Blog #10 - Q&A On Cliff & Charity's Accountability Process (audio text with link to video)
Summary: Q&A from the video of Cliff & Charity's Accountability Process
NOTE: This text version has been edited from the original conversation to make references clearer and to make it flow better when read rather than listened to. The actual video is available at https://vimeo.com/940924819?share
The timing notations by each question and answer are approximately where that is in the video. In bold/italic below is a list of the questions.
00:00:01] Kamela: Welcome to this Q & A session for Empowered Pleasure. We have Cliff and Charity here with us this evening. During the course of this call, I will be moderating. My name is Kamela Love, and I am really thrilled to be with you all. I was just hired recently by Cliff and Charity to support them with this next phase, which we could call the reintegration phase of their accountability process.
For the last year and a half, I've been doing mediation work with ISTA. Many of you know ISTA, the International School of Temple Arts. I've been involved in their conflict resolution program globally for the last 18 months. More recently this year I switched as the point person for ISTA's accountability process.
I've been deep in supporting ISTA to work through the different criticisms and experiences that some participants had in some of their programs. In some ways it's similar, and in other ways it's different to what Cliff and Charity have done. There are several other Tantra facilitators in various countries around the world who have had similar experiences to what Cliff and Charity are going through.
We can all see that there are some gems and, and some beautiful growth opportunities and some real transformational moments in these types of accountability processes. I really ask that everyone participate in this conversation tonight with an earnest heart and with open ears and open heart, knowing that this is hard work. It's hard work for everyone in the community in Portland.
One of the things that I value most in human beings is the quality of being able to reconcile. Being able to work through a challenge, through a conflict, and have an experience of increased love on the other side because people put in the work to get through the challenge.
It doesn't feel good in the middle of it sometimes. And Cliff and Charity, I'm sure, can attest that there've been many moments where it has just plain sucked. There's also been many moments where it's felt heartbreakingly beautiful. So we're here to be a part of this conversation to really listen to your voices. Your questions are important. Your voices are important. And we have a combination of questions coming from a pre-survey where we gathered questions from the community. We have a set of questions that we've already gathered and we'll also be gathering questions live from you on the chat. When it comes to me opening the floor for questions, you're welcome to raise your physical hand, your electronic hand, or type it into the chat.
If you want me to call on you and you want to ask the question live, just raise your hand. If you prefer to type it in the chat, I'll speak the question out loud. We have someone supporting me by moderating the chat, so they'll be feeding me the questions if I miss anything. You're well supported tonight and we're really grateful to have you.
I'll just say a little bit more about my history beyond the last couple of years that I've been working, supporting ISTA with their mediation and their accountability work. I founded my own company called Integrate Legacy Dispute Resolution, where I did mediation, mostly in families, mostly in family relationships between adult children or between adult parents and adult children, sometimes between parents and teens. So a lot of different family relationships.
And, prior to that, I went to law school. I spent several years practicing as a lawyer in California, doing my own heart-centered trust and estates work and always doing mediation work and restorative justice work on the side. Like many people, I had the blessing during COVID of feeling like I did not want to continue doing any work that was not totally my soul passion and my soul purpose. At the time, my law practice didn't feel like that. I gracefully exited that and went into the restorative justice work and mediation work full time, which I consider very much aligned with my soul's work and passion.
Thank you for being a part of my big service in the world. Having found what I feel is my deep calling and my deep soul's work. Here we are getting through the muck together.
I would also like to point out that we have Miles Hurwitz on the call with us this evening, and he has been acting as both Cliff and Charity's accountability coach for the last year. He may jump in and answer questions. If you have any questions directed to Miles, that's welcome. If you have any questions directed to me, I may jump in and offer my perspective. I assume most of the questions will be directed towards Cliff or Charity or to both of them. You can just say who your question is directed towards and we'll make sure we get that person on the mic for an answer.
Please feel free to type into the chat right now, if anybody has any questions about how this evening is going to run. You can be secure that I also will not mention the name of any of the people asking questions. For the recording, your names will not be said out loud. Like I said before, your faces will also not be on the recording, but your voice would be if you choose to ask a question live. So that's up to you again, if you want your voice speaking the question or if you want to type it into the chat.
All right, so we are going to take a moment to center ourselves. I invite you to close your eyes if that feels comfortable. You're welcome to leave them open and if you leave them open, I recommend picking a focal point, aka a drishti in yoga terminology, and allowing your eyes to rest on that one spot. Start by giving some breath into your base, into your lower belly and into your pelvic floor, feeling that there might be parts that have been retracted or scared or recoiled and offer those parts some gentle relaxation and love with your breath.
If you don't feel those parts, just allow yourself to come into presence with your base open and connecting to mother earth below you feeling supported and feeling nourished.
Allow your breath now to rise up through your central column, all the way up your spine, gently rising through your face. out through your crown feeling light and warmth on your face as you allow yourself to feel this delicious connection with source or spirit. Breathe into that and know that all of you is welcome here. Know that your emotions are welcome here and please know that we will be holding a brave space, rather than a safe space. We know that safety is often an inside job and we're not necessarily able to create safety, but we can create a space that is for people to feel brave and connected to their center, connected to their sense of their alignment with source and spirit. Allowing one final breath through your whole being into your alignment with source and spirit and back down into mother earth.
Welcome everyone. Okay. Let me just check in with Cliff and Charity. Is there anything that either of you would like to say? Anything that I accidentally left out before we begin some questions?
[00:07:44] Cliff: Nothing from my side. No.
[00:07:45] Kamela: Okay, great. I did forget one bit on the intro piece. It's important for us to say that I, personally, Kamela, have had no prior relationship with Cliff or Charity of any personal nature, of any professional nature. There's been zero friendship, zero intimacy, zero professional relationship, other than the relationship that we just began professionally, which was in the last week or two.
They have just hired me, and this is important as we're heightening our ethics. in this field, in the Tantra field. One of them is minimizing dual roles and minimizing potential conflict of interest, and we wanted you to know that right off the bat.
I'm going to open the floor now for questions, so you are welcome to write them into the chat or speak them aloud. Just raise your physical hand or raise your Zoom hand and we'll call on you roughly in the order that the hands were raised. The floor is open. Who would like to ask a question?
Just a friendly reminder to start your question with who it's addressed to, whom you'd like to answer. And another friendly reminder to come on to video if you're able to, and if you'd like to. We really welcome everyone's faces here for this conversation.
All right. Who would like to ask our first question?
[00:09:04] Kamela: OK, we'll start with some of a few questions that we gathered from the community ahead of time.
So this one is for Cliff and someone would like to know: “Why have you, Cliff, waited so long to get a neurodivergent diagnosis?”
[00:09:32] Cliff: Very good question. I certainly wish that I had not waited so long to get a diagnosis. It clearly could have prevented a huge amount of harm and distress for others, and frankly, prevented a lot of confusion from my side, had I understood that prior to when I did understand it. I don't think I could have gotten there before this process, though, because I always viewed autism as being less than. Basically, I was being allistic, being ableist towards autistic people. I was looking down on autistic people thinking they're kind of like Rain Man.
I've known that I'm different ever since a very early age, ever since four or five years old, but my differences never struck me as impediments. One of the things that Dr. Arnold, who is the psychologist who diagnosed me as autistic, pointed out to me is that one problem I have is that I come across as very intelligent, bright, and capable in many different areas of life.
People then make the assumption that I will have the same level of skill at reading social cues or reading emotional subtleties, and I absolutely don't. This whole process pointed that out painfully and clearly. In addition, my power and privilege, which was completely unexamined up until this particular process, left me in a place where no one was ever willing to point out that I was weird in any way that I could actually hear. If they did it tentatively, which they tended to do, it was very easy for me to dismiss that because my power and privilege are very comfortable.
