Elusive pleasure.

It's a learning experience. I've found there's a moving threshold of pleasure/stimulation that breaks my concentration/flow... but after I've experienced it enough times, my expectations of "normal" shift and it becomes easier to deal with and take further next time.
There's always a temptation for me to "grab on" to a good feeling that seems like it's going somewhere... but I didn't get where I was by forcing it, so why would forcing it ever work?

I can't tell you why your pleasure is disappearing... but a lot of people (including myself) think there are left-overs from traditional masturbation that need to be overcome... really counter-intuitive shit that you don't even realize is there.

@Clenchy I find your perspective very helpful. Refusal to acknowledge that a broad swath of our sexual practices and responses are habits built over a lifetime and in response to situations over which we had very little control is self-limiting. History is complicated and personal histories bewildering. Likely, our bodies had other plans. Wanna know what those plans might be?

I am absolutely determined to present my body with ambiguous circumstances, knotty problems, and conflicting messages...physically and spiritually. I will, then, lay back, relax, and wait for whatever kind of resolution. That’s my only plan for the next year or so, consonant with the challenge and advice I have gathered from those wiser and more experienced.

Mmm, I've bumped up against some very strange and unique feelings on my aneros journey. Probably the weirdest one was an alarming sense that what I was feeling was somehow "not allowed", like it was breaking the rules and shouldn't be happening. I have no idea where something like that came from... it wasn't just a thought either, it was a deeply held belief and an emotion that just filled my mind out of nowhere, with no additional explanation.

You are not alone with your "not allowed" feelings I have this argument so to speak in my sessions.Its like "you cant have that " "yes I can" then another voice says "just take it, come on its yours.Then I think about how fortuante I am to discover this,as I enter the "garden of bliss".

Ugg I get to where it starts feeling good and then the pleasure just suddenly vanishes. Is there anything I can do to keep the good feelings flowing?

When you allow your body to lead the progress of an Anerosession there is really no ego control to force your body to produce pleasure. The pleasure will ebb and flow as your subconscious dictates. It is easy enough to interrupt this process by generating mental noise but, IMHO, there is no guaranteed approach to keep "...the good feelings flowing". The best advice I can offer is to remain in the same relaxed mental state and see if the cycle of pleasure waves returns, sometimes they will and sometimes they won't. You just need to exercise a reasonable measure of patience (you get to determine that) before abandoning a particular session. Be positive in your outlook and believe you next session will potentially be even better. Learning to be satisfied with what your body does give you insures the possibility for it to give you more next time.

@Clenchy & @evergreen it seems to me you are both describing a mild form of cognitive dissonance. The Aneros journey, by necessity, induces a man to focus more singularly on his own body and pleasure. This focus is often characterized as selfishness which our culture generally considers a very negative personal attribute. Thus we (both men and women) get caught up in resolving this apparent dichotomy between socially acceptable attitude/behaviors and the need for individual self realization/fulfillment. This is a very real and common psychological dilemma especially when involving sexual taboos which have been enculturated in us from a very young age.

For the first couple of years of my Aneros journey, I also experienced this cognitive dissonance occasionally but have since resolved the problem by changing my attitude about what constitutes selfishness and how this activity is more about self empowerment and discovery than conformance to commonly accepted 'norms' of social behavior. While the old social programming may never be completely overwritten in our minds, the neuroplasticity of our brains does allow us to write new behavior programs using conscious intent to balance and satiate the deep seeded needs of our Ids.

I think it is important to remember that our Ids are the foundation of our beings, our inherited instincts and developed over hundreds of thousands of years of evolution. Our waking consciousness is a later evolutionary development and our gentle Kundalini awakening through Aneros use allows us to tap that deep reservoir of power, energy, mystery and pleasure within our original selves.
Good Vibes to You !

It sounds to me like you are looking ahead..
i used to find when pleasure would come,I’d start looking ahead thinking,this is it,this is leading to orgasm,I’m going to orgasm..I need to keep doing exactly this,then the pleasure would change direction and it would go downhill..maybe just need to relax more and enjoy the pleasure second by second,and try not to chase orgasm..which is actually a very easy thing to do,but,at the same time,extremely hard to do. 😉

Rumel told me years ago that if something feels good, slow down and investigate. Good advise and thank you because I was doing the opposite, chasing the good feeling grinding harder trying to get to the super O. Slow down when it feels good is good advise.

@rumel It was more on the scale of being forbidden by the universe... like my body was doing something that breaks the rules of reality that I've known all my life. There's an existential pang to it. I think it's terror-at-the-gates... I definitely have a fear of losing all control, and entering a swirling vortex that I can't come out of until it's finished tossing me around. I've been able to gradually loosen my grip over the years, and fall further into it while still feeling in control, and I'm really pleased with what I have now... but it blows my mind that there's always a new level, where no matter how ready I think I am to feel it... my mind still goes "What the fuck?! Let me off the ride!". I don't know what might be going on in my subconscious, but I've found it helps to talk back to it and say "No, this IS allowed. This is okay". Weird shit.

What if during a big full body orgasm you can feel so close to the universe, the divine, that you can almost touch it? An experience so profound that it is hard to wrap your mind around?

What if the total absence of ego is so foreign that it wants to maintain it's grip, by all means possible?

Fear and terror are powerful emotions that have been with us since the beginning of mankind to make you stop doing what you are doing by a conditioned reflex or instinct.
I think that giving into bliss and love are more powerful and can override this fear if you can feel at ease with the fact that nothing bad can happen.

I believe that you can not break universal rules of reality and therefore it is allowed to let yourself go. And not only is it allowed but your body wants to go there, it knows what it wants and what is natural and good for it. It's just your ego or thinking brain that is making up bullshit and throwing you curve balls because the ego needs to be in control.

I think it helps to realise that the real you, whatever that is, exists beyond the body and the ego because you can notice them and can decide not to listen. To just discard it as bullshit, facing your fears.
A lot of what is going on in the brain is pattern recognition, conditioned for survival. Fear is often felt by something that breaks a pattern and is unfamiliar. While this works on a lot of levels it also holds us back when it is not needed. Feeling fear does not have to mean that something is bad for you, it is often the opposite.

@Clenchy , I think @Mitaru is spot on in his thinking. Our fundamental self, the Id, is born into this world in alignment with the laws of the universe. It is our ego that sets limits and wants to exercise control even when it knows it has illusory control of its own existence.

Buddha said "All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think, we become."

An essential aspect of that universal truth is the fact your subconscious makes up the vast majority of your mind and like an iceberg, the vast majority of that mass is unseen, but very much there and influencing the action. Orgasms are natures way of allowing our egos to reintegrate with our fundamental selves and reconnect with the universe as well.
Good Vibes to You !

It is not selfish at all to have Aneros sessions. Having an Aneros session have been times for me that I do something pleasurable for myself and they are certainly health promoting. Nobody here knows this about myself except you guys here. And Aless is a state that goes with me everywhere and constitutes very special times at night in bed. If I had a wife or a sexual partner, I certainly would want her/him included in my Aneros journey and experience!