I was making a pot of soup earlier today and it took my mind somewhere interesting.
I thought about the taste I wanted, I thought about the feeling I wanted, I thought about the seasoning I wanted.
I thought about what music I wanted to listen to while I was cooking.
I cut the vegetables, today sweet potato, beetroot, onion, cabbage, ginger, garlic, stock, salt, pepper, chili flakes. (In case you wondered, or would like to try it).
Here’s where my mind went.
When we’re going to have sex, have a pleasure experience, it’s rare that we pause enough to think about how we’d like to feel. And it’s rare that we ask our partners how they’d like to feel.
We might ask them what they’d like to do, but more often than not we just do pretty much what we do, what we’re used to doing.
It’s not often that we look at the whole menu, for many of us the menu is quite narrow anyway. And we tend to choose what we always do. We know it, it’s comfortable.
There’s an interesting question with these choices. Do we really enjoy it, or are we choosing it more because it’s known?
The mind will always go to the familiar.
If we spend a moment considering what we’d really like and how, what we’d like to feel, we might make a different choice.
Underneath all this is a question, when we have sex, how much are we choosing, and what are we choosing?
Are we just driven, as so many men, for the release of orgasm? There’s no judgement on orgasms here, rather the enquiry as to what we really want.
Which requires a pause, and an inner conversation, an inner awareness. A listening to the body, the heart. What inside is awake, alive, searching, desiring.
In my work of Conscious Sexuality there’s something I’ve seen so much of over time.
We think we’re looking for sex, and more often we’re looking for intimacy and connection. We just don’t know how to listen to the inner space. And we don’t always know how to say it, ask for it. Then we’re not sure how, what do we do, so we go into our default pattern of whatever we do.
It’s not that our sex can’t be intimate, it can indeed. It needs some different things from us.
One of the key elements here is the feeling, how would I like to feel?
How would I express that, what would I do to feel that?
If I want to feel powerful in our sex, maybe it needs a different position, maybe it needs me to be really vocal, maybe it needs me to be so clear on what I want, maybe it needs me to move in a certain way…
If I want to feel seen, acknowledged, maybe we need to keep eye contact, maybe I need your words telling me…
This pause, this question, changes so much for us.
It takes us out of the pattern, out of a conditioned experience into presence.
It opens the door to exploration, discovery, communication.
It connects us to the desire that’s alive and awake now.
It becomes creative, expansive, exciting, fun, intimate.
And it becomes transformational.
When we can do this in sex we can do this in more of life. We can live with greater presence, choice and awareness.
Which can change so much of how we live.
That question, how I’d like to feel, takes us deep into life.
How does my work feel in me, make me feel?
How am I with my family, friends?
What do I feel about my life when I wake up, at the end of the day?
One more thing.
I’ve been listening to some Dire Straits while I was cooking, probably my favorite band, so a quote is appropriate, We’ll make it fast, just one more thing. From The Sultans of Swing.
You’ll also have delicious soup for after the sex.
Sex is life, life is sex.
What we do in one, we do in the other. They feed each other.
And if we’re awake, aware, they feed us with delicious, nourishing, nurturing, expansive, intimate, fulfilling experiences.
What resonated with you in this piece, what asked a question?
I’d love you to share in the comments.
