Introduction: Celibate with a Great Sex Life

Storm Constantine’s books have entertained me, inspired my own writing, led me to get to know a lot of wonderful people, and put me in a position to work on this very zine. They’ve also given me a sex life most people would envy. The funny thing is, I’m celibate.

Celibate and having a great sex life? Well, heck yes! Let’s just say it doesn’t necessarily take two to tango – or reach a state of bliss so extreme it matches up with the climaxes in some of Storm’s novels. Who knows, it may be that the lessons I’ve learned may provide something better than I could ever get with another person or something it’s just impossible to get with another person, although I’ll have to work on testing that theory. (That’s my latest conceit and for now I’m enjoying the warm and fuzzy feeling it gives me.)

The lessons I’ve learned don’t only relate to sex, however. In many ways, what I’ve learned to do with my mind, spirit and body mirrors practices of those who practice meditation or other energy channeling, whether it’s Reiki or Tantra. Ironically, such practices had heretofore always seemed like something I couldn’t manage because I was too inhibited to lie or sit down and have a "vision" or project my body’s energy or feeling it cycling through me. Maybe one day I will venture into those other disciplines, but for now I am content that I have, using my own methods, entered a universe that up until I read Storm’s books, was almost entirely invisible to me.

Basic Method: How I Do It

Although I like to term my experience as "visions," in fact there are three distinct activities I engage in: energy beaming, visioning, and energy cycling. Energy beaming leads to heightened sexual peak and connectivity to the universe; visioning leads to lengthy periods of stimulation and taps into the unconscious mind and random bits of the universe; and energy cycling leads to intense body-encompassing orgasms that leave the body with more energy that it started with. What I want to do in this essay is describe these activities and give guidance on how they might be practiced by other people.

Before I describe the activities, however, I need to present a very basic fact. All three of these activities take place as part of another more basic, mundane activity. While there are many ways to flex your mind beyond its normal constraints (meditation, Tantra, drugs, etc.) I discovered the way to do it through an activity I’d been engaging in for quite some time: masturbation.

There, I said it! Planning this essay, I’ve thought of a hundred ways to get around this part. I consider just skirting it entirely and going for a strictly academic essay. I also thought about just saying it once but not describing it in any detail at all. Over and over I thought of how I might do it because truly, I thought it would be a little freaky to mention it. In my head I worded it one way, the worded it another way. Finally, though, I decided that if I really want to be instructive, I’ve got to be frank and speak from my own experience. Plus, what’s for me to be ashamed of?² As I say up in the introduction, this method might even be better than sex with another person, so heck, why NOT share it? So here goes: To reach these alternate states of consciousness, I masturbate.

I do it several nights a week and have been for months now, usually just before I go to bed. Since discovering this new method, I wouldn’t have it any other way, because it’s a million times more rewarding than anything I ever tried in years past – and I’ve tried lots and lots of different ways. I’d even been using the same tools in the past but in this case it’s really the method and the application of the mind that achieves the effect, not the tools. In fact, I think you could achieve the same result with some other tools or with someone else’s assistance. For me, however, there is so far one method and that method is, as I put it to a friend, "the best thing ever."

Here’s what I do. After I’ve covered up my birds, turned out the kitchen lights, brushed my teeth, turned off the computer, put on my night and done all the other end-of-the-day business, I climb into bed. Sometimes I read or write in my journal or talk out some dialogue for stories I’m writing. Then the light goes out. You can guess what comes next, right? Hmmm, maybe!

Plugged conveniently into the outlet by my bed is a very large vibrator. Of every vibrator I’ve ever owned, this one, the Personal Wand Massager² (massager, ha!) is by far the best I’ve ever had. Since buying it for myself at Sharper Image a good six years ago -- one of my first "treats" after starting my first full-time job -- it has since paid for itself many, many times over – especially lately. The weird thing is, although I always treasured the PWM as a "power tool" because of it high setting, it was only when I learned to enjoy the low setting that I entered the world of alternate consciousness, racking up experiences worthy of being written up in an essay. (Would I really write about this in public if it weren’t incredible?)

To enter this world, all I do is flip the switch into the on position and just place it, oh, there, right in front. The tool has a ball on the end about the size of a tennis ball. Whether on high or low, the ball applies stimulation to the general area, although by pressing you can direct it to specific spots. In the past, I always used the high setting and went for specific.

