We could call our homeostatic shape of reception our bandwidth of deserving. Bandwidth refers to the range of frequencies that can be picked up by a device such as a TV or radio. When we tune to a particular station, signals that fall outside its bandwidth are filtered out; they are still being transmitted, but we cannot see or hear them.
It is able to take in only what we have taught ourselves to expect. When we say we cannot have what we want—a newer car, or a bigger house, or a more interesting job—it is not as if newer cars or bigger houses or more interesting jobs do not exist in the world. What we desire is out there, but our identity is not currently tuned to that signal.
The “we” we recognize is not of a shape to receive it. We can only have what we are capable of receiving. This is determined inside of us, not by the external world. If we want to have more out of life, we need to expand our bandwidth. However, we cannot change it just by thinking about it, for our bandwidth is shaped at an unconscious level. Our involuntary musculature—the potentially supple, dynamic, fibrous tissues of the body—reflects the dimensionality of our bandwidth, contracting and expanding as our “me” does.
It has a great memory and, if instructed, will enforce a more limited sense of self, becoming a kind of body armor that locks us into our habitual shape.
It flinches the way our eyes do when we emerge from a dark room into brilliant sunlight. Through Erotic practice, the body armor softens. It learns to stop tensing against incoming energy, and to relax and take in sensations that previously caused it to brace and flinch. The bandwidth of deserving gradually expands and the involuntary musculature can act as a mooring to our expanded identity, helping us to resist the tendency to constrict.
As we open to Eros, we become more open to receiving joy in all forms and it begins with the body. This expansion necessarily begins with an experience that hurts as anything that does not hurt already occurs within our range. We can trace the mind’s activities starting with how it occurs at the level of sensation. As our minds create meaning from what we feel at a sensory level, there will be an automatic contraction and an interpretation that goes something like, “this hurts,” “this is irritating,” “that burns,” “it feels like shards of glass.”
From there, we will likely observe the assignment of blame that arises when we perceive something is wrong. We may notice a further series of evaluative thoughts like, “There isn’t enough intentional care as we would like,” “he/she feels angry,” “my body is too sensitive today,” and “I don’t know how to do this.” Allowing these thoughts to permeate the mind unimpeded will increase the intensity of the contraction and pressure as our attention pulls away from the body and into this reaction. The pressure will occur as more pain, which will confirm the mind’s initial assessment that this is a painful experience.
Next, the mind will go into combat mode against the perceived threat. Here, we must remember the pain is caused by the cascading closure and not by anything that is actually happening. Our reactive patterns can be quite powerful and quite automated. Behind the scenes, our default way of thinking is to believe the only option is to close to the source of the pain. We have a limited range of stimuli our attention is able to stay open to, so when we breach our limit, we look at the stimuli as the source that “made us close.”
We do this instead of considering that the attention is too limited to remain open. This distinction is the difference between heaven and hell, and between the potential for growth and compounded tumescence. It is the very last thing the tumescent mind wants us to do, but
We can grow our attention wide enough to receive more than the extant “we” has ever been able to thus far.
We accept that we cannot control every stroke we will ever get and after some trial and error, we find we are faced with three options: We can grow our attention and receive; we can try to change the other person, the stroke, or the reception of such; or we can be sucked into the tumescent mind, suffering in an endless tumescent spiral of pain, closure, blame, justification, and more pain that will then lead to reactivity as rage, withdrawal, or checkout. Checking out can be anything from going into fantasy, to pumping up other areas, to getting lost in internal narrative—anything that makes us leave this stroke exactly as it is.
If, however, we can turn our attention to the offending stroke and, against every single habit, soften and open, something radical changes.
And just as constriction begets constriction, opening begets opening. With this opening comes the resources to back it, as if the body has just been waiting for permission to bring the power and steadiness it has to offer. We come into contact with another being or experience and we feel a sensation—heat, cold, or sharpness. The moment we start to retract and tighten in reaction, we can instead slow down, soften, and allow ourself to “fill.” This filling is the “exhale” of sensation. We may say we need the experience to go a certain way—to be faster, slower, with more or less intensity—to be able to soften and fill. But we do not need to adjust to the circumstance we find ourselves in.
This is the tumescent mind with its protest, essentially saying we must contract and withdraw from what does not meet our preference profile. In Erotic practice of all kinds, we aim to work internally, not externally.
