Blue heron chicks: LOVE, Harbin Hot Springs' book, nontheist f/Friends, Transcendent love (including intimacy, nudity and sexuality), Anthropology, Emerging, virtual Harbin, "Oneness in Living," Neural cascades of pleasure

So, thanks for this thread ... I'm eager to explore transcendent and far-reaching love vis--a-vis NtFs in this email group, and over the years, ... so that we might feel and grow love, in its positive senses, in the ways we might like, and bodymind-expandingly so. As they say at the Rainbow Gathering "We Love You," and "Loving you sister," "Loving you brother."

Harbin is an alternative place, is countercultural in my interpretation, and is viable financially as a hot springs' retreat center (with rooms and canvas domes for rent, and where you can camp out), in a pretty little valley at the end of the road in Lake County, northern California. A lot of Harbin residents, a kind of tribe, have kind of 'turned on, tuned in and dropped out' into a pretty easy-going lifestyle and interesting community. How the '60s and '70s, how hippies, and how alternative culture wind their ways into the 2010s is one of my (central) questions in the book, and will continue to be with the making of virtual Harbin. When the Harbin cobb and bale Temple was built in 2005, some Quaker Friends (who moved to Lake County from Berkeley decades ago) from the little Lake County WG and I held a silent, Quaker meeting in the partially built, amazingly beautiful, Harbin Temple. 

Both questions, again, of attraction and nakededness, vis-a-vis love, are explicit and implicit, in both my book (and my thinking). As a Darwinian, and an anthropologist, and a child of the '60s (in which 1960 year I was born) and freedom-seeking movements,  evolutionary biology, questions of socioculture, as well as thinking differently inform my thinking, in general. Love (vis-a-vis my Friends' Dalton letter), in this context, and physical, bodymind attraction, in their positive senses, including in terms of nakedness and sexuality - and differentially in terms of gender - relate. And I see love and attraction connect at Harbin (which has its funkinesses) in a fascinating, unfolding way, thanks particularly to the '60s and the clothing-optional, Harbin warm pool, the other geothermally heated and cold pools, and the Harbin pool area, in particular. (Yes, the media, religion and the modern world, throw so many questions of love, nakedness and attraction out of whack, and such never were normalized, anyway, in my broad readings of these questions). While not air-brushed pictures of naked women perfection (or men, etc., for that matter), you can see pictures of the pools here at Harbin's web site - http://www.harbin.org/.

What's parallelly fascinating about the Harbin warm pool, and Friends' Meeting, in my interpretation, is the gatheredness (another term for this is the 'relaxation response,' in my interpretation, which isn't a Harbin phrase) that occurs, and which facilitates a kind of connectedness, and in which love might and does arise. (How intensely might love emerge in various qualities in our bodyminds, and agency-wise/choice-wise neurophysiologically, are other questions I'm exploring). Harbin's founder, Ishvara's not-easy-to-read book "Oneness in Living" (2002) but be another phrase for this experience. But nakedness, attraction and love all do a fascinating dance at Harbin, often in nontheistically friendly and alternative ways, at Harbin, from which I learn, and am grateful for, especially the centering-soaking and harmonizing in the clothing-optional, Harbin warm pool. A very alive, unique, easing meditation occurs in and around the clothing-optional pool area, especially, at Harbin, thanks to the waters from the earth.

So nakedness, and cuddling in warm waters, and sexuality occur at Harbin, in a somewhat normalized way. Many of the workshops over the decades have focused on teaching intimacy. For example, HAI workshops ('Human Awareness Institute - Love, Intimacy and Sexuality' workshops), have been central at Harbin (and now take place around the world) since the early 1970s, (and which I've never taken, because I've been a little shy, even as an anthropologist with Harbin as my long-term field site, and because they cost something like $525 for a weekend these days) and while I think such workshops and teachings (e.g. Tantra workshops, and annual, Polyamory gatherings, etc.) are best understood as emerging from the 1960s, and the sexual revolution, I'm very appreciative that Harbin, and HAI, for example, have contributed to creating a culture / milieu where people can explore such openly and freely. (But Harbin actually isn't very 'Bonobo'). And Harold Dull, a Brit and a hippie, started Watsu (Water Shiatsu) as a healing, water dance form at Harbin (and to float women), as well. Perhaps paralleling Friends/Quakers' protests/vigils/witnesses on the grounds of conscience against societal wrongs, and in the name of the Peace Testimony, I'm glad Harbin has been able to create a space for such normalized living / explorations of nakedness and sexuality, and love, singularly so in this valley (but which may also emerge in a 3D virtual world), to occur, for more than 4 decades now, and as an expression of oneness. 

But transcendent love (including intimacy, nudity and sexuality) continues to be an ongoing focus of mine, especially in terms of neurophysiology / the biological experiences of such qualities. And while one (some people / I) can turn on Mozart's arias, Ravi Shankar's ragas or the Grateful Dead, repeatedly, and get to such neural cascades of pleasure (a quality of love I'm interested in specifically, as biology) again and again, which I would call love, and in most positive senses, I continue to explore various qualities of love and how to elicit such neurophysiologies, and with caring for others and social justice and nontheistic Friendly sensibilities, in mind. 

I'm very glad we NtFs are having this unfolding conversation about love. Thank you. 

Do any of you know the 4 part, beautiful round "Take the time to sit in silence" which really chimes when sung together?

With F/friendly greetings, 

Scott