A sense of radical activation where the power is turned on.
The spell of habit is broken
Struck by a power we cannot outrun
Go against preferences
The fire that clarifies and the passion that brings meaning
In the turn-on stage, we shift our center of gravity, moving from habituated forms into true Eros. The mind has made the journey down into the depths of the Erotic heart, becoming magnetized to the charged space of emptiness rather than fixed to the identity. We go from seeking to eradicate insufficiency and constantly searching to find out if "this is it," to offering our mind to our body and our body to the Erotic. We tend to our body, expanding its capacity to hold Eros so it can be a vehicle through which this sentient force may operate.
We only need to make one change: to shift the fuel we use, from fear to desire, from the rational to Eros—in other words, to shift from fossil fuels to renewable resources. We do this to become clean, burning with unlimited fuel. An organic change takes place when power is readily available, when there is no lack or scarcity, and when we are not living amid our own pollution.
Our interior world is restored. The strain and effort that pass for spiritual work, the theatrics of submission, and the controls necessary for a system clogged up with pollution and operating on lack—all prove to be the circular problems and solutions of a tumescence-based world. We have been driving in search of clean air, all the while in a vehicle that produces pollution.
A unified heart understands that the rational mind exists to serve while the Erotic mind is the deeper intelligence, and not the other way around. When we are coming from this heart, we are brought into a state of intimacy, coherency, and belonging. It isn't that Eros is better; it's deeper. The static mind of the rational cannot contain the dynamic reality of Eros, whereas the dynamic quality of Eros can contain the static truths of the rational.
The Mystery we aim to enter is infinite in nature, and the finite nature of the rational has only finite instruments to track reality; it cannot sense beyond its constructs. To enter and navigate, we need the proper instruments, which can be found in Eros.
Through climax, our rational mind is subsumed by our body, and its rigid structures dissolve in this deeper consciousness. Our mind may "hit bottom" in resolution, admitting with grace and relief that it's not equipped to meet the Mystery. Our mind can now surrender to Eros, and we are liberated from the search for surface-level resolution from conflict because we are now able to see through the seeming opposition. We see the underlying truth that the poles are complementary. Everything remains exactly the same, except we can now see things as they are.
From this vision, it's as if a whole world grows up. In restoration, we take the time to allow our new sentience to gestate. Turn-on issues from this gestation; yet, from here, turn-on is different by orders of magnitude from the old-guard version of pumped-up performance we previously considered it to be. Turn-on is a lightning rod through the center of our being. In later stages, we harness the energy created here into heat, light, and fire.
The energy created here is converted—using our emotion as steam to move us and our mind as fire that clarifies—and wed to our Erotic impulse to become the passion that brings meaning. We leave behind that old-guard version, which was more like a lightning bug buzzing around our genitals.
The habituated mind uses all its resources to prevent this very flash that now takes over the whole of our body, mind, spirit, and soul. In Eros, our body becomes the lightning rod that draws and grounds the force. Turn-on is so often diminished or trivialized, but in fact nothing could be more important.
Turn-on is the source that brought us into the world, and it has the intelligence and power to carry us through it. Turn-on is our divining rod, leading us away from that which is dead or deadening and toward that which sustains life and aliveness.
The heat of this force moving through us then activates the Eros that has been dormant in our system. What was static and fixed now flows like electricity between the poles, dynamic and alive. Disordered molecules, previously unavailable, are gathered and brought into the current, moving in a unified direction.
The sensation experienced is that of radical activation where the power is turned on. Effort is transformed into effortlessness. It may seem as if we have been bestowed with something supernatural and now have access to a mystical power, but it is hardly that; rather it is our own self, turned on.
Imagine a world built by people with eyes that cannot see and who are perpetually in darkness. Imagine the aids that would seem like absolute necessities, and the methods for reading the world, or the external tools that would be required for motion. The world would be built to accommodate a deficit that didn't need to exist and as a result would be radically slower, more cumbersome, necessarily more careful, and lacking an entire dimension. Entire systems with their institutions, cultures, customs, and governments would develop to accommodate this lack.
Turn-on allows us to dispense with the extra, which is the filter of the rational we develop to bridge the distance between our capacity and the world. When our capacity is no longer limited, we either dispense with or reappropriate the tools.
