Heart of Tantric Sex (26 page)

You may, however, need to call your partner and tell him you miss him, or to speak to your friend, find out how they are and share your feelings with them. You may discover too, that they did not even see you in the coffee shop, engrossed as they were in their own morning blues. Suddenly, the whole scenario disappears in a puff of smoke. In reality it was your personal insecurity, the need to be acknowledged and valued, that was offended. And this triggered the emotions always simmering within. If you find that acknowledging the emotion is not adequate in itself, you may need to do more to release the discomfort. Always try something physical for some minutes, jumping up and down, stamping your feet on the ground, or beating a pillow with your fists, even chattering away in gibberish aloud to yourself. All movement and sound helps tremendously to reduce the undermining effect of emotions in the body.

With a little more intense awareness we can start reflecting on our emotions, moods, our momentary ups and downs. This requires real alertness, and is difficult because the emotions are effectively a layer in the body. We experience them as an integral aspect of ourselves, we think it is who we are. Maintaining awareness of the solar plexus is of great assistance in detecting subtle emotions, and it is important to dissolve the accompanying tensions in the solar plexus through the awareness. Otherwise they accumulate and penetrate our psyche. The expression of an emotion is always beneficial because it removes internal pressures from the system. However, it is the
awareness of the emotion
not the emotion itself, which begins to dissolve the threads that link us to our unconscious aspects. Through this observation, the emotions gradually cease to be motivated. The past remains in the past. When feelings arise in the present they are then uncontaminated by incomplete experiences from the past and can be expressed in their freshness and purity. As this happens, love and life begin to take on a childlike simplicity.

Love, emotion, and sexual healing

When we begin the sexual act, we do so with the tension of all our unexpressed feelings, the now fragile emotions within us. In the sexual arena our emotions get activated unsuspectingly and come into play, casting shadows on our lives without our knowing it. This has disastrous results in love, and we find ourselves repeatedly in the same argument or dissatisfaction with our lover as if we are going around in circles. Or the same issue will separate you from a series of partners you have loved and left, because the theme keeps replaying itself. We can't seem to get it right. Yet, in our ignorance of what love really is, we have come to accept the ups and downs to be an essential part of love. When we become conscious of the effects and particularly the roots of our emotions in the past, we can begin to take more responsibility for our love and separate it from the emotional area. We can start to create it afresh, bringing intelligence and awareness into the act of love and to express our feelings as we stop identifying with our emotions.

Although it shows up differently in men and women, the genitals of both sexes are loaded with shame and accumulated negative emotions that interfere with the natural polarity. Once we take the pressure off the penis and vagina by removing the driving need to do something in sex, the genital poles will start a process of relaxation. As they do so, the encapsulated emotions will begin to be released in different ways. A man should not be embarrassed to cry and show his feelings, and indeed his task is to be as honest and straight as he can be. Your partner will thank you and be grateful for sharing your vulnerability, especially since in the moment of releasing tears you will feel the penis more sensitive and conscious. A male friend of mine, as a boy in puberty, noticed some marks developing on his penis. He was utterly distressed, thinking there was something wrong with him. He could not talk to anyone about it. And because he had never seen a penis before other than his own, he was not to know the markings were entirely normal. He wanted to see a doctor, but this meant discussing the matter with his parents first, which was inconceivable. Instead he buried his shame and mortification and well into his late thirties he unconsciously felt his penis to be "sick." Only when he began to make love consciously did this shame and pain emerge from his body. When it did, he realized how these emotions had affected all his sexual encounters with women. Allowing yourself to feel again what you failed to feel years before is a healing in itself, which extends to the genital tissue. With the onslaught of tears which help to wash away pain and to free the body of internal stresses and toxins, a new sensitivity arises in the sex organs. The poles slowly empty out, losing their disturbances (negative consciousness) and regaining their true polarity. In this way the man becomes more masculine, the woman more feminine.

