Pleasure as a portal

Pleasure is easy to misunderstand.

It’s often associated with indulgence, distraction, or something to earn or justify. For many people, it’s also tangled with shame or distrust—something unreliable or unsafe to follow.

In this work, pleasure is understood more simply: as a signal of aliveness.

Pleasure doesn’t have to be intense or dramatic. Often it’s subtle—a sense of warmth, ease, responsiveness, or quiet enjoyment. It shows up where life is still moving, still responding.

Many of us learned early to dampen these signals. To stay functional. To stay composed. Over time, numbness can begin to feel normal. But it’s not neutral. It’s a loss of contact.

Older wisdom traditions, including erotic and creative lineages, often recognized pleasure as a guide back into vitality rather than something to be controlled or transcended.

Approached gently, pleasure restores orientation. It tells us where there is capacity, where there is room, where something wants to flow.

This doesn’t mean chasing pleasure or using it as a goal. It means noticing where it already exists and allowing it to matter.

In that sense, pleasure isn’t the destination.
It’s the doorway.

Further reading (optional):
– Come as your are — Emily Nagowski
– Pleasure Activism — Adrienne Maree Brown
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