad of:

1. lack of recognition of all Dutch professionals who work independently in general, as being entrepreneurs or having a business.
Because the number one executive task for an independent is to create revenue, not to execute their profession.
Their measure of success is a financial one, and in no way entangles the professional accountability of a payroll job professional.

2. me, as a woman, in the women dominated profession of teaching yoga, being in the corner of women who work as independents.
A subcategory in the aforementioned already tricky category of being an independent in general.
We’re now in the corner where we’re barely paid, rarely paid, and an obligation to be nice to everyone. Recognition does not go further than that either you apparently have a hobby to the level that you can ask money for it.
Or, that you have an opportunity to be of service, which is code for that you should never overcharge and be grateful with whatever pennies you get.
Your real reward is in the good you bring into this world.

3.This is the new one: The taboo we have on really BEING someone.
I discovered a long time ago, that for a female independent professional in the Netherlands, it is very difficult to step into their identity of BEING an entrepreneur.
But what I did not see that this is part of a larger, and less gender specific, taboo, where your head gets chopped off the moment you ARE/ identify as,  something.
This is seen as hugely threatening.
Everyone is passive aggressively forced into being some toothless tiger version of themselves, where any OWNING of STRENGTH, IDENTITY, and characteristics, is immediately punished.

To compare: This also means that in the Netherlands anyone owning their sexuality, whatever that sexuality is, or owning their gender, again regardless of whatever that gender is;
Is going to have a really hard time.
The problem in the Netherlands is not lack of tolerance to WHAT you are;
It is that you ARE!
That you have the actual audacity to BE something.

“I am” is where the problem lies.
Not what comes after it.

And then, yes, being a woman in a service-provider profession makes it even more frowned upon to stand in your I AM power;
But that the problem where I live (and maybe in other countries too?), definitely lies in claiming identity as a whole.
Any, identity.

Recapping, all that time, I really thought that the root cause of unprofitable professions was IN THE NATURE OF THEIR PROFESSION!
That when someone is an artist, or a yoga teacher, or a musician, it is something in the very nature of their work, that makes it difficult to make a living.
Nothing which a good dose of marketing, branding, packaging, and stepping on those sales, would not fix!
Or so I naively assumed.

Because now, I understand independents not making any money has absolutely nothing to do with any nature of any work.

It has to do with how uncomfortable society is, if that person commercially sells that work!

Mind blown, Sara. Mind blown.

As a woman, the box you’re dealt with and are supposed to stay in, is so unbelievably small and so terribly plain, that even our casket will be a more spacious and colorful experience.
Pity we’ll be dead by then.

The closest I have been to fitting into that box was around the turn of the century when I worked an office job and was in my longterm relationship.
A time I was so inauthentic to who I am, it’s a miracle my heart did not stop beating out of protest.

So the above is an exploration and an explanation why even at the most no-frills level of entrepreneurship, I was setup to fail. Together with all the other independents, in particular the female ones.
Well at least I now have a better view of the headwinds I can expect in my second career in yoga, and that everything I experienced the past couple of weeks, was just the beginning.

And a sign, I’m actually doing the right thing this time!
That headwinds mean you have not fallen into the same trap this second time around, because deep holes in the ground are always windfree.

So there was that.
Finding the root cause of why we’re all going to fail as independents, unless we buckle up, ready to take on any storm coming our way!
Of which there will be many.

But then, to make matters worse, I discovered something which was more personal than just “being” (identifying) as an entrepreneur, in a society that does not want us to succeed.
And this is;
That I am an artist.

That although I believe as an entrepreneur my job is to build a successful business;
As an artist, my job is a different one.

And that this makes the money streams of the business unpredictable.
On one hand, it gives you the competitive advantage, because  artist-entrepreneurs, by the very nature of who they are, create more beautiful, enticing and compelling products and services.
They know how to pack that up, and make that thing look pretty!

But.
Also.

Unlike most entrepreneurs, an artist is someone with A MESSAGE. And one susceptible to change!
Where a regular business can work very well, staying at surface level, the artist has to not hold back on the deeper values backing up what it is they do.
To them staying at surface level playing nice feels like that grey, crampy box closing in.

To an artist, making generic, liked by everybody art feels like death.

It is why Disney became a business, yet Andy Warhol stayed art. He even made the commerce part of the art.

At the fork in the road between being a business or being an artist, I will never choose being a business.

And after finally and fully understanding how to navigate that business road,  and what to expect and to bring in order to conquer it, it just sucks knowing I’ll never be able to set foot on it!

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Body first, business second, boy optional. | 1998 diary

Published on by LS HarteveldLeave a comment

Thursday 16 November, 1998 11 PM

I feel so alone, so sad Bear left me and did not choose for me. I prefer his absence as a sign he no longer wants me in his life, to the breaking up from December 1994. I prefer having had the good times, the best times even, as recent as first half 1997, to having missed out on them. Which would have been the case if he had not returned and the breakup had been permanent. So I don’t have any regrets.

I prefer the coldness of this breakup to one where I crash and burn, something which fortunately has never happened with Bear. I was already over that when I met him. No man will ever break my heart again, and no man, ever has. I was 16 and it was a boy, not a man. I grew up quickly.  There are many other things I like including: -being indifferent to new men, maybe I will fall in love again, maybe not. It is of no interest to me, I do not pursue. -knowing how to prioritize my career. One year ago I promised myself three things. 1. Do yoga every day 2. build a business and 3. to go all in on my writing I only did (2) and still I m mostly dependent on writing assignments from old contacts. But I’m sub-teaching yoga too, and I have my own class. I m starting teaching privates now. But this diary, the one I wanted to publish the first volume of, has fallen flat. I neither write for it, nor publish. I have no idea in what phase the manuscript is or where I have the file. But I think the problem with publishing the diary is that it is too confronting because it is about the time I was still with Bear, and I don’t want to read  it. So it is time to recommit. 1. yoga every day 2. build a business 3. all in on my writing Friday 17 November 11.15 PM Feel 100% better than yesterday. The loneliness is transforming to a desire to do yoga. An acknowledgement that if I don’t want finding another man to be a priority in my life, or even resent having the task all together, then my task is to take care of my body. To give it pleasure myself. I only did yoga tonight but really see the absolute necessity  (knowing the sexual ambition that I have) to do yoga twice a day: AM + PM And become familiar with my body and be aware of it, just like with sex. Saturday 18 November 10.45 PM Good news and bad news. The good news is I wrote an entire article for the Bon Jov fanclub magazine, and I also had a day out with a friend. Making this really feel like weekend, I was no longer pre-occupied with work. The bad news is I am so tired I barely made it through taking my make-up off and brushing my teeth. I feel utterly spent and there was no way I could do my yoga. So clearly, if I want that done I need it to earlier in the day, AND cannot afford to write in the morning. The other bad news is that I still miss Bear. I am both happy for all the incredible years we had, as well as shocked that apparently he can just walk away from it. I know what we had was damn special and that it’s hard to come by. All women want to pin him down and make him the father of their babies. But regardless of if he wants that too and shares their dream, the pinning down, or settling down, inevitably comes at the cost of sexual attraction being deminished. I don’t know any woman who would come close to offering him what I have offered. And the 8 years it lasted, prove we’re the real deal. That I am, the real deal. Combined with the actual, factual truth that in any sexual relationship the real raw sexual attraction always dies out, this leads to the conclusion that I always win. Either he doesn’t have that sexual chemistry with someone else, or he does, but then it falls to pieces by the very nature of their monogamous involvement. Smothered, by playing house. So logically, in the area of sex, I should always win. Like a casino, house always wins. Maybe I’m not afraid that he gains more, wins more, experiences more, with his real girlfriend. But that he quit gambling all together. . ~Lauren98 Body first, business second, boy optional. | 1998 diary is the fourth chapter of book 4, diary 1997-1999
Providing Lauren98  gets over herself and her issues of rereading some of her best times with Bear, book 1, A Letter From A Stranger and book 2 Dear Nikki, of this series will be published at a future date, in one bind (one title). My diaries en erotica are available at my BOOK SHOP
.
Books 
My diaries are available at LULU New books will be added. The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready, is to subscribe to this blog. Button on this page, probably on the top right. Or follow my Facebook page / Twitter: @LSHarteveld
Nederlands blog: https://zegmaarlauren.com/