How the past can disturb the present

In my work with people it has been very distressing to discover that a high percentage of women have been sexually abused, many as very young girls. This is surprisingly common in men too, although to a lesser degree. Such individuals retain the pain and confusion of shocking early sexual events into their adulthood. Invariably they were unable to tell anyone, to share or express their feelings of fear and horror. Perhaps it involved father, grandfather, uncle, brother, or the next-door neighbor, or even the local priest. Mothers have been known to accuse their own daughters of being sexually provocative, blaming the child rather than believing a report of sexual molestation. These powerful imprints live in the body and the mind, underlying all future encounters. Years after the events, withheld feelings have become emotions that can rise to the surface and seek release in an attempt to be free of the secretive, shadowy past.

The basis of the sexually healing experience is the resurfacing and releasing of past feelings, rage, pain, and frustrations, the remnants of which have left an imprint in the sex organs. The relaxation that we are after can and will cause painful memories to resurface in an attempt to remove the obstructing tensions in an otherwise freely flowing energy system. With this understanding we can welcome old childhood wounds and stored negative experiences that start to emerge as the genitals increase in consciousness and begin their healing process.

When my own pain was triggered, I shed tears that were achingly deep, at times with strong and uncontrollable contorting body movements, shaking, shivering, and perspiring. To this day, I don't know what specific incidents created the pain, but I found that the release, not the origin was significant. Through releasing long-withheld feelings, a melting sensation and sweetness arose in my vagina and healing took place.

I have always maintained that the bed is not the place for analysis; this is love, not therapy. For me it was best not to speak about it or try and explain what was happening, but rather to continue making love while the tears were flowing, to keep opening myself to the penis triggering these past feelings in me. If I pulled away and rolled into a collapsed heap, or tried to talk about it, my tears would dry up immediately and I would be left feeling flat or incomplete. If I stayed present in my lovemaking, facing my lover and the intensity of what I was feeling, breathing deeply and allowing the vulnerability and tears, I would access a deeper layer of withheld emotions. As each layer peeled away I found more feeling and perception in my vagina, and my lover felt his penis respond too.

Noticing emotion as it arises

It is important to recognize when the past and unconsciousness step in, and when
precisely
emotion knocks on your door. How you deal with it makes all the difference. For instance, while you are making love, a rough, insensitive touch by your lover could remind you of an unloving uncle who did the same thing to you when you were a little girl, and an old emotion gets triggered. Even the smallest movement can be telling. Suddenly, the confusion and apprehension of the childhood experience can flood through you, bringing feelings of repulsion, curiosity, fear, guilt, attraction, or pain. The past has placed its ugly scarring foot into the beauty of your present love, and suddenly without warning, the two of you are worlds apart. Utterly separate. Communication seems virtually impossible, and it almost feels as if you have stepped into a different personality. You hardly know yourself, let alone your lover. Moments before, he was here, right in front of you but now you are unable to meet his eyes, as though looking at him through a long tube. An overload of unexpressed feelings is activated, and you may suddenly feel in a fighting mood, blaming your partner for your unhappiness.

This is an immediate sign that emotions from the past have stepped in and temporarily disturbed your present moment. Although you may feel absolutely terrible, the truth is that facing such emotions can be beneficial because the experience is ultimately cleansing. I suggest that as soon as you recognize (and this gets easier and easier) what is happening, try to access the real feeling that the emotion is hiding or protecting. If you experience fear, you may find underneath that you feel utterly abandoned and alone; if you feel angry, you may find immense sadness. Allow the expression of this old buried feeling to overwhelm you.

If you cannot get back to it
immediately
acknowledge to yourself and your partner where you are, for instance: "I'm emotional right now, I'm feeling separate." But do not get engaged in any kind of blaming, or assume that
be
did the wrong thing. If talking about it improves the situation, it is helpful. But if the sense of separation persists, it is preferable to take some time alone.

What are you really feeling?

