The outward expression of something beyond, drawn in and down.
The sensation conferred is one of being touched and used by the divine.
What is static is made dynamic
Consciousness channels power
Has humor and resourcefulness
The full, unimpeded, natural expression of yourself emerges
Once the foundation of connection is set and the inherent laws of classical OM are learned, practiced, and brought down to the bones, a new level of OM is birthed. Our system of connection is secure enough that a new level of Eros is able to flow through, carrying with it a sense of improvisation, genius, and intuition that subsumes the technical. Eros then begins to lift off from the solid base where we have learned to remain connected to power, regardless of what threatens to call us back to the tumescent mind. OM now ventures into play consciousness.
Often seen as a consciousness lacking skill, play consciousness is the channel that requires the greatest mastery. We must know the classical rules in order to play with them well. To play with rules well is to be elevated into a state of transcendent brilliance, where there is a sense of divinity pouring forth—an incandescence. In the suspension of this moment, the body and mind are channels of a presence that permeates all. This presence is the expression of something beyond, drawn in and down, and expressed outwardly, so the sensation conferred is one of having been touched and used by the divine.
But when we play with the rules poorly, we activate our tumescent mind. With this level of power pouring through, the activation occurs not only as an invasive force, it becomes trapped energy in the body. Not only do we feel unskilled, we may feel overburdened and useless. The nature of the play channel is high risk and high return. The reward is the thrill of discovery, seeing what we are made of, and testing our resilience and creativity.
If this stage posed a question, it would be: "What is possible?" This is this channel where we tap into the infinite nature of OM, the vast and endless doorways of sensory perception that can be opened to worlds nested within worlds.
This channel is the agency or expressive side of the activation of life. The experience of life force, activated in turn-on, comes into contact with OM in this stage. We feel a profound wonder, curiosity, and a desire to discover. These are not states that can be manufactured, and they are not the results of reactions; they are a reflection of our internal sentience extending further into the world, led by our curiosity.
This state sits upon the fundamentals. Eros has drawn the mind down into the body, creating a reaction that releases power. This released power produces an initial expression that must be grounded and mastered. Only then are we ready to elevate the rules we play by from the standard to the intuitive. To be clear, we are still playing within a set of rules. We all have an unalterable, innate sense of the elegant harmony of sensations, and we are allowing our intuitive sense to guide us.
What we once perceived as obstacles become opportunities that we convert into skills. Sensations that were previously too high to meet, spots that were closed, and speeds that seemed too fast, all become the playground of exploration.
The primary reason the play stage is seen as a type of mastery is that it stems from a security of connection, allowing both partners to lock into a state of yes. In this state, we have the capacity to open to any stroke or sensation and we trust that our partner does as well. This trust enables us to take risks. We may assume the person receiving is the most vulnerable; in reality, it is the person stroking. The stroker is at the mercy of the person being stroked.
As strokees, we hold the power to make the stroker either great or a flop by drawing out either greatness or ineptitude. This is where things get interesting, where the world gets set right side up, where we discover, in practice rather than theory, that the person receiving is the one who has the most potential to determine the direction of the OM. The key to making a stroker into a genius is what we call brilliant reception.
Brilliant reception is created when the strokee activates enough power to awaken the force of genius. We do this by applying the attention of approval on the sensation of power—the reaction within is genius. From here we draw from the genius within, which is of course Eros, through the stroker's finger. In essence, we are stroking with our reception, and we are able to extract genius from the stroker in proportion to the activation of our own genius. We possess the ability to draw forth any sensation from the stroke—from love to illumination to relaxation—to the level that these characteristics have been activated in ourselves. We hold the capacity to clear any blockages within the stroker, absorb congested energy, convert it using the heat of Eros in us, and send it back as pure Eros.
When we say "yes" to the stroke we are giving and to the stroke we are receiving, we are ready to explore all spots, speeds, directions, and variations. We listen closely to Eros, to the music, as we engage in this.
The strokee's power is in her reception, in her yes. Our world and our experience of it is created through this yes. Our yes is rooted in our agreement to approve of whatever we receive, because approval means opening to, and anything opened to is experienced as pleasurable. Something may be sad, beautiful, or even painful, but there can be a pleasure to each of these. We are agreeing not to get lost in the single dimension of the sensation, but to focus on the flow of the process through our body. In other words, by remaining open, any sensation has a pleasurable element and tone, whether it's somber, alive, or angry.
