Woman on Fire (5 page)

At our core where this energy or fire lives is that desire toward more, toward being, toward growth, toward becoming what we are here to
become. It is a desire to experience pleasure and joy in the magnificent matter our bodies are made of, in living a fully expressed life. Our souls are determined to live vibrantly in this world—which reflects this core eroticism in all things: it whispers in the wind and radiates in the warmth of the sun on our faces. It is the pure bliss of a cat basking in sunshine. It is the glisten on the rhythmic waves of the ocean. It is the softness of skin and the sound of your lover's voice in your ear. It is a baby's full-bellied laugh. It is the texture of the strawberry as you bite into its flesh. It is the heat of breath in sexual ecstasy. It is a bee that plumes a flower for nectar. We all seek that nectar of life itself, which is in and wholly of itself enough. A complete experience. That nectar is joy and bliss and orgasm. It is making love to the natural world as well as we would a lover. It is playing with the eroticism in others through hearty laughter, sharing memory, appreciating beauty. It is the core of life. Life would not exist at all without this powerful energy.

True north is there in your erotic core, and it will always lead you to the promised land of a life fully lived, of breathtaking edges explored, and dreams lavishly realized. When you are tapped into this energy, when you embrace it and love it and get to know it, this energy allows you to create more, to become more. When you deplete it, you deplete your core self, you smolder your fire, and you dim the lights on possibility. You agree to what might at one time have been unacceptable and give in to mediocrity, accepting less than you want of life.

I have spent years looking for a good definition of sexuality, and I have been shocked at how few real definitions exist. I've got a bookshelf full of sexuality textbooks and I have poured through them seeking a good, solid definition for what sexuality actually is, only
to find that nearly all of them fail to define sexuality at all, even though they are each entire tomes on this important subject. When I have found definitions of sexuality, they are either so broad and vague or so specific and related to sex itself that none of them really do justice to the magnificence and magnitude of sexuality.

The women I work with know sexuality is bigger than the larger culture acknowledges. They ask good questions: Where is the nature, the magic, the energy of sexuality? Where is art and music and creativity? Where is the aliveness I feel when I'm sitting in a beautiful place against an old tree? Where is the image I see of my own genitals that shows up in the natural world, on tree bark, in cliffs, and in flowers? Where is the ecstasy I feel when I'm dancing, that ecstatic connection to the power of my own body? Where is the breadth of sexuality that deeply connects me to all that is, the storm inside me that feels the rush of water when I bring a vision to life?

I began to play with this idea, and I wanted to create a model that held the magic of sexuality that these women know, and that I know, exists. I developed the Core Energy Model of Sexuality as a way of expressing what sexuality is capable of and what it encompasses in the wholeness of our creative lives and erotic selves.

In my Core Energy Model of Sexuality, I see sexuality as more like a ripple where the core is our energy or fire, and from that energy we move into connection, on which we build identity and, finally, power. I think the impact of each part is like a breath, taking in and strengthening at its core, and then flowing out in a ripple like water does when a pebble is dropped into it. And it's a two-way street . . . your power impacts your identity development and expression,
which impacts your ability to make connection and build intimacy, and ultimately affects your own core energy vibrancy.

Sometimes your core energy is depleted or not in a healthy place, and that will impact everything else adversely. It all begins with that core of energy you have within you. This model depicts sexual power and its functioning, and the Nine Elements in the rest of this book are how we can amplify, develop, and support the growth of this core power in each person.

There is a powerful well of energy at the core of your being, and you have many choices for how you will develop and use that energy. Energy is the beginning of all creation. It is a fire that builds in you and expresses itself in many forms. It comes alive when it is creating because that's what it's meant to do: it's meant to expand and multiply.

WHAT YOU FEEL/EXPERIENCE:

HOW YOU EXPRESS IT:

You use your core energy to experience desire, bliss, pain, or pleasure, to breathe and invigorate your body, to become aroused and to have orgasms, to feel sensation and experience your senses. You use this energy to create a work of art or a delicious meal, to dance or sing, to play, laugh, and cry, to feel deep emotion, to entertain a fantasy, and to express your own divinity. When you are feeling most vibrant and alive, your core energy is fueled with the life force that propels you in your life and helps you to feel the depths of
emotion and heights of ecstasy. You have so many different ways you can choose to use this well of energy.

You can choose to connect to yourself or your world in some way, or to deepen your experience of intimacy and
connection
.

