I am a poet, performer and psychic. Here are some of my Dreamstory videos:
Here is an extended playlist of all my Dreamstories:
Here is a link to SOULSPEAK/SOULMOVES, the non-profit that hosts my work and the work of other multi-talented poets and performers:
www.soulspeak.org
www.soulspeak.org
Here is a link to my web radio program, ADORA & FRIENDS, that plays 365/24 on the fabulous LADYBUG LIVE:
To all the love and mystery within youHere is the full text of my book THE SEXUAL SHAMAN. It can be ordered as a finished book by contacting me at the email specifiied in this blog.
THE SEXUAL SHAMAN
A Woman’s Guide to Enlightening Sex
by
Victoria Wolfe
and Adora
A Woman’s Guide to Enlightening Sex
by
Victoria Wolfe
and Adora
Published 2004
Pagan Press
Sonora, Mexico
Copyright 2004 by Victoria Wolfe & Adora
All rights reserved. Address inquiries to:
Victoria@NYCT.NET
THE SEXUAL SHAMAN
Table of Contents page
Introduction
Chapter I Connecting the Genitals to the Heart
Chapter II Connecting His Heart and His Verbal Expression
Chapter III Helping Your Partner Take a Spiritual Leap
Chapter IV Comforting Him Through a Challenging Transition
Chapter V Bringing Out His Nurturing Feminine Side
Chapter VI Disconnecting His Ego From His Sexuality
Chapter VII Helping Him Break Up Old Patterns
Chapter VIII Helping Him Rise Above his Love for
Torturing Women
Chapter IX Helping Him Complete the Life Cycle
Chapter X Healing Others Through Sexual Connection
with Your Partner
Afterwords
© 2004 Victoria Wolfe and Adora
Make no mistake about it. This is a handbook of revolution: social, sexual,
spiritual.
It begins with the premise that the force we call “God” is an energy, a matrix for the known, the not yet know and the unknowable elements of the universe.
Humans have historically attributed human characteristics to this force in order to understand it and feel closer to it. The specific characteristics affect and were meant to affect society and the human values and behavior sanctioned by society.
The face and form we humans put on “God” is about to change to that of a woman.
The effect this will have on the many cultures of our planet is deep and profound. When this image shifts, everything shifts. For with this change comes an honoring of those qualities linked in our hearts and minds with the feminine: compassion, empathy, nurturing, intuition, creativity and the wisdom of the body.
Adora
Sonora, Mexico 1.2004
Introduction
Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess. You no doubt know this story all too well. She wangled her way somehow into the prince’s affections. Call her Snow White, call her Cinderella. Call her by your own name. She grew up thinking beauty and poise would get her far, married young, and woke up six months later to discover that the prince was already less interested in her. And she in him. They had sex, but somehow it wasn’t anything special. She really loved him. Sort of. All the books said that what she had was what everyone wanted: a prince, a castle, a nice car, an interesting career or lovely children, or both. But on a spiritual level she was hungry. Just as many women all over the world are hungry. They are all looking for something. Guidance, perhaps. The voice of the goddess. A route to transcendance.
Adora was such a woman, and so she spent some time in the quiet of her own space for a number of years figuring out what the message of the goddess was. This message did not come quickly, but it did come. This book relates her findings.
First, and quite amazingly, she discovered that she was a sexual shaman. A shaman is a religious practitioner, found in many small-scale societies around the world. The shaman is believed to be able to diagnose and cure illness because of a special relationship with the spirits. Sometimes known as a medicine man or witch doctor, the shaman is traditionally male. But not always. Adora is a female shaman and hers is a message for women. In fact, it is more than a message; it is a system, a practice. Adora believes that the Sexual Shaman System has the potential to revolutionize the world; to solve longstanding social problems, and to change the basic ways that people operate.
Right now, in the early twenty-first century, more evolved people are necessary to solve the world’s problems. So this system works to train women to help themselves, their men, and thus the world to evolve through the transformative power of shamanic sex.
Sexual shamans take many forms. They include both sexes, many ages, different sexual preferences and ways, many personality types. It is not strictly a male/female system although that is the dominant pattern described in this book. Both homosexual and heterosexual relationships may reveal the issues discussed in the following chapters. Some shamans are shamans all their lives, and some shift into other patterns or ways of being—spiritually and sexually—from time to time. They may experience periods of monogamy and/or periods of multiple partners, as well as periods of sexual abstinence. As noted, the techniques in this book are not limited to male/female relationships. They can be used in triangular relationships, homosexual unions, and even, on a fantasy energetic level, in celibate situations. As is always the case, intention is everything.
To the sexual shaman it is clear that the primary purpose of sex—apart from procreation—is to transform your partner. That’s it. That is all it is—the most it is and maybe the least it is. It is not a new concept. These techniques that have emerged for Adora are well grounded in the traditions of tantric sex and other ancient practices. This book teaches a very simple, contemporary version of what has long been established as sexual wisdom with deep historical roots. Personally, Adora has avoided the study of these traditions because she wanted the message of sexual healing to come through to her unbiased by other people’s opinions.
In The Tantric Path of Purification, Lama Thubeten Yeshe writes, “We are talking about the potential for total development. In this, there is total equality between men and women. . . . We gather for the infinite progression of human consciousness that eventually leads to total satisfaction. That motivation should be remembered in everyday life, and if it is, men and women will be constantly learning and getting support from each other” (208).
The Sexual Shaman is a handbook that can change your life and the way you go about your life. It has the potential to alter centuries old institutions and traditions based on prevalent but limiting ways of thinking and behaving. We in western culture suffer from many schisms, including a strong cultural and historical predilection to see sex as bad or dangerous. And even though we certainly moved away from such a simplistic and puritanical view during the twentieth century, many of us have not yet arrived at an understanding of the full spiritual potential of sexuality.
If women all over the world are taught the basic shamanic knowledge, they will be claiming their sexual power in the most wonderful possible way—and also changing the world for the better. They will be healing and transforming the world through healing their sexual partners.
Basic Principles of the Sexual Shaman System
Supporting the sexual evolvement of one’s partner is the goal of sex for people with a strong spiritual/sexual orientation. It just works. What’s necessary and natural is a new sexual ethic that comes out of this awareness—one that removes sex as a form of manipulation or power play and substitutes for these the other person’s spiritual evolution.
· When you start to absorb this way of perceiving sex, everything shifts. There is no jealousy. What are you jealous of? You want your friends and lovers to have their spiritual advancement. It does not matter where it comes from; their antenna draws them to the correct person for their spiritual selves. Jealousy just does not exist then. The whole concept of women competing for men has to be examined by every woman individually. If jealousy and competition continue, this impedes women’s development, both individually and as a unified movement the likes of which the world has not seen in ages.