To achieve my consciousness now, however, I use the low setting, pressing firmly, and it is from this general stimulation, without any movement or penetration or touching myself in any other way, that I achieve orgasms and visions beyond what I ever thought was possible. Only last year I was rereading one of my favorite sex books, For Yourself: The Fulfillment of Female Sexuality³, trying to figure out if I’d ever really had an orgasm. That was a year ago and I really wasn’t sure. Now I’m sure. Very. Orgasm after orgasm. No doubt about it. And I think I have Storm to thank for it! (Storm, stop blushing, I will explain.)

Energy Beaming: Powering the Universe

Energy beaming is the very first of the methods I learned and one I probably never would have stumbled across if it hadn’t been for Storm. It happened one night a few days after reading one of Storm’s books and thoughts of energy and intention were fresh in my mind, even if I wasn’t exactly thinking of them consciously.

I remember climbing in bed, sometime after 1 a.m., I’d imagine, and just before turning off the light, noticed my vibrator on the floor, already plugged into the wall. "Oh, why not?" thought. It would be a little treat before bed. So switched out the light and pulled the tool into the bed. Lying back and keeping my nightgown and underwear on, I decided I only really wanted a light pleasure, nothing intense. "I use the high setting too often," I thought to myself.

It was a pleasant sensation but it was weak. "Be patient," something made me say to myself. "Enjoy what’s there." I waited and soon I noticed that I really appreciated what I did feel. In a way, I realized, it was better than doing it on high. "Hmmm, interesting," I thought. I could feel warmth spreading out and felt satisfied like after a good meal.

I kept it up and the wonderful feeling kept growing. This might not sound odd, but the fact is that not only do I usually use the vibrator with a higher setting, but I normally move it around. It had usually been much more of an active thing, me "giving" myself pleasure by strategically aiming the toy, not tapping into my body and letting it erupt. I had never been that passive about it. With the low setting, however, things were different. Instead of forcing my body into having an orgasm, overpowering it with the vibrator, I was just sitting there letting it give what it wanted to – which was a lot! It was as if I’ve tapped into some wondrous spring of pleasure that simply kept giving and giving and giving. So very unlike putting it on high for a quick off.

This is when the idea of energy beaming came to me. "This is wonderful," I thought to myself. "I’m pulling this incredibly vibrant, yummy limitless pleasure out of nowhere – why waste it?" Lying there, I thought that it would be great if I could somehow transmit my energy outward and share it somehow. I thought about aruna and Grissecon and the ways Wraeththu work with energies and use sexual energy for healing and to cast spells and cure diseases. What if somehow I could work magic like that?

I decided to give it a shot. Continuing on as before, I began to imagine all the wonderful feelings I was experiencing emanating away from my body and into the room. I thought about them like radio waves going outward and absorbing into everything – my furniture, the clothes in my open closet, the air, the curtains, and everything else. I thought of how the energy would seep into everything and eventually, if I kept imbuing them with my energy, the things that had absorbed the energy would grow powerful.

The real surprise for me was that in sharing my pleasure with the world, I actually increased my own. I had thought that sending the pleasure outward would deplete me, like I’d handed it off, leaving none left for me. Instead I found that the very action of consciously powering the universe made me surge with energy, experiencing intense orgasms roughly in time with the waves I was sending out! The more waves I sent, the more almost unbearably orgasmic I felt. It was like my body had turned into a power plant. The energy supply was limitless as my body sought to produce more and more pleasure, both for myself and the area I was supplying.

From that first night onward, energy beaming has always been a marvel to me. In subsequent months I have expanded my thinking on it, sometimes thinking beyond just the room but the entire city. I’ll lie in bed thinking of my energy shooting out through the walls and into all the tall skyscrapers of downtown Atlanta. I have visions of it racing up the atrium of the Marriott Marquis or the elevator shafts of 191 Peachtree. I think of it going through all my neighbors and people out on the streets. On nights of rare ambition, I feel it flowing out of me and beaming all over the world.

This is energy beaming as I experience it. For another person, it might be different, but I would suggest that the basic method is, when receiving pleasure yourself (self-pleasure or pleasure from someone else), think about the pleasure being not just something local, but something you can express outwardly. Picture it shooting out of you like invisible waves or perhaps a beautiful song spiraling outward. If you’re with someone, perhaps you can picture the energy flowing into your partner. Think of yourself as a generator and challenge yourself to see just how much energy you can produce. You might be very surprised!

