Expanding Through Dissatisfaction to God

From Bluetruth

She Tests My Wideness

She pulls me deep within her. “Harder,” she cries, smashing her vulva against me. Her need seems unquenchable. Twisting my organ tight in her velvety grasp, she begins to come in waves and shakes, extorting my spew through frictional torture.

But I do not want to ejaculate. I do not want the occasion to end. I do not want to be reduced to a spent sperm vessel.

Instead of being led by the pleasure, I feel into and through the pleasure. I don’t allow myself to be drawn into a frenzy of spurt, release, and depletion. Rather, I re-orient my attention. I feel through the intensity of pleasure, like a lion jumping through a ring of fire, into the openness that lies behind the pleasure. Feeling into this openness, the sensation suddenly shifts, as if the fire of pleasure were a mirage, a heat wave, rippling in a huge ocean of radiant naught.

The pleasure has not decreased, but it is no longer the pivot of my attention. It is but a small gleam, a transparent shimmer on the surface of an ocean of depth. As I allow my attention to relax into this wide source, the urge to ejaculate disappears. Instead, the intensity of sensation increases and flows up our spines in an eruption of brain light.

We are still forcefully coupled. Her legs and pelvis are now vibrating like an engine about to explode. She has never allowed herself to be filled with so much energy. And I have never sustained awareness so deeply in this violence of pleasure.

I can feel her trying to draw me over the horizon of consciousness into the whorl of her quivering petunia. It is as if she is testing me: Will I lose it? And yet, as I sustain awareness through the vortex of her pleasure, our energy increases, our surrender deepens, and new levels of mutual bliss arise and disperse, again and again, each more perfect than the last.

The attractiveness of her bodily ecstasy demands an almost absolute penetration of consciousness. If I contract the openness of my awareness for even a moment, my attention will be sucked into the whirlpool of genital stimulation, and I may unwillingly spurt quick joy in one last convulsion of lost cognizance. I must keep my recognition strong in the force of her profound sexual arousal. The more stable my persistence, the deeper her surrender. The wider the space of my recognition, the more intense the display of her rapture.

Our difference pulls no edges in the peal of revelation.

The Feminine and Masculine Errors

Understand the difference between energy and consciousness during sex. The feminine error is to lose yourself in energy or pleasure. The masculine error is to suppress energy by rigidly holding to consciousness or separative effort. Rather than making these errors, practice feeling energy fully, but feel it as consciousness, as a ripple of who you are most deeply.

The feminine partner will tend to get lost in energy first. If the sex is really good, he or she will tend to forget all else and become the energy, the pleasure, and the sensation. Then the masculine partner will tend to either hold back and resist or get swept away by the feminine partner’s pleasure.

If you allow your inherent spaciousness of consciousness to be narrowed by mere sensory pleasure, then you will be corralled toward orgasm. Without spacious consciousness, orgasm tends to lead to a collapse of energy and awareness. A swift ride to a mediocre null. Instead of falling prey to this common grunt of stimulation and release, re-orient your attention so sex goes beyond mere satisfaction.

Many people have experienced only the most meager of sexual pleasures. They have habitualized to a sexual routine of stimulation leading to intolerable excitement followed by an explosive release of tension through ejaculation or clitoral orgasm. This kind of sex is like pigs feeding in the pen of neuronal exhilaration, stuffing themselves with energy to the brink of explosion, unconscious of a path beyond such shallow slaughter. But sex can also be a revelation of open consciousness and love.

For Him

Free Your Attention

If you are the masculine partner, don’t lose the open space of consciousness for the sake of momentary pleasure. But don’t resist the force of pleasure either, like a rigid twerp trying to maintain control. Sexual pleasure itself has a natural magnetism that can draw awareness into its open source like a moth to a flame. Attend to the pleasure (as you will in any case). Feel into it, but don’t stop there.

