Fortunately, my perspective changed with time, but early on, I thought my parents were horrible people. They never talked about anything, least of all their emotions and feelings. They had a rigid agenda for me to follow; basically, I got married, had kids, and followed them in the family business. I was the only male in the family, so many of their expectations got pushed onto me. It was pretty relentless. Nowadays, I have a little more trust in my parents, but there's always this unease of like, “Who are they? Are they there? Are they being real? Or are they just playing a different game?”
I have always been sensitive and highly intuitive. I know when things will happen or change. And I act on that information. And yet, in the past, it was so completely unconscious that I didn't know why I was doing the things I was doing. I would walk into a room or a situation and get a sense or a feeling of, “Oh, I shouldn't be in this conversation.” Or “This conversation or situation is going to go wrong.” But I couldn’t explain what I was sensing or why I would not—could not—engage. As you can imagine, this kind of unconscious ultra-sensitivity didn’t help my relationships with people.
Outside of the family, my relationships were a little better. I've always been able to find friends and people to hang out with. And friends were willing to say more about what they felt. There was more trust with friends than there ever could be with my family. But having really meaningful relationships? There weren't many. The people I did get close to I ended up clinging to—killing the relationship off like Coco, the gorilla who fell in love with a kitten so much that she strangled her by hugging her to death. Because I was always a large man—at my peak weight, I was probably hitting around 230 pounds or something ridiculously high like that—I was shy about my looks. When it came to intimacy, I knew nothing, literally nothing at all.
I came to OM-Orgasmic Meditation when I was living in Las Vegas. One of my friends, Eddie, recommended that I try the practice. He didn’t talk about it much and didn’t get that deep into what it entailed. Maybe he was OMing two or three times a week, and we ended up chatting about it. I don't remember much about my first OM. I felt like I was fumbling, and my partner kept asking me to do things, and I wasn’t getting it. I didn't feel much at all.
Eventually, I realized that Orgasmic Meditation was like exercise or learning to cook. You have to practice and keep trying. I learned about the container and what should happen in it. And it was the container that made me feel safe. I could go into an OM, know what was supposed to happen, relax, and then have an experience.
Discovering Orgasmic Meditation has helped me develop the language to speak about my feelings and what I’m sensing. The frames at the end of every session help me solidify the experience, which has helped me out in the world. Before Orgasmic Meditation, I wouldn't say anything if something were going bad or off the rails. But now I speak up. I tell people about what I see and sense and try to help them not get knocked off track. I’ve also developed a new relationship with my body and food. Through practice, I have gained a certain discipline that I didn't have before.
