Woman on Fire (37 page)

Sexuality is, by nature, abundant. It is built to breathe and expand and invite all that is possible into your experience. Its energy is transcendent—it allows you to reach expanded consciousness that connects both physical and spiritual in a way no other energy can.

You are meant to be big. You are not meant to be small. None of us are. Yet we make ourselves small for so many reasons. I frequently work with clients on this—all the ways they sabotage and diminish the fullness of who they are. I see women diminish themselves so they don't intimidate men, leaving themselves again so they can take care of someone else. I see how so many women struggle to be in their full sexual expression without apology. They dim their own fire. No need to dim. You can bring your energy in close for safety or move with stealth in the world as a way to consciously take care of yourself and simultaneously remain firmly in your power.

You are not meant to be diminished. You are meant to live an abundant life, full with connection, sexual vibrancy, and all the love, caring, attention, joy, and money you need. You are not here to never have enough. There is enough for all of us, and as you develop and strengthen your core sexual energy, it impacts many parts of your life.

When I met Jill at age fifty, she had recently gone through a divorce, was working as a business coach, and raising her teenaged son. She was at peace about ending her marriage, yet she was having a hard time figuring out how to reclaim her sexuality because she'd felt unfulfilled for so long.

I was so stuck, and I had been for years. I didn't have a path or a way out of it. I was stuck around my sexual expression. I was holding it all in and repressing it all because that was my way of dealing with it. I was trying to figure out what I wanted it to look like
now
, and what was healthy for me. My hope was that this women's sexual empowerment program would be an avenue to prod my sexuality into unstuckness.

I was shaming my desire. I needed to give myself permission to have desire, to have my desire be what it is, and to really understand it. I opened up my curiosity to really understand what my yeses and my nos were. A big yes was about who I am attracted to and who I wanted to be with even though it's not culturally the norm, and being okay with that. The yeses helped me clarify what I wanted to create, even though it wasn't what sex was supposed to be. It meant a non-monogamous relationship. It meant having a physically based relationship without all of the romantic ideals around it. Those were stretches because they were not what I was told it was supposed to be. I'm fifty years old and I'm hot-to-trot for twenty-year-old guys, and I had to get that voice out of my head, and not go to a place of shame around it. I had to trust my desire and see where it led me. Well, it has led to the best sex of my life with a twenty-two-year-old.

At one of our women's weekends, I shared a fantasy I had, and someone said, “Oh, that's doable.” I thought, “Yeah, that's doable. I'm tired of this. I'm going for it.” Literally within two days of being home from the weekend, the possibility showed up in my life, and then the reality showed up! It took me two or three days to get my head around the fact that I was really going to do this, to have this fantasy come true. I was learning about the power of asking and allowing. I felt like the universe and I were having this joke, like “You're fucking with me, aren't you?” but it was really “Ask, and you shall receive.”

I made a huge practice of every time I'd think about a partner I wanted to be with, I'd get really clear about my intention: to share, learn, explore, and deepen my physical intention sexually. It has turned into a spiritual process. I allow myself a lot of space in my life. I meditate and pray. I have an understanding of the physical sensations in my body when I am out of alignment and I pay attention to them and ask myself where I'm out of alignment and intention. The question I ask a lot is not just “What do I want?” but “What is in my highest and best interest and how do I allow that into my life?”

One of the things I've asked about a lot is “Teach me about intimacy. Help me learn about intimacy . . . and the fear and vulnerability in that.” I've been blown away by how the process shows up when I am so clear in my intention. Being willing to be with my vulnerability and fear and be empathetic with myself in it helps me to grow my spirit and my ability to be empathetic with other people when I see them come up against their fears and vulnerability. The power of intention and allowing—putting it out there—is huge. Once I get clear, it's amazing what can and does show up. I see that where I'm at right now—this experience of my sexual self-expression is becoming solidified and re-created in other life experiences. I can get unstuck with my work and other parts of my life. I'm seeing it breaking open.

My fire feels like a passion, a deep joy, and an aliveness and a sparkle in my eye. People keep telling me I am beaming. When I am with my sexual partner it opens up that energy. Recently I've been asked out on the street by four guys within minutes of meeting them because they see it. That energy is so enlivening. Rather than trying to capture it and hold it in my sexual relationship, I'm really getting that it is in me and it is shared and extends to every aspect of my life, my work, my writing, my friendships, my way of being in the world. It's an incredible high.

Your fire is the energetic source that drives and births your desire and full sexual expression and all you do in life. It is your essential vibrant life force, and you need to feed it and nourish it. With these tools you can create all you want in love, sex, and relationships, and motor your life from this vibrant force of your being.

You have been given the gift of this energy. How would you like to spend it? How would you like to replenish your coffers when they are low? Recognizing that it is essential to nourish and grow this
energy is one of the keys to living a full sexual and creative life. It begins with your core energy. Do you want to expand or shrink? Your sexuality has the capacity for tremendous expansion—as it expands, so does your creativity, your relationships, your abundance, and your pleasure in living your beautiful life.

You can play with this energy and move it like fire. Consciously work your second chakra when you walk. Swing your hips a little. Allow the opening. Sometimes I enjoy letting my genitals lead my walk because it's less common for women to walk from their pelvis. If your genitals lead, how does that shift your energy and your movement? Try letting your pelvis lead and see. In meditation, lie in goddess pose (flat on your back, knees splayed out with feet flat against each other as close to your yoni as possible) or sit in a squat with your feet flat on the floor and say a blessing or make an intention (as Jill did) for your day or for your sexuality. Make an intention to open, receive, and connect. What a beautiful way to bring practice to your sexuality.

