Auto Eroticism


Eroticism is about being turned on. Ecstasy is also about being turned on, as every cell in your body celebrates Life. The creative life energies that we call "sexuality," the perceptive faculties we refer to as "sensuality," when allowed true freedom and fullness of expression, produce the erotic, orgasmic state that we call ecstasy. Ecstasy is perhaps the fullest orgasmic state we can attain with our earthly bodies. I call these "Ecstatic Passageways," because for me, there is no higher calling than to find and share these.

I will explore these passageways with you, in hopes of enhancing your appreciation for the wondrous instrument and vehicle for ecstasy called "bodymind." Let's break new ground then with the taboo area of auto-eroticism by first moving away from the notion that it is synonymous with masturbation and genital orgasm, and secondly, removing masturbation from our minds as questionable responsible adult behavior.

Loving begins at home, within each of us. This means an ever deepening recognition of myself as an embodiment of Divine Creation. It also means an increasing appreciation of how the degree to which I respect, cherish, and delight myself colors all my daily interactions with others. If loving begins at home, so does lovemaking. Generically, lovemaking is any act of creating love, especially when it's conscious: kissing a child, fondling a kitten, smelling an early spring rose, consorting with the wind spirits on a breezy afternoon, melting in a lover's embrace. If you allow sexuality to be creative lovemaking energy in action, you'll experience any of the above expressions of lovemaking to be sexual—and sensual.

Play with that word, letting it become "sense-you-all." Imagine yourself keenly alive, alert, all your sense-abilities in play. Open up past our cultural vision that severely limits these concepts, often to the notion of a pursuit of sexual intercourse—unless you consider that intercourse itself is a movement toward Divine Union. Our restrictive cultural definitions, plus all its consternation and repressiveness about bodies, instinctual expressions such as touching, feelings/emotions, sexuality, sensuality, and fear of pleasure itself, severely limit the potential richness of our erotic natures and lovemaking capabilities. Our legacy is often a profound disappointment, a yearning for elusive intimacy.

Isn't it time for us all to celebrate ourselves as wholly Divine and naturally erotic? Why not experience ourselves as inherently sensual and sexual, all the time, and lovemaking as a natural, instinctual creative act? Let's stretch to consider that every act is "creative," being Creator/Love expressing, and therefore is lovemaking! If fear of being fully alive disappeared, we might imagine being ecstatic 24 hours a day! This dance of learning to feel naturally "turned on" is the art of ecstasy, and the art of auto-eroticism, the experience of sensual and sexual bodymind as facets of the pulse or rhythm of Life itself.

Ecstasy comes from making love with yourself and all life around you. Imagine being fully present and alive each moment. Imagine the "juice" you would generate. This is true self-pleasuring, another word often used for masturbation, a behavior that has certainly gotten a lot of mixed reviews. Masturbating has been said to cause warts and madness, and provide a speedy route to hell. It's still linked to the Protestant work ethic in which pleasure itself is suspect, along with anything that can produce it, ESPECIALLY anything linked to "the flesh" and instinctual energies. This locks up our feelings and emotions, bodies and minds, away from rapture. Even among educated persons today, many people associate masturbating with an adolescent mentality, or as a poor health choice. Most schools of Tantra Yoga teach that masturbating to ejaculatory orgasm saps life energy, especially for men.

In these atmospheres, self pleasuring is random, distrusted and infrequently available as the healthy, healing ecstatic passageway it is meant to be.

Author and athlete, George Leonard, in his now out-of-print work entitled The End of Sex, provides valuable perspective. He divides our lovemaking potential into two categories, the sexual and the erotic. He uses the word "sex" to denote the common, semi- conscious, depersonalized, generalized and manipulative activity most people engage in. I see this as coming from a bodymind split, a feeling of need arising from an alienation from Self and general lack of true intimacy. Typically there is a longing for "something" that remains elusive, perhaps a sense of connection with our Divine nature. Sexual activity, then, is reduced to an addiction or a way to "sell" ourselves, our products and services, and often a furtive, pathetic attempt to feel OK.

