We have mastered solitary consciousness: the consciousness developed sitting in a cave or on a cushion. We have not even begun to master reciprocal consciousness: the fundamental willingness to be changed by each other as we interact moment to moment. We may pay lip service to the fallacy of independence and our desire for intimacy, but how often do we truly embody our inexorable interconnectedness?
There is a reason why, in some traditions, sexual climax is used as the metaphor for enlightenment. At no other time are we as free of the filters that cloud our perception of the world.
We have a glimpse into what it might be like to see this world with naked awareness. This moment is the death of our intractable sense of “this is who I am,” with such and such attributes, the gnawing feeling that underlies most experiences of dissatisfaction, and of always thinking this is how things could or should be. The thirteen seconds of climax present a single, unadulterated moment of how things are.
Nothing else brings the deep gratification that raw nature has already presented us with.
For many of us, this single taste of reality unadorned is the beginning of an entire life’s journey, activating a drive that will not or cannot be satisfied by anything less than the real thing: not to be good or liked or loved, to fix something or fit in or impress. All this proves illusory, unsatisfactory.
To begin this venture is to begin to sharpen the blade of discernment. To know in our bones, the way one knows how to dance or knows the felt sense of truth, and to allow ourselves to be drawn by that.
