Our Birthright to Ecstasy

"My breath is getting deeper, my body is letting go and I feel totally immerged in this loving energy uniting my partner and I. Time and space disappear and we are transported in this extraordinary ecstasy. I surrender to the intoxication of the senses and I hear myself saying..." It is absolutely divine!".

The sexual experience leading to ecstasy reveals that orgasm in essence is a spiritual experience. Most of us, if only for an instant, have experienced ecstasy, whether this experience was one of a sexual nature or not.

Is it not this experience of wholeness and profound unity that we are all searching for through sexual union? The desire to recreate at will this type of experience is universally human. Yet is it possible to achieve? And how about the risk of giving myself away or"losing myself" into romantic pursuits?

Such questions have led the way to a deep spiritual journey for me. It took me to India and to Tantra. My training of ecstasy and intimacy and the conscious journey of transformation of my passion began 20 years ago at a non traditional tantric ashram.

While there I soon became disillusionned with seeking into sex what only Being can give. The tantric path took me into the fire of purification of all that needs to be dissolved: false identities, dreams and illusions.

It is about meeting One Self and at once a deep and total acceptance of life.

Tantra teaches the reconciliation of body and mind, of sexuality and spirituality and the reconciliation of all aspects of oneself. Contrary to the reputation it knows in the West, Tantra is not about sexual techniques aiming at miraculously liberating its practitioners. The tantric master Osho reminds us: " Sex is only the beginning not the end, but if you miss the beginning you will also miss the end."

Miranda Shaw, in her penetrating investigation "Passionate Enlightenment-Women in Tantric Buddhism" sheds light on outdated and fallacious notions of Tantra: "Monastic Buddhism had fostered an increasing emphasis upon philosophical dialectics, an elitist enterprise that is best pursued in a monastery and whose practitioners display a tendancy to devalue other aspects of life, overemphasizing the role of intellect in gaining enlightenment and losing sight of the capacities and potentials inherent in the body, the senses and the emotions. Tantra emerged as a corrective to this imbalance and as a witness to the fact that the mind does not provide sole access to knowledge. Passion and pleasure also represent primary sources of knowledge and power."

Sacred Sexuality is the natural integration of sexuality and spirituality. Unfortunately this natural integration has been broken by the processes of acculturation and socialization. Most of us grow up hearing negative messages about our body and our sexuality. No wonder we often feel confused and fragmented sexually. For all of us this rupture has created not only a sexual but also a psychic wounding.

Orgasm is one of the most profound human experiences. It can serve as a powerful agent of reconciliation between the body and the spirit. The problem with our modern culture is that "we don't have time" to stop. We have become obcessed with work and filled with stress. Sex like fast food is ingested quickly and mechanically and is also deprived of high quality nutrients.

The experience of ecstasy requires a letting go, a surrender, but for most of us this natural incline to letting go into pleasure has been suppressed from early childhood. Very early we learn to hold back our emotions. We deny our instincts. Later on we continue holding back our deep sounds of pleasure and our passion.

Pleasure through touch can be cultivated. Yet one must know how to stop and take time. To take the time to taste, to touch, to listen, to watch, to feel and to perceive through our senses. The time and space to love.

First we must know that this orgasmic power is possible then we can make the choice to open ourselves to it.

Despite all the information available today on sexuality and the last half century of studies measuring orgasm and the orgasmic potential, we are still very limited when it comes to our fullest pleasure potential.

The choice to open to one's full orgasmic potential calls for an investigation of the negative thinking which sabotages our pleasure. Our capacity to accept pleasure depends on our self-image. The difficulty to accept our body by telling ourselves that ''my breasts are too small or are not firm enough, that my penis is too small or my ass is too big!" will make it so that we hold ourselves back preventing ourselves from receiving fulfilling sexual pleasure and ecstasy.

The task of freeing pleasure from its enslavement to the mind and its burden of negative identifications requires vigilance. Meditation plays an important role in the practice of vigilance. We come to realize that "We are not who we think we are". The surrendering to pleasure becomes easier.

The five levels of women's orgasm and male multiple orgasm

The first level relates to the woman who has never experienced orgasm or who doesn't know for sure.
The second level relates to the one and only experience of orgasm.
The woman at this level may experience a great deal of frustration by attempting in vain to repeat an experience based on what she has known.
The third level consists of experiencing orgasms in a precise and predictable way each time yet it is limited to one.
The forth level refers to multiple orgasms.
The fifth level goes even further.

This continuous orgasmic state is a process in which one is carried away and which can carry on for hours at a time. As far as men are concerned the first level of orgasm is associated with ejaculation and is localized in the genitals. This level is rather mechanical and the man doesn't have much control over its duration or its intensity. It is caractherised by a build-up of tensions followed by a release which will be somewhat depleting of energy. It will often bring the sexual experience to an end. Otherwise, the man will repeat a similar cycle with repeated ejaculations.

The next level generally requires an appropriate training unless a man has discovered through his own experiment to separate ejaculation and orgasm. Body and breath awareness will help greatly here in knowing how to relax while building up arousal. Gradually the build-up of arousal once localized in the genitals can be spread through the whole body allowing for a full body orgasm to take place. The next step is multiple orgasms.

Taking responsibility for one's pleasure I have often noticed within the women's Sacred Sexuality groups in the last decade that women still leave the exclusive responsibility of their sexual satisfaction to their partner.

Body shame and unworthiness in regard to receiving pleasure will often stop a woman from expressing her intimate needs and desires. Communicating about sex takes courage, commitment and caring and it is fundamental in order to establish an intimate climate of trust inviting mutual discovery. This intimate communication skill will make it possible to go through the resistances in the way. The blockages which limit our capacity to fully enjoy sexual pleasure. Training one's partner to know how to satisfy us sexually is a concrete way of taking responsibility for one's pleasure. Cultivating the art of love can be done just as cultivating any other art form. It comes with patience, time, and practice.

Sacred Sexuality is the cultivation of the art of love. It offers an ongoing training for intimacy and the reconciliation of sex and spirit. Ecstasy is our birtright, it's up to all of us and each of us to reclaim it!