The Asparagus Season | The Way of the Femme Fatale. Lesson 5 to 7

Published on by LS Harteveld

To hear a beautiful, rich, well brought up, well-educated woman talk, ever so nonchalantly about her sex life was disturbing.

from page 63, Basic Instinct, Richard Osborne 

.

This will be a bit of a different chapter than my opening post, 
“I know who you are. How did he die?” | The Way of the Femme Fatale. Lesson 1 to 4 which I wrote three months ago.

That opening post was a study of what makes the Femme Fatale so powerful, drawing from scenes from the movie Basic Instinct.
The protagonist, or antagonist if you will, of this story is “Catherine Tramell”, played by Sharon Stone.
In that post I derived four lessons, and I thought it was the first four.
That I would continue with the formula.

But soon after writing it, I understood what had made femme fatale Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct so powerful.
I knew what it was.
After which the idea of going over the movie Basic Instinct scene-by-scene to discover what she did, or how she did it, seemed a bit pompous.
Like a “Oh look what we got here!”, in badly acted surprise.

I can see how part of writing about your journey is that you must be willing to fake timelines, and to stick to your original format, because otherwise it’s gonna be a huge mess.
But if I have to choose between being a good writer, getting the most out of my material, versus simply doing whatever I want?!

Suffice to say I opened this new chapter in a new format, without feeling any obligation to pick up the “Lesson” structure from the previous post!
Nor the scene-by-scene approach, nor even necessarily talking about Basic Instinct.
Although I’m sure references to the movie will come naturally.

Either way the main reason of now writing off-the-grid, no longer following the movie Basic Instinct scene-by-scene, lay shortly after writing the first episode.
The scene-by-scene, and lesson-by-lesson approach of the first post, had been a training-wheel version of something about the Femme Fatale that was clear at a way higher level, soon after writing it.
And it is definitely a bit of a bummer….

Some of you may even remember the same thing being said about the movie Fifty Shades. That it was not Christian’s sexual preference to be dominant, that made him “the dominant” in his sadomasochistic relationship to Ana Steele:
It was his money.

He was financially dominant, he was a tycoon.
Which was an inequality that was much more potent, derailing and disturbing, than what the two had going on in the bedroom or playroom.

The same is true for Catherine Tramell, and any other Femme Fatale who adopts the position of Femme Fatale out of choice;
Not necessity.

I could write a whole book, of how tapping into your dark female powers can be a vital life skill, in particular when you’re already met with envy from other women and know the collective as such is not going to take care of you.

For more about turning Femme Fatale out of necessity, check this video essay: The Double-Edge of Beauty | Explored Through Malèna , based on the movie Malèna from 2000, but it is situated in 1940. The film stars Monica Bellucci portraying the tragic role of Malèna.

But for this series I am focusing on Catherine Tramell, who was no Femme Fatale out of necessity any more than Christian Grey was a sexual dominant out of necessity.
And she also had the same foundation to her top-tier position in the bedroom, as Christian Grey did. Which is;

Catherine Tramell is extremely rich.

So we can go over the movie Basic Instinct scene-by-scene, to see how in every scene she knows how to wield her power, play her cards, force others to break patterns, and in many other ways just succeeds where others would be intimidated and break to pieces;
But with her being someone who is worth over a hundred million dollars, the rest of her tricks and impressive set of psychological skills, are little more than add-ons.

It’s definitely not the case that money alone does the trick, but both Catherine as well as Christian also had first-class upbringings in privilege, not counting the first years of Christian’s life when he was still with his biological mother who could not protect him.
Another example of how power in the bedroom really all starts with having power, period. A power Christian Grey received from his adoptive parents.

The reason a woman like Catherine Tramell is a Femme Fatale by choice, a woman talking openly about her sexuality and exerting her sexual powers, that reason is simple;
She can afford it.

Her talents, although absolutely impressive and in other posts I will get back to Catherine’s psychological and spiritual qualities no doubt, but overall those talents do not matter.
We mortals would already get stuck at the level of how we fund our debauchery of sexual play!

Which gives us a lesson 5 after all, even though my blogpost was not set out to come with that:

lesson 5.
Being powerful is firstly a matter of having a lot of money

In a sense my journey to discover the heart of being a charismatic femme fatale like Catherine Tramell, came to a sudden halt the moment I realized it was first and foremost a money game.
Like the wisdom goes:

“Everything is about sex, except sex. Sex is about power.”

So to understand what Catherine Tramell does, in the movie Basic Instinct, you might as well read about how to acquire money and power. 
Or, if you want to keep a bit of the myth, read the book “The Art of Seduction” by Robert Greene.
You can find many video’s on YouTube of him talking about seduction, which he describes as a high form of power.
A power Catherine Tramell definitely possessed, and even more so than Christian Grey.

Where Christian frequently pays for his anger outbursts and disturbing behavior, and Ana makes him wait and punishes him;
Catherine Tramell just walks right back into detective Curran’s life, after she has just pushed his buttons, suggesting the suicide of his wife was his fault, and after the time she broke up with him in a cruel way.

She never apologizes, never explains, and she gets away with it because she knows what Nick does want, and she gives that in a way and at a moment, where he will be unable to remember the pain she has deliberately inflicted upon him before.

In all probability, it was even the other way round!

Detective Nick Curran feels so warmly for Catherine being there and for providing what he needs most, because the last thing she has done to him before that was to hurt him!
In the words of Madonna’s 1990 Justify My Love;

Only the one that inflicts the pain, can take it away.

A two-step process within the Art of Seduction (Chapter 5 Stir Anxiety and Discontent), which Catherine Tramell knew, mastered and had turned into an artform. 

Which brings us to lesson 6 of being a Femme Fatale:

lesson 6.
Inflict hurt, then be unavailable, letting your victim suffer on their own.
Reappear at a moment when their hurting (due to you or something else) is at an absolute peak.
Be the balm on their wounds.

