To practice the art of making love is first to shake the mind and senses free of anything that has accumulated. This can be challenging because making love can feel so rife with meaning that we may want to reassure ourselves we know what we are doing to cover the fundamental insecurity we feel. But that insecurity is sex itself. It is the substance we are working with. Feel it. Turn in to it. It is likely a little tight, a bit shaky.
There will be a pull to focus on our partner or the various instructions for how to act in response to this fundamental shakiness. We will likely hear a barrage of suggestions and opinions. We keep driving our attention into the shakiness. The difference between making love inside this insecurity and outside of this insecurity is the difference between a photo and the actual experience—two-dimensional and three-dimensional. Inside of this insecurity is the dimension of sex.
Our mind will want to run fast, a response to insecurity. Instead, we get curious. Often, it is accompanied by a feeling of wanting to reach out and grasp for something, something to resecure ourselves. The racing in our heart might feel like we simply do not have time to focus and have no option but to react. Instead, we keep bringing our focusing into the center of the feeling of insecurity. There is a center that is often like a tight bud; it will be precisely what everything in us wants to avoid.
To slow the mind, focus on detail. Every detail matters. Scent is often the best to start with because it is not as potentially arousing as sight. At first, it may be difficult to tune in to the scent over the voices in our head and the impulse to reach out. We can start by focusing simply on the breath itself and the intake of air.
We can notice what enters with the inhale. We will likely smell the aromas of the body releasing hormones. Focus on taking the scent in. Feel it enter through the nose as it makes its way to the top of the head where it processes as "scent." Note whether it is sharp or soft or spicy or flowery. We notice how the scent has a sensation connected to it and how that changes the feeling throughout our body.
Next, we take note of the sensations in our body. The beating in our heart. Tune in to the specific rhythm. The feeling as the blood moves to your hands and extremities. The heaviness or weightiness. Notice the feeling of the skin. Perhaps it feels taut or buzzing. We are beginning to move into the Erotic mind, from stasis to process. The tightness of the insecurity should be opening, and from behind it, there should be a feeling of movement.
As we focus more on the various sensations—occupying the mind with the dynamic—the tightness of insecurity that the mind has organized itself around begins, with little tremors, to spread throughout the body. It is as if we have opened a spring that pumps a carbonated energy into the body. There is a distinct shift from tension to aliveness. The feeling in our system as if the horses were locked behind a gate transitions into a more concentrated slowness.
We must watch the mind here. It can feel like it lost something as the feeling of intensity shifts. Tension occurs as a compelling sensation and when it opens, it takes a moment to adjust to; it is like vision adjusting in the dark. Rather than racing to recreate the feeling of intensity, we give ourselves a moment.
Pause is always good. A single pause where we take an inhale and release an exhale. We notice our hands and how hot or cold they feel; if there is any perspiration. There will be a slight percolating sensation that may almost have us rise up out of our body. The instruction then is to come down into our body. Rather than floating over it, we draw the feeling inside of us by deliberately focusing our attention on the place where our body is making contact with the ground or the bed. Feel as those points bring a downward sensation and allow that sensation to pull us down and in.
We will likely go through several experiences. The first will be to just notice the physical body. The next will likely have an emotional quality. We may notice things we do not expect, like a moment of repulsion or even disgust. Or we may feel a quality or flavor of yearning. We feel it, but keep allowing ourselves to be carried down and through it. It will be a stream in our experience but we do not want to get lost here.
If we keep allowing ourselves to be carried down, there will be a place we come to where the energy is neutral, has an emotional quality, but is bright, alive, and electric. We will likely feel a jolt; the feeling that an internal light has been turned on. This is the body electric, the demarcation between the physical act of having sex and the experience of making love. If we do not make it to this level, it remains merely physical.
Here is a good time to make contact with our partner. From this place, we have the electricity to burn through the tumescent layer of self-consciousness to the location of the Erotic self, unencumbered by propriety or perfectionism. When we hit this location we can discern what our body is actually sensing, not what we think it should feel.
This is also the place where sensation may grow exponentially as it is no longer obstructed by the insulating layer of judgment that dampens our experience in day-to-day life—we are in the second or third generation of what we are actually feeling; here, the sensation is direct from the spring.
Be aware, it can be a shock to the everyday mind when we hit this spot. We move from the hard, solid, weighted, predictable world of impacted thought into the swirling mass of nonsensical atoms. There is a weightlessness to it in the same way that the mind is freed when the body floats in salt water. The energy is released into the body and thought moves onto a different plane. Allow the thoughts to move through. It can be pleasurable to see a whole new stream of thought, never before witnessed, pass unperturbed through a mind that has such deep and predictable grooves. But do not stop to pick out any one of them. Instead, make simple contact.
