From the point of view of Highest Yoga Tantra, difficult emotions do not need to be suppressed or eliminated, as some more elementary meditations strive to do. Their energies can, instead, be used for enlightenment. By moving the attention from a complete immersion in the feeling to the observation of it, the emotions could be harnessed for spiritual purposes. The mind is a terrible master but a wonderful servant, this approach proclaimed. Evocative paintings of wrathful or erotic deities adorning the Tibetan temple walls made this point with graphic emphasis. Anger, no longer an obstacle to meditative attainment, was portrayed in these paintings as an instrument of insight. Desire, no longer viewed as an obstructive impediment, was embodied as a vehicle of empathy. Ambition, no longer for personal aggrandizement, was represented as the intention to help others. As if to highlight the connection between the personal and the spiritual, the four esoteric stages of Highest Yoga Tantra were named for four stages of falling in love. Looking, smiling, embracing, and orgasm are the closest one comes in regular life to the joyous celebration, and spontaneous loss of ego, uncovered in successful meditations of this type.

Sexual abuse like the kind Willa experienced robs a person of innocence. Instead of discovering erotic life in a natural way with a peer, sexuality was forced upon her. Any pleasure she might have found in the awakening of her sensuality was contaminated from the beginning with confusion and shame.

In the esoteric Buddhist literature, female sexuality is said to embody one’s highest spiritual intelligence. In its fullest form, it represents being rather than doing. Violette’s desire to please and her perfectionism worked against her being.

One of the things Buddhist psychology is best at is itemizing which emotional tendencies are the most ingrained. They are listed as the “ten fetters,” and this tendency to measure oneself is said to be one of the most subtle and difficult to uproot. Even lust and anger are easier to deal with than conceit.

The psychoanalyst Michael Eigen, in his endlessly inspiring book The Psychoanalytic Mystic, came at this mysterious undercurrent from another direction. Rather than leading with anything like loving awareness, he focused on the underworld.