The evolution of porn is interesting. It used to be a secret sin: dirty pictures under the table, dirty movies in the slum of the city, then porn videos in the back room of the video store. Porn videos were stories with a plot. You had to fast forward for the money shot. Then internet porn made the story porn obsolete. Everything is the money shot.
But one theme remains: porn is a sexual ballet. The male pole is the means upon which the female dances in orgasm. The male is just a pumping machine while the female is emotional expression and enjoyment of the body’s abandonment.
Porn is Shiva/Shakti in Hindu Tantric religion. In a society where the body’s pleasures or flesh is sin, porn is a liberating force. No matter how liberal we think we are, there is a deep puritan stain running through our collective psyche. Porn is like the call of the wild, the call of freedom from guilt, and shame of the body.
Without Adam’s fig leaf and shame, there would be no need for porn.
Let’s face it. In our society with its puritanical roots—the 50s is never far behind—sex is our religion. Sex sells everything. Sex is liberation from the known. Sex is the call of the wild. Sex is freedom from convention. Sex is getting in touch with the body. Sex is being free from thought control. Sex is an adventure into the unknown. Sex is being itself, the creative force of life itself. In Hindu cosmology, the Cosmos is an orgasm of death and union. Sex is death; sex is life.
Porn is always looking for virgin territory, to go where no one else has gone. Once the new virgin territory is known, it becomes boring and a new virgin must be explored, with great risk at first, but then others follow.
Like everything else in our society, the forbidden land of tomorrow is where we must go. To be the first in a new land is our imperative. The female is the land, the male is the explorer. The arousal of erotic energy is the goal. Anything can become erotic when there is a tease, the ambiguity of yes/no. When something is withheld but at the same time an invitation, there is eroticism. The game is to slowly advance until the final release where the One is restored in the Two that has been held apart.
So I’m writing about Porn as Metaphor. What makes it addictive? What are the deeper mythic currents it activates? What is the universal in the particular?
If addicted to Porn, one must make what you are addicted to transparent to the universal. Addiction comes from being unconscious of the universal in the particulars we are addicted to. We are addicting because we want to see the universal, the good, if you will, in ourselves, but it through the addiction we get in touch with that as mediator.
Making the unconscious conscious is bypassing the mediator, and one’s necessary addiction to it.
I worked in an adult bookstore back in the early 90’s for a couple years selling porn and dildos and everything sex you can think of.
It was great. I learned a lot about my sexuality and sexuality in general.
Indulging in porn today always brings shame, guilt and suffering despite having amazing orgasms.
I refrain as the subsequent feelings that result after orgasm are not worth the orgasm.
Yes…I too am interested in the Zen of Porn. IT’s EMPTY! I was just connecting the IT”S TOASTED of Mad Men with Porn and the love hate relationship, the innocent/guilt double-bind. It is good because it is bad? But in Zen truth: It’s Empty! We play with two faces of our own mind. All of Western civilization’s fear of the body, the flesh as fallen, comes into play here.
But lets look at the basic eroticism in porn. Erotic energy is what we are talking about, the energy aroused by the erotic double-bind, the yes that is no. The invitation and the refusal as one. Eroticism creates ambiguity, and the ambiguity like a batter holds the two poles and generates the energy needed to transcend the ambiguity and restore Oneness…AH….
Erotic energy makes the cosmos go around. Even science is erotic. Nature teases the scientist, beckoning, rejecting…until the scientist or inventor goes mad until the AH….I have it!