SEXUALITY AS PART OF LIFE IN AN ERA OF HIV/AIDS

A part of each and every one of us is the need to work through a process of self-development and to harmonize this energy to the point where it not only weaves the threads of our existence into a more satisfying whole, but also with the energy of other people and all life forms around us.

Techniques are available to us to help us all to rekindle a lust for life and regain a vibrant sense of self.

By being more loving and connected in the ways that you relate to your partner you can create deep loving intimacy.

The message is simple –

Celebrate your relationship with a spirit of wonder and playfulness. Stop thinking and together start feeling. Focus on the present moment as you will feel more vital when you whole-heartedly live in the ‘now’.

Be sensually aware of your body and express your sense of aliveness and passion through it.

Reconnecting with your body in a positive way via your senses gives you a surge of well-being and energy.

Sexual energy is a vital and fundamental indicator of your overall level of vitality. When you’re feeling great your body is vital and alive.

Cultivating this sense of vitality means embracing a dynamic approach to sex, love and life in general that will fill you with bliss.

The starting point of this process is to re-affirm the place of spirit in your life and make space for a soul connection in your sexual relationship.

Obviously casual sex and the so called one night stands do not have the time or space for this process to begin.

A loving relationship encourages you to expand sexuality into a more integrated way of being. The ethos of this essay is to encourage you in whatever relationships are ‘natural’ to you to open your heart and fill your being with loving emanations and sweetening your relationship with love and compassion.

This essay is not an instruction manual but I want to offer some simple steps and then suggest you start reading material relevant to the subject and practicing the principles. The first important principle to maintain a loving relationship is to love yourself. These days many of us lead stressful lifestyles that hamper our free spirits. Some also have to live with constant ridicule and rejection of those for whom, for us, love is both natural and complete.

Preparation is important. You nurture your body and your soul by taking care of your needs. When you nurture your self you have the resources to nurture others.

Learn to treat your own body with respect remembering that your body is a temple dedicated to life and love.

When you have activated the energy of body and soul in your own being you are free to reach out towards your partner with an open heart. Learn to connect with your lover as an energy-body relating to each other at the level of the inner core rather than just your surface personalities.

Stimulate your sensuality through rituals that enliven your senses. For me that often means through various forms of massage and oral stimulation. Allow time for this as it is all about inviting the sacred into your life. It is this heightened sense of sacredness that helps you to step beyond your normal limits into a closer connection with your partner.

Part of your desire should include physiological exercises that combine strengthening your love muscles with visualization.

Remember that you may also need sexual healing and clearing of difficult emotions that may be blocking the flow of energy in your relationship. Some of these might be religions or social taboos that infuse guilt and a sense that sex is dirty.

Learn from reading about the mistaken and often misogynist origins of these taboos and from your own reasoned decisions as to how many of these, or how completely you feel they should dominate your body and soul.

Part of the fun in this process is to work on your technical abilities as a lover. If you can only make love in the missionaryposition, either male of females, then you is still in the novice class. You need to perfect skills to pleasure yourself and your lover, exploring your orgasmic potential and lengthening and deepening your orgasms.

For women discover how clitoral stimulation is crucial to sexual satisfaction. For both women and men discover your g-spot stimulation areas so crucial to sexual satisfaction.

Men need to learn to defer gratification to develop potential for much greater orgasmic pleasure. Some fun ways involving sexual gymnastics is the way to find this potential. Look in books that teach techniques of breathing and visualization to move energy through your being during lovemaking, and don’t expect your parents to be much help in this process. (some exceptions of course because this writer is also a parent)

Most of your mothers and grandmothers never knew orgasmic sacred sexuality because they were never encouraged to learn.

Part of the process involves relaxation which often means letting go of the struggle in life and surrendering to the flow of energy.

This becomes dynamic relaxation – life affirming attitudes – joy, spontaneity and sensual pleasure but always governed by principles of sexual health and safety.

There is not much dynamic relaxation and spontaneity in tears and asking your best friend how to prevent conception or where to go for testing after you expose yourself and your partner to unintended consequences of risk behavior.

