As we begin to convert tumescence, energy is released. We can feel overwhelmed, even crazy. This happens because the mind does not immediately know what to do with all the newly liberated energy, so it eventually hits an existing tumescent spot in the body. That spot activates, and the energy then accumulates around it into a tumescent ball. That tumescence is experienced as anxiety. Anxious, obsessive thoughts often circulate around a root theme or cause and can be challenging to maintain conscious attention in.
As the tumescence burns off, we can feel exposed, which often brings two seemingly opposing feelings. On the one hand, there is relief of having something oppressive no longer on top of us; on the other, there is a sense of vulnerable exposure, a nakedness to the elements that was not there before. We can feel like a raw nerve. This exposure elicits one of two responses.
The first is to return to the original tumescent pattern. Until that energy is fully reclaimed, it retains a kind of elastic memory and will pull the energy back into form, usually stronger and more virulent than before. This is most often what happens.
The second kind of response is that we engage this liberated energy with a fierce new awareness, which protects and defends this new opening simply by staying present in the anxious discomfort itself. In placing active attention in the center of this pattern, we stretch and overpower its form until it can no longer hold, like a rocket breaking earth’s gravity.
In this moment several things happen. The first is that this pattern is liberated and the energy that was locked inside of it is reintegrated back into our system, adding itself to our attention in a value-neutral way. It becomes a part of us. Having reclaimed this energy with active attention, we become forever free from the pattern and its limited responses, which only formed in the first place through passive attention.
There is a tendency in this new, naked, raw exposure to become passive, soft, and to lean out. If it feels like anything is happening to us; we enter a kind of victim consciousness where our attention is retracted. If we go passive, a veil develops and we feel locked behind it; it seems impossible to escape the veil, speak our thoughts, and have others sense us. To move beyond the veil is too big a risk. So, we retract our consciousness.
Fear and anxiety are telltale signs this veil has started to form. Our work is to turn toward our sensing mind, aim and sustain steady attention where we feel the contraction, and listen with gentle curiosity. There is a sense we are in direct contact with sentience itself and are open to receive what it wants us to know and what we are releasing.
In turning toward sentience, we take great care not to strain, push, or judge. We will face a whole sea of sensations that increase, trying to pull us back to the old level of passive consciousness. These scary and bad thoughts often try to get us to do several things to maintain the pattern: get distracted through fear, which leads to catastrophic thinking, blocking, becoming resentful, and saying, “I will never do X again,” or allowing ourselves to become submissive with our thoughts, letting them dominate us into shame.
Maintaining steady, unflappable attention is learning to stay conscious in the process of release. It is a process inherently out of our control as material is being released that we have tried to constrict. Thus the active, conscious mind can hold steady and be with great levels of discomfort and fear. Indeed, it is both the challenge and gift of our conscious attention to gain agency in the face of overwhelming discomfort.
There is a natural desire to withdraw as the release is happening. The key is to maintain steady, continuous attention. When we hit bedrock we will know, because the energy will release and we will feel free to enjoy it, and even write down the realizations.