09 Oct Heat: Sacred Sexuality

“… it is in this aspect [inquiring, relational, bounding with energy sometimes, quiescent other times. It is responsive to stimulus involving the senses:music, movement, food, drink, peace, quiet beauty, darkness] that a woman has heat. Not heat as in ‘Let’s have sex, baby, baby.’ But like a fire underground that burs high, then low, in cycles… A woman’s heat is not a state of sexual arousal but a state of intense sensory awareness that includes, but is not limited to, her sexuality.”

– Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Women Who Run with the Wolves

An evolution. An unwinding. Through a frightening and enlightening crucible.

To me there is a physical recognition of less heat, but when it appears as resistance, as shut down, as recoiling, of tightening, not only in intimacy, but in the other quadrants of my purpose circle. It is then that it is a wake-up call. to what is precious. to what is life-giving. a slap across the cheek that brightens awareness and demands focus. on my partner. on myself and my own pattern of withdrawal – my deep rooted cycle of mini expand, maxi withdraw. Don’t be seen, no need to put yourself out there, ignore and hope I can just get by on my introverted nature.

but when is one’s ‘nature’ an inherited pattern that is perhaps irrelevant and un-serving of the present?

that is my path now to figure out.

My symbol was a tightly coiled spring. that is the image I burned n my purpose circle. the image of pent-up withholding. How to breathe out – how to feel freedom, confident that I can accept the warmth. love and perhaps criticism that comes from a free flowing river outward.

honoring of a sacred sexuality that is an exchange of energy – like a radiant sun, like ripples in a pond, willing to breathe out, exhale – knowing that you can always breathe in. I am in control. there is not need to prematurely block out – be willing to see what comes in and know I have the power to take in what is good, accept what is mostly love.

“…to take a breath causes one to feel one’s emotions, that when we wish not to feel we hold our breath instead.”

Prana – life force, breath. Tantra – the life force in the exchange of breath.