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Introduction

Often, many of our higher, mystical experiences -- perhaps even most of them -- occur around SEX. No wonder! In the higher energy states sex can provide, we can see and feel things that are sublime compared to ordinary perceptions. It comes as no surprise, then, that even the basest, most physically-oriented views of sex associate sexuality with heaven.

Here on Earth, we may tend to understand sexual "heaven" primarily in terms of bodily sense pleasure. And surely, sexual pleasure may well be one of the finer things in life as we know it. But generally, the selfishness of the sex act, combined with a lack of technical competence, holds sex to levels considerably LESS than heavenly -- and may explain why sex is often associated with sin.

In the song "Because the Night," Patti Smith expresses a deeper insight into the paradoxical nature of sex:

-- a clever disguise, indeed! But the sacred practice of sexuality removes love's disguise.

The truth is, sex is what one makes of it. It can either lower or raise; make more gross, or purify. Sex obviously lowers if it is essentially animalistic, routine, uninspired, and unloving. That kind of sex leaves us feeling empty, disappointed, or dirty (even when we perhaps also feel, if our expectations are low, smug, consoled, validated, or gratified). In contrast, higher sex can elevate the entire being profoundly. Higher love and higher energy produce true spiritual bliss -- a FAR greater result than the fleeting giddiness that comes from having gotten something one wanted -- or having enjoyed some sense pleasure, gotten consolation or ego strokes, or relieved oneself of "excess" energy.

When predominantly identified with their bodies and their sensations, lovers become trapped at lower levels of sexual potential –- and end up feeling spiritually cheated and frustrated, whether they admit it or not. But when the higher potential of sex is further explored, by raising sexual intensity to higher degrees than hedonism alone can allow and maintaining a strongly loving focus, the spirit can begin to assert itself. And there are times in sex play when the spirit asserts itself to a degree that is absolutely unmistakable!

This section will explore, stepwise, how the spiritual potentialities of sex can and do unfold.

Turned on to turned up

Rising sexual energy is an escalator to heaven. The ascent starts on the ground floor -- with getting turned on, getting excited. Of course, there's nothing to say that we will ride that escalator all the way to the Pearly Gates. After a short ascent, we can always get off early, pursuing sexual adventures just far enough to snag a bit of pleasure and energy release. But that conventional ride is just a round trip back to the basement. On that route, we give up on UP.

On the other hand, when we stay ON, heavenly destinations become possible. And, with a boost from the inner dog, we can reach a place where Divine assistance is available to help carry us even higher.

Ordinarily, the relative grossness of the human organism prevents mankind from connecting to Divine agency. At our normal levels of energy, though we might raise our arms toward heaven, we're not quite high enough for God to firmly take our hand, and LIFT. BUT, if we follow the inner dog up the escalator, at a certain point we reach high enough that a much higher power can take hold.

By raising the vibrational rate of the body through intensified sex play, we create fertile conditions for the appearance of Godly energies, allowing us to contact and channel powers that are of God. You may have heard those mystical energies referred to as "the Goddess Force." Those stronger energies may still SEEM internal to the body, but when they kick in, we will have little doubt that supernatural powers have come into play.

Woman. The woman experiences the appearance of Divine participation as a sudden arrival of Goddess energy, channeling through her. This can be recognized as tremendous force in the body, tending to produce powerful movement, emotion, and drive. What is the difference between ordinary, human-powered sexual energy, and the real Goddess Force? It's just a matter of degree, but it's a HUGE difference. When the Goddess Force descends, you know that suddenly something new has taken hold: You certainly experience a big increase in power. So big, sometimes, it's like being slammed back into your seat by the after-burner in a fighter jet. That's the difference.

Man. The man experiences the advent of Divine forces as an increase in consciousness, which provides increased ability to elicit the Goddess Force in his partner, to receive it from her, and to direct its use (much as Fred Astaire led Ginger Rogers when they danced). Perhaps it is no coincidence that this Divinely supplemented expression of male gender identity fulfills popular culture's image and ideal of "the REAL man." That "real man" is a woman's Rock: He can catch her when she jumps; he can hold her, husband her, and lead her in the Dance of Life. And of course, he can invoke her. This fulfillment of the potentials of male-female polarity is rarely seen apart from higher experiences of sex play, but occurs naturally within it. And, the reverse holds true as well: The fulfillment of higher sexual potentials rarely occurs without strong male/female polarity.

