Why is sex so dangerous? Recently, I attended a one day seminar with a successful and well-known psychotherapist. I had long been interested in his approach and I wanted to observe his work with groups. Since I was the outsider and most of the participants were in a long-term therapeutic relationship with him, I kept to myself and listened quietly during most of their feedback sessions during the day. One after the other, the participants talked about a longing for passion in their lives. Women spoke about confusion around how to have their relationships change from platonic to passionate. One woman was waiting for Mr. Right to make the first move, hiding herself in a wooden helplessness. Other women wondered aloud about how to deal with their jealousy. The men for the most part remained silent, examining their role as victimizers of women, apparently determined to continue withholding the passion which would awaken the sleeping beauties in the room.

Energetically, this group felt heavy to me. Heavy with guilt and shame about hidden repressed desires. Longing to be in a romantic relationship seemed to be OK in this particular group of spiritual seekers but asking to be well and properly fucked seemed quite out of the question. No one dared to use the word SEX at all. No one. Not even once. They also didn't say horny or geil or lusty or hungry or pussy or cock or anything like that. Instead, they used words that describe various states of suffering. They were all very in touch with their pain. At least those who spoke up. The group held a lot of negative judgements about anything to do with pleasure. The group leader expressed a rather condescending tolerance toward a certain amount of pleasure in the lives of his students. He suggested that it could be allowed in those of us who were still on the lower rungs of the ladder of consciousness but the clear message coming from him was that over time, if you were a good pupil, pleasure would be overcome and gone beyond, because it was purely an ego trip. Pleasure and our desire for it was seen as the enemy, the culprit, the root of the problem. Part of the illusion of existence.

I had to laugh. In my experience, most people have little or no experience of authentic, deep-rooted, earth-shaking pleasure. You know what I mean, like, REAL pleasure. The kind that makes your blood pulse until you see stars, blasts opens all your chakras and causes tears of joy to spring from your eyes. The kind of pleasure which shows you where God truly lives. I have observed that because suffering is much more acceptable and finds much more approval in our society, people tend to ignore their longing for pleasure or try to satisfy it with rough substitutes which work only on a very superficial level and of course never touch the soul. Things like fast cars, rich meals or Cuban cigars become the instruments with which we pleasure ourselves. Our bodies generally and our genitals specifically, are left completely out of the picture. Just too dangerous. Or if the genitals are a part of our pleasure program, we keep the experience within strict limits. God forbid, we should make any loud noises or move our bodies wantonly. Most people actually hold their breath when they start to experience orgasm fearing anything too deep or uncontrolled. Hard-core pleasure is just too damn risky and unpredictable to be part of our everyday lives. A spiritual teacher or therapist advising us to rise above our already pinched, constipated, dried-up experience of pleasure and calling it an ego-trip, seems not only absurd but downright destructive.

Much to my amazement, nearly all of the people present in the room that day appeared to follow right along with this ego-trip idea, never questioning whether it actually corresponded with what they knew to be true for themselves. Pleasure was definitely a NO NO. I had the uncanny feeling that I had experienced this many times before. It felt like the same old game that I have witnessed in other groups where over the years I found myself looking for answers. We are encouraged to substitute our old belief system that we inherited from our parents for one that our beloved teacher or guru presents. Unfortunately, because teachers (even gurus) are human too, their belief systems are based largely on their own personal limitations and fears. It may be equal to or even more repressive than what we grew up with but in our confusion and hunger for "truth" we close our eyes and pretend that the new way is wonderful and fresh. We pretend that it's just what we need to make us feel whole and finally at home with ourselves. We pretend that this one specific teacher that we have finally found has the answer for us. Unfortunately, in my experience, sadly little is actually changed in such circumstances and we are still just as stuck depending on something or someone outside of ourselves, just like we did years ago in Sunday school when we heard our first sweet story about Jesus, Mary and Joseph.