They've made my life extremely comfortable ever since I can recall. And that allowed me to be in a position that I simply wasn't ready or capable of listening. Now that I have learned that I’m autistic, I want to be clear that the diagnosis is not an excuse. An excuse doesn't need context. An excuse just is like, oh, everything is okay - there is no responsibility. But the diagnosis is an explanation.
An explanation does have context. An explanation gives two levels of responsibility. One is responsibility going forward to not repeat, or at least to greatly ameliorate or pre-disclose, the behaviors that have caused harm, that have caused distress in people. It also gives responsibility going backward, to the past, to both apologize for and also to help correct, if at all possible, the pain that I have caused in the past by being blunt, by being direct, by not picking up emotional cues, by assuming that yes means yes.
So that’s why I waited for a long time. Basically it took this process and the upheaval that resulted. Really, getting diagnosed was very much at Charity’s initiative, which I'm thankful for. She had mentioned she was sure I was autistic a number of times over the last few years, and I simply dismissed it.
I'm very sorry that I did that. I wish I'd gotten the diagnosis earlier.
[00:13:13] Kamela: Thank you so much, Cliff. Let's just see if anyone has any other questions related to neurodiversity or autism. We might be able to get to you. Feel free to type into chat or raise your hand if you have a related question.
I should have mentioned earlier that you're all muted automatically. So if you'd like to speak, you will need to press the Request to Unmute button and then we'll unmute you.
If we don't have any live questions, we'll take another question off our list. I'd like to also take a moment to mention that we're very aware that we may have survivors and stakeholders here on this call, and we are intending to hold this conversation as a place that is survivor supportive, where all voices are really welcome and where we're holding tenderness and validating people's questions. Just offering that gentle reminder and welcoming survivors' voices this evening.
Okay, we have a question from Claude. Yeah, you can just come off mute.
[00:14:15] Claude: “Great, thank you. Good to see you both, and you've been through a long, hard road. I really laud your courage in coming forward as you have consistently - you're really stepping up.
My question is related not so much to neurodivergence, it's to Cliff, as to kind of the synergistic factor that I see at play in the past, which is the power differential. And I guess I tend to not spend too much time looking in the rear view mirror beyond trying to understand the circumstances.
Going forward, how do you intend to monitor, mitigate, or manage potential power differentials so that you minimize the risk of future issues of the same sort. Thanks.”
[00:14:55] Cliff: Good question. Two things really slapped me hard in the face starting at the beginning of last February.
The first was being diagnosed as being autistic. The second was that this was the first time in my life I'd seriously considered my power and privilege and the implications of those. I've never had to think about it before, which is clearly a major deficit on my side, because I have never been in a position in my entire life where I sais yes to something that I didn't fully intend to take part in.
I was sure that if there was any type of repercussion or any negative result (I was actually fired from a couple of jobs during my career because I said no to people that were asking me to do things that I thought were ethically wrong) that I would land on my feet, that I would have no problems with accomplishing whatever I wanted to accomplish in life.
Yes, that hubris (because it is massive hubris, there's no question about that) basically led me to think that if people said yes, they actually meant yes. Thanks very much to Miles in particular with his concept of Mining for the No, and also to Dr. Evelin Dacker who introduced me to the concept of erotic attunement, it's now very clear that many people will say yes to me for a wide variety of reasons that have nothing to do with actual assent. It has very much to do with my power, my privilege, my certainty (which in many cases has turned out to be incorrect) that I actually know the answers to many things.
I do know the answers to a lot of things, but not everything. And I've been way overconfident in projecting my power - intellectual power, organizational power, financial power, etc. Those insights, those realizations. have been both very painful in many ways and extremely useful in other ways.
As a result, one of the conclusions we've come to (I know a number of people here have been reading our blogs and so have read this) is that, going forward, neither Charity nor I will date anyone if we’ve met them as our student because the power differential is simply too great. The importance of this really struck me in the face during the Trauma Training for Tantra professionals (actually Kamela took that same workshop and it was many, many hours somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 hours). Very early in that workshop the main leader presented intellectual and philosophical arguments that were irrefutable. Once I see something, I cannot unsee it. This I now see very, very clearly.
I'm sure that my autism won’t go away, but I can pre-disclose it. I'm sure I'm still going to come across as very blunt and emotionally unaware from time to time, but I think the combination of the pre-disclosing and being aware that there is a power differential should result in an enormous change in how I interact with people.
Of course, trust in that will take time. Trust is not earned by a few words or any number of blogs, but by actions themselves. So, we'll see.
[00:18:37] Kamela: Thank you so much, Cliff. I'll take a moment here to add a resource and a recommended book. If anyone here is interested in power dynamics, one of the hot organizations right now that's offering courses and training is called the Right Use of Power Institute (https://rightuseofpower.org), and I highly recommend their courses online. They're very affordable. They offer many throughout the year and the book, if you're interested in reading a book, is titled the Right Use of Power written by Cedar Barstow the founder of the Institute. The little tidbit of a teaching from that book that I wanted to drop in here, which is really, really relevant for all of the facilitators, teachers, organizers, people in role power, is that there's different types of power. Right now this comment is about role power. When we're in a designated role, that automatically puts us on a higher, hierarchical plane than someone in a different role. Obviously with teacher-student, there's always going to be that role power differential.
What Cedar Barstow proposes is that the person with the higher role power is 150% responsible for the health of the relationship. You ask, okay, well, what about the other person, the lesser-power role? They're 100% responsible. Yes, the down-power person is still 100% responsible while the up-power person is 150% responsible. That's part of what Cliff and Charity are integrating now into their beings is this real awareness that when I have a role, hierarchical power, up power role, there are inherent differences in the relationship with someone down power, and a lot of reasons, and blog, there's a good blog post on this that Cliff wrote, explaining why people might say yes to a person up power when they're not actually in their true yes.
There's a whole variety of ways and reasons a person could be off center, largely due to the power differential. So for leaders now to be understanding this and taking it seriously in their higher role power to say things like, okay, we're no longer going to be dating or connecting romantically with any students. We’ve realized that was not the best way for us to show up in the past. We erred, we didn't understand what we do now, and now we're ready to switch onto a different track and offer a space that will be even more cognizant of power differences and creating safer spaces.
Any other questions on role power, power differentials, or any topics? The floor is open for questions. You can type them into the chat or raise your hand.
Alright, we'll take another question from our list here that we gathered from the community.
[00:21:18] Kamela: This one's an open ended question. Someone in the community was asking, how are you feeling? What has it been like for you the last year and a half, Cliff?
[00:21:26] Cliff: Variable would be a succinct answer. Initially, I was very confused. I was angry. I was frustrated and very defensive, and that lasted for probably most of February 2023. At that point I began the Trauma Training for Tantra Professionals and that really opened my eyes to the validity of many of these points. The depth of harm that my very unthinking activities or speech patterns had caused people became clear from that expanded view. That left me, I don't know, full of regret on my part for their pain, and also full of sadness that I had done things that had deeply damaged an organization which I and Charity have spent a huge amount of time building.
I damaged our mission by causing harm to people - the mission of expanding awareness, expanding sex positivity, bringing more joy, bringing more pleasure to people that has been and remains my mission. But, you know, I'd done very stupid things and very harmful things that I owe a lot of apologies for. That has slowed that mission down enormously, although ultimately, I think the growth that will come out of it will certainly prove very useful.
After that, there was a period of integration and growth. Miles has been excellent at challenging me in many ways about certain of my thought patterns that had become essentially fossilized over the years.
Going through all of my business experience from around 1980 onwards - being athe CEO or president of pretty much anything that I ever got involved in - gave me a particular point of view that is really inappropriate for this type of community, for this type of environment. I think some of the practical business lessons are useful, but in terms of the way that is necessary to interact with people, to understand people, to have vastly more empathy for them, was simply something that I was deeply lacking in. I appreciate that insight, even though I perhaps didn't show the appreciation in the moment. I think I got annoyed at Miles on a very frequent basis, although I've also gotten annoyed at Charity on a rather frequent basis too, but she almost always turns out to be correct. Usually takes me a couple of days to figure that out, and I think it was similar with Miles.
