When rooted in the body, upstrokes occur as transcendence. They offer a sensory peak from the summit of what is possible without being constrained by gravity. We sense the world at the level of potential, which gives us motivation to shed extra or stagnant energy. We have a sense of the wind at our back, as if we have hydraulics and are being lifted when we would habitually climb or push. We are lifted by the Erotic state beyond where we could bring ourselves. Here, we are more energy than physicality, while still being deeply rooted in the body. This rootedness confers a feeling of safety that rounds out the feeling of freedom that might otherwise erode into anxiety.
Anxiety is the place where we want to stay up, up, up, but it becomes jittery. When rooted in this way, the sensation itself is full-bodied and not just a single note. The edge is taken off.
In life, we are often trained in only one direction: up. We think the solution to the issues caused by having gone too far up is to go farther up. We feel anxious or that there is something in the depths calling for our attention. We feel a tension or even a mania. Sometimes, we even call this bliss or euphoria.
The freedom associated with up is not in any way high, dizzy, or spacey; it is clarity. Up starts with a feeling of love, richness, or reverence that we are, tiny stroke by stroke, extending.
The truth is, the mind can only assimilate the smallest stroke. This is how we expand our capacity—in the same way we expand our lung capacity by increasing the flexibility of the cavity by drawing in the breath fully and exhaling fully, not by inhaling and holding our breath.
We do this with each stroke, feeling one stroke at a time. The capacity for this kind of liftoff, this kind of lightness, is key to offering the inspiration of Eros. Without this liftoff, our OMs have a deadly earnestness and gravity—or a fixed quality that adheres to the physical, whereas the sensation we seek is found only in the activation of the Erotic body.
Up is where we can “see” the wisdom from below. We may have moments of insight or intuition with the upstroke, including how to best meet the stroke. Down is where the circuit breaker is, and up is where the lights go on.
As the upstroke starts, it can feel especially subtle and require deeper attention. An upstroke has the quality of magnetizing the clitoris to the finger, pulling energy up to the surface and out through the body.
There is an overall feeling of liftoff, elevation, and then breaking through the clouds of the tumescent mind. The sense is spacious, quiet, and open.
An important instruction is to move the attention along with the stroke rather than moving our attention ahead of it and attempting to pull the stroke to a conclusion. When this grip happens, the antidote is to lift the stroking finger for a second and allow a moment of descent and relaxation.
We can then take in the breath and sensation with tiny sips. The instruction to lift asks us to raise the finger just barely off the clitoris to where only a tiny synapse of the lubricant exists between them.
Notice how the current still flows through the lubricant neutrally without physical touch. On the downstroke, we allow ourselves to be moved again. We can become so nestled into the down that our attention goes lax and, as a result, we don’t show up for the upstroke when it comes.
We end up feeling hunkered down or almost like we are drowning. We feel powerless, without realizing we are in fact drowning in power, and that the way to feel relief is to use the power to go back up and see what we gathered in the down.
A good upstroke is extraordinarily crisp in sending and receiving. It is tight and deliberate. It has a strength without rigidity and does not allow itself to be carried by the unconscious program, which only wants to go up and over.
We discover the more we can go up without going over, the more spacious and steady the upstroke becomes, and the more reality reveals itself to us.
