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Porn: Pleasure or Pain?
In my “Feminine Treasures” class an important issue came up; one that stirs a lot of emotion for women. What happens when a man is “addicted” to searching for and buying porn images? The women often feel unease. Why?
When sex is an object for sale it feels cheap and looses its sacredness. It is difficult for women to understand how men can enjoy sexual excitement without love. Women get aroused when their hearts open to a quality they admire and adore. Men get aroused and then the energy rises up to the heart and can grow love or desire for union. Where you put your attention the energy goes. If they are looking at porn where does the energy go? If it goes to a fantasy, then does less attention go to his female partner? 
Think of all the energy going into the search for the pictures or movies. Then consider the energy loss if the man ejaculates. According to yogic studies one ejaculation is equivalent to 36 hours of intense mental work or 72 hours of physical work, like chopping wood. It is their essence, their basic vitality. Men have all this energy which they can use to fuel their consciousness, love, and presence.
If a man thinks of his woman with loving desire throughout the day the fore play is seamless and psychically builds into multiplied energy when making love. Imagine if that energy did go towards his partner what wonderful love they can generate together! The energy arousal can generally energize the man. If men get bored at the workplace and they look at a beautiful woman or image, they feel energized and work better. This arousal can also go into self development and creativity if it is consciously channelled. The secrecy around it can feel threatening to a woman, catching her man in the act of searching around the porn sites when she is out of the house. She starts to mistrust his integrity. He might feel guilty or embarrassed. He might be addicted and loses his self mastery to temptation. We need to be compassionate for men who are “grabbed by the balls” by a collective force of entertainment. Like wise women are grabbed by fashion magazines and they might wish they would look like the “sexy” models. Women have the lure of romantic novels and movies and infatuation with movie stars. Men are hunting for a certain kind of energy. If he tastes it energetically and it arouses him he may then go back to his partner with more sexual desire. If a woman radiates just one taste all the time the man will tend to go hunting for another taste. If the woman plays with the full spectrum of feminine expressions, dark and sexy, innocent and sweet, wise, powerful, she will satisfy her man in a fuller way. When a man is hunting around with his eyes the woman might feel that he does not honour or appreciate her beauty. Men need to remember to express how beautiful the woman in his life is to him. One lady said “now I feel the yucky side of sex”. Sex in our collective consciousness is entwined with a lot of suffering like rape, abuse, broken hearts, broken families, violence…. It is a sticky energy that binds with emotions, negative or positive. It amplifies our emotions. If we feel unhappy and we generate sexual energy into it, the unhappiness grows. Creative energy can likewise cultivate virtues. If you take away a toy from a child, you need to give them another toy. It is important to replace the porn adventure with the evolving process of subtle energy flows and connections. When this level of subtle body lovemaking opens up there is no going back to the way things were before. 
Sacred sexuality connects sex with love. We can feel love through looking at pictures and we can feel love with a real person. Is there a qualitative difference when the stimulation comes from outside or an inner heart connection? What ingredients will cook up the most powerful alchemical elixir, a picture of a meal or a real meal?
The root causes of sex addiction could go way back to birth trauma, circumcision or not being breast fed. A painful experience longs for pleasure, even if it comes from superficial sources. Love and understanding can heal these traumatic experiences. Imagine if the time someone looks at the computer screen was devoted to looking at a real flower on the side of the street? We would be giving attention to Mother Earth. We would be sensitizing our senses. With the over load of stimulating entertainment many people have become numbed to the sensual experiences that nature offers us. Many women in the porn industry have disturbing “issues” around sexuality. On the other hand there are performers who feel it as an art form. It has been transformed by some into a self development practice like “Burlesque Yoga”. All women are representatives of the goddess. The body is the temple of beauty. Looking at porn could be seen as looking at art and honouring the beauty of the body, though the messages are meant to manipulate with the intention “Buy Me”. It is a business that may induce momentary pleasure and cause longer ripples of pain. I invite you to explore your methods of arousing the sexual juices to evolve into greater love and spiritual awareness. |
Minke de Vos
Tao Alchemy Teacher Minke is one of the facilitators of the Tao tantric Arts TTCs. She has been teaching Tao arts for 30 years as part of Universal Healing Tao, with Mantak Chia and Michael Winn. www.silentground.com 
Minke de Vos
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