Visioning: Like Watching TV Inside Your Own Head

Until a few months ago, the idea of having visions was really a theoretical one as far as I was concerned. Actually it was more like complete hogwash in some ways, since it had never really happened to me and therefore was up there with alien sighting and near death experiences. It’s one of those things that’s referenced all over the place – in Storm’s work, articles about meditation and religion, movies – but to me, it was always a mystery how somebody could reach a state where they were seeing things that weren’t there and yet were wide awake. I mean, was it drugs? Was it total self-delusion? Were they just imagining things they wanted to see and then seeing them? I really had my doubts. And then I experienced it myself.

The first time I engaged in visioning was actually only shortly after I learned the trick of energy beaming. I was lying there with my eyes closed, beaming away, when I started to "see" something in my head. That very first time, it was more like a pattern than any actual images. I believe it was something like a symmetrical web, an electronic vine growing very quickly. It was something I saw against the darkness, like watching television on a screen with the contrast turned down very, very low so I could barely see it in the murk, but somehow I could pick up all the details. The images came very quickly, like the sound-sensitive lights in a disco, sort of rushing along as I rushed along. As soon as I took away the vibrator and stopped my beaming, it would stop as well. "Pretty cool!" I thought.

From that small beginning quickly came some big things. Initially I mainly saw patterns, like geometric shapes, webs, and tree branches. Soon, however, I started to see images that were a lot more specific and to my wonder, seemed to have some sort of meaning. Here are descriptions of a few of these "montage visions":

• Butterflies: In my mind’s eye, I saw a butterfly, its wings twitching as it perched on a leafy green bush. It was in close-up, like on a nature documentary. After the first one I saw another, then another, until there was a montage of butterflies, different sizes and shapes, like slides flashing by quickly. Most of the butterflies would be sitting, but some were flying. I don’t control what I’m seeing consciously, so the sense of it being a slide show was very strong. The next day on the walk to work I saw five butterflies, which of course I had to go and watch.

• The Lamp: This was a dark vision of a lamp glowing in a dark room. It was one of those very dark Arts and Crafts lamps with the golden mushroom tops, designed for mood more than for light. I thought for a moment that it had become a glowing mushroom, but then it was a lamp. Other thing popped into my mind as well, but again and again, I’d see the lamp, which to me spoke of secrets.

• Goddesses and Madonnas of the World: Given how the experience of visioning seems to involve letting go of barriers constructed by conventional consciousness, it’s not surprising that one of my visions turned into something like a religious vision. In my conscious mind I’d never sit around thinking about Madonna or goddesses, after all. I’m not even Catholic. As for what I saw, since I think descriptions made close to the actual vision are more reliable than ones from way after, here’s how I described this one to a friend:
  It was all in black & white or maybe sepia, like old photos or stylized music video style, another case of my brain taking care of creative aesthetics, as it often does in my dreams, making them show up like artsy movies, LOL. It was done as a montage, the technique where you see a lot of flashing images, sort of a video collage. All the images sort of popped up and piled on top of one another, fading in and out. As with most the visions I've been having, sometimes if I paid attention to them they'd stay longer but other times they'd run away from me.

  Anyway, that comes up and then I got all these flashes of carved stone church statues, lots of Virgin Mary figures, faces and hands. Probably there were female saints in there, too. I have a lot of background in sculpture and church art so I was seeing all sorts of things, although no specific piece -- not like Michelangelo’s pietas or anything. That went on for a while but then gradually it blended into images of other non-Christian iconography. I knew I was seeing sculpture of other female goddesses and icons, coming from different cultures, including Africa, Asian, Mesopotamia, etc. It was all faces and the big feeling was that it was some message about the commonality of the goddess. I've made fun of the whole goddess worship a lot of lesbians seem to get into, so I was like "Hmmm, what the heck?" but it was very interesting.

  Shortly after writing this description, I decided I wanted to try and recreate vision as a sort of animation, simply to pass on some idea of what it was like. Put your mouse of this link to view it (large file, please wait for it to load).