Currently I'm hopeful, very hopeful. I’m much more relaxed than I was when this accountability process started about 15 months ago. I’m much less certain that I actually know what I thought I knew.
I think chastened would be a good word for it. Apologetic would be a good word for it. But I’m fundamentally quite happy. One of the things that I very much appreciated is that I talked to a couple of other men who have gone through accountability processes like this, and for both of them, it was deeply damaging to their relationship with their partners. One of the things that I've been delighted about is that I think this has greatly solidified Charity's and my relationship in terms of understanding how we are in the world and what empathy and inclusion can bring in terms of moving forward in life.
[00:25:20] Kamela: Thank you Cliff. We have a question on the chat from someone on the call and the question is, “What steps are you taking to address the challenges that arise as a result of your diagnosis? I think you've spoken to that a little bit, and it would be great to hear more. What steps are you taking to address the challenges that arise as a result of your diagnosis? “
[00:25:39] Cliff: Probably the main step is simply predisclosing. I know that a number of people had figured out that I was autistic long before I was willing to admit it, including pretty much all of the very close relationships that I have. And, they are more amused by my occasional bluntness or seeming non-sequiturs than annoyed by them.
I think that predisclosing will be extremely useful, and I also think that just being aware that non-autistic people expect a certain way of being that I simply don't have. They expect that when somebody walks into the room, they will react in a certain way, or they expect a certain level of posturing, or they expect me to understand when they say A, that they really don't mean A, they mean B or C or D or E, and that is very difficult for me.
It's very frustrating. If somebody asks me a question and I tell them what I really think, and they get angry at me, that's confusing, frankly. To me, it would be much simpler if I ask somebody a question, they would tell me what they really think. I don't want them to couch it or hide it or tell me something that actually isn't what they really desire.
Having the autism diagnosis helped me understand my confusion and helped me understand why other people experience me very differently. Hopefully, pre-disclosing will will help with that. Also, I believe that I've become much more sensitive to not just saying the first thing that comes to mind.
I still can't bullshit in the sense of if somebody asks me a question that they're clearly expecting a compliment because most people would compliment them, I probably am going to have to just say, gosh, I'm sorry. This is really uncomfortable for me. I need to go to the bathroom now or something like that.
I just can't lie in order to be polite. If somebody asks me a question, I am going to tell them what I really think. As I've found out, that doesn't work well in many social contexts. Just keeping my mouth shut is probably going to be one of my primary responses.
[00:28:12] Kamela: Thank you, Cliff. Here's another question from the audience, and it’s for you. “When and what are the situations that have caused you to slide back into resentment during your accountability process?”
[00:28:25] Cliff: Occasionally, I have resented Miles, frankly, for feeling like it's going too slow. Most of the time, I've come to realize that I'm pushing too hard, that I'm too interested in offering events again or doing things like that.
Resentment has also come occasionally from people being very dismissive, thinking, oh, Cliff couldn't possibly change, he's hopeless, he's over 70 years old. No 70-year-old can possibly change their mind about anything, which I've heard a couple of times. I find that annoying. I don't know if it would quite come to the level of resentment, but it's definitely annoying. But I understand it because I was certainly dismissive of criticism prior to this accountability process happening.
That reaction probably came over from my business experience where if something made sense to me, and somebody came up with a different idea or a contradictory concept, if I agreed with it, I'd be happy to adopt it and change my way. If I didn't agree with it, I would dismiss it. And most of the time my choices ended up being the right choice. Sometimes it didn't. There was failure. There were mistakes made. If I make decisions, I accept that I will make mistakes. In business, mistakes don't hurt nearly as much, most of the time, as they do in interpersonal relationships. So me dismissing things like that definitely had the very negative effect of hurting people as opposed to just changing the direction of a business or.
So ultimately the process really needs to be to be more empathetic, I need to be more empathetic. I need to actually listen more rather than simply responding and probably deferring response if it doesn't seem like that's the response the person actually wants to hear.
[00:30:43] Kamela: Great. Thank you. Here’s a connected question to the one you just answered: “How do you recognize when your resentment is returning? And how do you navigate through, how do you manage your way through the resentment in order to get back to the transformation and accountability space?”
[00:31:01] Cliff: Resentment, whether it's in this particular space or at any time previous to my life, it's very clear, it's an energetic thing. You can't really see it on my camera, but I'm touching my third chakra, the power chakra which is right in the solar plexus. That gets tight. And if it's tight for long enough, it starts to generate stomach acid. So if I'm feeling tight in my solar plexus and my stomach is feeling a little bit uncomfortable, I'm definitely in resentment.
My shoulders tend to get tight. I start being very intellectual and nitpicky. All of those things come together in one fell swoop. The way I relieve those is basically to get up, walk around the room, breathe deeply, do some asanas, meditate for a while, and that's generally very effective at relieving that particular stress.
[00:31:58] Kamela: Thank you. We've got a hand up to raise a question, so you can go ahead and ask your question. Just come off mute.
[00:32:08] Stephen: “I was wondering what you'd actually really like to do in the next, in the sex positive community in the next three months, nine months, couple of years? And would you be interested in joining other sex positive organizations as a ground level member or only as a leader?”
[00:32:27] Cliff: Good questions. Joining other sex positive organizations would be fine as a ground level member. I can certainly understand why that would be a requirement, particularly for ones here in the Portland area. What I think we'd both like to do going forward, forgetting about the next three months because that's a little special, instead of doing about 1.7 events per week (as we were for Empowered Pleasure over the 37 months finishing at the end of January last year), we'll probably end up doing two, maybe three events per month here in Portland. In addition, we plan on teaching longer residential courses, like long weekends or seven day courses, through a group called Awaken as Love (www.awakenaslove.com). I know Kamela is very familiar with it because she's a faculty member for Awaken as Love, and we’ll possibly teach with other organizations that do longer events.
I think one of the big mistakes that we made was having so many events here in our home. I think that may have generated a lot of resentment on some people's parts. It certainly utterly exhausted Charity as we had something like 550 events during the 37 months of Empowered Pleasure. And when we get exhausted, then our worst parts come out - we are more annoyed, we get more like I don't have time for this bullshit, we get more dismissive. And that I take full responsibility for because I was definitely the one pushing for more events and doing whatever we possibly could to introduce as many people as possible to sex positivity, to Tantra, to expanded awareness, and I got way over-enthusiastic and burned us both out.
I think that was one of the root causes of many of the issues that we had. Did you have anything you wanted to add to that?
[00:34:46] Charity: I'll just answer the question asked from my perspective, too, in terms of the next three months. We're in this space of just getting used to talking to people again. I think very appropriately, we pulled out of attending anything where there might be crossover with survivors. There's a lot of injury. As a result, we're not used to socializing anymore outside of people who are relationship partners. We’re now dipping our toes in when invited. We're waiting to be invited because we recognize how risky it could be to have us somewhere because we've been gone and nobody knows what might be different or how we're going to be.
I’m just getting used to being in the same room with people again in the next three months. From there, we don't want to make the mistake of again trying to do our own thing and have nobody else around that we're consulting with or who is supporting us. People offered us help, and we, you know, didn't accept it. Being in our own world, doing our own thing, and trusting our own wisdom was a huge source of the harms that happened. So for me, we've been connecting with other Tantra professionals, and that has been hugely important as they aren’t immersed in our local world and have other perspectives.
We’ll continue to be very open about our accountability process in that regard.
To answer the question, “Do we participate as participants?” Yes, although not yet locally. In the case of both Living Tantra and then Awaken as Love, we're just showing up as participants, and it's actually really beautiful and relieving.
