A flooding beyond the point where we could pull it back.
Backlogs of tension wash out and, in their place, comes intuition.
Brought down
Release anything false
Land in the Soul
Taste the real that will reorient you
We typically think of climax as "having an orgasm"—the result of an internal impulse activated when we exceed our capacity for sensation. This type of climax strives to restore a balanced state of sensation, to bring us back into equilibrium. We fasten our attention onto a goal—to the exclusion of all else. Anything not aligned with this goal is perceived as a disruption and must be ignored. The body is forced to produce sensation surpassing its normal thresholds, with the mind seeking more from the body than it naturally provides. This particular kind of climax is an attempt to pump for, and forcibly extract, a few moments of excessive pleasure at the expense of the harmony and ecology of the body.
The mind knows two modes: control through restraint and control through excess. In the natural, spontaneous expression of the body, this control dissolves. The climax impulse is the most dramatic of these spontaneous expressions, therefore we must employ the most extreme form of self-will, either in avoidance or pursuit.
Too limited to encompass the seamless whole the body naturally inhabits, the mind must focus on singular aspects that either avoid pain or promise pleasure, leading to either constriction or driving toward. The mind holds its own agenda front and center, forcing the body into compliance. But when this force of climax is held in the fullness of the body, it roots us in a kind of power and we open beyond what we are capable of closing against. When held within the body, climax allows us to see more, feel more, and know more of naked reality.
However, when the force of climax is fixed in the mind, the opposite outcome arises: fixation occurs, locking on, discharging beyond our capacity to stay conscious, and eventually shutting down. This force becomes the ultimate tool for greater ignorance, advancing an agenda that uses the resources of the body in ways that bring harm, not only to the body but to the felt sense of unity the body offers. Control-based climax mutates into a weapon wielded against unity, fracturing our natural ecology.
In this scenario, we conflate Eros with climax, and climax with the rapacious drive that's activated when our mind co-opts this force. By extension, we associate Eros with the negative outcome of its misappropriation, swinging between avoidance of the Erotic field altogether and the massive effort required to control the climax impulse as we attempt to prevent a discharge.
What is intended to be the ultimate vehicle in the play and interplay of the naturally arising, seamless nature of reality instead becomes the reverse: habituated climax, the type of climax we are familiar with. Habituated climax is like smoking—if we hope to find relief, repetition is required, allowing the craving to build up until discharge is inevitable.
In habituated climax, we experience only a fraction of what Eros has to offer. Rather than sinking into our body more deeply and embracing our sensations more fully, we discharge surplus Erotic energy—energy that is in excess of our customary levels. We do this in an effort to return to our comfort zone, to homeostasis. The buildup of stimuli results in anxiety and discomfort, and we expel the accumulated tension through climax.
The result feels less like fulfillment and more like relief. We get a brief, superficial kick that returns us to where we started, or even below. Rather than a dam breaking open, we are temporarily unclogging a drain. In and out, over and done. This kind of climax may meet our basic needs, but it does little to bring us into the depths of Eros. It may blow off steam, but in no way does it blow open the mind.
Most people are conditioned for habituated climax. Muscles tighten and genitals grip in response to moments of high sensation. As a result, Erotic energy gets locked into tiny, constricted spaces, where it gathers until it eventually bursts forth. Because it is so intense, so cataclysmic, the urge for climax has a way of drowning out the subtler notes of desire. With our muscles clenched and our attention elsewhere, we remain a prisoner of our habituated grooves for needs-based sex, keeping us in a needs-based consciousness. From this place, we have a fixed goal that determines all our preferences. We use pressure, avoid phase transitions, and over-stroke in an attempt to reach our goal.
Habituated climax looks at climax as an exercise in repetition, focusing exclusively on experiences that are "supposed" to occur during climax— climbing and then going over. Like swimming laps, habituated climax has a limited range.
Non-habituated climax, by contrast, makes use of every note on the piano. Non-habituated climax includes the full symphony of feeling that Erotic interaction has to offer. In non-habituated climax, we are willing to enjoy every available sensation without preference, and therefore are never hungry for Erotic connection. We can draw gratification from any stroke.
