Healing the Sexual/Spiritual Split

How does tantric awakening manifest in my daily life? For me, the awakening is most powerfully obvious in the changes in my body. I am more sensitive to each touch, to each look, to each scent, to each smell. With a slight touch, my entire body begins to shiver, and lovemaking travels to heights of pleasure where my old orgasms are only the warm up to new energetic ecstasies. These states I can only describe as pure bliss mixed with primal sexual pleasure. At times, I prowl through my life like a giant black jaguar, seeking pleasure and reveling in the pure sensual bliss of a touch or of a meal. But even in this state, I hold an expanded awareness of my spiritual being, and my spiritual and sexual sensual selves are inseparable. Every lovemaking can lead to enlightenment, and every meditation can lead to sexual bliss.

Juicy aliveness and ecstatic joy are the goals of shamanic tantra, to create a life where sexuality is no longer shut off from the rest of our soul. To embrace our sexual power and carry it with us as an integrated part of our being is a gift, and a gift that all of us were born to as human beings. Sexuality is at the core of so much of human life, of creating children, of dance, of art, of music. It’s in Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, and in Monet’s water lilies, and in Baryshnikov’s leaps. To deny our sexuality leads only to deadness and a sense of emptiness. The more we open to embracing our sexuality, to living a sex-positive life, the more alive and joyful we begin to feel, because sex breeds these feelings in us. How many of us have had that secret smile throughout the day after a beautiful sexual evening with our partner? And if we haven’t, then why not? Sex is beautiful when the heart is open. It is no longer something shameful and dirty, but is instead an ecstatic sacred act that moves us to tears, and even to communion with God.

The Six Gateways to sacred sexuality came into my life through intuition, experience, and a deep connection to Spirit. Their creation came partly in answer to many requests from students for a systematic set of practices they could bring into their daily lives. As they have evolved, each gateway has taken on a life of its own, becoming not only a set of tools, but a true opening in my soul. As I have moved through each gateway I have gone deeper into the mystery, wholeness, and ecstasy that is sacred sex. These practices are shamanic in origin, working with the energies in our bodies, and guided by our spiritual connection to our guides and to Spirit. The gateways are best traveled through in the order they are given here, the last three gateways revealing themselves through patient practice to be deeper levels of the first three.