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.
