All Blog Posts (73)

i am tyer Anbinder, currently a Peacock acolyte with Jichiren House, and have been with the Companion's Guild since September of last year. i thought i would provide some thoughts on my time with the Guild so far.

i came upon the Guild by accident. i was a recently released Owned sub of many years, seeking a fresh experience with my newfound freedom, and i happened upon Nanite Systems at Eisa, undergoing conversion to a gynoid unit. While exploring the NS store, i came upon the…

An outreach project of Xiaojie Companion House (though we are open to having Feminist Shrines throughout Second Life where they would be requested and helpful).. the Feminist Shrine has been established for about 6 months now. We have been celebrating some amazing women and their contributions to Second Life!

The current lady being celebrated is Strawberry Singh; a blogger, media activist, SL fashion enthusiast and teacher. Her relationship with Second Life is continually evolving and…

I thought I should post this here to add to the collection.

Learning Love

by Lysana (FireBride) McMillan

A poem I set out to write

My topic deeply mined

For love's a constant subject

To writers thus inclined

Being an emotion

It's better felt than seen

And much of its expressions

May say less than they mean

If love is in the doing

As many choose to think

Speaking it can bring a pause

And drop it out of sync

But…

As I know that it is of great benefit to others to hear about the journey of one's particular self I have decided to apply myself, between my other duties, to writing a High Priestess's blog. It will mostly be IC and I will try to write one a month. I hope others will be encouraged to give it a try who have not as yet :)

It had been a good two years or so since we left Dakini Land, an island of Paquin which we had moved to from Sihnon a long time ago. We had been given special…

Well, my (first) presentation on the Guild went off without a serious hitch at the International Scientific Conference on Cultural Group Behaviour : Historical Re-Enactment, Contemporary Paganism and Fantasy-Based Movements in Kaunas, Lithuania this week.  The presentation itself was nothing special (how much can you go over in a little more than 15 minutes?). However, it was the first time for me to present at a sociology conference (though I mainly focused on the educational aspects of the…

A friend in SL recently told me that the most obsessively f*cked up relationship she had had in SL started with these words:



"You will never know whether or not what I am telling you is the truth."

In a sense, this is the ultimate dom-gone-mad cop out; honesty is not a given in our relationship, because you are simply not worthy of it.

I use it to introduce Duke's acolyte blog in another sense. Blogs represent a struggle with meaning at a certain…

I was just looking back on my blog entries here. I kept writing about big internal revelations. This is a good thing, mind, as I can look back and see a few things more from those points of epiphany than I did at the time. Since the last one, though, the work and the walk on the path to Registration has been different. Quieter. Smaller realizations have come through. All of them important, all of them necessary. Not all learning is done in bursts of mental fireworks. If it was, we'd have no…

This is the translation of a Chinese poem about the joys of sharing tea with a friend.

7 Cups of Tea, by Lu Tong (795 - 835 CE)

The first cup kisses away my thirst,

and my loneliness is quelled by the second.

The third gives insight worthy of ancient scrolls,

and the fourth exiles my troubles.

My body becomes lighter with the fifth,

and the sixth sends word from immortals.

But the seventh—oh the seventh cup—

if I drink you, a…

This article appeared in my Facebook feed this morning. I'm going to elide whatever political thoughts that could emerge (and have, to be honest) and focus on other aspects of what it has to say. Where it grabbed me the hardest relative to the Guild was the discussion of emotional labor. In other words, the support and attention…

   The Autumn winds should chill me

   But a furnace heats my heart

   Burning with unabated anger

   I close my eyes to hear soft music

   Crisp piano notes like water in a stream

   Strings, a breeze whispering through leaves

   My body shivers in disquiet rage

   Not a frosty chill, nor a cool breeze

   But the tremor before an earthquake

   Earthquake weather is still and dry

   El Nino…

Part 1 (Sept. 25)

   I think sometimes "I love you", then wonder who I'm addressing this sentiment to. I realized one morning that I'm addressing it to my idea of a Deity that's present within all of existence. I'm addressing my Mother Goddess and all of Life around me. I'm not addressing it to a particular person. I'm not addressing it to a God who stands outside of His creation and wants adoration. I'm addressing it to a Deity that I believe created everything out of Itself…

Beeflin noted in class today that a well-trained Companion "can find a place in their hearts for everyone they encounter." I felt a resonance there with how I already love. When I applied to the Guild, I made a comment about how I've spent a fair amount of my SL time looking for love in a lot of places and sometimes finding it. That's been my basic pattern for for most of my eight years on the grid. Some have stayed around longer than others, and many of them have ended in different ways.…

Choosing to live a life of love historically has always been hard for the female sex. All simple choices involved ownership by one man or another... or perhaps celibacy through being embraced by a Convent of various religions.

As anyone can attest to... love is often far from simple and straightforward.. to learn it well is a little like learning the subtleties of an instrument. No wonder women who learned to steer such a course in their lives were often labelled as…

((Transcripted from a message dictated in sign language from Priestess Grail, who continues in her oath of silence))

Thank you to all my brothers and sisters, who continue to support me as I venture deeply in silence, to reflect on the spiritual mission of the Guild.

Please know that my attention and love are ever at your service, though my sign language is improving only slowly. I ask that you continue to seek me out with your questions, your joys, your interests, your…

A fork in the road when seen from the other side is a joining of two paths.

When I first came to the guild, much of my focus in Second Life was taken up with my Jedi roleplay.  At the time, most of my Second Life was devoted to being a Jedi.  At the time, I was very stoic, kind of aloof.  There certainly was not any sensuality in my main Second Life activities.  I joined the guild to address what I saw as a lack in my second life experience.

For years now I have…

   We probably all realize that Second Life is shrinking. Sims are disappearing faster than new ones are added. People die or leave faster than new ones come into the world. Maybe in physical reality the universe is expanding, but in Second Life it's contracting. For Firefly RP sims in particular, the "Verse is shrinking.

   This is probably part of an overall shrinkage of interest in SL, as well as decreased interest in the "Firefly" TV show & "Serenity" movie. There are…

Waiting for shuttle to arrive..... It was a sunny day on Paquin at the Spirit Bath House where we awaited the shuttle to take us on a week long tour through space. We had our bags packed and were ready to face whatever can come out of a journey during which we would visit miriad planets with a exceedingly different atmosphere on each. How can we not discover ourselves without…

With awareness must come action, or the knowledge is wasted. Knowing I am lovable, it matters more than ever that I keep close what nurtures me and set aside what hurts me. It's part of self-love to do that. Thus did I ask someone to change our relationship today to one that I can live with. I need a base-level certainty when bonds reach a certain level of intimacy. He stripped me of it. A question that needed a "no" received an "I don't know." In my experience, that's a "yes." I'm ashamed…

Shamans and magic users know of other realities besides our physical one. They also know that the laws of these other worlds are different from the laws of this physical one. They learn the laws and maps of these other worlds, so they can use them practically to help themselves and others.

Virtual Realities - Second Life in particular - might be similar to a huge shared lucid dream. I see enough similarities to our virtual existence and to my own lucid dreams, that I…