I used to believe that the power I felt in my body—arousal, aliveness, a sense of being deeply plugged in—came from one particular man. There was something about him. Something magnetic. When he looked at me, came near me, touched me—I lit up. I believed he had something I didn’t, that he was lit from within by some kind of magic I could only access through proximity. So I did whatever it took to stay close—lied, cheated, withheld. I contorted myself to preserve the image I had built of him in my mind. I made myself smaller so he could be superior, because the power I projected onto him depended on him seeming to know more than I did.
What broke that spell was learning how to access arousal without him—and then to stay in that state while doing something deliberate. I turned toward what had been hidden. Without arousal, the patterns were unbearable to face. The shame was too thick. I was humiliated by my manipulative ways and by how far I had contorted myself. But from within arousal, I could look. I could feel. I could even eroticize those patterns—bring them up, speak them, and find what I secretly loved about them. I told him the truth. Things I had never said before—where I had lied to him, where he had lied to me and I pretended not to notice, because I needed us in those roles. In the heat of arousal, those stories burned up. They lost their grip. I felt free.
Then something else happened. From that same state, I could see beneath the world of appearances. I had thought he held some rare power, but I saw that the charge I associated with him didn’t come from him. I saw strands of energy moving into him from other people, and then from him into me. He wasn’t the source. He was a conduit. I had mistaken the outlet for the generator. And once I saw that, everything changed. I stopped reaching for him to plug me in. I turned toward the current itself. Now, I know how to access power without begging for it, without needing someone else to be the gatekeeper. I feel it rise in my body, move through me, and pour outward. I can receive it. I can share it. I can live in it.