Discovering the deeply seated capitalist motive behind the Femme Fatale, and the fact that Robert Greene had already written extensively about her (and his) power of seduction in his book The Power of Seduction, was detrimental to writing for this series….

And I was already toying with the thought of abandoning this series, when for reasons still not clear to me, I suddenly snapped, popped, transgressed, moved, INTO ALIGNMENT.
Purpose.
Peace.
And knowing.

I was now no longer writing about a Femme Fatale;
I had become her.

Like I said, I cannot reconstruct it, but it was as if from one day to the next, I was suddenly everything I had always wanted to be, and what I told myself I “should be”; Yet that had never stuck.
And now I was it, without even trying.
There were no thoughts in my head that I had to be someone or something, no positive affirmations, no nothing. 

It was coming from within, and all the answers of who the Femme Fatale  was, the part of Catherine Tramell that had fascinated me so much;
Those answers were already within me.
Because I now was, what I was previously just researching, clip by clip, book by book, and YouTube video by YouTube video.

And the story of who I was, and why I did what I did; 
Why I will always live alone, or in a social setting that will allow me to play this game, and will never bind myself to one man sexually-
was shown to me, in a story that I have named “The Asparagus Season”.

That what I want from my sexuality, is like eating just the tip, of the White Asparagus. I don’t consume the whole thing.
And I know that with my taste I need to know everything there is to know;
When and where can I get Asparagus, and if there are times the tips are extra juicy?
How can I purchase and prepare them, in a way the tips taste the absolute best?
How can I show up (hungry, but not too hungry!), in a way I am able to enjoy them the most?

I was shown that what I have done, ever since I knew I only wanted the best sex with men I am completely in love with- or I don’t want sex at all- is learning all about it that I can!

To continue the metaphor, I have learned a great deal about this tip of the asparagus.
Where it grows, when it’s ready, how I can prepare it, how I can vary with it;
How I can show up ready to enjoy it the most, ritualize it, and plan for it.

However, I do not have an asparagus field. I am completely dependent on what I find, and I know that asparagus are expensive and that society believes you should eat the whole stick.
That it is even unethical, to only eat the tip.

So I have competition from people who promise to consume the carefully grown White Asparagus wholly and ethically, including processing the wood-like bit on the stems.

The sex shown in Basic Instinct, between Catherine Tramell and Nick Curran, is a treasure, a jewel, a piece of art.
It is a performance, it is a seduction, it is the interplay of two people bringing their best.
And with so much talent on the scene, naturally, what they harvest is something entirely different to garden-variety-sex.

For a Femme Fatale, me as Femme Fatale, and for Catherine Tramell when she was with Nick, sex is the thing we only want the best of the best of.
Like eating only the head of the asparagus, and not even bothering with the rest.

This type of sex requires huge investments, in all ways, and she may have to go without it for the rest of her life.

But that will never stop her from dreaming about it.

lesson 7.
Like the tip of a White Asparagus, sex is your highest form of art.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for The Way of the Femme Fatale, for my letters to Sara and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

The Fifth of November

Published on by LS Harteveld

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

“Remember, remember the fifth of November”

old English rhyme, Guy Fawkes day
.

Dear Sara,

It seems like there is so much to tell, and yet there is nothing new I suppose. Last time I wrote you, I told you how I was determined to dive in on my Dark Femme journey, and I suppose that really is all I have been doing!
But it feels like time is speeding up.
It seems like something, good or bad, is out of my control.
 

And yet also;
That I have been so terribly blessed!
Madness, mayhem, personal lives shot to pieces, or seeing those around you fall prey to misery and hardship;
I had none of it.

I’m coming out of what were the hardest years of my life, and I wouldn’t say I look like I have just returned from a spa or retreat – like was said of Ronald Reagan who seemed to have gotten younger, not older, during his presidency – but my body and looks also do not bear the marks of someone who has just resurfaced after a midlife crisis XL.

And like they say:
With great power, comes great responsibility.

With the first of my generation already dead and The Universe sorting out things that would have easily taken me down if it had not been for divine intervention-
there seems to be survival guilt kicking in.

Regardless of how good my new career under my real name will be, regardless of how much impact I will have;
How can I ever pay back the world, what it has given me?

As far as my love life goes, I am still on track with what I think I wrote you last time, in the Dark Femme Rising post.
I don’t have time to reread it now (I have had the busiest week of the year, and that includes this Sunday and the next two days), but I did notice (when copying it as a draft, to then overwrite with this post) that three weeks ago, I was already aware that one does not become, anything.
One does not get.

One simply is.

That when I set out to reinvent and personize my love life, in 2007, I could have short cut that by deciding I already was that strong lover, that woman fully owning her sexuality.
I didn’t need a man to be healed, nor did I need new sexual experiences that “did go well” or that “did reflect who I was”, in order to validate that I had grown and was now a different person.

I was already a different person the moment I read the White Tigress book from Hsi Lai.
Although I took little more from it than the identity
To this day I still feel I “should” read the book and study the techniques in it thoroughly, knowing fully well all I ever take and need is an IDENTITY!
It’s a pesky imposter syndrome to let go of, even when I know I have done the identity work, which was all I needed from it.
No new relationships, sexual encounters or new men required.
The thing was already done.

So I know I wrote that already last time, and all I can say is that my new Dark Femme identity, is indeed coming from the inside out.
I have a clear vision that I want to be so comfortable in my own skin, so confident in how I carry myself, but also so on point in my appearance and how I keep my house, that whether or not I have a lover (which since February I no longer seem to have), makes zero difference. 

Step two is to do the same thing for my career;
Whether or not my yoga classes are full, my roster is fully booked with mentoring and private classes – let it make no difference to how I see myself.

And those things are working, but I can feel it is asking of me, that I let go.
The past is proving to me, that all the good things in my life, including finding my lover late 2014-
it was never of my making.

I had spent 8 YEARS dating! Eight years, and none of those men came close to my lover.
The only one who did was someone I had known since my college years, so he too, was not in my life because I had taken dating seriously.
He too, had been brought to me by chance or The Universe, I had not willed him, into my life.

With the mountain of evidence, that the Universe takes far better care of me than I ever have, and that all it has ever required of me is to step up and start seeing myself as that person, I don’t know what is keeping me so long.
And why all this is still merely at surface level, of borderline intellectual knowledge.
Not a daily practice of living the life and being the person.

All I can say for now is that it has been.
And I intentionally leave that behind today.

I will remember the 5th of November 2023, as the day I freed myself.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Dark Femme Rising

Published on by LS Harteveld

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

There is a four A4-pages long diary entry, written at 3.30 A.M last night, that I honestly intended to type out and send in as this week’s debriefing.
That’s how important it was!
Or so I thought….

Because as I mulled over it today, I realized that what I had written out was actually, in all honesty, just BASIC stuff!
It was the bare minimum, covering little more than the foundational levels to be put into place in all areas of life.
And sure!
There were important elements to remind myself of, at future times, in order to make sure I held on to the clarity of what my strengths were, and to-  can I say “ruthlessly”?- monetize the talents that I had failed to bring to the limelight the past 20 years or so.

