Bruce P. Grether email: bgrether (at) austin.rr.com Check out the blog from BRUCE Even as a small boy, aged 4 or 5, I recall an intense awareness of human sexuality. Human bodies fascinated me. I loved the sensations of sliding down a banister or climbing trees, for the pressure exerted between my legs, though I had no idea what it meant. Perhaps I've always been rather highly-sexed. I spent my childhood in the Far East. I was fortunate to have a monkey for a pet. He totally intrigued me for his resemblance to myself, including his tiny penis. His unashamed tendency to play with himself impressed me as wonderful and sensible. Around age 5 or 6 I also enjoyed my first erotic play with other children. The shared arousal felt extremely good, only in a diffuse, generalized way many years before I could ejaculate. I experienced excitation, only it remained furtive and inconclusive. Then at age 7 I played with a boy my own age who seemed to know more about what we shared than I did. We rubbed our penises together for a long time, yet remained relaxed and totally attentive to the delicious sensations. I experienced prolonged orgasmic intensity and multiple orgasms that changed me forever. My sense of any separate self disappeared into our mutual glow of p3 or pure penile pleasure. We repeated this exquisite practice on several occasions and then our lives gently moved us in different directions. Do not imagine that my life after this astonishing discovery was all blissful, for not many years later, during adolescence I actually cast myself out of that Garden of Earthly Delights. I spent decades longing to return to that Penile Paradise that I never reached again . . . until my personal breakthrough of 1995. As I grew older and was moved from school to school, instead of gaining confidence in myself, I grew increasingly shy about my body and about sexuality. At 9 or 10 years of age, I discovered deliberately, consciously masturbating. An avid reader, I educated myself on the subject and learned that masturbation was known to be a natural, healthy practice, though my sources were not totally enlightened by today's standards. From my first experiments with masturbaton in the shower, I graduated to playing with myself entirely naked inside the mosquito net on those hot tropical nights while frogs and bugs sang outside the window screens in a wall of sound. It seems I soon shed any acquired guilt over such pleasure. I began to venture into the jungle to enjoy nakedness and arousal in solitude, or I slipped away to the ocean to swim nude and masturbate in the surf. Though the miracles of puberty were soon upon me, I began to retreat into my own brand of shame. I felt too skinny and unattractive to comfortably allow anyone to see me naked. While my body matured and my genitalia bloomed forth in splendid adult size and sensitivity, able to provide me with previously unimagined sensations, I suffered poor self-esteem over my appearance. After I moved to Berkeley, California with my family in the late 1960s, my early adulthood was a period of confusion, not over sexual identity, so much as an alienation from my social context and humanity itself. My personal uncertainty corresponded with the national trauma of the Vietnam War. The emotional crises of my late teens and early 20s finally gave way to a long spell of living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. I spent day after day hiking through natural splendor and also found a small group of good friends, I began the long odyssey back toward wholeness. Often in my solitude amid the beauty of Nature, I would find a secluded spot, strip naked and masturbate outdoors. I loved to masturbate every day in my bed, morning and evening, only the sensations never really felt quite as intense as I wanted, and never lasted nearly long enough to satisfy my soul. Most often I quickly grew so excited that I would ejaculate, and the whole thing was over far too soon. Though I had long since shed any inhibition about the habit, I also sensed that I was missing some powerful and important potential. Finally I felt ready to leave that high mountain village and go back to school in order to earn the college degree I had abandoned 17 years before. After graduating, I delved into a realm that had fascinated me in theory for years. I'd long been aware of certain Hindu Tantric and Chinese Taoist teachings about sexuality, ways to increase, prolong and sustain erotic pleasure, and even how to use the energy for personal growth and spiritual evolution. Every source I found proved fascinating, yet obscure, unweildy with burdensome detail, and impossible to enact effectively. I never found simple, clear instructions until . . . My breakthrough came in 1995 when I ordered Joseph Kramer's video FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN. Kramer developed his teaching of male genital massage using Taoist cultivation techniques for to generate erotic energy without ejaculating. Lacking a partner to share this with, I adapted the process to my solo practice. I have never been the same person since that time. Or perhaps I had never been my true self before. During my first few attempts, the sensations proved so powerful, that I ejaculated almost immediately, yet with persistence I learned. Finally I caught on and discovered how to levitate and soar in erotic trance! Then for 6 weeks I spent hours every day in a high erotic state, without ejaculating once! When I contacted Joseph Kramer and we became friends, eventually he mentioned the therapeutic potential of such high erotic states. He maintains that keeping yourself in such a state for 5 or 6 hours continuously may prove more beneficial psychologically than years of conventional talk or drug therapy. He also suggests that many patients in psychotherapy simply need to learn how to masturbate more effectively, to accept and love themselves more fully, may prove more beneficial than traditional therapies. This seems to be what I did for myself without intending it. During those 6 weeks, I noticed that my energy, what some call the "aura," affected people differently. Some kind of quantum leap occurred in my personal growth. Rather than consciously confronting my weaknesses, it seems I simply reinforced my strengths. Much of my poor self-esteem, many of my old bad habits of doubt began to fall away simply from neglect. All of my energy was devoted to positive aspects of myself. I learned the value of getting more in touch with my body, instead of living so much in my head. It opened my heart to loving myself and hence others more fully. I began living more in the present moment, here and now. I've lived in this Penile Paradise ever since! Simultaneously I also opened myself to the possibility of a relationship. It happened unexpectedly. Precisely when I had grown comfortable living alone, loving myself better than ever before, the universe provided me with the ideal partner, who totally supports this Mission. Ever since we met, while also able to share with a lover, I've continued to explore and develop my masturbatory skills in ways I never imagined were possible. During the late 1990s and the early 2000s I have published more than 120 educational articles on the subject of male masturbation. During the summer of 2001, in New York State, I assisted Joseph Kramer and his collaborator Joe Miron in teaching 2 workshops on cultivating erotic energy. After that I facilitated a series of workshops when men gathered to practice together and learn from one another. Then in 2004, with encouragement from Joseph and many others, I produced the first coaching/inspirational DVD, MINDFUL MASTURBATION FOR MEN: DEVELOP YOUR SELF-PLEASURING SKILLS TO EXTRAORDINARY LEVELS. This revolutionary teaching provides face-to-face naked instruction and demonstrations throughout with Yours Truly. Now I'm fulfilling my missionary urge by finishing THE COMPLETE MINDFUL MASTURBATION TRILOGY of DVDs to teach, coach and inspire men in these practices. Two more companion websites are in the works, as well as live Male Mystery School events where you will be invited to experience Mindful Masturbation in the Brotherhood of Men. Graduates will be encouraged to create local groups to share the practices. Now I'm excited and more dedicated than ever to this project of encouraging men to develop and share enhanced masturbatory skills in order to help us reconcile human nature with Nature itself. It's the quickest and most enjoyable path to planetary peace that I know. Please do your part by becoming an Erotic Revolutionary, and loving yourself as an EcoSexual!