Alex – The man in his forties was me; I get fed up with saying, “I did”, or “I was”.
So your description of your situation was one I knew well. It wasn’t caused by sexual abuse but by my mother screaming at me when I was thirteen that I would kill myself if I carried on masturbating. So the causes can be almost anything.
True later in life I realised why she felt I might kill myself – it was because at that time TB was rife, and several people I knew had the illness. My mother was terrified I had TB and she must have heard that those with TB often express extreme sexual activity – a sort of procreate before I die thing.
But added to that I had another side to the problem – to ejaculate left me feeling as if I had been left half dead.
It does seem as if you are hiding something from yourself and so lock your natural feelings away. I found that the reason many people are sick or ill is because there is a natural impulse to pull your hand away when you touch something hot. The same applies when we encounter difficult or painful feelings, people avoid them. Such avoidance is everywhere in the use of extreme alcohol, smoking, medical drugs and such.
It was desperation trying to find a way, other than medication and alcohol to deal with my depression and emotional pain. I got to the point I was ready to die if necessary, so the idea of facing pain didn’t bother me. But I was lucky because a friend started having LSD therapy sessions with R Laing – they were legal at the time, and he asked me if I would accompany him – sort of look after him on his journey home. Laing asked me if I would be interested in trying it. Having read the literature thoroughly because I had realised that it was like releasing the dream process while awake I said yes.
Having used dreams as a way to find healing for years, the session was an extraordinary burst of insight for me. I saw what was holding me and many people back – we were all trying so bloody hard, thinking and feeling, that the more effort and intellectual fervour we put into our search, or by religious intensity, we would get through our pain.
In the session I saw that by doing nothing but simply watching and allowing that I made amazing breakthroughs. Of course the session was like a tremendous dream, but because I had learnt to go beyond the symbolism by years of exploring dreams – not the intellectual fervour of interpreting them – I had found a way. It took me step by step to a normal life beyond suffering.
So I have tried to explain this in
https://dreamhawk.com/approaches-to-being/opening-to-life/ Tony