In habituated climax, however, we hold tightly to preferences, relying on a certain kind of partner, position, and circumstance in order to activate. For this reason, we are constantly longing for another opportunity to climax. Each time we empty out, we immediately start craving the energy we just lost. Because we only activate from the small handful of sensations we deem appropriate, we are consigned to long periods of hunger. Like a predator surrounded by the wrong prey, we don't take advantage of the abundance of sensation that's always available. Were we to see, approve of, and integrate what is already available, we would be inside of non-habituated climax, but in habituated climax we hold out for the strokes we like best, even if it means starving.
A phase transition, like ice melting into water, then boiling and evaporating, is not linear. A simple shift into the next state, there is no single moment, no violent unlocking. This is the movement of energy in OM.
We may shift into the pure release of non-habituated climax, but it is smooth, not jerky or rocky. This is because in OM we inhabit, rather than gloss over, each stroke, which is a radically different approach to life. We allow ourselves to have all of it and then, when full, to be moved to the next stroke. We remain at peak sensation.
In habituated climax, pressure is applied to force activation. This kind of pressure is a type of weakness that comes from a lack of power. In non-habituated climax we find power in allowing, rooting our attention in precisely what is happening and recognizing that no goal, no concept, could be more important than this moment.
When we root our attention in this way, a magnet builds inside us that draws in precisely the right stroke. This cannot happen in the starvation occasioned when we are in habituated climax, seeking relief. It comes when we are able to liberate fullness from the craving engendered by habituated climax.
The magnet inside us grows stronger and stronger, drawing in precisely what matches it until a seamless response exists between what we are yearning for and what we are having, all self-organized by the magnet within. A phase transition, rather than an expulsion, occurs at the point of fullness.
We remain at peak sensation when we neither over-stroke nor grasp. Over-stroking occurs when we find pleasure in a location and stroke beyond its capacity to continue to deliver fresh sensation. The pleasure initially comes from having found a location that's packed with charge and, as we stroke, the charge begins to move, and we feel an electricity in the body. Over-stroking begins when there is no longer a charge, but we refuse to move or look elsewhere. At this point we apply force to activate what little charge is still left.
When a spot is fresh, we can feel how alive its magnetic charge is by barely skimming it. We are stroking for this field and our finger, like a dowsing rod, is seeking this. But over-stroking is the grinding sensation we feel when we get into a rut of a stroke. Our attention has collapsed or become intoxicated by the initial charge. It digs in rather than moving toward a new location where charge is fresh and abundant. Our unwillingness to face the window of not knowing and uncertainty that may arise when looking for a new location with charge locks us into the diminishing returns of an over-stroked spot.
When disconnected from the body, the mind would rather know mediocrity or numbness than face the potential for aliveness that can be found through a transition in uncertainty. Only the body-trained mind faces uncertainty well. This mind develops sensory acumen so well it is bestowed with a skill level that is increasingly certain. At the master level, having been positively reinforced as a signifier of new spots to open, uncertainty becomes the home in which our attention is most comfortable.
The attention, rooted in confidence from having searched and found the spot so many times, has achieved wealth. The goal of skill-based confidence, which once drove the mind, has been met; it now stands on new ground.
From this foundation of confidence, we can enjoy the luxury of the wealthy mind—a mind that is no longer trying to overcome the poverty of proving itself to itself. Now our mind can take risks, get lost for the thrill of it, and explore unknown territory.
The promise of practice is that what previously occurred as an obstacle now occurs as a thrill. A new world opens up. We no longer need to guzzle down sensation; we can stop and note its qualities. We can afford the sensation of wanting, because it is a felt sense of wanting, no longer based in sensory starvation. We discover that the mind can track sensation with such sharpness and precision we can note the exact moment a single charge goes off in any stroke, feeling the body heat and thaw with the climax of each stroke.
Previously, in the centralized experience of habituated climax, at best this occurred in the genital area. The sensation would spike for a few moments into the other areas of the body, only to descend lower than it was prior. But now, with our attention on this moment-by-moment discharge, we feel as if our entire body liquefies, and something altogether different takes place.
The state immediately prior to discharge is the rarefied space of true freedom—apotheosis. During apotheosis, sensation radiates through our body, clearing out any stagnant energy, with self-perpetuating, purifying clarity. The clarity permeates the body and, along with it, sentience increases beyond known bounds; antennae reach out into domains of experience that could not otherwise be touched. This state is a stillness on the verge of crashing, stillness like that of a tightrope walker.
