When all the pores in my body feel open<\/p>\n
When there\u2019s a connection which feels like oneness with me, the near and the far<\/p>\n
When my senses feel alive enough to make me stay in the here and now<\/p>\n
Here and now, such a clich\u00e9, but you know how magical it can be<\/p>\n
When it feels pure<\/p>\n
When it feels like there is space enough to hold pain and pleasure and any mix of the two<\/p>\n
When too-much-ness is bearable<\/p>\n
When the other is needed, but it\u2019s really about me<\/p>\n
When rules help the energy to flow<\/p>\n
When there is magic in stillness<\/p>\n
When I can play<\/p>\n
When I feel safe enough to undertake adventures.<\/p>\n
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This is how I feel in the precious moments during silent meditation retreats and BDSM sessions.<\/p>\n
For much of the rest of life, I can do an almost too easy flip around.\u00a0 Like when my mind tells me that I am loved a lot by many but my body can\u2019t seem to retain that knowledge. Like when there seems to be a chink between me and me. I know well also the feeling of wanting to bolt from the here and now, however beautiful the moment is, in fact precisely because it\u2019s beautiful (till the phone comes to the rescue and I can click the moment rather than be in it).\u00a0 When too-much-ness is too much to bear.\u00a0 When it\u2019s about the other, as though the other can fill me up, and then it will be OK. When I need to make that horrid choice between safety and adventure\u2013 like between safety with a primary partner of so many years and \u2018just\u2019 the adventure of\u2018affairs\u2019.<\/p>\n
However elusive the combination of safety and adventure, it\u2019s a framework I find terribly useful. It helps me understand much of life, including spirituality and sexuality, and what the two might have in common. \u00a0I don\u2019t have a definition for safety and I\u2019m not sure how useful a definition would be, but for me it\u2019s a feeling of being held, but it\u2019s not about being held by a person on whom I depend for my fulfillment. \u00a0For me feeling safe is about being able to give myself permission to feel whatever I\u2019m feeling as well as permission to undertake adventures.\u00a0 I also don\u2019t have a singular definition of adventure, but for me it does mean aliveness. What it does not mean is simply happy sensations or excitement. Adventures could look most unlike adventures.<\/p>\n
A rider, if you like, before I proceed, is that when I speak of oneness, too-much-ness and so on, I don\u2019t mean that these are natural or pure states. The social, economic and political are at play here, like in all other aspects of life.\u00a0 The psyche is certainly at play. The fantasy of oneness and the resistance to it I believe cannot be understood without the frame of psychoanalysis.That however is not the focus of this article.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to begin with silent meditation retreats. Unlike my attempts at meditating at home which are not only erratic but can also be rather dry and boring, every retreat that I have been for so far, and I have been going twice a year for over ten years, have been, touch wood, so wonderful.\u00a0 I could say it\u2019s nature that does the trick (the spring retreat takes place in the hills in the North and the winter retreat on a farm in Southern India). But then there\u2019s only that much that I have been able to enjoy of nature on holidays in the hills during morning walks with friends, which also means chatting, pointing to trees and birds, guessing their names, taking photos (ofcourse),or sipping rum and coke as the sun sets.The retreats don\u2019t allow any such buffers between me and the too-much-ness of nature.\u00a0 No chatting, no booze, no phone. And I feel safe enough to soak in all that beauty.<\/p>\n
Mercifully, at the retreat we are encouraged to lie down and meditate (my bad back won\u2019t allow the more militaristic vipasana style). Lying in the meditation hall, I feel safe enough in the presence of my meditation teacher and the others, for whatever comes up to come up (including the untellable).\u00a0 I\u2019m helped by my teacher\u2019s evocation of the night sky that\u2019s vast enough to hold all sensations, feelings and thoughts. Again, mercifully for me, there is plenty of food to eat at the retreat.\u00a0 Actually it seems to me like food never tasted better, eaten with others, mostly strangers, in silence (no Netflix as buffer to its taste and feel).\u00a0 I feel safe enough to play\u2013 a word that my meditation teacher uses all the time.\u00a0 She encourages us to play with how we breathe, with how we walk, with images and with ideas.\u00a0 Most of all she encourages us to not take ourselves so seriously! Feeling safe enough at the retreats means having adventures of the kind that redefine what adventure is.\u00a0 Like looking into the valley at birds swooping down and flying around below, not above me. Like insights that seem to come from nowhere.\u00a0 Like feeling what feels like love for perfect strangers.\u00a0 Like how amazing the sun feels on the skin. Like images, not always comfortable at all, that grip the senses, shaking up ideas of who I am.<\/p>\n
I\u2019d like to move along the continuum to BDSM sessions. It\u2019s not that sex can\u2019t be great, but it can\u2019t really compete with sub-space (\u2018sub\u2019 being short for submissive since it is a term to describe a zone of intensity that a submissive can experience).\u00a0 It\u2019s difficult to describe sub space. For me it\u2019s like the feeling that immediately follows an orgasm but one that can go on from a few minutes to a few hours. \u00a0However amazing the experience of being in sub-space is, I shouldn\u2019t downplay the deep, calm intensity during acts that might or might not end in sub space.\u00a0 Like what it feels like during and not just after being tied up, flogged (rhythmically please and preferably to Nusrat\u2019s older qawwalis), having (candle) wax dripped or needles going in and out of the skin like a stitch (sounds gory, but it\u2019s really not that painful), or suddenly being made to do something super scary. These and innumerable other acts are part of what we call \u2018play\u2019. Beyond a point, for me, the act doesn\u2019t matter, what matters is the adventure of the here and now which feels spiritual.\u00a0 (The term \u2018spiritual\u2019 for some reason seems to be used mostly by kinksters, as we call ourselves, from the global North, not India).\u00a0 When I say spiritual for BDSM, I don\u2019t mean to sanitise it. It\u2019s still hot as hell.\u00a0 But spiritual because of the surrender to the flow of energy that lies at the heart of BDSM. It\u2019s not only submissives who surrender, but also Dominants, who can also themselves be surprised by what they do.<\/p>\n
Both in the silent meditation retreats and the BDSM sessions I feel safe. Safe enough to feel oneness with the self and other(s). Safe enough to bear too-much-ness, safe enough to surrender to the here and now. Safe enough to play \u2013 to be open to the not-so-rational parts of me, to be how I\u2019m not meant to be, allowing me to be surprised. Safe enough for the energy to flow.\u00a0 To be flute-like enough, to not get in the way of its flow. The retreats and the sessions also share elements that contribute to the feeling of safety.\u00a0 These include the sense of being held (whether by my meditation teacher, the community or the Dominant) and minimal but sacrosanct rules (whether about silence or the safe word).<\/p>\n
For me the silent meditation retreats and BDSM sessions speak to what sexuality and spirituality might have in common \u2013 that rarest of rare combination of security and adventure.Whether in the realm of the sexual or the spiritual, to the extent that one can or should separate the two, there is the possibility of feeling safe enough to allow adventures to happen.<\/p>\n
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In case you would like information about the silent meditation retreats please write do write to me at jayajulie@gmail.com<\/a>. For more information about BDSM please visit https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/kinkycollective\/<\/em><\/p>\n