When it is your intention to love your partner as much as you love yourself you need to be fully informed and design the games you play together to be safe, fun and pain free. Paying careful attention to what is happening between you and your partner makes you more sensitive in your interactions and deepens the connections between you and your deeper self, as well as with others.

Being more alive in your own experience helps you to fully immerse yourself in it, rather than stand outside your own life as an observer.

Meditation around your own life and feelings as a witness to your own life helps you perceive more clearly what is happening to you.

In that way, as you witness what is happening in your own life you develop insight into how you relate to, rather than hold yourself back from others because of critical or judgmental attitudes.

In order to let go of such attitudes you need to open up to the transpersonal nature of love, which should be unconditional? Love should flow through you, don’t try to bank it up.

Many of us feel the need for greater closeness, yet with our busy lives we can find it almost impossible to dedicate time to relate with the degree of attention that real communication requires.

Yet you can make time! It is the degree of connection with each other that is important, rather than the length of time spent together. You can also make time by letting go of a sense of hurry; be fully present and emotionally available in the here and now.

Reluctance to make time for closeness can arise from a feeling of resistance or fear about intimacy.

Soon I will write some more about breaking down defenses against closeness and going to the heart of intimacy both sexually and emotionally.

Think of a period in your life when the world sparkled with promise suffused with sensuality. Do you recall the delicious rush of anticipation you felt. Maybe it was an actual meeting or maybe it was just an answered email message from someone you just met on the net. Feeling the warm thrill of their touch on your arm or the elation of gazing directly into their eyes, or maybe it was a pic attached to a reply to your mail with words that seemed too good to be true.

If your erotic aliveness is more or less shut down, such sensations may only come in unexpected moments, when you are startled by undercurrents in a friendship with a mate or a friend at school, or with a stranger.

This tingling promise of eroticism is a reminder of our true nature, filling us with a surge of energy and delight - making a baby is often furthest from our minds despite what organized religion might say to us about the over-riding purpose of sex.

You can allow or force this erotic electricity to remain subdued, or you can consciously choose to ignite it, both alone and with your partner.

Please note that partner is one and not a plural series of partners. It is not possible for proper focus of these energies with multiple partners.

One of the problems with western culture where I write from, is that love is too often clichéd as romantic attraction built on fantasies and projections.

True love is all about relationship.

Relationship is the flow of our energy, and emotion is the form of that energy. You are not your emotions or your mind!

You are an energy field of dancing atoms! You are not the sum total of your problems and emotions!

You can fully engage in the moment rather than be withdrawn or pre-occupied with old hurts, disappointments, disapproval or insecurities.

Just as children drop the past as soon as it is over and deal with what is right in front of them, you too can re-learn the ability to constantly let go of these feelings that sap your energy.

By letting go of inappropriate emotions and impossible expectations we can then accept that we cannot determine our relationships with other people. Relationships are mysterious and ultimately unknowable.

When we dissolve our ego, learning to be receptive, opening our hearts to love and, as importantly, our minds to the knowledge that will protect us; letting love dissolve emotional negativity and seeing Divine created ness in every aspect of our lives, including the Divinity in the life of your partner, then you will be free to love fully.

It is about seeing the nature of the world as love, and making your relationship central to your life.

A great way to side-step all the emotional problems that a relationship often activates is to encourage the wisdom of your body, (not the inherently sinful wisdom that has been thrust down our throats since birth) allowing ourselves to feel love and express it physically and responsibly.

Traditional spiritual paths advocate cutting off from the body and disowning body experience, but the great architect of the universe, in whatever way you see Him or Her, regarded our bodies as the gateway of our deeper selves.

A prevailing perspective invites us to abandon yourself to life, enjoy your body and care for one another and take pleasure in daily life.

Some people are naturally able to do this.

They are alive to the abundance of energy and sensitive to its subtle manifestations in their lives.

They feel engaged and inspired in their relationship with the world around them – connected, perceptive, aware and sensitive. It is possible for us all to be like this, by discovering our innate sensuality and opening our lives to joy.

In an era of sexually transmissible infections however, this energy needs to be fully informed.

Sexuality is a powerful force that motivates us in many ways.

It is an essential and dynamic expression of your psyche, more a state of consciousness than a biological drive. It enriches your relationships and your life. It is an exchange of energies, not just body fluids.

