Self-Awareness Month: Moment of Homeopathy

“When we interact with someone else, we are often only interacting with ourselves. There is no real dialog. Two people are talking to themselves rather than to each other. We come from such completely different worlds, each of us, that we cannot even begin to comprehend what the other is experiencing.”

— Rajan Sankaran, Sensation Refined, an advanced text on homeopathy

So it often is with sex. We know how often it is an inner trip — more often than we would admit, sex is used as masturbation. While it seems harsh to say so, this is considered a practical matter, or something we ‘just cannot help’ — that is, who you happen to think about when you’re being sexual with someone else. But I think that using sex as masturbation gets in the way of both.

Think of sex as dynamic communication with someone else and masturbation as dynamic communication with yourself. If we confuse those two things, than neither can be what it is. This typical of the inside-out, upside-down quality of the world: seeking a ‘relationship’ so we can relate to ourselves or avoid doing so; wanting a relationship so we can feel like a whole person; feeling somehow wrong for being alone. I wouldn’t need to say anything about this, were it not one of the reasons that so many relationships are in such a state of struggle. Part of the struggle what you might call a boundary issue between ‘self’ and ‘other’.

I would propose that there are three basic modes of sex. One is masturbating alone. One is masturbating with a partner or friend. The other is contact sex with a partner or friend. One grants the pleasure of authentic communication with yourself. One is about exploring that authentic communication with yourself in the presence of someone you trust, or with whom you are exploring trust. One is about the pleasure of direct contact, sharing and exchange from a centered place.

Illustration moved below fold during daytime hours, due to nudity.