Tantra and Relationships Lessons
Increasing Your Capacity For Pleasure - The Barefoot doctor
Assuming pleasure is an a priori phenomenon and therefore something of infinite supply and availability, the amount being accessed only limited by your own self-restricting beliefs and hence physical posture, if you were to somehow locate and dismantle those self-limiting beliefs, you could increase your capacity for pleasure proportionately.
One obvious self-limiting belief is that pleasure can only come your way via other people, whether directly in person or through their services or products in the broadest sense.
Another is that you have to earn it.
Another is you have to deserve it.
Another is that pleasure is an indulgence and therefore anti-spiritual.
Another is that pleasure must only occur in free time.
Another is that pleasure gets in the way of fulfilling your responsibilities.
You can probably add to that list yourself.
These beliefs are insidious. They bypass your conscious radar like stealth bombers and lodge invisibly deep in your circuitry, disguised as rational thoughts of right and wrong, so it's unlikely you'll even recognise their presence unless engaging in a dedicated session of incisive introspection but for now, if any of the above resonate, write them down.
Pleasure only comes my way through other people.
I have to earn pleasure.
I have to deserve pleasure.
Pleasure is an anti-spiritual indulgence (it takes me away from the God).
It's only OK for me to have pleasure in my free time.
Pleasure gets in the way of me fulfilling my responsibilities.
Then look at that list and realise that's just a story you're telling yourself and that you are entitled and free to tell yourself any sort of story you want.
For instance you're perfectly at liberty to validly tell yourself the following.
Pleasure is a natural state, perhaps even THE natural state and something I generate entirely from within, with or without the aid of external triggers to remind me.
Pleasure is my natural state and all I have to do to experience it is choose to. It has nothing to do with my worth, in fact the more pleasure I allow myself, the more my self-worth grows.
Pleasure is the easiest route through to God. Pleasure is an aspect of God, quite possibly God's favourite aspect, so the more of it I allow myself, the more pleasure I afford God and that?s about the most spiritual thing I could ever do.
It's perfectly OK and even advisable for me to afford myself pleasure whatever I'm doing, especially while fulfilling my responsibilities that way, I imbue whatever I do with pleasure for everyone's sake.
Having looked at the story angle, next look at the physical.
You could define pleasure as a physical sensation, felt either in the brain, the sense organs, the chest, belly, and/or elsewhere. It's an energy, in other words.
The more you relax your musculature and soft tissue, the more you align your spine and the more you breathe in and out freely and smoothly without inhibition, the more energy of any kind, including in this instance, pleasure, can flow within and therefore stimulate you in a way that makes you go, ooh, that's nice? which after all is what I think we?re talking about here.
By way of personal comment and example, I've derived immense pleasure writing this for you. I've felt it in my fingertips as they interacted with the spring mechanism beneath each key. I've delighted in being single-focused. I've been tickled by having to examine the topic itself and I've been warmed thinking of you reading it. I've also found myself relaxing more to accommodate and savour the sensation, so apart from anything else, thanks very much and if you feel likewise and are moved to thank me back, all I can say is it was a pleasure.
The Barefoot Doctor: http://www.barefootdoctorglobal.com