The Forgotten Portal to Abundant Aliveness

What comes to mind when you think of the word Pleasure?

The breeze that caresses the skin like a thousand kisses

Gold-edged filigree clouds in a pastel painted sky

A universe in the life juice of a berry dancing on the tongue

All that penetrates the senses brings me home to the Divine

Often our knee-jerk reaction to the idea of pleasure is that it’s sexual, or shallow, frivolous and temporary. A luxury to be indulged in if and when we can in between work deadlines, the 527 things on our to-do list, responsibilities to our spouse, friends, and that fourth cousin twice removed, not to mention the nightly routine of chasing the kids around the house at bedtime. (Okay, I just have fur-kids, but still…)

However, a life dedicated to the practice of seeking, cultivating, and experiencing pleasure in all it’s sensual forms, is a life filled not only with abundant aliveness, but also overflowing with wisdom, protection, and custom-made fulfillment. There is nothing shallow about pleasure, and our sensuality.

While sometimes misconstrued as sexuality, true sensuality is so much deeper and all-encompassing than that. It is, of the senses.

Certainly sensuality and sexuality go hand in hand; sexual connection without really being grounded in the full sensory experience of your own body and connecting deeply with the heart, body, and breath of your partner, is temporary gratification at best. But sensuality itself is meant to be our inner GPS to steer us to our most alive life.

Much like the whiskers on an animal act as sensory receptors to give them needed information about their environment, the fullness of our sensory experience is actually our Divine wisdom coming through our body.

Imagine moving through life so embodied in your physical being that is was normal, easy, and natural to breathe with awareness and ask questions like, ‘how does what I’m sensing about the person I’m with right now make my body feel? is what I’m eating or drinking right now sparking joy and delight? does the thought of dating this person or taking this job or moving to this place make me feel light or heavy? do I love the way my clothes feel on my body, the way my home looks inside? is my heart moved and inspired by what I watch and what I listen to? are the thoughts I’m thinking right now making me feel tight and contracted or alive and expansive?

When I was a little girl, I would often start to notice what I was drawn to, or excited about, or what felt amazing, but because of a combination of religious programming, societal conditioning, and emotional trauma, I had learned to disassociate from my heart and body and desires at a very early age. My body did not feel like a safe place to be in, and if I was ever aware of my feelings or emotions, I certainly didn’t think I had the permission or the right to act on them or express them; to trust what I felt or sensed, or to let myself trust my desires, and receive what I actually wanted.

I was completely cut off from from the natural born inner system which was there to guide, protect, and resource me. Consequently, making it next to impossible to know what decisions to make, what to do with myself, or who to trust. As well as who to run from like my life depended on it. Which it later sometimes did.

And so that is why I’m so committed to my practice of deepening into my sensory experience, of living fully embodied, and so passionate about sharing the importance of such a practice with others.

In Tantra, part of the practice to enhance the beauty, pleasure, and joy of life, is by embracing all that is. To find Divinity in everything, even darkness or pain; a sacred sensuality.

Expressing the belief that all is sacred, everything is a portal to the Divine, and Life is inherently good. Not always good in the mind’s sense of right, fair, or pleasing, but rather a Higher good. From which can come wisdom and Pure Love; an unseen gift.

From this courageous, broader perspective, the practice of Pleasure takes on a whole new meaning.

It can be actually be pleasurable to feel our pain, sadness, melancholy, longing. To receive the intoxicating elixir of unconditional Love, from the eternal space that is always within us. The warm, all-encompassing embrace of belonging and allowing, of being fully seen and heard and understood, yet loved anyway.

Not to be confused with the ego’s enjoyment of wallowing in the stories and being entangled in the false identities, which can seem gratifying but has a sickly-sweet quality and is temporary at best. Most often with the side effect of staying stuck, feeling stagnant, and repeating unpleasant patterns on a nauseating loop.

The true pleasure found in meeting the full spectrum of feelings, emotions, and sensations within us feels like a deep, powerful, yet gentle involuntary exhale; Mmm, ohhh yes. It comes with a sense of peace, of stillness, and the side effect of effortless movement, bringing about the most delicious release and beautiful transformation.

This no longer requires the idea of trying to quiet the mind, rather, bringing the mind in service to the heart and body. To be in our senses. To sit with the raw sensations in our body, with awareness, with appreciation. When we pause first and remember WHO WE REALLY ARE, which is God/The Universe/Divine Source, in a human bodysuit, that we are truly powerful, and that ALL of our sensory experience is right, we will discover that these sensations are not to be feared, not a threat; they are sacred messengers of what our body is holding but wants to release. And it knows how to.

All that it needs to do that is our grounded awareness, our willingness to feel, our compassionate attention.

Where our attention goes, our energy flows, allowing all emotions and experiences to move and be felt as sensory, and as they are allowed to move, we effortlessly reside in our natural God-state, thereby deeply enriching every aspect of our lives and expanding our sense of beautiful aliveness.

There is nothing to fear here; nothing to judge, fix, or suppress.

Only an entire universe of wisdom, magic, power, and pleasure that was created specifically for us to experience and be guided by.

This is my foundational practice of YES, AND at work.

Yes, to whatever I am feeling and experiencing, lovely or unlovely.

And, what do I really want, what would make me feel amazing, lit up, alive, excited, delighted? Letting myself remember that ALL of that is really here for me, right now, always. Just waiting for me to choose what is already mine.

Then here’s the most important part dear friends - FOLLOW THAT! Like your life depends on it.

BECAUSE IT DOES.

Do not take lightly, what you feel, sense, desire.

This path of being present to what I feel no matter how ugly or painful, AND listening to and following my desires and pleasure, is how I was able to leave a dangerous relationship, heal from PTSD, an eating disorder, multiple traumas and illnesses, and be led into a beautiful life of purpose, joy and grace.

We are meant to FEEL GOOD. To have a life filled with pleasurable experiences, abundant joy, passionate love. The kind of excitement that comes from living out loud in a world full of wonderful surprises and delightful magical moments, both epic and small.

Your pleasure, your desires, what feels good, what delights you, is from whatever you call God. It is here to guide you, it is yours, it is actually who you are.

I encourage you to feel into your entire sensory system, what are you actually sensing? What does it feel like to be deeply embodied in your physical body, your emotional body, your full senses? What do you hear, see, taste, touch, smell? What feels bad, that if you released the mind’s limitations of right/wrong good/bad, you would move away from? What do you long for, feel drawn to, or absolutely set on fire by, that if you let go of possible/not possible, you would move towards?

When you say Yes to your desires, your true pleasure, what resonates deeply with your heart and body, you are saying Yes to God, Source, the Divine within you. You are accepting who you truly are. The fact that you desire something, means you have been chosen to experience it; to deny it or refuse to receive it is to abandon or deny a part of you, to deny the God within you.

So claim it, trust it, let the powerful sensory world of your physical body and your emotional body effortlessly steer you along the path to the Well-Lived Life you were always meant to have.

You won’t regret it, I promise.