Turned on to tuned up

The energy of the Goddess, in the form of supercharged physical excitement and power, can provide many a grand blessing. The benefits enjoyed are:

Soul communion to soul union

Devotion, the first form of sexual rapture

As we have discussed in previous sections, consciousness is a function of energy: The more energy you have, the better you can see. And, the better you can see, the better you love. That explains why, during periods of high sexual arousal, people often see depths in each other that are not normally evident to them. It also explains why, for many people, their most intense LOVE experiences are often associated with their most intense SEXUAL experiences.

The contemplation of the beloved's beauty with the keen eyes of love is the first form of rapture we encounter as we ride the up-escalator of love. A truly loving lover has an IMMENSE capacity to delight in and concentrate on the glorious, wondrous, perfect features of the beloved. It is as if one's beloved is gold, and the lover is a miser who loves nothing more than to behold and count the bounty. A teenage boy infatuated with a girl can sit and stroke her breasts for hours, and be spellbound the whole time. Likewise, his devoted companion can kiss his chest forever.

For lovers, a good part of connection is awe and devotion -- a feeling of connection to perfection.

Soul communion, the second rapture

As we continue to contemplate our lover with great devotion and awe, something mystical begins to happen. Our spirit essence -- our consciousness -- begins to be freed from body-identification. How does that happen?

We are naturally drawn out of ourselves by strong feelings of affinity and attraction. Desire extends consciousness outward towards the object of desire. That in itself is a movement of self-transcendence, an expansion of consciousness. We become distracted from our habitual self-focus, and even from inner focus on our bodily sensations, by the heightened and brightened vision of the beloved.

That desire-powered expansion makes it possible for lovers to connect on a much deeper level than mutual admiration and animal magnetism by themselves allow. And our connection, in turn, makes it possible to continue our upward ride on the escalator of higher desire.

Love-desire is always an upward spiral that requires great connection for its fuller realizations. In-turned attention can ONLY result in a knotted, obstructed body when energy builds. At some point the rising energy will be choked right off, and the experience will collapse. (Losing it AFTER the going gets hot, anyone?) Likewise, if we remain interiorized as living feelings arise, we will clamp down on our emotions until they, too, are snuffed out. Emotional withholding makes sexual satisfaction difficult, and sacred rapture impossible.

In sacred rapture, huge energy must flow like water, and keep flowing. That's why higher sexual experiences can ONLY be built and maintained under the conditions of almost continuous sharing.

So, soul communion is not just a wonderful side-effect of powerful love-desire; it is a natural and necessary part of the experience of sacred sexuality. Click here for a description of how to recognize soul communion.

Ego-transcendence: a fair price for a higher love

We may talk about how we want unity, but all too often we show great enthusiasm for separating! And similarly, we talk about how we want connection, and then we sever communication and communion, again and again. How does SEPARATING support UNION, or WITHDRAWAL support CONNECTION? Not at all, of course. The problem is, ego-oriented consciousness will not permit real connection. It won't suffer us to love strongly and consistently enough to enter into the great circle of soul communion, in which the love we put out is abundantly returned.

As long as our ego has concerns, WE will have to adjudicate those concerns, one way or another. EITHER we will respond by overriding the concerns, and continuing to maintain connection through the upward spiral, OR we will respond by stopping the upward progress of that spiral as a result of breaking the connection. It's up to US! Transcendence is a choice to leave the ego, along with its patterns of choosing smallness, behind.

If higher love is what you want, you must be willing to endure the emotional challenge of connection. Connection feels MORE –- especially when you're hot, it feels increasingly "vulnerable" and HOTTER to be presenting YOU. The question is, where -- subjectively -- does it get too "hot to handle"? The limit of sexual ecstasy is the furthest point a person is willing to go WHILE staying connected. Clearly, you can't have any more abundance than you can stand being connected with and in.

Happily, however, the challenge of connection is also a great spiritual advantage. As a love relationship heats up, the whole connection becomes so vibrant that ugly old ego no longer wants to show up in that context. Hallelujah! True extroversion, achieved by means of constructive desiring, opens a spiritual pathway to the transcendence of egoity itself. Thus, the showdown with the ego at this stage marks an important, universal transition in spiritual becoming.

Are things beginning to sound pretty serious? You bet! The real merger towards which the love-desire escalator leads is no cheap thrill, no casual fling, no weekend amusement for the bored and lonely yuppie -- it is a PEARL OF GREAT PRICE. The many paths up the mountain that lead to spiritual enlightenment all require, for their fulfillment, real ego-transcendence. The way of rapturous sexual merging is a bona fide spiritual path, and it too, requires the sacrifice of ego for its fulfillment. Only when ego is transcended can the fire of desire for unity be quenched in the Ocean of Being.

