Fly Me to the Moon
Recently in our Tayu workgroup we have been discussing the arising and functioning of strong mechanical sexual impluses and practical ways of working with such manifestations. In working personally with such phenomena, I have been struck by how easily the raw energetic yearning for contact can generate an unending series of plausible fantasies that if unchecked tend to seep into all my interactions with the particular object. There is no reasoning with these fantasies - much like the hydra of myth, if I attempt to cut off one head, then seven more grow back.
But the energy state behind the fantasies has a distinctive feeling sense. When that feeling is in front of me and I am aware of its presence, I have found that I can put it down as an act of conscious suffering. "Suffering" is the operative word, because when I have put the feeling down (as in choosing not to give it any attention in this particular moment), there is a corresponding feeling of loss. This sense of loss, however brief, has been for me painful as though I am giving up a promise or an ideal. And in the process of dealing with particularly powerful currents of this kind of energy, I have had to endure many such moments of sacrifice and loss.
Gurdjieff has often talked about becoming food for the Moon. In some of my recent studies of tarot, I have likewise come to associate this quality of seductive, sexually charged, fantasy making with the Moon card of the tarot deck. When our attention is given over to this stream of energy unchecked, we indeed become food for the Moon. Our vital energy can become sapped much like that of a junkie strung out on the promises proffered by a powerful narcotic - always promised, never delivered. Conscious suffering as a practice in this domain can neutralize the magnetic attraction of such streams of energy until such point that the energy gets redirected and the particular fantasies fade to the background.
Beyond the practice of conscious suffering, I have also found the Centrum of Gravity Question practice useful. These compelling sexually charged fantasies have for me had a character of yearning for completion by uniting with the particular object. But the so-called objects have always been my projections rather real people. As such, this yearning is in fact a powerful drive for completion by uniting with something in myself that I am not in touch with at the moment. Call it an emotional dislocation or a hole. The Centrum of Gravity Question to hold in conjunction with the arising of the yearning is something along the lines of, "What is it that I am missing in myself that would be completed by this object?" The key to this practice is not to generate a bunch of answers at a psychological level in response to the question, but rather to use the question to hold open the sense of emptiness or lacking underlying the yearning. By directing attention to the emptiness and being willing to be with that on an ongoing basis, we can indirectly effect a filling in of this hole.
The act of Conscious Suffering in which we willfully remove attention from the seductive fantasy making process induces a sense of loss felt most acutely in the Emotional Center. The Centrum of Gravity question engages the Intellectual Center to hold open the space surrounding this loss with a quality of perspective. The combination of the two practices can allow the naturally arising sexual energy of the Body Center to be realigned and reconnected with the functioning of the organism as a whole.
