Published in Toward 2012: Perspectives on the Next Age
A gentleman came to see me some time ago. This gentleman was carrying a lot of wounds around his sexuality, related to his adolescent use of pornography. Because he held so much anger towards his father, due to the emotional charge of that relationship, he released it and expressed it while he was masturbating to pornography. Thus, as he evolved and grew into an adult, his entire sexual relationship with himself was expressed as an act of aggression, releasing his pent up negative energy, and thus he was never able to merge his heart with his sexual energy. He acted out his aggression with women with whom he had a low esteem of, women who were easy to be judgmental of, always magnetizing himself to women who had low self-esteem and unresolved abuse issues. And simultaneously, he was never able to be present with them, he was often disassociated from them in a porn fantasy; thus he never sensually embraced them. He was unable to be present with them in the body, loving them or worshipping their juicy feminine shakti. And with the women he loved, and held a strong heart connection with, he was unable to cultivate sexual energy or desire with. It was this split, this huge emotional wound, that he desperately longed to release and transform, and thus he came to see me; a tantric bodyworker. He left a mind-blown man, as he'd never been that fully present in his body during any sexual experience in his entire life and indeed he had his very first full body orgasm. He asked for help, he stated his intention for transformation, and received what he asked for because he was clear about what he wanted.Our society is currently pulling its head out of the sand of denial, and as a culture, we are all looking for transformation from our current global catastrophe, to a harmonized global village. But we've been in denial for so long about so many pervasive problems, that it's finally hitting the fan so late in the ball game that many people are hopeless with the global situation and feel that we are doomed for armageddon, World War 3, complete economic collapse, or the end of time as touted by (mis)interpretations of the Mayan calendric system. Many of us who are awake to the current global situation are calling for transformation and simultaneously afraid of and excited about the potential of this asked for transformation. But the transformation that needs to take place needs to occur within each of us individually, and the barometer of this transformation will be how each of us responds personally to huge events that transform our lives from the comfortably known to the ineffable unknown.The publication of 'Can Sex Work Be Shamanic?' changed my personal life in profound and dramatic ways, in ways I could never have imagined. It was really an innocent endeavor; I never once considered the transformation that could potentially ensue as a result from publishing the essay. I never imagined what might happen. I simply felt driven to express something, and I was excited to be offered the opportunity to publish an essay that I felt potentially could contribute to the evolution of consciousness on planet earth, which is ultimately the only thing I care about. When I finished a two hour thai massage with the editor of Alternatives on the last day of my thai training at Breitenbush Hot Springs, Peter inquired about my background as he felt I had some special energy. The conversation that ensued lasted some time and I opened up about the Tantric work that I do. He offered me an opportunity to publish an essay, and thus 'Can Sex Work Be Shamanic?' was born.But truth be told, it was a question I'd been asking for years before the publication of the essay. The essence of my essay belies the deeper unspoken question: 'Can Sex Be Shamanic?' To me, there are latent potentials within every one of us that are held in the field of our sexuality, and these potentials often lay dorment and unawakened. These potentials are the ability for sex to be an experience of union, an ecstatic full body vibration of love, connecting deeply psychically with your partner, meditating simultaneously on the profound physical ecstasy as well as the energy, staying present, staying connected in the heart space, staying clear and in the flow of juicy yummy bliss. And beyond that is the potential for sexuality to awaken the kundalini and shift consciousness, awakening the visionary potentials of multidimensional third eye activation. And beyond that is the potential to deeply experience the feeling of transpersonal sex; where we're not making love with the personality of our partner, but we're making love with divine source; 'God' or 'Goddess' as within the heightened sexual state we are able to begin channelling our divine energies. So, I believe sex can be a transcendental holy union. And indeed, this has been in my experience. Those who know from first hand experience the massive floods of energy moving through the body, and the subsequent transformation of consciousness from 'mundane' to 'awakened ecstatic' need not question the opportunity that exists despite that most people are unaware and unavailable for this level of freedom and bliss.But to return to the massive shifts that occurred in my life after the