Slow Sex: The Path to Fulfilling and Sustainable Sexuality (24 page)

The Difference between Feelings and Emotions

If you don’t express your feelings or share your needs it is highly likely that sooner or later you will get emotional. Feelings and emotions are not the same and knowing the difference is life changing.

A feeling arises for expression out of the present moment, but when it remains unexpressed, the energy can turn in to negative emotion.

That means that feelings we do
not
express in the present get stored inside us, accumulate with time, and cause disturbances. You will know the moment you are emotional because there are certain distinct signs or symptoms that help you to recognize what is going on.

For the brief period of time when we are emotional, we are unconsciously caught up in the past, and not really anchored in the present and in reality. You begin to experience distance or a sense of separation from your partner (and also from yourself), whereas earlier you were feeling connected. When everything was rosy in the present there was the experience of connection—you were with the perfect person. Now, however, you may suddenly find yourself feeling far away and finding fault with your partner in some way, blaming them for this or that.

These swings in mood happen because from time to time our stored, unexpressed feelings get triggered, in and out of sex. And what leads us into trouble is that we have a
multitude
of unexpressed feelings, given that we live in a society where expressing genuine heartfelt feelings is not really okay. So most of us (and especially men) repress many of our feelings. As a result of centuries of repression, human beings have the tendency to be pretty emotional. All the unexpressed feelings remain in the system and go slightly sour, and when provoked in any way (even the slightest nudge can start a fist fight) they pop up and express themselves. The difficulty lies in the fact that the old unexpressed feelings have become toxins in the system, which explains why so often a person becomes so destructive or so vengeful when caught in the emotional state.

People sometimes do and say dreadful things to each other when they are experiencing a wave of emotion. And the toxic vengeful quality of emotion is the reason why whenever you recognize that you are emotional, you must literally tell your partner, “I am emotional.” And then, to avoid further possibly hurtful words, leave the room.

Instead of venting your emotion on your partner, do something physical to burn up the emotion that has become active in your system. This really simple solution may appear
too
simple, but it invariably works. Afterward, when you return to your partner, the wall that was separating you has probably come down. If not, that’s your signal to go and do some more work on yourself. Taking responsibility in this way means that you save yourselves the pain of going through many emotional upheavals that are destructive to your love connection. After too many fights the repairs start to take more time and be more temporary. Love slowly begins to erode and slip out of our hands. The toxins produced by too many fights, or one fight too many, has been the cause of many a couple finally separating.

Love is precious and we have to protect it from the destructive effects of overwhelming and inconstant emotion. Knowing how to tell the difference between the two very different states of emotion and feeling can save your relationship.

Deepening Polarity and Healing of the Penis and Vagina

As a couple opens to slow sex, the genitals go through a purifying, refining, and balancing process. Pain in the male or female genitals is sometimes indicative of old tensions leaving the body, yet another expression of buried and unresolved feelings. Be aware that healing or detoxification happens at any time and in many forms. For instance, nausea or vomiting, loose stools, headaches or migraines, toothache, exhaustion, boils or pimples, irregular heartbeat, or feeling very weak.

It’s common for some women to experience pain in the vagina during sex and, regrettably, they accept it as part of the package. Some women will even fake pleasure by making suitable sounds when in reality sex feels painful to them. As a woman gets older and enters menopause, she frequently will report pain upon penetration or dryness of the tissues, so much that she can no longer have sex. Slow sex, however, is possible and enjoyable.

Sometimes during sex a woman will become aware of hidden pains or numb places at the entrance, along the sides, or deep in the higher part of the vagina.

Pain and deadness usually represent old wounds or memories stored in the tissue. Pain is positive in the sense that it acts as a door to the past and the tension accumulated there.

The powerful and healing effects of conscious sustained penetration are described in detail in chapter 8.

Opening to and giving way to buried feelings can be an effective way to release physical pain in the body, especially pain in the genital region. If you have a pain that suddenly arises and persists, especially after sex, always look to see if there is an emotional component hiding behind it. Perhaps there is some sadness, anger, or anxiety that you are holding under the surface. Allowing old feelings heals, balances, and sensitizes.

Men can also experience uncomfortable pain when they start to have slow, conscious sex. Pain in the groin, testicles, or penis is usually an indication of previously held tension being released and purified from the system. (Please note that ejaculation control by repression is not recommended, as mentioned earlier. Repressing ejaculation will also lead to pain and tension, but this is due to congestion and not because of purification.)

Sustained penetration can become a style of sex, with or without erection. The opposite poles spend simple time together and gradually become more attuned and alive.

RAISING CONSCIOUSNESS

In many ways, mastering slow sex is really a matter of unlearning a certain behavior and learning another one. You are installing consciousness in a place where expression has been more automatic, mechanical, and unconscious. So transforming unconsciousness into consciousness is a great shift and gift for your life, a blessing intended for you by the Creator.

Afterward Is Your Teacher

Essentially you have to teach yourself the conscious way. Learning is not going to happen just by reading and thinking about it; rediscovery can only happen through practice—hands-on experience. What you learn from yourselves is revealed by how you feel after you have had sex. Afterward is your teacher and shows you the way.

