Ruwan Meepagala followed childhood dreams into discovering a whole new magic as old as life.
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When I was a kid I wished to one day be taken in by a real Obi Wan Kenobi, a wise old man who would teach me to use The Force- the ubiquitous energy binding and guiding all life and matter in the fictional Star Wars universe. To “use the Force” was to access a power and intuition far beyond normal human expectations.
As I grew up and let go of sci-fi fantasy stories, I retained the burning desire for guidance to find such force, some version of a guiding power allowing optimal expression of man. My later adult studies found many synonyms for this concept in many different places. Taoism calls it the Tao- the way of the universe. Ayurveda refers to it as prana- life force. Even economist John Maynard Keynes had a name for it, the animal spirit- the sometimes irrational instinct that ultimately guides the behavior in the market. Regardless of the name, I read it to mean a way to access a state of effortless peak performance, what Positive Psychology calls flow.
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Almost two years ago I discovered a company called OneTaste that had another take on this concept that proved to be way more practical, effective, and, well, interesting. They use the word Orgasm. OneTaste uses the expanded definition of ”orgasm,” not it’s common use as a synonym for “climax”–a momentary peak of sensation followed by a release. Their definition comes from its etymological roots (Indo-European *uerg, later urja “vigor” in Sanskrit, and orge “impulse” in Greek) to mean “the state of high sensation causing activation of the involuntary- the action not controlled by cerebral thought.”
When your heart rates increases, you sweat, get an erection, feel hot and bothered, get butterflies in your stomach, or any physical response that you can’t control, your involuntary is active. Neuroscientists would associate “the involuntary” with the autonomic nervous system, but what’s much more interesting about it is it’s role in the state of flow. When you spontaneously crack a brilliant joke, get hit by a wave of creativity, or are ecstatically enthralled by mind-blowing sex, you are also in your involuntary. That your “mind is blown” is an important piece. Only when your internal dialogue silences can you access the optimal state of flow.
Most people miss out on flow because their minds are too active trying to control the situation. In The Art of Failure, Malcolm Gladwell covered how tennis players “choke” when they start thinking about what they are doing and can no longer do what they would normally do instinctually. The overuse of the mind comes from a lack of trust in intuition, impulse, the animal spirit, if you will. So instead of allowing flow to be experienced, they try to voluntarily control life situations with the mind. As you would guess, this is the opposite of flow and acting through the involuntary.
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OneTaste taught me to access the involuntary, through a sexual practice called Orgasmic Meditation, “OM” for short. It’ a partnered practice where a man strokes a specific point on a woman’s clitoris for 15 minutes with specific intention. The purpose is not to get her to climax, but for both partners to enter the state of orgasm where both partners can feel the potent sensation being created between them.
By calibrating against her most sensitive body part, the clitoris, he learns to be guided by feeling, rather than thinking. This is all intuition is; our ability to hear the more intelligent voice beneath our mental chatter. When in flow, you don’t need to think. You are so immersed in what you’re doing that the right action for each moment comes to you intuitively. You act on feel.
By simply “following sensation”, a person finds that optimal results occur effortlessly. Sex and everything leading up to sex escalates naturally to extremely high sensation. Creative expression bursts out in torrents organically. Taxing problems become interesting challenges. Life overall becomes more vibrant and exciting as you basically get to observe yourself acting optimally and spontaneously in every moment.
I ultimately did find an Obi Wan. My wise teacher didn’t come in the form of a old man, but in that of a company teaching a sexual meditative practice and many women and their genitals. Orgasm, the involuntary state of high sensation, has taken the place of what my childhood self called The Force, however the effect is the same. This work has taught me to access the state of power and intuition beyond normal human expectations that can only be characterized as living in flow.
Photo: Flickr/Natesh Ramasamy
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