I would submit that tension is a mistake in the future as well, and the likely precursor of arrogance, which is a form of rigidity.
My Mobility Meditation is working splendidly, and I am really beginning to open up. I am getting more visions, and more insights, few of which I will share here.
But one thing I will share I am seeing–the word is feeling, actually, although it is more of a synesthetic sense–that I am like everyone else, and everyone else is like me. There is no human expression I have seen on a city street which could not occur to me. There is no human impulse which could occur to anyone else which is fully foreign to me. We are all born with the same needs, the same instincts, the same confusions, and same compensating need for certainty.
Ritual, it occurred to me this morning, is little more than a way of shaping order out of chaos. It is something recurring, stable–a table to which all are invited at the same time, to share in its benefits.
I felt too how feeble must any attempt at coherent action be in the face of pervasive tension. Certainly, this has been my own problem: the unresolved tension from my childhood (and for that matter youth and most of my adult life) makes calm action impossible. I can impose my will, but it is very much like overcoming an engaged parking brake by stepping on the accelerator harder. Ironically enough, I have in fact destroyed not one but two clutches in my life doing that. How? Tension induced stupidity. And youth. I was younger and dumber once.
And when I get really relaxed sexual imagery sometimes comes into mind. Healthy sex begins and ends with relaxation. You can’t kiss well with a tense mouth. You can’t ride the wave, allow things to happen, when you are tense. You can’t be playful. You can’t be fun and spontaneous. At its worst, for men, it is a job to do: generate an ejaculation. Actually, worse: conquer her, using sex.
I feel much of the contemporary obsession with sex is really an obsession with relaxation. And it seems obvious why tension would intrude on all this: sex alone cannot generate the effect needed, and it doesn’t, so various manias come into play. BDSM from this perspective is really just the generation of an extremely tense state, so that releasing it feels like bliss. Well, I’m sure its more complicated than that, but that is likely a factor. I’ve never done it and never will do it, but I’m acutely aware of what both psychological masochism and sadism feel like. They are in me too.
And I got to thinking about all the talk about sex we saw in the recent election. Would you not agree that Bill Clinton and Trump have very different sexual styles? Bill Clinton has all the hallmarks of a sexual addict. He just needs fixes. He just needs to get his rocks off, and doesn’t much care how he does it. He seems to hold women in contempt.
Trump, on the other hand, genuinely seems to love the company of beautiful women. And he does respect them: he has promoted women to high positions often.
It does seem likely that he has groped women, but it would seem to me the reason no one has ever called him out–the women who popped up during the election and have since disappeared don’t count–on it is that he has an extraordinarily developed sense of judgement, and that any women he may have done that with took it as a compliment because he had accurately judged they wanted him sexually. In fact, some he likely did subsequently seduce.
But the point I want to make is that his overall relation with women is one of PLEASURE, of consensual sex, of fun. He has always loved having a good time, like when he got Mario Andretti to drive him for the Apprentice . This is a guy who knows how to relax, and not always take himself too seriously. Obama could learn a lot from him.
Bill’s addiction was based on a need for dominance, not pleasure. Bill cultivated a great, goofy smile a long time ago, but he is deadly serious when it comes to power, to the pursuit and cultivation of it. He is privately a very angry man, we were told long ago when he was in office, as of course is Hillary.
The fact the Left does not want to talk about is that women do sometimes not just want but expect some degree of sexual aggression. It lets them know they are desirable, worth pursuing. Not all women, obviously, and certainly not traumatized women, but many women. And any man who consistently guesses right, and backs off immediately if and when wrong, is playing that game in a manner consistent with the instincts of both genders.
Edit: women want PLAYFUL sexual aggression. There is an expression a man can wear where it is OK, and one where it is not, and it really can’t be faked. The first time I really felt a strong sexual instinct was in a pillow fight with a bunch of girls at camp. We were laughing and having fun, but I suddenly realized I wanted one of those girls, and I think she wanted me. It would have flowed very naturally for both of us, if you will forgive that phrase.
We say the birds and the bees, because the urge to reproduce is a very important instinct, and it is the most natural thing in the world. We have made it something very, very complicated.