Our first genuine experience of turn-on may be disconcerting. It is a moment of absolute and total possession; we are struck by the lightning we have spent a lifetime trying to outrun. This lightning occurs as the sensation and as the actual experience of an electrical arc in our body. We feel a jolt through our body at the point of connection between the finger and the clitoris, as if the finger is plugged into a light socket, electricity flowing.
The jolt is too powerful for the mind to hold or control. Imagine the first jolt of habituated climax, then turn the volume up tenfold, extending it indefinitely until it is done with us. This is the experience of turn-on.
Anything static is blown out, and everything that remains is electrified; no aspect of our body fails to be electrified in this way. The lightning takes over our entire body from the top of our head down to the arches of our feet and we can hear an audible hum. We feel the blood circulating, the heart pumping—everything coursing and alive.
The finger and clitoris feel locked in this arcing energy. We see how they become circuitry, how the voltage is so high that this lock sets in, holding both partners in place in such a way we could not move even if we tried. We see it from the inside, how this flash of white has taken over both our interior worlds. What was a dark mystery is now a shock of white so bright there is only light. We feel how it holds us there, refusing to let us down. This is turn-on.
And then we feel how, if we have developed an attention that can remain with it, we can track it as it turns back down, like a light on a dimmer—the electricity incrementally dims and our body is gently released back into itself as it comes down into the nest. Without this attention, we are like a light with just an on-off switch—our body is in shock and crumples back to the nest in a heap.
We notice how our interior world looks. The light now remains "on" inside. What was once invisible reveals itself. We notice the warmth and the glow. We sense the aliveness, the buzz and hum, the release, and the bringing to life of what has been seemingly dead or numb. Latent feelings, previously painful in their dormancy, are alive and dynamic.
Compressed love moves through, its movement like the music of sadness and the liberation of joy. Our interior world has gone through the death process of climax and resolution, then was held in restoration, and is now resurrected in turn-on.
This experience is life itself. This is our direct contact with the force of evolution that brings phenomena from potential to realization. It is what flows through the bud to have it blossom, what flows through the mind to turn ideas to genius, through the sperm and the egg to transform into the baby.
This neutral force, when activated, operates on phenomena to bring us ever more into what we are. The line of electricity that runs through all of life is now switched on inside us. The information is encoded in our essence, but it will also need guidance; at this stage it is operating as a primal or elemental force, carrying with it tremendous power for both creative and destructive potential. Ultimately, this force is always seeking for wholeness and a totality of being—the activation of the will to achieve humanity.
Parts of us are often rejected by the rational mind as being unacceptable, and the demands of our humanity are too often resisted. But the activation of this force brings us beyond what the rational mind is able to resist. For this reason, and because it is undifferentiated in its power, we must bring the force into the peak location of the heart, where it can be connected to the world of aim and intention.
When we enter the turn-on stage in OM, the energetic body is waking up and will likely have an appetite. We feel electric, vibrant, molten, and vibratory with the sensation of the light going on throughout. If we are turned on in this stage, every moment of gratification only leaves us wanting more.
We have the first glimpse of the orgasm being directed by the essential self. A refining happens as we find certain strokes deepen the sensation and are therefore more attractive. Organic preferences arise that are not based in hunger or conditioning.
If we are turned off in this stage, we feel dug-in and have a lack of joy for anything. A sense of unease and anxiety, like the ground is starting to slip away, and an aggressive agitation may arise, as if something is brewing just below the surface and we cannot control it. We have a frustrating lack of power or ability to maintain stability.
The skills needed for OMing in the turn-on stage are discernment, circulation, and expanding our sense of the body. We learn to discern each stroke from others. We circulate electricity throughout our body. The feedback loop between thought and sensation becomes part of our reality and we expand our energetic body beyond the physical.
When we are stroking someone in turn-on, we touch the point of highest sensation—the spot—allowing the sensation to flow through the finger. We stroke gently but persistently, both playful and gently tenacious, until we feel ignition, at which point we lock on and let it take us. If our strokee is turned off, activating our own system will generate the origin of a feedback loop.
When we are being stroked in turn-on, we expand our energy body, spreading out sensation so it isn't just concentrated in the genitals, playing at the edge of going over but without going over. If we are turned off, we approach OM as a practice, showing up to the nest even when it seems challenging. We practice saying "yes" to every stroke.
