To me, the erotic isn’t just about sex. It’s about life itself. It’s the pulse of aliveness that runs through us when we allow ourselves to feel: to savour, to soften, to delight.

When we touch the erotic, we are saying yes to life. We’re saying yes to our bodies, yes to each other, yes to this wild, improbable gift of being here at all. It’s why I often describe the erotic as a celebration of life’s goodness - because when we let ourselves feel it, we are honouring the fact that life is good.

The trouble is, we live in a world that teaches us to shut that part of ourselves down. We rush, we strive, we numb. We treat pleasure as frivolous, something we’ll get to later when the to-do list is done. But the erotic isn’t something to tick off at the end of the day. It’s a way of being: a choice to meet life with curiosity, wonder, and an open heart.

And yes, of course, it shows up in sex - in the way lovers move together, not just physically, but in presence and attention. But it’s also there in the way sunlight warms your skin on a cold morning, or the way a piece of music makes your chest ache, or the way you close your eyes to taste something truly delicious. The erotic is in every moment you allow yourself to be touched by life.

This is why I talk so much about erotic aliveness. It’s not about being “sexy” all the time; it’s about being awake to the world, awake to each other, awake to the simple fact that being here, breathing, feeling, is extraordinary.

So as you move through your days, I invite you to ask yourself: Where can I let the erotic in? What would it feel like to let myself be turned on by life itself?

Because every time you do, you’re celebrating life’s goodness. And that, to me, is truly erotic

Some days into my last couples retreat in Bali we were in a group discussion when one of the participants said that what he and his partner were experiencing, based on what I was sharing and teaching, felt like a ‘practice’. Just as they had regular meditation practices, this approach to sexual intimacy had the same qualities. I think that is an excellent way of conceptualising the approach to sex that I encourage.

So, what do we mean by a ‘practice’? Well, spiritual traditions have various spiritual practices or disciplines to enable personal growth and spiritual development. Prayer and meditation are obvious ones, but it can expand to include some of the martial arts and other physical activities such as dance and yoga, volunteering, creative arts, being in nature. But it’s less about the activity itself that makes it a practice, and more about the way in which it’s engaged. Which is why sexual intimacy can also be a spiritual practice.

A practice is engaged in with intention to engage in a certain way and with attention during the experience. It’s mindful, both in the sense of bringing mindfulness to the experience and also for the experience itself to be a mindfulness practice. In the case of sex, regular readers will remember that the academic research I did a few years ago explored how sex itself becomes a mindfulness practice, heightening both the lovers’ experience in the moment, and taking from that experience an ongoing sense of presence and engagement in the rest of life.

It’s also about bringing a sense of the sacred into the experience, to create a sacred space of time and place. In the case of sexual intimacy, the lovers enter into it consciously, with the intention of creating a beautiful experience of pleasure and connection together. Then as the experience unfolds, each pays attention to what they are feeling and wanting to express in the moment, while also paying attention to what the partner is feeling and wanting to express in the moment - and through that they co-create positive meaningful experiences, whatever the activity and however long they stay engaged.

The lovers don’t rush in. There’s what I call a ‘chilled build’ - they take their time first to connect and then to become aroused. There are no expectations of outcome, other than pleasure and connection. There is no need for it to follow the standard linear approach, and even if it does, that happens through focused co-creation, not expectation. Then the experience comes to a close when the lovers feel it’s right.

This approach to sexual engagement can potentially last for hours, but what really matters is that it heightens any kind of sexual encounter, so a sweet and simple cuddly encounter under the covers can be enriched when considered a “practice” and not just a quickie and definitely not as a duty or obligation.

It’s simple really, just as a meditation practice is simple. But it’s not necessarily easy – you have to practise at making sex a practice! You need to change your mind set about what drives a sexual encounter, how it is initiated, how it is engaged with and how it’s concluded.

But once you do, the depth of feeling, both physical and emotional, that you can attain is so beautiful. It can feel not just mindful, but also bodyful and soulful. Then you really are making love.

Quality sex nurtures your body. It releases stress, is good for your heart health, your skin, your fitness, suppleness and so much more. 

Quality sex also nurtures your mind and emotions. It’s fun, it’s creative, it’s connecting, and keeps you feeling relaxed, calm, bonded and loved up.

It’s about the healthiest activity you can engage in!

It goes much deeper though than just being physically good for you, and even deeper than having a positive effect mentally and emotionally. It goes right to your soul. Quality sex nurtures your soul.

