The Importance & Function Of Our Erotic Embodiment

When I was eight I experienced an unequivocal, felt sense of my place as a daughter of the earth, as one who was not only of the world but deeply loved by the world. Though I did not understand it in these terms until I was in my adolescence, this intimate connection with the world was made through my sexuality (the creative generative energy that is how you and I and everything else got here). It never occurred to me that this was not everyone’s experience because, in the magical thinking that is so particular to the 8 year old, I thought surely I must be just like everyone else. I remember experience after experience being in the rich and decomposing leaf layered oak and elm woods behind my family home in the suburbs of Hartford Connecticut, face down, ear pressed to the earth, listening to the pulse of what felt to me like the ultimate mother, the benevolent one from whom I came and to whom I would some day return. At the time I didn’t know that the embodied neuro-biologically extravagant state that allowed my experience was the physiological phenomenon we call orgasm (whose scientific definition is so dry I won’t bother to bring it into this conversation because, trust me, it will cause you to want to find another term for that wild thing you do with self and other than feels so damned good and transcendent).

I believe now, after the honor of educating and guiding hundreds of individuals and couples, that what happens in our sexual embodiment and orgasm is nothing less than our genius; the specific intelligence, purpose and passion - our way of knowing the world - that is unique to each of us yet intrinsic to all humanity. The extent to which we prioritize and care for our eroticism, sexual vitality and embodied health (and the depths to which we see all of it as sacred) is the extent to which we allow our genius to be fully present in the world.

The second thing I believe is that the most dangerous ailment in the world, the one from which all other catastrophes stem, is the epidemic of our disembodiment, the evisceration of our understanding that human experience, intelligence and awareness comes primarily through the portal of our physical body. If we are not in relationship with our bodies then we cannot be in relationship with others or the earth body upon which we each rely for our individual and collective survival. In our disembodied state we are capable of not only allowing but contributing to the disembowelment of each other and the earth.

The third thing I believe is that we live to be used up by the world in the unique way we are each here to serve; that this largest longing is at the root of all other longings. It is likely that the un-lived course of our deepest longing is the cause of skyrocketing addiction and other numbing behaviors now epidemic among humans. If we get to our death beds without having been both acknowledged and used up by the world in the particular way we are meant to serve, we often feel an unbearable sense of betrayal, anger and uselessness that is perhaps the worst of all human experiences. We cannot offer what we have yet to claim as our own: in our disembodied state we flail in bankruptcy with nothing more to offer than the collusion of our domesticity.

The fourth thing I believe is that, because of our cultural disembodiment and the resulting disembowelment of the world, the world is quite literally dying to experience our full presence, for the wise stewarding and intimate attention of our witness and reflection. We are so perfectly equipped to be the world’s stewards and witnesses, to feel the joy and heartbreak of the impossibility of this life and its certain death, of the miracle of ocean ecosystems and the diversity of rain forest canopies. Of the inconceivable infinity of space and the existence of microscopic organisms without which the entire web of this life would collapse. To traverse the vulnerability of our heart’s attachments while allowing that all of what we know and believe defines us will cease to exist, to make room for the next iteration, over and over, without hesitation, through devastation and incomprehension. It will happen to us, with us, despite us and we will, if we reclaim our wild lives and the fullness of the wisdom that comes through our erotically intelligent creatively vibrant bodies, be here to say “Yes. I am paying attention.”