The experience of having montages play inside my head has brought up a lot of questions in my mind. What determines what I see first and what the theme is? Is this like dreaming while awake? When the images are random, is it just my brain firing off random messages of stuff it’s seen in books, on TV, people on the street, places I’ve been? On a few occasions I’ve entertained the idea that it’s more than just my brain freeing itself, but rather my brain hooking into some central network of the mind and all the images just coming in like a download. Other times I’ve thought about how my brain could be acting like a radio, picking up on transmissions. If I were schizophrenic I probably would believe those last two theories but in general I stick with the idea that I’m simply freeing myself up to see the contents of my own mind.

As fascinating as I find as these montage, I think what’s even cooler to me are the more sophisticated visions I’ve had in very recent months. These aren’t slide shows, but actual journeys. Rather than just watching a slide show, I’m going on an actual trip, with my brain apparently either piloting simulation trips or, who knows, actually going there.

One of the first journeys my brain took was like something out of an acid trip or some sort of hallucination. I started off the same way as always, probably doing some energy beaming and seeing a few montages, but then the montage switched from flashes of static images into something more like a movie. I saw mountains, great peaked mountains capped with ice, like the Rockies or the Alps, and my point of view was like that of an eagle swooping over the land. I was traveling fast, the mountains rushing past. Still, they continued on as far as I could see. Eventually I moved in closer to earth and the mountains seemed steeper then and also rockier, devoid of vegetation, made up of gray rock like granite. It reminded me of an adventure game where I’d be flying down a canyon in a fighter plane, only it was only my brain barreling onward, twisting this way and that as it all rushed by. For all the speed, however, I was seeing a lot of detail, with the rock hyper-real, almost computer-generated, with crisp edges and a feeling that they were somehow enhanced.

Finally the journey took on a whole new aspect when, flying by, I somehow gained the ability to not only fly past these great rocks, but to fly in close enough to examine the rock in detail. It was as if I was seeing the rock through a magnifying glass and then it was like an electron microscope, where I was almost tunneling down into the rock, seeing all the tiny details as I zoomed between the tiny crevices between the molecules. Meanwhile I was still flying by, but I was getting smaller and smaller so that rather than flying through the wide space of a canyon, I was skimming the actual surface of the rock, which to me had become like a canyon. The mountains only seemed large because I was so small. I realized then that what to me were mountains were actually only small pebbles, chunks of granite, in the normal world. It was all a matter of perspective.

Another journey I took was more like a story or, as struck me as soon as it was over, like something from one of Storm’s stories. Characters in the Grigori trilogy, Burying the Shadow, Silverheart and all her books are always entering trances or going on trips in their dreams. Reading these books, I had thought the vision aspect fascinating but fanciful -- until I actually found myself in a strange place with strange people who seemed to be talking to me. Maybe this happens in dreams all the time, but the fact that I was awake and conscious of it makes it different to me somehow. As for what exactly I experienced, for that I will reference a description I wrote out for a friend the day after, as it contains more detail and immediacy than I could give it today:

Anyway, the vision started out with these very ephemeral flashes of desert and cliffs in the Southwest. It reminded me of Wiley Coyote cartoons only it was all done fuzzy like Impressionist paintings. I kept seeing the tops of monolithic rock formations and then above them there were things in the sky like birds, although I really couldn't see. These visions of the cliffs would come in flashes and were sort of transparent. I saw that for a while and then I saw more of the desert, which was dry and dusty.

Then I saw this figure, a Native American man, with long dark hair. I mostly just saw his face. He looked upset, like he was moaning and had seen something bad happen. I would see the desert and then this guy, who was obviously in the desert somewhere. I saw him flash into my head a few times and eventually I knew he wasn't outside, but inside, like in one of those big cliff complexes or a cave dwelling. He was standing there with I think no shirt on and he was trying to communicate something I think. I saw him and had the sense I was visiting his home or the home of his tribe.

The next thing I saw was this really old person. I don't know if it was a man or a woman but they had white hair and not a lot of teeth. The figure I saw was shriveled up and squatting down on the ground. The person was looking up, like they were very excitedly trying to explain something to me, like "Look, look!" I looked down and then I got flashes of tracks on the floor, like someone had made lines and stuff in the sandy floor. I'm not sure if the lines were there or the old person had made them but they were very excited about them and trying to tell me it was some sort of magic sign. I got the feeling that the younger guy wasn't impressed by this but the old person was convinced I had to know about it.

