Sometimes we are confronted with something we do not really want to see and there are several ways to react to this: keep looking and be outraged, look away and be outraged, or look away and keep going about your business as you did before. All of those are common reactions, but they have very different effects on us. Why bring this up in the context of conscious sensuality and tantra? In order to properly focus on your own experience, it is important to accept whatever someone else’s experience may be. If you have ever been to a group activity involving any kind of embodied experience – be that tantra, ecstatic dance, or similar – you may have seen things you did not expect: an unexpected erection or an unusual groany sound coming out of someone's throat. Or you may have seen someone else going into a state that made you cringe a little, or maybe even question what you were doing there. It is important to separate what you see other people experience from what you actually feel and do yourself. Find your own truth and let others do the same. Looking at the three reactions mentioned above, the most upsetting one is actually to ‘looking away and be outraged’: it’s this reaction that has the biggest potential to fester and become an obsession, even a crusade against whatever that person has seen and was upset by. Moving on: ‘looking while being outraged’ is an interesting one (and I would associate that with disaster tourism theory). Clearly, whatever that person sees holds a certain fascination and makes me wonder where the outrage actually comes from. Is it actually outrage at what they see? Or a sense of desire, exclusion, curiosity, shame or something else? Option three – looking away and move on – appears to be the most sensible one. It indicates that someone has seen something, acknowledged it, dealt with it and moved on. Best result scenario if ever I saw one. Sadly, either of these mindsets can be created even more easily by just IMAGINING something without even having seen it in person. That could explain the huge number of people who hold strong beliefs on all manner of subjects they never really experienced themselves. Personally, I’m very much in favour of a fourth option: keep looking and enjoy. I believe this is the sign of a truly open mind, full of curiosity and acceptance of whatever others are doing and having fun with. And maybe even trying some of it out for yourself... Check in with your reactions. Understand them and move on.
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These are my own thoughts on aspects of my work I feel strongly about. Archives
September 2021
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