by Allan Rosenthal
When I was younger, I practiced something using the same foundational approach as Orgasmic Meditation. Then, I started a family and a law firm, and the day-to-day requirements of life took over. For 35 years, I put blinders on and became numb, forgetting that deep sense of ego-less connection I had tapped into. Then, in 2016, I discovered Orgasmic Meditation, remembered the expansiveness of those moments in my past, and rediscovered a transcendent connection much deeper than thought allows. I relearned how to leave behind the imprisoning bars of my own fears and let go of my ego. I felt like a colorblind man suddenly seeing in color for the first time.
My Orgasmic Meditation story starts in 1980. I decided to take a leave of absence from law school and buy some land for agricultural purposes. Without getting into details, let’s say I ended up spending ten months in county jail.
When I got out of jail, I had nothing, and I moved into a communal living situation, basically for lack of anything better to do. Everyone there was dedicated to elevating their awareness and getting more out of life by acknowledging the perfection of the present moment. There was no time limit or container, but their ideas resonated with some of the concepts of Orgasmic Meditation (OM), focusing attention on the ideas of masculine and feminine. I saw something inherently true in it and found an entirely new level of connection.
I found value in these practices and concepts and tried to share them with my wife, but they weren’t right for her. Eventually, my life’s focus shifted to my career and family, and these brilliant truths faded like wisps into the fog of the distant past. I got swallowed up in the hard work of creating a law firm, becoming a human ATM for my kids, and achieving a pretty unassailable level of worldly success.
But I was numb. I had blinders on, and I wasn’t feeling. I went from being an ex-con to creating the most profitable bankruptcy firm in San Francisco, so the numbness didn’t interfere with my success. My life was so busy and filled with so much that I didn’t even realize I wasn’t feeling. It manifested only as a distant melancholy.
I found Orgasmic Meditation (OM) in 2016. I read the description on a meetup site online, and it raised my eyebrows – I was intrigued. So, I went to an informational session at a restaurant on Market Street and met some practitioners within the community. Almost immediately, I thought, “Wait a minute, this is like that thing from 35 years ago.” The perfection of the moment, the men responding to women, all of these thoughts and truths I hadn’t touched in three decades came cascading down.
I was so enthusiastic that I tried my first OM—Orgasmic Meditation—with my wife without a proper nest or a zafu (meditation cushion), based on instructions from a YouTube video. We did our best with pillows and blankets, and we had fun, but it was imperfect. I underestimated the importance of the zafu, so I was in pain from being in the wrong position.
Once more practiced, I started to love the container and the 15-minute timeframe. It lent the whole process a level of safety that both my partners and I found really comforting.
Even asking for an OM and opening yourself to another person was valuable. The way I was brought up, these things were supposed to be a big deal. According to my upbringing, if I was going to let go of my ego to be intimate with someone else, with their body and their attention – it had to be the absolute right person. So, those moments of connection were relatively rare in my life. But part of the Orgasmic Meditation practice is setting aside all that societal garbage and asking.
Orgasmic Meditation taught me how to focus my attention on another person, even outside of OMing. I guess it’s like other forms of meditation in that sense, but it was a total shock for me: one day, I was talking with somebody, and I realized I was 100% focused on them. The exact concentration and attention I had learned to bring to the Orgasmic Meditation (OM) container was now available to me in everyday life. This was eye-opening, and it suddenly expanded my universe, letting me connect with people and feel their energy in a way I never had before. I learned to attune myself to the essential core of people, to sync with their energy, and to divorce myself from my thoughts.
This new sense of expansion and feeling was in stark contrast to the numbness I had felt before. It was like living life with cataracts or seeing everything in black and white and then suddenly seeing the world in color, in perfect clarity. I have always had this terror that my imperfections will be witnessed and that I’ll be rejected. Orgasmic Meditation helped me move beyond the imprisoning bars of this fear to get in touch with my energy. To suddenly not feel imperfect, to feel content in the moment with who and what I am, is incredibly valuable. To be able to extend that beyond myself and connect with another person’s energy is magical.
Orgasmic Meditation taught me to feel again and brought me back to the deep truths of my past, truths I had forgotten and left behind. I won’t forget them again.