The vast majority of people will never walk this path. They are afraid of their own power, their sexuality, and their erotic energy. They're afraid they won't actually know what to do with all of this energy and power if they really embraced it. They're afraid to be out of control, to want too much, or to be seen as selfish. They fear they might not know how to control themselves, so they avoid the vulnerability and out-of-control nature of orgasm and sexual exposure. Sometimes it's easier to keep it in the mystery than to take responsibility for actually having it. The idea of it seems more palatable than the reality. Yet the more you clamp it down, the less able you are to pluck the unformed out of the ether and make beauty with it.

Because women are often afraid to eclipse others and avoid taking up too much space, being too big, or shining too brightly, they work deftly at managing the controlled burn. It's helpful to learn how to direct our fire to the right places. Yet sometimes life needs the wild fires. The wild woman in every one of us needs her day. She
cannot be controlled, and she can be a threat because she is self-sufficient and owns her own power. She is confident and she is not afraid to follow her own compass. She is present to her fullness of being, feeling, and aliveness. She will look you deep in the eyes and seer her own image into your memory. She knows she shines among the brightest stars and she hangs unapologetically in the galaxy of possibility and dances in her own sensual world. Her sensuality is affirming of life itself.

Sometimes it's not about the controlled burn or the wild fire; it's that you've learned to allow and be receptive. This is so hard for so many. Just let it in. Bring the unseen into creation. Be present with yourself, your lovers, your kids, your friends. Turn off the gadgets. They can easily eclipse your connection to your fire. As you allow energy to flow in, projects move, things come together with more ease, and more of those moments of feeling on fire happen until it becomes a way of life. You are feeling the pull toward all you want, you are allowing the love, the creativity, the sparks to come in. You are open to feeling good and shining ever more brightly. You've released the habit of living from a place of fear and you've begun to live from a place of desire and creation. You've claimed your birthright of pleasure. Your alignment is 360 degrees, full-on.

I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.

—A
NAÏS
N
IN

Beauty is the highest form of spirit. Beauty inspires others. Art and music will always be needed regardless of how automated and computerized our world becomes because our spirits are deeply moved by beauty and opulence. Artists must unplug and create space to connect to the muses of their creations. They know that beauty inspires and they make it their craft. As you experience more fun, pleasure, ecstasy, bliss, and orgasm, you experience more beauty. You learn to prioritize beauty so you can experience it more deeply. Sunsets never get old. Beholding the power of the ocean or the forest or a canyon never ceases to awe because it reminds us of our place in it all and of the vastness of the natural world. It reflects back to us the opulence in nature that is in everything.

One of the best ways to refuel your fire when you feel depleted is to spend time in nature. Nature regenerates itself and reflects the process of life-degeneration-death-birth in everything. When you feel like your fire has gone, go back to nature. Walk, hike, breathe the fresh air, make love to trees, lie in the grass, swim in the ocean, behold its beauty, let nature sex you up. It replenishes your well in a way nothing else does.

Allison, a client in New York City whom I worked with over the course of a couple of years, wrote to me one day about how connected and alive she felt by getting back to nature in the context of the deep work she had done on herself:

I just came back from Florida and made a point of being in the water often. I floated in the pool for a while just gazing up at the clouds and surrendered to the water and its flow, allowing it to wash over me and hold me up at the same time. I had a beautiful experience in the ocean yesterday. It was really windy, so the water was a little rough and choppy. I was standing about hip deep, and there were waves coming at me from all different directions, and as I stood in the swirl of water I felt an inner peace come over me. It was as if I needed to acknowledge and honor that yes, I am now strong
enough to stand in the eye of the storm and am able to stay grounded in the process, because now I have a balanced sense of self and an inner strength that is connected to the divine. And I also have been given beautiful tools and wisdom to guide me and keep myself grounded. While I was standing there I also began to feel the power of the water. Not the power on the physical plane but the spiritual power that can be given to you by the energy of the water. The current began to move through the palms of my hands and through my whole body. It was so amazing.

What would it mean for you to play full-out? At work? In your partnerships? With your lovers? In sex? In your creativity? With your kids? With your dreams? What would it look like? What fears would you have to bypass? What confinement would you need to bust open? Exercise your leadership in sex, in relationships, in work, in creativity, and in life. Lay your claim. Make demands on yourself for high performance, high enjoyment, high fulfillment, and fun.

Life is too short not to play full-on, clits out, big, bold, brazen, and beautiful. Put the damsel who waits for her knight to rest. Stop taking whatever comes. Stop living by reacting. Quit bitching. Flirt with the one you think is attractive. You are orgasmic and full of vibrancy. Start living like it. Fire doesn't hold back. Fire plays full- out. It doesn't make itself small. It doesn't dim its light because there are other fires nearby and it might take something away from them. In fact, if they get together, they'll make a much bigger, raging pyre, lighting everything around them.

For fifteen years, I worked as a firekeeper in a women's sweat lodge community founded on Lakota spiritual teachings and practice. I learned deep lessons by working with the fire, which “traditionally” only men were allowed to tend. I've built fires in downpours, in snow, in icy cold, in blazing heat. Each fire has its personality and each one has its needs. The fire always tells you what it needs if you listen. So I learned to listen to fire.

Some fires need a song, a prayer, a focused breath, to get going. Some just need you to stand back and let them do their thing. Any fire can catch and blaze bright when you begin with a firm foundation and all of the necessary elements: A base. A bit of kindling. Air flow. A focused caretaker. A match or a spark.