One distressing aspect of emotionality is that if one person gets emotional, it is not long before the second person is in a rage too, also accusing the other for countless disappointments! The situation has gone from bad to worse. The emotionality of one person will resonate and vibrate with the emotionality latent in the other, and so they inadvertently get involved in a conflict. Their repressed emotions are suddenly pouring out of every pore, and each one is blaming the other for it all! Communication can become absolutely impossible because neither person is clear or conscious. It is suggested that when you are very emotional, it is better not to talk because this rarely works out, and the confusion and separation often increase. Only if you are willing to
admit
to your vulnerability and
expose
it, should you carry on talking. Otherwise, it is far more respectful to acknowledge what is happening and to separate physically for a while. You can go for a walk and as little as an hour may be enough. Or you may need a longer time, a whole evening or a couple of days to give you time to work through the old emotions, expressing the feelings by having a good weep, or release feelings of rage and frustration by pounding a pillow. It is important to do something physical when you are emotional. Anything will do, such as jogging, dancing, or exercising.

Don't be afraid to give yourself adequate time, if you need it. During these moments of solitude, you may begin to notice that it is seldom this lover in particular who is entirely responsible for what you are experiencing, your sense of isolation, of being abandoned, rejected, betrayed. If you are honest with yourself, you will find you have had these feelings before. It's nothing new, only the scenario has changed, you even may notice it is a pattern which arises when you are growing in intimacy.

It is that excruciating experience of the heart wanting to open, but the hurt from another time, when you loved and were not loved in return, is there haunting you, keeping you withdrawn. We are all reliving the past in our present and this lover is not directly responsible for what you are going through. When you take full responsibility for your emotions, your love will not become contaminated with the unhappinesses of the past. When the right amount of time is taken for separation, the reunion can happen wordlessly as you step into the present.

It is by filtering these emotions from the genitals through the solar plexus to the heart, that they can be relived as real feelings and released. The emotion will sometimes be experienced on a physical level as a dense foreign substance swirling and spiraling uncomfortably within, flowing through the fascial system, which forms a weaving connective labyrinth throughout the body. Emotion clings to pride and protection and lacks the willingness to find the root of pain. If you have the courage to look beneath the emotion, however, your heart will race, your breath rate will increase, and you may shiver and sweat as you enter the reality of what you felt so long ago. Then your heart will speak of itself, its fragility and its tenderness. The wall between you and your lover will crumble right then and there. As suddenly as the emotion stepped in and separated you, it will leave. Your eyes can then meet those of your lover, and the sense of living in a separate reality will dissolve. Within these emotions is the kernel of our realignment with our essence, the love that we are.

Remember you are more than just your emotions

When you are in an emotional state, it is highly significant to realize that you are not your emotions, that you do not become over-identified with the pain and anguish of them, even though it can be hell. Do not trust anything that you do or say, either. Emotion likes revenge and you must avoid getting lost in there because this is not you. Do not do anything impulsive or potentially dangerous. Be aware of what you say. Understand what is happening, that a cloud of (past) emotion is overwhelming you. You need to be clear about the potential of men and women. As you let the sadness and pain emerge upward and out of the body try to cultivate an attitude of welcoming these feelings, understanding that you are unburdening your heart. This will bring a refreshing quality; you will feel more alive, closer to your lover and yourself

When we bring new intelligence to lovemaking, we come to understand the fluctuations from good to bad times. Learning to distinguish between emotions and feelings saves a lot of potential trouble when we can recognize repressed emotions creating a disturbance, sparking irritability, argumentativeness, and even physical excitement. It is crucial to understand that emotions create excitement. This is why sex is so hot and exciting while you are having a fight; the drama of it turns you on! Many couples will use sex as a last attempt to communicate, to patch up the pain of separation, but Tantra suggests that you never make love when you are in a fighting mood. It can easily lead to more emotion and therefore unconsciousness in sex. Wait until the emotions have passed before making love. Otherwise it is less easy to be aware as you make love, and difficult to meet in the loving and healing environment offered by the present. Since healing is a process, the fragile emotions can pop up unexpectedly at
any
moment, and if you are not alert, you're back in the ditch again, with the same story and the same issues.