Increasing the 'Pleasure Threshold'

I'm sitting opposite a ridiculous hot Israeli guy in a fancy restaurant in Iceland. He's fresh out of ISTA (a conscious s€xual & shamanic retreat).

Looking deep into my eyes he asks me, in his cute accent, "How good can you stand it?"

I wanna keep the flirtation going, but I honestly have no idea what he's talking about.

"... Errrr, what do you mean?" I ask.

"How much happiness are you open to? How much pleasure are you willing to receive?" he elaborates.

I feel a fluttering between my legs but it's overruled by my spiritually-correct mind & I answer,

"I accept & am grateful for whatever life brings me. Whether it's pleasure or pain, it's all just experiences to be witnessed."

As the answer leaves my mouth, it doesn't resonate as highest Truth & a question forms in its place...

What if my approach is *limiting* the joy & abundance Life is able to give me? What if I'm capping my capacity for bliss & have inadvertently created a Pleasure Threshold?

After a conservative Christian upbringing until I was 18, compounded by two decades of Buddhist & Hindu inspired spiritual conditioning around transcending the body (especially the senses), I've been testing the pleasure waters tentatively.

I'm now 2 years into consciously expanding my own Pleasure Threshold & am ecstatic to share my findings with you...

Our ability to experience (healthy) fun, pleasure, ecstasy, bliss etc IS the antidote to suffering.

THIS pleasure is what’s on the flip side of doing all that shadow work & clearing trauma.

I see it in so many others walking the path to awakening (& I was stuck there for years too). There's an addiction to the feeling of BREAKTHROUGH when you overcome a past pain.

But at a certain stage on your healing journey, there’s a tipping point. You no longer need to remain hyper-vigilant about all your unhealthy patterns.

You don't need to stay stuck, wallowing in the past, trying to fix yourself.

Once you’ve cleared the majority of your pain, it’s time to MOVE into increasing your capacity to receive pleasure. (Don't worry, Life has a habit of walloping you if you get stuck in bypass mode!)

So, back to the lush, Israeli man. We leave the restaurant & wander the deserted, winter streets of Reykjavík. He takes my hand & pulls me into a passionate first kiss, giant flakes of snow landing on our faces. Allowing the pleasure to soar through my whole body, I know this is going to be a night where I answer his question “How good can you stand it?”.

Yum.

Want to know how to expand your Pleasure Threshold? Let me tell you the simple way I've been doing it.

Whenever I find myself in a state of genuine joy, pleasure, happiness... I remind MYSELF & utter to Life "THIS and MORE, thank you!".

I take this positive experience as my new baseline for bliss & invite the possibility of expanding it. It's basically a gratitude meditation on steroids.

Are you ready to trust that you’ll constantly show up to do the shadow work when it’s time AND you’re also ready to GO OUT, have fun & LIVE?!!