Our desire for intimacy is natural and yet many of us struggle to create the meaningful, sexually vital relationships we long for. In the absence of authentic connection, pornography and masturbation become habits that offer momentary release but do little to quench the soul's thirst for ardor and the desire to be truly seen. If anything, a quick wank amplifies the underlying loneliness. It's not just solo orgasms that heighten the feeling of alienation, any kind of sex that is tainted with sordidness or desperation, leaves us feeling isolated. It's not self-pleasuring that is the culprit, it's the emotional baggage we are using it to hide that is the source of the problem.
Bad sex comes in all shapes and sizes. Being bullied into sexual contact you don't want, relationships in which there's cruelty or lack of respect, taking risks that feel frightening afterwards. Any sexual engagement that leaves you feeling diminished. I remember the receptionist announcing my HIV results in the hospital waiting room, 'You're negative' she boomed. I was both shocked and relieved. I hadn't known an HIV test was included in the panoply of ante-natal screening and the public announcement embarrased me. It also opened up a lot of feelings about the risks I had taken, getting pregnant while travelling in a country where HIV is prevalent. When I was sharing this with a friend, she told me of her horror when a lover informed her after they had had sex, that he had Hepatitis. She turned out not to have contracted it but, years on, she still feels angry with him for putting her in danger, and self-loathing for the risk she took with her health. Unresolved feelings linger in the heart. When we take bad sex into our self pleasuring, we sacrifice our truest and deepest needs for a listless, effete orgasm.
There are two contributing factors. In a society saturated with graphic pornography that dehumanises those whom it displays, we are inured against the damage this does to our inner world and our capacity to relate to those whom we want to touch and be touched by, fostering unobtainable and undesirable expectations of how our lovers should serve our needs. As a culture we have become sexually infantile and disconected from the true power of the sexual body to awaken us to love and the magnificence of our humanity. While what's labeled 'adult content' is certainly not for children, there is nothing adult about it.
This is the cultural backdrop against which the second factor plays out. In the Grief Recovery Method we call it a Short Term Energy Relieving Behaviour (STERB), ie. anything we use to momentarily relieve our pain. This could be drinking, comfort eating, shopping, masturbating or any number of other activities. It's not that any of them are inherintly harmful, the problem lies in the fact that none of these activities tend our grief – that cloud of emotions that engulfs us after any kind of loss. For example, after a redundency, what was once a sociable Friday night drink when the office closed, becomes a daily habit to ease the feelings of rejection and dull the fear of the future. After the death of a parent, a dopamine-hit shopping spree distracts from the feelings of emptiness and regret. After the break-up of a relationship, monotonous and increasingly vigorous masturbation eases the sexual frustration and disguises feelings of anger and hurt.
Using masturbation and pornography to distract from the pain of loss (of any kind, not just of relationships) has the double whammy of leaving us hurting inside and becoming increasingly disconnected from the source of our sexual power.
The medicine is two-fold. Firstly, tend the underlying grief and secondly learn how to nourish the sexual energy so that it enriches and sustains.
Kahlil Gibran observes that we must touch the bottom of our sorrow before we can reach the heights of our joy.
And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.
And how else can it be?
The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.
Is not the cup that holds your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?
Kahlil Gibran
Allowing ourselves to know our pain means we can transmute it and bring it to completion. I have done this using the Grief Recovery's step-by-step method. Identifying firstly my experiences of loss and then working on one relationship at a time, observing what remains to be forgiven and that which needs an apology. It's simple but transformative.
Filling our cup with joy through self-pleasuring requires re-education. Vibrators with more buzz and increasingly graphic images only numbs our sensuality and weakens our orgasmic potency. Once the wounded heart is healed through the action of forgiveness, then comes nourishment. A simple Daoist meditation invites us, with eyes closed, to imagine turning the eyes inwards and looking into the brain, down the throat and into the heart. Smile to the heart. Every day foster the love within by smiling to your beautiful heart. Without self-love, self-pleasuring is like eating empty calories – there's no sustenance in it and the quick high is shortly followed by a low.
For women, the breasts, and for men, the prostrate, are, according to Daoist teaching, the locus of our sexual vitality. Breast and prostate massage can be a beautiful place to begin self-pleasuring. This isn't a guide on how to masturbate, but rather an invitation to shift the focus away from quick, aggressive stimulation using images that contribute to violence or are degrading in some way, to heart-centred touch. What might sound like a diminution of sexual pleasure and excitement is actually the doorway to extended whole body orgasms. Daoists are known for their sexual prowess – and to learn the techniques that will meet your deepest sexual needs, you are best to seek out the tutelage of a Daoist teacher.
In the meantime, if breaking free from mindless masturbation and healing your heart of your underlying grief, appeals to you, book a free call with me and find out how the Grief Recovery Method can help you.
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