How does Leonard define "erotic?" Erotic denotes an encounter with Eros, the true Lover, and participating fully in the moment. It's where heaven meets earth. Each erotic encounter is unique, personal, and a conscious activity. There is no "goal" and no "performing." There is lovemaking. This is the domain of intimacy and of knowing Divinity within self and partner, and both as Beloved. This is also what I believe we all want to experience at a deep level no matter what our outer behavior suggests.

The point here is that we must pay attention to the kind of experience we are having if we want to have the most from our sensual and sexual lives. In his book The Way of the Lover, Robert Augustus Masters speaks eloquently about doing away with "compulsive rituals" and "pleasurable sedation," mere relieving of tension, to "lucid passion" where "love out-dances every alibi." He asks us to let ourselves "be a meeting place of grief and joy, a potent and throbbingly human intersection of both the mortal and the Everlasting." He describes ecstasy for us as an intensification of happiness that accompanies true Being, rather than being related to attaining something. He also counsels that in sexual terms, if this sort of happiness is not present throughout our lovemaking encounter, orgasm won't assure it. Says Masters:

"If such happiness is not present before we begin to engage in sex, then our sexual act is precisely that, an ACT whose predictably scripted dramatics are intended to produce 'good' feelings and intimacy, an act that is but fleshed-out fantasy, starring us in our search for ecstasy.... If what precedes orgasm is not ecstasy, then orgasm is but best a bolt of pleasure, a few waves of intense thrill; even if it's a storm, a great bursting, an intoxicating undulation of delicious current...it is still only a cul-de-sac of quickly spent excitation.... Ecstasy exists in the heart of each moment, in the very depths that we flee in our compulsive search for pleasurable release. Ecstasy is the full-bodied freedom of unexploitable freedom, a feeling that pervades our entire being...the shout of the awakened heart..."

Whether Masters is accurate or not, realistically, I'm sure many would welcome even some of the kinds of intense pleasures described above, whether or not true ecstasy is being experienced yet. In my private practice it's common to meet individuals who experience little pleasure or passion at all. Yet I feel it's very valuable to keep opening to all that is possible, especially when our hearts are participating. This allows for the possibility that we've only touched the tip of an iceberg, and an erotic and ecstatic iceberg at that!

Auto-Erotic Do-It-Yourself-shops: Getting down to basic pleasurable and practical brass tacks: How successful are you at providing yourself with deeply pleasurable experiences? How do you make love to yourself? Think about it carefully. Do you treat your senses to pleasure meals? How much life to you absorb? And give back? Have you ever experienced making love with the sun or moon? Stars? Wind? A tree? What touches you? Do you enjoy the experience of touching yourself? If you're like most, you'll have to pause both to remember any specific acts of self touch as well as to consider if they pleased you or not. You probably have more questions than answers. It's helpful in creating the touch life of your dreams to answer such fare as, "What kinds of touches did I engage in today? What kinds of self touches are even possible?"

Let's get specific. Keep a "Touch Journal," either all the touch events you can recall, or those you feel are most significant. Really get "in touch" with yourself. If you can, be even more gracious, more loving. There's nothing in the book that says you have to be serious. Enjoy yourself in the process of exploring your bodymind, your sensitivities. Learn what kinds of touches turn you on, delight you or arouse the fireball in you. Discover what kinds of touches (and environments) bring out the soft and gentle you, or the wildcat you, or the playful you. You may surprise yourself that you really can enjoy auto-eroticism.

While I can't argue the potential awesome wonders of two-someness, I will state emphatically that most of us have only barely begun to discover how to self-pleasure. And in a real sense, even with someone else, your actual experience is produced by you as an act of self-pleasuring. Furthermore, the deeper your self-pleasuring, the less desperate or needy you are apt to feel and the better your chances will be to experience ecstasy with another. So take your auto-erotic moments to heart and they will become a way of thinking and a way of life.

