SACRED UNION
Touch, sex, lovemaking has an inherent spiritual dimension, leading beloveds to what I view as the ultimate experience of Tantra: Sacred Union.
The term Sacred Union has been used so much that I would like to take you on a journey into what that actually looks like. I have broken it down into steps or perhaps ‘ingredients’ that I like to use to teach couples but please do not be rigid with these. Follow your own heart and intuition, this is just one possibility. Lovemaking is a spiritual practice or active meditation to be enjoyed and celebrated. This guide is not meant to take the fun out of it or turn it into a strict discipline…it is simply an offering so you can perhaps get a clear picture and feeling of what sacred union can look like.
When I come into sacred union with my beloved sometimes the steps are practiced much like the way they are outlined below and other times they all merge into one passionate embrace. A step by step guide is only helpful as an initial starting point, as we are developing new habits and a new experience of sacred relationship and sexuality. What is really happening when we enter the wonderful world of sacred union, is that sex moves from being a purely desire based act with a goal to ejaculate to a spiritual practice between two people who love each other.
Just like when we are training muscles with singing, consistency is key in order to get these muscles used to doing something different than they are currently doing. So my suggestion is, to try to make a time at least once a week where you really drop into full presence with your partner and devote this time to ritualizing lovemaking and re-training yourself to breathe, sound and move with heart centered presence. When working in harmony, the sacred union of Feminine and Masculine can unite, heal and create ANYTHING!!!
My suggested “Formula”:
- You are in sacred relationship – a COMMITTED DANCE where you have the courage to be of Service to each other, the relationship and the world at large, together. You recognize the equality between you and your beloved. You are able to share and discuss the dynamics between you and interactions with self and others with authenticity. Both of you can be strong and gentle, assertive and tender, yin and yang, leader and follower, divine and human. So you have untied your own masculine and feminine energies, your own dark and light and as these energies flow, move and change, so to does the sacred relationship…it dies when it needs to and is reborn continuously…so it is the seed of a kind of creative existence. When the new seeds grow, the field blossoms with magic. We see each other’s greatest treasures and our deepest pain. The relationship is contained, though not constrained, and there is safety to be honest with a knowing that your beloved is always going to love you. Whilst you don’t rely on each other for your sustenance or your wholeness, you nourish one another and magnetize each other into wholeness naturally with the power of your love. You do not go co-dependent with each others wounds or caretake one another, and yet you choose to be compassionate and supportive so there is a level of discernment that carries mutual respect and kindness. This Dance is radically authentic, respectful, creative and at a certain point, no more outer growth is possible until more inner growth occurs.
- One or both of you have created a SACRED SPACE – a space (usually the bedroom) dedicated to ecstatic, healing lovemaking; there is beauty and sacredness but also substance…the bedroom is a Temple, a holy place. It has captured the essence of the Hindu God Shiva and his consort, the goddess Shakti union, possibly on an altar. Shiva is recognized by you as the embodiment of pure consciousness, and Shakti as the embodiment of pure energy and you both understand that when these energies unite, form is given to Spirit and some kind of magic is created in the universe. When you are going to make love there is a a beautiful process of getting the space ready – wiping the slate clean physically and then energetically. This can be likened to CEREMONY PREPARATION; where incense or sage is burned, music is played and candles are lit. I maintain this practice in my own life and I love having a Temple for a bedroom and I also love preparing the space for sacred union. As I clear the space I also like to invoke the full living presence of Mother Father Spirit and imagine my bed surrounded with rings of primordial fire that protects whatever happens in that bed from anything other than the purest love energy of the Divine. Then I kind of devote the space to the most ecstatic tender love – making, and in doing so – have that sense or knowing that whilst we make love we are worshipping the emerging Christ in the other.
- You MEDITATE together (perhaps in front of an altar that is set up in your bedroom). Then you connect and become very present with yourselves and each other in SILENCE (Jnana) and DEVOTION (Bhakti). The reverence and honoring you experience brings you into your heart and allows you to connect soul to soul, heart to heart, smile to smile. There is no rush and no goal, just a reverence for each other as a human divine being that is quite simply melting you from the inside out. The heart centered presence you experience is a result of the presence you experience with yourself. You and your beloved each have own solo practices of meditation, silence and reverence. This is Priority…taking time individually to centre and develop as a human being. The more energy we give to to self development, the more we can perceive the truth and experience intimacy (into me you see). There is also an opportunity here to set an intention. Sex magic – the creation or seeding of what you are wanting to birth into the world.
