The Carrot or the Stick Approach
It is unfortunately very common for men to experience performance anxiety or the fear that they may not be able to have an erection when the time is right. To address these anxieties they often opt to medicalize and chemically trick their uncooperative member into an erection via pharmaceutical drugs like Viagra. In the not too distant past, these drugs were only marketed for aging over-the-hill men who could no longer get it up. In contrast, nowadays it has become routine for “every Tom Dick and Harry” regardless of their age to pop these little blue pills as they promise to boost confidence in performance. This empty-headed widespread use of erectile dysfunction pills is like sprinkling icing sugar on top of a chocolate cake that is made of sticky tar. When something is rotten at its core, it will not become more palatable just because there is a sprinkle of sparkly confetti on top. The man doing the pill popping is bypassing a golden opportunity for emotional and spiritual growth by deluding himself that some icing sugar or a tiny pill will set them straight. The good news is that there is a DIY alternative to Big Pharma’s popular dick bandaid solutions. The alternative is a ‘know thyself’ inner transformation process which can reverse the demeanor of a stiff necked penis that caves in to performance pressure.
Let’s look under the microscope at how performance anxiety operates. The mental landscape of a typical man consists of the critical voice of an inner judge. This voice incessantly threatens him with a stick that failure to perform in bed will have his mugshot on display at the Penis Hall of Shame. Most men would equate the prospect of this punishment with no less than a beheading on a guillotine. The inner critic or judge is very much present for the majority of men whether they realize it or not.
In reality, this negative inner dialogue becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. This inner judge is an ego fragment that is a part of an outdated internal defense mechanism that was needed at some point in the past for survival. This system runs on fear of rejection and abandonment. It is a physiological fact that fear engenders tension in the body. Whenever there is tension there will be a contraction emotionally and physically. Fear of bedroom failure forces this man into flight or flight response. His biological organism is operating under the belief that it is a life or death situation and that he is being chased by a tiger. He is running for his life. It should not be surprising that he is not getting hard when a scary tiger is chasing him. When he is hyperfocused on survival due to the presence of danger, an erection makes no physiological sense. All physiological functions and energy are by design diverted towards the primary goal of survival. The tiger in this scenario is his inner critic or judge chasing him with a stick ready to ‘cock’ shame him as a means of punishment. His inner critic’s stick as a penalizing tool used to incentivize him into an Oscar worthy bedroom performance. But, alas, it is obvious that this tiger story does not end well. Tragically, this poor man becomes the victim of his own inner villain or his ego. Agonizingly, he loses to the tiger who devours his flesh leaving him to languish in lovelessness defeated and flaccid. His erection was the prey and his inner judge the predator. This ecosystem is not sustainable for love-making.
Feeling caught in his inner vicious predatory cycle this man turns to pharmaceuticals to resolve his mental battle. Western quick-fix culture has just the right bandaid for this poor man. However, the drug bandaid actually serves to exacerbate his unconscious war with himself. The meds function as a powerful stick. Big Pharma hands him a mightier stick to beat his inner critic into submission by use of force or synthetic chemicals. His inner judge or ego structure has been artificially silenced and remains unresolved in his inner psyche. He becomes reliant on the meds to repress a part of himself. He can only show up in the bedroom with this crutch as he has not made peace with himself.
Big Pharma’s dick bandaid does not heal him from his inner war but rather offers him a bigger stick so he can war better with his ego. This bandaid comes with some serious repercussions. He has handed over all forms of agency, sovereignty and mastery over his physical, emotional and spiritual body. He is weak and dependent on a mass produced magic bullet to fix his inner fragmentation. The little blue suckers can not assist him to integrate his inner judge into his conscious awareness. He is too powerless to slay his own demons and dispenses his power away to the matrix.
Alternatively, if he were willing to tantrically engage he would step into an entirely different trajectory of self healing and expansion of his consciousness. Tantra will serve as the container for expanding his consciousness. He would gradually shift from making war with himself to making love which should be the ultimate goal. The first step lies in his acknowledgement that pills or the external matrix can not rescue him from himself. By stepping into his divine masculine archetype, he can summon up the courage to face and integrate his inner critic. Afterall, this inner is a frightened part of himself that does not want to be repressed and inflicted with further violence. It is not there to intentionally harm him. It holds an old fear of rejection and abandonment which dates back to early childhood.
Bringing softness and self-love to this protector fragment of himself has the potential to catalyze deep spiritual and emotional transformation. The inner critic when it is met with love slowly learns to trust the man. Gradually, this ego fragment will feel safe enough to disarm and lay down its weapon or stick. It will come to accept that it is no longer needed in the front lines for protection and instead establish a more cooperative relationship with his man who has shown capable of tending to his emotions.
This part of his inner wounded child was fearful of rejection. This part of him was waiting to be seen and acknowledged rather than repressed with a toxic brew of manmade potions. Self-love becomes the carrot incentivizing intimacy in his life rather than fear. He is healing and reuniting at last with exiled parts of himself . The gentle touch of self awareness to these sore parts provides all the medicine he needs as it resets his nervous system. The scary tiger fades into the background and the body enters the parasympathetic state. This expanded relaxed state sends signals to the penis to listen and respond to sexual stimulation naturally. Relaxation is crucial as it increases blood flow into the muscles which supports an erection. Prescription chemicals such as Viagra work in the exact same way physiologically. They chemically relax the muscles to allow for an increased blood flow into erectile tissue to facilitate an erection. So the same relaxation process is possible minus the chemical concoction. Softening into self love hardens the dick, it is not more complicated than that.
It may seem counterintuitive that getting soft emotionally leads to hardening physically. However, such is the duality of the yin and yang as the two complimentary forces work to balance seemingly opposite energies. A hard emotional ego stick will not be able to force another entity such as a physical penis into hardness, regardless of how much force the stick applies or how much compliance it demands. Hardness can not bring about more hardness. A hard emotional stick will always yield a flaccid soft physical penis. Therefore, the penalizing stick method of incentivizing erections clearly fails. It brings about an opposite outcome to the one desired. On the flip side, the carrot of self-love is like a magic wand when it comes to encouraging erections. The emotional softness in the heart directly translates into the complimentary opposite or the hardening of the physical penis. It is as easy as pie, the sweet carrot does the trick.
Hence, the man who utilizes tantric mindfulness to deepen his awareness and learn to trust himself by integrating his ego fragments has activated and fortified the feedback loop between his heart and penis. The two can now communicate to each other using the same tongue or universal language of love. When one expands and relaxes the other listens and responds. The incessant chatter of the mind and the inner critic are no longer interfering in the transmission of signals between the heart and penis. The inner friction that causes static electricity subsides and the communication between the heart and the penis is fully aligned in love. The signals sent by the heart are broadcast to the penis and its unobstructed antenna responds to the transmission. Tantra removes the static charge or the blockage to allow for a powerful transmission. Men who no longer wish to hand their dicks to the matrix will take their power back. They will consciously understand that sticks make war while carrots make love all the more juicier and sweeter. The men who choose Carrots over Sticks will return to their spiritual divinity and Shiva consciousness and transcend the limits of egoic existence. Liberation never tasted this sweet!
OM SHANTI. Om.
All Mighty Tantra 