The names of people in my story have been changed to protect their privacy.
Chapter 1
"A Date with Destiny"
Venice, California
I was driving to see a new masseur to work on my stiff neck, when a calm, like warm milk being poured on my head, descended, saturating my body with a feeling of stillness. Everything slowed down; details of life became more intense. I became fixated on the colors of the traffic light, first red and then green. I had slipped into a very present moment that always makes life come into a technicolor high-definition experience. The magician’s cloak of changing perception was being shaken and the not very attractive route I was driving down Lincoln Boulevard was showing hints of the vibrant whimsical land of OZ.
I’ve been meditating since I was 13 and have had mind-altering experiences descend during meditation and also in mundane moments, so I was not shocked or worried. This was a familiar event even if I hadn’t experienced it in a while. I just observed it and hoped the openness that was granted to me through the calm would help me release the neck tightness and the underlying stress I had been locked into because of an imminent “break-up” that loomed in front of me. It was like being on death row. The mental struggle and fear of knowing a part of me was about to die was perhaps more torturing than the final death itself. I was so relieved to have this sense of ease start to reclaim itself in my body since the emotions of a dying five-year relationship had my heart and now my shoulder and neck in vice. What was worse, I had not been keeping a regular meditation practice, compounded by the fact that my boyfriend and I were partnering on a project I thought may go belly-up if we were no longer together. The tension caused by the flailing relationship was a Molotov cocktail for my emotions.
I pulled up to an apartment building that looked like a run-down high school in the projects: patchy lawn, peeling paint, no flowers, some trash blowing across the courtyard in front and between the buildings. The wind whistled and I thought I was looking at a snapshot of what the world would look like after a nuclear disaster: empty, barren, lifeless. Was it here where the masseur whom I had booked a month or more in advance lived? It had taken several phone calls to even get him to call me back! But he had come highly recommended by a top physical therapist, Annette. She herself has an amazing reputation and is flown around the world by wealthy clients when they are injured. I trusted that this would entail a quality massage, regardless of the external appearance of the location where it would take place.
I had asked Annette if she would do a series of bodywork sessions on me herself, because I felt my shoulders were rounding and my posture was being affected by my emotional turmoil. I am very familiar with bodywork since I was a professional ballet dancer and had serious bodywork my whole life. It had transformed my body before, but unbeknownst to me, this time it would transform my heart, my soul.
Instead of doing the bodywork herself, Annette enthusiastically suggested that I see someone she had just taken a new massage course from, Thaddeus Young, Thad for short. She said that she sensed I was ready for a heart opening. I was already well aware of that. I wanted to go back to wearing my heart on my sleeve, not around my neck as pain. Her words would prove to have a much deeper meaning than what I took them for at the time, now that I look back.
I saw a man waving to me from his apartment and figured it was Thad.
I entered the tight-fitting apartment living room painted a sterile, hospital-green color. The table was laid out in the center and even though the color of the walls was off putting, the place was cozy inside, like a cocoon within the unloved and abandoned exterior of the building.
Thad reminded me of the Cheshire cat from Alice In Wonderland. Not that he had a big fat face and was sticking his tongue out and rolling his eyes, but his big, easy smile was of a mischievous, yet wholesome contentment that suggested “fun.” Although his smile spoke volumes, the rest of him was non-assuming: a slender, tall man in his thirties, closely cropped dark hair that outlined the contours of his head, barefoot, dressed in comfortable, black, yoga pants and tank top. And just as he was comfortable in his clothes, he seemed to be living comfortably in his body, like favorite fuzzy slippers feel.
We sat on Thad’s couch and drank a tea that I was told would be good for our session. I looked into his eyes and felt a deepening of the heightened state of being that I had been feeling on the drive. The late afternoon, magic-hour sun spread across his face lighting it warm and crisp, ideal for a picture. I wish I had had a camera to commemorate the day, as it would be the beginning of a new and unexpected journey. He didn’t talk much or explain anything in particular or in depth. I shared with him my shoulder, neck, and relationship dilemma that needed “fixing” and told him I was a veteran of deep-tissue work. He seemed kind and gentle and I was ready to hop on that table to relieve the stress, so we got to it.
Music played, a New Age, tribal, yoga musical genre that seemed meant to stir emotions, not just to relax and sleep like the usual non-descript stuff played in massage sessions when masseurs are hoping you’ll drift off to sleep so they don’t have to work so hard. This was meant to evoke and provoke feeling and start an inner dance.