You might begin with a Heartbreath. I teach this to all my students who wish to experience fuller sexual/sensual presence and "energies." Just get into a position that allows you to breathe easily and comfortably. Focus on your "love spot" —the heart— and feel your love for yourself expanding with each inbreath, deepening with each outbreath (or vice-versa, if that fits you better). Relax even more profoundly. Feel anything and everything. Trust where feeling takes you. My experience is that a hundred percent commitment to each moment of reality/feeling will carry you into ecstasy.

Now imagine yourself connecting your heartbreath to your genitals. Love yourself in this way, and feel everything and anything that comes to you. Allow healing to take its natural course. Often this simple movement will arouse and pleasure you. This is the time, if you wish, to begin to touch your body. Begin anywhere, any way you like. As you do, notice any thought pictures that form or pass through your mind, as well as any inner "voices" that sound. You will develop a keen awareness of how your mind, body, emotions and sexual energies interrelate.

Author and sex therapist Bryce Britton, in The Love Muscle: Every Woman's Guide to Intensifying Sexual Pleasure, suggests that masturbatory self-pleasuring is essential to mature sexual response. She says masturbation teaches you the basics about your own genital orgasm. Her suggestion to set up a date with yourself for an autoerotic encounter works for men as well as women. Take the phone off the hook, find a spot where you won't be disturbed and give yourself time to enjoy and discover. Be kind to all your senses: flowers or incense to delight the olfactory, a tasty beverage for gustatory awakening; a favorite piece of music to enhance auditory participation. Visuals are important, whether internal fantasy images, or enjoying your roomspace or even looking at your own body in a mirror. And, most importantly, your tactile senses. You may begin by lying down on something that feels terrific to your bare skin, or wearing something loose, comfortable and sensuous. I call this "Getting into the Mood."

The second step is to "Relax." How nice that all these preparatory gestures may already have greatly relaxed you, as your senses take in all these delights. Feel the sense of your mind, body, and feelings to be in accord, all here in spacetime. Now you may relax even more deeply by allowing your mind to drift, detaching from thinking, just noticing thoughtforms as they arise or pass by. You may elect a third step, "Imagination," and begin to envision a specific lovemaking scene or scenario. It may be a special outdoors spot, and alone with a lover. If the weather is warm enough, and you have an open door or window, allow the breeze to silken your body as you dream. (You may even produce orgasmic waves this way!)

Now, as a next step, begin your heartbreathing. Experience this venture as a truly loving act. Notice, too, how heartbreathing relaxes your bodymind even more deeply. Later, after you've been exploring your body with self-touches, you may try varying your breathing as a way of producing different bodily sensations, of degrees and types of electric waves and currents of erotic energies. Try slow, regular breaths, and fast, fiery ones. Breathe through your nose as well as your mouth. You'll be amazed at what you'll learn about yourself.

The last step is the practice of touching yourself all over, every nook and delicious cranny. Try different kinds of touches, such as caresses, tickles, scratches, tiny pats, pinches, slaps, with differing durations and pacing. Use your fingertips, nails, palms. There are no rules! The only limits are with your imagination. Treat yourself as you would wish to be treated by the best lover you could imagine. BE that best lover to yourself. You may find that it will change your inter-personal relationships for the better. Like will attract like in this case. As you touch yourself, deeply feel the pleasure that is your Divine birthright, inherent in your makeup. Remember that touch is ultimately a communication. It is information. What do your self-touches say about you? Your mood? Your mind? Your heart? The kind of past experiences you've had about touching? In these new touching, auto-erotic, self-pleasuring adventures, you can recreate your history, dissolving past hurts, ills, defeats. Learn to touch only with love. Be touched by the love that is in creation all around you.

Be love in the making. Be ecstatic. Be well. Pass it on to others.