Feel through the pleasure, as well as through the space around it and behind it, into the ocean upon which it shimmers. Feel the sexual sensations fully, as well as the openness in which the sensations hover. Feel the excitation, as well as the sharp clarity that cognizes every throb and pulsing intensity. Be feeling itself, extended to infinity, through every thing.

Allow your attention to be attracted by the velvet torque or molten throb of your lover’s genitals, and feel through it. Allow your attention to be drawn by the siren rhapsody of your lover’s moans, and feel through it. Rather than being swept over the edge by your lover’s currents of abandon, meet her untamedness with your ferocity of consciousness. The wilder she becomes, the deeper you must feel through her energy.

In some moment, you will feel through it all. Openness-sex, without circumference. Openness itself, without difference. Love. For this apparency to ease itself plain, you must practice freeing your attention in the midst of extreme pleasure.

As if waking up while still dreaming, practice feeling the entire sexual occasion arising in the open of consciousness. This recognition transports the pig to the palace. Suddenly, you are aware of what is always true: You are consciousness-radiance itself. Everything that happens, including sex, takes place in this openness and is a creation of conscious light. Except you forget this, and get lost in the drama of hope and desire, in the dream of fulfillment and release, in the vision of flesh and grind.

While humping in the bedsack it is easy to forget who you really are: consciousness-radiance, the natural love, openness, and depth of being. Always practice to remember who you really are, even amidst the slosh and smell of sex.

Why Do You Want Her?

You probably use your woman to stimulate yourself. You like the way her thong bikini cuts between her ass cheeks. You get off when she wears leather, or whips you, or kneels before you. Her gentle massages, wispy lingerie, and cinnamon-caramel-tangy fragrance turn you on. Then, through sex, you ride your own excitation to the brink of release, and in a flash of intense pleasure it’s over.

Women are probably the most beautiful, sexy, and attractive inspiration of your life. That’s good. That’s how it works out: Women reveal to men the beauty of existence. Without women, this would be a sorry life indeed. But your relationship to feminine attractiveness doesn’t have to stop with sexual titillation.

Suppose you are on a beach and you see a woman who attracts you, whether she is your lover or a total stranger. Perhaps she attracts you because her skin is soft and smooth and shines with oil in the sunlight. Perhaps you can’t keep your eyes off her cleavage, front or rear. Perhaps it is the way she walks, her elegance and grace, or the relaxed depth of passion in her eyes.

The feeling of “wanting” a woman is the feeling of wanting to merge with her, to take her and make her yours, so that for some moments you are absorbed in her beauty and delicious woman-ness, released of desire because you have exactly what you want. But what is it that you want?

The Usual Relationship

Most men know the feeling of wanting a woman, having sex with her, and then feeling done with her, at least at the energetic level. You have gotten what you wanted: stimulation to the point of ejaculation. You are released of desire. Though you may still cuddle with her in love, you are already drifting away, into sleep, reverie, or the TV on the other side of the room.

Some men come to a point of feeling shame or guilt about this kind of sexual relationship. So they try to find other ways of relating with their woman. More civilized ways, perhaps enjoying common interests. Foreign movies. Bird watching. Discussing ideas. Reading by the fireplace. Collecting wine, antiques, or rare something-or-others. Some men consider these to be more “mature” forms of sharing, and they certainly do transcend the quick in and out of sexual desire and release. They last longer and aren’t dependent upon youth, energy, and physical attraction.

If you are like many men, you quit at this point. Besides working and caring for your family together, you enjoy being with your woman sexually, watching movies together, going to concerts, and perhaps discussing international politics. As a couple, you seek great orgasms, good discussions, and vacations you both find interesting. In bed, you enjoy fleshy intercourse; in museums and galleries, intellectual exchange. Secretly, you crave just one night with your eighteen-year-old next-door neighbor who suns herself in the back yard. Or, you fantasize about being with the brilliant and provocative woman at work with whom you could share things that your partner couldn’t even begin to understand.