There, we're just showing up as new to those groups and their experiences. So, yes, we want to do that when invited and there we recognize that we need to start from the beginning.
[00:37:12] Kamela: Thanks. “And would you like to add, Charity, what your plan is with Cliff to do some test workshops as you step back into offering material?”
[00:37:22] Charity: Sure. So, for the near future, although we don't actually have anything on the time schedule yet, we want to dip our toes back in the water of facilitation, but doing it under supervision. To be clear, it's not like there's licensing board structures or anything for Tantra teachers.
There's significant value in saying, look, we've made mistakes in the past. There's things that we feel like we've done well, but others that have caused a lot of harm. We're going to be offering something like three to five events as pilot or test events, and they're not going to be public. We're going to invite a few people whom we trust to give us really honest feedback that also have quite a bit of experience participating in Tantra events.
Of course we won't be charging for them because they’re helping us out. But before we even run those, we're going to have some very seasoned Tantra professionals review all of our materials. We're adjusting events by taking into account some of the information Cliff learned in the Trauma Informed Tantra course, and then having all of the participants complete an enhanced survey asking how things landed, and those surveys will be anonymous. They'll go straight to our supervisors so we can get feedback before we open our doors to the public. So that's basically what we're looking at in the next phase of figuring out where we go from here.
[00:39:06] Stephen: Okay. Thank you very much. And empoweredpleasure.org is going to be where you'll announce anything that will be public.
[00:39:15] Cliff: Yes.
[00:39:15] Charity: Yeah. And also I should add that we're going to be doing a major update of our website that will include disclosure about our accountability process. So any people who come to our events will know about our process, where we've gone wrong, and what changes we’ve made.
It’s not something hidden. Nor are we changing our name because we don't want to hide what's happened.
[00:39:38] Stephen: Okay. Thank you very much.
[00:39:40] Kamela: All right. The floor is open for questions. Does anyone have a question? You're welcome to type it into the chat or raise your hand.
In the meantime, I'll let you know that I put into the chat the website Live Tantra (www.livetantra.com), which has the trauma-informed training for Tantra professionals that both Cliff and Charity have mentioned. It is highly recommended for anyone in the Tantra field. It's a really extensive course in trauma training and how to work trauma training into workshops and into private session work.
The new test workshops that Cliff and Charity will be offering in the upcoming months to an inner circle will then be giving them feedback like they explained. They're incorporating a lot more trauma-informed techniques and methods into their upcoming workshops which is a benefit to everyone.
All right, as y'all think of any additional questions you might have, we'll go to this list of questions that we pre-gathered.
So, the next question has to do with the business leadership within Empowered Pleasure and Sex Positive Portland (SPP), so I'll read the question.
“You used your power and privilege during your time in SPP to receive preferential treatment. That led to changing how monies from events were distributed to further benefit you, getting preferred calendar slots, and at times becoming a gatekeeper of sorts about who could access programming.
As someone who purports to be a leader, what do you think the negative long- lasting impacts of this abuse of privilege has been for individuals and the organization as a whole?”
So this might be one that both of you could answer. Let's start with Cliff and then we'll go to Charity afterwards. What would you like to share around any realizations you've had and changes you've made around the way that privilege has impacted you in Sex Positive Portland?
[00:41:37] Cliff: I can definitely understand and I apologize for the negative impact that my power and privilege clearly had on SPP. As I said before, I really didn't understand how strong my power and privilege were. One of the things, and it took me a couple of years of leading workshops for SPP to finally get that there was simply a radical difference in mission.
My mission was to produce as many events as possible with as large attendance as possible that were focused on Tantra, expanding awareness, expanding pleasure, expanding joy and relationships, whereas SPP was very much about building community, about giving many people the opportunity to lead events , even if they had never done so in the past. And I'm sure that my presence on the SPP Board and the events that I led were probably very discouraging to many people who had to deal with me.
I make a good projection screen. So dealing with someone older, white, male, reasonably well off financially, who is very certain that “this is the way things should be done” was undoubtedly very discouraging to people who were more marginalized (which is essentially everybody), and that was one of the reasons that when I finally started to understand this that Charity and I started Empowered Pleasure on January 1, 2020. This allowed our mission to go forward and not step on as many toes. At least my projection was that many fewer toes would be stepped on.
I really don't know what the current impact is on SPP of me having been there since I've really haven't had much to do with SPP since the beginning of the pandemic back in March of 2020. If I project my lasting impact, it is true that the founder of SPP, Gabriella Cordova, and I had a conversation about compensation for people putting on events back in November of 2015 when I first offered events. We negotiated and she agreed to 65% of the net going to the facilitator of the event, which was applied to all event leaders.
But I experienced even while I was still with SPP (and I've heard it’s continued subsequently) that this has caused conflicts within the SPP Board as some feel strongly that all events should be free and that facilitators and volunteers should not be compensated.. It's an ethos that I don't agree with, but that ethos is very much there, and probably my insistence upon compensating all event facilitators has undoubtedly caused a lot of conflict on the SPP board and within SPP since that point in time.
Let's see, what else did I want to say on this topic? I think that's the main thing - difference in mission. And again, my unacknowledged power and privilege - feeling certain that I knew the best way to do things and really pushing very hard on that undoubtedly stepped on a lot of people's toes and caused problems within SPP then. I’m sorry to hear that potentially those problems are continuing. If there's anything that I can do to ameliorate that, I'd be happy to. While I was with SPP, I and one of SPPs leaders led multiple free events on how to post, host, and get the most out of events. I would be surprised if I would be welcome to do anything like that going forward, but if that's useful, I'd be happy to help out. I don't think Charity really had much to do with SPP. So I don't know if you had anything to add to what I’ve said.
[00:46:09] Charity: I could certainly say the way that I made all of that worse was just the fact that I defended Cliff. When Cliff was being very insistent on doing lots of events, how they should be done, and how they should be monitored, it conflicted with SPP’s mission of removing barriers so that more people could be in leadership and could host, especially people with marginalized identities.
People came to me and said, “Hey, can you please help us? Like, help us with Cliff?” I would instead defend him. That then created even more barriers because it became a massive amount of emotional labor for any of the folks that were trying to say, “But look, this is the ethos. This is the mission we're trying to do.”
At that point, we were essentially obstacles. In addition to that (and maybe some in this room have experienced this), when Cliff and I in power and privilege and energy start bouncing off of each other together, it's almost like double wavelengths of intensity, and I imagine that had to have been exhausting for people who just wanted to bring their gifts to the world. I apologize for that as I was also a barrier and intensified those strains.
[00:47:57] Kamela: Thank you for those additions, Charity. “I'm curious, Cliff, if you might speak into some people's curiosities probably right now are what will it look like in the future? Will you have any leadership roles in SSP? How will you show up differently in that than how you had showed up in the past?”
[00:48:15] Cliff: I would be stunned if I had any future leadership role in SPP, but in terms of any other organization, I think the lessons learned from this whole process would flow through and encourage me to be much more empathetic, to listen much more rather than being certain that I knew what was right, and that I knew what was best for the organization. So I think that just generally more smoothness, more openness, and more willingness to listen to others would be the primary experience. I believe that has already been the case in Awaken as Love, for example.
[00:49:08] Kamela: Let's go into the topic of feedback and receiving feedback. “Can you share some glimpse into what it was like towards the beginning of your accountability process and some glimpse of what it's like now for you, the process of receiving feedback?”
[00:49:23] Cliff: I assume you're asking me?
[00:49:26] Kamela: Really both of you, but let's start with you, Cliff.
[00:49:29] Cliff: As I said earlier while answering the question, “How are you feeling?”, initially I was very resistant to the feedback. It was confusing. It was annoying and frustrating, but then that ameliorated extensively. I think I'm vastly more open to feedback now than I was. I won't say that I can ever promise that, yes, I'll accept absolutely any feedback and immediately alter to however the person wishes I was doing, because that would not be true.
