I love words, love playing word games, I so enjoy Scrabble, crossword puzzles and the like.
I’ve learned a lot from these over the years.
When we learn about what words really mean, their origin, there are clues for us here. Clues to sometimes worlds within us.
One of these words came up a few years back when I started a new series of retreats.
The word is Encounter, the retreat is The Erotic Encounter.
Encounter means to meet someone or something.
And then it gets interesting.
Because some of the elements of Encounter are Unexpected and Mystery.
Now when it comes to Sensuality, Sexuality and Eroticism, these words offer us such delicious possibilities.
The way that we live is in patterns.
An easy way to understand this is that every time you brush your teeth, you do it in the same way. We eat in the same way, we wash ourselves in the same way.
Sexually, and in relationship, and in life, we do exactly the same thing.
We sex in patterns.
We do the same thing in the same way.
The interesting thing about our patterns is that they have very little to do with happiness or fulfillment. We do what we do because we know it, it’s our comfort space, and it works, or we think it does.
Our sex, our pleasure is the same.
We do what we know.
Whether it’s fulfilling or not, ‘successful’ or not is secondary.
In fact those are questions we rarely ask. They’re dangerous questions for many of us. Asking them, asking ourselves, asking our lovers, what we really want puts us in an uncomfortable, challenging, sometimes precarious place.
And asking how sexually satisfied our lovers are, and getting an honest answer, is one of the scariest questions for us.
Unexpected and Mystery take us out of the patterns.
They take us into possibility.
They’re the invitation, into our bodies, our hearts, our energy.
They’re the invitation to explore, to discover.
To walk pathways that take us into ourselves, into who we are, sexually, sensually, erotically.
To know ourselves beyond the patterns and expectations of a society that’s conditioned us to be a certain way, which is often far from the truth of who we are.
To know our passions, our desires.
To know our sexual truth.
And to know that our eroticism is an endless mystery to be explored.
When we go beyond the patterns, we discover dimensions of pleasure, of arousal, of energy, that keep expanding, and that keep expanding us.
For it is a mystery.
And it takes us to some very unexpected places, within ourselves, within our relationships, and within our pleasure.
It takes us to some very unexpected places in our minds, our bodies, our hearts.
So much of our sexuality, until we really look at it, isn’t ours.
It’s been given to us by movies, by porn, by social media, by so many sources.
There’s so much out there at the moment about who we are as men and women, what we want, what we need, and of course, what’s wrong with us.
Much of this takes us from box to box, again not really ours.
When we start exploring who we are, what arouses us, interests us, draws us, what we’re curious about, we begin to free ourselves from the patterns.
We begin to free ourselves to discover ourselves.
Leaving what we know for the Unexpected, becoming an erotic explorer, a sensual seeker, a sexual searcher, requires courage.
Courage to have the conversations, with yourself and with another.
Courage to go beyond what you know.
Courage to step out of the pattern.
It’s been said in many ways that we fear our power more than we do our pain.
We know our pain, our hurt, our inhibitions, our fears.
Our power, and the power of our pleasure, is often a stranger to us.
We meet them in the place of Mystery.
And we see the most Wonder-Full gifts they have for us, in the most Unexpected ways.
The theme of this Erotic Encounter is Freedom.
And in a world celebrating mediocrity and sameness, in a world celebrating the shallowness of porn-style sex, the freedom to begin to discover our own unique, delicious erotic selves, is a priceless gift we give to ourselves, to our lovers.
I’m inviting you to Encounter your beauty, your freedom in this experience of possibility.
I’m including a link to more info and to an Early Bird Special Offer.
