FOOT FETISH? SPANKING? THE SHRINKS NOW SAY YOU'RE GOOD TO GO!

This is from a report on Slate.com this morning:

"The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), the bible of psychiatry published by the American Psychiatric Association, currently defines "unusual" sexual turn-ons as paraphilias. Paraphilias include everything from foot fetishes, S&M and erotic eating to exhibitionism and pedophilia. These paraphilias are now to be considered harmless unless the person experiencing them feels distressed about their preferences or if their unusual sexual practices are harmful to others."

"Simply put, the latest edition of the manual, DSM V, will say that happy kinksters don’t have a mental disorder. But unhappy kinksters do," wrote Slate's Jillian Keenan.

Well, we're getting there. Here in 5D, the "Pleasure Principle" is in full force. Like the survival instinct, our instinct to follow pleasure is hard-wired into the human organism. Simply stated, the Pleasure Principle comes down to this: if it feels good, it is good, with the one not-so-small caveat - that in order to know what truly feels good, you have to actually be in touch with your body and your feelings which, because of the wounds we all endure in childhood, requires a fair amount of self-work first in order to dismantle the defenses created to survive those early slings and arrows. Once in touch with yourself in that way, you can then live well by following the dictates of your pleasure principle and Full Permission Living.


Here's an excerpt from the Pathwork Guide Lecture entitled, "MOVEMENT, CONSCIOUSNESS, EXPERIENCE: PLEASURE, THE ESSENCE OF LIFE":

"Experience contains the pleasure principle. The possibility for utter bliss is contained in the life force. It is your inborn longing to partake of this experience, which becomes possible when your entire organism is in harmony with reality, when you no longer fight against it because of misunderstandings."

The "in harmony with reality" part is key in this way - to have sadistic or masochistic fantasies, and to consciously and mutually indulge them in sex play, is fun. But to actually be sadistic or masochistic in your intent, and to act out those aspects in your relationship life is not. In his book, "Dark Eros," Thomas Moore, a former monk and Jungian analyst and writer, writes that it is precisely this topic [sadomasochism] that needs to be explored mentally, even spiritually, through fantasy and play, in order to prevent it from erupting into anti-social, or even criminal acts in the flesh.

So, back to your fetishes... the bottom line is this: if your sexual fantasy life, and the concomitant games you play in bed (or in the kitchen or the dungeon), don't stress you out or hurt anyone else, well...