Just as the string of an instrument requires the right tension to hit a desired note, apotheosis will only express within an optimal range. The order of the voluntary nestles up against the chaos of the involuntary at the gap just at the edge of climax. The sweet spot that exists in the in-between is where all that is stuck is liberated. Lying between comfort and grasping, this is the location from which gratification radiates.
If the body has liquefied, and climax has been liberated from the grip of control, when the climax impulse activates, a sense of unimpeded rolling takes with it every last bit of anything stuck. We can sense our awareness, too, is liberated, flooding beyond the point where we could pull it back. Because the body has been erotically stretched over time with sensation, it is able to allow for this swell without any contraction.
We sense the climax is not contained in the body nor in the mind, but rather, both are contained inside this charged, sentient force. In contrast to the catapult and crash of habituated climax, non-habituated climax continues to roll until it lands us on solid ground. Rather than leaving us with a sense of depletion, we experience it as energizing, because there are no violent throes to exhaust the body. Instead of raging like wildfire over the surface, non-habituated climax reaches into our depths of bone and sinew, emptying out any tension-creating impurities. The mind is absorbed into these new places in the body, into a deeper sense of knowing—so rather than experiencing simple relief, the mind expands and becomes more complex. Backlogs of tension are washed out and intuition rolls into their place
Thus in non-habituated climax, two primary characteristics have changed: through stillness we have grown our capacity to be in the fullness of sensation, and we have reduced impurities. As a result, each cycle of non-habituated climax makes more energy available to push out into the world—in contrast to the habituated version, which is solely based on depletion.
In non-habituated climax, no dramatic expulsion offers the seeming relief of emptying the "trash," because we have already been releasing energy. The trash has already been emptied, and consciousness (in this case, rooted in the body) can radiate out, unimpeded, to touch the furthest reaches of reality. As much as the mind can stay tethered to the body, the body will permit it to explore. We have no time limit or distance limit—only the question of how secure the line is between our body and our mind.
When our body senses the connection may snap, it draws the mind back in. This is why habituated climax is a few short seconds, like going to the symphony and only hearing the cymbal at the very end. Habituated climax stops right where it might otherwise continue, were the yoke between the mind and the body more secure.
If climax is a lightning bolt, non-habituated climax is an extended sheet of lightning. We don't open our eyes; our eyes are opened. We are simultaneously flooded and emptied.
Surrender is required to experience non-habituated climax. We surrender our fixation on climax as a goal, our unconscious mental and physical habits, and our attachment to our homeostatic comfort zone. Stroke by stroke, we enter the realm of the involuntary, fully engaging with every sensation, rather than passively accepting sensation.
By cultivating a deep capacity for surrender, we develop a fluency with the involuntary; we are able to have a lava ride that roars through us, clears us out, and takes us into ourselves.
When we are in climax in OM, we feel as if we are overflowing with Eros and out of control. Often, a falling or exploding sensation occurs. The physical release is in direct proportion to the amount of energy that was made volatile.
When we are turned on in climax, we feel as if a dam is being unleashed and we are fully integrated into its flow. Effortless, rolling over, expanding, and building energy, we are left feeling soft and energized. The experience is mind-opening and consuming; we feel full and wrapped in a thick, honey blanket. To have this turned-on experience of climax, we first need to develop the skill of surrendering to sensation, which involves giving and taking light strokes as well as navigating resistance. Physically, this also sets the bar for an involuntary ride.
If we are turned off in climax, we are in habituated climax—efforting, pulling, or pumping to make a release and expulsion happen, as if a drain is being unclogged. Climax is the phantom that's always being chased; without it we feel lost or disappointed. The physical experience is either drastically numb or painful, like glass shards. Afterward comes a feeling of depletion. When we are stroking a partner in climax, using a consistent, bread-and-butter stroke (medium pressure, speed, and length) makes it easier, as the strokee is climaxing, for her attention to latch on to the strokes.
While the stroker initially agrees to be the strokee's object of projection, something her attention can latch on to, eventually, her attention develops enough to be fully located in her body. She can then lie back and truly enjoy the experience. But, if the strokee knows no stroke will help here, she should inform her stroker and end the OM, releasing them both.
