Poison to Medicine

Tumescence is the activation of a pattern of energy that induces doubt, fear, anger, or hunger
and blinds one to reality, inducing them to act in ways that are against their spiritual self-interest.

This activation carries with it a sense of urgency and vigilance, rooted in pain that must feed on pain.

Just as sugar moves towards sugar, tumescence, which is a painful congestion with its own agenda, seeks pain.

It does this by:

1. Baiting, provoking, inflaming another.

2. Taking the bait that another sets—from the media, a post, a partner,
or a co-worker.

3. Adopting an oppositional mindset: for me or against me, friend or foe, good or evil.

4. Hypervigilance that seeks out the “condition” that confirms the reason for
the pain, from “trauma” to social justice.

5. Looking for self-pity supporters, rescuers, saviors to feed the pain.

6. Seeking out people who will upset, violate, or abandon us so that we can “innocently” feed the pain.

7. Seeking out ways that social disadvantage can feed the pain.

You know you are in tumescence if you are fixing, comparing, or judging.

The activity of tumescence can best be described as the horns in your head fitting into the holes of another’s.

It’s a shady deal between the pain source in me relating to the pain source in you; the shadow of the divine in me honoring the divine in you.

At bottom is the feeling of powerlessness as these behaviors, moving out of alignment with the creative impulse, strangle the flow.

This is the source of the pain: acting out of alignment with Eros, Creativity, and life.

The remedy is to open creative and erotic channels of arousal to break through the congestion, move the energy out, and create something from the blockage.

Try this: Read down your feed and note the voice in your head—

how often it is triggered and wants to get into it with someone, educate them, or give them a piece of your mind?

Take that energy and make art. Write. Move it through.