Sex
Marianne
Williamson asked David Deida to contribute an essay about "Sex"
for her new book called, "IMAGINE:
What America Could Be in the 21st Century." IMAGINE looks
at what the highest possibilities might be for "Inner and Outer
America" in the next 50 years, and David's essay addresses what
the next step of sexuality might look like for the cutting edge or
"cultural creatives," those men and women who have already
achieved respect, harmony, and self-responsibility in their intimate
lives, and are wondering what to do next. David's answer: Be willing
and ready to be ravished open to God.
Sex provides most men and women with both intense pleasure and heart-wrenching
pain. Pleasure because sex allows a deep dissolution of boundaries,
opening your body and heart to be filled with love and energetic delight.
Pain because, as your boundaries open, your heart is exposed, and few
people know how to give their love as a vulnerable gift-which is the
only way to offer yourself sexually that doesn't create suffering.
Many
men in America today-the so-called evolved men, the new-age men-are
heart wimps. They have grown beyond the macho rigidity of their fathers
but have yet to grow through their fear, to face their deaths fully
and to discover the purpose of their lives. They are hesitant and ambiguous.
They can't feel the depths of their consciousness and don't know where
they are going, so they can't take their lovers, sexually or spiritually.
Most women today feel "untaken" by their men, unravished to
God by their men's relentless, forceful, and exquisitely sensitive loving.
Many women in America today, the independent women who have learned
to love themselves rather than look for love elsewhere, are deeply unfulfilled.
Their bodies are angular with a mission adopted to cover and hide yearning
hearts. Distrustful of men's love-having experienced betrayal or simply
inadequate men who are unable to open their women's hearts and bodies
to God through deep sex and committed daily loving-many modern women
are afraid to surrender, open, and trust love to live through them.
Because they are unable to open fully, divine love cannot enter them,
claim them, take their hearts to God and lift their bodies as offerings
of devotion. And so they settle for good food, nice homes, and relationships
that leave them wanting more, wanting deeper, weeping inside, acting
self-reliant on the outside.
Modern American culture has moved from macho men to sensitive men, from
submissive housewives to career women. And though nobody wants to go
backward to old sex roles, nobody is God-blissfully happy either. Something
is still missing. The heart's deepest desire remains unfulfilled. Today's
more balanced men and women are still dissatisfied, and thus another
step is beginning to take place, beyond old-fashioned, narrowly defined
limits and also beyond modern financial, social, and political equality.
American sexuality is in a transition phase. A dissatisfying arrangement
of false characters populates the cultural cutting edge: women who have
betrayed their own hearts' desire by protecting themselves in tense-body
forts of independence, and men who have lost touch with the clarity
of consciousness that cuts through every moment to reveal their hearts'
deepest truths. Relationships are safe, respectful, and often boring.
Sex between so-called spiritually evolved men and women often seems
like a session between therapists, each partner discussing needs and
feelings in a civilized fashion, waiting for permission to bodily yield
as expressions of their greatest impulse: to offer themselves so fully
that they are gone in the giving. And even when sex is infinitely loving,
what happens after great sex? How can a habitually heart-protected woman
and a man who is afraid to murder her open in love's obliteration sustain
love's bliss throughout the day?
The next stage of sexual awakening is beyond biological urge and emotional
need. If you are ready for this new stage, you have grown beyond the
narcissism of self-centered me-pleasuring: "I'll do to you whatever
you want as long as you love me." "Okay. Do to me what I want
and I'll love you."
You also have grown beyond the safety and fairness of us-centered we-sharing:
"Let's create a beautiful life together. You give me pleasure the
way I want it, and I'll give you pleasure the way you want it, and we'll
never violate each other's boundaries."
Furthermore-and perhaps most crucially-you are ready for authentic spiritual
sexuality only when you have grown beyond the new-age separatist safety
net: "You are responsible for your own happiness and I am responsible
for mine. Although we can do our best to help each other, in the end,
we are each responsible for ourselves."
The next stage of sexual loving, which grows beyond dysfunctional abuse
and victimhood as well as beyond self-responsibility, requires bliss-forceful
heart surrender despite all boundaries and fear, feeling so widely and
giving so openly that you are alive as all beings. When you have grown
this open, you recognize that you are utterly responsible for the one-bodied
form of the divine as well as the two-bodied form, no boundaries allowed
or enabled. The openness of unsafe, heart-ravishing, two-bodied divine
love is not for everybody but requires a deeper understanding of sex
and a readiness to open as wide as the entire moment, inside and outside
your skin.
Even now, as you read this, "sex" is alive as all, including
you. If you go deep within, you will find nothingness: an unchanging
empty witness of all, the one who is reading these words, the same one
who read words when you were 10 years old, the same one you always are,
behind every thought, feeling, emotion, sensation, and perception. That
is the masculine divine.
