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“Do not seek the extraordinary, but see the extraordinary shining through the ordinary. The gateway is everywhere.” ~ Jeff Foster

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I started writing a piece on the shame of desire.

This has come up a lot with my students and clients—how we’ve been made to feel shame for the desires we have, what it means, and who we are when we have these experiences.

So much of this has been the “wrongness” of what arouses us. So much of this has been the story of what we should be, how we should be, and how our sexuality should be expressed—according to someone else’s idea, expectation, and story.

That’s important here: the story we tell ourselves has been told.

So I started writing this and sharing the desires when something emerged inside of me, the Divine Desire and another understanding of what that is.

When we talk about sacred sex, we generally put that in a specific context—ritual, candles, heart salutation, or worship.

That’s beautiful. I love that stuff in my life, teach a lot about it, and write about it. And, it’s important because of how it helps us expand our sexuality and pleasure into a deeper space.

It brings us into greater presence, awareness, and shows us how our sexuality can be a doorway to higher experiences of energy, intimacy, and more.

All of that is fantastic.

And there’s something else in Divine Desire.

It’s the everyday desire, the every moment desire.

It’s seeing, feeling, knowing, and becoming, Divine, in everything—every experience, every feeling, every sensation, every desire.

It’s not only in the transcendent moments. It’s not only in the rituals. It’s not only in the expanded energy and emotional states.

It’s in every look, every touch, every kiss, every lick, every penetration, every opening, softening.

It’s in every sensation.

It’s in every feeling.

It’s in every orgasm.

It’s in all of your skin, your genitals, your eyes, your mouth.

It’s in every moan and sigh of pleasure.

It’s in every, “Oh yes, God, yes, more, just like that, don’t stop.”

This is the journey of healing, of growth, of learning.

Finding ourselves—our Divine selves.

And in this, there can be no shame.

Only us.

In love.

When we begin this journey, we learn about sacred experiences and those are the ones we seek. Often in the beginning, we see these experiences as separate.

In the same way, we see mediation, breathing, and other practices as separate. Sacred sexual experiences are seen as separate, which is in line with one of the great illusions we’ve been given.

We’re separate from the Divine. As we go deeper into learning and experiencing ourselves, we see that we’re not.

We are Divine. And our practices are not separate from life.

In Tantra Yoga, we express beyond the mat. Breathing is breathing in life, not only when we’re sitting with our eyes closed, focusing.

Our desire is the same.

And if I’m a lesbian who wants to be penetrated, that doesn’t make me less in any way, it allows me to be more of myself.

And if I’m a man who longs to be held, to hold another man, it makes me more of a man.

And if I long to feel rope or leather on my skin, it makes me more alive, more of who I am.

And if I enjoy men and women, if I like more than one partner, and if I surrender myself…there are so many more stories. For some of us, these may seem simple desires, but so many of us have been shamed for being different according to the box and labels.

There are so many paths to awakening, to awareness, to ourselves.

One of the elements of sexuality is the freedom it brings us to be who we are, in so many ways. And as the Divine expresses herself in so many ways, in so many tastes, sights, sounds, sensations, feelings, experiences, she expresses herself in our desires—every day.

In time, we see how the spiritual is within all of us. All of us, as in, who we are, and all of us, as in, every one of us—and us in life, in love, in pleasure.

The desire that may begin with our sexuality becomes more of a desire for life—and to live with greater intimacy in every way.

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