Published May, 2024
The tumescent mind is the voice in the background always suggesting we chill out a bit, just do what we already know, stick with the familiar, and stay in our bubble. Resentment is the nourishment of the tumescent mind. In fact, you might even say it is the pool it swims in.
And so, what are we to do? There is a doorway, a point of entry into this moment, that will gratify all yearning, all heartache, all addiction.
Pretty much everything gets worked out if we walk through this door. There is one catch: We have to be willing to leave everything behind and let it sort out what belongs on the other side and what were merely identity props for the last place we were in.
And we have this tumescent mind, this bully always pulling in the other direction, the direction that is in direct opposition to us making it to and then through that door. It is cunning. It will lie to us in our own voice. It will feel like an internal enemy. So, what do we do?
We stop, slow down, listen to it, welcome it, and love it. We make it the spot, the point of entry. We hold our attention there. There is no agenda—even the striving for infinite bliss—that is more important than this spot or what it has to say. This is the opposite of the way we’ve been taught to work with the enemy on personal, institutional, and cultural levels. We love to be outraged by things in a way that demands vengeance. In fact, to not retaliate is to be weak and vulnerable, or absurdly passive.
As a result, in our culture we mistake outrage for power.
That is the model for how we work with the tumescent mind in a stealthy manner. The only way to execute such a delicate maneuver is with focused love that is bigger than the fear.
How do we find love? We seek for the point of highest sensation until it opens to invariably become what all things are at their core: love. Obsession becomes love, hatred becomes love, violence becomes love. Each form is simply a more or less skillful seeking for love. So, if we respond with love immediately, we can stay nestled in close to it rather than having to play hide-and-seek with love’s associates: forgiveness and empathy.
We can inquire with our moderately, skillfully seeking tumescent mind about what it wants in order to eventually reveal this essence. To do so, we ask what it wants, and then whatever it says, we say, “Okay, and if you had that, then what would you want?” Spoiler alert: All behaviors in self and other—though some will come to it with their first answer and some will take all day—at the foundation, want love. When we offer it preemptively, we forgo the wrestling our own tumescent mind and other people will do to get that love.
And still, our tumescent mind does not like to admit there is a spot. It does not want to admit it’s at the mercy of anything.
Plug in, the door opens, and we either spend the rest of our lives seeking it in a whole host of ways that offend the tumescent mind or we internally rationalize not doing the only thing that will satisfy our deepest yearning.
Or we may get stuck trying to convince ourselves the shortcut version is great—but we always know. We know from the incontrovertibility of the spot. That spot will ask everything of us, at all times, and it’s on us to show up or not, to seek out the how when we have no clue, to give up on that other stroke that was feeling so good that is now no longer the stroke.
To follow it when it keeps taking us higher and we are sure we will lose consciousness and trust that it knows how much we can take. To follow it when where it’s going is deeper than we believe ourselves capable and everything in us wants to lock up, freeze, and give up.
To trust there are many other strokes we are quite familiar with that feel so good and that this new place it is taking us is wobbly and kind of nauseating but to keep stroking that one. To follow it even when a nearly inconceivable rage arises, one that clearly demands action. And, if we keep going there, our only option will be to blow up into climax—no one could stay with that much anger and not explode.
High sensation by its very nature is heated. We sweat. And the tumescent mind is the one in the background always suggesting we not take any risks or turn up the heat.
Only one thing is asked of us: Respond to this stroke at this moment. Then we get back on the spot, and in that spot there is freedom from panic and anxiety. We are granted a bigger perspective, where a crazy, beautiful life is playing out and when necessary, we are instructed on the next right or skillful move on this path of beauty. And the good news is that no matter what level of pressure life is stroking at, we can always start right now. There is always only the imperative to open to this stroke.