· A person is not a piece of property. It is inconsistent with being on a spiritual path to think of people that way.
· Healing here means the evolvement process, the enlightenment process. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there has been anything unhealthy, diseased or wrong before. Here the word “healing” expresses a peeling away of layers in order to know yourself. The healing process involves letting things out from the dark and into the light so that you can see and be who you truly are. Transformation is an aspect of such healing.
· People need to be taught from childhood that sex is a pathway to merger with God. Like love, sex is a sublimely powerful tool for transformation; many people know this instinctively, but it has not been widely taught.
· Basically the kind of woman who will be drawn to the shamanic way would be a very open person who is fueled by giving. Shamanic sex is basically an act of giving.
Body Dreams
I’ll follow my body anywhere,
to your body, through your body,
taking your body into my body
no matter how we twist and turn
there’s the other, there’s that slow
unfolding, waiting.
Adora
Using the Sexual Shaman Techniques
· This book describes ten classic situations where a woman can work on her partner’s evolvement while they are engaged in sex. Each chapter describes a particular situation or issue—such as disconnection between the heart and the genitals—and then explains how to energetically support change in the lover’s present pattern of behavior. Drawings are provided in order to make visual what happens during lovemaking. These drawings are important to an understanding of how energy is transferred and transformed during sex.
· If you set your intention and program yourself in the way Adora suggests, your own techniques will emerge, sometimes immediately. Your own strong, powerful female side will produce individually created techniques as a product of the energies that you and your partner generate.
· There are poems included throughout the text that celebrate in different ways the experience of merging with another person and with god/goddess.
· Becoming a sexual shaman is a process. A woman first has to make the commitment to herself and her partner. She has to believe herself capable of being his spiritual guide and helping him to transform himself.
· Adora performs a conscious preparation for lovemaking or a sexual encounter. She notes that what she is engaged in is not necessarily “love” as we think of it. Rather, it is helping another person grow spiritually. This is not romantic love as we have been taught, which is often a magical , somewhat haphazard endeavor, generally proving disappointing in the long run. The ways that she prepares for a session are as follows:
1) She rededicates her body and her sexuality to her partner’s soul expansion.
2) Next she requests divine guidance: “Oh Great Spirit, enter my body, fill me with light and love.”
3) The god/goddess is now moving through her and all her moves will be correct moves. All will be to that purpose.
4) She may then put on a video or audio tape to enhance the sensual experience. As a poet-performer she has made several CDs that consist of hot, hip music and channeled (spontaneous) speakings, performed by herself and her male collaborator. These are designed for sexual shaman lovemaking sessions. But she notes that Gabrielle Roth CDs among others are also wonderful for this purpose
· The empathic woman gets off on the excitement that she is creating for the male, finding she has limitless imagination for ways that she can pleasure herself in his presence. So the giving, ultimately, is mutual, but, interestingly, the woman (in her goddess personae) is in charge. Adora points out that you cannot go wrong. Intention is everything.
GODDESS SONG
They’re holding a goddess festival in town
and of course I’m thinking of going.
I’ve climbed down from the moon, donned
human clothes, brushed my teeth,
combed my mane, and am searching for
stray stars to hang about my throat—
flashing lights to call you home.
Home is what I call my body when
you’re around. Home is the goddess nest,
the spice bush, home is where I entice you in
to the sound of gentle wind chimes
while the sweet port in my mouth
dribbles from my lips into yours.
Listen, love, to the wind in the leaves,
listen to my heart beating its song.
I am being called to the goddess festival.
I’ve climbed down from the moon where
it’s cold and lonely. I’m abandoning
Diana’s bow. Just hold out your arms.
Home is what I call my body and your body.
Listen to my heart beating for you.
They say human men make lovely consorts
and I do adore the smell of your hair.
Victoria
Understanding What It Means to Become a Sexual Shaman
1.Tend well to your own spiritual development. Although you certainly will expand at the soul level in the process of doing this “work”, you will bring to it an increasingly powerful energy that will make your effect stronger. Once you honor your self-development and the continuing responsibility of your sexual shamanship, appropriate opportunities will not doubt present themselves: healing circles, workshops, seminars, yoga classes and retreats, conversations and connections with spiritually evolved people.
2. Expressing yourself in an art form can be a ladder to
enlightenment; so can running or drumming or dance—particularly spontaneous dance. Body work , such as acupuncture or massage or any of the healing modalities, can also help you move a notch higher.
3. You should be working on yourself all the time, not in a grim
“Will I never get there?” way, but playfully, happily, knowing you have been given the miracle of life in human form in order to expand your soul.
4. Speaking of working on yourself playfully: it is best to be hot as
not. Think sex. Feel sex. Be sex. Do “it” in your head and in your bed and anywhere else your imagination takes you.
5. Your sexuality is a tool for soul expansion, exceeded only by
love. When you have both going, you can make miracles or, rather,
miracles can be made through you.
6. The way you will make these miracles is through both intention
and energy. Energy is moving in our bodies all the time; the Chinese call this energy “chi”. In a healthy body that energy is moving freely, but in most of us—because of all the pressures and stresses upon us, both in the past and the present—there are energy blocks at various points in our bodies. You need to free up your own energy and then use your energy to free up your lover’s body.
7. Sexual union is an excellent time to free energy blocks. Orgasm
involves an enormous release of energy, making it a fruitful time to free up the lover’s psyche. But it is rarely used this way. The sexual shaman uses the time of lovemaking as a time for healing.
8. The sexual shaman takes her flowing sexual energy and her
lover’s sexual energy and blends them in ways that heal his psychic wounds. Since almost all of us have such wounds, there is much “work” to be done. But this is work that is deeply pleasurable. It is also work that leads to spiritual expansion.
9. As Kenneth Ray Stubbs has written of evolved women, “Their
bodies are their temples, to which they invite others. Their purpose is to support a deeper discovery of the spiritual flame that burns with us all. Sexual energy, in a broad sense, is this flame” (Women of the Light, 17).
10. In the shamanic system described in this book we are really
talking about a connection, not a relationship in the current sense. You are giving your partner the opportunity to grow. This is truly giving men what they want, whether they realize it or not. It introduces a whole new level of connection to any existing relationship. In fact, it is the only approach that keeps the sexual aspects of a relationship deeply alive and propels that connection over a much longer period of time than the old fashioned sexuality ever could.
