The Presence of Spirit in Moments of Pleasure
The Presence of Spirit in Moments of Pleasure
In my conversations about pleasure, people are often puzzled why pleasure would Pleasure be so intriguing to me a psychotherapist and spiritual counsellor. Pleasure isn’t commonly associated with either our process of healing or spirituality development. But interestingly for me, those are the two main motivators, in my project to redefine and reclaim a more wholistic understanding of pleasure.
A Story of Pleasure and Healing
Recently someone shared a story with me about pleasure and healing.
He is a person who had significant childhood trauma, and then choose the military as a profession. After several tours of duty, to say nothing of the challenges of day to day military life, for an already highly sensitive personality, the PTSD was significant.
Again, courageously he chooses to go on a healing journey - both literally and figuratively. He shared with me the various routes this journey took – therapy, spiritual healing, poetry and other creative pursuits and always, aulteristic engagement to support others. These were all forms of inward and outward seeking. At some point in this venture he found himself on a retreat in South East Asia. Along the way he carried a poem line from a Kim Rosen poem called Impossible Darkness. The central imagery of this poem is that of the chrysalis transforming into a butterfly. This planted a seed of imagining for him. Here’s a line that guided:
conceiving
in impossible darkness
the sheer
inevitability
of wings.
“My confidence built enough to get me to Thailand on a retreat. During this time, we saw many fascinating elephants. I got to ride one to the forest one day. The next day, I got to ride an elephant called Jo-Jo. I was high enough up on his shoulders to pick a coconut off a tree and smash it on the ground so he could eat it. We walked to the forest again the next day and a monarch butterfly followed us. Jo Jo and I went into the pond so he could bath. He dipped his head way down below the water. I hung onto his ears. And went in the water a bit myself. All of a sudden Jo-Jo swooshed up out of the water and I was still on him. It was as if I got baptized into being a whole person. I found pleasure in waving my arms coming out of that pond with wings and with happiness.”
For him this breakthrough experience was one of significant healing and of pure pleasure.
We need the experience of pleasure to heal
I love this story because it so beautifully illustrates a concept I’ve come to embrace. We need the experience of pleasure to heal. The small everyday moments of pleasure build our resiliency and faith in the goodness of life. The bigger capital “P” pleasure experiences, when we can open to them, often stretch us out of familiar, comfort zone and teach us about living daringly. So we need pleasure to heal and frequently in moments when we feel healing happening, we experience those moments as deeply pleasurable, as the story above conveys.
We can’t “make” pleasure or healing happen
Its my understanding that when we are in a deep experience of pleasure, things happen that we couldn’t ever imagine or even if we tried “make happen” – the monarch butterfly that follows the man and the elephant into the water for a healing, baptismal bath. Always in deep true pleasure the presence of spirit is palpable; and that spiritual presence is the elixir that supports healing to happen.
Your stories are such an inspiration and further education for me in this journey with pleasure. Please keep them coming. If you’d like to contribute, but perhaps don’t know exactly how, read the attached guidelines for details.
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“Loved the “slow medicine of it”