A common space for harmonic peacemakers

Sacred Sexuality

SACRED SEXUALITY

DR. BARRY HAMMER

The energy of sexuality and erotic sensual attraction is a physical expression of the sacred energy of love, or the urge for union, and the actual experience of union, or intimate communion of our energies at every level of our being. The urge for physical intimacy with another individual can naturally be united to, and enhanced or deepened by, intimate contact or sacred connection at other levels of our indivisible whole being, including our spiritual core, as well as emotional, mental, bioenergetics, kinetic, and other forms of energetic and experiential connection. Sexual and erotic contact becomes shallow and unsatisfying when divorced from deeper intimate communion, caring experiential connection, or loving empathic attunement at the level of heart, mind, and bioenergetics.

Human relationships at any or all levels of our being, including sexuality and erotic attraction, are truly sacred when they involve a reverent or respectful attitude toward our partner and ourselves. This view finds support in an online Merriam-Webster dictionary definition of “sacred” as connoting, among other things, “highly valued and important : deserving great respect” [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/sacred]. A physical and/or a broader integral holistic relationship between two whole persons is truly sacred, reverent, or respectful when we honor the intrinsic unconditional value, preciousness, beauty, and freedom of our partner, ourselves, and all living beings, by relating to our partner with genuine compassion, integrity, sincerity, generosity, as well as empathic considerateness of our partner’s natural dignity, needs, rights, and freedoms.

This respectful way of relating to our sexually and/or experientially intimate partner differs from relationships that disrespect, degrade, dishonor, or cheapen our partner, ourselves, and the intrinsic value of life by treating our partner in an exploitative, manipulative, controlling, abusive, inconsiderate, undignified manner. Such disrespectful relationships typically involve treating one’s partner, in effect, as if he or she were a controlled possession or commodity to be used and/or abused for our own perceived benefit even when that is harmful to our partner, the relationship, and our own true integrity. The philosopher Martin Buber distinguishes between exploitative, egocentric “I-It” relationships, in contrast to “I-Thou” relationships, in which unselfish caring for another person, and respect for their intrinsic value, is expressed. [see Buber’s books, 1) The Way of Response. 2) I and Thou.

Sacred relationship, including expressions of sexuality and erotic attraction that truly honor one’s partner, oneself, and all that is of intrinsic true value in the reality of love-life energy, is naturally more satisfying than egocentric, exploitative, forms of sexual and experiential contact with a partner, because respectful ways of relating bring contact with a more pure, refreshing, regenerative, beautiful, ecstatic, deeper kind of energy, whereas the energies generated by egocentric, uncaring ways of relating are naturally experienced, whether consciously or subliminally, as basically cheap, vulgar, unclean, degrading, degenerative, shallower. The ego typically seeks intensely exciting or thrilling sexual and erotic sensations and activities as a way of generating a greater sense of joyful vitality, beauty, and grandeur, but in the absence of the connective energies of true love and mutual respect flowing between the two partners, the stimulating kind of energy that is generated through artificially contrived or controlled sexual and erotic techniques is rather superficial and coarse, therefore, inevitably becomes stale, desensitizing, deadening, numbing, and unsatisfying, sooner or later.

Artificially induced stimulating sexual and erotic thrills produce an initial semblance of vitality, elation, and euphoria, but that initial surge of excitement is later followed by a depressing, deflation, deadening, or numbing of our energies, eventually resulting in energetic, experiential, and emotional depression, like the subsiding of a giant wave into a downward pulling whirlpool, or like the hangover or stupor following an alcoholic binge, because artificially induced excitement does not stimulate the real life-energy centers of our being as occurs when sexual and erotic contact is grounded in genuine caring or true love. The intensely exciting sensations and activities that the ego seeks only poorly imitate the genuine vitality, beauty, sweetness, and grandeur generated by true love, including physical as well as experiential expressions of love.

