Sex and Sensuality
_I: If getting sick means stopping, when we're told to stop and contemplate, is that the spiritual way of getting sick?
_AM: Humans live busy lives, in their eagerness to live, they run wearing out life. Biological bodies have to ensure their subsistence, to live as long as possible; and for that, they seek energy to accumulate for times of scarcity. So, every day you wake up, the body asks for food, asks to go out and look for it, asks for love, and goes out to find it, asks to move forward, and walks toward the horizon. This is how humans build life by spending it. Just like every time you breathe, you try to absorb as much oxygen as possible in one breath, devouring the air, without realizing that it is the same oxygen that precisely oxidizes your cells, corroding them until their degradation and death...
_I: Another of life's paradoxes.
_AM: If you eat life in small bites, one day you will end up eating yourself, because you are life. For this reason, faced with the whirlwind of the body's need to live, the spirit asks it to stop, to contemplate. The body understands stopping as sickness, but at a spiritual level, sickness is called a crisis. From the Greek "krisis," which gives rise to criterion and critical, it means "decision." It is the turning point where you come from one path and it opens into two, and you must decide which one to take. The critical point breaks everything built, and it pushes you to stop to contemplate, plan, take stock of the journey. Deciding is Libra's Achilles' heel, and it is also the sickness of the spirit. Every crisis is a moment of reconsideration, of decision, what do you expect to do from now on? It is a moment of shedding everything, to be able to move forward. Tell me, do you remember the next step after Mount Kailash?
_I: Shedding everything... Mount Kailash for me was facing death. The Alchemist, whom many call Merlin, accompanied me on that journey. It was a difficult path, crossing at 7000 meters with almost nothing, and less experience. Several times I felt like I was dying, but I didn't stop. There I had an important crisis moment. Shiva spoke, reminding me that I cannot take responsibility for the world, that I cannot be responsible for destruction and death, as they are part of the cycle of life. I always wanted to help, to prevent bad things from happening, and there, at that turning point, the mountain explained to me that it was destruction that had created it, that it was destruction that had originated the beautiful ecosystems that I enjoy today, the landscapes that amaze us, the species that inhabit the Earth. Without destruction, there is no creation. I came down different, transformed, with the calmness of knowing that I cannot stop the coming destruction, what happened in the following years, that is, now, 2020, and the things that will come. But I understood that different things can be done, that destruction can be used to evolve, to create and transcend, to improve. When I reached the bottom, Merlin told me: I'll wait for you in 7 days at the end of the lands, in England. So I did, I left Tibet for Nepal, and from there to England. Upon arriving at Land's End, he guided me to a small circle of stones, called Buscawen-Un, and he said to me: "Shed everything." He made me take off my clothes, and I stood there in my underwear. And he said: "everything." There I had a crisis: shame. I am very shy, modest about my body. I always felt uncomfortable with it. He made me undress in front of the rock, and present myself as I was, being myself. He said to me: "Make your way, now is your time to be the Alchemist, become me." That was the last time I felt him in the following 14 days when I traveled alone throughout England and Scotland, going alone to the stone circles from south to north. At that moment I felt a crisis, a moment of confusion, where I felt stripped of everything, as I was born, facing shame, the fear of showing myself as I am. For 14 days, I did the same thing in various places, whether it was cold or hot, and I began to feel a strange sacred energy in the sexuality that the ritual of shedding everything implied. Starting to lose shame stopped being losing it, but gaining confidence. Then I remembered what ancient civilizations made us do to break the barrier that separated us from others: sex. From childhood, sexuality was practiced because it was known that at 12 years old a man and a woman could already have a child, and then, they needed to understand what sex was, which was not something foreign, strange, taboo, but something natural and useful in life. They made us recognize our bodies, limits and extremes, where pain and pleasure were. Women, thus, learned to give birth with orgasms instead of suffering. Nudity implied self-confidence and confidence in others, awakening strength and weakness at the same time, making everyone men and women, as one. There were no shames, no dependencies, nothing to hide. It was the first time I danced naked with freedom in a stone circle as our ancestors did, it was the first time I was not ashamed of being stripped of my clothes, of my personality, in front of strangers. I felt reborn.
