“You think this is just another day in your life? It’s not
just another day. It’s the one day that is given to you…today. It’s given to you. It’s a gift. It’s the only
gift you have right now and the only appropriate response is gratefulness.” ~
Brother David Steindl-Rast, from Louis Schwartzberg’s TEDxSF talk on
“Gratitude”
I’ve recently started attending a
weekly Native American tobacco ceremony. From the outside the ritual seems
simple: everyone sits in a circle, says a brief prayer for the things for which
they need help and smokes the sacred pipe.
However, within the basic
framework lies an experience full of connection, humbleness and vulnerability.
Through witnessing another in communion with his or her Creator, you realize
that each person’s prayer is actually your prayer. To have someone speaking
your heart’s deepest yearnings is a swift reminder that we are separated only
by the most trivial of differences.
Which makes sense. To walk around
as a boundaryless open heart all day, feeling the pain, hope and wonder of each
person that breathes near us would render us perpetually incapacitated. After
all, we have cubicles to inhabit, student loans to pay off and episodes of Weeds to download.
Hence this weekly sacrament of public
surrender is like ambrosia for the emaciated soul. We walk around with our
poker faces on, pretending like life is just “fine” and that we have everything
“under control.” So simply saying the words “I need help” is enough to sucker
punch us in the arrogant gut of our social deception. Yet it is through these
cracks in the armor that life’s blessings can fill our cups of longing.
The thing is that most of us carry
thimbles where we have room for chalices; so even when can let in a little bit
of the good, we fill up quickly and look for ways to manage the excess. One
common way is to expel the energy through complaint. It’s a lazy way to avoid
doing the work to discover what we truly want, as well as shirks the
responsibility for your happiness to someone or something else. It’s easy to be
angry at your friends if you throw a party and no one attends—but if you don’t
give us explicit directions on how to get to your house, you are setting
yourself (and the rest of us) up for failure.
We look for what’s wrong with
life. We hold onto the idea that life happens “to” us, as if we are some sad
little puppet, rather than becoming active participants in the experience. We
have a thousand ways to talk about what’s shitty in our lives and virtually no
language for what’s good.
Nowhere do I see more of this
than in the arena of sex. It’s an area loaded with confusion, shame and
resentment smothered by a lacquer of bravado, victimhood or just plain
avoidance. It’s also the place where we are most desperate to be touched and
where a mountain of excuses resides to keep us small and safe:
I’m not getting enough
I’m too old/fat/inexperienced
No one knows how to touch me
I can’t last long enough
My partner is blocked
I’m fine, but they have a problem
All the good ones are taken
It’ll never happen for me
The art of receiving what you
want is something we are rarely taught and yet it’s the foundation of sexual
maturity (and is required for vibrant and nourishing sex lives). First, we must
have the courage to admit that we are
hungry and that it is no one else’s responsibility but our own to feed us.
Once we decide to follow our
desires, rather than live in the world of complaint, we must then undergo the
task of expanding our thimbles into chalices. If we want more, we need to grow
big enough to hold more.
Again, I take my inspiration from
the pipe ceremony. There, the way we are taught to pray is that before you ask
for what you want, you must first express
gratitude for what you have in your life right now. It changes the
perspective, so that your desires come from a place of abundance and
attraction, rather than lack and rejection of what is. You mentally and
energetically set yourself up to receive.
Think of it this way: each time you say “thank you,” you
find your location on the map of desire and widen the net for the universe to
bring you more. Conversely each complaint is energy wasted that could have been
used to express yourself and surrender deeper into pleasure.
Recently, I was making love and
towards the end, I found myself in a state of overwhelm—the energy was high, I
was feeling physically exhausted and my mind was flipping out on whether or not
he was happy. We’d lost the connection and I started crying and blaming myself
for ‘fucking it all up.’
“Do you want to check in with
me?” he asked.
“Ok,” I simpered.
"Well, the first three-quarters
of that was some of the most amazing sex we’ve ever had together.”
Oh. Well that changes things.
Because I was approaching our sex
from fear-based, life-or-death-stakes mindset, all I could see was the
negative: any perceived ‘fuck up’ was going to lessen my value as a human and I
would end up dead and unloved in a crappy studio apartment in the Tenderloin
(fear-based mind also tends to bring out the drama queen).
Had I been in my abundance and
gratitude, I would have stood up on the bed, ripped off my
chain & turtleneck sweater and sang “I Just Had Sex!”
Which brings me to my second
point: the importance of cultivating humor in sex.
We’re all human. Being able to
laugh at ourselves in the face of our sheer incompetence is what makes being
alive bearable. Humor takes the life-or-death-stakes view on sex and infuses it
with space and permission. As one of the clumsiest people on the planet, I’ve
had my fair share of teeth-banging kisses, cum & snot-nosed BJs and
mid-coital pussy farts. You just gotta laugh at that shit because we’ve all been there.
You are allowed to make mistakes.
You are allowed not to have the answer. You are allowed to curiously fumble
into the unknown. In fact, that is where
the best sex happens. When your rational mind throws its hands in the air
and says ‘Fuck it! I’m just gonna let it all hang out and have fun,’ you go
from being a warrior on the battlefield to a child in a sandbox—totally unaware
of people’s eyes on you and unattached to what is created.
Play for the sake of play.
And really, why have sex for any
other reason other than for fun? Of course there’s also procreation and shared
intimacy—but if you’ve lost the spirit of play in the process, then I suggest slowing
down, re-evaluating your desires and re-connecting to your own pleasure.
Because ultimately sex is fun—and silly and weird and
confronting and undeniably human. We
should celebrate that: the slips, trips, bumps and falls as well as the bliss,
joy, ecstasy and intimacy.
So no matter how your sex
expresses itself these days—whether you humped three people this morning or
haven’t kissed anyone in ten years—take the time to be thankful for your
sexuality. You are alive, right now, a sexual being on this planet, and you have
the unique opportunity to go on a rich and hilarious journey into the heart of
your own desire.
Just don’t forget to pack the
Gratitude…
…and Humor.
