Archive for April, 2012

One Story

Friday, April 27th, 2012

A friend of mine had a rift in her marriage last year.  This was not an unusual story.  It may sound familiar to you, from your own life, or someone you know.  She had been married for a considerable number of years.  She noticed, several years before, that not only had she stopped having a desire for sex with her partner, but that she had literally at times felt repulsed by him.  She was not in love with anyone else nor was she having an affair.
Hers is a story with a “happy ending”, or I should probably say a happy resolution, at least for the time being.  With her permission, I am sharing what happened.  Perhaps it will be of service to you or someone you know.  Here’s what she did, that, I believe, contributed to a positive outcome for her and her husband:

1.  She told the truth.  Her truth. As much as she was scared to do so (she had put it off for years already), she told him how she had been feeling.

2.  She honored her feelings.  She stopped having sex with her husband.  She honored herself by not forcing herself to continue to have sex with him when she didn’t want to.

3.  She didn’t panic.  He did.  He was very angry and hurt.  He told her he thought he should move out, that they should get a divorce, all the usual stuff the partner who’s hurt will predictably go to.  But she didn’t overreact to what he said. She remained calm.  (Okay, maybe ONCE she said some unenlightened things, but that’s all ;) )

4.  She kept meditating.  She had been in the habit for years of meditating daily.  Sometimes when we get in stressful situations, we stop our healthy habits.  She did not.

5.  She allowed her soul to penetrate further into her body.  She set that intention before her meditations, and it did occur.

6. She talked to him on the soul plane.  Since her husband’s ego was getting in the way of their having productive conversations on the earthly plane, she went to the soul plane and had some chats with his soul.  (See my blog titled Soul Linking for more information on how to do this.)

After two to three months, something wonderful happened.  One day, seemingly out of the blue, she began to have sexual fantasies about doing something with him that they had done in their earlier sexual life.  When he got home from work, she pounced on him and fulfilled her fantasy.  She reports that for several days and nights after that, they passionately made love as they had done when they first fell in love.  Then, they were restored to a more “normal” frequency of lovemaking.

I’m not saying this eliminated every challenge in their marriage, or that the same experience (lack of sexual desire) never resurfaced .  I AM saying that this is what worked for them.  I know there are literally millions of couples out there who may be going through a similar experience.  Maybe you are part of one of those couples.  If so, how have you handled it?  What has/hasn’t worked for you?  What do you think of the approach described here?

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Meditation Makes Me Horny!

Tuesday, April 24th, 2012

Yesterday we were sitting, listening to channeling during meditation group, and our spirit guides asked a question- how can someone restore their sex drive when it appears to be lost? And this is what popped into my head: meditation.  Meditation makes me horny.  Of course, I blurted it out.  I’m not one to hold back!

Literally very often while I am meditating alone, I can feel myself having sexual feelings arise in my yoni.  (Yoni is a tantric word for “sacred place”, used to refer to the  female genitalia without all the negative associations of a word like “vagina”.  The word used instead of “penis” is “lingam”.  It means “wand of light”.)  And then when meditating in a room with others, sometimes this makes me horniER.  This, of course, is because of the Synergistic Energy Exchange that is naturally happening in the room, even with all our clothes on, not touching each other, and not even necessarily having any sexual thoughts.

And here’s what our guides had to say about that:  First of all, they affirmed that meditation does in fact work to raise libido.  But they also said the REASON that it works is that it raises the kundalini energy in our bodies.   Kundalini, simply put, is the natural energy of the self.  And what’s true is that since we are in essence sexual beings, ALL of our energy IS sexual.

No, the existence of kundalini hasn’t been proven scientifically, but to me that means nothing.  Lots of other things that were previously not scientifically proven, now are, such as the fact that our chakras, or energy centers, really do exist.  Or the fact that white sage, when burned, really does purify the energy of a space or a human being.

So this kundalini energy sits at the base of the spine, coiled up like a snake. When a person meditates, it starts to rise in the body, up through the chakras.  And this can create, among many other wonderful benefits, more sexual feelings.