But it could hardly count as a vision, last night’s document.
I wasn’t exactly dreaming big, but an almost scientific dissection’s of where my talents lay.
A roadmap to the career I always wanted, although in theory career was only one aspect of it.
But it was the most important one, because if I have learned and realized anything in the past years, it is that the more financially successful you are, the freer you become in being who you want to be.
That freedom is not earned, nor does it start with financial freedom;
But it sure makes it a hell of a lot easier.

The easiest way to illustrate is that monogamy is the dominant choice because people are financially dependent on each other.
If you’re not free to leave, or your partner is not free to leave, because either one of you cannot afford to live on their own, and in the Netherlands that currently includes close to a hundred percent of couples because of the biggest housing shortage in our history-
Well, then a discussion about if monogamy is right or wrong, or opening up the relationship, is threatening not because of the sexual aspect, but because of the financial one.
If you guys would break up, then you’re homeless.
Monogamy is just one of the many examples where personal or sexual freedom, is intimately linked to the degree of financial freedom you have.

So although my four pages covered four areas of life, it was the one about career that I knew was the most important one.
The other areas of life were made possible by having the understanding of how to rebuild my new career.

But as I said, mulling things over, not only did I realize it was pretty dry and boring, I also realized I had not been dreaming BIG.
And that a vision of how it- my life- was meant to be, should surpass the level of tweaking and understanding Life in its individual components.
That if you need to write out four areas and five bullet points per topic, that’s twenty bullet points too many.

I needed one vision.
Any and all points that could possibly arise, would fall into place on their own accord.
So I wondered how that would look, and the first thing I realized was that despite all the very important reasons it was all about the money, and worldly success was important and bla bla;
I only found the sexual paragraph relevant here.

That I never started this alterego LS Harteveld, nor my precious work with you as my creativity coach, to then make it about business.
With that singular insight, I could already narrow it down from 4 areas of life and 20 bullet points;
To one area and 5 bullet points.

It was this area of sexuality and sexual identity, where I needed to develop a Vision.
A Vision that would hold, and that I would hold, and a vision which would dictate the right path.
In this case a sexual path.

So I combined all the studying and thinking of women’s sexuality I had done since 2007. In particular;
The White Tigress books and ideas from Hsi Lai;
My own identification since 2015 that I am a mistress, or that that is the identity I am most comfortable with;
And finally my current Femme Fatale project for which I analyze the movie Basic Instinct to articulate why its protagonist (or antagonist) Catherine Tramell radiates so much power.

And what it comes down to is that over the last few months, I have internalized all those three identities or wisdoms, to the point where I no longer a need a man/lover to validate I am a sexual being.

I am a sexual being, and this has become entirely independent from if I do or do not have someone to have sex with.
It has become not so much irrelevant, because of course I hope life has something in store for me!, but it doesn’t define my sexuality.
I am a sexual woman, a dark femme or a femme fatale, I am a mistress and I aspire to transform and elevate my female presence to the level of Catherine Tramell in Basic Instinct ;
These things are independent from if I do, or do not, have a lover.

It comes down to the lesson I learned looking back in 2015, to the beginning of my sexual healing and rediscover journey, in 2007.
In 2007 I had ended my long-term relationship because I wanted to meet new men and fall in love. I did not want being in a long-term relationship to be the end of my sexual path.
In particular not because I had an aids-phobia, from which no therapist had been able to cure me. 
My choice for one partner, and for monogamy, was based on fear and on my inability to live life as a single woman with multiple partners.
I knew I had failed to develop myself sexually, and that my relationship status was because I was too afraid to live any other way.

I was very happy finding the Hsi Lai book at the time, White Tigress. It is to this day the only one of its kind, the only one depicting a sexual independent woman, but also a spiritual woman.
For a White Tigress sex is a spiritual practice.
As I now know, it also is for me.

So I dated, I met new men and so on, and in 2015 I found myself being “the other woman”, and it clicked.
I knew being a mistress was the closest term or definition I could find to describe all the characteristics of the relationship I now knew I desired.
I wanted dates to be special, orchestrated, centered, loving, exciting, playful, fun, with a hint of mystery and a whiff of the forbidden.
Being a mistress offered me those things.
All things my (“our”) long-term relationship had lacked, and largely because we had still been in college when we had started seeing each other. We were not mature, when it came to dating and sexuality.
We had started out great, but we had known nothing about keeping the flame burning.

To this day I consider 2015 the year my “White Tigress Journey” ended. The journey that had started in 2007 when I bought that book and set out to find my own sexuality, and to live without fear. 
In 2015 I had been phobia free for years, and I knew I had found what I was looking for.

That was the moment I looked back and thought:
“If I could tell the 2007 version of me something to help her out on this journey, what would it be?”
And it was:
“I could have been that strong, sexually independent woman from day 1. There was no need to let myself be defined by fears of the past, nor did I need to have sex or find a new fearless lover who would heal me.
It was all inside my head, and I could have claimed my new identity as a sexually free and strong woman, from scratch.”

And I always remembered that.
Never look outside of yourself for validation that you have reached a certain level, nor look outside of yourself for healing.
The only healing that is needed is you letting go of your old story, and stepping into the new version of you.
Maybe outside validation will come, maybe not!
What difference does it make.

So the fourth area, and the five bullet points about my sex life and why everything would work out, and why I had a good chance of having a sex life in the upcoming decades?
It can, and should, be replaced by that one image, of the woman I want to be.

This post was originally titled White Tigress Rising, not Dark Femme Rising. Because those two books from Hsi Lai (White Tigress and White Tigress, Green Dragon) are to this day the only spiritual and sexual femme path I know!
But I changed the title, and thereby I changed the name of my project title.

I changed the word which I from now on will use, the lens through which I see myself.

Sixteen and a half years after buying the White Tigress book, and 31 years after Basic Instinct hit cinema’s, I am stepping into the identity;
Of the Dark Femme.

And unlike the White Tigresses, unlike mistresses, and even unlike Catherine Tramell, I do not need a man or a sex life with someone else to be that person.

It is as 2015-me said it was all along;
“I could have been that strong, sexually independent woman from day 1.”

This is day 1.
A dark one.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

I can’t allow myself to care

Published on by LS Harteveld
Breakup scene from Basic Instinct. In a later scene Catherine Tramell explains her actions saying “I can’t allow myself to care about you. I can’t allow myself to care.”

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

It is not an easy time, and yet technically it is by far the easiest is has been in years.
The euphoria from last summer has not made it into the new season, and the last two weeks were even marked by a darkness that I was no longer familiar with.
It feels like I should be doing some mending, some reconnecting to the insights I had this summer which I wrote down, particularly for times like this.
So why am I not?
I do not know.

I am typing this, and the answers present themselves immediately though, I notice. 
That there is no not knowing of any sorts!
That I know exactly why I am so apathic;
Because my new businesses are not based on writing or blogging. If I were fully booked I would have zero time to write, and only an hour a day for marketing related writing.
And LS Harteveld is not included in my workhours either.