But, I believe I am more open to hearing, open to considering, open to being more empathetic to the point of view of the person giving me that feedback. Obviously from an outsider's point of view, that needs to be tested against actuality to see if I’m open to listening to something that I probably would have dismissed 15 months ago.
[00:50:43] Charity: If I’m being authentic regarding myself with feedback, it's still hard. Looking over the accountability process, there's many times where I felt highly defensive and argumentative. This is one of the shadows I've really had to look deeply at, and it still happens.
I’m sure Miles can attest to that, and I'll take a moment to publicly apologize to him for the many times that I've been really a pain. My intention is that after someone gives me feedback to initially thank them for what they’ve said. If it strikes an intense cord within me, that’s even more important to pay attention to. The stronger I feel to push back, the more important it is for me to pay attention, because it's a shadow that is showing itself. So I would say my intention is, especially when I feel defensive on the inside, to pause, to really take it in, and to understand what that cord is in me, and then to wait to respond until I have at least some understanding of what my response is all about. To sum it up, my intention is to hear and believe the person's experience of me, and then (especially if I'm defensive) to take that time to look inside and see what is the shadow or shadows being touched here and to pause and wait before I respond.
That is my intention, and I can’t promise to always be able to do that.
[00:52:35] Kamela: Thank you. For everybody's knowledge, one of the markers that we look for as people are coming towards the end of a formal accountability process. is this topic - how well are they receiving feedback from participants in their workshops, people in lesser power roles?
You'll notice as you observe a person going through this transformational process that we're calling their accountability process, somewhere in that, there has to be a breakdown of their old listening, cracking into a new way of listening, because we hear this word gaslighting thrown around a lot these days, and you'd be amazed how many of the complaints from, say, students and participants in Tantra environments to the teachers and facilitators, how many of those complaints involve being dismissed, being gaslit.
They're not necessarily these egregious consent violations that you might think of (like rape). It's more nuanced. Communication dynamics and leadership dynamics that fail to fully honor and recognize a person's experience and the power differential can often exacerbate trauma responses. That’s why learning about power differentials, about trauma responses, are all really important, necessary components of an accountability process.
And then there’s getting to the place where feedback becomes a gift. I think that's the best way to say it in a few words, where it might feel like a criticism and people's defensiveness hackles come up in the beginning. That's how everybody starts their accountability process. Eventually there's enough humbling, enough inner work, enough willingness to receive these shadow reflections like Charity was talking about where the person is able to really bow down and say what you have to say is valid and it's valuable to me. There's a totally different demeanor that the person carries now in the way they engage with people, the way they listen, and in the way they receive feedback. This is what I'm noticing as people come through their accountability processes, and these are a year, two years, three years, four years.
There's no finite time for an accountability process. There’s no clear timeline from the outset as to when will this end? We don't know. It ends when the people have gone through the growth work that they need to go through to be ready to reintegrate into a community role from a new place of humility and higher trauma informedness and higher sensitivity to the people in the room that are coming from a more stressful environment.
This humbleness and receiving feedback is noticeable and it's a really important quality to this process. When a person is finished with their accountability process doesn’t have an easy answer. There’s no black and white answer. There's no clear one, two, three steps to completing the process, because so much of it involves an internal subjective process, and then subjective feedback from community members, coaches, and supervisors.
What we're looking towards in the future now with Cliff and Charity is this phase that we'll call the reintegration phase. They're feeling like they've gone through a lot of that deep internal processing work. They pulled themselves out of community, out of leadership roles, and took some real dark time on the calendar to do their work. Now they're interested in reconnecting with the community, interested in offering information transparently and vulnerably like today where they're really ready to own different places that they feel like they've erred and different places that they feel like they haven't held people's hearts and emotions as well as they could have and the ways that they're now engaging in repair work.
I'll say the accountability work is never over. It's really a lifelong process. Now that Cliff and Charity are here, they understand it's not like we're going to turn off the feedback input valve anytime. That is a forever open valve. Now it's important for us to create safer channels for feedback through independent third parties. That's another example of an important step that Cliff and Charity are taking moving forward is there will be an external third party feedback mechanism for all folks that go through any of their workshops in the future. This helps to minimize the power differentials because some people may not feel safe, may not want to offer their feedback directly to Cliff or Charity.
There will be a. input form online that'll be handled through an independent third party, and then any feedback will be brought to Cliff and Charity in the way the feedback submitter requests the feedback be given. It might be anonymously, it might be with that person's name or identity attached, and that's something in the future that you'll see with Cliff and Charity and with many other Tantra teachers that are figuring out that these mechanisms are important.
Teaching Tantra is not a licensed professional field. It's a bit more open, and there's a lot of variety in how facilitators run their private practices and their workshops. Truthfully, accountability processes are a blessing happening now for the past few years in the Tantra community.
The way I see it is that the MeToo movement hit the Tantra scene, maybe a year or two after it hit Hollywood. We started to hear all these voices erupting and saying, hey, these things happened to me. And now there's a number of Tantra companies and teachers going through something that looks like this process.
Ultimately it's wonderful for the field because now we're creating these global conversations around codes of conduct, ethics and best practices. And companies like Live Tantra (www.livetantra.com) are creating trauma-informed courses specifically for Tantra professionals, because there's nuances in the sacred sexuality field that need extra attention, extra conversation, and extra teaching on how to navigate that world ethically.
Okay - opening up the floor again. Any questions, feel free to type them in the chat or raise your hand. I don't have any on deck, so I'll go ahead to one of our questions from our log here. So Charity, this starts with you, and it'll probably go to you Cliff afterwards.
“Charity, you've also engaged in some of the problematic behavior that has occurred with Cliff, namely engaging in sexual behavior at events that you were hosting or co hosting while criticizing other sex positive organizations that did the same. Why do you now see those behaviors as problematic?”
[00:59:15] Charity: Excellent question. First of all, I was being an incredible hypocrite at the time and was blind to it. I won't go into what stories I was telling myself that made that okay. That might be out in the future blog to communicate to you. But more to the point, why do I now say, “Oh, I should not have done that, and I don't intend to do that in the future.”
My process of changing my opinion on that was actually slower than Cliff's. Cliff was much sooner to say we shouldn't have done that and shouldn't do that going forward. I was more resistant, and what changed it for me were a few things.
First, Shashi Solluna who taught the Trauma for Tantra Professionals course, and then my own Tantra teacher, Jan Day, opened my eyes. Through hearing what Shashi was saying and then conversing with Jan, I recognized that there was no difference between the power differential of a Tantra teacher and student and what I already am familiar with as a mental health practitioner. I've known for 20 years of my profession that I should not have sex with my patients.
Once that became clear, there's not a question in my mind. Yet somehow in my mind, I had made it different even though the power differential isn't different. It took interventions from these two women and also work with Miles when it finally hit me that, of course, it's the same.
This was a very powerful recognition that I couldn't unsee after I’d seen it. I do want to add here that this isn't about me saying to other Tantra professionals, look, you should make the decision we’ve made. I am in no position to judge anybody else or to instruct anybody else about this. I'm only sharing my process on this topic. If I engage sexually with a participant outside of events or participate in an event that I'm leading or co-leading, both of those have great potential for harm. Even if the person I'm engaging with isn't harmed, then it’s potentially harmful to community. It can create drama and many other problems that can be avoided by just saying, “I'm not going to do that.” Once I made that equivalence in my own mind that the power differential between being a therapist and teaching Tantra are the same, then it was clear to me. It wasn't overnight, though.
[01:02:12] Kamela: Thank you. Would you like to add your version of that response, Cliff?
