Let's take again our example of the merging essence. The individual might realize that his experience of it is restricted to the chest only, that whenever this aspect is present it does not go beyond the boundaries of the chest. He might want to believe that it is a heart quality, and that is why it is always located in the chest. But essence cannot be restricted this way. To be completely established, any aspect must attain the freedom to be anywhere in the body. The individual might notice, if he applies his attention, that the merging essence is blocked from going downward into the body, particularly into the pelvis. Usually the essence will spontaneously go to the blocked area and expose the repression in it related to the particular aspect. But the individual must be interested in seeing the truth, whatever it is, for the process to proceed. The individual might find out, for instance, that when the merging essence flows into the genital area it activates the wish for genital merging. This might bring out conflicts around sexuality, oedipal and otherwise. These conflicts need to be understood and resolved for the merging essence to exist freely in the genital area. This process usually continues of its own accord if the individual is committed to the truth. The essence keeps extending its territory, displacing the personality, until it reclaims the totality of the body. Then the essence fills the whole body, the totality of the organism. Each cell is then full and vivified by the presence of essence. The whole organism is then unified and integrated.

In the head and upper part of the body, Brilliancy feels more like majesty. When it gets into the pelvis and genitals, the sense there is more of ecstasy—intense ecstasy, overwhelming ecstasy—regardless of whether you are making love or not. When it gets in that area, it is activated in such a powerful way that the pleasure becomes intense to the point of overwhelming ecstasy. It also makes the genitals feel clean. A lot of the time, people have the sense that the genitals are dirty or not so pure because of all the prohibitions everybody has regarding them. But when Brilliancy enters there, they feel really clean; everything feels immaculately clean and graceful.

However, the orgastic potency advocated by Reich is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the development of a completely genitally free character. It is not enough that the biological energy flows into the genitals. Essence must be present in the pelvis, essence must be allowed to flow in the genitals, for the genitals to be truly integrated and full. And for this to happen, space must be allowed in the pelvic region. Otherwise the genital hole will continue to be defended against and feared. The genitals are not completely owned then, and sexuality is not fully experienced. Reich understood that orgasm anxiety, pleasure anxiety, and castration anxiety must all be confronted and resolved for orgastic potency to be freed. However, we ask: How can there be full freedom without confronting the genital hole, without space and essence? The fact is that pleasure anxiety and castration anxiety cannot be completely resolved unless the genital hole is confronted and the essence freed. A truly sexually free individual is an essential individual, one who fully experiences his own being. There can be no true or full sexuality on the personality level.

Within the boundaries of the genital hole there is the sensation of nothingness, of voidness, of no existence. If the person senses or looks deeper, the nothingness deepens and expands. The hole expands into more of the pelvis and later into the rest of the body. Under normal circumstances, awareness of this hole in the unconscious body-image is defended against through many different means. The most obvious is physical contraction, tension. Typically there is a tension around the pelvis, centered at the sacrum and the perineum. This ring of tension is normally accompanied by another tension ring around the head, especially around the ocular region. We recall that the genital hole is one end of a column of emptiness running through the body, so we see then that there are tensions which block the two ends of this column or tube. There are other tension patterns in the body relating to the column, but the pelvis and head are the major and most frequently encountered ones. Of course, these tension patterns and the psychodynamic defense mechanisms that go with them are generally unconscious. They surface to consciousness only when the individual is approaching awareness of the genital hole and the psychological material associated with it. The tension in the head manifests in extreme cases as headaches. The tension in the pelvis can lead to all kinds of sexual difficulties.

The perspective which assumes the ultimate reality and value of the physical universe, to the exclusion of other dimensions of reality, is the source of the difficulties of the egoic mind. This perspective creates most of our suffering—the way we approach death, sickness and disease, pleasure and pain, issues of acceptance and rejection. In the course of our process of spiritual work, of discovering the true presence that we are, the basic identification with the physical body and the conviction in the physical world persists as an ongoing phenomenon, concern, and barrier. For example, suppose someone begins to experience space. At first, you experience a kind of absence. As you know, the arising of each essential aspect usually manifests first as its absence, as a hole. In the case of the arising of space, the hole first manifests as an emptiness in the pelvis, the sensation of a hole. How do people see it? Do they experience, “Oh, I feel emptiness there. I am seeing the dimension of emptiness.” No, most people react, “Uh oh. I lost my genitals. I have no genitals.” That’s how people react to it. Why? Because you approach the experience from the physical perspective. If you perceive an emptiness there, it means to you that there are no genitals. You don’t think, “I’m just perceiving a different dimension. There is physical reality, but other dimensions of reality also exist.” If you saw that, there would be no fear, no issue. You have not lost anything. You are just seeing another dimension of yourself. But because you assume that the physical universe is the most fundamental reality, when an emptiness arises, you tend to think, “Uh oh. I lost my penis.”

Not being able to feel sexual feelings without conflicts creates some kind of emptiness in the pelvis because you cannot be present there. To be present in any region of the body means you are in touch with any feelings that are there. So if there is anxiety or guilt, for instance, then that is what you will first encounter; and not being present becomes the consequence of not wanting to feel those feelings. In other words, the region needs to be empty of issues for the presence of Essence to pervade it.