You Will Eventually Become Disillusioned

If raising a healthy family, having sex thrice a week, and shopping together for great deals on Persian rugs truly fulfills you, then enjoy it while it lasts. It won’t for too long. Consider sexiness itself: no matter how appealing your woman’s body is or how interesting her mind is, you will probably grow to a place where it isn’t enough. Your first impulse may be to find it elsewhere. In some instances, another woman can give you the bodily energy or intellectual brilliance that your current woman lacks. But even so, you will eventually become as disillusioned with her as you have become with every woman before her.

Great sex is alluring, and then you grow to a place of depth where that isn’t enough. Your interest becomes piqued by the special kind of woman with whom you can “share a life.” Hopefully, this kind of woman is also sexually attractive to you. Then you grow some more. Whether you stick it out with your current woman or try for greener pastures, it doesn’t change anything fundamental. Something still feels missing. You must liberate your consciousness from old habits and re-orient to a deeper sexual truth if you are to find life and relationship meaningful.

From Desperation to Depth

Become sensitive to where your attention goes when you are interested in a woman. Perhaps it goes to her breasts and legs. Or maybe you think about what a good mother she would make. Or perhaps you imagine relaxing on a ranch together, sipping coffee and watching the sun set. Unless your consciousness continues deepening, you will feel unfulfilled when these things lose their oomph. You will end up feeling, “So what?” You will slowly starve in quiet desperation or chuck your current relationship to start from scratch, both of which will leave you short of true happiness.

Eventually—and don’t rush it, you’ll know when the time comes because you will have no choice—suffering compels you to greater depth. Then it is time to practice easing your attention through its things—as if feeling through the deck of a boat into the deep rhythms of the sea, or relaxing your gaze through the objects reflected in a windowpane so you can know the vast landscape behind them. Every object of your attention floats in a boundless space of being. Who you are is this entire depth of being, including the “reflected” things. Ease your attention through every experience so you can know and feel this depth of openness.

Feel through stiff nipple and wet crotch as if feeling through images and sensations in a dream, feeling through their transparency into the inherent spaciousness in which they shimmer. Feel through the waves of household sounds—the children laughing, the phone ringing, the dog barking—as if feeling into an underlying ocean of silence. Feel through your sense of satisfaction while lying next to your woman after a long day of hard work, and relax into the openness of deep being, the “who” in which arises, “I’m satisfied.”

Feel through everything into the “who” of your feelings, the deep silence behind the sounds, the open space in which the images of your life move. You will probably notice that you can’t do this for very long. In a second or two you will have forgotten depth and become riveted to the surface, to the sights, sounds, and feelings of your life—and these things don’t fulfill you for very long. Practice again, anew in the present moment, feeling through everything to which you pay attention, opening as the depth of being. Over and over, practice for many short moments all day and eventually even during your dreams at night.

Especially practice when you are most attracted or repulsed by life, which probably happens quite often with your woman. Use her attractiveness (or her problems) to pull your attention off your own body and mind into her body and mind. But don’t stop there or you will end up feeling depleted, bored, and unfulfilled. Feel to her and then feel through her to the depth of existence itself.

The Deepest Sex

While making love, your attention will naturally be drawn to the warm grip of your lover’s vagina around your penis. Feel your attention actually move to this sensation from wherever it was a moment before. Then, using the momentum of your attracted attention, feel right through the sensation, into the space of sensation itself.

A rainbow takes place in the sky. A movie takes place on a screen. What is the background against which you feel any sensation? Find out. Feel through the pumping, slippery heat of your woman’s vagina around your penis. As good as it may feel, it feels better when you also feel the empty space in which the energy of the sensation appears, like the air in which a mirage occurs. This simultaneous realization of fullness (hot, wet, silken, throbbing) and emptiness (the space of sensation) liberates bliss from the merely physical into an unconstrained infinitude of openness and depth.