The Sexual Shaman
In the beginning, I didn’t know why these poems were
coming out of me, like bubbles,
so quick, so quick.
Then I got the word from the She-God herself
that I was to be her symbol, her embodiment,
here on earth
for this time, for this journey of mine.
Why me? Why me?
And then, I kind of got used to the idea,
and I started becoming more and more like her:
bold and brave and beautiful,
and very, very sexy.
And pretty soon I stopped asking:
“Why me?”
Adora
Chapter I:Adora was such a woman, and so she spent some time in the quiet of her own space for a number of years figuring out what the message of the goddess was. This message did not come quickly, but it did come. This book relates her findings.
First, and quite amazingly, she discovered that she was a sexual shaman. A shaman is a religious practitioner, found in many small-scale societies around the world. The shaman is believed to be able to diagnose and cure illness because of a special relationship with the spirits. Sometimes known as a medicine man or witch doctor, the shaman is traditionally male. But not always. Adora is a female shaman and hers is a message for women. In fact, it is more than a message; it is a system, a practice. Adora believes that the Sexual Shaman System has the potential to revolutionize the world; to solve longstanding social problems, and to change the basic ways that people operate.
Right now, in the early twenty-first century, more evolved people are necessary to solve the world’s problems. So this system works to train women to help themselves, their men, and thus the world to evolve through the transformative power of shamanic sex.
Sexual shamans take many forms. They include both sexes, many ages, different sexual preferences and ways, many personality types. It is not strictly a male/female system although that is the dominant pattern described in this book. Both homosexual and heterosexual relationships may reveal the issues discussed in the following chapters. Some shamans are shamans all their lives, and some shift into other patterns or ways of being—spiritually and sexually—from time to time. They may experience periods of monogamy and/or periods of multiple partners, as well as periods of sexual abstinence. As noted, the techniques in this book are not limited to male/female relationships. They can be used in triangular relationships, homosexual unions, and even, on a fantasy energetic level, in celibate situations. As is always the case, intention is everything.
To the sexual shaman it is clear that the primary purpose of sex—apart from procreation—is to transform your partner. That’s it. That is all it is—the most it is and maybe the least it is. It is not a new concept. These techniques that have emerged for Adora are well grounded in the traditions of tantric sex and other ancient practices. This book teaches a very simple, contemporary version of what has long been established as sexual wisdom with deep historical roots. Personally, Adora has avoided the study of these traditions because she wanted the message of sexual healing to come through to her unbiased by other people’s opinions.
In The Tantric Path of Purification, Lama Thubeten Yeshe writes, “We are talking about the potential for total development. In this, there is total equality between men and women. . . . We gather for the infinite progression of human consciousness that eventually leads to total satisfaction. That motivation should be remembered in everyday life, and if it is, men and women will be constantly learning and getting support from each other” (208).
The Sexual Shaman is a handbook that can change your life and the way you go about your life. It has the potential to alter centuries old institutions and traditions based on prevalent but limiting ways of thinking and behaving. We in western culture suffer from many schisms, including a strong cultural and historical predilection to see sex as bad or dangerous. And even though we certainly moved away from such a simplistic and puritanical view during the twentieth century, many of us have not yet arrived at an understanding of the full spiritual potential of sexuality.
If women all over the world are taught the basic shamanic knowledge, they will be claiming their sexual power in the most wonderful possible way—and also changing the world for the better. They will be healing and transforming the world through healing their sexual partners.
Basic Principles of the Sexual Shaman System
Supporting the sexual evolvement of one’s partner is the goal of sex for people with a strong spiritual/sexual orientation. It just works. What’s necessary and natural is a new sexual ethic that comes out of this awareness—one that removes sex as a form of manipulation or power play and substitutes for these the other person’s spiritual evolution.
· When you start to absorb this way of perceiving sex, everything shifts. There is no jealousy. What are you jealous of? You want your friends and lovers to have their spiritual advancement. It does not matter where it comes from; their antenna draws them to the correct person for their spiritual selves. Jealousy just does not exist then. The whole concept of women competing for men has to be examined by every woman individually. If jealousy and competition continue, this impedes women’s development, both individually and as a unified movement the likes of which the world has not seen in ages.
· A person is not a piece of property. It is inconsistent with being on a spiritual path to think of people that way.
· Healing here means the evolvement process, the enlightenment process. It doesn’t necessarily mean that there has been anything unhealthy, diseased or wrong before. Here the word “healing” expresses a peeling away of layers in order to know yourself. The healing process involves letting things out from the dark and into the light so that you can see and be who you truly are. Transformation is an aspect of such healing.
· People need to be taught from childhood that sex is a pathway to merger with God. Like love, sex is a sublimely powerful tool for transformation; many people know this instinctively, but it has not been widely taught.
· Basically the kind of woman who will be drawn to the shamanic way would be a very open person who is fueled by giving. Shamanic sex is basically an act of giving.
Body Dreams
I’ll follow my body anywhere,
to your body, through your body,
taking your body into my body
no matter how we twist and turn
there’s the other, there’s that slow
unfolding, waiting.
Adora
Using the Sexual Shaman Techniques
· This book describes ten classic situations where a woman can work on her partner’s evolvement while they are engaged in sex. Each chapter describes a particular situation or issue—such as disconnection between the heart and the genitals—and then explains how to energetically support change in the lover’s present pattern of behavior. Drawings are provided in order to make visual what happens during lovemaking. These drawings are important to an understanding of how energy is transferred and transformed during sex.
· If you set your intention and program yourself in the way Adora suggests, your own techniques will emerge, sometimes immediately. Your own strong, powerful female side will produce individually created techniques as a product of the energies that you and your partner generate.
· There are poems included throughout the text that celebrate in different ways the experience of merging with another person and with god/goddess.
· Becoming a sexual shaman is a process. A woman first has to make the commitment to herself and her partner. She has to believe herself capable of being his spiritual guide and helping him to transform himself.
· Adora performs a conscious preparation for lovemaking or a sexual encounter. She notes that what she is engaged in is not necessarily “love” as we think of it. Rather, it is helping another person grow spiritually. This is not romantic love as we have been taught, which is often a magical , somewhat haphazard endeavor, generally proving disappointing in the long run. The ways that she prepares for a session are as follows:
1) She rededicates her body and her sexuality to her partner’s soul expansion.
2) Next she requests divine guidance: “Oh Great Spirit, enter my body, fill me with light and love.”
3) The god/goddess is now moving through her and all her moves will be correct moves. All will be to that purpose.