To me, sex is one of the greatest gifts we can enjoy while here on the planet.  Okay, it’s actually my favorite, even above massage and food, but who’s counting?  I feel really sad when my sex drive appears to go underground.  I miss it.  (Just to reassure you, in case you were worried about me, right now it is alive and well!)

And I know there are so many people suffering with a low or non-existent sex drive.  According to USA Today, 20 to 30% of men and 30-50% of women say they have little or no sex drive.  Wow, those numbers are high! Low sex drives deprive of us being able to fully enjoy the gift of our sexuality.  It is bad enough if we are single and have no sex drive (or, perhaps if that is the case we may be grateful, but not for long I predict), but when we are in a relationship and one or both partners are having trouble with libido, this can cause real difficulties.

If you are falling into that category right now, why not give meditation a try?  It has no negative side effects, does not require a doctor’s prescription, it’s free, and you can do it just about anywhere.

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Why are we Shaming Our Children?

Friday, April 20th, 2012

I have been thinking about how we raise our children in terms of the messages we send about sexuality.  For example, when I was growing up, one would have thought that sex didn’t exist.  I honestly don’t believe I ever heard either of my parents say the word “sex” or even acknowledge that sex existed.  Thank Goddess, one of my friends told me (accurately) all about it when I was in fourth grade, or I would have had to wait until the public education day for the official school sex talk.

I did a little better with my own kid.  One day when she was about three, she was getting ready for a bath and she touched her clitoris and asked: “What is this?”  I am proud to say, I told her the truth: “That’s your clitoris”.  She responded by saying: “I like this.”  And I validated by saying: “I know, honey.” :)

But seriously, now I think back and ask myself: why was it that at three years old, she did not already know what her clitoris was?  We had already gone through the whole game of teaching her the name of every other body part when she was one or two and then quizzing her to see if she remembered them.  Conspicuously, we had left out her genitals.  But she caught us on that one.  She asked.

When she was seven, there was an older kid that told her all about sex, again accurately.  She checked the story out with me (a sign that she did not get the message that it was bad to talk about it), then said: “And he said that’s called sex.  Is that true?”  I confirmed that it was.  She asked some more questions at that time, which I answered.  Some people might say she was too young to know that, but apparently she wasn’t, because she did know it. Think of it this way: by that age, we have already explained to our kids how all sorts of other things worked when they asked, why would sex be any different?

Another way that parents give the erroneous message that sex is bad or shameful is by trying to stop their kids from enjoying their own bodies. Even when the kids are still infants, many parents will pull the baby’s hand away when it naturally goes to it’s genitals.  Infants and children do things with their bodies when it feels good.  Some kids like to rock.  They may stroke other areas of their bodies simply because it feels good.  But allowing kids to touch their own genitals is where most parents draw the line.

Clearly something that is left out, not discussed, and discouraged must be bad, right?  That’s the message that our kids receive.  Is that the message that we want to give children, that sex is wrong and bad and sinful?  It’s certainly not the message that I want to give

What about you?  What messages did you receive about sexuality growing up?  How do you think that affected your attitudes toward your own sexuality?  What messages do you think you have been (verbally or non-verbally) giving to your own kids?  What messages do you consciously choose to give your kids about sex?  What is one step you are willing to commit to toward creating that?

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When It’s Over

Tuesday, April 17th, 2012

Are you ready?  I’m going to share with you one of  the greatest myths of our times: We are meant to fall in love once, and stay together with that person for the rest of our lives.  Haven’t we all been told that?  Haven’t we all been told that true love is forever?  Well, it is, and it isn’t.

First of all, yes, there are those whose High Self, the God(dess) part of them plans at the outset to find their partner, (usually a soulmate, someone who they have known and loved in past lives) and stay together literally ‘til death do they part.  But that is relatively rare.  Most of the time, our High Selves agree that we will meet in this lifetime and stay together for a pre-determined amount of time. We will learn what we can learn from each other, and then it will be complete and we will move on to continue our learning with different partners.  This may turn out to be a total of two partners or twenty.  None of it is wrong.