He asked if I was comfortable being topless and I said yes, although I felt a bit of resistance since it was our first time. We guard our breasts and yet flaunt them like mana from heaven in America. They’ve been so sanctified, worshiped, and sexualized that they are no mere body part, but a gateway drug to sex. I coyly took of my bra and with that gesture of trust was a real willingness to be open hearted again. I tend to put on a bold front in life so he probably didn’t notice my shyness.
Thad worked on my neck deep-tissue style and it hurt! I took deep, endless, slow breaths as I was taught by my other therapeutic body workers in order to release the tension and allow the massage to go deeper.
Then he lifted my arm and started to work in my armpits. Wow! What a bundle of painful nerves. No one had ever worked in my pits! He told me he wanted me to take a yogic release breath, a quick double exhale, every time the pain became very intense, instead of the deep, slow, relaxing breaths. In between the painful prodding he would do simple caresses across my lower abdomen and arms. He leaned in and would breathe with me after the pain and I would mirror his breathing.
The sex in my almost-over relationship had been gone for a while and my body was starving for touch. But beyond the simple touch aspect, my senses were responding in all kinds of ways from this therapy of breath, caress, and painful release that I had not experienced in a massage before. Thad put his head close to mine so that I would hear his low internal rumbling growl, a pleasurable, purposeful exhale growl of release. His body scent reminded me of an ex-lover’s that smelled like pot and the color yellow, a memory that heightened my sensual awareness. I mimicked his internal growling to release the pain.
Suddenly, my body started to rumble from deep within like an almost inaudible voice in the distance. Then coming closer and louder, the rumbling started to shake my whole body. I was shivering and quivering uncontrollably no matter how I tried to stop it. Then it went up to my head and my jaw was chattering. I felt as if I was in an arctic freeze.
Thad asked me if I was all right. I stated the obvious: that I was cold and couldn’t stop shaking for the life of me, but that I was OK. He kept working and moved to my hip and legs.
The shaking continued and I became increasingly uncomfortable and at what exact body part he was working on I don’t remember, but one single tear came out of each eye with no particular emotion. I call these soul tears. They represent a release of energy that reconnects me to my soul, like a sigh from the lacrimals. Sometimes there are memories of emotions and feelings that are beyond human understanding that stream from the greater awareness of the soul.
Bam! The dam burst with those two tears and energy flooded, gushed, and rushed down my arms and hands. I was swimming in a sea of warmth that spread all over my body and I was relieved of this odd shivering tremble. I lay in delight, basking in awe at the power of the energy that flowed down my arms and hands. This was no ordinary trickle of tingling energy current. This was a waterfall of electricity that had manifested itself with the release of the soul tears.
Then after some time, say half and hour, the waterfall energy that rushed down my arms receded and I was swimming in sheer comfort in my body. Relaxed, warm, feeling the pulses of my body swelled open into a healthy sense of being alive and vigorous.
At the end of the session, we sat on his couch and we spoke a bit about my experience. It all seemed very normal to him, which should have been a tip to me that this was not just “a massage.” He didn’t explain anything out of the ordinary. Perhaps he thought Annette had spoken more in detail about what exactly his work was about. I was still under a spell of ignorance as to what was going to unfold with Thad’s bodywork.
I had no specific idea as to what had happened, but I’ve been around enough meditations, healers, yogis, gurus and body workers to know this guy had something special and it was powerful. I instantly booked a double session, but to my disappointment I would have to wait two and a half months before he had an opening. But that wait turned out to be a valuable part of the process, because I was about to slowly unwind, unravel in preparation to become unhinged – in an intense and profound way!
I went home and totally forgot about my shoulders and neck. All I could muse about was what an interesting experience I had had and what more this work might evoke. This guy had something and it was tangible and would help jump start me back into spiritual exploration that was so dear to me.
* * *
“Hi Hungry” My boyfriend lovingly greeted me by one of my many nicknames with a heartfelt kiss that was getting rare these days. We’ll call him Double Double with Cheese his self-proclaimed nickname at the time.
Once I asked him why he loved me so much and he said it was because his whole life he had felt he had to be the man in control, cool, suave, but with me he could be his silly, goofy side, he could relax and be real and that made him feel comfortable and loved by just being himself. He said he could be a “Double Double with Cheese” as he patted the very small amount of girth he had gained that I suppose he felt conscious of around his midriff. I hadn’t even noticed it. He had taken on some of the physical perfectionist attitudes that come with living in Los Angeles.
