The Hunger for Ecstasy
Sacred sexuality honors pleasure as a gift from God
Sitting with my friend Roseanne in the darkening twilight, I ask her a question I've been asking many people lately: "What does sacred sexuality mean to you?" Roseanne hesitates, searching for the right words. "It's not something you can force, but once in a while, you pass through into something beyond, something transcendent. It's like a great light. Life comes pouring into existence, and for just a second, you get a chance to look at it and see it happening."
Roseanne, a mother and housewife in her early fifties, is neither a student of Tantra, nor versed in New Age thought. In fact, she seems an unlikely source of information on sacred sexuality: She was raised in a strict Mormon family where sex was equated with sin. Yet the long overlooked truth is that countless men and women feel a natural, intuitive reverence for sex as the place where "life comes pouring into existence." At the same time, millions of Americans also carry a heavy legacy of sexual guilt and shame that blocks their ability to appreciate sex as a divine gift. Over and over, people tell me that their parents seldom or never talked about sex and pretended to be asexual. "In my family, there were no words for sexual parts or sexual acts," one woman said. "When I was eight or nine, I got out a mirror and looked at my vagina and wondered if there was something wrong with me. 'Is this okay?' I thought. 'Is this how it's supposed to be?'"
Many of us were raised in religious traditions that considered sex as "unspiritual" if not downright sinful. In contrast, most indigenous people revere sex as an encounter with the spirit world. Sobonfu Somé, a teacher from the Dagara tribe in West Africa, says that her language has no words for "having sex." The equivalent Dagara phrase translates as "going on a journey together"—a journey guided, according to Dagara belief, by the spirits of the ancestors. Moreover, the Dagara believe that although this journey is taken in private, it benefits the entire community because in the process, the human and the spirit worlds are brought into alignment.
Such ideas seem a far cry from our own. Yet I have heard hundreds of women, as well as many men, describing sex as a mysterious, profoundly sacred power. One woman, for example, responded without a moment's hesitation to my question about the nature of sex: "Sex is the light that streams from the body." Another said, "Sex is a field of magic." Still another told me, "It's the primal creative force. It moves through you, but it doesn't belong to you. You can't possess it."
Sex is not a genital activity; in fact, it is not an activity at all, but rather an aspect of the creative life force, also known as Kundalini, that can enliven and electrify us at every stage of life. For Cindy, a sculptor in her seventies, the moment of her sexual awakening at age 28 coincided with her birth as an artist. "In that moment, I understood that this vibrant aliveness was me. That's who I am. All the creative work I have done since then comes out of that state." Cindy has had several deeply satisfying relationships, but today, she is happily single. "I felt so empowered when I realized that I would always be a sexual woman and that I didn't have to depend on a partner," she told me. "The older I get, the more I feel turned on to spirit, to my own creativity, and most of all to the crazy, magical rush of life."
Naomi, a woman in her forties, made the exhilarating discovery of her own sexual power during a women's ritual in which each participant took off her clothes and offered a nude dance. Years of childhood abuse had taught Naomi to equate sex with humiliation, so she began her dance shaking with terror. Soon however, fear gave way to a mounting surge of ecstasy that intensified until it exploded into orgasm. "This joy started coursing through my body until I was rolling around on the floor like a little animal, kicking my legs and laughing," she recalls.
Sacred sexuality can be ethereal and gentle, or it can be bawdy, raucous, and funny. Cutting through the ego's pretentiousness, it reconnects us with the innocent joy of our animal bodies and gives us the medicine of wild, liberating laughter. The ancient Greeks thought of Aphrodite—the goddess of love—as the "laughter-loving" goddess who was always surrounded by children.
We all need to find our way to ecstasy, for the soul's hunger for ecstasy is as real and urgent as the body's hunger for food. When people become obsessed with sex they are in fact starving for ecstasy. When they fail to acknowledge this, they mistakenly try to satisfy that need through alcohol, drugs, or self-destructive sex. Modern Western civilization is probably the first that has no ecstatic rituals. Creating our own version of the Sufi zikrs, the Pagan spring festivals, or the ancient Greek mysteries could address the longing that drug-prevention programs and sex education cannot fulfill.