publication of my article. First was a lot of attention, more attention than I knew how to deal with. More emails and requests for my presence than I knew how to handle, so I caved in, and dropped off and focused on my personal life. Not long after publishing the essay, a documentary filmmaker began inquiring about working with me and the topics I am discussing. But the ultimate bomb that got dropped in my life happened two months after my essay was published; my landlord handed me a notice of eviction. He'd discovered my work, my websites, my essay. He handed me an envelope filled with my writings and told me that I was "flying above the radar" and not being discreet enough. So, I was given three weeks to move out of my cozy nest; the home that I'd worked so hard to create, the massage temple space that I'd worked so hard to cultivate. It was heartbreaking. I'd only lived there for 8 months after 9 months living out of a backpack and travelling around Guatemala, Mexico & California, and all I wanted was 'home' that entire time. The intensity of sadness crushed me completely, and I grieved for days. But before the heartbroken grief set in, my immediate response to seeing the eviction notice was a total state of calm, knowing completely that this was divine guidance and the spirits of the universe were communicating with me through this. They were instigating more transformation. It felt like it made perfect sense.The timing of the eviction was amazingly ironic, as the two months prior to the eviction were some of the happiest months of my life. Having nothing to do with the essay; it was the deepening of my ability to embody my spirit in my body that brought me the most amount of happiness. For the first time in my whole life I felt I was coming home. Not home in a place, not home with regards to a materialistic acquisition of things that created a 'home' ~ I was coming home into my self. I felt more present, more awake, more clear, more relaxed, more authentic, more fully plugged into my body. I did not feel disassociated from my body or my sexuality; in fact, I felt like my whole lifetime was leading up to this time of finally collecting all parts of my being and bringing them fully into the temple of my body. I felt whole.Some amazing puzzle pieces aligned for this to happen. A phone call with a man who I'd been in love with for a whole year on Christmas Day helped me let go of his energy that I'd held onto. Beginning a daily smoothie regimen, that included maca, cacao, acai, & vitamineral green, that transformed my digestive system and cleared me of all stagnancy and bloating. Once my digestive system cleared out, I released the energetic blockages I held in my lower belly (my second chakra) and released a lot of sexual energy. I returned to a largely vegetarian diet and made most of my food. I received bodywork from a bodywork genius who tore me apart and helped me realize that I have hips. And most importantly I was cultivating a relationship with a gifted computer wizard, a genius for making phat psychedelic electronic dance beats. First we began co-creating music together, and then we began co-creating sexual energy together.Becoming sexually activated with my musical compadre re-awakened me to the power of sexual energy. In the heightened sexual energy state, when I am ramped up in ecstatic states of physical bliss, when the outer walls of my labia are hard, when my yoni is an enormous orb of hot heat glowing from my root sending pulsations of bliss through my whole body, when I am that present and that free to be insanely joyful; I become my full self. All parts of my being are collected and brought into my body. I can feel an enormous shift within my subtle energy body, and it feels like I become a goddess. The Goddess steps fully into my body. I feel activated, alive, liberated, blissed out, and powerful. One of the most amazing things about sexual energy and states of union is the experience of releasing every last bit of tension held in the body. When every single cell in the body is infused with high states of pleasure and the body is deeply relaxed, the body does not hold onto any more tension and neither does the mind. When the body is open; the spirit walks in.What I am referring to is the center of Tantric practice. After much meditation upon Tantric wisdom, I realized that the intention or goal of Tantra was to create the merging of dualities, the union of heaven and earth, the union of masculine and feminine, the union of body and spirit; thus bridging dualities and emerging into a state of wholeness. The Tantric path is about the interweaving of our energies with the fabric of the whole, the available chi of the universe. This is a deep path that requires intense dedication to mastering awareness of energy and being able to become energetically aware of the movement of energy in the body. And in many spiritual philosophies, you hear tell of 'The Higher Self' as if we are lower selves, disconnected from our high enlightened selves. I think our psyches are very split, split between our inner masculine and feminine, split between our conscious surface level awareness and our ignored unconscious denial dream self, the split between our divine selves and our 'shadow' ego selves. But to merge and marry