_AM: Sex comes from "Sectus," which means "to separate." In ancient times, the two paths before you were called man and woman, and their clear differences were what separated them as different things, so their genitals were known as "their sexes," and the interaction between their genitals would be known as "sexual intercourse." Sexuality, then, is the attribute of separation; however, in today's culture, you have given it the wrong connotation, as it is confused with Sensuality.
_I: And what is Sensuality?
_AM: It is the ability to perceive with all the Senses, it is Sensory ability. Hearing, Taste, Vision, Touch, and Smell. The tone of voice, the words used, singing, intense breaths, are a sensory delight for the ear. Flavors, foods, aphrodisiacs, kisses, the sensitivity of lips and tongue are a delight for taste. Shapes, colors, symmetry, the depth of the gaze, are a delight for the eyes. Caresses, touch, warmth, shivers, tickles, massage, are a delight for touch. And aromas, perfumes, sweat, pheromones and testosterone emanating from the skin and hair, excite and delight the sense of smell. Sensuality is the illumination of the senses. Each of them is the basis of one of the elements of nature: Earth the touch, Water the taste, Air the hearing, Fire the vision, Ether the smell. And in turn, they represent the universal codes that manifest all reality: Hexahedron, Dodecahedron, Icosahedron, Tetrahedron, and Octahedron respectively. If vibrating geometry is the universal language of the spirit and the mind with its patterns (being the Elements of nature, the realms, energy in motion, that is, of the soul, which manifests in physics), then the Five Senses are the way in which the spirit and the soul can receive with full consciousness the information of its creation. Sensuality goes far beyond Sex and reproduction because it implies communication with the soul and the spirit through the senses of the body. The ancients taught that the only way to learn to communicate with the spirit was through sensuality, being fully aware of the body, losing shame, opening oneself to perception with oneself, and with others. And within all that, what separates us, Sex, becomes a way of feeling, of recognizing other parts, of uniting the different.
_I: Sex and Sensuality, then, are two spiritual concepts, that is, the spirit has designed them to be able to feel and receive information from matter.
_AM: And therefore, Merlin told you that until you accept your nudity, your body, your sexuality, and sensuality, you could not become a wizard like him, as you would always be blocking the spirit in its will to live.
_I: I understand, it makes sense now. Sexuality is something that has been prohibited for many years, and it still is in many cases. There is still much discussion about sexual issues, attributing them to what clings to us, what keeps us being animals, what keeps us away from the spirit and purity, and it is taken as something negative, provocative or that separates us, deviates, from the path or path of light. In many cases, abstinence is talked about as a way or the only way to connect to the spirit. What do you say about that?
_AM: That never would such a rich Universe design the diversity of existence to say that there is only one way to find the spirit, especially a spirit that is not found anywhere, for it inhabits all things. The only way to find the spirit is not through the method, but through coherence and harmony. If you fulfill those two requirements, everything else will lead you to your being, to your spiritual essence.
_I: So, in a time as turbulent as this, of constant struggle over sexuality, over gender diversity, over feminism; everything generates a conflict that will lead us to spiritual sickness, to the crisis that will make us stop and see where we have come, and how much we have mentalized concepts that are not ideological but sensory. And there we will return to the essential. The gender ideology is not an ideology, it is a sensation. And therefore, we must learn to feel, to perceive with the 5 senses without mental judgments, knowing that beyond diversity, we are all sensory beings connecting with the essence of who we really are, beyond genitals, that is, through the senses.
_AM: Sexuality and Sensuality may seem like opposite concepts now that you think about it after this analysis. However, one and the other feed each other. In tantra, the doctrine of learning to use the senses as a way to communicate with the spirit, sex is a fundamental part of communication. Breathing ignites the kundalini, vital energy, which is reinforced with looks and aromas, which is potentiated by touch, and with singing, it is harmonized. The use of the vital and generative force of the genitals encourages the rise in vibration that awakens the brain's sensors to perceive with heightened senses. Reconnecting with healthy Sexuality is not a matter of spiritual idea but of allowing oneself to awaken one's own sensuality, not in relation to others, but the capacity to feel for oneself.
_I: Exalting my senses to become sensory is awakening my sensuality.
_AM: And sexuality will be another tool in the task of uniting with the spirit here and now.
_I: So I free myself from my shames, to allow myself to feel, and thus unite body, soul, and spirit.