When he reaches for you, and you lean into him; that arching sensation of want. A defenselessness of merging. The groan of pleasure. Maybe even a held, vulnerable shiver of anticipation and release.
The thrilling moment when a date takes your hand for the first time in a movie theatre. The fireworks that are that initial touch.
Lying in bed with your lover and as she puts her hand to your face, you lean into it, connecting, letting it envelop your being.
It’s sacred, sensual, intimate.
If a stranger cupped our face, out-of-the-blue, on the N/R train heading downtown through Times Square, we’d indignantly smack him out of the way, maybe with a scared or dirty look and most def move immediately to the opposite side of the car, probably even getting off at the next stop.
Depending on how agro we might be at that moment, punching and/or expletives might be in order, and if we really want some attention, perhaps a call-to-arms with everyone else on the subway car, confirming: yes, we did all see, just how creepy that was. N/R train creep-o-rama, “We were just made victim!”
This is what we do, day in and day out, every day.
We run toward pleasure and we run from pain.
When I teach, I start in on suffering. This, admittedly, is not a very sexy place to start. No one wants to be told to suffer. We go into spiritual seeking and practices to alleviate our suffering, not to make out with it.
In my blogpost last week, I offered: let life make love to you. By leaning into the pain, this is precisely what we do. Embracing our suffering is what eventually frees us to make every moment sensual.
And yes, I mean sensual.
There are people who use the term beloved, when they speak of the divine, or the Universe, or Whoever or Whatever have you. I’m not so wild about this word because for me in conjures up an image of people who make most moments “precious” and would have held key parties in the 70’s… but the idea: a sensual, visceral, experience of life that turns me on?? That I can wrap myself up in.
Beloved when used to describe this interaction is about this merging. It’s not about affection, but yoke: as yogis would say, union with the divine.
Our awakening is that—it is merging with the world. Literally. It’s an ongoing make-out fest with your experience of life. It is a practical, physical experience, not just an emotional bond.
Let’s talk about sex again.
You know how sometimes there might be a primal, or almost painful, shockingly acute moment within a carnal interaction, and for all intents and purposes, it should not feel good, and yet… it does? Suffering fully experienced does this. It feels like joy.
I have an amazing Russian facialist I go to in the West Village who has a teensy tiny little nook of a spa. I will tell you SJP and Marisa Tomei go there as well, and I say this not to name drop, but to show you she’s the real shiznet. In my short experience on this planet, I have found Russian women to not innately be gentle. In past years, I felt it more than reasonable, in fact, necessary to take half a pilfered xanax before prepping myself for her extractions.
A few weeks ago, I went by to see my darling little strong-handed Yana and didn’t think to wonder about how the pain might affect me in this expanded new state I’ve been tangoing with these last few months. Emotional pain I’ve been able to embrace and lushly experience for some time, but a Russian woman with a disposable sterilized lancet for those hard-to-get-to blackheads? Jeez, talk about suffering for your art…
Here’s what happened. I leaned into it. Really, quite undeviatingly, pushed into her hands as she went scavenging for the NYC dirt and grime that had submerged itself into my epidermis. I commingled with the pain, her fingers, the stabbing needle of a lancet. I pushed her to rock me to my proverbial knees. I shagged the sugar out of that treatment. Pain was my beeotch.
I’m not going to say it was orgasmic or anything, but it wasn’t too far off. There was no suffering attached to it.
My brazillian hottie sistah guru Adriana just produced a darling angel through a natural birth and we skyped about her experience with the pain. She (being the one to introduce me to these concepts) is a couple of years ahead in this work and is probably walking on water already. Dri spoke of how every woman should have the privilege of that experience—there is nothing like it. When we were in India together last, six months ago and she was pregs, she educated me about “orgasmic birth,” while I skeptically judged my hips were too small for so enlightened a venture.
With pain and suffering, I’ve been using this course of action for years in my emotional life. Rainy, moody day? I’ve often recounted how I put on all black, dark lipstick, Edith Piaf and voilà: je suis Français. For however long it takes. Then it passes, and I’m chipper and neutral again.
It is, quite simply, the be all and end all.
Just. Be. All.
Mary Oliver poemed: “And I will now tell you the truth. Everything in the world comes. At least closer, and cordially.”
When you lean into life, it leans into you.
The achingly beautiful Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön wrote:
“When we’ve touched in with the spaciousness of rikpa” (she describes this as “intelligence” or “brightness,”) “it begins to permeate everything. Once we’ve had a glimpse of the spaciousness… it will continue to expand.”
The spaciousness is within the pain. That’s the secret. No where else to find it, but within.
My word for rikpa would be Reality. Capital R. What I mean by that is, life perceived from the awakened state. Life with no filter of our mind’s false perceptions. Life as it is.
Embracing our pain, leaning into the suffering, merging with it, making love to it… this is the practice. We practice until it happens automatically. Until the moment that yes, life makes love to us.
Until the moment oneness overtakes our entire experience.
The loved becomes the beloved.
The flow is our pimp daddy ride.
Cause here’s the payoff:
In that moment?
Everything is ours.
Everything.
Booyakasha. That’s all I have to say about that.
