Lifeletter #122: Hidden Dimensions of Pleasure

yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.
             ~Allen Ginsberg

When I work with people these days, I keep noticing how much anxiety is present in their experience. Often the level of anxiety is not even conscious. It’s like an underground stream, running through their life. And this anxiety is not confined to the parameters of their individual experience. It runs through our whole culture at this time, the underlying sense of not being safe. We can point quite easily to the apparent causes of this profound unease: climate change and the destruction of our environment, global terrorism, a collapsing economy, the disintegration of traditional structures, unprecedented levels of change on all levels. These are the stories of what is happening on the outside.

It’s very interesting to turn and look inside, for a deeper glimpse of what this sense of not being safe is all about. It seems so important to discover the foundations for an inner stability and well-being. How strangely clinical those words sound: inner stability and well-being. But they point to an experience that is anything but clinical. It’s alive, flowing and erotic. Our basic sense of well-being is deeply rooted in the body, and our capacity to be present. This is what so many of us have lost touch with, in our disembodied culture.

I’ve been exploring, with deep interest, what it is that can call us back into the body, into this space of being here, fully human, alive and present. One of the most beautiful healing resources that I have stumbled across is pleasure. To stay connected with the simple ways that pleasure can move through me, is an art, a science and a blessing. No matter how extraordinarily difficult my life might be, it will still offer me distinct moments of pleasure. Over and over again they come to me. It’s not that pleasure has flown away and abandoned me; it’s that I have not learned how to recognize and receive it.

There are many kinds of pleasure available to us. The pleasures of the body are different from the pleasures of the heart and the mind. And the pleasures of the soul exist in a different dimension of our being. The embrace of pleasure needs to start at the beginning, with the body. We can’t leap over those simple pleasures to reach for the lofty pleasures of the soul. Because the pleasures that belong to the body are profoundly healing, grounding and restorative. They are what nourish us and help us to relax into a fundamental sense of well-being.

If any of you went shopping in a mall lately, as I did, you might have noticed how dissociated our post-modern culture is from the simple pleasures of being alive. There is very little in a mall that awakens our basic sense of vitality and well-being. Something in the nature of a mall seems to mirror our collective predicament. We are speeding around, living in our minds, disconnected from our bodies and from each other. There is very little pleasure in this state of being. It is hyped-up, manic, narrow and grey. The body needs space and depth and colour in order to come alive.

Pleasure happens when we can slow down and enter the rhythms, the pulsations, of our warm body and our living senses. When we can ground and soften enough to receive the sensations of a warm bath, snowflakes on the face, the flicker of candlelight. The sound of a loved one’s voice, or the touch of their hand, can give us so much, when we are living in the body.

On Christmas Eve, I went for a walk late at night. There were beautiful soft clouds curling all over the hills, and a sky full of stars. On the way home I passed through a dark patch on the road, under the trees. I nearly bumped into a young buck, with a tiny rack of antlers, standing right beside the road. I stood very quietly in the dark, feeling his presence, as he took me in. The silence of the night, the sweet coolness of the air, and that unexpected meeting filled me with a deep pleasure that lasted for days. I wasn’t trying to hold onto it, but it kept returning, like a gentle whisper of grace.

In the face of all that challenges us right now, these small moments of pleasure could seem unsubstantial and irrelevant. They used to seem so to me. As I move into my 65th year, my perspectives are changing. My reverence for the body, and what inhabiting it fully can offer us, is growing day by day.

The good news is, the body is endlessly forgiving. No matter how long I have abandoned it, it is still here, waiting for me, when I decide to return to its simple healing pleasures. Even people on their death beds have been awakened to the depth of pleasure that happens through touch.

Let’s not wait until we are close to death. The body is such a powerful ally. We can take shelter here now, and in the days to come.

with love,
Shayla