4) She may then put on a video or audio tape to enhance the sensual experience. As a poet-performer she has made several CDs that consist of hot, hip music and channeled (spontaneous) speakings, performed by herself and her male collaborator. These are designed for sexual shaman lovemaking sessions. But she notes that Gabrielle Roth CDs among others are also wonderful for this purpose
· The empathic woman gets off on the excitement that she is creating for the male, finding she has limitless imagination for ways that she can pleasure herself in his presence. So the giving, ultimately, is mutual, but, interestingly, the woman (in her goddess personae) is in charge. Adora points out that you cannot go wrong. Intention is everything.
GODDESS SONG
They’re holding a goddess festival in town
and of course I’m thinking of going.
I’ve climbed down from the moon, donned
human clothes, brushed my teeth,
combed my mane, and am searching for
stray stars to hang about my throat—
flashing lights to call you home.
Home is what I call my body when
you’re around. Home is the goddess nest,
the spice bush, home is where I entice you in
to the sound of gentle wind chimes
while the sweet port in my mouth
dribbles from my lips into yours.
Listen, love, to the wind in the leaves,
listen to my heart beating its song.
I am being called to the goddess festival.
I’ve climbed down from the moon where
it’s cold and lonely. I’m abandoning
Diana’s bow. Just hold out your arms.
Home is what I call my body and your body.
Listen to my heart beating for you.
They say human men make lovely consorts
and I do adore the smell of your hair.
Victoria
Understanding What It Means to Become a Sexual Shaman
1.Tend well to your own spiritual development. Although you certainly will expand at the soul level in the process of doing this “work”, you will bring to it an increasingly powerful energy that will make your effect stronger. Once you honor your self-development and the continuing responsibility of your sexual shamanship, appropriate opportunities will not doubt present themselves: healing circles, workshops, seminars, yoga classes and retreats, conversations and connections with spiritually evolved people.
2. Expressing yourself in an art form can be a ladder to
enlightenment; so can running or drumming or dance—particularly spontaneous dance. Body work , such as acupuncture or massage or any of the healing modalities, can also help you move a notch higher.
3. You should be working on yourself all the time, not in a grim
“Will I never get there?” way, but playfully, happily, knowing you have been given the miracle of life in human form in order to expand your soul.
4. Speaking of working on yourself playfully: it is best to be hot as
not. Think sex. Feel sex. Be sex. Do “it” in your head and in your bed and anywhere else your imagination takes you.
5. Your sexuality is a tool for soul expansion, exceeded only by
love. When you have both going, you can make miracles or, rather,
miracles can be made through you.
6. The way you will make these miracles is through both intention
and energy. Energy is moving in our bodies all the time; the Chinese call this energy “chi”. In a healthy body that energy is moving freely, but in most of us—because of all the pressures and stresses upon us, both in the past and the present—there are energy blocks at various points in our bodies. You need to free up your own energy and then use your energy to free up your lover’s body.
7. Sexual union is an excellent time to free energy blocks. Orgasm
involves an enormous release of energy, making it a fruitful time to free up the lover’s psyche. But it is rarely used this way. The sexual shaman uses the time of lovemaking as a time for healing.
8. The sexual shaman takes her flowing sexual energy and her
lover’s sexual energy and blends them in ways that heal his psychic wounds. Since almost all of us have such wounds, there is much “work” to be done. But this is work that is deeply pleasurable. It is also work that leads to spiritual expansion.
9. As Kenneth Ray Stubbs has written of evolved women, “Their
bodies are their temples, to which they invite others. Their purpose is to support a deeper discovery of the spiritual flame that burns with us all. Sexual energy, in a broad sense, is this flame” (Women of the Light, 17).
10. In the shamanic system described in this book we are really
talking about a connection, not a relationship in the current sense. You are giving your partner the opportunity to grow. This is truly giving men what they want, whether they realize it or not. It introduces a whole new level of connection to any existing relationship. In fact, it is the only approach that keeps the sexual aspects of a relationship deeply alive and propels that connection over a much longer period of time than the old fashioned sexuality ever could.
The Sexual Shaman
In the beginning, I didn’t know why these poems were
coming out of me, like bubbles,
so quick, so quick.
Then I got the word from the She-God herself
that I was to be her symbol, her embodiment,
here on earth
for this time, for this journey of mine.
Why me? Why me?
And then, I kind of got used to the idea,
and I started becoming more and more like her:
bold and brave and beautiful,
and very, very sexy.
And pretty soon I stopped asking:
“Why me?”
Adora
Connecting the Genitals and the Heart
Disconnection between the heart and the genitals may be the single most common situation for men. Almost all of them need help in this area. It is something that is in the way of spiritual development, and to be able to change that to a strong connection is very important for the person, and also for everyone with whom that person connects in any way. The sexuality (or genital connection) is always there, but what it needs is to be clearly driven by love.
What you as a woman are doing is being conscious of this. It is not that your pleasure is not important, or that you are some kind of sex goddess/slave, there only for his evolvement. No, you are choosing to make healing an aspect of your sexual life, your own healing and that of your partner. But since we know that men and women have been socialized very differently for thousands of years, and that testosterone no doubt plays a role in male behavior, we women need to be aware of such issues as genital fixation. Adora always starts with the idea of connecting the heart and the genitals; it is part of her foreplay to energetically reinforce the connection. This can be done during sex too. But in the foreplay phase, there are simple movements that can be performed: like a circular motion of the hands and arms, a drawing up of the energy from the genital region to the chest. Imagine you hold an invisible beach ball in your hands and you must keep transferring it up from his genital region to his chest; make the movements slow and graceful. Have you even seen anyone doing Tai Chi? It is that same slow, meditative movement. When you do it, you feel it. It is a remarkably powerful movement.
Sexual shaman practice involves moving energy within the lover’s body in order to free up both flow and connection. Why this works so effectively during lovemaking is that a good deal of energy is released through sexual stimulation. This makes it an excellent occasion to engage in healing practices, a possibility recognized by a number of ancient peoples. Tantra, for instance, is a five-thousand year old system of sexual union, practiced in ancient India and Tibet, based on an understanding of the energy exchanges that occur during sexual union. It is a complex body of knowledge, and it is not necessary for the modern sexual shaman to study it unless she so desires. But we shall refer to it rather frequently in this book because its principles and practices are so wise and so illuminating.
The ancient Kashmiris believed that women’s spiritual capacities were deeper and more direct than men’s, and the various Tantric schools in general were pro-women (Odier, 19). The woman was perceived to be the ultimate point of incandescence, and women of knowledge were known as yoginis. They taught the path of the whole person, the regeneration of desire, and a return to the senses.
