Each time something good happens and a new experience enters, our identity must open wider in order to contain it. The tumescent mind will be keenly aware something fundamental in our being has shifted and will experience discomfort.
We sustain our access to and ultimately integrate this good by acknowledging it happened, and doing so in exact proportion to precisely what was met within ourselves.
The tumescent mind gaslights the Erotic mind and says no, that opening didn’t just happen and in fact, we’re not capable of meeting the aspect of ourselves we just opened to. In order to put us back in our place, it has to beat us up in direct proportion to the amount we opened. Our tendency will be to make much ado out of creating intimacy as if that is the difficult part of the process.
We will think and say we want intimacy, but the issue is not that it is unattainable; it is that the true price of intimacy comes to bare on the back end—as the tumescent mind tries to orient and assert itself again.
This is where the tumescent mind will try to snap us back just as powerfully as we opened.
Should we succumb, not only will it close and the tumescent mind will deny it happened, but because a closure has occurred inside of us, the tumescent mind will now perceive that person or place that we had this opening experience with as a threat to itself. It will then begin to create distance from the person or place, and if we do not keep it open, the tumescent mind will turn against this person or place, often convincing us in the process.
If we begin to process and analyze our feelings following a closure, it becomes the toxic mimic of continuing to stroke for opening. Processing starts with the idea something is wrong that we must make right. And we are willing to spend significant energy—most often the energy released in the opening itself—to run the intensity down and justify closing and demonizing.
On the other hand, if we continue to stroke for opening, we communicate to the self that is always listening that something good happened that activated a natural response of contraction. We do so with the understanding that the contraction is the signifier of the good thing, and we continue to stroke, employing deliberate approval to counteract the negative contracting bias of the tumescent mind. With this approving attention, we deliberately go back and stroke the prior moment of greatest opening to release anything that got stuck. In this way, the flow of good can continue at the depth and intensity it was in that moment, and from there grow and deepen.
Our deliberate approval is even more vital and must be strong enough to hold the threat impact enough to convert it. The key to remember is that contraction is always directly proportional to the level of opening that occurred. After contraction, we can always return to that level of opening.