Sex—as well as raising a family, sitting by the fireplace, or collecting cars—is only as deeply fulfilling as you are willing to feel. The capacity to feel through the surface into the depth of any moment is learnable. Its strength grows with practice. When you can feel through the sensation of a mosquito bite, the moment is as blissful as being massaged by five naked women. The smells, tastes, touches, sounds, and sights are different—and certainly most men would prefer one experience to the other—but the bliss of the moment is identical. The depth of the moment is identical. The degree to which you feel fulfilled—open, free, alive, and complete—is identical.

Nothing Can Fulfill You but Depth

When you can practice feeling through experience, then you no longer hope for the impossible: that this or that particular experience will fulfill you. Nor are you depressed by the facts: sex is passing you by and you still haven’t totally done it; your woman is sometimes loving and sometimes bonkers; your daily life is filled with endless chores and picayune tasks. You feel through it all, and in doing so the very bliss of being dawns overwhelmingly obvious, suffusing all experience.

As your practice grows strong, you might still complain about your aching back or curse at your broken car, but the inherent depth of being remains unbroken as the tangible, underlying “substance” of every moment. You might feel sorry for yourself, but you also feel through your own self-pity, and thus relax as open depth even while you bitch and moan.

After you have located and relaxed as this deep bliss of being, you can practice allowing it to pervade every aspect of your daily experience, moment by moment. Your family life becomes permeated by your openness. Your professional life becomes an expression of your depth. Your woman becomes swooned by the force of your presence, transmitted emotionally through your body and breath.

As your practice grows, you no longer use sex simply to release tension and desire. Rather, you release yourself utterly in the feeling through of sex. You allow yourself to be attracted by smooth skin and fetching smile. You use the attractive momentum to feel your attention right through the sensations and emotions into their source and depth, the “who” of experience itself. Then, you recognize the depth of this “who,” its force of love and openness of being, arising as all your experience and the entire world around you. You are made free not by woman or orgasm, but by relaxing as the bliss that you are, over and over again, until fear and desire lose their hold in the fullness of unfettered emergence, realized anew every moment.

For Her

Neediness and Abuse

When love is flowing in your life and relationship, you tend to feel open and happy. When love is not flowing, you tend to feel depressed and tired. So it’s very natural for you to try to create a flow of love in your life in the hope that you will feel good.

If you assume that the source of love is in others, then you will do whatever you think will get their love. You may bend your personal desires in order to cater to the needs of those whose love you want: your family, your man, your friends. Eventually, if you really go out of your way to please them, you might end up feeling abused, a victim of their whims. The truth is, in many cases, you are tolerating their abuse because of the love you also hope to get from them. Otherwise, you would simply stop making yourself available as a potential victim.

If you really feel unloved and unnoticed, you may actually crave abuse. You probably don’t think about it this way, you just feel hurt and angry. Your man sits in front of the TV drinking beer. He has ignored you for weeks. You try talking with him and he doesn’t respond. You do something special—make him dinner or wear an especially beautiful outfit—and he doesn’t even notice you. You are in the kitchen and, frustrated with his apathy, you suddenly throw down a plate and break it. Or, you pull your car into the driveway and feel like “accidentally” driving right into the garage door.

You know such behaviors aren’t going to make your man love you more. But they will get his attention. When a relationship gets really bad—in the sense that your man doesn’t even notice you—then his angry attention is better than no attention at all. His abuse is better than total lack; in his anger at least you can feel his presence.

This is a very low level of “presence” indeed, but, nevertheless, most women have at moments desired it from their unresponsive man: “I’d rather break his stereo so he notices me than continue on this way.” You can at least feel his responsiveness in his anger. He may be yelling, but at least he’s talking with you. Receiving his heated anger may be as close to receiving his passion as you’ve gotten in a long time.

Enjoying Your Independence

Love is so important to the feminine essence that some women will do just about anything to try to get it, including giving up authority over their personal lives in the hope of receiving love from their family, lover, or friends.

As you grow spiritually, you realize how unfulfilling it is to always depend on another for love. You realize that whether or not your man gives you love—whether or not anyone gives you love—you are worthy of love. You don’t need to please others to feel the flow of love that you desire in your life. You can love yourself.