[01:02:19] Cliff: I think I've already mostly covered this, but I'm certainly not coming at it from the point of view of a health professional. I think the “Mining for the No” concept that Miles introduced us to compared to taking “Hell Yes!” as being the be all and end all of consent (which SPP taught for many years” led to me realizing that, even in a peer relationship, coming up with a list of reasons why this relationship may be a bad idea is an excellent thing. In fact, that will probably be one of our first events that we offer - showing just how profound that particular perspective is. and how much pain it could eliminate.
[01:03:17] Kamela: Thank you. Another question live from the audience today. This is starting with Cliff and welcoming Charity's answer second. “If you've had the realization, have you had the realization that as a triad of CCM, the power differential was magnified and made it multiple times harder to take a position that disagreed with Cliff or to give feedback that might be critical in nature?”
Can you explain for listeners what CCM means so everybody's tracking
[01:03:59] Cliff: Sure. CCM stands for Cliff, Charity, and Mel. Mel was a co-founder of Empowered Pleasure. She lived with us as a relationship triad for about 3 years which ended in May 2022. She was a relationship anarchist and was very vehemently solo poly when she moved in. I hadn't really considered that having her here would have magnified the power differential made it even more difficult to give us feedback.
Now that I consider it, I can see that that probably did make it more difficult. While Mel was here there were three relatively strong personalities, mostly moving together in a particular direction. We all supported the same line of open sexuality, of play and joy, and minimal relationship restrictions between any levels of the organization. Now that I consider it, I apologize for any problems or discomforts that created.
[01:05:09] Kamela: Thanks, Cliff. Anything to add there, Charity?
[01:05:11] Charity: Absolutely, and I really appreciate this question. I think earlier I briefly mentioned the challenge that someone trying to talk with Cliff or me faced, especially giving feedback. When the three of us were together, that would increase the challenges even more as we would back each other up, defend each other. I can't imagine what it would have been like to try to come to the three of us with any serious complaint or feedback. With our strong defensiveness or insistence that we were correct, we would have been a force to be reckoned with.
I want to add something that may be a bit less related to Cliff, but I know is a way I caused harm. Being in a triad, I was strongly committed to open or very low-restriction polyamory. It was almost a relationship anarchy perspective. I was overtly shaming people who felt insecure and jealous. I was certain that the best way to be is to have no restrictions, to be open and free, and, if you don't have that, you're not doing it the right way or you're not good enough.
I know that position and the way I communicated it caused harm to many people, as if they were struggling or having insecurity and jealousy, then they felt there's something wrong with them. I realize now that there’s a wide variety of normal feelings in polyamorous relationships. Particularly having Mel and me speaking about that could have left many people, particularly those socialized as women, feeling inadequate or less than if they had a different way of exhibiting their sexuality or participating in their polyamory.
[01:07:26] Kamela: Thank you. If there are questions from our attendees right now, please type them into the chat or raise your physical or electronic hands.
Okay, you've spoken into this a little bit, so we'll just open this if there's more detail you want to share. One question that we had gathered previously is, “What do professionally supervised events mean? So these test workshops that you're going to be doing, is there any more detail that you didn't yet say that you want to add now?”
[01:08:12] Charity: We're deciding what that will look like in combination with the people that we're inviting to be supervisors. The main piece will be having our supervisors review all of our materials before the event and then directly collect any feedback from participants. No participant will have to come directly to either of us and say, look, I didn't like how you did this. It will go straight to the supervisors who will give us that feedback, anonymously if the participant wishes. This will really reduce the discomfort of coming straight to us and saying I didn't like that. Particularly given the level of defensiveness that both Cliff and I demonstrated before, people were worried, were afraid, understandably, to come to us.
Having that feedback loop and having advice from seasoned professionals is really what this will look like. That means no one needs to worry about some sort of in-community rejection or punishment for complaining or pointing out if we violate one of our ethics codes. Plus we’re making sure that the first few events that we do are very, very carefully monitored and reviewed before we start offering them again.
[01:10:00] Kamela: Great. Thank you. And we'll actually hybrid that into the next question because you've touched on it already. So we'll keep going in this direction. The question is, “What do you plan to do for outside support structures? And they gave an example of Sex Positive Portland's MC3 Community Concerns Committee.”
You've already named several structures, so an opportunity to add any additional detail that you haven't yet said, as far as outside support structures that you're putting in place. Either one of you can answer.
[01:10:31] Cliff: I think that question was just answered by Charity because SPP’s MC3 is a way to report problems with anyone.
Kamela will be heading up our reporting. We've also invited a couple of other seasoned Tantra professionals to be in the supervisory role, but Kamela will be heading up what serves as SPP's MC3.
[01:11:23] Charity: I’d like to add that we're still in discussion about this and want to have it in place before anything is offered. We'll also have an option for more internal peer reporting so that it may be, let's say, for example, if someone says, I had an uncomfortable experience, but I actually want to have someone within the group to talk to rather than going to somebody I don't know.
[01:12:21] Kamela: And I'll add a little more here too, since I'll be involved in that process, like Cliff said.
There's the external reporting feedback that they've explained. That's an important mechanism to separate that from the actual in-power facilitators themselves. And then also, this external 3rd party would be handling any conflict resolution needs like Charity mentioned. So I will be working as a mediator if needed. If any people from the past or from here forward in future workshops have an experience that they feel was less than desirable or they haven't been able to integrate it well after the workshop, they would fill out a feedback form and explain their experience. That feedback form would come through my website to me, not to Cliff and Charity.
I would bring that feedback form to a group of supervisors who are supporting Cliff and Charity, and we would discuss what are the best next steps. I would reach out to the person in a trauma-informed way and ask if they're open to a phone call or we could have an electronic typing conversation if they don't want a live phone call - whatever they're comfortable with and however they want to share.
I would ask them what's needed for them to feel whole. The conflict resolution part could look a lot of different ways. Sometimes it looks like a live mediated conversation. I'm available to work on Zoom with Cliff and Charity, me, and whoever is interested in having a mediated type of conversation with them. I would work as a neutral as I'm not their cheerleader or their support person. I'm working as a neutral, independent third party trained in accountability and conflict resolution work to support them in their accountability process. You would have the experience that I'm facilitating your voice to be heard by them and your concerns to be really validated and listened to, and then we’d come up with some creative strategies for how we can come up with solutions.
I'll just add one more piece. It's likely there will be other structures put into place that Cliff and Charity aren't aware of now. They're adding things as they become aware of the need for them. So this is really truly a lifelong process and cultures evolve. The Tantra community evolves. Technology evolves.
There will undoubtedly be changes in the accountability work in the upcoming years that we can't even necessarily predict right now.
Okay, coming to a question here on the chat for Cliff and Charity. “You refer to a new role with a Tantra teaching organization where you'll receive further training named Awaken as Love. Is this organization totally informed of this recent troubled history of Cliff and Charity resulting in over a year of hiatus from event leading and their long accountability processes and the earlier RJ process?
So is Awaken as Love aware of it and how is any respected Tantra teaching organization okay with Cliff and Charity's background of causing harms to be added to their team of facilitators?”
[01:15:24] Cliff: Yes, they're very well aware of it. Both prior to going to the Awaken as Love training and then also at the training, both Charity and I informed James Stevenson, who runs the Awaken as Love organization, of exactly what had happened and what the RJ report was all about.
Yes, so he's well informed. I find the question of how could anybody let someone as harmful as me teach is a bit pejorative. That perspective precludes the possibility of evolution, of learning, of apologizing, of coming out the other end a better person. I believe that James is very satisfied with what he sees and hears from us at this point in time.
I hope that you keep an open mind and can recognize the possibilities there. And I realize it's completely your call.
[01:16:26] Charity: I'll chime in as well that one of the commitments that we've made as part of this is we'll be telling everybody if we're attending as a participant or we're teaching, we'll be informing everybody about our accountability process.
With regard to James Stevenson and Awaken as Love, I actually selected that to attend because I knew that he was involved in bringing the first ISTA facilitator to go through an accountability process. Also, I knew that part of the code of ethics for Awaken as Love is that teachers do not interact sexually with students.
