SPIRITUAL AWAKENING RUINED MY LIFE SKIN

Something deep inside me was apparently coming closer to the surface.Īnd then, at a weekend-long tantra workshop, it came. My social life withered and died I cried for any reason and for no reason.

SPIRITUAL AWAKENING RUINED MY LIFE SKIN

It was, as we wrote at the time, “a commitment to extreme, exaggerated spiritual openness over a period of approximately two years, an experiment in living without skin over an unnatural period of time.”Īs we neared the endpoint of the work, though, I was beginning to fall apart a little. In the spirit of research, we added tantra and other quasi-religious practices into the mix and took classes in those, too. They were risky scenes both emotionally and physically, challenging every skill we’d acquired during our combined half-century-plus of experience. We were enacting intense S/M scenes with one another and our other partners, and the scenes were often chosen to illuminate some aspect of the manuscript: edgy role-plays designed to tap into both personal and cultural histories of trauma and abuse, as well as intense, prolonged experiences of bondage and pain. My frequent co-author Dossie Easton and I were working on a book called “Radical Ecstasy,” charting what is known in S/M-land as “spirituality”: the transcendent, ecstatic, deeply connected state that may occur during and after a good scene. Not with a whimper - the gradual tailing-off that many S/M folks experience as age and relationships take the edge off their desire - but with a bang. It was a heady era that fed my ego and libido abundantly and my pocketbook at least adequately. I relied on its unique jolt of arousal, endorphins and adrenaline to get me through bad moods, PMS, creative blocks and anything else that was bringing me down. and Get More Pleasure From It” and “Warm Cheeks, Warm Heart.” I wrote and published books about it. I traveled around the country monthly, teaching workshops like “How to Take More Pain.

I spent every weekend and many weeknights at dungeon parties and S/M discussion groups. For nearly two decades, my social, sexual and philosophical life revolved around the subculture known as S/M, BDSM or leather.

Spiritual awakening ruined my life