Pleasuring for Peace
Healing childhood trauma to shift towards a blissful civilization.
As someone with my own #MeToo stories, I watch with terror and exhilaration as victims become heroes and tyrants are exposed as monsters.
I examine my own behaviour and choices, acknowledging how I have participated in coercion, enabling and the hidden advantages of passivity, often layered within one ‘it’s complicated’ relationship. 🙄
We are all victims, all tyrants and all heroes, taming our own monsters.
In the future, I believe historians will identify #MeToo as one of the turning points signalling the beginning of the end of the patriarchal western European civilization.
Beyond the turmoil of our social revolution, a small, soft voice keeps asking ‘We don’t want rape culture — it hurts men as much as women ; but what do we want?’
There is a long lever we can use to shift the whole world towards our emerging alt-civilisation of planet-wide, peaceful hyperabundance:
Pleasure
In 1975, James W. Prescott published an article on the most profoundly important ideas I have discovered on the connection between pleasure and peace: Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence. (A long read, very well-worth your attention.)
Based on laboratory animal research and cross-cultural studies, he presents a strong argument that societies which prioritize pleasure, starting from babyhood, are peaceful and sex-positive for adults, with a natural, gentle equilibrium between women and men, leaders and followers.
Societies which deprive babies and children of physical contact and pleasure, which practice socialized child abuse such as physical punishment and genital mutilation (both female and male), generate adult societies defined by coercion, violence, crime, war and rape culture. Sound familiar?
Childhood trauma sets up the conditions for childhood PTSD : a key factor in adult mental health issues, which may be obvious ; more surprisingly, many physical health issues are also closely correlated with C-PTSD.
Most of us have at least some childhood trauma. Most of our powerful decision-makers are damaged by childhood trauma.
Not me, you’re thinking? For a quick measure of how trauma may be affecting your life, visit Aces-Too-High for a short questionnaire and a rich set of references. (Yes, it will suck your attention — and it’s worth it.)
Looking only at the widespread and long-lasting effects of childhood trauma and the evidence of psychopathology in our leadership, it’s easy to fall into depression, passivity and victimhood in the face of our abusive, world-dominating culture. Brutal honesty points to the fact that we are part of the problem, even as we try to blame the ‘other’.
However, there is an antidote to our toxic culture. An antidote to the toxic stress we viciously cycle through our bodies, families, communities and countries. A simple concept, unfolding a complex series of solutions.
Pleasure
If you could rewrite your childhood experience, what would you change? Close your eyes, take in a deep breath and release it. During three long outbreaths, envision your ideal childhood. Do it now.
Opening your eyes, perhaps you feel great pain for the burden of childhood suffering you still carry within you. The gap between remembered reality and your ideal can be a vast chasm, full of monsters.
Catch and release your emotions: name the feeling, feel it intensely, and let go with your outbreath. Notice the new feeling arising. Breathe out and release again. Experiment with head bowed, thrown back, noises, tapping. Memories are held in our bodies ; move as you feel inspired.
Keep doing it until you feel empty, clear. (Most of us will revisit this exercise more than once. There are layers and yet more layers — onion skins — of suffering.)
Now, if you could reFrame your childhood without changing anything but radically shifting your emotional response to memories, how would your world be different?
Relax deeply, (perhaps in bed before sleeping,) and visit your ideal imaginary learning environment: mine is a reclinable technochair with a large screen, surrounded by a black velvet coccoon.
Pick one of your most painful childhood memories ; watch it on the screen, and then deliberately re-engineer it.
Go deep into sensation. Comfort and hold the child you were. Reparent yourself, knowing what you know now. Watch with your inner child as, together, you find a way to understand the life lesson of what happened— even, and especially, if it’s a powerful lesson in what not to do.
We can disrupt the unconscious repetition of the sins of our fathers and mothers.
Today, make one small babystep to give your self pleasure.
It could be taking the time to truly savour a cup of your favourite tea ; running a beautiful route ; a warm bath and/or cold shower ; snuggling with your children ; hugging a willing partner for 3 minutes to release oxytocin… massages, delicious food and sustained orgasm are all part of the options I can imagine — I’m sure you have many more ideas. 😊
Bliss begins within.
[^http://extrafabulouscomics.com — leaving this here so I don’t lose the link before I get onto a laptop to format it properly]
I’d love to hear about your experiments and experiences — please feel welcome to share your stories and questions. ❤
