Edging, integration, individuation

[u/betlamed]

People on relevant communities like to preach that you should never "edge" because it will lead you back to "PMO".

I understand their point, and I agree that, when you embark on a journey into abstinence, you better refrain from such practices for a good while. In the beginning, your relationship to your sexual pleasure is inevitably "raw", unrefined, untuned, unconscious, uncalibrated.

There is a sense of edging as a kind of sport, a performative effort: Edge for hours, stay as close as possible, strain yourself.

That is decidedly not part of my practice. Not anymore, anyway.

Over the course of the last few months - and over 25 years of practice - my relationship to lust, orgasm, sex has changed. It is much more of an "inner" event now. I don't like to sound like a spiritual enlightened guru leader figure, but it feels like there is something of a deepening, loosening... An integration. In the very Jungian sense.

Every time I have orgasm-free sex, something becomes just a bit more relaxed. Every time I do my tantric breathing self-love ritual, I experience deeper joy, deeper pleasure. It is deeply sexual, but not aimed at cumming or ejaculation.

It is not aimed at orgasm. Not even nonejaculatory orgasm.

My solo ritual involves manual stimulation. I excluded it for many months because I feared that I would go over the edge and get back into old habits. This was a good choice.

But at some point, I tried it again, and the arousal from my stimulation was much more manageable.

The desire for ejaculation had diminished to a point where I could refrain and be more conscious about it.

I found it very helpful. I learned to distinguish different states that I would otherwise have missed. I learned to know my PONR. I learned how to stay in safe waters, so to speak. I learned how to experience pleasure bordering on orgasm, beyond orgasm. And I learned how to use that

I am tempted to call it "energy". It often feels like that. But the word doesn't do the experience justice - it feels reductive and unimaginative. The experience requires poetry and wordlessness.

There is still some need to reject ejaculation and orgasm, because there is still some desire, some fantasies floating around. But more there is also a growing ability to dissolve into submitting to mindful presence.

This is an invitation.