Double Double was a dapper fellow who liked to dress in suits and carry himself with a touch of elegant arrogance. Quick and spry, he moved as one much younger than his age. He had fine boyish features and hair that could rule the world. His eyelashes were long enough to pet and the hair on his head was so strong that I think you could tie it to a train and he could pull the train along successfully, like they do in those “Strongest Man in the World” contests, without ripping his hair out. I tested the strength of his hair once with his consent. I pulled so hard, steadily, that I practically lifted him up from the chair, but he didn’t even feel it, didn’t hurt him at all and not one hair came out of his head. If you grew it out I think you could trim it into different creatures and it would hold its shape like a hedge. Needles to say, his hair was a wonder.
It was a beautiful compliment to me that I made him feel he could be a Double Double with Cheese, loved for who he was and not for some “James Bond’ image he felt he had to live up to. I can’t imagine living into one’s forties and not feeling comfortable enough to be oneself instead of having the need to put on an act all the time. How could he have stood it all those years?
“How was your massage?” he asked as a lead into what he really wanted to know.
“Great. It was interesting. I had this flood of energy come down my arms…I felt a release,” I explained.
“Good. So how is the rewrite on “Sexual Healing” coming along? We have a deadline here. Avenue wants to see it. Get it going. He lay down the facts of what he really wanted to speak about, which was not the massage.
“Sexual Healing” is the story of Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson, the first sex therapists in the world. I was chosen to write the script of their story for Avenue Pictures. I was flown to Saint Luis, Missouri to interview Virginia Johnson so as to capture her first-hand perspective of their famous story.
“I’m done. Left it on your desk,” I replied proudly with some playful in-your-face attitude.
“Great! I’ll read it tonight. Let’s grab some food. I’m starving. Where do you want to go?” he announced, as he grabbed his coat. Double Double with Cheese never wanted me to cook. He always wanted to eat out or get take out. Not that my cooking was horrible. In fact, I don’t think he ever let me cook one meal for him. He just liked to decide what he wanted to eat at the last minute. I think after a long day’s work for both of us, he just wanted us to relax together.
The dying relationship and the tensions that surrounded it already seemed a little brighter after the session with Thad. Optimism was alighting from the fire of hope that had been rekindled in my heart. I went back to my daily routine, feeling that I had been pointed in the right direction to find my way out of the tension and back to the stress-free body and calm heart through which I liked to live life.
Chapter 2
"The Quickening"
I must explain the drama that had led my heart to start distorting my shoulders as an expression of despair. I had recently become aware of the fact that my boyfriend was afraid of going to prison for tax evasion! Now you can understand why my life was sexless. Going to the “Big House” will make anyone lose their appetite, shit in their pants, or lose their erection. He was not a criminal sort, but had a strange self-sabotaging rebellion in his mental frame. He seemed to think he was above having to deal with things such as taxes, waiting in line to renew a driver’s license, and paying traffic tickets. He basically wouldn’t pay tickets until there was a boot on his car or at least until they had tripled in price. He was a good, hard-working, very successful man, but could not see the logic of keeping this part of his life simple. He saw it as a burden he shouldn’t have to deal with, which was so illogical, because the punishment for not dealing with these legalities was even more of a burden. Ah, figuring out the human psyche! He did pay his taxes when he worked for other people or if he had business partners that would file on his behalf, but if it was up to him, “forget about it”.
Ironically, his father was an accountant! Some people eternally rebel even when it doesn’t serve them anymore. I think he equated being responsible with living a boring, mundane life and he wanted to be James Bond-cool: women, money, and adventure flowing. He wanted more than the emotionally shut off, over-burdened existence his father’s life portrayed and raged against it in an illogical and self-destructive way into his 40’s. He was a lot of fun before the taxman caught up with him. He really knew how to make time spent together special, intense and adventurous. But that was in the past.
Afraid that the patty wagon was going to come and drag his ass to Sing Sing he became a miserable, emotionally volatile, grumpy man. He had once been such a lively, humorous, playful, romantic, affectionate, and sexual partner. Now, he grunted at me without even looking at me for a greeting as he walked into the house and would go straight to his computer. He would no longer go out socially. He rarely wanted to have sex. He was the kind of guy who liked to be in control and take care of his woman. I think the whole experience of possibly going to jail or losing large amounts of his wealth to pay for his folly emasculated him. He didn’t want me to see him fail so he was pushing me away.