Sexual energy is the fuel that is capable of building connection. We are meant to connect. We are not designed to be alone here. We never are actually alone, and yet our path is decidedly solo. Along the way we are supposed to connect—to commune—to have intercourse of many kinds with one another, to have companionship, to play. You connect to many things in many ways and create intimacy using your powerful well of energy. You might even be a person who does not actually desire strong connection with other people, but you might desire connection with yourself, or with nature, with art, or with the divine. Connection can be about many things:

If you are working on developing your human relationships, you are going to do a dance with expressing your caring and sharing of yourself by making yourself vulnerable and taking risks. Any
meaningful relationship will be founded on attraction, communication, loving and liking, trust, and exploration. When people become intertwined and begin to lose their boundaries, they may experience what is known as merging—not always healthy, and the crux of codependency. You might experience skin hunger and share affection or explore and express your emotionality terrain. You will express your own boundaries and you might explore sex, and even pursue reproduction, birth, or creating a family with others. You might also be someone who feels enlivened by experiences of profound connection to nature, art, and music. You might be highly spiritually inclined and cultivate relationship to what you consider divine. And your own masturbation practice and self-development is part of your relationship to self that is so critical to how you relate to others.

The greater your sense of yourself, your values, and who you are in this world, the more you may take on
identities
that are important to you.

From and within connection we are able to identify ourselves as a sexual being. We express and define ourselves in reference to our environment, our world, and the people in our lives. Our identity is very much based on culture and our place in history. It actually changes with time and place. Humans have a need to categorize and create identities for ourselves and sometimes, nonconsensually, for others (more aptly known as “labeling”). Those identities relating to our sexuality are varied, and they give us power in many ways—and sometimes we feel disempowered around identity as well. It depends on how we use identities and what messages we've internalized about each one. We can also get very attached to certain identities and they can limit us or be very ego-driven. Identities can give voice to who we are, allowing us to create community and to be more visible in the world. This is not a book about identity, so I am going to focus here on sexual identity, but other identities around race, class,
culture, ethnicity, and disability are also really important. Many sexual identities are also racialized, and that can add important layers of meaning to them.

WE CREATE SEXUAL IDENTITIES ABOUT MANY ASPECTS OF WHO WE ARE:

Your identities can be related to your biological sex or gender. Who you are as a woman, man, transgender, trans*, or intersex person might be very important to you. Your biological sex is your body (genitals, chromosomes, hormones), and your gender is culturally learned, evolved, or chosen. People play with gender and express it in so many ways. There are literally hundreds of gender identities now, from high femme, butch, trans*, boi, grrrl, genderqueer, drag queen, drag king . . . the list goes on. For many people sexual orientation of heterosexual, bisexual, gay, lesbian, queer, pansexual, heteroflexible, or asexual might be very important. Relationship status like single, married, divorced, or widowed might be something we strongly identify with, or relationship styles like polyamorous, monogamous, nonmonogamous, or monogamish can be important for how we organize our relationships. Sexually, people take on many identities: top, bottom, dominant, submissive, service boy/girl, vanilla (sex that is rich without a kinky twist), kinky (enjoys playing with power, control or sensation, fetishes, or BDSM in some way), and so on. We
might even choose cultural archetypes to wear proudly as identities like virgin, slut, wild woman, or femme fatale.

We may choose to become part of (or create) communities organized around a particular identity. The value in this kind of community-building is having others with shared interests, qualities, and desires in our lives, garnering support and visibility and a way to meet other like-minded individuals who may have shared values. For people who are largely unseen in mainstream culture, this can be really important and can create power. For instance, we have gained power and acceptance of gay/lesbian/bisexual/trans* people via organized communities and people willing to speak out and be seen.

From that place of connection, knowing and naming who we are, we either step into our power and claim it, or we feel powerless. To look at how sexual
power
shows up, ask:

• How do I animate my sexual agency?
  
• How do I actually take action around my sexuality in my relationships and in the world?
  
• How do I utilize my sexuality as a source of strength for my life?
  Power
  

Sexual power is about how we exercise our own personal power and agency sexually and in the world at large. Women often get really uncomfortable with the idea of power. When I talk about “sexual power” I am talking about your confidence, your expression of agency over yourself, your desire and your body, your internal sense of personal power, and how you use all of it to create the world and life you want. It's
power-within
and
power-with
. Not
power-over
.

POWER (OR THE LACK OF IT) AROUND OUR SEXUALITY COMES FROM: