The emotional walls against her desires and vulnerabilities came down, and she felt them release toward him, responding to his sexual energy as they hugged. She felt available in a physical, emotional, sexual way, beyond her conscious control and beyond the meaning of what was actually true between them. She experienced herself as a woman. And although she enjoyed the feelings of experiencing this, it was separate from her emotional connection with him. Her physical, sensual responses to him were in conflict with the emotional truth between them.
This experience is not uncommon. Sensual experience can leave women with difficulty drawing distinctions for their own benefit. Many of the women who are coming into their power and sense of purpose in life at this time find themselves having difficulty holding on to this in a relationship. For many of them the question is, “How can a woman be fully connected to the vulnerable softness and responsiveness of her sexual and emotional nature, in a way that doesn’t distort the emotional truth between herself and the man she is relating to, and their souls’ purpose in relating with each other – and that doesn’t give away her power and value?” (Although this is from a female perspective, there is, no doubt, an analogous dilemma that relates to many men, but with different dynamics.) The solution relates to whether we get into states of delusion in relation to each other, or whether we are willing and able to be in our present moment experience, with all aspects of ourselves. Sexual energy can be used to create states of delusion, but it doesn’t have to.
There is a major difference between pleasure that comes from reality, and pleasure that comes from fantasy, delusion, or illusion. People who lean on illusion, do so because they don’t believe they can get their needs met in reality. This is the result of unhealed emotional issues, which can be cleared. Reality is always more powerful than illusion and is ultimately the only state in which there is connection, harmony, freedom, joy, growth and evolution.
Narcissism is a major defense system promoted by this culture, which distorts and avoids real experience, mainly by the use of sexual energy. This energy is used to attract and control others. It causes immediate and overwhelming pleasure that has a drug-like effect and can be very addicting, keeping people coming back for more. It also creates illusions about desirability in people who feel lacking in their own value. They give up their power to the person putting out that energy in order to delude themselves they are valued. This is not the same as being related to by that person or being actually valued by them.
Each person is holding a model of reality (paradigm) in place, individually and collectively, and these have a large effect. Many of our paradigms, to varying degrees, are an avoidance of the here-and-now, and therefore a distortion of reality. They hold a surface experience in place we think serves us, while what is really happening under the surface undermines us and keeps us from taping into our potential, evolving, and connecting with each other. They keep our experience of life limited to what we think we can control, understand, and feel safe with.
Current social pressures define sexual relating as attraction based on illusion (often illusion-based appearance), and is an avoidance of reality. From counseling many individuals and couples, and from personal experience, I’ve become aware that a new paradigm is evolving from those of us who have a greater sense of our own value, and those of us who have a strong sense of our purpose for being here on earth. Many of us have worked through enough of our unhealed issues so that our desires are in alignment with real experience. The new paradigm is attraction based on our essence expressing itself. It is accessible, because it is real, something that can be engaged with and related to. It’s inclusive of other people and open to life. When we’re in a state of reality, we can freely, from a place of power and integrity, release our passion and vulnerability, because it is aligned with life-transforming universal truth.
© Jane Ilene Cohen 2007