So it is not such a leap to a contemporary recognition of the power of the goddess within all of us. As an ancient hymn to the goddess stated:
There is no jewel rarer than woman,
no condition superior to that of woman. . . .
there is not, nor has been, nor will be
any holy place like a woman. . . .
any yogi to compare with a woman,
no mystical formula nor asceticism
to match a woman.
There are not, nor have been, nor will be
any riches more valuable than a woman.
(quoted in Odier, 21)
Adora tells a story of one of her early experiences as a sexual shaman. She was in a healing session led by a very powerful woman spiritual guide. All in the group were in a highly sensitive state, with many spirits around. She was sitting opposite a very handsome young man in a classic legs-crossed lotus position. But every time she looked at him, she saw him as a brutal Mongol. That is what his face and energy were projecting. To see him so committed to hardness of body and emotion struck her as sad so she immediately started to fantasize giving him a most loving and sensual blow job. Her visualized hand reached up and touched his heart just at the point of the ejaculation.
After the healing session was over his whole face and body had changed; he had somehow been humanized in some very profound way. And as if he knew whom to thank, he leaned way forward towards her and prostrated himself in a prayer posture. Every time afterwards when she saw him, that change was still there. This story suggests that deep healing work can be done just in the head and heart; it doesn’t have to be done in real time in the real body.
In every lovemaking session, this technique of connecting the heart and the genitals can be incorporated. It does not need to be a situation where disconnection issues are a problem for this person. Rather when divine forces lead one, such binding of body parts tends to slip into every lovemaking session–whether by your design or divine design.
The major technique here is as follows: one part of your body–hand, breast, genitals–needs to be touching the heart, chest of the lover. It can be accomplished in any one of a number of wonderful, imaginative ways. You just need to think of yourself as the link between his heart and his genitals. You and your body are that essential, soothing link. That link can be realized in innumerable configurations. Just use your imagination. Go with it.
· Lick his chest area.
· Move your tongue from his genital region to his chest (holding your hand on his chest as your tongue lightly moves up his torso).
· Keep your breasts against his chest as your hand manipulates his penis.
· Lick his testicles lightly while your right hand caresses his chest.
What any of this does is shift the energy into the heart/genital link pattern. Your body is where your divine guidance comes from. One often hears healers say, “I was led to do this.” They’re actually led by their bodies that are moved by divine forces.
Otherwise, without this connection of heart to genitals, you have—in the extreme instance--rape and pillage or people who hate the person with whom they are having sex, which is, unfortunately, quite common (see Catholic and Puritanical sexual guilt and a long history of misogyny). Look around the world at the bands of young men with guns engaged in military actions and even genocide. See just how often the gun becomes the outlet for sexual tension, and how such young males are trained not to connect their hearts to their genitals. This is how in the Bosnian conflict you could get an actual military tactic that used rape as a method of breaking the will of the enemy. Large numbers of Bosnian women were raped repeatedly by the Serbian troops as a form of ethnic cleansing. When such women became pregnant, they were ostracized by their own community as soiled; many ended up mentally deranged and suicidal.
Something clearly needs to be done to reorient such male aggression. And women, as lovers, possess the possibility of healing such men. It is something that needs to be physically reinforced between yourself and your partner. The woman needs to “see” the heart/genitals connection, and then proceed to connect these body parts—physically with touch-- before or during sex. With some people such a connection may be deeply programmed already. But with most people it needs to be reinforced.
Adora’s guess is that there are whole countries and societies where men are damaged in this particular way. They are probably warrior cultures, oriented towards violence and terrorism. What has gone wrong? She once asked a friend to introduce her to a real terrorist so that she could test out her theory. He knew a central European wild man, who happened to be a bar owner. This man was regularly violent, had made threats on the life of the president, had been jailed–what was wrong with him? One possibility is that he is stuck in a view of the world where all people are not connected: my religion is the best and I’ll kill to prove it. An evolutionary step up for him would be to implant the idea, “I can’t hurt somebody else without hurting myself.” But how do you help that person to move that step up?
If Adora had such a man in bed, what she would do is make horizontal movements around his heart area with her hands, broadening his ability to love (beyond his religion, his country, his family) while she was in some way also pleasuring his genital area. When having intercourse with such a person, she would be saying at the moment of highest excitement, either to herself or at whatever volume it came out, “Broader, broader,. . .deeper, deeper. . .wider, wider”-- something verbal that would move him towards expansion of that heart area. This technique is called “implanting” and works best at the time of ejaculation. That time is so precious in terms of transformation; it is a shame to waste it. It is then that you say whatever comes to you, and it will come to you.
Such an approach to lovemaking as healing is one of the keys to world transformation, according to Adora, because if you support men’s enlightenment, you change the world. No question. At least the potential is there.
Connecting His Heart and His Verbal Expression
“ This recognition was inspired, “ Adora relates, “by my primary sexual partner because he hadn’t been verbally expressing the love that I knew he had for me. And I was missing that. So when we made love, I made a few gestures and connected his heart to his verbal expression by getting him to give me a really deep kiss with his tongue while I put my breasts on his heart area. I just kept that connection going for as long as it felt good. I liked it better than he liked it. But, interestingly, he turned to me and said upon removing his tongue, ‘I have really missed you.’”
Certainly there would be other ways to create this heart/verbal expression connection:
· kissing his throat (the location of the throat chakra, which is the chakra of expression) while placing a hand or breast or arm over his heart;
· sitting gently on his chest, your genitals to his heart, while you lean over and place your tongue in his mouth;
· sucking on his nipple while putting a finger into his mouth.
Any way that you can connect his mouth to his heart is a way to move the energy into verbal expression.
This connecting of the heart to verbal expression is a very important thing to do because we are a society of people not speaking from the heart. In fact, this is the only way that people should ever speak to each other. All people need to speak this way–from the postman to the politician. You surely want to speak to children this way. Children always speak from their hearts, unless they have been forced by repressive parents or cultures to abandon this true speech. Certainly very young children don’t have to be taught. You can also talk to friends this way and absolutely to your lover. If everyone on our globe spoke from their hearts that alone would make it a significantly different world.
But what if deep in you heart you have something negative to say? And certainly such occasions do arise. At first one might go silent. We often seek to protect those we love. Don’t forget, though, that your heart is programmed for the other person’s evolvement also. So speak out what you need to say gently and with love. Honesty and cruelty are not the same thing. And when you speak something true and without malice, the person you are with will recognize this. We cannot avoid the dark side of life. Instead we need to incorporate it.