Our hands may feel like they extend out much farther than our skin. It may feel a bit awkward. What we should notice is that there is a sensation that is different from regular physical sensation by orders of magnitude. We can sense a field that extends beyond our physical body, like the sensation of static electricity lifting the hair from our scalp. We sense that field coming into contact with the complementary field in our partner. That is the "love" that we are making. We will be building, concentrating, and stabilizing this field.
We let our hand be moved. A natural feel-good to it occurs. Focus on that and not on making them feel any particular way. That would remove us from our capacity to sense. As if our hand can inhale, draw in the magnetism and the sensation of the other person. We do this for our own enjoyment, the way we might run our hand over velvet for the sensation we feel, not how we are making the fabric feel. We can feel the tiny fibers moving in one direction, then another.
Our mind will want to interfere, to censor and direct our touch for a result. Even if our hand and our touch feel a little bit stiff or creaky, we keep going. We are bypassing the "stop" mind that is trying to protect us from the very abandon we are aiming toward. We do not allow it to take root.
We will notice something strange in our hand; it will feel almost like it is going out of control. As if it has its own agenda and is responding to something other than the rational mind that usually seems to direct it. This is good. Let it be moved by sensation. Eventually, this will catch fire and our whole body will move and be moved in this way.
We are shifting from a solid to a liquid. We become like a musician, the music playing through us rather than us playing the instrument. We access a space never before touched and concurrently discovered with another. This is the experience of intimacy. Music is created but we are not sure who is playing whom.
Do not let logic enter. Do not venture outside to imagine how we may appear or try to contort the body to look a certain way. Stay in it and know there is no way that changing how we look could ever begin to produce the sensation of contact between the bodies electric. In fact, the visual faculty is so strong it can become a hindrance that anchors sensation in the mind and the mind's eye rather than allowing it to float freely and carry us.
We will be tempted to get carried away. We have hit the source of life-force energy. It carries with it a propulsion. It pushes things open. We are in touch with nature itself. The same force that makes tsunamis and rainstorms and turns night into day is being revealed from behind the layer we usually buffer consciousness with. It is not uncommon to feel swellings and upwellings.
The primal self is rising to the surface. It fills the lips, puts a layer of perspiration on the skin, and brings fluids to the genitals. But it can also bring tears to the eyes, and mucus. It can bring anger that had been tamped down into the chest. What is rising is the "us" that has been covered by the rock of appropriateness.
Eros has a distinct feeling here, sweeping through the body. It is a magnetic force that moves of its own accord, collecting, absorbing, and concentrating all of the dissipated energy. As it moves through, the Erotic body itself is opening.
There is something different in the felt sense of this body; a sentience. If the body electric feels alive, the Erotic body feels rich. There is a cool darkness to it. It can occur as the feeling of healing itself. The senses are calmed and cooled, the internal lights are dimmed, and the mind can rest into itself. In this place, a different knowing wakes up. Where there is contact with our partner, there is a masculine type of communication, and it feels as if we are listening in on a conversation.
This place has a darker essence and the primary experience is that of becoming permeable to the other; that information is being exchanged or shared. The deeper aspect of being is in exchange. When we inhale, we inhale air that has been inside of countless others and the whole of nature. When this body is connected to another, we are immersed in meaning-making activity. This is what matters. Here, we are given access to a massively magnified version of the exchange that defines life. It is like we are seeing life from the inside out.
At this point, more body contact can feel good. It can feel like our body knows precisely how to pull toward the other, as if perfectly suctioning itself. The feeling of "locking on" can feel incredible as this exchange between essences begins. The conversation between bodies has an intelligence. We can sense how connective the conversation is by an increase in vividness. The colors get brighter, the sounds get more poignant, the scents once faint or subtle grow thick like a blanket.
At any point in the experience or between experiences, we are going to encounter resistance, usually in the form of anxious "What if?" questions: What if we cannot make it through the insecurity or what if the Erotic body does not light up? What if we get too excited too fast? What if we experience a thought or a feeling we cannot get beyond? What if we do not like a scent or feel disgust at something we see? The amount of opposition we feel is in direct proportion to the amount of potential opening there is.
The response is to be steady, kind, direct, and without aggression. It is common to meet internal opposition with an aggressive stance, an energetic demand that one of the senses or bodies open. Or a threat that if it does not, we are going to protest and deliberately shut it down. This is often the response to our sexual impulse because we do not understand that its power is rooted in its sensitivity.
We feel the power and feel we need to match it by hardening. Instead, the instruction is to become softer. This is so hard to remember because we are trained to view sex as less than, so it will not give up the turn-on on demand. It will only open to our genuine open kindness and appreciation. People do not trust their sex, or they see it as unreliable.