My new businesses are great in theory! I have things to sell, I feel professional, and they’re real businesses.
And it feels like a thin line (meaning they feel similar) between writing something to build an audience ->for a business<- and writing to build an audience period.
Or even simply “and writing *point*”.

The number of hours necessary to write an article, in particular when research is involved, which it almost always is;
There is just no way of justifying that from the purpose of building a business.

But I think my lethargy and my absolute obsession to squeeze all my business duties within a 40 hour workweek- and that is including social hours, because I need 3 hours a day, every day, for housekeeping, my duties for the neighborhood animals and yoga.
During summer when I was on my high, I let my whole self-care fall by the wayside (I did care for the animals!), and I felt so absolutely horrific about not being in touch with my body, nor with my house.
It was a mess!

Okay, I have no idea at which point of the story I am right now, to be honest.
But suffice to say, that as brilliant as I felt about finally understanding what my new businesses were going to be, I dread the execution now that we’re in THAT stage.
I dread anything, that is NOT me writing.

AND living a life worth writing about!

So the answer to how I can feel better is by stepping into my WRITER boots,  and my storyteller boots, more firmly, and letting the business side just take care of itself.
I have a business, but I am not the business.
I am a writer.

So that bit is solved I think.
But there is another dullness inside of me. A numb feeling where I would expect light and happiness, because I have come so far!
It’s about sex and men and letting go of the idea that I need a man in my life. Just the thought of spending a minute searching, dating or in any way investing, in the process of finding a new lover?
No way!

It probably happened at exactly the same moment when I mapped out my roster of maximum client hours, and needing 3 hours a day for myself to feel human;
And realizing there was no time for writing.

From there it was a very easy choice to accepting I will never invest in men again, and that the Lord will just have to organize them appearing at my doorstep, or on my Timeline, because that’s the furthest I’m willing to travel.

It felt incredibly mature to let this desire for a new lover go.
And either way, I had little time to think about it because I was fighting tooth and nail for time in my schedule to WRITE.
Something had to give, and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be my last chance at writing something beyond the 2200 character Instagram limit.

To not let my whole sexuality dry out, the desire for men was replaced with the resolution to nurture and develop my femininity, my receptivity.
Including healing massages, a cleaned up diet, and a peaceful energy. 

But there was also a deliberate intention, a vision of developing a feminine business, where the love and effort I once reserved for men, was now gently directed to more profitable waters.
Where every word was written for the world, not for him (whomever he may be).

Emails are for romantics.
Femme biz owners write for the world, and I intended to live according to this rule religiously.

Until I stopped feeling and a dullness set in.
And I m not even curious to what I wrote down last summer to protect my inner-light, although I do remember that I said to myself I needed to start treating writing as a business too.
That that was the only way to make it a priority… And I know I have not done that. I have treated writing like a luxury after a 40 hour workweek.

In the movie Basic Instinct, Catherine Tramell breaks up with detective Nick Curran, after she has finished writing the book about the detective. That same night she returns to him, after she learns from the news that his partner has been murdered.
“I can’t allow myself to care about you,” she explains the breakup.
“I can’t allow myself to care.” 

That resembles how I feel the closest:
I have broken up with my writing, by planning my whole week about making money like a normal person. Just like Catherine disposed of Nick when he was no longer necessary to write her novel, because it was finished.

Nick enters his apartment after a horrific day where first his lover has broken up with him, then his partner gets murdered, then he shoots his other lover the psychiatrist because he thinks she has a gun and has killed his partner;
Then he finds out she’s only holding a set of keys.
Then the police find out the psychiatrist was actually the killer, Nick is cleared of all charges and free to go.

He opens the door to his apartment and walks in, not even bothering to turn on the lights.
“Hi,” Catherine says, from the shadows. She has been waiting for him.
“I heard about what happened. On TV.”
Nick nods his head, his face is dark with grief.
“I can’t allow myself to care about you,” Catherine says. “I can’t allow myself, to care.”
“I don’t want to do this,” she starts pacing the room, frantically. “I lose everybody. I don’t want to lose you.”
He steps towards her and holds the sobbing Catherine close to him.
“I don’t want to lose you,” she repeats.

He doesn’t answer, but the love-making that follows shows his answer:
She’s not gonna lose him.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Someone I had not seen since the 20th century has returned

Published on by LS Harteveld
Sharon Stone. Outfit dates photo during filming Basic Instinct, 1991.

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

To compensate for my click bait title and those cheesy posts where they drag-on-and-on about what you think first the post is about;
Only to then in the final sentence “reveal” that it was about something rather dull;
It is dull!
Because the 20th century person who has returned from the title is not a lover.

It is Me!

The real me. The one I lost in the 20th century, and recently tied finding her to my project of living in 1998. A project which I have been on-and-off doing since 1994 = 2019.
Well it worked!
Found her!

Same for a project I started since our last conversation, which is to study the Femme Fatale and get a better understanding of the rules behind Sharon Stone’s character Catherine Tramell, in Basic Instinct.
What makes Catherine Tramell so omnipotent?
I was certain that cracking that code, would provide insights still valuable today.
And I hoped that the study of the magic of the Femme Fatale would reboot my sex and love life, and snap me back into actually having one!
Because by the looks of it, I don’t have a sex life

Something that would have worried me, if I had not been so incredibly happy this summer.
Who needs a sex life when apparently, you can have the best summer in 25 years without leaving the house or taking your clothes off!

Literally (as in: concerning the amount I will write about it, and the intensity of the content) it is a shame that the Femme Fatale “clicked” in me, shortly after writing the first episode of the series.
But for the personal intention this project had, it is great news of course.
I am not turning into a Femme Fatale though! Like I said, I found the real Me back.

So although I now have a perfect understanding why my favorite playtime will always be to be a Femme Fatale, or a Dark Femme;
Why I will always long for men who like to play that game with me;
And why I will never burn myself on anything even remotely resembling a normal relationship where my freedom and growth are under threat, and I will VERY happily let him go to do that with other women.

Yet I am not not, a Femme Fatale.
For the first time in over 20 years, I am Me.

So as far as that time frame is still applicable “without further ado”, I will tell you what I found.
No real system, I will stick to “loose” terms, because the past five years I have done so much thinking, the last thing I want is to think even more and formalize what I found.
I’m not a psycho-analyst or researcher, I’m a storyteller. 

So what I found, studying what on YouTube is called the “dark femme” or the “femme fatale”, is that although she has incredible powers, the power she holds is not male!
She has power over men, but she is not a man.
In fact her power comes from being more feminine than what we would consider normal women.
The Femme Fatale does less, not more.
The Femme Fatale holds back, so that he can lean forward.
A Femme Fatale is that unavailable woman so that he needs to REACH and grow, to get to where she is.

In other words, the reason the Femme Fatale is so successful with men, is because the only way they can be with her is if he rises to her level.
So he is forced to become the strong, independent, dominant man he desires to be.