The problem is, our personalities usually don’t know that, and our society tells us differently.  So, and here’s the really crucial part: we are set up to think that we have failed if our relationship or our marriage, Goddess forbid, doesn’t last forever.  In fact, when I was married and going to counseling, our therapist literally told us that we had failed at marriage.  Wow.  For years afterward, I was afraid to really commit to anyone else because I believed what he said, and didn’t want to fail again. And the truth is, if our relationships end it doesn’t mean we have failed at all.  It simply means we have chosen differently.

And here’s the part where true love really IS forever.  For example, my last partner and I loved each other deeply, even though we eventually chose to separate in this lifetime.  We loved each other before we met in this lifetime, we loved each other for the five years that we were in relationship, and we will love each other for the rest of our current lifetimes and into eternity.  I know that may sound incredibly sappy and over dramatized, but it is actually true.  I can’t explain how I know that exactly.  I just feel it in my bones.

So, what? What is the implication about all of this?  Here’s the big payoff.  If we accept the new paradigm, we don’t have to go with the old way of breaking up. The old way is, since we are all meant to stay together forever, and since we’re not doing that, this must mean not only that we have failed but that there is something wrong with one or both of us.  We messed up.  We are defective.  You are defective.  I am defective.  We feel pressure to come up with a laundry list of reasons we are going to give when someone asks us “why?”.  I didn’t handle it right.  (S)he has all these bad qualities that I can’t put up with any longer.  And it goes on and on.

I did that when I divorced my husband.  I came up with a long list of all the things he did wrong and all the ways I didn’t voice my displeasure strongly enough or soon enough, and thus the marriage had failed.  The real truth was, I didn’t even know why I was divorcing him, I only knew I needed to do it.  It was over.

In the new paradigm, you get to say: “It’s been a great ride together, and it’s over now.  Thank you for allowing me to grow and learn together with you. Thank you for all the good times, and all the bad times.  I learned from all of them.  I honor who you are, and I love you.  There is nothing wrong with either you or me.  It is sad to part ways, but it is part of the plan we made together with God.  I trust that our High Selves made this plan in perfect knowing of what was for our highest good.” Isn’t that much better than: “I’m leaving you because you’re a @#$ ”?

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Cougars and Such

Friday, April 13th, 2012

The topic of cougars keeps coming up in my life.  Some have said I am a cougar, although technically, I don’t meet the full definition.   But cougars are not just women, either.   There are “man-cougars” too.  Let’s start with the female cougars, though, since that seems to be the hot topic these days.

A female cougar is a woman usually 40 years or older who exclusively pursues very young men, at least 10 years her junior, but typically  young enough to be her son.  So a cougar in her 40′s would pursue a male partner in his 20′s, a cougar in her 50′s would pursue a man in his 30′s, you get the picture.  It has been a part of pop culture probably since the movie The Graduate with Ann Bancroft and Dustin Hoffman. We all remember that scene, don’t we?  These days WAAF even advertises a site for men to find cougars (hey but doesn’t that take away the stalking role of the woman?) complete with a jingle that goes: ” date a cougar, date a cougar”.  It’s both funny and absolutely for real.

A man-cougar is defined as an older man, usually middle aged who pursues and succeeds in dating younger women.  It is not known whether the cougar got its name due to the predatory behavior of actual cougars in the wild, in comparison with the predatory behavior of the “human cougar”, or due to the fact that older women who may pursue younger men have been known to wear a lot of wild cat prints.  Personally, I prefer the first idea.  The last one seems a little tacky.

Regardless, the reason I bring all this up is that I am aware that although this kind of cougarism, if you will, is quite common, there is still a societal taboo about it, whether it is older woman/younger man or older man/younger woman.  It has been described as both “disgusting” and “wrong”, among other things I’m sure.