Urge to merge: Fishin' for fusion

The ESSENCE of desire is VERY serious: Every bit of desire hungers for merging, for union. Wishful thinking? No! Desire CAN satisfy its own deepest yearning for union -- although not, perhaps, on the level where desire is conceived.

Clearly, physical "unification" is hardly unitive -- it may amount to little more than a mouthful of tongue! It leaves us with little more than a wet spot to remember it by, and perhaps a sense of mild satisfaction -- but the ache is still there. Ordinary passion may yield some pleasure, but can NEVER provide true satisfaction of spirit hunger. The spirit seeks a meeting of true Self with true Self, in which differences disappear, and separation ceases.

Our soul's urge to merge points us far beyond where conventional sexuality leaves us. If we persist past the point when ordinary lovers roll over and go to sleep, passion fills and overflows our body, our vibration rises, and our attunement moves into the spiritual level. We feel an overwhelming hunger, not so much for the fleshy body of the beloved, but for the spiritual being that the beloved IS. Our heart vows, "I want to never separate from you in spirit." We long to unify in consciousness, in Reality. Everything in our being leans toward the beloved, leaving behind all mortal doubts about the possibility of becoming ONE. To that higher goal, sacred sexuality can surely lead us.

The sacred rapture of soul union

Haven't you experienced, in special moments of rapture, a feeling of unity, of oneness? Mystics, eat your hearts out -- because the soul union of lovers is a genuinely, seriously, MYSTICAL experience. Without a doubt.

Sometimes people who are deeply in love, while sharing rapt attention, are heard to say, "When I saw you it seemed to me that we were the SAME," or, "I was looking at YOU, and it felt to me like I was looking at MYSELF." When you find yourself feeling that way, you are tasting soul union.

While body cannot merge truly with body, spirit CAN truly merge with spirit. When two lakes both overflow their banks, what is the result? One big Lake! In Unity consciousness, these things called OTHER and SELF are realized to be one and the same -- part of the cosmic Sea of Being.

In the throes of love-desire, two factors can help energy overflow the confines of the body:

Sacred rapture is a magical combination of higher love and higher energy. Loving attention is the medium through which energy flows, is shared, and is allowed to build to ecstatic levels. When ecstasy reaches a certain pitch, we burst out of the bodily prison. Truly "beside ourselves," we mingle with our lover in a realm where nothing stands between us.

Yet even then, we find ourselves longing for MORE. As ecstatic as it is, merger with one's lover still represents a relatively limited condition of consciousness compared to, say, total awareness of the Unity of all Life. Cosmic liberation, the destiny and birthright of all human beings, still awaits. We cannot truly be satisfied until we achieve it.

Continued progress depends on continuing desire to go further. Stay hungry! It is by CONTINUING to desire that we can escape our remaining limitations in consciousness. We get stuck if we're moving TO the objects of our desire, but not THROUGH. For release from the limits of bodily identification, we've got to move TO a desired object, but THEN we've got to go beyond. Our true Self is that which exists beyond all objects and experiences, high or low.

Divine communion to Spirit union

Once we attain the transcendent condition of soul union, we are on the verge of a mystical homecoming. And when we're There, we KNOW it. Remarkably, in that lofty place, we suddenly feel a tremendous sense of being Home. We sure don't want to leave; we don't want to be anywhere else.

Divine communion in the Bubble of love

When we are awakened to the point of soul union, we not only feel energy within, but, progressively, we feel energy and brightness "in the air." At some point, the SPACE around us feels electrically charged. What is THAT? That, dear friends, is GOD.

In energy and consciousness, where we overlap with our lover, we overlap with all of creation -- and with Divinity. This place, which we refer to as "the Bubble of love," IS the SOUL ESSENCE of man, and the PRESENCE of Love, or God. In this Bubble, we commune with our fellow man and with God. The more we surrender our attention into the space where we "overlap" with all that is, the more we find God in that space.

Spiritual unification: streams and rivers into the ocean

In the Bubble, unity-consciousness starts to gain ground over the consciousness of self and other -- and even over the unified consciousness of two selves, blended into a certain oneness. In that transition a shift occurs, from identifying with soul essence to identifying with Divine essence. And that, obviously, is subtle. And also quite intentional.