Of course we've all come a long way from the days of sin and Sunday school. We no longer refer to sensual gratification as sin. It's not necessary to do so since that seed, sown in our early childhood, fell on the fertile ground of a guilt-ridden psyche. Today we hear spiritual teachers predicting ascension out of the body or suggesting techniques to draw our attention away from the energy of the "lower" chakras. Up, up and away, that's where you want to go. Connect with other star systems, channel higher energies, prepare for lift-off into either a space craft or another dimension depending on who you believe, when in fact we haven't even begun to understand what we are doing right here on Earth. Did we incarnate in order to leave again as quickly as possible? Sexual diseases in every imaginable form and variation beg us to focus on the physical body and its needs in the here and now, and still we are advised to rise above and go beyond. The underlying concept isn't new, it's still the same old sin dressed up in new-age clothes.

Odd as it may seem, most seminar leaders, therapists and spiritual teachers are actually themselves terrified of sex. Yes, believe it or not, it's true! When they encourage us to "go beyond" pleasure (please read here "skip over" pleasure), it's not because it's best for us but because experiencing your own deep erotic pleasure and finally knowing yourself physically and sexually is a really dangerous thing. It's dangerous for society. It's dangerous for partnership and family life. It's dangerous for all the structures of our society as it exists today. It's dangerous because in doing so you will finally grasp the essential experience of being in human form, of having a body. You will know what it means to be fully integrated into physicality. Grounded, here, present, on the Earth, in the world. You will finally be in the energy that you incarnated right here on planet Earth to experience. When you get that far, you are nearly home so you don't obey rules very well anymore and youčre much more difficult to control. In fact, you become a real pain in the neck. Too much freedom and the whole damn system might crash. Being free sexually is one step away from total anarchy, believe me. If your teacher doesn't enjoy perfect freedom himself, why should he encourage it in you? Not possible. No fuckin' way.

If you could sit on the market place lovingly stroking a beautiful hard cock and all the men and women who walked by would admire it, or maybe lovingly stroke or touch it, sprinkle it with holy water or even just smile, nod and go on about their business, what a different world this would be. If your potent hard member were honored and encouraged by your community perhaps there would be no need for violence. If we loved your cock maybe we would see the end of war. Maybe. Who knows. If women were encouraged to have bigger, louder, more voluptuous and wet orgasms and they invited, even encouraged their friends and neighbors to participate in the sacramental beauty of the experience, perhaps pornography would be transformed into a kind of sacred eroticism. Perhaps our wounded vaginas would finally heal. Perhaps.

It was Alan Lowen who first turned me on to the power of the word "YES". It was years ago but it has become my mantra. What's yours? If you could summarize your life with one word, what would it be? Right now, just for fun, take a look inside. Take a moment and examine all the places in yourself where you choose to say no instead of yes. Especially around your sexuality. Especially around your genitals. Set this magazine down on the table in front of you and cup your hands warmly, affectionately over your genitals and say very softly to them "yes". Let them feel the warmth, the acceptance in your hands. Let your balls, your cock, your pussy, your clit feel the love that you are sending down from your heart. "Yes...yes...yes" say it several times. Stay that way for just a moment feeling into the greatness of who you are with all your sexuality, your lust and your desire intact. In a world where so much is denied and so much is rejected, I challenge you to take back this abandoned part of yourself. I challenge you to take it back and experience the power and the freedom that it holds for you. I challenge you to love your sensual/sexual self. Pleasure is my prescription for transforming the world. May it start with you and me.

Maggie Tapert is an internationally known healer and seminar leader who has lived and worked in Europe for more than twenty-five years. She is known as a "way-shower" who guides and supports people along their individual personal path of spiritual awakening. Gifted with a compassionate and intuitive understanding of the energetic light body, she uses her insights to fully support the flowering of the sacred Self. Healing the separation between the sacred and the sexual has been the focus of her work in recent years. Maggie has a healing practice in Switzerland, where she lives and she is working on a book on female sexuality entitled Heavenly Lust.

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