I really wonder what would have happened if I had kept on with that vision, but as often happens, I simply stopped it, having seen enough. Much as I might have liked to keep on with that journey, I had to go to bed. I switched it off like a TV, which is rather appropriate since it felt like I was watching a movie. I really had no control over it, but rather let it happen to me.

Letting it happen is actually a big part of having visions, whether they’re static images or montages or movies. It’s sort of difficult for me to explain exactly how to have one, since I seem able to open my mind up fairly easily, but all the same, I’d say the main thing is to avoid forcing anything and meanwhile trying to be as passive as possible. Concentrate not on what you specifically want to see ("I want to see birds!" or "I want to see my lover!") and don’t get anxious about having to see something. Just like forcing yourself to have an orgasm often ruins it, forcing yourself to have a vision will often keep it from coming. You need to just see what pops up and then passively watch it. You can get excited by what you see and you can feel curious ("What’s happening?" or "What is that?"), but don’t go trying to cling to it or chase after it, because visions are elusive, ephemeral things and will run away from you like rabbits in the field. Just stand and watch.

Energy Cycling: Almost Too Much Power

The last activity I’ve come up with, energy cycling, is one I feel almost the least qualified to discuss, first because it’s something I’ve only very recently discovered, second because I think there are lots of people who must know more about it than I do. Having been working my way through Storm’s Inward Revolution, it’s obvious to me that the energy and visualization work involved in energy cycling is something that’s been worked with and discussed for ages.

Energy cycling is actually closely related to energy beaming, described earlier, with the big difference being that rather than being shot out into the universe, the pleasure and energy is cycled through the body. What I do is experience pleasure and then let it pool in one place, building, straining to get out and shoot into the universe. I monitor the situation until suddenly there’s an eruption of not all the energy, but what feels like just some of it, like an overflow. In my mind, it seems like bubbles but it could be foam or a cloud. (Since none of this is "real," this is simply how I imagine the energy, it’s not an actual bubbly sensation in the physical sense.)

Rather than fleeing the scene, however, these energy bubbles are captured, sucked backward up to my head, as I will the energy back into my body. I take a deep breath as I do this, channeling it through the air and back into me through my head, then willing it down through my torso until it reaches its original point, where it once again joins the cauldron of boiling energy. Then I’ll wait for a build-up again.

The second eruption is usually greater than the first; I rescue the energy and pass it above and through my body just like the first. Then I do the same thing again and again. With every cycle the pleasure becomes more intense, not only at the point of origin but in my entire body. The cycle picks up speed and soon I feel like I’ve become a turbine.

So far I haven’t been able to carry out cycling for very long stretches, nor have I reached the point where I’ve created an entirely continuous loop, without even any build-up, but I’m working towards it. Because of the way the process accelerates and the volatility of the energy, it does take some control in order to keep it going, which makes it a bit different than the other two methods. For energy cycling you need to let the energy grow and accelerate but you need to also consciously move it around, so it does take some work on your part.

Conclusion: The Power Revolution

So far I’ve been engaging in these activities for less than a year. For me it’s a certainly that I will keep up with it for a long time to come. Given the way I seem to keep learning more, it may be that in coming months I’ll have further revelations and learn even more about the energy and power and pleasure I can derive on my very own – and maybe I’ll even be able to share them again.

Endnotes

1. There's another reason I just couldn't bear hiding it: I'd feel like a total hypocrite since I used to be a very open advocate of masturbation, bragging about my vibrator collection. Used to go out with friends to vibrator shopping. Got them as gifts too. How totally silly of me not to promote them! After all, my friends' pet name for masturbation is "metro" and hey, I think you might notice the name of my company and the domain this is hosted on, eh?
2. Similar to this Acuvibe Rechargeable Personal Massager, only with a plug instead of batteries. For more excellent vibrators, check out Good Vibrations.
3. I first discovered For Yourself during spring break my sophomore year of college - while visiting the Library of Congress in Washington, DC! Yes, there beneath the beautiful neo-classical dome of that most famous library, I dared to request a book from the stacks I'd found while fooling around with the computerized catalog system. I didn't really go there looking for it, just decided to look up books on masturbation. Although it took about 45 minutes for the book to arrive, reading it was certainly worthwhile. I would strongly recommend it to any woman who's not sure she's really getting the most out of sex, either with a partner or on her own. The author is Lonnie Garfield Barbach. Original publication date was 1975 but there are probably reprints and the book it available online through American Book Exchange.