When you are able to create the level of connection and safety, through self-awareness and communication, that enables you to engage sexually with presence, vulnerability, authenticity, the quality of experience becomes so freeing and joyful. This is a level of freedom beyond just stress release. It’s a sense of expansiveness that feels transcendent. And it’s a sense of joy that is more than just fun and happiness, it is experiencing a core vitality and a joyfulness of life and love.

 It’s an altered state of consciousness, with transcendent states of bliss and flow where you’ve let go of control, there’s no expectation or pressure. It’s two authentic lovers coming together to co-create an experience of pleasure and connection moment by moment. 

This is what sex can ultimately be. All the way from a gentle cuddle under the sheets as you drift off to sleep through to hours of experimentation and play. When it’s entered into and experienced in this way it becomes a part of life that nourishes you, individually and as a couple, at the deepest levels of body, mind and soul.

 

In the Tantric yogic traditions they talk about ‘actionless action’ or inaction through action. This is part of the karma-yoga tradition, developing spiritually through right action. Rather than renouncing the world and avoiding actions, karma yoga is about engaging in the world - cultivating wordly life and spiritual life simultaneously.

In the Taoist tradition there is the concept of wu-wei ‘action through non-action’ or action without intent, which leads to a life of harmony, aligned with the Way or the Tao.

As it says in the Tao te Ching (Daode Jing) "When action is pure and selfless, everything settles into its own perfect place," and “The highest virtue is to act without a sense of self”.

So what’s this got to do with sex? How can we modern people have sex through non-sex and thereby achieve harmonious living and spiritual growth?

Firstly - sex without attachment. This means you enter the sexual or intimate activity without being needy, without an expectation of outcome, you’re not assuming or expecting that it will be orgasmic, not even that it will be genital. You go with the flow, the wu-wei of the encounter.

Secondly - sex that is virtuous, morally sound. This means you come together with a purity, an openness, a sense of rightness. Don't confuse this with any prudish concept of purity, you can be playing in an S&M dungeon and do it with purity; and similarly you can engage in so-called ‘spiritual’ sexual activities from an impure basis, led by ego rather than soul.

This is so different to the western view of sex, which in the old days was considered shameful and wrong, and which in the modern era is often considered a need or a right, something to ‘achieve’ in the same way that we want to achieve so much in our ego-led society.

Cultivate yourself, through your sexuality as much as the rest of life, in this way and you will find that bliss, ecstasy, sense of unity with the cosmos, oneness of all things, harmony. You’ll ride the tantric wave….

Live ‘La Vida Tantrika’ - the Tantric life!

The Tantric approach sees joy and pleasure as essential to spirituality. It’s about harnessing the power of pleasure without attachment to that pleasure, desire without craving; finding the spiritual in all aspects of life, really living life to the full.

You know when you’re on track because you’ll feel a lightness, joy, ease (although it’s not always ‘easy’) - and a sense of alignment with your purpose.

To get there you need to let go of judgment and craving - these two biggies get in the way. You can’t be attached to ideas or desires.

Then you bring consciousness to every moment of life, living with gratitude, loving with open heart. It’s about appreciating the subtle, finding the ecstasy in the spaces in-between, as much as letting go to intensity and passion.

What’s this got to do with sex? Because sex is so important in life, until you bring it fully into your Vida Tantrika you’re not going to get anywhere spiritually. Having lower energies such as shame, guilt and craving attached to such a primary part of your self is inevitably going to hold you back.

I invite you take sex out of the box and fully incorporate it into your life. As you let go of blockages and can let the sexual energy flow freely through you it will bring with it a sense of vitality, joy and ease. You’ll feel a sense of the spiritual and sexual merging and you’ll find yourself tapping into the sublime, creating a life of peace, purpose, pleasure and love.


Learn more about living a Tantric life at my Tantric Lounge workshops and tune in to my Tantric Lounge Radio Show.

I'm often asked about spiritual sex, and terms like 'Tantric Sex' are commonly googled requests that link to my website. I believe that to reach your sexual potential you've got to be open to the spiritual elements. So let's talk sex and spirituality.

'Bliss', 'ecstasy', 'connection', 'union', 'transcendence', losing self', 'merging with the universe.

What do you suppose I’m describing here?
a) A spiritual experience
b) A sexual experience
c) Both

The answer is (c). Not all sexual experiences are spiritual and not all spiritual experiences are sexual, but there is a strong connection, and when the two merge the sex is truly awesome.

For many of us in western culture this seems at odds, because we’re often brought up to believe that sexuality and spirituality are opposites, that one is base and ‘bad’ and the other is lofty and ‘good’, that to get to the spiritual we have to overcome the sexual.

So instead of embracing our sexuality, which is an intrinsic part of being human, we at best trivialise it and at worse deny it. Which means that instead of a whole healthy society we have one that is obsessed with superficial sexuality and full of people with dysfunctional attitudes and behaviours around sex.

