Conscious Sexuality

Deepening our Sexuality as an Expression of Consciousness

Sex in the world we live in is a pretty shallow affair. On the one hand, we get entrained in our culture to believe that there is something inherently bad and dirty about sex. On the other hand, the media bombards us with images of sex on display. For many young men, the first encounter with sexuality is an awareness that they are feeling something in their bodies that is going to get them into trouble if they don’t hide it. So they find their dad’s porn magazines hidden in a cupboard and learn to masturbate – fast and furiously – behind a closed door. In time, this cultivates a lack of sensitivity and an over activation of the sympathetic nervous system in men’s sexuality. Sex gets to be associated with excitement, quick release and in instant change of emotional state.

For young women, their first sexual encounter is often with men who have only had the experience I have just described. Because men have been objectifying women’s bodies in this paradigm, women don’t really feel men connecting with them when sexual encounter happens from this place. Most women’s bodies will not truly open until they feel a man connecting with them deeply. However, women do discover from an early age that sex can get us attention – perhaps attention that we didn’t get from our fathers and that we yearned for. So we learn to ‘put out sex’ in exchange for emotional gratification.

There comes a time when this way of making love is no longer fulfilling for a man or a woman. This may be the onset of discovering how to consciously make love. Men learn to slow down and become more attentive to what’s happening in their partners’ bodies. Women learn to connect their bodies and their hearts, and to feel with both.

In the African tradition, there is a belief that, when a child is born, his/her mother carries the truth for the child. Through mother’s milk, the child develops an internal compass for the purpose of life. If the child does not individuate, s/he will at some point turn the world into ‘mother’. We look to the world around us to inform us as to the meaning of life. Our lives become about accumulating things, gaining status, being accepted and praised. Thus we enter the hamster wheel of the collective subconscious. Without us knowing this, we lose all control over our lives and start to serve the great machines of the societies we have created.

Then comes a day – or a lucky lifetime – when something happens, and we see through the game we have been playing with ourselves. We see through the illusion that our lives are about accumulating possessions and power. We discover that love is not something one can possess. We come to face the fact that everything we are holding on to, will be taken away from us. We discover that the identities we have built up for ourselves, have nothing to do with who we really are.

When a man or woman starts asking the big questions of life: Who am I? What is the purpose of life? How can I love without reserve? the axis of our world begins to change. We find ourselves engaged in deep inquiry, meditation and body awareness practices. We develop a more conscious relationship with nature, our bodies, our food, our possessions, and our relationships. Bit by bit, we start to let go our false notions of who we are, and open to the unknown. We come to rest in deep stillness and presence and develop the courage to truly open our hearts to this moment.

For many seekers who have been committing themselves to a path of consciousness, sexuality is the last frontier of awakening. In fact, many profound spiritual teachings do not address the area of sexuality. Some even claim that it is better to transcend sexuality. Why is this so? Because of the negative pressure that our society has put on sex, sexuality has become the dark underbelly of our culture. Our sexual bodies carry the imprints of our unresolved feelings, sensations and beliefs. In other words, we are terrified of entering this terrain and shining the light of consciousness on our sexuality. Sexuality thus remains the last frontier in our journey of awakening.

It helps to have a skilled guide when entering into this terrain – someone who is steeped in a path of consciousness and whose relationship with sexuality is infused with the light of awareness.

The prejudice our world has towards sex is actually the greatest cosmic joke. The truth about sex – when we open to what it really is – is that sex is God coming into form. When two people come together in profound love and in total surrender to ultimate truth, then their lovemaking becomes a flame of consciousness. In this fire, our old ideas of who we thought we were, burn away. We come to meet in tender, powerful presence. We discover that, in our lovemaking, we have the capacity to give birth to entirely new realities – ones borne from consciousness and love coming together in divine union.

This path of deep sexuality is for those brave souls who are willing to walk to the edges of our known reality – and then walk across the edge – to discover, and keep discovering, who we truly are.

You don’t need a sexual partner to let the light of consciousness infuse your sexuality. You don’t need to be a specific age, shape or sexual orientation. All you need is a profound love for truth, and a sincere desire to bring THAT down into your body – and into this world.