Where a damsel in distress makes men feel good because they can be their heros and protectors;
A Femme Fatale makes a man, who has it in him to rise to her level but just needed a little nudge; she makes him feel better than any other woman can or ever will, because she is the one who has forced him to rise above himself.
And without using any force, but by creating distance.

She has created, a demand.

Now there are of course many “The Rules”-like approaches, and multiple female archetypes who use this technique, yet the Femme Fatale the way I see her, and the way Catherine Tramell from Basic Instinct operated, is that she is the only one of the bunch for whom their play is the reward.

The chase is a one-off play, for many female archetypes. They do it in the courting stages of a relationship, but change to a less exciting way of being together later.
But for the dark femme/ femme fatale, playing is a way of life!
She does that, with the same men or multiple, on repeat.
She is only in it, for the game.

A Dark Femme/ Femme Fatale the way I see her, as well as the only man she will ever consider her equal, appear to be both what Jung called the archetype The Lover.
Both men and women can have this archetype dominant.

So not only does this solidify what my love life will always be like, and what kind of man I will always date and all the other archetypes will always be way too serious;
But it also revealed what the f* went so horribly wrong around the turn of the century!

It was never my male side that I lost.
I mean yes, when my father died something inside me shifted, which was even worsened by entering the yoga teaching world around the same time.
I went from being in a masculine world of engineers, to being fatherless in a woman’s world.

And to this day I will defend tooth and nail that any independent, including any professional yoga teacher, first and foremost needs to start seeing themselves as a business and fall in love with selling as a way of making connection!
It is borderline irresponsible to train professionals without sharpening their skills to become good business people. 
So yes, feeling the masculine is being swept from underneath of you, when you’re a professional in her 20s, is bad!
Very, very bad.

But that was not the greatest loss in general, and in particular that was not the biggest character or personality shift inside of me that caused my misery.

The biggest loss was that I loss my feminine power.

My father was a strong and dominant man. But he was full of unconditional, beautiful and clear love for me, and he expressed it in deep conversation. 
In supporting my education.
And in paying anything he thought I needed in life, he was a huge giver!

And I?
I was an amazing receiver.

I have made gestures telling the story of my youth, with my arms up in a V! Ready to receive everything he wanted to provide, with the same joy he had giving it.

And it was that power, that quality, I lost.

As small and inexperienced as I was, I brought out the best in my father. He made sure there would always be ample money to support our family, and he made sure I knew his door was always open.
Years after he died, I heard from one of his few female friends how he had counseled her, how he could spelling check the English in the thesis I had given him for proofreading, in a supportive way.

My father went through lengths, to be the best father he could possibly be. And I was there receiving.

It was this receiving quality, I lost.

And my desire for “Rock Star strength and presence”- Rock Star being a word that resonated with me since 2019 and that has been instrumental in finding my way back! – I had missed one super big cue! 

My strength is not the performance and extraversion, it is not to have the strength and size and visibility of being a Rock Star.
And what I lost around the turn of the century was not my ability to be a Rock Star.

What I lost, and now have found, was my ability to awaken someone’s true strength, reveal their most vibrant truths and to unleash their biggest potential.

I was never a Rock Star;
I created them.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

“I know who you are. How did he die?” | The Way of the Femme Fatale. Lesson 1 to 4

Published on by LS Harteveld
source: Basic Instinct (1992)

“I know who you are,” the young woman said evenly.
She wouldn’t or didn’t want to meet their gaze.
She looked at the water as if deriving composure from its tumult.
“How did he die?”

from page 23, Basic Instinct, Richard Osborne 

.
Introduction to this series

Welcome reader.
I am studying the wisdom and lifestyle of the Femme Fatale, because this has been the closest to the lifestyle I have chosen.

The Femme Fatale stands for being a solitary, sexually active woman, who sees the men in her life as equals and the relationship, friendship or affair as playtime, where they challenge each other.

I will investigate the lessons of this archetype using the movie Basic Instinct. This series will contain spoilers, and will probably also be incomprehensible if you have not seen the movie.

I have no idea how long this series will be.

My ultimate goal is to rewrite it and publish the lessons as a short manifesto.

But until then this series will be the long-form version of the lives and loves, of The Femme Fatale.

.
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk

.
Over the years I wrote many things about Basic Instinct’s Catherine Tramell. But despite three decades of conclusions in the media, that Catherine Tramell was the killer;
The only thing I have found her guilty of is that she refuses to engage in small talk.

She’ll do jokes, she’ll do irony, she’ll do sarcasm and she will not hide her intelligence.
She will overtake another car in a curvy road, driving at full speed next to a cliff, and she has convicted murderers as friends;
But she does does not engage in conversation without substance.

For Catherine, interaction is a game that can only be played with people who raise the stakes together with her.
People who immediately understand life is too short to play it safe.

But I am getting ahead of myself, because that last bit, about the Femme Fatale or Catherine Tramell, having an actual connection to life being short, and the inevitability of death?
I didn’t realize that.
Not until yesterday.

.
lesson 2: play with death

.
Yesterday, I wrote the post “Why Femmes Fatale are so powerful“
And the Why, is because they are not afraid of death, and train themselves to be in its presence.
Catherine’s reckless driving and choice of company, are not just signs of how powerful she is;
They are the reason she has that power.

She trains herself to never be afraid.

Catherine acknowledges fear of any kind takes away your autonomy and that if you want to play life at the level she does, you have no other choice but to overcome them.
And this will automatically influence your desire for small talk (lesson one), because the purpose of small talk is to give yourself and the other a sense of safety.
Which contradicts the unspoken rule that she, as well as detective Nick Curran, and also other femme fatales live by;
That we are all responsible for conquering our own fears.
Including our fear of death, our fear of being rejected, our fear of being excluded, our fear of not belonging, our fear of being outcast.
Our fear of being thrown into jail.

And the perfect way to train that, is to refrain from small talk, in particular in situations where the other person has more power than you do.

Small talk and social skills are functional if you need them to survive. But applied habitually without being mindful of what your endgame is, small talk and being social become a cover up of a deep existential fear that no spiritual practitioner will want to miss out on.

Learning to be with someone without small talk, is a spiritual practice much like meditating is.

.
lesson 3: Treat Fear as an obligation to rise

.
Femme Fatales and those playing at her level, can distinguish between good and bad, and desirable and undesirable.
But they also recognize that before acting, before doing anything about it or doing something in pursuit of getting it;
The fear to never be able to attain a certain outcome,
or the fear to suffer a certain loss or doom,
must be met first.

“the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.”
Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1933

The Femme Fatale notices fear (of rejection, of loneliness, of poverty) and recognizes her first job is to accept all realities that might happen.
And being okay with it.

Just like a player in sports, she must keep her cool in order to play her best game.

.
.
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

.
On the deck of Stinson Beach, overlooking the ocean, Catherine Tramell disempowers the two detectives by not being moved by their presence, nor by the news that her lover has been murdered.

In a later scene in the police station she does the same thing with a whole team interrogating her.
Leaning back into her chair, not hiding behind a lawyer, she tells a completely transparent story, taking away all their intimidating power and instead making them uncomfortable.

