Suzanne Editorial - from A Way of Life Issue 11.1 | Text View

I have procrastinated about this editorial longer than any before, because in truth I don’t feel I know much about the subject and honestly sharing with you about it is going to take a deep breath……What has been particularly hard is that I know that it will be read by Raj, my sons, my Mum and my friend, you!   What that reveals is all the neat compartments that my persona has devised, yet if I really love you, I owe you the deepest truth I can find.

I guess you could say that I have had a sheltered sex life. I was a teenager in the 60’s, born into an average middle class family and virginity was a big deal. I was sensitive, underdeveloped and not much of a target for anyone’s attention and so I made it through to the ripe old age of 21+ before I lost my virginity and in my over simplified way of dealing with things then, I figured that was the guy I was going to marry. Aided by the fact that I “fell in love”, I shifted into that mind set and looked no further.

What is interesting is that I had great career prospects, I worked in radio and television over that time and had I been ambitious I would have had the opportunity to go on. What seemed most significant to me then at the ripe old age of 22, was to ‘fall in love’ and get married and so I followed that urge. I had no clue about consciousness in the way I do now… although I was fascinated by anything metaphysical, wherever I found it. The world I experienced at that time was conventional and predictable and my secret dreams stayed buried.

I entered marriage in a mire of high sexual urgency coupled with all the programming for co-dependence. My twenties and thirties was a time of high energy devoted to having children, establishing a home and all the usual suburban stuff. My husband had a roving eye, but I was dedicated to security, both so typical of the average middle class prototype of world values that exists even now.

In my twenties I was energetic, motivated and wanted to be an individual, but not where sex was concerned. I had made my choices early, conformed to social mores and saw no reason to change. Being sexually adventurous was dangerous in my mind and a major threat to the security of my family. I got over my husband’s occasional indiscretions and avoided friends who wanted to explore couple swapping relationships, extramarital sex etc. Somehow I felt that sex was something that kept a marriage together, so it was not to be ignored completely, but it was hardly a motivating force in my life.

Sometime in my late thirties I thought I fell in love with a work colleague and had my first fling. It was a disaster of unrequited love and I spent a miserable year, trying to hold myself and my life together strung between a few seamy encounters and lots of pining. I was well on my way exploring and becoming passionate about a spiritual life, but it was very much a development of New Age thinking, which seemed revolutionary, but barely scraped the surface of any true spiritual understanding.

Not long after that my husband had a major affair and it looked like he would leave me. Our two very lively boys were in their teens at that time and I freaked, totally unable to imagine how I would raise them as a single parent, and I begged my husband to stay in our marriage. We travelled on in the conventional sense for another four years, together but not really happy.   The really meaningful consideration of how and where things go ‘wrong’ didn’t occur to me, caught as I was in my own story, not sure what I believed in.

Around then I met Raj, fell hopelessly in love and I made a break for freedom and the next phase of my life. Now almost a decade later I am more interested in the concepts of ‘wrong’ and ‘right’, relative to how they are wired in my nervous system. I have had an incredible adventure, with more amazing experiences than my tiny mind could ever have hoped for, so many encounters quietly leading me further into the evolutionary stages of deep personal healing. The first stage of moving into a new consciousness, started with rearranging what I believed. Amazingly this took years of teachers, reading and workshops, until I finally refined what was me and what I wanted to believe in. So far I haven’t found anything more encompassing than the Jeshua’s teachings as a basis of truth.

I love writers like Jayem, Ken Wilbur and many of the authors you will find on these pages and yet the one revolutionary realization that is predominant on my horizon, is that no amount of reading is going to actually transform my deep egoic patterns. My experience is that as I move into greater understanding the translation of what is true and false becomes apparent and subtle changes, upgrades in my intelligence occur. Evolution of my values and understanding follow, but that in itself as I’m sure you have discovered doesn’t do much to create transformation. A deep and lasting change in my internal experience. Transformation is the work of moving through the deep grips in the nervous system that constitute the reactionary persona, the source of my suffering. Once the mind has opened to a new way of thinking, there is a much greater chance that when the opportunity arrives to pass through a deep egoic pattern, I will face it rather than run away, perhaps the most pivotal point to a real spiritual path.