This transition is very difficult and rewarding: to grow from depending on others to giving yourself the love that you want. Learning how to love yourself is a big step in life. It makes you whole and independent, a true adult able to make your own decisions without setting yourself up to be a victim. You can choose your own course and live life on your own terms and let others do the same.

To some, this kind of autonomy is the achievement of a lifetime. After years of being in a relationship with a man who expected you to do everything his way, finally you have grown into a relationship of equality, mutual respect, and independence. You share love with your partner, but you also know how to give yourself love. You take care of your partner, but you also take care of yourself. For a while, this may seem like an ideal relationship: friends and lovers rather than oppressor and dupe.

Growing Beyond Independence and Equality

The next transition occurs when equality isn’t enough. Your relationship is safe and supportive, but something feels missing. Your man gives you love and also respects your freedom, but the ecstasy of total surrender isn’t a frequent pleasure. You no longer would “do anything” to be with your man, but you are beginning to feel you might do just about anything to feel ravished by the bliss of love penetrating deep into your body and heart—yet you know that to surrender to another for this bliss is a prescription for abuse, victimhood, and weakness.

As the next stage of spiritual growth unfolds, you learn to open yourself completely without losing yourself in another. You no longer suffer the hurt of dependence or the pride of independence. You stop pulling and pushing your lover and simply breathe as love.

When you were dependent, you practiced sacrificing yourself for the sake of pleasing your man. When you were independent, you practiced strengthening yourself so you could please yourself, with or without your man. Now, you practice true spiritual surrender, which involves opening to the love that lives the universe, flowing as your body, mind, and emotions. Your pleasure lies in this submission, neither to your man nor to your self, but to the very flow of love for which you’ve yearned all along.

This kind of submission makes you stronger, not weaker. Surrendered to love itself, moved by love itself, you are a force to be reckoned with. As love moves through you, your man better straighten up or watch out. In fact, you better straighten up or watch out. Love is a force that strips you of false security and aligns your life to love’s demands.

Are You Ready for the Bliss of Divine Love?

Most women choose physical comfort and emotional security over true love. Their lives are aligned by the demands of nice homes, good jobs, and their relationships with family and friends. Only after submitting to both dependence and independence are most women ready for submission to love. Only when a woman is willing to be moved by love—not by her man’s desires or by her own dreams—is she ready to take this next step in spiritual growth. This step involves “marrying God,” becoming love’s woman, rather than your man’s woman or your own woman.

When you are ready to take this step you will know it because you will have no choice. Perhaps you will be sitting in the kitchen, your beautiful children eating at the table, your devoted man looking into your eyes, and you feel fulfilled—almost. There is still a “God-shaped void” in your heart.

You will notice a tension in your body and a yearning in your heart. You may try to keep yourself busy to avoid feeling it. You may try to convince yourself that you have no right to feel this subtle lack; after all, you have everything you ever wanted, certainly more than many women are lucky enough to have. And yet, somewhere, somehow, something is missing, though you can’t quite put your finger on it.

Some women try to analyze their ennui through therapy or talking with friends. Other women seek the ecstasy of “losing themselves” in the rush of something “greater.” They give their lives to a spiritual leader or a social movement and experience the bliss of self-surrender that they lost in developing their independent emotional stance.

But this kind of bliss is temporary and dependent on their chosen beloved person or purpose. When they are rejected by their spiritual teacher they feel as bad as when they are rejected by their lover. Or, if they have chosen to lose themselves in merger with a larger social issue—for example, ecology, feminism, education, or worldwide health—they suffer the eventual success or failure of their mission; again, they yearn for something more.

