Part 14: Gay-Centered Inner Work

Saturday November 6, 2021,

Join us on Zoom

from 7:00-9:00 PM PDT

with Chris Kilbourne moderating

A Practical Community Discussion on

How Mitch Walker’s Seminal Book

Visionary Love; A Spirit Book of Gay Mythology

Is More Relevant than Ever

Part 15. “ROIKA, the Myth of the Homosexual, Uranian Soul and Coming Out”th

Reference page 33

Free PDF Download

A tax-deductible $20 suggested donation is much appreciated.

Each month’s meeting of the Gay-Centered Inner Work Club features a developing topic. This month we continue to
honor the pioneering book,, Visionary Love, A Spirit Book of Gay Mythology and Transmutational Faerie by Mitch Walker, as a powerful Call to a
more contemporary form of activism, one that starts within but is experienced with each other.

Mitch offers many thought-provoking notions and perspectives that can help combat the epidemic of demonizing hate
and projective violence in the external world around us, by mainly going inward and investigating our own gay souls.
This means in part, addressing any subconscious complicity with and allegiance to that internalized violence which
works against our own more-valued natures and thwarts our potential to be able to transformationally, alchemically
handle what we discover within, as well as to take more effective action in the world around us.

To that end, the Club focus for this fifteenth part in a series will continue to explore Mitch’s third stage of personality
development, coming-out. Last month, we explored how coming-out can be understood psychologically as “a quest for
ontological security through the resolution of conflicting self-identities”. This month we investigate the struggle to come
out in terms of an inner battle between the forces of with ROIKA, which he describes in many ways, including “the root
and potential in being gay,” and the falseself, with its ontological security rooted in the “Myth of the Homosexual,” and
how “Uranian Soul,” the vitalizing erotic essence in being gay and “subjective gay being” can be realized through that
struggle. And as always, a main emphasis of this Club meeting will be on sharing whatever we feel in the moment
about our own inner gay spirit work communally, thereby contributing to a very unusual experience.

Visionary Love, A Spirit Book of Gay Mythology, by Mitch Walker, was published in 1980 at the peak of the
exuberantly magical, psychedelically creative, boldly sexually experimental early period of the gay liberation
movement. During this time, the expression of an undeniably powerful gay spirit, of real love and possibility, burst into
the world… and shortly thereafter seemed virtually silenced with the decimation of the gay community from AIDS and
the rise of the Reagan regime, which laid a lot of the groundwork for the horror of Trumpism.

More than 700,000 people in the U.S. alone have died of this disease so far, such substantial mortality due in no small
part to Reagan's homicidal neglect early on, as well as to other more-obvious culprits, for example right-wing religious
fanatics and other hate groups. But in the culpability department can also be placed seemingly supportive
progressives who have had a deleterious effect on our “gay spirit” and thus our mental and even physical health
through espousing such homosexual-negating ideas as conveyed in postmodern “queer theory.” These forces have
conspired to annihilate, subsume, dilute, or coopt the extraordinary nature of same-sex eros Mitch celebrates in
Visionary Love.

Nowadays, even with the current, astonishing historical level of social tolerance, at least for some, compared to the
recent past, the idea of the emancipation of our extraordinary potentials as homosexual has been for the most part
forgotten as we have been steadfastly corralled into conforming with the hetero mainstream and its oppressive sex-
roles and false-self myth system.

But not entirely. There are still many ways to actively address this pervasively neglected situation. Engaging in gay-
centered inner work can be a particularly powerful method. But even simple gestures could be helpful in the effort to
value the endogenous gayness in gay identity, such as to mindfully put-up rainbow flags or images of rainbows
prominently throughout your home, or the same with hot same-sex images, or by invoking the idea of gay liberation
the next time you have sex, or writing your dreams down in a special journal and thinking about them in a gay way.
And, of course, there is also the possibility of getting involved with the gay-centered inner work community by
attending a Club meeting. Here is the chance to immerse yourself a little in a most unusual educational setting, where
our gay natures can be validated, stimulated, shared and related with, where inner work as a viable alternative to
extraversion can be described and tried.