We need to honor and live and speak truth as we see it in order for advancement to take place individually and collectively. The sexual shaman always supports integrity. Were we to become a world of truth-tellers, we would have moved a giant rung up the evolutionary ladder. One of the reasons so many people are utterly disenchanted with politics and almost any public speech at all is the wide spread belief that all we hear are lies. People, particularly many high-profile people, have made deception into a twisted kind of art form. Advertising has fed into this massive public paranoia as has the ever-widening culture of corporate speak, which is all about damage control and spin. So perhaps we must begin in the bedroom. If our intention is to heal, our speech will not be toxic. The goddess is a truth teller. She knows not how to lie. Let her speak through you or let yourself tune in to the goddess within. Remember what the Bible says: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John, I i).
We want to hear words of affection because they are signs that help us to feel appreciated. So connecting the heart and verbal expression is a reasonable goal. But ultimately it is deeds more than words that show the heart’s truth. The glib man with the good line is just as disconnected from his heart as the shy man who fears to reveal himself. Words are only as true as the speaker.
A woman we know was wildly in love for a year with a man whom she had met several years after her husband had died. This man was a master of language and would tell her that he “loved” her on a regular basis. She took these words as true coin, and treasured them in her heart. She is a passionate woman, and she gave herself over fully and completely to this man. But what she failed to perceive was that although he could say the words of love, his actions spoke more of a refusal to commit. He traveled a good deal and rarely invited her along. He would go to parties and other social engagements without her. At one of these parties he met another woman, whom he secretly began to see. You know what happened next. But when he told our friend that things were over between them, she was shocked. She had failed to note how little his heart had been involved—trusting his warm words and his eagerness for sex. For him, she had been just a passing dalliance, even though he kept her around for a year. She had given her heart away.
If you work on connecting his heart to his verbal expression, you may be able to tell when there is some problem. It is not so much what he says, or even the words he chooses, as that he manages to communicate how much he values you. It has sometimes been said that “words are cheap,” and they are cheap when they don’t mean much to the speaker. Lovers, like politicians, are capable of polluting language until it means the opposite of what it says. But that is a sad situation for everyone involved. We need to make compassion and honesty our measure of true expression. And this is why deep kisses can be so deeply meaningful. We open up our mouth and breathe in the breath of our lover. Tongues move from mouth to mouth; boundaries disappear.
Please notice that ethically there is one very important principle involved here and that is that the lessons have to be purposeful in the larger sense, and merely wanting to hear a few affectionate phrases would not have been motivation sufficient to inspire this lesson. This awareness of a larger purpose always shapes the shaman’s guidelines and standards for her own sexual behavior.
Helping Your Partner Take a Spiritual Leap
When your partner is in need of and desirous of taking a spiritual leap (such as moving from addiction to a place of functioning fully on this plane), one way to help him is to delay his gratification. Rarely is he in favor of such behavior, but you as the shaman know that sometimes you have to frustrate his immediate desires for his own spiritual evolution.
Sometimes what occurs is a spiritual transition from one state of being to another, maybe a period of intense introspection and communication with your internal and external guides, a kind of prelude to a leap in growth of your own mystical powers. If he is also in need of a growth experience, then in helping him take the spiritual leap–no holds barred–you need to be able to take him from where he is to a state of ecstasy that will support his merger with god/goddess.
While making love he may ask to have you bring him to the point of ejaculation. You do this, but then stop, then lead him again close to ejaculation, and again stop. Now he has this very strong desire to ejaculate and this third time, you let him. He is in a position to benefit from the intense and complete release of the ejaculation. Of course he may not tell you exactly what he is experiencing–but this is a way of supporting his spiritual growth with your assistance. It could prove for him to be exactly the healing he needs for a major transition.
Remember, this one is an excellent technique for curing addictions. The basic idea is in some way (in your head or manually) to cut off the juice at two points. In the midst of the sexual encounter, when the man has reached his maximum excitement before coming, you cut off the erotic energy supply (move away, stop doing whatever; you want to turn him off–talk about the bills, his hair loss etc.). Your body will cut him off–then you start the stimulation cycle again (your little sexy dance), re-arouse him, bring him up to the point of ejaculation, then turn off the juice one more time. And only now, on the third movement towards orgasm do you promise satisfaction: “Now this time is the time, it’s going to happen,” you whisper. And this time you let him go. The long awaited climax pushes him through or over towards some spiritual transformation.
Body/Soul
There are wounds and bruises on your soul that are
reaching out to me,
in the guise of your cock, your tongue, your skin
wanting my skin.
Every tender and reachable place of yours wanting its counterpoint,
its counterpart in mine.
Why call it sex? Why not. It’s just a code
for a hungry yearning, just a code
for a . . . hungry
yearning.
Adora
Sometimes you may wish to pull in reinforcements in the form of other powerful healers and sexual shamans; they would do whatever they were led to do, and it would likely be of a physical or sexual or fantasized nature. You’re just doubling the amount of sexual energy the poor guy is getting. Specifically what is done would probably be a little different in each case–depending upon what excites the man the most.
We should mention that if this seems all too giving and not enough asking back, many women get it on when he gets it on. The empathetic woman is getting extremely turned on by all of this teasing of her partner. She recognizes that it is in fact leading him towards his greatest good. One day he may respond in kind.
“For instance,” Adora says, “ I had a lover once, an artist, a very sophisticated and erudite charmer, who seemed to have a kind of erratic behavior. I was very naive about alcoholics, people had to tell me, ‘oh Alex has been alcoholic for decades; why do you think he’s so slow producing paintings?’ I finally realized that was the explanation for the demanding 3 AM phone calls and annoying possessive streak. After we’d split up, he called me to check up on how I was--he was always warm and caring--and he mentioned that he had almost stopped drinking; he just had a glass of wine now and then. This new moderation was confirmed by mutual friends. He’d also made a connection with a gallery owner to sell his paintings, and he was actually moving ahead. When I was with him, he was constantly self-defeating in his career. Every time we were together sexually at his apartment, he would be unable to come; he could never come. But after I would leave, he would come. Something about my body was stopping him. The important message that I got was that he was actually benefiting from these occasions, the prana [energy] was pushing through in a spiritual breakthrough. I only understood this after the fact.”
Song for a Bawdy Lady
When she had to sing a song
to a short bald headed man,
this bawdy lady,
she never mentioned his baldness,
she never mentioned his shortness,
rather the way his tongue
slipped lewdly
from his lips
and the light,
oh the light in his eyes.
And while she sang, she’d strum
rum a tum tum tum
on the strings of a lute
she carried,
this bawdy lady,
upon her person
if ya know what I mean.
She sang real good
And bald men loved her.
