Meditation #16 From Love to Sex

Meditation #16 From Love to Sex

I am finally catching up, and as I was getting ready to write last night, I turned on CNN and watched a disconcerting report on "sexual reprogramming for homosexuals" carried on during decades by psychiatrists and mental health professionals. Our relationship with our bodies and especially, our sexuality, is still a very obscure topic, especially since it requires removing all masks and being open to pain and confusion.

I was brought up in a country where female beauty is idealized and sexualized highly from a very young age. I remember the taunting and familiarization with sex, gender roles and the relationship between men and women, or of those who felt attraction to those of the same sex, as always being at the core of jokes and conversations held not only among adults, but frequently shared and encouraged as a humorous talent among little ones: the telling and retelling of comical stories where the common denominator was always the ambiguity of language and how it served the purpose of ridiculing precisely what people repressed, the intense desires and conflicts that sexuality arose and that were so easily disguised as humor.

I look back at my adolescence and realize with horror that I was not only dancing with the devil, modeling in Medellín in the 1980’s, but surrounded by deceit. My hometown was dominated by drug-dealers and abundant dirty money, a pervasive game involving sophisticated scenarios such as the night clubs built precisely by that blood money and establishing a high stakes, fast-paced traffic of every single human desire, where young pretty girls were customarily just currency, and usually the cheapest commodity to be traded and used and abused at will. I look back at my self-image and credit my mother with the filter that allowed me to have a sense of dignity that prevented me from getting lost amidst the dazzling allure of the pleasure promised by the moment.

I found out about several unwanted pregnancies that happened very close to me as an adolescent and interestingly, fear of that ever happening to me was a big deterrent in my behavior. But looking back, even though I had the privilege of a mother who did not shirk conversations and questions about sexuality and always described sex as the most beautiful experience two people who loved each other could share, I wish I had understood earlier on, the psychological implications of sharing your body and soul with another human being. Very little discussion of this important part of sexuality is ever presented, not only at homes, but at school, and our society, represented mainly by the media, insists on portraying sex as a casual, non-committing, non-binding encounter that is presented as seeming to involve two bodies, but very rarely includes the consequences of the encounter between two souls and two visions of the world.

I have observed the reactions to sexual scandals in the media and among people and see how usually the behavior is examined as a deviation and analyzed from the guilt and shame perspective, the highlight is often the disgrace at having been careless enough to have been caught, while analysis of the complex issues of fidelity, power, and human weakness and sexuality are overlooked, or simply denied.

We seem to believe that like Dorian Gray, we can use our representations of reality, our portraits, consisting on the facades we present to the world, our powerful stances, positions, or possessions, as shields from the truth of who we are; complicated, fallible beings who need to be willing to stare their humanity in the face to fully understand their weaknesses and also their beauty, which is most majestically revealed precisely when we confront our vulnerabilities.

Only by opening our minds, bodies and souls to inquiry, to questions, to longings, to desires, to unfulfilled needs, can we fully inhabit our sexuality, and allow the real You to seek connection with another. Just as when we lay our clothing aside to allow another to become one with us, masks and fears need to be shed, in all three dimensions, forming a bond of unbreakable communion. We spontaneously inhabited our sexuality even as babies when we were held, breastfed, cuddled, massaged and explored our bodies, and we were reminded that we were loved. Sadly, our upbringing may have distorted our perceptions of who we are as sexual selves, but the way back requires re-learning who we are and learning to love and accept ourselves.

Before we can even begin to comprehend the far-reaching effects of a sexual encounter with another person, regardless of our sexual orientation, we need to understand human connections, relationships, affection, conversation, empathy: the gift of looking into another’s eyes and putting down the walls to allow the real selves to shine through and venture to reach out and let the sparks fly. Only then might we find our paths to understanding the fire that is created when two human beings melt one into another and find an echo, a mirror, a bridge that allows them to fuse into the divinity of another. Only through love we can understand this power, but it starts with the love we must first feel for our own selves; Love is the beginning of a healthy sexuality. 

With love,

Lina.