But why is it disgusting and wrong?  If you think it is disgusting and wrong, I invite you to look at where your views are coming from.  What’s true is that we are all souls within these bodies.  While one person may be chronologically older than another, maybe the “younger” person actually has a more advanced soul than the older person.  And what I also know to be true is that we are attracted to people many times due to the souls inside of them, not due to their age or even their bodies in some cases.  If our souls have a history with each other from past lifetimes, we may be attracted regardless of age.  And as one member of our meditation group pointed out, there is the fact that in the older woman/younger man cougar situation, both partners are likely to be at their sexual prime.  And I would argue if that’s the case- it’s a good thang!

I will say there are a couple of caveats.  One, I am talking about consenting adults here.  Certainly not about children.  And two, when there is a power differential, such as an older boss pursuing a younger employee, I can see that may become exploitative.  With an older woman pursuing a younger man in general, yes I admit there is a power differential but since men are more powerful than women in our society, it doesn’t count, in my eyes.  And as for those older guys pursuing younger women, depending on how much younger, etc., there may be some room for debate.

What do you think?  Are you for it or against it?  Have you ever experienced it?  If you think it’s okay, do you think it can ever be a “serious” thing, as in a long term relationship, or do you see it as just for sexual fun?

 

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No Wonder it Works!

Tuesday, April 10th, 2012

Back in my social worker days, I did outreach to homeless people.  As part of my job, I would attend a monthly meeting with other clinicians from around the state who did the same thing, outreach to homeless people on the streets and in shelters.  Sometimes we would have guest speakers.  I clearly remember when one of my colleagues brought in one of her homeless clients to speak to us about his experience with breathing as a spiritual practice.  (Spirituality can come in very handy for homeless people- and well you know, all of us.)  He described how his breath comforted him during his darkest moments, and how it felt like his connection to God.  On an intuitive level, I totally got what he was talking about, yet I didn’t really have a clear grasp of the relationship between the two- breath and spirituality- at the time.

Years later, unexpectedly, I got my explanation.  In one of the daily Abraham quotes that I receive, (see blog titled The Energy Stream for more information about Abraham), it said that our breath is actually how we take Spirit into our bodies.  It is literally how Source Energy comes into our bodies.

To me, that explains a couple of things:  One, why when we stop breathing our bodies literally die.  When we cut ourselves off from Source spiritually, we die inside.  When we cut ourselves off from Source by no longer breathing, our physical bodies die.  We cannot live in these bodies without a steady supply of Source energy.  We ARE Source energy.

And two, it explains why it IS so comforting whenever we consciously breathe.  Whether it is just a few conscious breaths to do what I call “pressing the reset button”, or it is a full meditation, our breath connects us to Source, we can feel it, and that’s why it works. We are literally bringing Well Being into our bodies with every breath.

Very simple concept today.  Many times, the things I talk about are very simple.  And we can all use reminders of these things.  Sometimes it is the most obvious things that are the hardest to get.

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The “Him-Shaped Void”

Friday, April 6th, 2012

A few months ago, I read a book called Dear Lover by David Deida.  In it he talks about a concept he called the him-shaped void.  In my mind, I changed it to the man-shaped void, so that’s what I prefer to call it now.  I’m quirky like that.

Regardless of what it is called, I was experiencing it.  My “friend with benefits” from last year left a man-shaped void in my heart and body that just wasn’t going away.  David Deida describes it in a way that makes it sound like an actual physical/energetic thing, not just a construct of the mind.  And based on my personal experience, it is.

I’d done all of the emotional and energetic work related to my friend with benefits, and I was ready to be done with the man-shaped void.  It was getting old.  Just when I thought it was gone, (phew! ) it would pop up again in another form.

So I made a decision to take on another lover.  And I intuitively knew, the man-shaped void would vanish like magic.  It did- like magic!  But the part I conveniently forgot about, (that I remembered when I reread the book) is that if the new lover opened me more deeply than the old lover did, then there would just be another man-shaped void as soon as that new lover was no longer present.