Show up. Be kind. Don't posture with it. It knows it is more powerful. We should not try to steal from it and get the goods without giving ourselves. The goods are us giving ourselves. The feel-good of endorphins alone is a sorry consolation prize we're given when we do not make it beyond the gateways that can open. We can do this daily. We can show up for what is inside of this experience, whether we feel ugly or dirty or beautiful or sad or dead or bored. What is inside of making love will come to trust us, and when it does, for every move we make in its direction, it will reveal doorways unimagined.
We will find that there is a type of Erotic metabolism that speeds up. Our bodies get congested with so much of the undigested material of experience. But if we can make it down to this Erotic body, the undigested material becomes transformed into a rich, fertile experience by the process of making love. It is as if we have made it to the part of the forest where, beneath the pile of leaves, there is a heat. That heat is converting what is dead into nourishment. The same experience we have at the physical or even the emotional level, which can feel jagged or rocky or unsettling, is imbued with beauty down in the Erotic body.
With our Erotic body in contact with our partner, the undigested material gets heated up and transforms. Grief, for example, becomes a mournful, salient sensation that connects rather than separates us from the world. We can be taken over by the beauty and awe of shared experience. This is the eroticization of material, where what would have otherwise been uncomfortable or irritating is made rich and beautiful in connection. We move into a kind of alignment with nature herself. Something deeper opens.
We have made ourselves available, offering what we had wanted to keep, and as a result, we've opened the interior body of knowing. Knowing has us move in cooperation with life in such a way that we sense this interior body is entirely behind us. We feel it as our body is moved in accord with that of our partner's. What we clumsily struggled to know, what we so desperately searched for techniques to understand, is there, right at our fingertips.
The concepts have all burned away. There is a sensing organ that is alive in us. The feeling, though, is that there are two forces who have known each other since the beginning of time, playing hide-and-seek in various bodies. There is a sense of "Oh, there you are." More often than not, a flood and a release of emotion and release occurs. We are in contact with love itself. This is the conduit that has traveled since time immemorial through every body, as lover and loved.
As the deeper body opens, it can feel dreamlike, filled with a doubtless knowing. We know how to handle our partner's body in a way that will have them be able to let go. Vague boundaries become as clear as black-and-white. We can hear their thoughts. We know our partner. There is no mystery. There is no question. There is no searching.
At the same time, there is a playfulness, a humor, and a spontaneity as we catch up with each other and the lives lived since the last time. This is the place where information gets processed, where things make sense about why we turned left or why that job did not work out. There is a sense that we had to make it to this appointment, despite the conditions of our daily life. It was all for this, because this is where we get to be who we are, off the stage of life.
Here, there is a kind of self-possession we cannot know anywhere else. A new resolve awakens within us, a gift of the interior body accessed through making love. It offers solid and unwavering power to those able to remain with the impulse, without being carried away with fantasy or consumption. We are not running from anything. The voices can play out in our head and we remain so seated in who we are there is nothing to defend.
There is a strange sense that we have at once shed and inhabited our bodies. Where there once was bondage, in its place is security. But, it is the security we can only find on this side of insecurity. It is the security of the Erotic self, making it to the depths where it can breathe and express its nature. It feels like coming home.
We hear clearly the precise way to move and look at our partner, where to touch, when to stop, when to start. Our body is merely taking dictation. The movement is an overlay, like lyrics on a melody so beautiful we almost miss the words, but when we tune in, they add a deeper dimension to the experience.
The movement is so free, so unfettered, so entirely unself-conscious that we and our partner have the sense of being liberated from our bodies while inside of the body. The motion or movement can have a hypnotic quality, the mind mov- ing in accord with the rhythms and further loosened from "normal thought experience."
It begins with a pronounced sense of unity. There is an entire lack of separation between us and anything else. There is a sense of stillness in the seamlessness of experience. The mind becomes stripped of concept such that our experience now has a revelatory quality. We understand the nature of touch. We understand the nature of love. We understand in this very moment the nature of forgiveness. It is explaining itself to our heart. For many, this is the first experience of the unhindered self with the felt experience of perfection.
This is the arising of Erotic wisdom. This is the language we must understand to enter the next body. Remain with the sensation even as the subtlety can have the experience feel "trippy." If we feel foggy or fuzzy, we have disconnected. If we feel "high," we have disconnected. Come back and feel the contact of skin-on-skin. Of skin on sheets. Or just stop and breathe. As we do, we may feel a "clunk," almost like we were hovering over our body and we have now dropped in. This is good.
The art of making love is not to get into supernatural states; it is to get into our natural state. It may feel unfamiliar to the everyday mind, but there should be a part of us that feels like it is driving toward a very familiar home. If there is ever a sense of being untethered or lost, there is no need to go further in the process. True love-making is an art that takes a lifetime to develop.
