The stripper pops her balloons one by one

The provocatively - or stupidly - titled Guardian article:

Strip clubs are the new normal – and that's a good thing

That young men are able to explore their sexuality safely and consensually is progress, not the downfall of the modern male

...came to my attention and after reading a few of the page comments I started writing...

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I write not as wit or repartee, entertainment or to have or voice an opinion so much as to embody a listening to the meanings and feeling of idea that is beneath the world we so easily and readily engage. In this way I would undress (deconstruct) the mind of its story - and if that appeals to you, you'll read a bit more and if not, you'll enjoy your story.

Fantasy, sexual or otherwise, is a private affair. A separating affair - that seems to be something it is not - otherwise it would be freely alive rather than using YOUR aliveness for ITS enactment. ITS fulfilment is like a drug, that hits but doesnt really fulfil and only needs repeating. The process of which hollows out or depletes joy and desensitizes feeling to ever shallower conditioned reaction regardless of the self-justifying mentality of the fantasy self that is being 'explored'. (This is different where the fantasy is in no way confused with reality - but the appetite for fantasy dissipates in true presence).

To use another for fantasy purposes who is in some sense willing to be used in exchange for using you sets up a mutual agreement that runs in place of honouring the true relational reality. (In context of a truly loving relational sense, all things - including fantasy - serve a different purpose of an awakening intimacy of being. Intimacy is not bodies - but oneness. To have the form without the Spirit is hollow show - but to have the Spirit will always have tangible effect - though the effect is not where the focus is.

Mutually using each other as consensual relationships isnt as innocent as it likes to think it is - for as soon as the Life in the other is not honoured, they are seen as a means to an end - and in that purpose, the mind is actually at war with the other so as to manipulate an outcome to its own personal agenda and will use the forms of kindness as a mask as much as it will use an overtly coercive intent such as instilling guilt or fear and taking advantage of the traction that that gives the mind of control.

Normal can be anything - deception, slavery and war and appalling inhumanity can be normal in that they can be pervasive and unchallenged.

If an addiction can be normalised, then the addict doesnt have to meet the dissonance of finding their perspective dictated by a coercive or tyrannous intent.

Ultimately, the exploring of a fantasy must realize that it costs Reality - and the Reality is infinitelty fulfilling in ways that are ever new and this Alive - and of which the little mind in its little private show cannot even imagine.

Everything is permissable to Reality - in that there is no limit on thought and action and effect spring from thought. God doesnt censor your freedom to think. But not everything is helpful to you and you (as we all) learn there are consequences implicit in every thought.

It isnt that there is a you with a free will perfecting your self (or not!) - but that the thought you accept and validate as yours by living out from it is actively filtering and defining your identification and in a sense, creates your experience out of a mutuality of thinking.

This deception or fantasy is dancing for you now as a sense of a reality that fascinates and distracts as if to become something or indeed escape something.

I watched a woman walking her dog along a beach once. the dog chased every single pebble thrown out to sea in utter futility - and yet avidly, with glee! The woman herself was bored - it went on out of sight without let-up.

Boredom must be one of the wonders of the Universe. Do you thing Angels queue to see? The power of thought is not as we think it - but as it thinks us. To put power aside like an old toy is to let love come out to play. Was there all along but I just didn't notice, recognize or feel able to allow.