Sex and Soul
To define sacred sexuality, it is important to rediscover what sex means to us. Paramount for growth in this area is to break out of preconceived thinking. To help us step out of the cultural box, I use the word “sex” as an acronym, S.E.X., which stands for Soul Energy eXchange, or as my partner sometimes likes to refer to it: Soul Energy eXtravaganza! Couple that with S.O.U.L., a Systemic Organization of Universal Love, as defined in the book, “The Living Energy Universe,” by Gary Schwartz and Linda Russek, and you have Soul-ful Sex.
Lainie Love Dalby | http://www.LainieLoveDalby.
This new perspective is not strictly about performance or procreation, or even about orgasm, though that can be a wonderful benefit. S.E.X. is about sharing and exchanging energies that originate more from our souls than just our heads or our genitals. It is about uniting our longing for wholeness and connection, yearnings that are naturally sacred and spiritual. It is about pleasuring and being pleasured in whatever consensual form that takes.
Author Brandy Williams writes:
Sex is the most engrossing human act. Intimate touch involves all the senses. At the moment of pleasure, of shivering contact with a partner or a stolen moment of self-love, all our normal duties, tasks, fears, failures, all things we do drop away. This is life at its simplest, a time simply to be – to watch, listen, smell, taste, touch and feel, to focus on being a physical creature and experience the body’s capacity for pleasure. [Indent omitted] When our bodies feel healthy and our hearts clear, when we can give and accept pleasure freely and with sincerity, when we bring to intimate touch an awareness of the Divine, sex becomes sacred. We blossom into a fully human consciousness, caught up in the passionate embrace of life…We become…supple, flexible, centered, alive in the moment.
Sacred Sexuality
Sacred Sexuality is the desire to discover and explore both our conditioning and our limitations in exchanging four personal and distinct energies with another, or exploring them alone. We open our “new eyes and ears” and listen to our bodies through the felt senses. Becoming familiar with the body’s felt senses adds great fluidity to the process. And by expanding our sharing skills, however gradual, the experience of sacredness seeps into the bones and marrow of the lover. What more beautiful way could human beings embody the sacred than by challenging themselves to bring the four primary soulful energies together (see below)? When we do this, when we consciously give and receive these four energies, we experience ecstasy, transcendence and a new sphere of personal growth, empowerment, and understanding.
The Four Primary Energies
There are four primary soulful energies in Soul Energy Exchange (S.E.X.): love, pleasure, lingum and yoni. The third and fourth energies are Hindu Sanskrit terms used by Tantra workshop leaders Charles and Caroline Muir, and understanding them assists us in breaking out of traditional, cultural thinking patterns. The third expression, lingum energy, represents the masculine drive, penis, aggression and personal power, the giving of complex energies, and glory. While lingum energy is often male identified, in reality this energy is found in all human beings. And our fourth soulful expression is yoni energy, which represents the feminine, the vagina or any part of the body that exudes surrender and desire to receive energy. Yes, men too have yoni energy.
We are all more or less conditioned and limited in our expression of yoni or lingum energies, not to mention love and pleasure. In truth we have all suffered traumas to our lingum and yoni energies, as well as love and pleasure. Unlocking traumatic and toxic shame, and thawing frozen energies are steps on our path to the sacred. Experimenting, without judgment, along the felt sense boundaries of these energies is a direct route to god energy, the earth, our ancient memories, and the universe. All four of these soulful energies are the creator’s way of expressing itself through us.
As the river gives into the ocean, what is inside me moves inside you…
– Robert Bly
Sexual Concerns
I have met with many people who have shared very personal sexual concerns with me. They ranged from feelings of deadness in their pelvis, to erectile challenges, orgasmic difficulties, being restricted in experiencing sexual desire, or feeling limited with a partner they love. Sometimes it’s a body part, or image, thing–too big, too small, too tight, too wide. There are many similar burdens that people carry in a very heavy way. My experience has taught me that the principles explored in my writing can be enormously helpful. In most of my experiences with Focalizing, these types of hardships have been resolved.
Integrating Spirituality & Sexuality
After facilitating countless workshops and sessions with individuals and couples, one thing is certain: The healing of the schism between our sexual and spiritual energies is not only a provocative topic, but one of the most intimidating tasks before us. Yet it is also one of the most important. What I call the “split” arises out of early religious and cultural training, which teaches that love and families are good while sex is dirty, bad, and perverse. I have yet to meet one person who does not highlight this as a foremost challenge in life.
A deeply ingrained and culturally-induced rift between sexuality and spirituality haunts us. Yet, these two human forces are two sides of the same coin. At its most fundamental, when two people come together with open hearts, sex is a sacred act, joining them in body and spirit. This kind of union can be healing, the very embodiment of “transcendent beauty,” to be regarded with reverence and respect.
All too often, this is clearly not the case. Opening the heart and keeping it open can be challenging particularly for those whose sexuality is connected to psychic and spiritual wounds of early experiences. As a result, it is difficult to resolve our connection to a “higher” power with our human need to express, satisfy, and celebrate our sexuality.