Everything else, everything that is now dancing as change inside and
outside your body-your emotions; the lights you see; the sounds you
hear; your thoughts coming and going; the seasons cycling hot and cold;
all bodies being born, living, and dying; everything and everyone that
you can experience-is the feminine divine.
The ever-divine moment is the union of He-emptiness and She-fullness,
the sexual play between unchanging consciousness and ever-dancing light.
That is why bodily sex is so painful and pleasurable: unless you are
able to open without boundaries and merge fully, sustaining love's openness
as full-blown conscious light alive in two-bodied form, you will experience
an occasional fleeting grace of immeasurable bliss surrounded by many
moments of knowing this isn't it.
Most moments-sexual or otherwise-are not recognized, felt, and lived
as love's bliss appearing through many bodies. She-fullness is not allowed
to dance open as love's all-giving life-light, and He-emptiness is not
allowed to fearlessly penetrate and lovingly pervade Her bright showing.
Ravishment is disallowed. He holds back. She dims down. You kiss your
lover on the cheek, settle for occasional peaks of bliss surrounded
by years of something missing. Few moments are allowed their magnificent
display of light yielding open as love, perfectly, without residue or
regret.
Instead, the masculine divine is kept sheathed in false layers of hesitancy.
Today's man has learned to let his lover talk on and on, even when he
is bored witless, even when he would rather enter his lover's heart
with the same boundary-annihilating penetration of consciousness, pervading
the moment, open, full of love, and gone now. And now. Meanwhile, she
waits to be felt by him through and through, she waits to be seen, really
seen, and adored as the light and love she is.
"Take me," she silently yearns, unfulfilled, unravished, aching
inside to be claimed by a man of utter integrity. "I want to take
you," he squeamishly desires, squelching his passionate depth beneath
tons of false pursuits.
The next sexual step is a spiritual one. He recognizes who he is and
offers himself as God's unchanging and all-pervading presence: "I
am consciousness, and you are mine, you love-wild bitch."
She relaxes her body open, actively receiving his true claim, displaying
her deepest heart as God's  love-light,
unafraid to cut off the head of any false wimpiness that enters the
depths of her heart: "I am light. Take me, if you dare."
She is alive, as all-alive as anger, joy, sadness; bliss-opening as
every form of love; dancing as every shine of light. He is feeling her
deeply, feeling through her as deep as the moment goes, opening as her
body and emotions, invited by her heart's radiant yearning to surrender,
together opening as One, as God, as the He-She that is.
Or not. She can focus on her career. He can relax in Bali with his girlfriends.
And then, sooner or later, she and he will die.
To die without coinciding with this moment's blissful openness-at first
in rare moments and, with practice, in all moments-is to die uncomplete,
unfinished. Like lousy sex, a residue of dissatisfaction lingers, which,
strangely enough, makes you want to try again and again, until the trying
itself is too meaninglessly painful and you relinquish your boundaries
of safe striving. Finally, you exhaust the illusion of self-responsibility
and are open to be lived as the heart's surrender. You open to be lived
by God, to be lived open as love. And this is the basis for every moment
of your life, including sex.
America has often been at the forefront of sexual exploration and political
innovation. The next sexual step is a spiritual commitment to making
love for the sake of God, which requires that He is willing to fully
claim Her open and She is willing to fully shine Him open, as love,
as One Heart appearing through two-bodied merger. This moment, as it
is, right now is already ravishing-or you are hiding behind boundaries
of safety.
Either your consciousness is already fully offered as unrelenting presence,
ravishing all forms open to God, or you are holding back your masculine
gift. Either your body is already surrendered open, as an active invitation
to be claimed by love's force-breathing as the bliss of love, rippling
with pleasure, undulating with pain, raging as anger's passion, showing
your open heart as all love-light-or you are hiding your feminine gift.
Sensitive men and independent women are a necessary transition step.
But in 50 years, perhaps, these images will be humorous enough to forget:
a man, unsure of his deepest purpose, lost in temporary projects, pretending
to be interested in spirituality as long as he can still hold back his
absolute commitment-especially from his woman, who, not trusting his
ambiguous love, tries to love herself, direct her own life, and postpone
the heart-crushing knowledge that she is growing older and has never
been claimed for real.
The choice is yours right now: Are you opening to feel all bodies, offering
your vulnerable, indestructible love through every moment with every
breath, even when you are hurt, or are you still protecting your deepest
heart, waiting?
 "Sex"
by David Deida was written for Imagine:
What America Could be in the 21st Century (Rodale Books, 2000),
a collection of original essays from leading authors, academics, and
activists on their visions of a better America, and what can be done
to turn these visions into reality. All author proceeds from IMAGINE
go to the Global Renaissance Alliance, a nonprofit network of citizen
groups interested in spiritual-based activism.
Visit
David Deida's website: www.bluetruth.org
Copyright
©2001 PLEXUS & David Deida. All Rights Reserved.
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