The Upper Limits Problem

Always mesmerized by this mural in the powder room at the iPic cinema / The Seaport // NYC /// March 2019

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In March, 2019, my friend Steve Dean (remember him from horizontal with lila episodes 82. 200 dating profiles, & 83. you do not have voting rights in this startup relationship?) teamed up with an experience designer to create an event they dubbed The Love Immersive, a “10-hour exploratorium-style foray into the 5 love languages.”

In Steve’s words:

I teamed up to architect a choose-your-own-adventure interactive journey through the languages of love.

Spanning every floor of a sprawling 6-story arthouse in the heart of New York City, and co-produced by the creative arts group Moontribe, Love Immersive attracted over 450 attendees who came to explore love through the nuanced dimensions of touch, words, service, quality time, gifts, and more.

We invited over 50 volunteers and practitioners of different love languages to showcase their creative capabilities in an evening of self-discovery, secret missions, hidden rooms, wandering wizards, art installations, and live music.

I was one of the 50.

They gave me a closet.

A closet.

This is not lost on me.

That was all the space they had left, apparently. And I was determined to make good use of it. I turned it into a cozy nesting pod with blankets and pillows and two sets of listening devices, and I recorded this 11-minute meditation for anyone who stopped in, so that they could take a break from the glorious menagerie for a few minutes. And reset.

In the closet.

Lila’s closet @ The Love Immersive / Chelsea, NY // March 2019

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I always need a break space at giant parties. Parties of most any kind, really. Honestly, I think any party with more than 6 people should have a chill space! Ideally, the chill space would be an entire floor. But not every shindig has such luxury.

The full transcript is below. If you would like to listen to this meditation in my allegedly velvety, mellifluous voice… become a paid subscriber, darling.

Here’s the transcript from March 2019:

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Hi, I'm Lila.

I'm glad you decided to take a break.

It's kind of intense out there.

Magnificent, and intense.

If you haven't already, lie down.

I know there's not much room in here, so let's pretend this is your secret hiding spot.

Find a way to curl up on the floor.

Use the pillow, maybe.

And then settle in.

And let gravity have its way with you.

In other words, deliberately relax your muscles.

Sigh with me.

That's better.

Surrender is an act of will.

Tell your muscles that it's okay to relax, and it might take some time.

But eventually, they will listen.

Have you ever heard of the upper limits problem?

I learned about it from the book Conscious Loving.

The premise of the upper limits problem is this:

At some point in our childhood, probably a moment we don't even remember, we decided that there's a limit to the amount of good feelings that we're allowed to have.

A level at which things could be good before they got too good. It could have been something as innocuous as a teacher telling us not to laugh so loud. As damaging as a parent scolding us for masturbating, or as scarring as a religious figure threatening hellfire if we did X, Y, or Z. That day we created an internal ceiling, enforced by us alone. And ever since, when we approach or hit that internal limit, we unconsciously do something to sabotage our own joy. We essentially bring ourselves back to a level of good feelings that we feel comfortable with. Most of us need to learn how to tolerate more good feelings.

This floored me.

I need to learn to tolerate good feelings?

Tolerate?

The way that I would train myself to manage discomfort?

But aren't good feelings what I want?

Aren't I a hedonist?

Isn't that the whole point of pleasure?

To feel as good as possible for as long as possible?

And then I started to rewind and re-watch the movie of my life with this in mind. And I saw subtle, insidious self-sabotage all over the place. After a grand adventure, like a cross-country road trip or Burning Man, I'd return to New York, one of the greatest cities in the world, and get depressed. After a peak romantic encounter with a lover or a luxurious new sexual adventure, I'd start to worry. After a deeply vulnerable and connected night in community, I'd feel sad and drained.

In the book, they describe it this way:

Have fun. Have a crash.

Get close. Get sick.

Be close. Start a fight.

I'm aware of it now, so I do it less. But it still happens. My upper limit is nowhere near what I'd like it to be.

Yet.

