Mastery Through Accomplishment: Transformation of Desire

It has been an interesting week. I’ve been fortunate enough to meet someone with the just right stuff to bring me to my own just right moment/self/clarity. There are times when people, places, things or situations apply the right filter for ideas and experiences or memories that brings resolution into your life.

In this instance I made a prayer for a new partner for tantra. Also in this instance, I’ve picked a man who has a personality and an experience with so many key elements that work for me. I feel so safe. It seems that there’s really no factors in this fledging relationship with any cause for turmoil or fear. Its just utterly absent. And one might think that in itself is cause for bolting.

I’ve changed though *grins with dimples*. I don’t feel any overwhelming urge to bolt just because I’m feeling safe. Yay for me!

The result of this situation is that I’ve had time to bring strands of understanding together…

One strand is the understanding that the biggest barrier in my life is a lack of self discipline and a tendency to divert my attention from my goals through investigation of desire.

Now before I go further, I want to make it crystal clear about my viewpoint of discipline and desire is. That’s for me…and its for you as a reader, because understanding these things as I view them is a factor in really getting me about the lessons I’m sharing here.

Discipline, for me, has always been an experience of harshness. Its always with high expectations, ones that are nearly or completely out of my reach. It is always rigid and judgmental and often humiliating….leaving shame in its wake.

Now there is a period of time in adolescence when the external supports for protection, balanced choices and lifestyle and discipline are internalized. Its a natural process…in part a result of puberty being an internal force that drives and brings consequences to a child. They are at an age, when relaxing the rules just enough to let them feel more independant is totally necessary because it gives them the room to make mistakes and learn from them at an age when its relatively harmless outcomes, but carry a painful enough sting that the discipline becomes internalized as a natural result.

Dr Phil’s voice saying dryly, “How’s the working for you…?” to a person doing unruly, foolish things with very poor outcomes…sorta brings the point to bear in a good way. *smiles*

At this time in my life there was a very harsh experience of discipline that turned into a rape.

And was later followed by further sexual abuse.

The outcome of that was that I began to rebel against discipline, no matter where it came from. I learned to curb that, but its always been there inside me. I have struggled with self discipline for my whole life as a result.

Another outcome was that I felt desire during some of those experiences of sex. That is something that most sexual abuse survivors do not speak of freely in general…but the fact is, the body is built to respond to certain types of stimuli and sometimes it does even in horrid circumstances. Its a matter of the nerves doing their job….so I felt intensely humiliated and ashamed of me at a very basic level of my being. I also felt that something beautiful and splendid was stolen from me and my response to that was to seek to claim my feelings of desire and revel in them. But the pendulum swung too far and I frequently felt hurt and dissatisfied…alone and even sometimes further humiliated and disappointed in myself.

The years have passed and like the discipline thing, I learned to deal with myself about it and to make good choices about sex. And I learned to view desire and sex as a holy thing…and expression of heart…which I believe is an expression of soul. So sex is never dirty to me. It is the most holy experience that anyone can share. That it was ever perverted was a crime against me….and any messages that arose from that moment that were filtered through humiliation or shame are simply not true.

Still, these two factors of desire and discipline combined to create a history of under achievement in my life when it comes to some things, such as accomplishing my goals as a writer, which is so very important to me. I am not sure why that is. In other facets of my life, I am incredibly accomplished. I have become an effective healer, a wise spiritual guide, a minister, I have raised three children despite all seemingly insurmountable challenges and they’ve all turned out to be incredible people, I have also learned unconditionally and without fear. That last is the biggest accomplishment of my life except for the legacy of my children.

But in this area of writing and making an abundant living, I have been stifled by this twist of lack of discipline and wildishly indulged desire.

But the strands are coming together thanks to this new tantric partner that I’ve met….and I’ve told you about most of the strands so far.

I mentioned Tantra. Tantra is a spiritual practice that specifically focuses on desire as a path to profound spiritual awareness and wisdom. Desire is considered holy in its light aspect and dissatisfying in its dark aspect. As with so many things in life, it is a rainbow bridge toward wholeness. Sexuality, as an expression of love and life and all that is holy is considered the fast track to getting to spiritual awareness and wisdom….and that the key to this is to add Divine Light to the desire and let the practice unfold…let the experience of deep and fulfilled pleasure, catalyzed by the Divine take one into splendor and grace.

So I have been reading alot of the transformation of desire through Tantric practice. I’m taking the reading very slowly and watching my life unfold…I am watching this new relationship unfold and watching its impacts on me.

Recently we began to express the intense desire we are feeling for each other. And as we have talked, I have gradually become aware of the great mastery he has of his own discipline and of his experience with Tantra and I have been feeling so drawn to studying Tantra with the need to transform this desire that runs me into an inner discipline.

I’ve started talking to him about it and to myself about it. I’ve been writing to myself about it.

Last night I fell asleep and dreamed dreams that brought all these strands together. I feel a deep sense of peace about it all now. I know that the discipline about desire is internalizing for the first time in my life. I realized also that I need the experience of it internalizing to be very gentle…very full of kindness, affirmation and loving. I need it to be internalized with humor and fun and passion. The way it originally should have been internalized.

I had thought that maybe I should force myself to deal with this desire in a very difficult way and that it should come with lots of self denial and all that. I woke today with the knowledge that it should not be done in such a way…and then I went back to sleep again after doing some writing to get the feelings and thoughts out of me where I could look at them.

While I was asleep, I heard a child’s voice wailing in the way that a child does when its heart is utterly broken…I reached out to her and soothed her for the first time and helped her feel safe inside me…that there would be no more hurt about any of this. It would be okay. *smiles* I woke again and this post is what has poured out of me.