This shift has to do with letting go of the world of appearances, of name and form, and clinging to the level of the undifferentiated Omnipresent. We do this, as we said earlier, by loving THROUGH, not just TO, our beloved and ALL that arises to consciousness.

For a description of how love-desire leads us from the relative to the Absolute, click here.

The realm of freedom

Thus, great desire shifts us from body and ego-identification to absorption in unlimited space-like awareness. Through desire we discover ourselves and all human beings to be essentially CONSCIOUSNESS. In that Consciousness, lover joyfully merges with beloved, and we come to understand this paradox of love, unity, and relationships: Love is fulfilled not in body or in mind, but only in the universal dimension of consciousness in which lover and beloved are absolutely one. At this point, the tension of desire and the motivations of separation resolve in an indescribable sense of completion. Finally, ALL others are revealed to us as none other than ourselves. Personal love becomes universal love, and all dilemma and withholding become obsolete.

Divine seeing and being

We have seen that, in the soul union of lovers, the lines between self and other blur. Profound identification removes the "otherness" of other, leaving oneself in the place where other once stood. Thus, soul communion leads into soul union.

It's the same way with Divine communion: It becomes difficult -- impossible, really -- to determine where the human leaves off, and God begins. There is a blending in both perception and function.

This will seem heretical to some -- and over the ages, many saints have been accused of heresy for this -- but there IS a sense in which the human individual, when filled with God, becomes IDENTIFIED with God, and with functions that are, in fact, Divine functions.

With respect to perception, looking through eyes of love is looking through the eyes of God. With respect to function, "Let me be your hands and feet," say God's devotees. And in being God's hands and feet, they ARE, in fact, part of God -- not the totality of God, to be sure, but God nonetheless, in the exact same sense as YOUR hand is YOU. Such is the mystical body of God.

Afterglow to endless Love

The challenge in the afterglow

In sacred sex, the streams of "lower love" have emptied into the sea of higher Love. Leaving our chamber of love, and yet still carrying it in our hearts, we continue for a time, feeling God's presence, the presence of Love. But gradually, the afterglow fades, leaving us bereft, and yearning to find it again.

In the following conversation, David Truman discusses the Great Challenge of spiritual ascent -- establishing a PERMANENT home for ourselves on the mountaintop of higher consciousness and living. The secret is, we get to live in "God's country" by living God's Life.

We won't ever be satisfied until the afterglow NEVER fades.

For that, we must learn not just to ATTAIN high energy states, but also, to MAINTAIN those higher states. This IS our goal, is it not? -- to STABILIZE in the level of consciousness in which God-connection -- the awareness of the Divine presence and the connection to Divine agencies -- is always the case.

Bringing our all to love, and our love to all

It IS possible to achieve that goal! Through the sacred use of sexuality and many other means (such as the Unification meditation technique), we dip ourselves over and over into the dye of higher consciousness, until it becomes stable. Just as important -- because the lowering effects of negative thought and action can more than offset all the possible gains of upleveling practice -- we need to simultaneously renounce our chilling habits and correct our shortcomings.

And then, by bringing our all to love, and our love to all, we realize Endless Love.

Divine deliverance: Functioning in (and as) Love

Sharing the presents of the Omnipresent

On the tour of the higher realms of sacred sexuality we've just completed, we have seen that the path of sacred sex converges with all other true spiritual paths, and eventually arrives at the goal sought by all. Likewise, the destiny of all who arrive there is the same as awaits all who find God -- a life of endless love, sharing the presents of the Omnipresent.

When we have succeeded in stabilizing in higher consciousness, the bedrock of lasting and secure spiritual connection makes it possible to stay in tune with the Divine, through the guidance of the still small voice. That connection provides a dependable road map for the present and all future time -- as well as reliable road-side service anywhere in the Universe. That strong and constant connection makes us capable of doing God's will day by day, hour by hour. God's will is simple: "Love My children."

To be in Love with Love is inevitable. To CHOOSE love is to be true to Love. In any enlightening or enlightened life, Love is the goal; Love is the path; Love is the guiding star; love is the practice. Choose Love today.

Click here for a final message about living a passionately loving life, apart from romance and sexuality.

FURTHER STUDY: In this chapter we made brief reference to the awakening of the Goddess Force (otherwise known as the Kundalini Shakti). For you serious goddesses and would-be goddesses out there, we include a special addition: an in depth consideration of the operation of the Goddess Force in sexuality, including its physical, emotional, and spiritual functions.

To download or view a copy of the 46 page article, "The Enlightenment of the Body-Mind in 7 Steps," click here.

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