As an energy that transports the soul back and forth between the unmanifest and the manifest dimensions, sex has always been of special interest to healers, shamans, priests and priestesses. Today we are experiencing a mass spiritual awakening. More and more people are refusing to submit blindly to external religious authorities. Instead, they are examining religious teaching in the light of their own beliefs, hoping to separate the nourishing kernels of spiritual truth from the husks of outdated dogma. Often sexuality acts as the catalyst for forging a path through uncharted terrain. Richard, now happily partnered with another gay man, was formerly a Zen Buddhist teacher and monk. "I saw desire as a big no-no," he told me. "The Buddha taught that attachment to impermanent objects causes suffering. In my order, that was interpreted as meaning that personal attachments were bad, and sex was definitely bad."
Like many religious institutions, Richard's order considered celibacy a spiritually superior way of life. In theory, Richard agreed. Yet as the years went by, he became more and more frustrated. "I felt dry and shriveled. I started wondering, 'Where's the juice in my life? I need to find that juice.'" Soon after, Richard chose to leave his order, a decision he does not regret. "I believe that the purpose of the spiritual path is not to avoid suffering but to grow in love," he says. "And the only way I can walk the path of love is by following my heart's deepest desire. I still feel that celibacy is a valid choice, but it should be an option, not an ideal. So much hypocrisy and deceit are the direct result of idealizing celibacy."
For centuries, the way of the monk or nun was deemed incompatible with the "way of the householder." But the path of sacred relationship is at least as demanding as the monastic path, because it forces us to develop and transform the ego in ways monastic life does not. Nonetheless, Richard is not alone in his determination to integrate sexuality and spirituality, human and divine love. Over the past fifty years, there has been a radical shift in the in the purpose of sexual relationships. More and more couples find themselves simultaneously committed to a spiritual journey, to inner transformation, and to each other. A married friend told me, "What people like us are trying to do has never been done before. Certainly our parents were not trying to achieve that level honesty and consciousness and intimacy."
Marriage—or any long-term, committed sexual relationship—is perhaps the most radical voyage of personal transformation a spiritual seeker could embark on. Marriage involves saying yes—not only to another person but also to the difficult process of surrendering one's deepest, most stubborn ego structures to the purifying fires of love. For this reason, the mythologist Joseph Campbell used to describe marriage as a form of crucifixion. But short sexual involvements, too, deserve to be honored as spiritual teachers. Every sexual attraction carries a message from the spirit; so-called sexual "chemistry" has its source in the hunger of the soul to reclaim its own wholeness.
This does not mean we should act on every impulse, however. One woman, Hannah, told me of a night she and a monk spent sharing a small room, both madly in lust with each other. "Neither of us slept a wink," she recalls. "Every cell in my body was trembling with desire, but I did nothing." Ironically, she remembers this night as one of her deepest experiences of sexuality. "I don't believe that sex and love necessarily have to go together," she told me, "but in this case, they were in conflict, and I chose love."
Those wanting to improve the quality of their sex lives will find no lack of books, workshops and teachers. But even the most refined sexual techniques cannot unlock the door to the sacred. The key lies not in our actions but in our perceptions. To experience sex as a luminous miracle, we must approach it with eyes of reverence and with a mind free of judgment and shame.
Jalaja Bonheim, Ph.D., is a counselor, workshop leader, and author of several books, including The Hunger for Ecstasy: Fulfilling the Soul's Need for Passion and Intimacy (Rodale Books), Aphrodite's Daughters: Women's Sexual Stories and the Journey of the Soul (Fireside). For information on Bonheim's workshops and publications, visit her web site at www.jalajabonheim.com
Reprinted with permission.
