Reading Room

Sacred Intimacy, Sacred Sexuality:

“Erotic” means living life in Love!

By Marsha Anita Rand and Barnaby B. Barratt

Article published in the April 2006 issue of The New Spirit.

“Within my body are all the sacred places of the world,
and the most profound pilgrimage
I can ever make is within my own body.”

Saraha, 9th Century Tantric Adept 

In this culture, it is so easy to forget that we live within our bodies!  We tend to imagine that our spiritual development is about what we think, what we believe, and what we do. 

Even when we attend to our embodiment, too often we do so in the manner promoted by athletic clubs, spas, and hospitals.  We tend to view our body as if it were a mere machine, whose job is to be ready (even if sometimes reluctantly!) to do the mind’s bidding.  Our task is to keep the machine “healthy” – strong, with no diseases, alive as long as possible, and perhaps even cosmetically attractive.

We have forgotten how to listen to the voice of our embodiment … forgotten that our sensuality is actually the conduit of the divine.  Even while we chatter in our heads about “spiritual” matters that are “then‑and‑there,” divine energy continues to flow here‑and‑now within us, through us, and all around us.  We just need to listen, to witness, and to honor it.  This energy is Love, and to attune to it, to align ourselves with it, is to live life in Love.  This is the authentic meaning of the “erotic,” and of all that is sacred about the naturalness of being human.

We all know that “sex” can be one of life’s greatest blessings, it can also be the scene of some of life’s most painful tragedies.  We may or may not ever choose to have partnered sex, but whether we do or not, the erotic energies of our embodiment remain the source of our spiritual calling.

Nowadays, “tantra” is much misunderstood.  People mistake it as being all about having better sex.  Indeed, it can be about this.  But it is much, much more.  “Tantra” means to weave – to attune and align ourselves – with the energies of the sacred.  It is a spiritual path that attends to how we relate to ourselves … and then how we relate to our partners, to our friends, to our enemies, to the natural beauties that are all around us, and … to the divine!

In our workshops on “sacred intimacy and sacred sexuality,” we facilitate processes which help people to honor the spirituality within themselves, and then to honor the spirituality within those whom they may or may not choose as sexual partners.  There is no sexual activity or nudity in our introductory workshops.  But there is a lot of fun, a lot of meditation, a lot of challenging self‑exploration, and a lot about how to honor the divine within our partners … as well as within ourselves!

Of course, heartfelt participation in workshop exercises is not a substitute for therapy – however, powerful and growth promoting these exercises may be.  But tantra is – like all practices of meditation – healing.  We are all called to our spiritual path to heal ourselves … to heal the rift between our ordinary selves and our divine nature … to heal the alienation between our chattering minds and the divine energies of our embodiment … to heal all the business and busyness of our egotism so as to return us to living life in Love. 

“Sacred intimacy, sacred sexuality” is a process of bringing ourselves home to our erotic‑divine being, and to the erotic‑divine being of those whom we choose as our partners.