The narcissistic ego blocks our natural urge to fully release our sexual, erotic, and other energies through intimate physical and experiential intimacy with our partner, by continuously recoiling our energies away from the relational energy “dance” of love in order to reinforce and preserve the ego’s sense of separate self-awareness, selfish self-gratification, and oppositional self-will, or resistive willfulness. The only way to experience full orgasmic release of our sexual, erotic, and experiential energies is to let go of separate self-preoccupation in deeply invested, unselfishly caring, communion with our partner. Utilizing controlled, predetermined sexual techniques in the attempt to ensure sexual and erotic sensual gratification only blocks and constricts the spontaneous natural rhythmic pulse of sexual energy and related heartfelt love, ultimately producing tension and frustration rather than the genuine and enduring sexual satisfaction and ecstatic orgasmic release of energy that we naturally seek.

As long as our energies remain recoiled within ourselves, and do not flow outward to our sexual partner in deeply invested empathic attunement and unselfish expressions of caring, our energies are basically trapped, not free flowing, like a pool of water that becomes stagnant and self-polluted when it is self-enclosed and does not flow freely. Deeply investing our energies in rhythmic sexual attunement and caring empathic communion with our partner produces self-forgetfulness of separate ego self-awareness, which releases our energies from self-confinement and thereby enables them to flow outward ecstatically. That is what produces the sexual, sensual erotic, bioenergetics, and emotional experience of full orgasmic release of tension, full vitality, full relational vibratory “turn on” of our deepest energy centers.

The narcissistic ego’s attempt to selfishly gratify itself at the expense of our sexual partner is ultimately self-defeating, because the energy of joy and beauty naturally grows deeper and richer in us only as we share it with our partner, arouse it in our partner by being unselfishly responsive to their legitimate needs and concerns. The reason why the energy of love, vitality, joy, and beauty must be unselfishly shared with our partner in order to be more substantially aroused in us as well is because it is, intrinsically, a relational, connective, expansive, giving energy, not a solitary, narcissistic, contracting, selfishly taking and hoarding energy. Thus, when we unselfishly elicit and amplify an ecstatic vibratory pulse, or experience of deep sexual, sensual, and experiential satisfaction, in our partner, that also arouses and enhances a similar energy pulse in ourselves as well, through a responsive process of sympathetic vibratory resonance, like two magnets or electromagnetic currents stimulating one another.

Our sexual and experiential energies naturally seek to intertwine, merge, “melt” into our partner in order to be amplified through that relational connection, like two magnets or electromagnetic fields amplifying one another through their vibratory resonating pulsation. At its best or most satisfying mode of expression, this sublime intertwining and amplification of energy fields can include not only genital contact, but also bioenergetics contact through the whole body, which becomes more porous, open, and receptive to “inhale” and “exhale” relational energies flowing between us and our partner.

In addition to the ecstatic flow of energies between the two partners, there is a greater, even more joyful, sweet, and beautiful, unifying flame of divine love, existing beyond as well as between the couple, that becomes available when we let it have its way with us, or fully surrender to its rhythmic pulse, by completely letting go of egocentric self-involvement, self-seeking, and resistive self-will. The flame of love or full connection of energies is greater than the warmth or glow of partial relational connection or relative overlap that flows from it, like the light, warmth, and energy that flows or glows from a candle flame.

The sacred flame of love includes but also surpasses, overflows, and transcends the couple and the relational energy pulsation that flows between them, as a greater reality, a full unity pulse that keeps the relative communion of energies between the couple rightfully synchronized, or truly compatible, as a greater holistic purposive directing intelligence, like the unifying music, tune, or tempo to which a couple dance, or the heartbeat that governs the rhythmic physical and energetic circulation of the entire human body, or the connective highway on which various automobiles drive. Sometimes the purposive will, wisdom, and intentions that govern the energies of relative communion and full union surpass our conscious understanding and control, because they originate in a Great Mystery Source that has subliminal or subconscious and superconscious aspects which can exceed the powers of comprehension of our conscious mind.

