As Helpers, we hold sexuality as an integral, sacred part of the Worker’s life. At some point, we can expect to work with the challenges they have in the area of sexuality. To avoid the sexual aspect of a Worker’s life is to avoid something vitally important about who they are.
While we do not police or judge our Worker’s activities, if someone is acting out sexually, we may suggest they refrain from potentially unsafe behavior. Then the underlying motives can be explored more deeply in session.
To avoid the sexual aspect of a Worker’s life is to avoid something vitally important about who they are.
How sexuality twists
The Pathwork Guide teaches that human beings are wired to experience our life force through the experience of pleasure. We can’t live without our life force, which means we can’t live without pleasure.
Sexuality is a powerful expression of life force. Therefore, when our life force gets distorted, our sexuality will reveal that distortion with particular intensity. The underlying mechanism is something the Guide calls negative pleasure.
Here’s how it gets created. If what we experienced as children was “unpleasure,” then we attached our pleasure principle to something unpleasant. Now we must create a similar unpleasant experience to activate our life force.
Since everything we experience in life gets “recorded” on the physical level of our being, negative pleasure shows up in our sexuality.
This means that, in order to activate the sexual experience of orgasm, the Worker may need to re-experience the negative thing that has become associated with pleasure.
As Helpers, we are looking to see how the Worker gets their life force activated.
One effective way to do this is by exploring the Worker’s sexual fantasies with them. In addition to surfacing sex-related issues, this will uncover distortions that affect the Worker’s entire life.
The delicate nature of working with sexual fantasies requires that the Worker trusts us. It takes time to establish such trust so that the Worker will reveal these most intimate aspects of themselves.
As Helpers, we are not ready to work this way unless we have explored our own psyche by looking through the lens of our own sexual fantasies.
What sexual fantasies reveal
During a session, we can invite the Worker to step into their fantasy. They share it as if they are part of a dream, speaking in first person in present tense: “…and then I do this…and now this is happening.”
In walking through the fantasy, the Worker will come directly into contact with the most exciting aspect of the fantasy. This is also the part that holds the distortion of their life force. There is always pain locked into this highly charged situation. The work involves dropping into these difficult feelings and expressing them.
The Worker may fear that without their fantasy, they won’t get to experience this highly pleasurable aspect of their life force. And they don’t want to give this up. They don’t realize that they could have this pleasurable experience without the associated negative twist.
To illustrate, let’s say a Worker has a sexual fantasy that involves being urinated upon. What is most exciting to the Worker is when the urination stops. That’s what pushes the Worker over the edge to orgasm.
In his childhood experience, the Worker’s mother was often critical of him. This felt humiliating, and he painfully cut off the flow of his own creativity. “Stopping the flow” is now the unpleasant experience that the Worker is wired to enjoy.
He currently struggles in life to complete any creative project he starts. He routinely cuts them off at some point, then feels the guilt of this wash over him. Although he rationalizes his behavior with excuses, he really doesn’t understand why he doesn’t finish what he starts.
Turn things around
One technique for exploring our work, in general, is to turn things around. To look at our problems from the opposite position. Because in duality, it’s not uncommon for our psyche to switch sides.
For example, if we can’t understand why we feel so fearful—why do others create so much fear in us?—it may help to investigate how we make others fear us.
We aren’t simply reversing the literal meaning of each sentence. We are looking for the opposite energetic position: Where I am passive, I become active; where I am receiving, I look at how I withhold; where someone is ignoring me, I explore how I might ignore them.
Here’s how this might look in exploring a sexual fantasy. It’s like looking at the negative of a picture, turning the black into white. In the following example, a man has had a difficult relationship with his father. This is revealed when we turn things in his sexual fantasy around.
First, let’s look at the fantasy:
“She comes up to me, unasked, out of the blue, and as I’m standing there she falls to her knees, opens my pants, and devours me. She sucks me, licks me, fondles my balls, and hungrily sucks me until I cum in her mouth. She keeps sucking and eagerly swallows. She keeps gently licking and sucking until I get soft.”
Now let’s look at each phrase when we turn things around:
She comes up to me || unasked,
my father turns away from me || when I ask him something, when I am talking to him
out of the blue, and
daily, frequently, all the time
as I’m standing there || she falls to her knees,
as I am on the floor, sitting || my father stands (towers) over me
she opens my pants, || and devours me.
my father won’t take “me” in || and ignores me, he covers over my person, he rejects my “self”, he closes himself
She sucks me, licks me, fondles my balls, and || hungrily (eagerly) sucks me
my father ignores me, stares blankly, doesn’t feel me, || coldly ignores me, doesn’t touch me, talk to me, hear me
until I cum in her mouth.
until I withhold from my father all that I am
She keeps sucking and eagerly swallows.
my father keeps ignoring me and coldly accepts my withholding
She keeps gently licking and sucking until I get soft.
my father keeps coldly staring blankly, ignoring, not talking or touching until I am hard inside.
Here is the exposed view of this man’s relationship with his father:
My father frequently turns away from me when I ask him something or am talking to him. As I am on the floor, sitting, he towers over me. My father closes himself, rejects me, won’t take me in, covers over my person. He ignores me, stares blankly, doesn’t feel me, touch me, talk to me, hear me, and coldly ignores me until I withhold from him all that I am. Even then, my father keeps ignoring me and coldly accepts my withholding. He keeps staring blankly, ignoring, not talking or touching me, until I am hard inside.
As we hold the Worker in their wholeness, they will slowly reveal their splintered shards. These fragments of consciousness are what they want us to help them heal.
Lastly, sexual attraction with a Worker sometimes happens, and we don’t need to run away from it. We need to be conscious of how we are managing our energy with the Worker.
We must never act out our sexual feelings with a Worker, either within a session or outside of a session. The power dynamic created by a Helper/Worker relationship does not simply disappear when the work ends. Even after the relationship has ended, pursuing personal or intimate involvement is not advisable.
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