these aspects of our selves is to create wholeness within ourselves, and that is the goal because that is how we will finally experience complete peace and clarity and joy and freedom.So within this framework, we distinguish between our lower 'human' 'ego' 'shadow' selves, and our higher 'divine' selves. And thus we are split. But I have been praying for a year, sending my intention out to the universe, to fully embody my spirit in my body. To fully anchor my divine self, and see my divine self as my true self, to not identify with the unconscious confusion and chaos self, but to identify with my conscious fully aware authentic self. And because I want to see Heaven emerge on Earth, I feel I must anchor my heaven in my earth body. And clearly in no time in my life did this occur more profoundly than when I stepped fully into my sexual energy and meditated in deeply blissed out energy.Now, imagine what the world would look like if there were millions of women who were anchors of ecstatic bliss energy. Imagine if there were millions of women who were eschewing convention and walking their path towards their authentic nature, and they were releasing social conformity norms in favor of following their heart bliss. Imagine if the world was filled with juicy mamas who love to be loved, and love to get loved on. Imagine if millions of women were fully in their bodies, fully activated in their sensuality, fully released into their creative liberation.. What kind of world would we be living in? We would be living in a world where people would rather make love than cut down trees or enslave other people. We would live in a world where we wouldn't need prostitutes. We would be living in a world where everybody was met and loved, cared for and nurtured, such that the only thing we would want is to make sure others are getting enough too. We would be living in a world where the priorities would be about taking care of each other, because taking care of each other is taking care of the whole, and we as individuals are a part of that whole.But we don't live in that kind of world. And I don't need to be the one to remind you what kind of world we're all living in right now. I could list the environmental degradation, the wars in other people's homelands, the widespread deaths of bees, the corruption in the highest levels of our society.. We have been living in a world that has for thousands of years suppressed the feminine. Our culture killed all the witches, all the holders of esoteric magic and wise women who knew the plant secrets. Our culture put corsets and bustles on women and disfigured their spines so they couldn't relax into their bodies. And a woman needs to have good flowing, healthy, undulating spines in order to have sexual power. Our culture told people to have sex within the confines of marriage. Our culture put high heels and makeup on all the women so they could disfigure their hips and hide the women behind masks of inauthenticity. Our culture has not told women that they are beautiful for their authentic beauty; and instead we have a culture of women who get rhinoplasty and botox. And other cultures have maimed and bound the feet of women to look like lotuses, and have dismembered the erogenous jewel of a woman's sexual body ~ the clitoris. Christianity and Islam, as well as other religions, have suppressed women and our sexuality. Many in our culture have been told to only be sexual with one person for procreation within the confines of marriage and to have sex with a sheet between the bodies with a hole in the sheet for the penis to go through, so nobody would feel pleasure.How many clients have come to see me over the years that haven't made love with their wife for 15 years? The numbers of men who haven't been lovingly met and haven't received intimate nurturing are astronomically enormous. I once met a sad man who only a year before had separated from his wife of 16 years, whom he hadn't had sex with since the day their first and only son was conceived within the first year of their marriage. His wife refused to display any signs of affection throughout their marriage; she wouldn't hold hands, hug or cuddle. This is an extreme example, but it paints the picture of imbalance between genders that is sadly rampant. I feel that a culture of men who haven't been loved, met or nurtured is a culture doomed to act out that extreme emotional wounding by cutting down trees, degrading the environment, creating wars and enslaving others. I believe the root cause of all planetary and social imbalances is a result of sexual repression and gender imbalance. Men have been just as suppressed from their authentic sexuality as women have. But we live in a culture where, generally speaking, women's power has been repressed by dominant masculinity.There can be no more denial that women have been suppressed from their authentic nature and from their sexual power. The tools of physical disfiguration, using corsets, footbinding and clitoral modification, as well as the guilt trip tools to subdue the psyche from pursuing physical pleasure ~ these tools have been used to keep women from knowing their true power and from standing in their bodies as radiant, ecstatic, blissful beings of joy. But I am not a feminist who is angry and