In addition to the joyful vitality that comes from sexual, sensual, and heartfelt caring energies flowing between the two partners, an even deeper, higher, or greater level of joyful vitality comes from arousing and energizing the spiritual core of our own individual being as love, and connecting to the Universal Divine Source of all true love, through our passionate energetic attunement to our partner. We awaken, energize, and amplify the sublime grandeur and limitless spiritual blessing power of our own individual Being as pure divine love form, as well as amplifying the relational substance, collective/universal essence, and holistic integrating quintessence levels of Divine Love and Blessing, by aligning our sexual, sensual, experiential, and energetic intimacy with our partner with the vibration of true love, or wholesome pure integrity. Thus, rightful, harmonic, sexual, erotic sensual, and heartfelt loving attunement with our partner is the key to unlocking the vast inner treasure of our individual being, our relationship, and the connective energy of Love itself, as the combined source of true greatness, grandeur, goodness, and blessing power. The powerfully ecstatic energies of sexuality and erotic attraction exist not only for their own sake, not only for the sake of procreation, and not only for the benefit of the two individual partners and their relationship, but also for the sake of contributing to the further awakening, self-discovery, and manifestation of the Divine Love that is the source of everything truly precious.

The relational energy of true love, including the erotic energy of sacred sexuality, is like a divinely inspired master artist, gradually contouring, purifying, and transmuting all aspects of our individuality and our relationship to be ever more closely and fully aligned with its vibratory pulse or “perfect pitch” of sublime loveliness, true beauty, sweetness, wonder-full enchantment, and creative insight. When both partners are fully surrendered to the rightful integrity, integrated wholeness, or natural purity of the sacred sexual, erotic, and experiential energies that flow between them, then they become fuel for the spiritual flame of love to abide in them without consuming them, so that their true individual and relational distinctiveness are preserved, amplified, further enhanced and developed, like the burning bush that was not consumed, seen by Moses in the Bible. [Exodus 3:2-5]. The sacred flame of love that abides within us, and between us and our partner, is a source of limitless blessings, like a bottomless reservoir or inexhaustible fountain pouring its ever more abundant and sublime bounty into our individuality, our relationship, and the wider world through us. When we let our sexual and erotic sensual contact, and other aspects of our relationship and individual life, serve as an appropriate fuel, nourishment, or outlet for the sacred pure flame of divine love and blessings, that is how our sexual, experiential, energetic, and spiritual love transforms for the better us and the world around us. So when our sexual, erotic, and experiential contact with our partner is rightfully aligned with the pulse of sacred attunement, cohesive/coherent empathic communion, or pure divine love, then we become like a porous translucent beacon or lamp through which that sacred flame of love and blessing shines, filling the wider world with limitlessly abundant beauty, joy, comfort, peace, healings, and other expressions of true goodness through us, the couple, as its compatible outlet or medium.

A more detailed discussion of sacred sexuality is presented in Appendix H [pages 290-308] of a book co-authored by Dr. Max Hammer, Dr. Barry Hammer, and Dr. Alan C. Butler, entitled, Deepening Your Personal Relationships: Developing Emotional Intimacy and Good Communication [ISBN: 9781618975904].

RECOMMENDED BOOKS BY OTHER AUTHORS:

Alan Watts, Nature, Man, and Woman. (ISBN: 0-679732330; see chapters 6,7, and 8, pages 139-206)

Sue Paton Thoele, Heart Centered Marriage: Fulfilling Our Natural Desire for Sacred Partnership. (ISBN: 1573240176, see especially chapter 12, pages 245-265)

Michael Mirdad, Sacred sexuality: A Manual for living Bliss. (ISBN: 0974021601)

John Maxwell Taylor, Eros Ascending: The Life-Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality. (ISBN: 9781583942611)

Anaiya Sophia, Sacred Sexual Union: The Alchemy of Love, Power, and Wisdom. (ISBN: 9781620550076)

Tim Alan Gardner, Sacred Sex: A Spiritual Celebration of Oneness. (ISBN: 1578564611)

RECOMMENDED YOUTUBE VIDEOS:

http://youtu.be/2jRUBzyFzbU

SEX - The Secret Gate To Eden [Full Film]

http://youtu.be/dyuKSoELKW0

Sacred sexuality & interconnectedness of Life

http://youtu.be/ierAzZKE6C4

Introduction to Tantra and Sacred Sexuality by Michael Mirdad

http://youtu.be/SZOOZ2zbvHg