Porn and Betrayal, continued

For many years I held what you might call the sex-positive view of this. The compulsiveness and the hurt were both side-effects of shame. Take away the shame and, voila! No more compulsiveness, no more hurt, lots of sex, everyone happy.

But I wondered. Porn proliferated, and it became much more acceptable, but it remained obdurately nasty. It didn't feel liberated or liberating, no matter what anybody said. It felt, as it still feels now to me, constricted and obsessive and unhappy. The compulsiveness didn't go away. My relation to it seemed much more like an alcoholic's relation to drink than a healthy person's relation to healthy pleasures. Something was clearly wrong. Maybe it was just me: my own addictive personality. I had, after all, the same response to some foods, some of them disgusting ones ("barbeque" potato chips, for example, which I clearly perceive to be grotesque-tasting, not to mention nutritionally toxic, and which I also binge on occasionally to this day, eating them till my mouth is raw.)

When I stumbled into the Dharma, I obtained a wholly new vocabulary thinking about desire. What if -- I could now wonder -- what was wrong was neither me, nor the porn, nor the potato chips? What if there was something wrong in the desire itself, something woven all through my consciousness, which just revealed itself clearly in these habits, because they happened to be the ones which weren't approved of by my culture?

Lots of things began to make sense. And suddenly I could dismiss the sex-positive solution, without denying the ecstasy and the deep perception of beauty which is also part of these obsessions. (Yes, even of potato chips.) And I could rewire the whole network of my thoughts about this. The problem wasn't that I was too open to beauty and desire. The problem was that I wasn't open enough. I know, I've said this before. Shall I say it again? I'll say it again. The problem was not that I was too open to beauty and desire. The problem was that I wasn't open enough.

I'm sure you can get to this same place by the path of renunciation. But renouncing pleasures, as I'm sure is clear by now, is not my strong suit, and since my culture is not exactly famous for supporting renunciation, it's a hard path for anyone in it to follow, even those who are less greedy and libidinous than I. (Which includes, I hope, most people.)

More anon.