And so it goes, each new lover opening us more deeply than the last.  Each new lover leaving a man-shaped void in his wake.  Which leads me to the belief that it’s what we all came here for.  To be with others.  And while this is true, it doesn’t end there.

As David puts it: “Eventually as your devotional capacity to offer yourself grows, you will attract a man who opens you to God’s shape through his loving.  Then, your heart will retain a God-shaped void in moments when you have separated yourself from divine love.  Your yearning will be to feel infinity’s claim of your heart, opening you without bounds, filling you with an abundance of presence and pleasure beyond your capacity to bear, forcing you open as full as all.”

Now, I ask you, how good does THAT sound?  And guys, you get the same benefit on the other end!

I haven’t created that in this lifetime- yet- and it is my full intention to do so.  For the time being, I’ll simply be in my process, taking my learning and my growth as it comes.  And I will feel both the pain and the ecstasy of the man-shaped void I now have.

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When Sparks Don’t Fly

Tuesday, April 3rd, 2012

There comes a time in any long term relationship when sex is just not the same as it used to be.  One day, it seems you wake up, and you realize the sparks are not flying.  What happened to that feeling that you couldn’t wait to be with the other person?  What happened to those butterflies in your stomach?  Or, depending on how far along this path you are, what happened to your sex drive altogether?

Many people, at this point, assume that it is over.  You tell yourself you have fallen out of love with your partner.  You may decide to leave the relationship, or stay physically but leave emotionally and pretend (maybe even to yourself) you haven’t.  Some of the ways that people do this are through cheating on their partner or just shutting down and concealing what’s really going on for them.

But what if there were another choice?  What if reaching this point in your relationship were a normal part of what happens and not a crisis?  In part, it can be explained through science.  As some of you may have read before, hormones play a big part in how we feel and how we feel about sex in the early part of our union.  (It’s just a general estimate, but what I’m referring to as “early” means the first 6 months.  Could be longer, could be shorter.)

The hormones that originally had you tearing each other’s clothes off at the beginning are now replaced with hormones that create more of a feeling of attachment rather than horniness.  It makes sense, for the continuation of the species, if you think about it.  You get these raging hormones that make you want to hump like rabbits, the woman gets pregnant- job done- and then the attachment hormones set in to increase the likelihood that the couple will stay together long enough to raise a child together.

In addition to the hormonal factor, there can be other things at play that are causing one or both of you to have a lack of desire in the bedroom.  Some of these things can be:

1.  Having one or more children together.  Sounds romantic, but it’s really not.
2.  Having busy lives in general and neglecting to invest the time in nurturing the relationship that you did early on.
3.  One or both of you having withholds in the relationship, important communications that could be anything from: ‘I cheated on you’ to ‘I’m feeling neglected and I want us to spend more time together.’
4.  You are not very satisfied with the sex you’ve been having.  When those raging hormones were there, it was easy to overlook, but now not so much.

So, what to do if you find yourself in this position?  Below are a few suggestions on your path back to wanting and having fulfilling sex:

1.  First of all, don’t panic, it’s so common that it literally IS normal.
2.  Be transparent with each other.  Be truthful about what your experience is.  Set up a time to talk with your partner in a non-threatening  way. Use “I statements” to describe how you feel and make requests about what you want.
3.  Realize that changing your sex life takes time.  It is a process.  It can get better, maybe in some ways better than ever, but it won’t happen overnight.
4.  Start wherever you are.  If you don’t want to have sex with your partner, be honest about it.  Then work from there to see what you can do to rebuild that feeling of connection.  Sometimes a hug can get you started in the right direction.  Or, how about cuddling?  Or give        each other a back or foot rub.  Non-sexual touch is a great way to rebuild that feeling of connection.
5.  Don’t force it.  Stay in the moment.  See what happens organically.  Try to let go of any beliefs that things “should” be a certain way.
6.  Seek outside help from a life coach or therapist when you feel like what you’re doing’s not working. Better to admit that you need help than to go it alone and possibly lose the relationship unnecessarily.

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