Sex is not meant to be like this. Sexual energy is our basic life energy. We all come from orgasm. Denying or corrupting it damages our selves. It’s far better to embrace our sexuality and experience life-affirming and life-enhancing sex.

You see, sex has three purposes. The first is reproduction. That’s a wonderful thing, but it’s not the essence of human sex, all animals have sex to reproduce. The second is pleasure. Our bodies are sexual pleasure machines, we are designed to experience exquisitely delicious sex. The third is personal transformation. By deepening the intimacy and heightening the erotic, we are capable of having sex that is far more than a physical joining of the genitals. We can have sex that takes us far above the physical rutting of animals, way up into the realm of the angels.

This type of sex can be called ‘high sex’, I think of it as ‘deep sex’, it’s definitely spiritual sex. Whatever you call it, you have to realise that it doesn’t just ‘happen’ (although plenty of people have experienced a glimpse of this possibility), just as blissful transcendent spiritual experiences rarely occur spontaneously. You have to cultivate deep sex.

For a start, you have to be truly present in the experience. For a society that increasingly views sex as a performance activity, this can be hard to achieve, because to be present you have to be out of your head and into your body, you have to turn off the incessant monkey chatter. Spiritual sex does not happen if you’re constantly thinking about whether you’re doing it ‘right’ or if you’re worried about your bits jiggling or whether you ‘should’ or ‘shouldn’t’ be doing a particular act.

By being present you become more intuitively attuned to your partner, so the sex flows. You also become more sensually aware, so the sensual aspects of sex are heightened. You’re also more likely to take it slow, delighting in every exquisite morsel of the experience. Our society tends to focus on the peaks of sex, the harder-faster-louder side of sex, which of course is good, but it’s only half the story. The valleys of sex, the slow, sensual, deep aspects are at least as glorious and often more ecstatic, and the sensations linger longer….

When you practice sex like this, it can go on for hours, and the sensations go beyond our normal concept of orgasmic. Too many of us see orgasm as the point of sex, believing that all the preliminaries just lead up to the grand finale of the big O. In spiritual sex orgasm is an outcome of sex (often many times over) not the point, and certainly not necessarily the end. The heightened states of arousal reached can transcend the usual experience of orgasm, so the feeling extends way past the genitals into the body and beyond, and potentially for a very long time. In fact, experiencing sex like this means you carry the bliss into the rest of your life, so that the whole of life becomes an extended experience of sexual and orgasmic energy.

I’m not advocating some hippie herbal version of sex here where it’s all about worshipping the god/dess in each other and dancing around in sarongs to Indian sacred chants (although that can be good too). This sex can occur anywhere - in a bondage parlour, for instance, or in a back alley up against a wall, or even a simple late-night cuddle under the sheets - if it’s part of a life lived in a heightened state of spiritual and sexual awareness.

You see, high sex incorporates the intimate and erotic, in fact you can’t really have erotic without the intimate. True intimacy is about showing your real self and surrendering to the experience. If you’re playing a role, or if you hold yourself back out of fear of your partner’s reaction, or a belief that certain acts are ‘bad’ (some are, I’m assuming consenting acts between living adult humans here), then you won’t be able to open yourself, to surrender yourself, to experience the sublime.

Spiritual growth involves an ever deeper knowing of oneself. A centre, a presence, a union with wholeness of the universe, an experience of self as selfless, of loss of self. There are many paths to this awareness, sex is one of the most accessible and beautiful paths to spiritual awareness and growth.

Intense sex can be wonderful, transporting you on a wave of fervour, even ferocity. You’ll find the pleasure of passion there, but if you want ecstasy, rapture, you have to look elsewhere…

Because the ecstasy is found in the spaces in-between…

Imagine…just the barest of touches…not quite a touch at all…just the knowledge of the presence of the other…

…through each other’s bodies.

Sexual union with another - where you dive deep into each other - where you let go into the giving and receiving - relaxing into the expanding potency as the borders blur and you are consumed by ecstasy - is the experience of the divine manifesting in the physical.

It’s a space uncontaminated by sordidness or shame, the two big challenges to finding the purity of sexual connection in this modern era.

It’s quite simple once you let go. It’s the letting go that’s hard: letting go of the all the stuff attached to sex: the fears, the fantasies, the judgements.

Once you do, and you find the essential beauty of the experience, the purity (and avoid judgement of the word ‘pure’), there you’ll find the transcendence, the experience of divinity.

Practice alone - masturbate as meditation and invite in the divine, whether as a general concept or a particular deity; or meet your beloved (whether you’ve yet met them or not) on the astral plane and make love.