I thought even if I'm going as a participant, I want it to be aligned with our values. That was part of the selection process for us. When, when we disclosed, we also included not only our verbal disclosure, but the RJ report itself. It wasn't just our interpretation of what happened, but also the words of survivors were there for him to review.
In terms of the question of how would anybody allow us to teach again, I understand the question is if somebody has a track record of doing harm, why would anybody want to hire them? I can only share what, what James shared with me and what I've heard from some other people is that when a person chooses to go through an accountability process that shows a willingness to do better. It also shows we’re choosing to be open, transparent and say these things have happened and we have made errors. So, in some ways many would say that that makes us safer because we have the supervision in place and the openness and the disclosure.
And, of course, everybody has to make their own decisions about that.
[01:18:36] Kamela: Thank you. Question on the chat from someone today. around cultural differences, American, non American students or participants. So the question is, “Do you find the American focus on language like survivor, marginalized, power differential, trauma, privilege, white male, and so on creates more drama than for example, working with Europeans or any non-US culture?”
This is for both of you, so whoever feels drawn to answer first.
[01:19:10] Cliff: It's definitely different, no question about that, and it is a much more sensitive environment here in the U. S. than it is in Europe or Latin America. There were quite a few Europeans and Latin Americans at the Awaken as Love training that we just attended in Tulum. And the sensitivity is there for a reason - the culture of the United States is a different culture. Particularly the sex positive culture here has a lot more sensitivity and reactivity than other cultures do, and that has some very positive points to it. It causes more circumspection, more demand to consider behaviors, to consider activities. It is much more quick to demand an accountability process, for example, and I personally am very grateful that our process has happened, even though it has been very painful in many ways over the last 15 months.
It's also been incredibly educational and expanding. I think that ultimately. It has been very good for me, for Charity, for our relationship, for our ability to be really impactful and very uplifting teachers. But yes, it's different. I wouldn't classify it as, you know, better or worse, but very clearly different.
[01:20:55] Charity: I think the only thing I would add to that is that it's important wherever culture I happen to be showing up and teaching that I am sensitive to the needs of that person, and I don't have as much of a varied experience with this as some might. If it is true that the manner in which I speak and the mindfulness and the caution that I might utilize regarding words or language or communication is needed to be trauma informed and needed to be supportive, then it's my job and my responsibility as a teacher to respond to that.
It's not about drama. I think the word drama was in the question. Does it bring up feelings? Sure. It does. But consider the word drama. I know when I have used that word, it's often me trying to minimize the intensity of the pain I see in the other. I am glad that people are willing to speak up about their needs.
I want to provide them space to do that, particularly in ways that are potentially healing. And yes, sometimes it is difficult. Both of those are true. What I want is that, wherever I'm teaching, I'm aware of what the people showing up need to be in a place of openness and expansion, and not in a place of constriction or contraction, whatever that means.
[01:22:21] Kamela: Great Question here: “What kind of transparency will be offered for Cliff's accountability pod? Has that been happening already? As far as I know, nothing has been made public except that you're working with Miles as a coach.” So in the chat here on this call, here is a link to Cliff's blog: (https://cliffnotes108.blogspot.com).
If you haven't had the chance to read his blog posts, those are all public. That is one of the main devices right now for communicating to the public. They will continue to write blog posts in the upcoming days and weeks. And what else can you say, Cliff, on that, on the transparency of your accountability pod, and what else has been made public, in addition to working with Miles as your coach?
[01:23:08] Cliff: The concept of having an accountability team or pod was originally there, and it was definitely mentioned a number of times because that was our initial intention. It's evolved over the last, say, 6 months or so to being what you see here. Basically, it will be Miles as accountability coach, Kamela, and a couple of others joining her in a supervisory role.
One of the things that a couple of top professionals that I have great respect for said that often having a local accountability team ends up being a really bad idea. It ends up with friend relationships getting broken, student-teacher relationships getting broken. It becomes a dual relationship with the inevitable context conflicts that any dual relationship involves. They highly recommended getting people who are experienced in this rather than just like, “Hey, you know, you want to help us out on the accountability team?” With no experience, no background, no frame of reference, really, and I think this actually serves both Charity and I much better and also hugely serves the community better.
[01:24:29] Charity: I'll just chime in, too. One thing, and this is vulnerable for me to say, is that in terms of the creation of an accountability pod or team, meaning for the most part, peers that serve in this role we invited, actually, many people and, if I'm correct, almost all declined.
That resulted in a number of feelings for me, and I know that each person declined for their own reason. Part of our journey actually over the last year and a half has been coming to terms with that reality and recognizing that level of emotional labor from a peer is a lot to ask.
In terms of transparency moving forward, you will be made aware of who is involved along the way if you follow our blog, and I think Miles can say a little bit more about what our conversations have been around that.
[01:25:32] Miles: I want to note that there are two community member volunteers who have remained available throughout this whole year waiting for us to get going if we were to have a more active accountability team. What happened is we kept trying to shape the team in a way that would be objective, believable by the community, and effective with Cliff and Charity.
With the team not coming together, we continued to do accountability work. In the end I just kept coaching - a pretty intense process through the past 15 months. I will say, I think there's a lot of value to having members of the community give some kind of reflection about what they observe and report about Cliff and Charity's process.
To that end, we think we're going to reshape the intention of the team from an ongoing team to a reporting one. This is just taking shape really in the last week. What I hope is that within a month we'll have this committee reporting. It may be that I'm the one who's actually writing the full report, but I'm just going to be reflecting what is delivered by those who are members of the community appraising what Cliff and Charity will be taking on.
[01:26:55] Kamela: Thanks. We're going to steer in a different direction for the next question. There's a question on financials.
“So my friend told me that you made thousands of dollars leading events for Empowered Pleasure. I think sex positive events should all be completely free. Why are you charging so much for them?”
So we could just take this question as well as sort of a wider scope to speak into any other criticisms that you're aware of on the financial aspects and what you'd like to share on the financials of Empowered Pleasure.
[01:27:32] Cliff: Sure. I, I can certainly understand why some people may have thought that, and I apologize that we didn't address it much earlier than now. Yes, I live in a beautiful home with beautiful grounds. People naturally associate that with having lots of financial resources. I can understand why me profiting off of people's desire for better sex, for better relationships, for expanded awareness, could be seen as basically patriarchal oppression dynamics writ large. But the resources that I have certainly have not come from teaching events. Miles actually encouraged me to share the following summary of finances from Empowered Pleasure.
This is Empowered Pleasure's P&L for its 4 years of operation. It's a limited liability company (LLC) that started operating January 1st, 2020. At the top,. you can see the revenue. The vast majority of revenue - almost $93,000 - came from events.
There are some notes to the side of those numbers. We offered about 1.7 events per week for 37 months with a little over 20 average attendance per event. We received slightly more than $20 per person per event, which included what people paid for COVID tests. About half paid for the tests, and the other half we gave away. The total Gross Revenue is $93,000. I can certainly understand that a person coming into a big party where there would be a basket that had a stack of cash and checks in it, and think, “Oh my God, these people are making a fortune!”
But gross revenue is not the whole story of any business.
On the expense side, entertainers cost about $7,400. Outside speakers cost almost $9,200. In terms of checks made directly out to Cliff, Charity, or Mel, you can see the figures there - Charity and I have not taken anything personally from Empowered Pleasure. Mel was not in a financial position to not take something personally, so she was compensated as if she were an outside presenter. As you see, outside presenters, other than Mel, got about $9,200. Mel got about $3,000 for the events that she created and led.
House cleaning cost about $9,800 and includes carpet cleaning. I want to be clear, all these expenses are outside of what they were before I started offering events. Prior to that, I mostly did my own house-cleaning and yard maintenance. I vacuumed, cleaned bathrooms (probably not very well), etc., but that doesn’t work with high traffic. 5,464 people went through my house in the last four years.
