The Pleasure Body 2

Pain causes contraction. All organisms shrink from pain. Contraction prevents full engagement with the environment. This constraint diminishes our perceptions. What we cannot turn to look at, we cannot see. An awareness of pleasure broadens our perceptions by freeing us from the contraction of pain.

Making the shift to a pleasure body means supplanting the Trauma Model with a Resource Model. Trauma is about overwhelm, terror and desperation. The assumption is we are inadequate when challenged. The Resource Model assumes we can find adequate response- we are sufficient, capable, and functional. We respond with appetite rather than shrink in fear.

Pain is constructed, abstracted, arduous, single minded
Pleasure is natural, ecological, playful, adventurous, versatile
Pain is tension, rejection, restraint, indigestion
Pleasure is ease, acceptance, freedom, digesting
Pain is suffocating
Pleasure is breath

We can choose to attend to pleasure. By deliberately responding to challenge with an open attention, we can summon resources. This is a learn-able skill. It accrues. Practice makes it easier and stronger.

We can re-examine those places where we fall into habitual pain using the Resource Model. By examining where we are basing our choices in pain and fear, we can find opportunity to nurture pleasure.

Lots of data exist outside the realm of pain. They are useful for optimal function. Applying the Resource Model will allow us to access this data. This shifts the curve from centering on basic survival to encompassing more creative ranges. Contrary to our fears, our chances of survival in most situations actually increase because we are using a better model for processing incoming data.

Trauma is based in the past. The Pain Body is the home of trauma. Overwhelm is necessary to create trauma. If we perceive we have adequate resources available trauma is impossible. Perception is critical to moving beyond trauma. Using the perception reduces the dominance of the Pain Body.

Pleasure is current. The Pleasure Body is the home of possibility, of appreciation, capability and love for the world. Working with a Resource Model, we can nurture the Pleasure Body.

Gradually we come to organize our world according to what pleases us, meaning what serves us more than adequately. We now have room for play, for experimentation. This includes the experiment in social resonance we call compassion.

Investing in the Pleasure Body is a revolutionary action and a spiritual practice. The tyranny of fear is overthrown for the wisdom of competence, ease and elegance. Joy and compassion become our habits.