Ultimately, the only surrender that is truly fulfilling is to the love that is the substance of every single moment, the love that moves as you and the universe. If the love you are surrendering to is love “of” something or someone, then you have more to learn. You will never be completely fulfilled by something or someone. Never. You may have moments of relative happiness, but these will be stretched between moments of relative unhappiness, and this cycle of getting and not getting love in your life, day by day, eventually becomes barren. Futile. Exhausting. An authentic spiritual teacher, teaching, or movement turns you directly toward the bliss of love itself, and then helps you to serve the world as love.

Living As Love

True spiritual surrender is submission to love itself, the love that breathes your breath and beats your heart, the love that dances alive as this moment. Spiritual growth involves going through whatever you must to recognize this love, open your heart and body to it, and live as it, expressing it through your life. You may choose to express love in relationship to a man or as a celibate nun. You may choose to express love by giving birth to many children, by adopting, or by living alone. You may choose to be a political leader, a doctor, or a fund-raiser. You are free to choose the life you want—but you will only be fulfilled if you are practicing to live as love moment by moment.

Without this practice, your life will eventually come to desolation. Many women have loved a man, raised children, and made great social contributions, yet still felt lonely by the end of their life—or even in the middle of it. Many women have joined spiritual teachers and social groups, yet died unhappy, exhausted, and bereft of true fulfillment. There comes a point when the only thing left to do is surrender directly as the flow of divine love—you have tried the other forms of surrender and, however benevolent they have been, you have remained wanting, yearning for more.

Giving yourself to another is a beautiful thing, but eventually unfulfilling. Giving yourself to your own direction is a beautiful thing, but eventually empty. The yearning deep in your heart can only be penetrated fully by the love that is the nature of your very being.

Transfigured by Love

In this present moment, practice opening your body to bliss. Breathe love in and out with every breath. Learn to relax your muscles—your heart, your belly, your thighs—so that the energy of love can flow through you without obstruction. Regardless of your emotions in the moment, practice feeling the love that flows through your heart and body. While you are hurt, angry, or afraid, surrender open and live as love. Open yourself as love, through your breath, throughout your entire body, over and over, whenever you can remember.

You may discover that parts of you resist surrendering as love. Your belly hasn’t relaxed completely in years, so love-energy can’t flow fully to your genitals. You are afraid of losing financial support, so you are reluctant to stop trying to please your man. You have been single for so long that you are afraid to let down your guard and feel the pain held in your heart.

Learning to surrender directly to love is often an agonizing process. You will be disillusioned of your dreams of comfort, security, and romance. Every emotion that you have stuffed into your body without feeling fully will emerge for you to re-experience. Years of loneliness and ache will be exposed as your heart unfolds. Yet, when the time comes, you have no choice but to go through this process and learn to surrender as love, receiving and giving the bliss of deep openness with every breath.

This bliss is born of your true nature—an eternal love that cannot be lost. The force of this love cannot be beaten or victimized. This love fills your body and heart with a pleasure so deep that even your own thoughts and emotions cannot sway your fundamental happiness. Your loneliness is filled with a bright immensity of joy. This love-energy flows from your heart through your body and out your feet, hands, and face like beams of beauty. You live in love’s rapture, even as your day-to-day life continues in the form that you choose.

Sex becomes literally making love, magnifying love, from the boundless depth of your heart through every inch of your body and in merger with your lover. You are so full of love and pleasure that it is impossible to give it up in an effort to please your partner. You are so open in bliss that you no longer need to guard your heart for fear of being hurt or taken advantage of. Your love is larger than your lover or your self. You have nothing to fear or protect. Love has already worked its way through your secret hopes and dreads and opened every speck of you as light.

You are neither possessed by your lover’s needs nor by your own. You are love. You live as love. And when you find your heart yearning still, practice surrendering more deeply as love. While washing the dishes, picking your child up from school, or firing an employee, practice allowing love to flow through your every gesture, word, and breath. In every moment, practice receiving love deeply into your body and giving love from every cell. You are thus transfigured, breath by breath, from a needy woman looking for love, to a self-sufficient women who loves herself, to a woman always and already full of love’s bliss and blessing power.