If 5,464 people came through your house, you'd probably have a fairly large cleaning bill and a lot of wear and tear. Then there’s our website, Constant Contact (for email), Zoom, and EP Meetup. Next is event supplies which are the biggest cost. It costs about $4.25 per person, per event, and that includes COVID tests, food, drink, et cetera, all the stuff that you see on the chart.
Those are hard costs - incremental costs per person coming through. Then there’s Continuing Education which includes Living Tantra and the Trauma Training workshop. Then there’s Books and Cards which are the 400 strip poker card decks and the Living Tantra books. Next is Capital Investment which includes getting the LLC, the domain name, sex furniture, massage tables, Zoom studio lights and camera, sex toys, etc. Next is Utilities which are at least 15% greater than before with that many people in the house. I’m sure you can imagine there has been lots and lots of washing dishes and sheets, on top of space heaters, TV, sound system, air conditioning, etc. Taxes, Outside Rent, Home & Yard Maintenance are the last listed expenses. Home Maintenance includes things like sheetrock repairs like when a couple of towel racks were ripped off bathroom walls and needed to get fixed. This also includes replacing broken furniture and lights, hot tub maintenance, etc.
Deducting Total Expenses from Gross Revenue gives us EP's Net Revenue, which for four years is $8,169. Next is listed the approximate event hours which gives us a rate of about $2 an hour. This is not making millions of dollars giving events at $20 per person. This is basically break even. Charity and I were effectively volunteers for the last four years.
I realize some people reading this may completely disbelieve these numbers. But this is real stuff right out of my EP books. So, I'm sorry that we haven't been as open as we apparently should have been. I was very resistant to it because one of the other things that I'm very resistant to saying - it's actually embarrassing for me to state - is that I don't have anywhere near the cash reserves that most people appear to think I have. I have a very nice house with substantial equity, but I literally live month to month on my social security and the check that Charity gives me every month because she pays for half of the mortgage, utilities, travel, and food.
Without those two income streams, I would have to sell my house in about a year and a half because I would have run out of cash. That embarrasses me because I’ve had far more liquid assets in the past. I've given about $15 million to charitable organizations over the years, and my two divorces cost me about $2 million. I should have managed my money much better. I should have a substantial amount of cash in the bank at this point, but I do not. That's why charging enough that we at least break even is essential for me.
Also, I'm a firm believer that if you say that sex positive events should all be free, should always be offered for nothing, that will result in only relatively wealthy, mostly white people ever offering significant events. That's why we give 75% of the net to any outside presenter because they deserve to be compensated for their knowledge, for their expertise, for what they offer through their event. We give 100% of the net to any BIPOC presenters.
Many of you know Mojo, for example, who's been on and off this call, Victor Warring, Saffire Bouchelion, anybody who is a BIPOC presenter, we offer 100% of the net. I’m a very firm believer that people need to be compensated if they're going to do quality events. So I hope I've made it clear that offering Massage-a-Trois for $25 per person is not a way to make millions of dollars.
[01:35:19] Kamela: All right, we are going to take one last question for today, and then I will bring it to you, Cliff and Charity, to summarize a little bit about the process a bit about accountability process thus far and share any last pieces that you'd like to share with this group. So the person who had your hand raised we're coming to you, you can go ahead and ask your question.
[01:35:41] Claude: Thank you. I had a question that was complementary to the several questions that you guys got regarding basically the sort of safety nets that are being put in place MC3 like mechanisms and such. It's a complementary question for which I'd like to preface it by saying, in addition to the harms that you guys have been addressing, I, for one, I'm very grateful for the many wonderful events that you guys benefited, certainly me with, and I've heard the same sentiment from many others in Empowered Pleasure as well.
So, harking back also to the power dynamics questions that we had earlier on, and looking forward into the crystal ball, “As you start to expand Empowered Pleasure activities, are you thinking about doing anything potentially in more of a power sharing vein, such as collaborative events, that might reduce the danger of, you know, power imbalance, the impact of that going forward?”
[01:36:41] Cliff: We've always been very open to having outside presenters, although I sense that that's not really what you're asking. Outside presenters like Jessica Fern, Dr. Eveline Dacker, Victor Warring and others that have expertise in topics that are of interest to our members. We absolutely continue to be open to those.
In terms of collaborative events, we’d be open to have someone come in and, you know, help monitor a Massage-a-Trois. I'd like to have a very serious discussion first with that person to see how they understand the purpose of the event and what they feel that they could add to it. We're definitely very much open to that type of thing.
[01:37:42] Charity: I would add one of the reasons that we want to join a larger faculty like Awaken as Love is that events are co-taught and there's peer relationships between teachers. In those longer events you always have three people presenting, taking turns, giving each other feedback. Part of the facilitator training that we'll be going to is we'll be presenting to other teachers who will give us direct feedback. For me, that was really missing in Empowered Pleasure. From that broader point of making sure that we're not just out there by ourselves doing our own thing, that's part of what this supervision, what joining a larger group and then what having closer relationships with people that attend here is hoping to accomplish. We want to have that community of people giving us feedback, teaching us how to teach,. and then being able to have that exchange.
[01:38:50] Claude: Yeah, both of your comments are very much in the spirit that I was hoping to hear. It's really about co-creation as well as about checks and balances. So thank you both.
[01:39:01] Kamela: Thank you for your question. All right, we're nearing the final few minutes of this call. I'd like to thank everyone in the audience for being here and asking questions.
Thank you so much. Please know that this is just the beginning. There will be plenty more open platforms for communication for questions and answers in the future. And we will be sending out the recording as well so that you can watch it, share it with your friends, et cetera.
To finish up here, Cliff & Charity, “Would you like to take a couple of minutes to summarize any pieces that you don't feel like you've said yet that feel important around what you've learned in this last year and a half deep transformation work. Are there any places where you feel you have erred that you haven't yet directly talked about today, or any plans for the future that are in addition to what you've already said today?”
[01:39:51] Charity: I, one thing that I would like to share is that I'm in recognition that how I often presented myself to people, particularly others who may have been leaders, was often hard. There was a hardness in me and I know that's not easy for someone to fill out a form and say that this was a concern that they had. I know that I was experienced as hard as I was hard and confrontational in many situations.
I hope that softening in me will be evident energetically for those who choose to interact with me. I hope that the softening I feel inside is something that will change how I receive feedback and how I communicate. It's not an easy thing to ask and answer, but a lot of my shadow work has been related to those hard edges of mine.
[01:40:53] Cliff: Miles has continually reminded me of the error of my ways in this regard - my certainty that I am right, that I know the best way to do things has been greatly lessened by this process. Being open to other perspectives, being open to other ideas that I had never considered before has been an exhilarating experience in many ways. It's pointed out that as Kamela said earlier, this is a long-term process. It's not something that ends, you know, with this meeting or with any individual meetings or any specific events occurring.
It's something to remind myself over and over again to keep on being open to being wrong, open to learning new things, open to adapting new ways of presenting, new ways of being, new ways of interacting with all the people around me, and I'm very grateful for that.
[01:42:03] Kamela: Beautiful. Thank you both for how you're showing up so open and vulnerable and willing to answer questions and willing to share pieces of data and information that may not have been shared before and might feel a little scary to share. And thank you to all of the participants here for listening with your heart, for asking your sincere questions, for being here in support of your friends and colleagues and potentially being here through some courage or fear that it took to be here. So thank you. Your voice is valuable and we appreciate your thoughts, contributions and questions.
So we're going to call it a night. Thank you all for being here and there will be future blog posts coming and future announcements around how there will be some test workshops coming up in the upcoming weeks and months.
And we look forward to seeing you in the future. Blessings.
[01:42:58] Cliff: Thank you.
[01:42:58] Charity: Thank you everybody for being here.
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