Healing the “Sexual-Spiritual Split”
The split between spirituality and sexuality is a deep psychic schism within almost everyone in our culture which prohibits enduring, loving relationships to form and continue to remain sexually alive and growing. This rift is caused by generational, cultural, religious, and early programming that plants seeds deep in the unconscious, which makes merging the two virtually impossible without specific healing.
The British author Aldous Huxley wrote, “The aim and purpose of life is the unitive knowledge of God.” This speaks directly to the spiritual dilemma of our time: how to unite the polarities of our dissociative culture. Ever since Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am,” we have been separating the body, mind, and spirit. I’m convinced that the key to the disconnecting dilemma we face is to re-unite the body, mind, and spirit.
And a primary obstacle most people face is uniting the spiritual with the sexual. I call this “healing the sexual-spiritual split.” We need to reintegrate God and the cosmos with our sexuality.
Relationships Without Sacred Sexuality
When sex is not fulfilling in a monogamous relationship, the cornerstone of the union is weak and vulnerable. Most of us, consciously or unconsciously, commit to such relationships, at least in part, anticipating sexual satisfaction. If fulfillment dwindles or becomes barely existent, a foundation of the relationship is betrayed. One will often feel imprisoned and act out in emotional or sexual ways. There is, or will soon be, trouble in paradise. And often, because couples lack the skill required for sensitive dialogue, they go into denial, often for years. This is not necessary. New skills are available now.
I am happy to report that I have been living in a sexually fulfilling, loving relationship for many years now. All the work has been worth it! Opening up the heart, letting go of taboos, sharing shame-free sex, and being responsible and self-respecting, are keys to both the kingdoms of higher consciousness and pleasure. It is no wonder that when some are in the throes of orgasm they say, “Oh God, Yes!” In that moment of letting go and dropping defenses, a greater reality bursts forth. Loving sex heightens consciousness, and for me, God is consciousness, and pure consciousness is love.
Imagine yourself and your partner, with open hearts, choosing to pleasure each other. Imagine breathing and letting go into the bliss, whatever it may be, and knowing that you are going to God or the highest energy powers. Your partner is joining and supporting you in this awareness and experience. Then you switch, pleasuring your partner in whatever ways are desired and appropriate for the two of you. If you really give yourself such a delightful experience, you will experience ecstatic sex, erotic energy, and you will have a rich spiritual experience that is enlightening as well. Every time more veils are dropped between partners, more consciousness opens to them. It will reveal itself in the daily living of life and in creative expression. This is what sex and pleasuring looks like when you are healing the sexual-spiritual split.
Sexuality & Higher Consciousness
Combining love with sexual expression can be an act of higher consciousness. In workshops, I help foster a genuine belief that when two human beings combine love’s energy with erotic energies, a transcendent experience occurs, one that is often profoundly healing. This is a very sacred sharing and the true goal of a fulfilling sexual experience. Reaching this goal is the result of a give and take, a negotiation of the openhearted experience of interconnectedness.
Though this process can be awkward, it is essential to learn to communicate about our needs, desires, and fantasies. “Reclaiming Adolescent Awkwardness” is a phrase I use to give people permission to go to the awkward “places” necessary to heal the sexual-spiritual split and to form authentically intimate relationships.
Yet even so, we will often encounter resistance to fusing our loving, sexual and spiritual energies. Contrary to what many naively believe, we need to learn that healthy loving includes the expression of our more shadowy desires as well as our tenderness. The delicate opening up of our repressed sexual histories, variations, and fantasies is extraordinarily enriching and healing. Appreciating the nature of resistance and de-shaming our fantasies are entryways to a “circle of energy” allowing the experience of full body orgasm and full-hearted spirituality.
Under our needs, desires, and fantasies are powerful and subtle feelings and energies that want to be expressed. These expressions help us grow holistically; they teach us about aggression and passivity, about our feminine and masculine energies, and about pleasuring and being pleasured. They help us dissolve shame toward our inner contradictions and complexities and experience them fully for healing, growth, and self-understanding.
True and spiritual lovemaking is the interweaving choreography of our higher and shadow selves. It is a holistic fusing together of aspects of the so-called ‘higher’ and ‘lower’ self — how beautiful and so very intimate to do so with open hearts.
Evaluating Our Progress
I believe that there will always be one more way we can heal this schism, drop more veils, or enhance our capacity for pleasure and spirit. Not to worry. If all the veils were gone, where would our humanness be? How interesting to ponder such ideas as we heal ourselves day by day, and with each healing, enhance our ability to give and receive pleasure. It is a process of both struggle and delight with spontaneous expressions of perfection and bliss. Progress rather than perfection is the goal, and if we are earnest our bodies will lead our progress toward our personal perfection.
In evaluating our progress in healing our sexual-spiritual split, we need to ask ourselves: What motives do I bring to sexuality? What do I want from the sexual aspect of my nature? We know our healing is progressing when our answers emphasize spiritual fulfillment, integrating power and surrender, femininity and masculinity, and the desire for shared experiences of pleasure and higher consciousness.