- BREATH, SOUND AND MOVEMENT. Tantra Pranayama teaches that correct breathing* is essential for the release of thoughts and expansion into the moment of Being fully in the body. You breathe together, move together and blend mindfulness with energy. You begin to run energy through your own bodies with breath, stillness, sound and movement. So begins the masculine and feminine dance with an awareness of the centre behind both and beyond all duality. Moving the body to move beyond the body (Raja) **Note: For correct breathing gently place the tongue in the centre point of the palette to form the connection of the microcosmic orbit connecting yin (conception front channel) and yang (governing back channel) together. Breathe in through the nose and out through the nose and allow the flow of chi or prana to circulate around the microcosmic orbit. Remember when you breathe in through the nose expand the belly out like a balloon and when you exhale through the nose, pull the belly back towards the spine. Practice breathing this way until it becomes natural. You can also combine squeezing your pc muscles.
- ENERGY MERGING – you exchange energy in the subtle realms before physical sensual touch so that by the time you put your hands on each other, you are glowing and ready. This is the work taught by Kenneth Ray Stubbs (www.sexualshaman.com), a brilliant man who has inspired a lot of my work. Put simply, you want to a) radiate a brilliant light from your physical body (visualize you are a radiator, sending heat); b) expand and make your energy bigger and bigger till it connects to the beloveds (spirit body ballooning around you both separately, then when your two balloons meet, you merge, you connect, and your spirit bodies join together). You can expand your Spirit body to anyone anywhere in the world – I did this once from a mountain top in Sedona to my beloved at the time who was in NZ. He felt it and wrote me an email describing exactly what I as experiencing at the time that I was experiencing it; c) Extend energy outward from your light body which is made up of nadis that connect with other beings (here you can visualize shooting rays into each other, penetrating each other, giving and receiving from each other chakras or nadi points). The experience is as though fibers are literally extending out from different energetic points in the body; d) Resonate from your soul body/core a current of energy. This can be likened to tuning forks. Imagine that you are coming into entrainment with someone else’s soul, coming into one, like musical notes resonate into one note. A really good choir is when it all sounds like one note. When you seeks the ultimate union, you seek a partner who is on the same frequency band and therefore the same octave of Being, and more than this the sacred path which leads to the highest states of conscious awareness, as God and Goddess become ONE.
- Now it is time to to de-robe (either fully or partly) and come into YAB-YUM. Yab yum is the symbol of union and in this position we can merge energies/chakras even more profoundly…penetrating and connecting deeply at the heart…feeling your love for each other so profoundly….you feel at one with each other and all of life. There is more attention on the physical now, and because there has been such a build up…ahhhhhh it is oh so sweet and there is so much gratitude for each others bodies. Now you combine breath sound, movement and energy merging, with sensual pleasurable touch, a touch that is spread over the entire body, from toes to head, appreciating every inch of each other. You feel every glide and move of each others hands and fingers, bringing an aliveness to your skin and cells. There is freedom to be naked emotionally as well as physically so that you can express any vulnerabilities, desires, fears or boundaries. This allows you both to relax and open even more and the touch is not only sensual and pleasurable but also healing as you both intuit what the other needs. A bit of mutual massage is always nice. Sometimes you may only feel extreme pleasure and ecstasy, other times there may also be tension, stresses and emotions that are present to be vibrated loose. You are both unconcerned with where this is all leading but rather relax into the heart more and more into the beautiful experience, staying totally present to what is. You can go deep, being transported away somewhere else by the sensations. You can stay with the sensations feeling the shaking and tingling as energy moves completely through your body bringing you into different states of bliss. This can be experienced as a waterfall rushing and gushing over you. It always hits the heart and there is warmth and opening for both of you, healing past hurts, enjoying love, sounding as emotions are released and pleasure is celebrated. If thoughts begin to churn or analyze, there is the touch and the love to bring you back into you body, silently asking you to accept anything that is happening. The permutations move like waves through your body, and you may be trembling now as you move deeper into union. Time? What is that? There is only the touch, the presence, the candle flames flickering and the deep sounds. When the yoni is about to be physically penetrated there is a pause, a silent or verbal asking of permission to enter. There is intensity of energy that goes beyond an outward explosion. This is an inner explosion as two become one on every level now. Wow what a miracle. You are Home.
To learn more about the art of sacred union, Contact us or come to one of our Events.