Victoria
Comforting Him Through a Challenging
Transition or Fear Inducing Situation
This chapter simply describes several ways of physically helping people through what may be an emotional time, a down time, the rough spots that we all have. And because of the physical stimulation involved, these techniques can prove much more effective than just saying comforting things. As with all the other moves and techniques, the moves came to Adora first in a very intuitive way, and the interpretations came later.
The first of these comforting techniques is simply wrapping your partner–or a friend in need of comfort--in a blanket, very tight, as tight as you can get it, tucking it in all around. You may murmur little comforting things at the same time; also, you might check, “How does that feel?” Generally, it feels very secure when you are wrapped tightly; many cultures do that with babies, swaddling them in tightly wrapped cloths, or bundling them as papooses. If it is a sex partner, then your body, perhaps your bare body, next to him may also be wrapped up. Both of you in the blanket at the same time would increase the intensity. You just let him absorb your serenity and your love. You are giving comfort through your skin and your body warmth—a kind of giving all humans tend to appreciate.
Another technique for comfort would be very light stroking; if it’s your sex partner, you know where his really sensitive spots--not necessarily his erotic spots--are. It could be shoulders or back. Some men are very sensitive right on their sides, near their hipbones. You just use your intuition and your fingers to find these spots if you don’t already know where they are, and just very lightly stroke them and speak to them. Stroking a troubled or depressed partner is a way of showing love, acceptance, nurture. The skin is an extremely sensitive organ.
The third technique that came up for Adora was rocking. Now rocking can be highly erotic or it can be compassionate and nurturing or both. You can hold him in front of you between your thighs and just rock back and forth to achieve a soothing rhythm or you can rock his prone body from side to side, kneeling by his side. You just have to let yourself be led by your spirit guides, your intuition; don’t forget you’ve already self-programmed to make the spiritual growth of your partner your highest priority. Sometimes such rocking works well with a musical background. You might also wish to light incense if this is something that gives your partner pleasure. The point is to create a very safe and comforting environment.
So therefore, pretty much whatever happens–and it may be very surprising things that happen–you just allow yourself to be led. Rocking often serves as a kind of foreplay to sexual connection of a more obviously erotic kind. And it also stands on its own. Particularly if your partner is tired or depressed, he might like to know that no sexual performance is required of him. The sexual shaman is only demanding when it is appropriate to be demanding (and certainly that is sometimes the case). Because she knows her own worth, she knows how to give.
What is Going on Here?
A thousand flying birds inside my head,
their beating wings lifting me through and past passion,
then back again.
It isn’t lust anymore
but has transmuted into something I cannot name.
Something outside myself
awesome in its power
in its surges of terrifying
quick shuttles from one world to the other.
Like hiccoughs or stammers of our souls.
Adora
You can practice on anyone you’re involved with emotionally who will share their down times with you. This is an often-repeated set of techniques because the need is so often there--with yourself as with others. Think about tucking a child in at night, how much that child likes to be tucked in. Or think of your own mother if she was nurturing–the sheer comfort of her leaning over the bed and tucking you in: the hand on the forehead, the kiss on the cheek. Lovers can do this for each other. But then so can friends. A loving touch is a great gift.
Just to take these techniques outside the purely personal realm, consider this experience. A sexual shaman we know was walking along the cliff above the ocean in Santa Monica on a brisk day. The sun was out, but the air was cool. Lying on the grass she saw a homeless man, probably in his late forties, blond, bearded. He looked tired and alone. He lay on his side, covered by a blanket. She had the desire to go lie down behind him, hugging up to his body, his back, giving him comfort and warmth. She imagined doing this, lying there in the grass in spoons position, no talking, just the sharing of body warmth and her intention to heal and comfort him. Who knows if he felt it? It was a semi-erotic thought but more a desire to succor–a pure giving of the kind the goddess inspires.
So many people in our world today need comforting. We are here in this life really such a short time–days, hours, minutes. We need to heal through love and compassion. As Joseph Campbell writes, in The Power of Myth, “the other love, Agape, is a love of the neighbor as the self. Again, it doesn’t matter who the person is. It is your neighbor, and you must have that kind of love” (186).
On the Isle of Patmos
And if we dry salt tears, it is because
the beast in us bewails the loss of paradise.
In Greece there is no disjunction.
At last we inhabit our flesh—
thoughts are only purple flashes
when the hot sun and blue sky conspire
to make us animals.
We snort and moan and sweat—
Beasts, we are beasts!
The crazy analytic mind goes vacant—
bleached and burnt out.
Our only thought is: water . . . sand. . . hot.
At last we inhabit our flesh
and suck with gasps of slippery pleasure
the juices of some unforbidden fruit.
Warm in our bellies and skin,
the salt of the sea tingles on nipples,
arms are golden brown and glistening
and under them the damp hair is curling in the sand.
At last to be human is not to be confused.
Victoria
Bringing Out His Nurturing Feminine Side
Every advanced culture has supported the balancing of male/female aspects, the yin and the yang. While we often enjoy people who are totally lop-sided, (All in the Family’s Edith Bunker and the perennial dizzy blondes, more effeminate than any cross-dresser), the ideal is to be balanced. Most artists get this; most evolved people get this–that balance is extremely important in that it increases your personal power. And it also attracts different people to you.
This chapter’s technique is based on the underlying assumption that most men have been trained and encouraged to be more masculine in their behavior than is good for them. The personal tastes of the sexual shaman run to very well balanced men and to getting and keeping herself in balance. Sexually that balance in each person in a couple-relationship provides a much broader playing field for sex than if either individual is unbalanced. Sometimes your male aspect dominates, sometimes his; there are just more combinations, and interesting turns and twists when this is the case.
Post Card to the Departed Lover
Every day I say a little prayer:
I’m going to be okay.
And besides hearts were made
to be broken. This is the lesson
of risk and love.
I remember after the first time
we made love you ran me a bath
with juniper oil, and after you’d climbed out
and I stayed in, you sat on the floor
by the tub and held my hand
because you didn’t want me to feel alone.
I think that’s when my heart first
started breaking.
Victoria
Also, most women are drawn to men who have a very well developed feminine side because they can communicate better with them at every level: physical, spiritual, emotional. Also, sexual shamans believe that in the coming centuries there will be increasing flexibility in male/female roles. Even today many men hunger to express their nurturing, feminine side: their love for children, their connection with children, their compassion, their love of beauty. Sociologically, a necessary shift must occur worldwide since in a testosterone-dominated world violent behavior is all too frequently indulged.