But to Gus, Nick Curran’s partner, she cheerfully says “Hi Gus.”
Even when she has just asked Nick:
“Why doesn’t Gus like me?”
To which Nick has replied:
“I like you.”
“You do?” she asks.
“Yes. Do you want to go upstairs and have a drink?” 
“I didn’t think you’d ask me.”

And it is after the following scene in Nick’s apartment that she walks down the stairs, cheerfully greeting Gus as he comes up, carrying pizzas.

Catherine has not complained to Nick about lack of warmth coming from his best friend. Being cold-shouldered by Gus was merely an interesting conversation topic to her.

This illustrates Catherine only plays with those who have moved themselves into the game with her. She respects that Gus wants to keep to himself and does not hold grudges.

.
lesson 1-4: recap and practice

..

Catherine’s opening scene reveals lesson one to three, which are all related:
lesson 1: become a woman without small talk
lesson 2: play with death
lesson 3: treat fear as an obligation to rise

Small talk and the larger desire to be part of a community, is how we cover up fears, including our fear of dying. 
Being a Femme Fatale means understanding you must be completely okay with death, isolation, loneliness, pain;
Before you act and do anything to prevent it.

The coolness Catherine displays in the opening scene, displays a mastery of the deepest and most primal of human emotions.
It displays, what we all know under the term:
Enlightenment.

And the scene in Nick’s staircase where she stays polite to Gus, gives us number four:
lesson 4: only play with those who play with you

Catherine is kind to Gus, and also to her two friends who are both convicted of murder; Roxy and Hazel Dobkins.
There is no judgement of Gus’ choice to not like her, nor is there judgement over her friends being murderers.

Whether she is with friends or foes;
Catherine is transparent, open, and unjudgmental.

Her dominant spiritual practice is to be at ease, whatever happens.

It is that which she has trained, and it is that what we can learn from her.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for The Way of the Femme Fatale, for my letters to Sara and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

Why Femmes Fatale are so powerful

Published on by LS Harteveld
Source: sponsored ad from an IG account called manifest.affirmation.app

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

There were plenty of titles to choose from for this post, and all would have been a great fit.

“I don’t need six months to reappear a Dark Femme”
or
“Being Catherine Tramell: part deux”,
a follow up to an earlier post on this blog about Basic Instinct’s omnipotent female writer protagonist (many would say antagonist) who was described by the director Paul Verhoeven himself, as being all-knowing and as possessing supernatural powers because she was the devil.

Or the title could be:
“A year to live like a Femme Fatale”
– as a follow up from the post I wrote you three weeks ago, in this same blog:
“A year for my essential self to play major league and major league only and come up with catchier project titles“

Isn’t it ironic that three weeks ago, I knew the direction of what I wanted
– to be my true self and play what I call “Major League”-
but was also annoyingly aware I was lacking a catchy title?
When now everything fits like a black over-the-elbow-glove?

It is a symbol of how it was indeed an umbrella term or idea, the thing that would hold it all together, that was missing.
Why I could understand the content of my vision for myself, but did not have a catch phrase.

It’s like being pregnant but not having seen your child yet.
I’ve heard from many mothers they did not know the essence of who their child was, until it was born. Then they realized how “wrong” they had been, how many things they had thought they knew about them, which had actually been assumptions.
The child had been unable to show their mother who they were, as long as they were still inside.

Three weeks ago, my year long project was still inside of me.
I thought I knew what it was, because I had such an intimate relationship to it. But as I know now, it is actually quite possible to have an intimate relationship with something you do not know at all.

In fact, looking back at my three decades of fascination with the omnipotent writer Catherine Tramell from the movie Basic Instinct, and her game-of-equals with her love interest Nick, played by Michael Douglas, it is quite a surprise what I am about to tell you took me this long!

What I am about to tell you, is a big case of:
“How did I manage to miss this?”

It all started a couple of weeks back, when I saw an advertisement for a personality test that portrayed as a how-to become a “Dark Femme”.
I remember clicking the link, and being annoyed it was a test that ended up including about 8 or so personalities, and I was not the Dark Femme.

But the biggest turn-off was that it was aimed at, you know, “getting your man”, that kind of thing.
Something I have never been interested in.

Just for your point of reference: I have no idea what my lover has been up to, but I feel he’s in a good place, and he’s having a good year.
I’m sure he’ll be “back” at some point in time, because like Nick and Catherine, we had just such a deep understanding of who the other was.
There was so much love, and joy, and respect, and fun.
I’m not calling it coming “back” to me, because that suggests he’s not having fun now, or that he made the wrong choice.

If there is anything I know it’s that if you want to have a relationship based on equality, any relationship, you need to start trusting the other person to live their own life.
I trust him to be doing exactly the right thing!
Even if it would mean I would never see him again.

There is zero tendency or desire within me to influence it, if anything I “push” him away, by never faking a disinterest or an unavailability.
I never play the game of moving out of his life, if he fails to do this, or return to me by whatever.
I am much more interested in seeing him return, without giving him any reason to do so.
Because then I know he’s really back to play;)

So ultimately it was the underlying tone of playing a man to make him choose you, that disappointed me in the company behind the Dark Femme advertisements.
And I’m not 100% sure it’s the same company, as the one from the screen shot advertisement, used in this post.
I clicked and did that test weeks ago, maybe even two months ago.
But when I saw the (or “this”) advertisement, I was reminded of clicking that or a similar advertisement weeks ago, and made a screen shot because I had not “let go” of this Dark Femme idea!
If anything, in the weeks in between the idea within me had strengthened that I was missing some Dark Femme cues to life.
Cues far more important and far-reaching, than getting a man to call you.

And since then I have done my research, and I now know:
-what gives this femme her power
-which is the same thing I was intrigued by in Catherine Tramell as well as in Nick Curran (Michael Douglas). It is this thing, that binds them.
-why I developed an aids-phobia in the 80s, later relabeled by me as a social-phobia, because it was being expelled and unloved that I feared. Not death.
-why during the pandemic, social interactions became unbearable to me. I felt I had to comfort an unnamed fear, on both sides of the polarized pandemic spectrum and anything in between, before we could have a conversation.
-why these heavy 2020-2022 interactions were a magnified version of “work” I had been feeling I had to do, ever since I became a yoga teacher.
I felt I was paid or expected to comfort something, to put a blanket over something very painful, before yoga could begin.

And I couldn’t really pinpoint what it was exactly;
There were times when I was sure this unnamed work, soothing, or pampering, had something to do with having to cater to someone’s ego.
But during the pandemic it felt more like having to put the blanket over a sincere fear of illness, or a sincere fear of loss of freedom (other side of the spectrum).
After about two years, I finally understood what the criterium was within Dutch pandemic strategies;
They were all designed to give most people the impression something was being done. 
There was literally no other criterium for Dutch pandemic measures, everything could be brought back to this.
F.e. deaths were only a problem, if they caused people to feel that not enough was being done.
Deaths counted in the media were a problem.
Silent suffering, of any kind, was not.

