In our last session about Connecting with Pleasure as a skill to expand your old, limiting program and create the life you want, there were good questions that I didn’t get to. So in this episode, we’ll dive deeper into the topic of pleasure and see if we can bring more clarity to the difference between our mind’s ideas and attachment to pleasure, and pleasure from integrity.
Listen to it here:
Here’s a summary of what I cover in the episode about Pleasure:
When we’ve been identified and pulled along by our mind program our entire life, it’s hard to tell the difference between desires for pleasure, wanting’s from integrity, and attachments to pleasure as an escape, distraction, or addiction.
This is where you first of all need to learn skills to step outside of the stories your mind is running to observe them. To start stalking them and turn the tables on them pulling your attention along. When you’ve inventoried some of these stories and seen what kind of unconscious beliefs are driving them, now you start to recognize the components of a fear-based mind structure.
In other words, you’ll start to recognize when the mind has an attachment to an object or experience out of fear, or when the desire for an experience is about expansion and enjoyment from integrity.
So what do you do about the minds’ attachment to pleasure that might be there?
I received a question during the last session.
How do you treat the craving for pleasure?
I’ve found that I have these strong desires (either sexual or for objects) but have come to realize that there is little fulfillment from giving in to these. On the other hand, although I know I won’t get genuine pleasure (unlike the pleasure of the moment) from these desires, I don’t want to repress them since I’ve had a life of that already and it hasn’t worked out too well. Are these cravings able to be addressed at the time or, since I think they are just a way to fill some void, are they something that needs to be worked on overtime as part of an overall program?
Your mind will likely tell you that there are only two options when it comes to pleasure: Give in to them, or repress them.
Because first, the mind likes to talk in black or white, either-or, ultimatums. “If you don’t do this, that will happen.” And second, the thinking mind seldom has the knowledge to change unconscious patterns and therefore doesn’t see it as an option. It’s operating and thinking from within the box it knows.
But it is very possible to change.
- Shift out to the observer (with your hunting skills)
- Inventory and understand the beliefs behind the attachment (why it was formed)
- Inventory and understand how different parts of the mind have been relating to the attachment (judgment, victimization, need to fix it, hiding it…)
Which will set you up for the most important piece when it comes to pleasure:
4. Acknowledge and allow all layers of the structure to be felt.
a. Release the emotions that have been suppressed
b. Acknowledge the genius in these layers getting exactly what they want
You see, the addiction or attachment itself is just a compensating strategy or a protection mechanism to avoid an emotion underneath. When you ask it to “go away”, to the mind it’s like taking away the parachute when you go sky-diving or your water on a hike through the desert. It believes you need it, that your life, honor, and safety depend on it. So instead of putting out the night light for a child who’s scared of the dark, we’ll talk to the child about its emotions and figure out what it’s afraid of, letting it know that it’s okay to be felt.
Once you see and allow the emotion underneath to be felt (not scared of it anymore) the need for the compensating strategy will disappear.
How the mind’s attachment to pleasure might look like:
- “You have to do this or else!”
- A strong impulse in the body that is almost impossible to resist (that isn’t about your body survival functions like peeing and drinking water)
- Judgment of the things you want, or because you gave in to a desire
- A feeling of contraction and “have to” in the body
How connecting to pleasure from integrity might look like:
- Exploring pleasure in every-day things and where it normally wouldn’t be found, according to the mind
- Stripping the labels given by the mind to certain situations and instead experience them just as they are in the body
- Allow yourself to have the quirks and desires you have, even if they are not acted upon
- Not denying the unconscious parts that are finding pleasure in dark, not morally accepted stuff
- A feeling of expansion and yes in the body
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