Here's something I do. When I get turned on by something new, that resonates with some unsung vibration in me that I can feel gathering, like the quiet opening hum of a singing bowl that is my hips, and I can taste a hungry thirst whetting, I permit myself only the smallest delight in this arousal. Some part of me sucks it dry almost immediately, convinced it is out of reach, too big and too late to become accomplished within, as if I should have already pursued it, and even be offering it, like the people who are, who turned down the right path I can never seem to find, can't quite remember the directions I've been given.
That is a sad relationship with pleasure, its immediate redirection toward self-improvement and self-loathing, and a heartbreaking life-long pattern of believing I must be qualified for love. I can recognize it, so that's a start. I know, intellectually, that there is no route Right Way that I could have or should have taken, that there is only what is right here, tugging on my appetite and inviting me deeper. But it is a hard habit to kick, which is coming, slowly, by loving myself, and by trusting this wild throbbing world to seduce me to my spawning ground.