Intentionally begin to observe yourself after you have finished making love. How do you feel? Pay attention to immediately after, a short time later, and even a couple of days later. The tendency is to evaluate the high point—the climax—but we do not really observe ourselves during the minutes and hours beyond the moment of orgasm. Watching yourself afterward helps you to put together a new picture of sex. If you notice after slow sex, even while you may have “missed” some aspects of the fast approach (such as orgasm), that you feel more at ease in yourself, more loving, more nourished, then this feedback is teaching you something about the nature of exchange. If you perhaps observe that you feel brittle, abandoned, or lonely, it’s good to look back at that as well. What did you do and how did you do it? Do you notice a connection between what you do and how you feel afterward?

My partner and I tell people in our groups that “afterward” is their teacher, we are not. Both of us have certainly found that observation of the period of time after sex, even days later, has been the greatest teacher thus far.

Teach yourself through asking, “How was it?” Teach yourself how as you go along, by trial and error. Starting happens by getting down to doing it, and in your own individual way. Approach it with a sense of adventure, interested in what lies on the horizon.

Becoming Messengers of Love

Slow sex is an inquiry; you begin to examine sex. Answers will come to you, like the slow dawning of the day; you don’t have to know everything in advance. Wanting questions answered in full before being willing to step out is not realistic. You might hear something said, but to make it your own truth, the experience has to be lived, and the truth verified.

Sincerity and general sensitivity in the body, especially the genital union, can produce transforming higher states of consciousness.

Ecstasy is not, however, the new goal that replaces the old goal of orgasm. It cannot be seen in this way because ecstasy only shows itself when there is a dropping of goals, a diving into the present, and a dissolving into the infinite inner cosmos.

Recall the three beautiful elements to the experience of blissfulness mentioned: egolessness, naturalness, and timelessness. Egolessness means there is no “I.” Naturalness means you surrender to the intelligence of your body. Timelessness means you slip into the present, and therefore completely out of time. Bliss can also happen without a partner, such as when alone enraptured by nature, and many people have had such an experience. So we cannot do bliss, we can only humbly and reverently create the situation that allows bliss. Sex definitely offers the perfect situation for exploring these elements, and it is perhaps one of the easiest, because the central theme reduces itself down to how you do something, and not what you do. Attributes such as innocence, sincerity, compassion, and courage are the qualities to pursue in order to elevate consciousness.

You don’t need advanced techniques. The ever-deepening experience of penetrating your inner world can accompany you for the rest of your life. It’s an experience that evolves with time and practice. Sex gets more simple, sensitivity grows, and you transform as time goes on. Slow sex becomes a practice involving a finely tuned awareness with positive, uplifting, long-term benefits that generally increase the quality of love and of life. While slow sex encourages togetherness, it also encourages aloneness and independence. You begin to feel complete, whole, and integrated, happier in and with yourself.

As you grow together you also grow as individuals, and your male and female poles come into balance. And the curious thing about the inner balancing of masculine and feminine energies within yourself is that you don’t need to do anything with the opposite pole. You need only live and explore your male qualities as man, or your female qualities as woman. Living these aspects will alchemically establish the equal and opposite pole within you. Man by being more male accesses his feminine qualities, while woman through being more female accesses her masculine qualities.

Your inner flow of magnetism comes to life in such a way that energy can stream within you as a form of inner sex. This means you can circulate energy within yourself and continue the inner process of transformation that you have started together. The capacity to circulate vitality within yourself is the most evolved form of sex given to human beings, so it is something that can be done alone or in each other’s company. You may already feel some streaming within; if not, visualization works very well, as it helps to awaken the energy.

Through practicing slow sex you will come to see and understand that sex is not what it seems to be on the surface. Any inherited preconceptions and ideas of sex are mostly false, and these misunderstandings form a screen between you and the real power of sex.

Through sexual exploration you will discover that the true function of slow sex is to bring more love into being. In this way each and every person can be a messenger of love by creating love and offering it to the world. Likewise, a couple can become a positive force in the community as generators of love and light.

Man’s deepest wish is to be loved by woman, just as woman’s deepest wish is to be loved by man. When you discover the how of love, then love is easily sustained. Couples begin to value, support, and appreciate each other as equal yet fundamentally opposite and complementary forces.

If there is any hope for humanity, perhaps the only genuine hope is that man and woman find peace with each other. Practicing sex in a conscious, slow way builds bridges of communication that kindle the flame of peace, enabling them to live as a cohesive force enjoying physically and spiritually uplifting lives.

The end of the story is that there has to be a drastic turnaround in the way people use their sexual energy. A few innocent, simple sexual steps are all it takes to initiate a journey back home to oneself, in accord with nature and the cosmic plan. There has to be a ripening and maturing process, whereby sex incorporates the universal metabolic enhancers so that the higher dimensions can easily be accessed and revealed. Slow sex is simple, sustainable, and life affirming, and enables us to be radiant purveyors of light, love, and peace on Earth.

APPENDIX

True Male and Female Qualities versus Conditioned Distortions

Present tables that list male and female qualities. The column on the left in each table lists the essential deep-seated qualities of man or woman. The column on the right lists the outcome or pattern when these intrinsic qualities become (unconsciously) distorted through sexual and societal conditioning. Because all human beings carry male and female poles within themselves, it can also happen that a man may sometimes demonstrate distorted female qualities, while at times a woman may display distorted male qualities. Approaching sex in a conscious, slow way leads to personal purification and healing of the body and psyche, promoting spontaneous inner balancing and integration.