I am reading “Cuffed, Tied, and Satisfied”, a book about kink by my teachers’ teacher, Jaiya. I unexpectedly, surprisingly felt a wave of emotion while reading one small section. It was about a deep cathartic emotional release Jaiya experienced with her partner through kink. As this happened I thought and felt a few things.
How surprising! I feel so moved by this! It seems kinda outsized.
I feel keenly aware of my own conditioning. No one ever taught me anything about kink, let alone about it as healing and rewarding, a way be fully expressed and seen in one’s entirety.
I feel something way down deep, grief maybe, that I and millions and millions of people have been robbed. Fear and ignorance instilled in us by religion, family, society, and culture rob us of the very things we need to break free from fear and ignorance. Kink is bad. Kink is evil. Those people are weird, demented, sick, etc. Really?? “Those people” are actively working to free themselves! It is clear madness to sit inside a prison and rail, mock, loathe, and judge those who are breaking out. I feel sad/mad about that. And baffled. And it happens all the time in so many different ways. Silly, strange humxns.
I am so grateful I can feel! I remember a time, a long, long time when I didn’t feel much of anything, when I had forgotten what it was like to allow feelings to be, to know that no matter how intense they always pass.
I feel so grateful to know that feeling all the feels makes it possible to feel all the feels. It is worth it to feel pain and fear and shame because feeling those fully makes it possible to feel joy, ecstasy, empathy, love, and compassion.
These are the sorts of things you might hear revealed at an Authentic Relating circle. — internal thoughts and feelings that come along with an experience. Every single experience we ever have comes with thoughts and feelings. The choice is to notice them, allow them, maybe share them, or to pretend they aren’t there, squishing them down into the smallest version we can. Enjoy the warm feeling of connection. Tolerate the cold isolation of disconnection.
The experience of feeling emotion and of sharing that with other humxns is a gift, a great big, fancy, messy, laugh-y, cry-face, unpredictable, confusing, and wondrous gift. Lean in. Unwrap. Engage. If you want some of this in real life — not the kink, y’all, not at this event — git yerself a ticket and come on over to Berkeley this coming Monday, 5/22. See you there!
And…I’d really like to engage with you! Tell me something, even something that seems really small or insignificant to you. I really want to engage with you. You can even tell me what fears, worries, and/or resistance you are feeling right now as I’ve asked you to engage with me.