Practice together - start slow, relax, connect through your eyes, your hearts, your sexual centres (well before they actually touch).

Then… enter deep into each other, allowing yourself to be consumed by the other, by the act.

Open up and move past the physical, past the smallness and the limitations. Open your heart and your body, allow the force of love the force of sex to move through your genitals and your bodies and way beyond, burring the edges.

Until you are less an individual ‘having’ sex and more a ‘being’ of sex, of bliss.

And there you find yourself in union with god.

And it is magnificent.

**************************

I’d love to hear your thoughts on having sex with God - have you experienced it? Does my limited ability to express through the written word convey what you’ve felt? Please let me know!

There are two spiritual paths: the Way of the Recluse and the Way of the Householder.

The way of the recluse is to become secluded from society, enter into a monastery or convent, and spend your life praying. Not too many modern people choose that lifestyle!

The way of the householder is to be spiritual while living in mainstream society, having a job, raising a family and so forth.

The way of the householder is actually the harder of the two paths.

To grow spiritually while living in the hurly-burly of life is a challenge. (That would have to be the understatement of the year!) Whether it’s the stresses or the temptations that distract you from the spiritual path, it’s not easy.

It is possible though. That’s what the Tantric and Taoist approaches to life are all about (and many other traditions) - finding personal and spiritual growth within regular society, and in all aspects of life, from parenthood to work life to sex.

The key in large part is devotion. Devotion is defined as “love, loyalty or enthusiasm for a person, activity or cause”. When you live your life with devotion, the boring and mundane elements become purposeful and satisfying. You move away from a martyr mentality.

You therefore become less needy of ‘reward’, whether that’s money or food or sex.

The simple things in life become pleasurable and there is a greater ease in life.

With this ease, you can, if you choose, devote yourself to larger causes, finding joy and satisfaction in these too, even when the going gets hard.

You feel a connection to something greater than yourself.

The way of the householder starts with the little things - doing the housework, dealing with the children, managing all the many aspects of life in cooperation with your partner. When this comes from a feeling of devotion - with love, loyalty and enthusiasm - it’s actually a really good feeling.

It’s a hard shift to make, finding pleasure and joy in the little things while having a feeling of greater purpose. It’s essentially about slowing down a little, becoming present in the moment and in your body, and actually experiencing each moment fully in the moment.

I’ve written about this at length in terms of approaching sex mindfully, so that it becomes deeper and more fulfilling. You can’t rush around frantically all day, stressed and harried, and then switch into a mindful mode for sex. It needs to be a natural progression, and the more you can live mindfully throughout the day, live with a sense of devotion and spiritual awareness, actually living within each moment and not rushing through a stressed life interspersed with ‘rewards’.

And if you and your partner both live like this, you’ll feel an ease of connection between you and, well, the foreplay never ends!

‘Tis indeed the season of kindness and giving, as shown by the heartfelt response to the tragedy of a gunman in Sydney holding hostages, resulting in three deaths. Rather than responding with anger and hatred against people who share his religion, Australians are opening their hearts and embracing acceptance and openness. It shows a high capacity for love to be able to respond in this way.

My work is so much about opening our hearts and the change this brings to individuals and through them to the world. This means overcoming fear and prejudice and limitations, about not putting things in boxes, not having an either/or, right/wrong approach to the world.

And yes, my work focuses on sexuality, one area where there is still so much judgement and limitation, categorization of good and bad, and where there is still so much fear. When we are blocked around sexuality it is very hard to open up fully to love.

And beyond even that, unblocking sexual energy leads to greater love, as the power of sexual energy - its passion, pleasure and potential - becomes a powerhouse to drive the love energy. Sexual energy is the foundation of life. Focused passion is a driving creative force. The power of pleasure is freeing and liberating and creates loving openness and flow within and between people.

I am blessed to see this unblocking and freeing occur every day in the people I work with. Individuals and couples come to me with personal or relational hopes and concerns around sex love and intimacy. Seeing them letting go of blocks, increasing awareness, coming to understanding, releasing and freeing themselves, is a beautiful thing to witness and be part of.

As 2014 comes to an end and I look towards the next year I’m ever more committed to continue this work, which is essentially about raising the vibration of humanity and increasing love energy, through what I believe is probably the last bastion of blockage to conscious awareness and spiritual growth - our sexuality.

To those who have been part of the journey in 2014, thank-you for your trust in me to help and guide you. It has also been an extraordinary year for me personally in terms of my own growth and I acknowledge the importance of all of you in the two-way exchange of our mutual development.

Wishing you a safe, merry and lusciously loving festive season!