Bruce P. Grether Send email to Bruce   Check out News 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 & sensible. Around age 7 I also enjoyed my first sexual play with other children. The shared arousal felt extremely good, only in a diffuse, generalized way many years before I could ejaculate. I experienced an orgasmic glow, only it remained inconclusive. As I grew older & was moved from school to school, instead of gaining confidence in myself, I grew increasingly shy about my body & about sexuality. At 9 or 10 years of age, I discovered deliberately masturbating. An avid reader, I educated myself on the subject & 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 masturbating in the shower, I graduated to playing with myself entirely naked inside the mosquito net on those hot tropical nights while frogs & bugs sang outside the window screens in a wall of sound. It seems I soon shed any acquired guilt over such pleasure. I began venturing into the jungle to enjoy nakedness & arousal in solitude, or slipping away to the ocean to swim nude. Though the miracles of puberty were soon upon me, I began retreating into my own brand of shame. I felt too skinny & unattractive to allow anyone to see me naked. While my body matured & my genitalia bloomed forth in splendid adult sensitivity, providing me with unimagined sensations, I suffered poor self-esteem over my appearance. After moving to the Bay Area of northern 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 & humanity itself. The emotional crises of my late teens & early 20s finally gave way to a long spell of living in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. Spending day after day hiking through natural splendor & finding 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 & masturbate outdoors. I enjoyed masturbating every day in my bed, morning & evening, only the sensations never really felt as intense as I wanted, & never lasted nearly long enough to satisfy my soul. Most often I quickly grew so excited that I would ejaculate, & 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 & important potential. Finally I felt ready to leave that high mountain village & 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 & Chinese Taoist teachings about sexuality, ways to increase, prolong & sustain erotic pleasure, & even how to use the energy for spiritual evolution. Every source I found proved fascinating, yet obscure, unweildy with burdensome detail, & impossible to enact effectively. 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 generating 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, but with persistence I learned. Then for 6 weeks I spent hours every day in a high erotic state, without ejaculating once. When I contacted Joseph & 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 & love themselves more fully. 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 reinforced my strengths. Much of my poor self-esteem, many of my old bad habits of doubt began falling 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 & hence others more fully. I began living more in the present moment, here & now. 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. I've continued exploring & developing my masturbatory skills in ways I never imagined were possible. Since the late 1990s 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 & his collaborator Joe Miron in teaching 2 workshops on cultivating erotic energy.   Now I'm fulfilling my missionary urge by creating more Mindful Masturbation DVDs to teach, coach & inspire men in these practices. Two more companion websites are in the works, as well as live events where you will be invited to experience Mindful Masturbation in Brotherhood with other men. Participants will be encouraged to create local groups to share the practices. I'm excited & more dedicated than ever to this project of encouraging men to develop & share enhanced masturbatory skills in order to help us reconcile human nature with Nature itself. It's the quickest & most enjoyable path to planetary peace that I know.