After eight months of relating in this passive-aggressive and empty way I was a wreck. I was hoping he would realize that he wouldn’t be going to prison, because the IRS prefers the money to punishment, unless you’re a famous person they can make an example of; but he couldn’t shake the fear. It had possession of him and he became an emotionally sick person.
I tried to be supportive and loving by just staying by his side while he went through it, but it seemed he wasn’t budging from his fatalistic mood one bit. He was getting worse. I tried to make him laugh about it by telling him that I would visit him at the jail everyday with a tuna sandwich, his favorite lunch food in the whole world, and he just got furious. Perhaps I wasn’t in his shoes to know how he was feeling, but being with him started to feel punishing, almost emotionally abusive for me.
I sat down to eat dinner in front of the tube one night, soon after my bodywork with Thad, and I felt currents running up and down my legs. They weren’t painful. I’d felt these tingling currents before in meditations. But as the weeks went by I started to feel them consistently. I wondered if there wasn’t some nerve being pinched in my spine, but there was no pain association.
Then a sexual desire started to gnaw at me that I did not think to be unusual since I was in a sexless relationship. But it kept getting stronger, mushrooming into a distorted distraction. I would masturbate to climax and not feel like a drop of desire had been released. I wasn’t eating anything different or taking aphrodisiacs like horny goat’s weed. I wasn’t around any man whose flirtations where making the juices flow or stimulating fantasy. I’d lay awake after pleasuring myself for the third time – not satisfied – and just assumed it had to do with the sexual frustration in the relationship.
Interestingly, it never occurred to me to cheat in the relationship. That was not an option for many reasons. I didn’t want to lie to my partner. Also, this sexual energy didn’t focus on an outward outlet of a man, anyway. It didn’t make me feel like running out and fucking everybody or anybody for that matter. Maybe I would have felt different about this if I hadn’t been in a relationship, but the energy was so strong I think I would’ve been scared to bring an unknown person into these new insatiable, uncontrollable energies that were new and disconcerting to me.
With the energy building, there came a voice that kept repeating: “It wants to go up…it wants to go up.” I knew “it” meant the sexual energy. The currents in my legs and spine continued to widen as well. I basically stopped masturbating, because it didn’t seem to be satisfying me in any way. It seemed to me that I had no way of directing this energy up or anyplace. It just kept building.
As the weeks went by I knew this was not normal, at least not for me. One day I was at my wits end with this energy distracting me so intensely I couldn’t even sit to write for more than ten minutes. I can usually sit calmly for hours at a time. This was crazy! I had a sexual pulsing in my whole body. My heart pulsed with sexual energy. Parts of my body I never new could feel sexual, like my elbows were pulsating. In desperation I called a couple of friends that were veterans of meditation practice to try and get pointers on how to deal with this energy. They were not at home and I was feeling lost and overwhelmed by a sexual entity that had co-opted my body.
One morning when I couldn’t sit and write I decided to start meditating to channel the energy and the sexual energy took the driver’s seat. My legs uncrossed themselves from the normal Indian style meditation position I sat, legs bent toward my chest and spread, and a low moan split my being as it grew loud. My head bent back until it touched the ground behind me as if I was about to give birth. I cannot do this pose under normal circumstances. The pulsing moan from my heart and belly emanated out to mingle with life and I felt I was having sex with the universe, the ether, and I couldn’t contain this force as I reached out to call it, to meet it, to merge with it, to expose my most powerful and raw heart. A heart-pulsating being, that I wasn’t even aware was inside me, was emerging.
“Oh Lord, this is everything!” I screamed in my head. When I screamed “Oh God,” it was literally God that I could attribute this orgasm to that would not let me out of its grip. It would not let me down. To be clear, it was not a vaginal contracting orgasm I was experiencing; it was my whole body contorting and moaning as an expression of orgasm. It was much stronger than a regular orgasm. It was transporting me into and informing me of another level of sexual experience.
Shaking, I eventually decided I needed to go do something else so as not to be caught in this act of as yet unexplainable “nasty,” holy, and sacred initiation. When I say nasty it is only because it felt like it was the type of pleasure we’ve always been taught we should hide. Can you imagine being caught making love to what appeared to be nothing, a ghost (the Holy Ghost of course, hopefully) the Ether. I had already had some interesting experiences and this was turning out to be the strangest for me, so I could imagine just how strange it would be for someone else to walk in on me moaning in these sexual/spiritual episodes. This specific, most intense meditation came on the day before my next “body working appointment” with Thad. It seemed perfectly planned. My time was up. Time for me to wake up!
