Some believe that promiscuity is, by definition, devoid of love and cannot envision strangers sharing a loving, meaningful and spiritually imbued tryst. It is probably more difficult to imagine a group of lovers coming together for one night of honest, nurturing and loving sexual expression. Yet these things do happen for some people.
Dr. Jenny Wade's Transcendent Sex documents the real life experiences of ordinary people whose sex “suddenly turned into an awe-inspiring experience that forever changed the way they understood themselves and reality — and the power of sex and the body as a vehicle of realization.”
These transcendent sexual encounters occurred in long-term committed relationships, casual relationships, momentary hook-ups and one-night stands.
The ancients envisioned sex as a doorway to the Divine. Today, mainstream religion teaches us that our bodies and the desires of those bodies are an impediment to spirituality. Despite differing doctrines, devout from a variety of faiths eschew the desires of the flesh in an effort to attain a higher level of spirituality.
However, a rich spiritual life does not require us to move away from our bodies. We can use the body as a vehicle for even greater spiritual awareness. Learning to focus on energy and intentions can free us from limited thinking and open doors to transformation.
Despite a plethora of “sexually explicit” imagery, our culture remains sex negative. I am often asked how I feel about sex in the media. I usually quip “what sex?” My sarcasm derives from my training as a volunteer for a rape crisis center. Years ago I learned that rape is not sex, but rather a bid for power over another person. By the same token, the “sexual” imagery so prevalent in our media, does not strike me as particularly sexual; it feels hateful on some level; more likely to communicate posturing and put-downs.
We are admonished to avoid certain proscribed sexual behaviors while monogamy, marriage and heterosexuality are embraced as “normal,” “right” and “good” by the dominant culture. Yet, there exists a subtle avoidance of anything resembling real intimacy.
I coach women who have felt degraded in the context of marital sex. For them sex, which is misogynistic and abusive, occurs while remaining hidden behind the socially sanctioned state of marriage. Extolling the virtues of marital sex and decrying the pitfalls of promiscuity sets us up to deny marital abuse while remaining blind to the spiritual gifts sex can provide.
Sex and love can transform us when we invite a blending of both spiritual and sexual dimensions. Shifting your focus from the exterior evidence to the energetic reality can catalyze your creativity in ways you might never have imagined possible.
Deepak Chopra has been quoted as saying, “Creativity is ultimately sexual — I’m sorry — but it is!”
Elaborating further on his website:
“Sexual energy is the primal and creative energy of the universe. All things that are alive come from sexual energy. In animals and other life forms, sexual energy expresses itself as biological creativity. In humans, sexual energy can be creative at all levels — physical, emotional and spiritual. In any situation, where we feel attraction, arousal, awakening, alertness, passion, interest, inspiration, excitement, creativity, enthusiasm, in each of these situations, sexual energy is at work."
Eve Ensler of The Vagina Monologues asserts that sexual energy “ . . . is the basis of creativity, love, ambition, desire, life.”
It makes sense that sex is the catalyst that informs all other creative endeavors. Everything we love about life originates from sex in one way or another. While the act of sexual reproduction is obvious to most, many of us don't realize that sexual energy is an important component of every facet of life including our spiritual, artistic, political and creative energies.
University of Amsterdam researchers found that thinking about love can make us more creative than simply thinking about sex. Dr. Helen Fisher believes “there may be a physiological explanation for these results. Feelings of romantic love can boost levels of dopamine, a neuro-chemical associated with creativity, while sexual desire can raise levels of testosterone, known to promote analytical skills.” February 2010 issue of O, The Oprah Magazine: “Why Love Can Make You More Creative”
What the Amsterdam researchers miss is the artificial separation their experiment creates between love and sex, as if the two were mutually exclusive. Asking their subjects to imagine a loving scenario, versus an unfeeling sexual encounter, ignores the terrain between these two extremes.
Freeing individuals from sexual shame improves self-esteem, enabling a more powerful expression of their life force and creativity. This increased sense of purpose often translates to a desire to be of service. In other words, being fully sexually integrated can lead to acts of altruism. We see a perfect example of this in the culture of the bonobo, a close relative of both chimpanzees and humans, which differs from both in that they make love instead of war. As the bonobo so aptly illustrates, love can be a component of a variety of sex acts with a variety of sex partners.
Your sex can be as meaningful and fulfilling as you wish it to be regardless of the external realities. I invite you to open yourself to the potential for transformation and increased creativity, which exist in sexual connection of many descriptions. Explore and find your own truth but don't expect it to remain a static truth. Your perceptions and needs will change over time and with each shift in your reality, there is no need to invalidate what came before. Change is an inescapable component of this beautiful journey we call life. It can be a beautiful component of your sex life too.
Next month: What's Love Gotta Do With It? Part Three: Specific Tips and Techniques to Invite Sacred Sexual Experiences