vindictive about four thousand years of the patriarchy. I am saying, however, that in our society today, we don't need to do that anymore. There are many women who are waking up to their authenticity, to their creative potential, and to their divine liberated selves. I know countless artists and witchy wise women who are creatrixes within this matrix. The women that I know that are beautiful are those women who delve deep into their creativity, journeying with their artforms ~ their paintings, their poetry, their songs, their handmade clothing. These women journey and dance, and honor their bodies. These women nurture themselves, educate themselves about how to best take care of their health with healthy food and plant based medicines. These women love each other and support their sisters, encouraging each other to grow and become more expansive and creative. This new wave of women is the embodied resurgance of the Divine Feminine on Planet Earth.But the suppression of women is buried deep into our collective subconscious. Even though our culture has been through waves of Women's liberation since the seventies, many women still don cloaks of disfiguration and sublimation. In my neck of reality, where all the women I'm friends with are brilliant artists, juicy mamas making homemade bread and doing plant & sweat ceremonies, dancing ecstatically and going on healing retreats, I am in a bubble of empowered powerful women. But I recently went to a Mormon church on Easter, and walked into a room full of women giving their 'testimony' about their 'faith'. The room was filled with women who didn't seem present and in their bodies, they didn't speak with conviction about their faith, they didn't share stories that expressed their hearts, they gave testimony to a belief system that they had been indoctrinated in, but it didn't seem that any of them deeply believed in it. Their shoulders were rolled foreward, they wore high heels and makeup and looked very uncomfortable in their bodies. Over the years and throughout cultures, most of the suppression of women has been perpetuated by women themselves; it is the elder African women who dismember the clitoris of the young girls, it is the elder Chinese women who break the feet of the young girls and wrap them in cloths. But we must not cater to bitterness or victimization about these injustices. We must realize that we need to take the power back into ourselves. If we want to live in a world that is whole and healthy, we must decide to become whole ourselves because we are each facets of the whole, and when we are a weak link in the circle of the whole, then we aren't doing our part to hold together the integrity of the whole. If we want to live in a world of balance, we need to re-embody the Divine Feminine.When divine powerful goddess women reach critical mass on Planet Earth, you know that big shift is going to happen because it will make more women want to step into their juicy, ecstatic, erotic, powerful, creative selves. It becomes magnetic. And to all you women who don't know how to get from point A to point Z but the journey looks appealing and the end result more appealing, all I can say is, be receptive to change. Become an agent of transformation, and do not hold onto what is not serving you. With my story of being evicted, the huge change out of my comfortable cozy nest offered me six weeks of travelling and spiritual pilgrimage, and after my journey I moved into a home more beautiful & divinely magical home than my old one. Often the doors of transformation take the form of something that seems at first horrible and heartbreaking, but when we surrender to the magic of what is, we make ourselves available for potent potentials of miraculous meetings.One of the major realizations after getting evicted and hanging out with the Mormons is that we live in a culture that is absolutely afraid of sexual liberation; the suppression of sexuality is so deeply ingrained in our collective consciousness. And it is the repression of it that causes it to pop up in the ways of prostitution, strip clubs and online porn; because the men are hungry and need to be fed. And we live in a culture that criminalizes whores, denies them recognition and visibility, and secretly tolerates the hoards of them because society would go haywire if they weren't available, meanwhile brandishing them as shameful lepers of society. But if women weren't suppressed in their bodies or their psyches and we were free to be powerful pleasure beings, if sexuality wasn't so deeply repressed and the life force love energy within each one of us so deeply malnourished, we wouldn't have any of this collective shame about owning our right to freely enjoy joy. We would step into ourselves and we would step into each other with gratitude for the gifts that we each are to each other. We would step into our bodies with gratitude for our pleasure receptors, we would honor each other when we each nurture ourselves. And ultimately, in doing so, we would co-create peace on Planet Earth, because the priorities would be shifted away from War and Corruption and Media Lies and Economic Disparity to Nurturing, Feeding and Loving Each Other, Supporting Each of our Highest Potentials, & Contributing to the whole by nurturing ourselves.