The physical security I knew in my relationship and the lifestyle that was afforded by that relationship was destructing and I had been feeling lost emotionally. Now, I was lost in a new terrain of insatiable sexual desire and unexplainable spontaneous sexual experiences that were definitely not provoked by some mortal, manly musk phenomenon, but seemed to be the ether itself that titillated me and energized me. It was as if atoms were exploding inside of me, releasing a power I was not accustomed or fully comfortable with, even though it delighted and invigorated me.
Life was dissolving and rearranging itself and I was in full swing of the chaos that comes with such a transformation. And it came with more bells and whistles than I had bargained for, because there was a bridge into the unknown that was emerging, into the world of the primordial self, into the mystery of God, existence, and who I was. And with all the signs that this “force” displayed, expressing itself in a sexual manner I had not bargained for, I never thought once of not proceeding. There was no question that I would go down this road, come what may, and with the thunderbolt of the Gods, it would shock my body to new understanding of God, sex, and the meaning of life.
Since I was thirteen years-old, I remember desiring and dreaming of the “Big E” (enlightenment), not much thought to the big “O” (orgasm). I guess I took the “mortal orgasm” for granted. What a surprise I had to find out that a stage of enlightenment would come through the most pure essence of sex itself.
“Hey Thirsty!” Double Double with Cheese called out one of my other nicknames, which often had to do with my love for nourishment, as he came home just as I had brushed myself off and collected myself from having sex with the ether, the universe. This is one lover you can’t hide in a closet. The Universe is one lover no one would ever expect or accuse you of cheating with.
“Avenue loves the script! They’re thrilled,” he announced. “Cary says that the script will take Avenue Pictures to the Oscars again!
“I know. I was at the meeting with you a few weeks ago and he said the same thing then,” I reminded him.
“Yeah. But you don’t know we already have some mega A list actors interested,” he burst out almost as if in song. “He thinks my baby’s script may win an Oscar. Remember the first script that the first writer wrote and it was thrown out? That was a bloodless piece of shit! Well, this was your chance, you stepped in, and you made it happen. “Sexual Healing” is a winner, thanks to my baby!”
Sexual Healing was in the air in more ways than one…
Chapter 3
"God Orgasm, Tea, & Lamb Chops"
I didn’t feel comfortable divulging my sexual angst to Thad on our second appointment, so I kept mum. We drank his ritual tea and stared at each other in the hazy, particle-filled sunlight that streamed on his couch. It was at this point I started to feel the sloshing of the large meal of lamb chops and twenty vitamins that I had eaten in a hurry and wished I hadn’t tried to shovel so many nutrients into my stomach before a bodywork session.
By the way, the tea was no “strange brew” of some mind-altering substance, unless you consider something akin to your Starbucks coffee a portal to a psychedelic experience and God awareness. We would have had a Utopian society on earth by now if that were the case. Thad serves either yerba mate or guaraná tea, stimulants that contain some caffeine. (I can see the sales go up after the reading of the following account.)
Thad went into the other room, as he always does, to allow me to disrobe partially and slip under the sheets. I didn’t have any extraordinary expectations or any expectation at all. Oftentimes when I’ve visited healers, their effectiveness is inconsistent. There is definitely a variable to just how powerful a healer is on a given day and how receptive a patient is. And perhaps, in the layers of life that we still do not understand fully, there are other reasons for these variables, maybe one of the endless types of karma that I’ve heard of. I don’t necessarily believe in karma or profess to know how it would work, especially if there are so many kinds: personal, family, country, etc. But let’s just say there was good karma due me and apparently it was about to club me in the head.
Thad began working on my neck, deeply and painfully, although I no longer was so focused on that issue with the wave of sexual distraction that I was riding of late. Nothing strange happened. Then he worked down my arms. Everything still seemed normal. Even the icky pushing of a lamb chop and a vitamin stew that was not digesting, threatened to mutiny and jump ship. The rhythm of the music stimulated and loosened my body simultaneously. We did the yogic double-breath release.
Thad paused.
