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.

I show her my favorite Buddhist book about tantric sex, Passionate Enlightenment by Miranda Shaw, in which female arousal is described as the most sublime, the closest one comes in regular life to the bliss promised by the Buddha’s enlightenment.

I try to talk to Violette about how this could be good, about how the concept of what is ideal might be getting in the way of what is true, and possibly good enough. In the back of my mind are earlier discussions we have had about how her desire to please might be getting in the way of her own enjoyment. “You are going deeper into your own space,” I suggest. “Your husband can get the runoff. That will be nourishing for him. He can appreciate you as other and you will feel affirmed.” Violette is not necessarily having it. “Still, it’s not ideal,” she replies. But then she reflects upon some earlier relationships with actors who had more embodied her sense of the ideal. She had tended to submerge herself in those relationships, privileging their talents over her own, and had ended up feeling used and unappreciated. “I might not be so happy in the ideal,” she admits. “This is real,” I repeat. “Grappling with the real is the way to go.

Violette had a wonderful feeling for the joy of connection and the benefits of generosity. She was a selfless person in many regards. But her upbringing had not made enough room for healthy aggression, and this had made it difficult for her to balance the inevitable give-and-take of separation and connection. Beneath her compliant exterior lay an aggression that made her feel guilty and removed from the people she loved. Surrender was not going to be Violette’s rhinoceros. She knew about surrender already. Her rhinoceros was much more likely to look like a rhinoceros.