In general, my interests seem to shift about every other week. For a long time, I tried to tackle that by forcing me to keep with one thing. That didn't work out at all. For example, I would be sitting with my latest literary text, and just... no words would come, I would get irritated, start looking around for other things to do, find excuses... By now, I try to always have at least one literary project, one coding project, and one book to read, so I can switch them up. This works quite well.
Just to find one more thing related to chastity: The language of "energy". I have ranted about this quite a lot in the past - mostly because I often encounter a kind of intellectual rigidity, and because I can't seem to manage to explain my position to people in a way that doesn't alienate them. And it's a shame because I feel we could all profit from sharing our notes.
I haven't found any proof of special sexual energies in the body. What I found, was a feeling that can be metaphorically described as an "energy" - just like we talk about "warm fuzzy feelings" or "getting cold feet". We don't think that our body temperature actually changes locally to any signifcant amount just because we have romantic emotions, or some mild panic. In the same vein, I see no reason to presume, based on my own experiences and whatever I know about human anatomy, that the "energy" is anything but a psychomotor effect. So I accept "kundalini", "energy", "qi" as more or less apt metaphors for something we do with our body/minds. Works for me, anyway.
What I seem to encounter, over and over again, are people who desparately need to convince me that there is some reality to it. And I want to convince them - wait for it - NOT that they are wrong, but that that belief is unnecessary for us to talk about our experiences. The experiences are exactly the same (I guess) regardless of our interpretation. Or not. In order to determine that, we have to first establish common ground. And that seems impossible to do.
I think this goes to a larger issue. I'm not going to drag religion and politics into this... but it seems like these are fundamentally similar issues. I think identity politcs, groupthink and tribalism play a part in this.
We're all massively identified with our own positions. That goes for those interlocutors, that goes for myself. It seems almost impossible to just present a point, explain how I got there, compare notes, and be done with it. It always escalates into anger and name-calling and you-just-don't-get-it, and whatever.
I tried a lot about that. Nothing ever works.
I would love to have a debate about "kundalini energy" - but purely on the meta level. I would like some people from the "it's real" crowd and some from the "it's just a metaphor" group (do you even exist? Hello...? HELLO!!!?) to talk about how we could talk about our common experiences, our paths and detours, without getting all riled up and dragged into debates about semantics.
I face a very similar issue when it comes to religion. There are those who believe in it - and there are those who think it's all bullcrap and just throw it away. I'm somewhere in between. I don't believe in it, but I think it's a fundamentally important part of the human condition, it's endlessly fascinating and we should study it in-depth - which I have been doing all my adult life. And it frustrates me to no and how there is no way to communicate across group boundaries without a fight.
Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/Joyful_Chastity/comments/huosv1/getting_back_into_chastity/
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