(audio version below)
I have written a few sultry posts in this journal, but let me make this clear up front: This isn’t going to be a sultry post.
It’s easy to confuse things, because when I say that we should engage in the wisdom of sensuality, of course the first thought is the erotic.
Sensuality can be, of course, erotic. But saying that’s all it is is like saying a flower is only its scent. There’s so much more to it.
To the Body
Sensuality practices – mindful dance, movement, nature, food, and yes, the erotic – are my go-to cure when I am foolishly trying to solve a problem by thinking about it.
The mind is good at solving some kinds of problems, namely those that have clear and simple solutions. It’s just pretty awful at dealing with the broader category of problems we have – the murky, sticky kind whose answers live in the grey space between right and wrong.
Turns out the best place to go when we have to make a call about a delicate situation is the body, the home of sensuality.
Body Knows Best
Before I can open this door to using sensuality as a tool for healing, I have to name something – as a whole, we don’t have very good relationships with our bodies, and the quality of our relationships will affect how we can use sensuality.
If you’ve come to this post from a spiritual circle, you may think your relationship to your body is better than most, or at least better than it used to be. That may be true, but be sure you’re not stuck in the mistaken spiritual belief that happiness comes from disengaging from the body.
Newer seekers often believe they will reach enlightenment when they turn away from all sensory pleasures, undergo extreme purification processes, or make their sole focus ending the cycle of rebirth. (It’s important to note that such students learn this from teachers who haven’t quite cleared their personal fog around the topic.)
I call this a mistake for a reason.
The Worldly Mistake
This spiritual mistake is a perfect mirror to the much more common worldly mistake about bodies: believing that happiness only comes from the pleasures of the body. This leads to overconsumption, greed, and chronic dissatisfaction. In this cage we chase bites of happiness but remain forever hungry.
Very, very few humans can step out of this worldly kind of mistake. We are all born of a world that teaches us to chase after yum and run from yuck, an attitude that is reinforced a million times an hour. What we can do is name this conditioning in our lives.
You’ll be surprised how far that takes you.
Correcting the Mistakes
These mistakes are not entirely wrong; they’re just only half correct.
The spiritual mistake comes from partially-understood teachings that say that we are more than the body. It is true – we are oneness, consciousness eternal. It’s also true that the body’s limits must be transcended in order to find that oneness. But it doesn’t mean we walk away from enjoying these holy vessels.
The worldly mistake comes from a half-understood experience of life. We overvalue what we can see, hear, feel, taste, and smell without considering that it’s not the physical aspect of our senses we love, but the unseeable magic they create in our bodies.
The whole truth is this: Our bodies are how we experience life. As we experience life, we grow spiritually. We cannot have the spiritual without the worldly and vice versa.
Sensuality is the bridge between them.
Why Sensuality?
I offer this experiment: graze something lovely with your fingertips (velvet, a rose petal, a pet, your lover’s back). Or if that’s not your thing, take a bite of your favorite food, inhale the scent of a flower, or watch someone dancing.
As you do, notice the sensations that arise. They are in your body, but of a heavenly nature. There is something mystical and enchanting about them. They’re hard to name – pleasure? joy? delight? – and disappear the moment you try to hold them. Maybe this is the bliss that spiritual masters speak of.
This is an experiment in the untouchable reality held in a concrete form. That’s why I say that sensuality is a form of magic that can only be accessed through the body.
Sensual Mastery
There’s an art to using sensuality wisely. A master of sensuality is first and forever a disciplined student.
True scholarship begins by exploring what we are naturally drawn to (even the “bad” things) and the feeling-senses behind those desires. But don’t stop there – witness the ways these feeling-senses cloud our vision and trick us into believing we are satiable.
Then take a page from the spiritual texts and remember that all pleasure (and pain) is temporary. No matter what comes or goes, we are inherently whole and cannot be reduced or added to.
Knowing that, we can sink into the full ecstacy of a sensual experience.
Sensuality Practices
If you’re wondering what I mean by sensuality practices, this is the part for you.
Having a sensuality toolbox is the best way to get out of racing thoughts, anxious worries, not-good-enoughness, stubbornness, overworking, fear of vulnerability, and lack of purpose, among other things. Learn to use your toolbox when things are going smoothly so that you’ll remember to pull it out when things are rough.
Here’s a short list of tools:
- Dancing to your favorite song
- Slowing down to eat (a candlelight dinner, eat with your hands, or have someone else feed you)
- Walking/hiking in nature
- Hugging or feeling up a tree
- Playing with a child (they are naturally attuned to the joys of spirit and body)
- Singing or playing an instrument
- Taking a bath
- Sex with or without a partner/end goal
- Tracing a feather up and down your favorite part of your body
- Wearing your favorite essential oil scent
- Swimming in an open body of water
- Kissing with no end goal
- Wearing exactly what you want to wear, whether your aim is comfort, beauty, or both
- Petting an animal
- Watching leaves, snow, or rain fall
- Painting/coloring with no end goal
- Laughing or making someone laugh
- Drinking a cup of warm tea
This list gives a whole new meaning to the term “physical transcendence.”
Care and Handling
When things that seemed rock solid become destabilized, it’s easy to freeze, to get rigid, but that’s a sure way to fall with the tower.
Sensuality allows for the kind of fluidity that keeps us upright. It may not change the problems we’re facing, but it makes dealing with them a lot more fun.
What’s on Your List?
I invite you to spend some time journaling to make your toolbox. As you write, make even that an exercise in sensual pleasure. Hear the sound of your pen scratching against your paper. Watch words appear where a blank page once sat. Be with the experience with no aim to figure anything out and you’ll have already completed the assignment.