Recently, I went on a dreamy, week-long vacation to Miami to meet a man I'd been flirting with for four months but had never met in person. And the sex was delicious, and the sun was healing, and the food was delectable. And right in the middle of it, I found something to be upset about, and proceeded to be pretty upset about it. Because I didn't know how to handle, how to process, how to tolerate feeling that good for so many hours in a row, feeling that good for that long.

Everyone's threshold is different, based on our history, the trauma written on our body, the dogma implanted in our brain. My upper limit may have been set lower than most. Perhaps because depression runs on both sides of my family or maybe because my mother was sick in the hospital when I was a child or because I watched her want so much more from my father than he was willing to give her or because I never developed healthy ways to cope with and release my anger.

Whatever the reason, I set that upper limit.

And now, I can raise it.

If I'm very, very attentive to the sensations alive in my body, I can catch it in time. In the book, they talk about the quality of approaching an upper limit as feeling ashy. My housemate says he can identify it as the point when the pleasure doesn't get inside him, but sort of glances off the surface of his skin and slides away. It could feel like you're watching a movie and the image just changed from color to black and white. Or as though your brain is aware that you're eating something delicious, but you can't taste it anymore. For me, it can feel like the day before I get a cold, an underlying hum of impending exhaustion, a weariness. If I catch the sensation in time, before I pick the fight, have an accident, or get sick, I can practice the most effective technique for raising my upper limit.

I can rest.

The rest can look all kinds of ways. It can look like a nap, a walk around the block, leaving the party, locking myself in the bathroom and taking 60 deep breaths, lying down on the floor of someone's closet, a restorative yoga class, writing down or speaking aloud all the pleasurable things that have happened recently. Downloading them to paper or the cloud or the ether or to a willing listener. Taking time away from a lover for a week, a day, an hour.

Annie Lalla (a love coach I believe in) would put it this way: Every relationship needs exhales. “You can't inhale forever,” she says. That's what coupledom is. Learning to be together and then separate. I think of the organism of the us as an entity. And it breathes. It inhales. That's when you're together, gazing into each other's eyes, having the best sex. Can't leave each other in bed all day.

Inhale.

Exhale, fuck off, I need to go for a walk, I need to see my girls, I need to go away for the weekend.

Inhale, exhale.

And you need to do that daily, weekly, and monthly.

Couples need to know, ¹whenever couples are fighting [please read the footnote], it's because they didn't exhale in time.

Your relationship to your own pleasure is also a relationship. And it, too, needs exhales.

This is the way muscles get stronger. You give them a challenging task, and they rip a little bit, performing that task. There are these little micro tears. And then you rest those muscles. And while you rest, the tears heal. And the outcome is that you get stronger. But you don't get stronger without the rest.

Let's do this for a moment. Put one hand over the center of your chest, and cover it up with the other hand, like you're holding your own heart, like you're creating a circuit that goes out from you and back into you.

This, by the way, is a very nice way to fall asleep.

Now breathe into the space under your hands.

Inhale. Exhale, 10.

Inhale. Exhale, 9.

Inhale. Exhale, 8.

Inhale. Exhale, 7.

Inhale. Exhale, 6.

Inhale. Exhale 5.

Inhale. Exhale, 4.

Inhale. Exhale 3.

Inhale. Exhale, 2.

Inhale. Exhale, 1.

One last thing. I invite you to tell me, and I'm not there, so you're telling the ether, about the pleasure you've experienced tonight.

Pour some off the top so that you'll have room for a little more.

Take the time that you need.

When you feel ready to slip back out and immerse yourself in the love, please put these things back where you found them and leave the door open so somebody else can take a much-needed break.

Thank you for getting horizontal with me.

If you want to hear my voice again, take a sticker.

They're in that little mailbox.

Now tell me, what feels good?

Life is Beautiful, Love More / The Arts District // Las Vegas, NV /// October 2021

1. “When couples are fighting, it’s because…” Oh dear. This is Far, far too broad of a generalization. Please edit this in your heart to “often.” Often when couples are fighting, it’s because they didn’t exhale in time. Not always! Sheesh!