The only significant purpose to being in a body is the opportunity for contexts that Love and Holy Spirit can create to dissolve the ways that I hold the “World’, the belief in separation in place, since my identity with the belief in it, is what creates it. I come back again and again to the axiom, “Everything within the World is diametrically opposed to the Kingdom.”    Jeshua – A Way of Life

All of my identity with Sexuality has been based on fear. Every way that I think, feel and relate to Sexuality has been out of alignment with truth. I have used sexuality it to validate my worth, measure how attractive I am and attract partners to me. I have used it to create special relationships and to tru manipulate and control them. I have used it to flirt my way through situations where it suited me or where I thought it could be a source of power. I have had the expectation that it is for my bodily pleasure, something that I can get from, or give pleasure in a way that supports my need in relationships. I have withheld it out of fear of not being valued or risking vulnerability and pain. Perhaps that only way that I have used it properly was to get pregnant and even the deep underlying motives there are dubious.

It’s small wonder that relationships that start out in a euphoria of love and oneness, eventually fade into patterns of co-existence or co-dependence. In fact if I look at what happens in my relationships I start out so deeply alive, excited, allowing and giving. Then the first little fear sets in. I don’t want my love to be too far from me. I look for reassurance. I don’t want them to give as deeply to others as they give to me. I want them around all the time. I have wanted them to like what I like, think like I think, do what I do, be the source of my peace and happiness.   What was love becomes a fortress. Compromises are made, agreements are forged. What was once alive and exciting is now as vibrant as a caged bird and the relationship is on an inevitable pathway to habit. The awesome Sexual aliveness, that is my Godliness, becomes suffocated in under the weight of boredom, rigidity and need.

So what of Sacred Sexuality?    Sacredness and Sexuality are two separate dynamics. What I have shared is where I have found myself to be in relation to Sexuality. What has occurred for me in this evolution of my values and beliefs around sexuality is that I realize that every way that I ever approached it was doomed to failure. All of the reactions in my nervous system around sexuality come from neediness and fear.

Sacredness is the key to the Kingdom, it’s all about giving, not getting. When I let go of all my phobias and needs and simply rest in pure unattached love of everyone and everything for the joy of being and giving an extension of God’s Love, all other considerations are dissolved. The key to Sacredness is appreciation. When I move into the absolute wonder and awe of how incredible everything is, be present, still and breath, I experience a deep peace and connectedness. It can be in relation to the sexual act, but more than that is the profound sensuality that occurs and that can affect how I relate to everything. Appreciation for me is equivalent to prayer.

So what would Love have me do with my Sexuality? It feels like the first stage is to look at my current relationship and see it in the light of where I am now. To lighten up on a lot of my ideas and expand how I see my life and others. Risk more in relationships, open up more to others. Not just sexually, but in terms of my conditions, reactions and the essence of giving. Become aware of subtle patterns and denials. Be more vulnerable. Realize that my aliveness comes from risking, flying in the wind and letting go.

Raj and I have both been surprised by the depth of what Love has uncovered for us individually and together. There are serious pointers toward finding ourselves exactly where we have ended up in relationship before if we can’t change our ideas and upgrade into a new type of Freedom and allowance. Christ mind doesn’t cling. It doesn’t need and it doesn’t play exclusive or own. I don’t even own my body…….that too is God’s and it maybe that when enough of me is healed and rewired, God will have a very different plans for it than mine, and so be it.

Right now I am still in wonder. Feeling strands that started in discord become readjustment between Raj and I that might take us anywhere. If I trust that Love is winning all the time and if I remember that I am always in the Gracestream then I embrace the transformation so much more easily and I find myself moving into a gentleness and spaciousness, realizing the opportunity to simply bring Sacredness to everything.

I think you will find this one of the most potent editions of the Journal ever and I thought that Sacred Sexuality was going to be about Tantra. Ha! It might be for others but for me it has been about Yoga……the Yoga of Love, how deep and real can I get? What will it be about for you? If you are having realizations and experiences that you feel to share, please visit the Forum at www.wayoftheheart.net and share. I so look forward to your feedback and questions if you have any….

Love

Suzanne