Then with one finger he reached down and pressed my lower abdomen. Bam!! A sensation of energy, liquid fire, shot up my spine and burst from inside every cell of my body. I yelled with the force of unbridled ecstasy and surprise. The heat broke out into a full-body sweat and in that instant I was a dripping, melting mess. It was hotter than a sauna and it was more than good. It was bliss! The heat spontaneously moved me up onto my knees without even thinking, my mind was not in the driver’s seat anymore. It just watched in utter disbelief. As my body slowly undulated and delicately gyrated, I was moved by this force to touch the most sacred thing I’ve ever felt – MY BODY!! As if I was both lover and beloved, giver and receiver, both the touch and the hand were receiving equal pleasure. I was one with this fiery force – THE LIFE FORCE ENERGY- too beautiful to almost contain. Yes. The body is the temple of the soul as it says in the Bible (Corinthians 6:19-20). Is this what Jesus meant? Is Heaven in every cell as the bliss of the creative Life Force Energy awareness in our bodies? I was entering my most sacred temple for the first time.
I was exploding over and over again in a unique flavor of pleasure that was both sexual and sacred at the same time. Sex and the sacred mingled in a way that was seamless: the innocence of pure ecstasy. I felt as though I may combust completely. “IT” was alive! A part of me was alive that I never new existed! And yet I felt an understanding that “IT” was there all along. “IT” was there before time. “IT” knew about me when I apparently did not have full awareness of “IT.” It was the overlord. I was a sub-particle of its awareness. “IT” is the real me not the “me” I “think” I am.
I moved up and down slowly on my knees reaching my hands out, just feeling the bliss course and pulsate through my body and release from some new dimension inside every cell. And it was talking to me. Not in words, but in an instantaneous knowing through what I would describe as the highest aspect of intuition.
It was informing me of a vastly superior wisdom to the intellect. My mind was humbled for it had thought it was the smartest aspect of my being since that is what we are taught in the Western world. The mind watched in awe and humbly deferred to this intuition, pouring out of every cell of the body. No wonder I had gotten so much wrong at different points in my life. I was looking to the wrong aspect of self for the answers. I had forgotten how to listen to God wisdom speaking through the intuitive body/heart intuition.
The signs are always there as a gross physical manifestation. How many times had my body/brain spoken to me on a cellular level, turning my stomach when I bought into a false belief system, making my hands cold or my core uneasy, hollow, when around people of masking subversive intentions. So many times I did not listen, because I had lost the connection to my body/brain on how to clearly interpret what exactly these signs were telling me.
It was informing me about where to find not just happiness, but bliss!! “The kingdom of God is within” …every cell of your body. It is the fabric of absolutely everything! And we miss this in lieu of what? In lieu of fabrications of the intellect/mind.
In an instant I could see this was what everyone toiled for, and ran around in circuitous ways, seeking. And I realized that we must learn to connect to this direct source of bliss if we are ever to be fully satisfied: fully loved, fully alive, fully thriving, and achieving our potential as human beings!
So many instances of this life shot through my head, of human beings seeking this contact with bliss in ways that would only spark a faint memory of the fiery bliss that is this conscious force. Those who take drugs to feel love over pain, those who seek fame for love and approval, those who seek success and wealth to feel powerful and effective; and those who never can be satisfied sexually. If they only knew the direct line requires no outward object, gain, or pursuit. Unconditional love and acceptance is in the heart of every cell of the body temple!
Thad disappeared. He was never an object of sexual desire or lust, but here I was with his touch to my belly having an orgasm in every cell of my body. Yes, an orgasm, for this force is the ultimate sexual satisfaction I’ve ever had; equivalent to a million orgasms all at once. I was not in the cramped green apartment. I was in a red and orange world of swirling fire.
The Bible talks of the Original Sin and as far as the energy was informing me, the Original Sin was forgetting about the Original Bliss! And forgetting the bliss leads us astray to do the most wacky and sometimes destructive things in order to recreate a pleasure that we instinctively crave: The Original Bliss that is The Life Force Energy – God! I didn’t realize how lost I was until I felt this sense of happiness permeating my body. I finally felt like I was HOME! I didn’t know I was living a life not fully at home in my body until that day.
Waves of soothing comfort, love, acceptance, and reverence for my body’s capacity to be the answer, imprinted a new truth in my mind. I made sounds that must have made the neighbors worry about just what kind of chandelier-swinging sex we were having as Thad tried to cast out the demon-monkey from my soul. If you can imagine those sounds! I’m surprised they didn’t call the police. Having sex with your own God-force energy can be very boisterous and obnoxious for the neighbors.
