In the past few days, for the sake of experiment, I was making a list of everything that brings me pleasure. If I am gong to engage in kindling desire, pleasure mapping and intensity mobilization meta games to enhance my collaboration with the world, I better start knowing myself. The list I composed was surprisingly long. Worth noticing, while I was writing, things stared to come out, pulling me deeper and deeper into self inquiry. I left it open, without any particular framing or categorisation. A waterfall of thoughts, ideas, memories of sensations and experiences. Things that feel important, goals and aspiration. I put everything under pleasure. I am aspiring to get to the point when my internal and external alignment will allow my pleasures to manifest without causing any conflict or discomfort to anyone. Holding pleasure in good hands feels important.
What constitutes good hands. Taking care of the body, keeping it healthy, grounded and perceivable. By perceivable I mean cultivate awareness and be present in the moment. It is very important to be in good relationship with the body and don’t take me wrong - I am not proposing to dive deep into the void of bodily explorations, exposing yourself to prolonged heat and food deprivation, I am talking about simple daily routines like breathing, focusing, meditation here and there. I see these as small, simple islands of full presence I punctuate my day with. Sometimes only a few moments are enough to build a connection. And why is the body so important, main reason is that it can tell us the truth about the quality of the experience we are having and through that we can find what brings pleasure. Sometimes even if we think we like something, we actually don’t, on experiential level. Most of the time, if we take a moment and listen to our gut feeling it will tell us what is actually happening. Not always, but often following our gut feeling leads us to better choices in the long run. Of course, sometimes it happens that we decide to go against that feeling but then it becomes a choice. The body as a sensing device to recognise pleasure is a great strategy to start with. Good to remember that everyone has their own way to get in touch with our sensing machinery, the only way to find out what works is to try different things and see what works. Noticing is the most difficult part, but once that happens half of the job done, congratulations!
Once the body is present and atuned, it is important to work on other virtues which contribute to good hands to hold pleasure principal. These include humanistic, ethical and moral beliefs and orientations that allow for meaningful connections with others to emerge. Providing care, being together, helping each other, feeling empathy and compassion and other social skills that are necessary to practice discernment and enhance good energies by engaging with pleasure. For what else are good hands needed? I would propose to rise above the individual experience and look how individual pleasure fits in a global context. To have good hands one must be able to give away their own pleasure for the greater good. Under all those conditions, having a strong inner core, building relationships and thinking globally, while taking responsibility for our own stance within those systems, will accommodate and justify any pleasure that wants to come out. And, if we all make sure we wash our hands diligently, we might experience the world where more and more pleasure will be found. Wild pleasure, real pleasure. Alive.