Lust for Existence

I’m learning something about sexual power and energy and I like that which is beginning to become clear. I’m in the south of England right now and I’ve spent a couple of days with my friend Paul whom I met while traveling in India. He’d quite an amazing person and one whom I feel I meet eye-to-eye. That doesn’t happen that much in my life, where I feel as I am met by someone, someone on a similar path, at a similar place on that path, with a similarly curious intellect, and someone with whom I can explore our experiences and observations.

We were eating lunch in Brighton, a vibrant town on the southern seaboard, today talking of many topics, when I broached one which I’ve kept pretty close to my vest as it’s been developing. It has to do with how a man draws the distinction between the often confounding lines between love, compatibility and sexual attraction. It’s a very difficult topic really, because for many men our heart sometimes believes it wants what our lust calls for. Furthermore, our hearts and our sexual drives may yearn for a woman with which we are not necessarily very compatible. Many men move forward based on their lust and unless they/we/I can sort it out, we can confuse that lust with love.

Lately, and here’s where the confession begins, I’ve really been feeling a strong sexual drive. It’s actually been around for awhile but it’s been growing increasingly stronger over the past couple of years. There are several reasons for it I think – partly a natural drive towards procreation and partly just good old fashioned reptilian brain stem. Another part, however, that feels stronger and more relevant however is that I’ve become more embodied in my experience, in my Beingness. I’m living much more in my body and much less in my mind. I’ve also come, through my Diamond Heart work, to learn to experience the actual pleasure of simply Being. And when I say, “the actual pleasure,” I actually mean the true “sensation” of pleasure. When we are actually just being ourselves, if we are open to it, we find that it is a profoundly sensual and pleasurable experience. Thus, the more present I’ve become, the more I’m just “here” rather than in my mind somewhere in the past or in the future, the more pleasure I’ve been experiencing. I think this connection to a more omnipresent pleasure has infiltrated my sexual being as well.

So Paul and I were talking about this and he suggested that the energies I was talking about may be misplaced a bit, and that perhaps I should focus on bringing those energies up into my heart and focus them more on my life’s purpose. What followed was pretty astounding. I brought that feeling of sexual charge up higher in my body, closer to my heart, and allowed both the sexual energy and a heart-centeredness to be present at the same time. What I felt was a magnificent lustiness for existence, like the world was my lover. It was a very powerful energy. I also felt in a way like a sponge that just wanted to absorb everything. To take in and feel and taste all that life has to offer As such it was powerfully masculine but also deliciously feminine as well.

What I’m seeing is that there is a tendency in people to compartmentalize our sexuality rather than allowing the energy to flow and move where it wants and needs to go. It is an incredibly powerful energy if allowed to expand to it’s full potential, and one which can be channeled toward many ends, and not just the obvious one.

So getting back to the distinction between love, compatibility and sexual attraction, I think this insight helps to decouple them a bit for me. It’s hard to ignore a strong sexual drive/charge yet I’m seeing that it can have many outlets. As such, it gives more space for the heart to have it’s voice heard more independently. In relationship with women, I’m fairly convinced that the heart is the voice that should be listened to most closely. I think often it’s our sexual drives that encourage us to ignore the voice of reason and ignore potential incompatibilities.

I’ve also learned in this process that we errantly attribute pleasure to the objects which are connected to that pleasure. For example, if we feel great pleasure when we eat good dark chocolate, we give the credit for the pleasure to the chocolate. The truth, in fact, is that the pleasure is truly within us, we just think that the pleasure is outside us. Don’t get me wrong, there are things in the world which we experience as truly pleasurable, but that pleasure does not reside in the external object, but rather is our inherent pleasure that is being touched and opened up.

I feel a little strange posting this as I know it’s “out there” a bit and it’s also not a topic that people just casually talk about. But it is one of the things I’m finding my mind is on these days and writing here gives me an opportunity to flush things out some and open up further questions and awareness which makes space for things to move in whatever direction they need to move.