This weekend I posted a podcast episode on reclaiming the sexual instinct. This has been a major focus of mine for the past decade in my own personal life, and I have now had enough direct experience of my sexual blindness to start speaking on the subject. This behavior has led many to believe that I am sexual dominant, and I am here to tell you that my fascination with the sexual instinct can only be described by the words from the classic hymn Amazing Grace. “I once was lost and now I’m found, was blind and now I see.” And it truly does feel like grace. I think when we hit a shock point in life and taste something delicious that was heretofore hidden from us, we hold it with a type of importance, wonder, and awe that only someone that has experienced their own unveiling can truly understand.

I started my podcast with John Luckovich because in my opinion, he currently has the best book on the Instinctual Drives. There is so much controversy in the Enneagram community around how to define the instinctual drives, and if this causes you any angst, my suggestion is to keep looking at how all three instincts are showing up inside of you, follow your own inner wisdom about what needs more attention, and start there. I do not recommend trying to get yourself to be less neurotic about what perpetually grabs your attention. That’s like telling you not to think about a purple elephant after I tell you not to think about one. Our dominant instinct is always running in the background tracking its basic needs, and allowing the others to express when it feels safe enough and satisfied.

As Adreienne Maree Brown writes in her book, Pleasure Activism, “How acutely and fully can we feel in the doing?” For me this is all about presence. There’s lots of talk about presence, but do you actually have a presence practice and do you even know when you’re present? My Self preservation instinct believes I always have to be working in some meaningful way in order to acquire enough resources (money). It’s very judgmental if I slow down my acquisition efforts to enjoy something along the way. My Social instinct believes I always need to be tracking the needs of others. It’s very judgmental of the times I turn inward to appreciate my own experience. The sexual instinct doesn’t give a shit about my self preservation and social concerns. It wants pleasure, and sensuality. It wants to FEEL every last nuance of an experience. As a person with a strong seven fix in my tritype, this feels like my transformation from gluttony to sobriety. When my sexual instinct is caught up in the gluttony of my seven energy or the vanity of my three energy I can start believing that all I need is another experience or to acquire another accoutrement to prop up my ego ideal. When I allow my sexual instinct to slow me down and drop me into intense feeling I can access joy and have an experience of real value in every moment.

So which of our life endeavors bring us closest to the fullness of satisfaction and completion? For me, at this point, it’s writing, teaching, connecting, studying and nature. These activities bring me into a flow state, where the incessant needs of my self preservation and social instinct quiet for a little while. My self preservation instinct tells me I can’t slow down on the work that brings me money but little joy. My social instinct tells me that I’m selfish if I prioritize the work I love over meeting the needs of family and friends. As I take an inventory of my life I can see that I am sitting here with a private medical practice that has supported me and my five employees with enough money to meet our needs for the past 12 years. I have four wonderful children that are suffering only the normal struggles of that 15-23 year old time of life. They have solid attachments to their family unit, and I have a very close bond to my parents and a solid group of people I’m lucky enough to call friends. So I have no data to indicate that my self preservation and social concerns need more of my energy in spite of the terror that lives inside of me that I’m never giving those domains enough.

It’s the sexual instinctual energy that I feel ashamed to enjoy. Sexual blind types can like to explore, travel, see new things, and immerse themselves in interesting experiences, but there’s a limit to which they won’t “let themselves go” or be “swept up” in something. I know my boundaries well and I am always considering the consequences of a leap. My inner critic is very concerned about my need to be consistent, responsible, acceptable, and sensible, and if you don’t believe me, come hang out and listen to me endlessly justify the sexual instinctual indulgences I allow myself. Sexual blinds can be some of the most physically daring risk-takers or socially-bold people around, because they allow it in specific, compartmentalized areas of life. For me this is conferences or psychospiritual learning containers, which is why many of my peers see me as not being sexual blind. 

What my friends don’t see are the neuroses that I’m managing on the inside when leaning into my blind spot. My sexual instinct’s drive for “loss of self” and complete surrender often leaves me feeling destabilized, messy, and exhausted, but those moments I actually allow it to emerge are always transformative. It’s also important to remember that in most cases Sexual Blinds do not avoid or fear sex and often have high sex drives that they act on freely. Chemistry, however, simply tends not to be on their “radar” so there can be a kind of bluntness to how they approach sex and sexuality that can easily offend the sexual dominant individual who are drawn to create more “mystique” around the experience. I call the self preservation approach to sex “earthy”. It’s more about getting down and dirty with your partner as opposed to achieving a more delicate transcendent experience. 

Now that I have cultivated the ability to slow down and savor the expression of my sexual instinct, I find alternating between the different instinctual experiences to be most satisfying, like eating a well balanced meal. A final marker of sexual blindness is when people make decisions by weighing options around what makes the most sense or seems the most reasonable. The sexual instinct simply leaps off that cliff expecting that the universe will catch them, or perhaps take their impassioned actions hoping for some type of annihilation. The sexual instinct cannot trouble itself with concerns of this plane. 

I extend deep gratitude to John Luckovich for bringing such elegant language to these concepts in The Instinctual Drives & The Enneagram. I also extend deep gratitude to Russ Hudson, Sarah Peyton, and Antonia Dodge who have all set the stage as my teachers to be able to bask in my continued unfolding and support the unfolding of others.