I was on my knees with my elbows by my side, forearms stretched out, palms up, and my head all the way back. I was in this one position that looked like an Egyptian hieroglyph for an hour. I have long hair down to my waist and the pleasure heat extracted a sweat that dripped continuously from the ends. I never thought I could sweat so much. Pinned in this one position, I was in communion with a part of myself that was so new that it may be considered another entity that had descended upon me, but no, it was me. It is a larger, more complete part of me that oversees this smaller identity and was making itself clear and present.
Why had the wiser, most sacred and blissful part of me kept itself hidden, or perhaps I should say had only spoken to me in whispers my whole life, up until that day? Any self-consciousness left melted in sobs of gratitude for having experienced what made me feel completely undone as I felt such vulnerable pleasure. Why was it that I felt so vulnerable at this depth of my being? It was just the heart’s deepest pleasure. Why did I feel I had to hide it from others?
I have experienced altered states, heightened states of awareness before, but this was different. The larger self had taken over and my mind had no say. I, the small me, was out of control in the powerful hands of the God-self me. “I” was not meditating. I was not trying to meditate. The Life Force Energy was meditating me!
Finally, Thad directed me to lie down, because he had to end this session. Bummer! I could have gone on lost in communion, but I managed to obey and lay down on the table. He covered my sweat-drenched body with a sheet and did some cranial work to ease me out of the session. I drifted off to sleep for a few seconds as Thad meditated and sang along with the music for a short while. He said it was time for me to go as he left the room for me to dress.
I opened my eyes and my mind was very quiet, spent, as if a part of it had been erased and I had a clean slate. I rolled off the table and used the sheet to towel dry my wetness. I felt a little shaky as I put my sweats back on. The sexual angst was gone. It had been released into my body, bathing, and coating my cells with a new sheen from which to see the world. My sexual energy build-up had launched me into a new dimension where I was open to a new clearer dialogue with God. The Life Force Energy was about to start communicating with me through everything.
Here I had tried to transcend the body, the senses, to contact God, my higher self. Perhaps I had misunderstood what the teachers and scriptures had said, for this higher self was in my body as sexual life-force consciousness that made me feel Heaven through my “pure” re-sensitized self. It was the sexual energy buildup that pushed me to deeper places in my soul than I had ever reached.
Thad came out. I really didn’t have much I wanted to say as I basked in the awakened energy. But part of the session is to discuss the experience on the table, so I tried to express that I had just gone through the most intense experience of my life. I don’t remember what I said.
I left the apartment and as I drove home, I had to call Annette. She didn’t answer, so I left a message. “What the hell was that? What just happened?”
I was delightfully perplexed. These questions were not of great concern or worry. My mind could not hold onto such things as worry as it was so blown away into peace. I wondered if this was really what she meant when she said “I was ready for a heart opening.” Why had she not told me? Is this what Thad does for everyone or was this some special occurrence?
One thing I did know for sure was that what I had experienced was exactly what I had read about and heard gurus and swamis speak about in the Indian practice of yoga: “maha kundalini awakening.” This great life force energy is depicted as a serpent coiled at the base of the spine that when released, it purifies the chakras, the energy systems, and it opens the spiritual awareness. There is a lot of heat associated with the experience. I had a hunch that my fiery snake had been trying to release up my spine just as the voice in my head kept telling me when I was locked into unrelenting sexual angst, “IT wants to go up.”
Going against conventional teachings–for I had always been told that to invite a great connection to Spirit and open the kundalini it was best to not eat meat and to meditate on an empty stomach–my most earth-shattering awakening would happen on a full stomach of lamb and icky vitamins! The moment the kundalini shot up my spine, the sense of fullness from the lamb was gone. It was as if the energy evaporated it in an instant. It almost seemed like this opening was destined to happen no matter what circumstance was at play.
As a teenager, when I was about sixteen, I literally had dreamt about the exact experience: a liquid fire of bliss that made me identify myself as this pure sexual bliss energy and forget myself as an individual identity. In the end, it was not about following exact, niggling rules, but I think it had been a general lifestyle of health and meditation that prepared me for the awakening. It was not up to my “mind,” but the power and wisdom of the Life Force Energy. When the kundalini energy is awakened, it thrashes its mighty tail at you and will knock you down no matter where you stand–lamb chops or no lamb chops.
