It is humbling to the tumescent mind that it becomes fixated on tumescence itself, or the wrongness of the conditions of any experience it finds itself in. The signifier of tumescence is the sensation of something being “wrong” that kicks off a search for who or what to blame—whether the self or some other being or thing outside of the self—and then how to fix whatever it feels is wrong.
Tumescent behavior is the default for releasing excess energy. It will chase its tail until it is exhausted, unless it is otherwise directed to more enjoyable ends.
Before we can convert this “something is wrong, how can it be fixed” process, we must first see it and understand it is always the same and will never change without conscious effort. We are so grooved in a habit of fixing the problem, it is challenging to recognize it is something our anxious response will not help. Or worse, it is a self-perpetuating cycle that saps us of all our life-force energy, merely because we will not address it and disrupt it by developing the necessary consciousness.
We will try to exceed our limitations when the wreckage caused by not addressing the tumescence itself gathers around us. We do not have the capacity to fix it because fixing it would mean dialing our tumescent behavior back rather than continuing. The general ethos of the tumescent mind is to “continue no matter what.” Unfortunately, this leads not just to diminishing returns but increasingly negative ones.
Solving tumescence is not a matter of fixing anything at all, as fixing only perpetuates the issue. Instead, it is a matter of shifting over to the Erotic mind that sees the rightness of things and builds from there. It is never from the tumescent mind—which fixing reinforces—that we create solutions. Tumescence never contributes to the solution and is always the issue.