Reflections with Neycha:
Erotic Holiness 

​​I have always been a fool for the intoxicating madness of longing.  Not for material possessions, but for the transcendent experience of erotic holiness - that sacred and deeply sensual exchange that happens between a performer and her audience, a lover and his beloved, my God and me.

 

In many parts of the world, outside the bounds of westernized thinking, the concept of spirituality is something that is delicious and white hot.  Venerated, spiritual practice can melt away our resistances to experiencing the full potential of our humanity.   When we allow ourselves the freedom to move into every corner of our beings - sensual, sexual and otherwise - that surrender in itself is spiritual.  

 

For the creator, I have a fierce undeniable attraction that splits me wide open.  There is not a lover had or imagined more erotic than the relationship I have with God.  We touch and my body becomes an inferno.  Do you not feel the commanding warmth of spirit in the crevices of your heart and soul?

 

To be touched by something transcendent is the most erotic thing I know.  Yet, there has long been a suppression of the sensual in the spiritual conversation.  The split between spirituality and sensuality is a deep psychic schism for almost everyone in our culture. It arrests our genuine attempts at self-actualization.  Refusing the sensual in the sacred and the spiritual in the sexual, we allow ourselves to be reduced to apologists and our sexuality to be absurdly identified as obscene.

 

To condemn the sensual is to abandon the spiritual. Both the sensual and erotic are representations of our innate hunger for vastness, fantasy and passion - chief aspects of the spiritual life that are not always appreciated.  In our spirituality, we are not summoned to deny the matter of the body, but to sanctify it. This practice reminds me that the divine is dancing with me every single moment, in the sanctuary as well as in the bedroom, with the desired as much as the hated.  There can’t be yin without yang, just as there can’t be pro-creation without God in the details of the most erotic.

 

Between sensuality and spirituality is the very pulse of life. Their intercourse is the whole of energy.  This energy is the nucleus.  Whether you call it nirvana, orgasm, love, God, Buddha or Jah matters not as much as that you make the call - in whatever fashion - so that you may know intimately the great spirit of your being, who as a gentle and most perfect lover animates the sensuous in all life forces.

 

Waking up to the erotic is to catch fever darlings! Rendezvousing with it is like the act of falling in love. Not the ascent we normally think of in our spirituality, but a holy decent - a falling into bliss over and over again. This falling is a meditation on God, with God, as God.  Do you know a thing more vulnerable and naked than to fall into the holy mystery unencumbered by the weight of oppressive belief systems? How many moons must pass before we stop demonizing the “Eves” of ourselves?  Sensuality is so powerful because it transcends the duality of good and evil.  

 

For much of my life, I’ve spent a great deal of energy fiercely challenging duality and celebrating the co-existence of what seems dissonant. I’m convinced the key is to return the mind/body/spirit mythology to its original glory as something unmistakably connected. In the end, we may discover that the fearless expression of our sensuality is a direct path to spirit.    

 

In his poem “An Astronomical Question”, Hafiz writes, “What would happen if God leaned down and gave you a full wet kiss? That should be enough contact with God in one day to make anyone crazy.”

 

I wish you craziness my friends.