When I got home I craved to be in nature. I had to feel the sun and the air so close, as if my life depended on it. I went hiking in the hills across from my home. In the air and the sun I could feel the magic life force energy. I was cocooned in this knowing, comforting me and keeping me awake to the power and magic all around. I felt my heart energy was so huge and my emotional static slate wiped so clean, that with every step I took, I was blessing the earth. I felt the sacred communion with the earth beneath my feet.
Just the last few months I had walked the same hiking path, but how different my relationship was then to my surroundings. Then I was praying and asking for blessings, relief from my emotional and physical pain, whereas now I was so full, I had nothing to ask for, but so overflowed with heart, that blessings flowed naturally out of me and into the world. This path that I had walked so many times was a mirror for my inner state. The dry, golden, tall grass swayed with the breeze at sunset and every cell in my body was pregnant with life.
Now, I understand the walking meditation done in the stone labyrinths. When you walk the same path over and over again, you will see how the beauty or blandness of that path changes in accordance to your inner state.
Feeling more into what it is to be alive and more aware of the precious, arresting beauty of everything, I was swathed in the understanding of the sacred relationship that was healing me, reconnecting me in so many ways. I had become detached in small ways that I was not aware of until this day of reconnection. I was re-established in a timeless, larger self. I was feeling the world as myself. I was seeing the world through the eyes of my heart. Maybe this is what we are all searching for: How to let the heart of the “larger self” lead. Reconnection!
I could feel the wind at the top of the mountain as a Spirit, a consciousness. I could feel the flutter of the wings of a butterfly give me a precious chill of joy. My senses were juicy and raw like a newborn’s. I had been reintroduced to my original openness and sensitivity. How important it is to protect this sensitivity to receive the layers of pleasure from the natural world and from the heart itself. I had become numb and I have always been considered a pretty centered, stable, and happy person. I could see that maybe the reason why so many people are running around crazed is because they have become numb, desensitized, perhaps over stimulated by things that have distracted them from the direct source energy. It had happened to me and I’ve had a meditation practice, I don’t do drugs, I come from a stable and loving home, and never had what the world would consider a major trauma. However, the little events that were hurtful, confusing, distorted subtleties or societal programming in my life were filed away in my subconscious, building walls, running the show and keeping me from living fully. What else had been kept from me about my own fuller sense of self for reasons that were subconscious?
The natural world should feed us the pleasure that so many taste only artificially and thus end up harming themselves. The mind clings to strange distorted habits, seeking the security that can only be established through direct experience of the awakening and awareness of the Life Force Energy. It can be so simple to be satisfied when you sink into the layers of the heart of the larger self. The pleasure, the love we seek, exists. You may be satiated someday, too, if you are blessed by the awakening of the serpent.
With my new ability to feel beauty came a feeling that I had stepped out of a dulling membrane and I was seeing and feeling at a deeper level, but I was also much more vulnerable without the membrane. I realized I didn’t want to be around people I didn’t trust or that may not understand what I was going through. This was a sacred understanding of life that was growing in me and I wanted to cultivate it, protect it so as not to lose the new sensitivity that had me in ecstasy.
I meditated in the garden that night and decided that I would stop my work and social life and make a mini-ashram, a sanctuary in my home to give myself the time and space to look into what this new emerging Life Force was showing me. Luckily, my home and garden face the mountains, so the natural surroundings fed the experience even more.
Oh, there was the boyfriend issue! The influence of living with a boyfriend that was so negative at the time could have been detrimental to my vulnerable, sensitive state. But since he was so wrapped up in his crisis, instead of feeling lonely, his distance was a relief and an opportunity to allow me to recede into a world of my own: A mystic world of intense new energy that I wanted to venture into and that, apparently, I had no say in the matter. “IT” was growing through me and around me, devouring the world I knew and unfolding a reality of initiation and understanding of the deeper realms of the mind, the wisdom of higher, whole-self, and the sexual power of the Life Force Energy – God.
It was as if I was realizing I was a different breed altogether. Perhaps I had not been taught about what the potential of a human being is. Something had been left out before, but now I felt I was the most blessed person on earth, enlightened to the endless beauty in my heart and in the world. This is all I had wanted my whole life and it was happening.
In this life-changing moment I saw my story unfolding with an odd set of circumstances which made me wonder if there was a destiny beyond my conscious understanding or was it just the strangest of coincidences. Here I was writing a screenplay called “Sexual Healing,” the story of the first sex therapists in the world and I was having a sexual healing myself! A sexual healing of the spiritual kind. But this was not in their books!