Perhaps by now you know what I found out;
The reason social interaction is such a minefield, is because what people are facing is their own death.
That, is what you are veneering, comforting, framing, softening, coaching, and whispering them through.
That is the work, you are doing, in social interaction.

Someone’s ego can take over, and start compensating or self-comforting, a fear of death. That is why for so long, I thought the ego was involved.
But it is much deeper.

And it is here, where the omnipotent taps in deeply.

What binds them all, what gives the Dark Femme, the Femme Fatale, Catherine Tramell, Michael Douglas, my lover, and me, our power;
Why we can navigate through layers and through worlds, and why we can choose to play in the Major League of dating and sex, without even the slightest interest of following someone who walks off the field to go do other things;
Is not because we followed an Instagram advertisement of how to become a Dark Femme.

Each and every one of us, overcame our fear of death.

.
~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/

 

 
 
 

 

A year for my essential self to play major league and major league only and come up with catchier project titles

Published on by LS Harteveld
Sex and the City Mr.Big and Carrie

This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.
.

Dear Sara,

Our next one is of course:
The Biggie!
A call to kick off my new year, and speak to you on my birthday, as I always wanted it to be.
My birthday is going to be introvert’s heaven, with an intimate lunch at a high level place that immediately shifts my mood!
And then our call.

A call which I wanted to prepare with vigor, but the theme of “new year”  and “birthday call” had a way of preparing all by itself, and in the end all I need to do is write it down.
In 50 minutes, because my weekend is so packed, and I already had to cancel things because I just couldn’t do all of it.
But I don’t think I need 50 minutes.

Because I have set my eyes on living one year according to my “Essential self”.
If the Social Self is the aspect we all need because we live in a society and to a degree have to conform in order to belong to a bigger community, then the essential self is the part of us that is truly us, and that does not belong to anyone except to itself.

I had an understanding that I spent the past 20 years cultivating the social self, in particular as a yoga teacher, and that now that I am setting up my career(s) again;
All I basically did was take the concept of Social Self, and put a price tag on it.

I have felt so totally not-me the past 20 years, and in particular the last 10, that my real name became synonym for an empty shell that I inhabited.
“I” never belonged.
Maybe my empty shell did.

And the only thing I did differently with my new companies, is understanding that my empty shell was way more interesting as a vehicle for monetization, than as a vehicle of acceptance and belonging.
I’ll go be rich and alone, instead of squeezing myself within the tiny margin you can allow for me to make a living and still be part of society.

Now, I already knew that emotionally separating myself from the person I was going to be four to seven days a week, and that taking time off meant:
Be Lauren Harteveld.
The alterego, that I identified as my real self-
I knew that was probably not the most holistic approach.
That cutting yourself in two, in particular if you view one half as an empty suit you just put on to make money, was not wholesome.

Even when- and I knew this is what happens- “the actual work of the shell” is really, the real self.
My clients and my yoga students, of course they get the real me!!!
So the separation was far less extreme than it was in my head.

But the reason I have a profession that is local or national, is to have a profession that gives you a place, in the society at large.
Being an international online entrepreneur does not make me a relatable person, in the Netherlands.
So the empty-shell profession, the front, was really needed and in that sense the “I” under my real name, was not a real person.
It was a construct, to get around.

And me thinking about “On which days am I “her”? On which days am I real? (Lauren Harteveld)”;
That was me trying to perfect it.
Trying to cut it in half, permanently.

Only to realize Lauren Harteveld does not have a community. She does not have belonging. She has a few friends, for sure, but they are not part of her daily life and her/my lover is currently outside of my energetic circle.
I have no idea when he will come back, and if he does, with what message.

Will the dance begin again?!
I hope so.
But I can’t count on it.

And out of ALL of that, all those thoughts, and me standing with the scalpel in hand to cut the real me out of the empty shell I apparently needed to be to fit in and be relatable;
An anger arose.

And I remember the other times in my life I was this angry, and have a better understanding now of Why!
And Where that anger comes from!

It is anger that is reserved for situations where I am put on the spot to comply, to say I am sorry, in order to belong, and to be accepted or welcomed back in.

Sara, what I felt I can only describe as the biggest, hardest, loudest, fuck you I have ever felt in my whole life.
And I took ALL of that energy back, and of course I am not going to cut myself out of an empty shell persona, and leave my Name and Identity as a monetizable shell.
That is ME you’re talking about!

I took my FULL identity back, the WHOLE person, who I still was late 20th century, before the world got their fangs in me, and I started to believe I was somehow responsible for other people’s feelings.

Late 20th century, when I would NEVER have given up my identity in order to belong!
And yet?
I belonged perfectly.

So instead of the empty shell I am claiming full authority of myself, and as myself.
I will say who I am, and WHY I am.

I will tell people of the game I played with my lover, and how every friendship, and every business relationship, and even every family relationship can be played at that level.

It is the level where you are in control of your emotions, and the one who gets triggered loses a point.
But it is also a game everybody loves to play, and there is never a winner.
In a way you are always playing yourself, and you are playing no one. But the game-aspect does bring you back, it makes you “better” at life.
You grow.

The message, my message, is that if we keep each other stuck in the social blame world, in the everything-can-be-present world, we are NEVER going to play LIFE at the level where we are Major League players, like my lover and me were.

We’re never going to be the two little boys talking in their own language, like I have with my best friend for the past 15 years.
Who is a mature woman too, just like me.
But we play, that we are two little boys.

We’re never going to get lost in Star Wars lore, or in Bon Jovi universe, or in the Rock Star badassery of entrepreneurship and creativity.
We’re never going to pretend-play it’s 1998!

Once we settle for battling, discussing, and concerning REALITY, our life is going to be nothing else but an endless stream of long and unpleasant conversations, and ALL the play is lost!

All the hot sex is lost!

And all the badass 20th century women, will get overwhelmed, dissociate from their bodies and identities, and will stop showing up for life altogether.
No one is going to notice if they are actually there, inside their body anyway.

And THAT is what I saw.

So I am going back, to 1998, like my project here on this website has been about for years.
But this time I know WHY I am on this time-travel project.

Because the 20th century was the time I was still a whole person.
I was still my essential self.
I was not split up into an empty shell and an alterego where my soul lived, as I have been living for the past 15 years.

So the upcoming year, will be my year of wholeness, of living under my real name, but also with the alterego identity, they’re both me.
But they are both ALIVE now.

I have a STORY, under both now.

I have POWER, under both now.

But mostly, and more importantly;
I will be playing, under both now.

I am on the field, the field I was once on with my lover. The Major League.
And what I will be teaching, coaching, mentoring, and yoga-ing;
Is that the field exists, and how to play there!

Among your peers.
In the never-ending game, of life.

.
~Lauren

An unexamined life is not worth living

Subscribe to this blog for my letters to Sara, and my 1998 diary.
The subscription button is on this page, most likely on the top right.

Books 

My diaries are available at LULU 
New books will be added.

The best way to receive updates on when these books are ready,
is to subscribe to this blog.
Button on this page, probably on the top right.

Or follow my Facebook page
/ Twitter: @LSHarteveld

Nederlands blog:
https://zegmaarlauren.com/