This book was published in 1980 during the tail end of the exuberantly magical, psychedelically creative, boldly sexually experimental early period of the gay liberation movement. During this time, the expression of an undeniably powerful spirit, of real love and possibility, burst into the open in a big way in Western cultures, heralded by the Stonewall riots of 1969, and Mitch tried to capture that fervent spirit in an intricately developed psychological framework, with the hope that such an ephemeral subjective experience could continue to be cultivated. Shortly after its publication, that community spirit certainly found new life in the extraordinary fight against AIDS and the neglectful holocaustal Reagan regime (which laid a lot of the groundwork for the current, unending horrors of right-wing terrorism), as well as fueling an extraordinary fight for LGBT rights in public institutions. But what happened next, as Mitch foresaw four decades ago, was emergence of a historical condition where the gay “Vision is preempted by the [societal] myth system.”

And so here we are, in which the exuberant flowering of our gay spirit from the early 70s on has come to be pretty well coopted by the heteronormative system, that idealistic passion now extinguished and replaced by the empty, nonthreatening packaging of LGBT Normals, eccentrics, and clowns, all this change occurring in an astonishingly short amount of historical time. The level of social tolerance achieved can be seen as a reward for our long victimization, at least for a lucky few mainly in the Western World, and at least for the time being.

But the gay spirit has not been entirely extinguished. There are a few who yet actively address this perversely neglectful situation, as this Club meeting signifies. Here is an opportunity to immerse yourself a little in a most unusual educational setting, where our gay natures can be validated, stimulated, shared and related with, and where gay spirit inner work as a viable alternative to extraversion can be supported and practiced with one another.

About the Club

The Gay-Centered Inner Work Club invites anyone interested to participate in helping cultivate depthful community
that celebrates the divine nature of same-sex love by grasping its psychological potentials. This Club emphasizes the
development of subjective homosexual experience in self and with others through mutual exploration into relevant
subjects like the evening’s topic with its related theory and practice about being gay-centered, as well as any pertinent
dreams, fantasies, memories, and especially feelings that may range all the way from unpleasant or unacceptable
heteronormative-caused fear, shame, and anger too, on the more euphoric side, desire, love and Uranian Eros. Gay
liberation is here practiced subjectively as the evolution of ego-Self relations progressively from out of and beyond the
grip of toxic unconscious complexes sourced in non-gay parental dynamics and other early, traumatized instinctual
and transpersonal patterns. In this way we can choose to create a world of beauty and creative possibilities.

A Uranian way of connecting with one another would be to start within with the gay psyche, where the deeply
gratifying work of fey psychological alchemy, operated chiefly by productively engaging big feelings and issues to
transform the lead of what internalized homophobia has ruinously wrought into the phoenix gold of gay self-
actualization, can effectively be undertaken in communion with like-minded others.

Don’t forget to bring a notebook in which to write and draw! The experience will be facilitated by Chris Kilbourne, long-
time activist, and is sponsored by the nonprofit educational corporation Treeroots.

A Uranian way of connecting with one another would be to start within your own gay psyche, where the deeply gratifying work of fey psychological alchemy, undertaken chiefly by productively engaging those complexes and other big feelings and issues in a relational way so as to mercurially transform the lead of what internalized homophobia has ruinously wrought into the phoenix gold of better soulful becoming, a challenging but deeply rewarding effort to grow more human and more spiritual as gay, a task usefully undertaken in supportive communion with like-minded others, and experience the Club is meant to supply. By persisting in this way, we can choose to work affectingly towards creating a world of genuineness, beauty and creative possibilities.

Don’t forget to have a notebook handy in which to write and draw!

The experience will be facilitated by Chris Kilbourne, long-time activist, and is sponsored by the nonprofit educational organization Treeroots.

A $2-20 suggested, tax deductible donation is much appreciated:

Or donate to Treeroots-Inc on Venmo (phone number ending in 8681). Or mail your donation to: 1014 N. Gardner St., West Hollywood, CA 90046. For more information, please call 323-252-8824.

Thank you!