To the extent we are able to keep the tone flowing with the music of pleasure, it continues to move and change, enabling it to be received fully in the body. Preventing our mind from listening only to the individual note, extracting it, and then focusing on it in the isolation of the mind is key; doing so confines us to living in the story of the sensation.
Play only exists in an in-the-moment, improvisational flow, when we have the capacity to meet whatever enters. This is what brings about the sensation of delight, which is the marker of the stage of play.
In the play channel, delight is found in the catch and toss of the full expression between the ever-resilient and resourceful Erotic bodies of each partner. This dynamic cannot occur if one or the other cannot maintain a play consciousness, where the foundational agreement is to say "yes."
Because we are permitted to fully let ourselves out without fear of harming the other, play is the place where we see what we are made of. We can do this because our partner agrees they are a co-creator and can- not be harmed because they are choosing to be open to all experiences.
Until we have this agreement, our souls cannot meet. This phenomenon cannot be partial; we cannot hold part of ourselves back and meet another's soul. Such a meeting only happens when two souls are 100 percent activated and 100 percent available. The tumescent mind can, and will, make the process sound complicated, but it's not; it is quite simple, which doesn't mean it's not difficult. It happens when we agree to say "yes" to our experiences. What we discover is that this is the only way to activate the Erotic mind, the mind that knows.
Inside each of us is an eternally resilient mind that knows how to open, absorb, and convert every single experience into love, then send it back out as love. The finger that switches this mind on is the word yes. Yes to our fight, yes to our resistance, yes to our hurt, and yes to our feeling of wrongdoing. Eventually, we confront the most terrifying yes of all, what all play is practice for: yes to the full, unimpeded, natural expression of ourselves. When we hit this yes, we hit the yes of genius. This expression is something we can never figure out because it comes as an outgrowth. It liberates itself in an instant and reveals itself wholly. Suddenly, we know.
The old rules of play are pretty basic: we play to win, using the rules to move us closer to winning and further from not winning, which is perceived as losing. Discrimination and the capacity to say "no" is vital. When one or both players win, the game is over. Connection is secondary to winning, and personal expression takes a back seat to the goal. From the perspective of Eros, this type of winning is merely climaxing or having our conditioning met—maybe falling in love, getting married, or acquiring some sign of commitment.
The new rules, on the other hand, are to play in order to keep playing, to play to discover what is possible, and to do this by playing with the rules. We play with the rules in order to activate a genuine, spontaneous novelty that activates attention and adds to its complexity. And all of this is done to learn the mechanics of unique expression while in connection; both partners agree to fully contribute their unique expression to the connection and to draw from it as well, playing off each other.
This is the location of freedom. But this is not freedom from, which doesn't exist. Freedom from is just well-dressed separation. This is freedom with, where we play all-out, exactly as we are, not in spite of but for the benefit of all. We do this by focusing on what lies between us.
When we are in the play stage in OM, we feel more powerful below the surface. Our body feels entirely effortless and even volatile, with a feeling of continuous current flowing at the point of contact, and the easeful following of Eros. Any direction we go in is good at this stage where we are in flow. Our body feels volatile, involuntary, and pliant, and the boundary of our physical body feels fluid. We have the sense we are more felt than heard. We enter a timelessness and are completely absorbed as our body disappears into Eros. If we are turned off in this stage, we have a sense of superiority and are distant and mistrusting. We find ourselves willfully efforting.
The skills we need in the play stage are humor, resourcefulness, risk-taking, and resiliency in the face of resistance.
When we are stroking someone in play, sensation is magnified, with the stroke felt at the level of attention. Strokes are more energetic than physical. If our partner is turned off, we stroke with precision at the highest point of sensation rather than stroking harder and faster. Our attention may be drawn to every thought; here, we remember our rightness and our partner's rightness unwaveringly. Stroking to nuzzle the gates of the spot open and then dancing in the current, we pour our own Erotic body through our finger.
When we are being stroked in play, we activate our Erotic body and draw in all strokes from the stroker. Our clitoris plays back and we use our attention to foster the natural unfolding. If we find we are turned off, we notice any blocking and continue to bring ourselves to the third that exists between us and our partner.