Problems of commitment are endemic in contemporary society, because of the damaging effects of a lack of intimacy in early family relationships and the bruising experiences of careless sexual relationships before maturity.

Please notice again my choice of words “before maturity” not “before marriage”.

Marriage is a social construct embedded in civil society but fast losing its appeal and usefulness for many as well as being unavailable to many who find themselves living on the margins of society.

Lack of commitment damages a relationship.

If you feel ambivalent and can’t manage to express your appreciation of your relationship and don’t intend to stay with your current partner, you should leave.

Commitment is necessary to allow your relationship to grow and move forward on the spiritual path.

Without commitment, you will be wracked by emotions like uncertainty and lack of trust. No where is that more apparent than in the families where HIV has been brought in to the marriage by migrating husbands and the only sin committed by their wives was to have unprotected sex with their husbands.

These negative emotions distract you from the task of increasing awareness and openness towards others.

A commitment grounds your intention to pursue the spiritual path together; it means honouring your obligations including child abandonment or abuse, rather than leaving when the going gets tough.

You need to discuss mutually your intention to deal with these emotional issues in spite of the temptation to give up.

Commitment implies making it a priority to bring more mutual pleasure into your relationship. This means honouring agreements you make together.

The path of love involves service and devotion.

Allow yourself to be a source of happiness, love and comfort for your partner and for your community.

Through giving the sense of separation is eclipsed for both of you.

Your sexual attraction gives rise to caring, loving devotional qualities, grounding these acts of everyday selflessness, such as when you put your partner first.

Worshipping your lover as your soul mate or beloved means you worship the divine in them.

The Devine stands for the inherently lovely lovable and loving in human nature.

Both of you are inherently divine, and seeing each other in this light will help you let go of the petty squabbles and power struggles that you see around you in order to create a more loving union.

This is definitely not a one-sided game. Both of you can be selfless and giving to each other.

Even if the relationship is a same sex relationship there is still a need to explore the sexuality of your partner.

Bring an awareness of what it might be like for your partner when he or she is faced with trying to satisfy both your sexual and emotional needs.

Take not of what your partner says and listen to suggestions.

Imagine what your partner is feeling when you are making love. What does your love making feel like to your partner?

It’s not about going after your own phallic pleasure or being so busy trying to excite your partner that both of you don’t feel properly connected.

What I have been describing has been regular lengthy love making sessions where you will be developing strong currents of sexual energy.

Once perfected it is possible to tap into these strong currents of energy and use it to enhance the rest of your day. There may be times when you may not have the time for longer love-making sessions so sometimes ‘quickie sex’ can also sexualize your whole day.

If the sex you have is enlivening you, it doesn’t matter if it’s over quickly; however if you feel depleted or shut down by sexual or emotional disappointment you should avoid ‘quickies’.

Remember also that sex starts long before you take your clothes off and after-play continues long after your orgasm dies away.

Orgasm is only a gateway – so you’ll miss out on a great deal if you just roll over and go to sleep.

Some of you might experience what is called premature ejaculation. Most folks who have discussed this as a problem have also agreed that they usually recover erectile capacity quickly so one plan could be that early ejaculation becomes part of the foreplay with capacity for a re-incarnation again later if desired.

To make the process more interesting try breathing alternately with one partner breathing in while the other is breathing out. It takes some practice to but it can enhance energy especially if your mouths are connected as well as your genitals.

Sexual energy is intense. It continually changes while both giving out and absorbing energy.

It is, for mature people in a voluntary partnership and an amazing health giving practice in moderation.

I close with a mantra of affirmations:

We will treat each other with mutual respect and honesty

We are free to be together

We honour the love between us

We prioritise pleasure

We glorify our sexuality

We respect gender diversity

Remember why God created cracks between the fingers.

It is so that at some time and place the one who is made for you, comes and fills those gaps by holding your hand forever.

Acknowledgement must be given to the continuing

inspiration of eastern philosophies

and the magical properties of massage techniques

that the writer has explored extensively.

Geoff Heaviside

Brimbank Community Initiatives Inc

Incorporated in Victoria Australia

gheaviside@rediffmail.com

MARCH 2004