So what is the technique here to achieve this female balance? First, you focus on his left side, which is the female side of his body. This is true psychologically, maybe neurologically, definitely spiritually. Focus on being aware of whatever he wants to do sexually, but do it on his left side. Caress him more on that side. Maybe lean towards him with your body during intercourse, to the left—to connect with his left female side. Sometimes words will come out of you also–audibly or inaudibly–that will encourage this shift that you are supporting, the shift toward balance. You might say anything from, “You are your mother’s son, show me your mother’s qualities” to “Balance, balance, balance” (just repeat it). Or you might even call him “Mommy” if he can deal with this. You may talk to him as if he were a woman, telling him how beautiful he is, what nice curves his body has, just the way you’re used to being talked to. This can come out during the day life, the non-sexual life, too–you are applauding his display of “female” qualities.
Many women are aware that bringing out their partner’s nurturing feminine side is very satisfying to them. It seems to touch very deep mothering needs that many of us have and may always have. Suck on his left nipple; that’s an important move. You can be cradled in his arms; that makes it more effective. But the important thing is you are stimulating his feminine side–and probably your own masculine side, but maybe not.
Other cultures display the attraction to sexual balance in their depictions of deities. Very often the male god figures in eastern religions possess certain androgynous traits; rarely are they hyper-masculine. And also it is often the male youth who is the erotic object of desire, in part because as a youth he still possesses certain traditional female features: the softer body, the hairless face. Such recognition does not mean that men must be other than what and who they are but rather that masculine and the feminine both have value, and too often we think of these traits in an either/or fashion instead of recognizing how we all embody both. The woman in touch with her male side and the man in touch with his female side make wonderful partners.
Disconnecting his Ego from his Sexuality
In case you haven’t noticed, this ego/sexuality connection is a very common and very irritating problem, especially with the most attractive men. They somehow have begun to think that they are God’s gift to women, instead of the other way around. Totally apart from the effect this may have on you as his partner, this is definitely affecting his ability to move upward on the evolvement scale or ladder or whatever you want to call it.
So Adora tells this story, “Once, after a particularly annoying display of macho egomania from my consort, I thought, I ought to cut off his balls. But not wishing to actually inflict harm, I quickly decided on a simulation of that action. I asked him to kiss me deeply with his tongue way down my throat. At the same time I held his testicles firmly, and sucked his tongue so hard that it kind of transferred that pain to his testicles. It didn’t hurt him, but it wasn’t a happy experience for him, nor was it intended to be.” What she found was, if this didn’t work (or some variation that may come up for you), then his behavior would turn her off. Surprisingly, perhaps, being turned off is an extremely important tool in your arsenal. You have to stay with that being turned off state until you get an internal signal of some sort that this machismo problem has been temporarily corrected.
Don’t even think about this being a permanent cure, however, because ego-connected-to-sexuality keeps coming up with the most attractive men. Often. He may be constantly flaunting his desirability, talking about other women–which is fine except when the intention behind it is to irritate you, try to make you jealous, have you notice how desirable he is. This ego driven behavior takes different forms with different men. He might throw his relationship with another woman (at work or somewhere) at you; he is trying to fan jealous fires or to keep some antagonism going because it makes him feel desirable. “Gee,” he’ll say, “Sherry always laughs at my jokes. In fact they get her hot.” Now that’s a pretty destructive form of ego-preening because it sets women against women.
Some may display that ego/sexual connection differently. When it’s not hurtful to anyone–other women or you–then it becomes merely a little harmless game. Every man has a little of that. And your body will know when ego is displaying itself in a destructive way because it will be a turn off to you. Some men present an extreme case of that syndrome. They periodically will do or say something that will tell you that this crazy egotism is a continuing problem. It is at that point that you use this–discomfort to tongue and testicles--or some other technique to reinforce your negative reaction to his posturing.
The basic thing that can happen when his behavior gets out of line is that it can turn you off. Then he’s not hot either. So he stays away until he gets what’s happening...
And the interesting thing is that if he is worthy of you, he will get the destructiveness of his behavior. And if he is not worthy of you, then it may be hasta la vista time.
The Disaster
Thanks for breaking my heart.
It’s so good for my poetry.
Of course I feel like a truck
ran over me. And other than that,
I feel dead and stupid. Words
come out wrong. Gone, you’re gone
even though you’ve said that awful
thing, we’ll still be friends.
How can I be friends with the man
whose hands and mouth I need all over me?
You want me to understand you didn’t mean
to fall for her, it just happened, a surprise,
and what you read in her eyes makes you think
it could be like nothing you’ve ever known before.
You who took pride in being my muse
have pulled up the stakes of your tent
and planted it in another land. You want
me to understand. But I don’t. Can’t. Won’t.
All I feel is dead while pain like a molten river
runs every where. You’re sorry I hurt.
I’m sorry you fell out of love. Or is it that you
never really fell into that great rich green chasm
of life and bliss where loving you drove me?
Victoria
Helping Him Break Up Old Patterns
We all have them: patterns wired into us from who knows when. Some are useful, some are neutral, but some are really in the way of your own continuing evolution and your ability to fulfill your destined role in this life. Not to mention that these patterns will affect others with whom you are in connection .
One day Adora's consort was displaying a highly critical, put-down aspect of himself that she knew was exactly how his father had been. She also knew that this bullying aspect had created a years-long rift between this father and son, causing damage to her lover’s masculine side that still persisted.
So as Adora tells it, "That night, although I was especially tired from the emotional undercurrents of the day, we had an unusually active sex session. Suddenly I was moved to sit astride his prone body and jump up and down on his cock as hard and fast as I could. When I reached orgasm, I slid off and made love to his cock with my mouth until he came and I came again."
In retrospect, she remembers placing her hands on his hips, and shaking his body at the same time he was reaching his climax. So what is going on here? This technique involves a shaking up of the body/soul so that behavior and attitude patterns--especially ones that he is ready to dislodge--are shaken free. Perhaps, more accurately, what occurs is that he is shaken free of them. He lets go of the old hurtful patterns in a kind of physical/spiritual catharsis. The feeling he gets is like what D. H. Lawrence describes so movingly in his fiction, the sense of utter release that Lady Chatterley experiences with her groundskeeper lover.
Active dancing, especially with a lot of shaking motion would accomplish a similar purpose. African/Caribbean dancing and drumming has recently become much more popular in the United States, as has belly dancing. People are intuiting the need to shake free with their bodies to come into deeper contact with their spirit. In a great hunger to really know ourselves and feel ourselves, we are discovering dance as a path to the body's wisdom. Dance is a way to let go of inhibitions, for the man and the woman. For the sexual shaman, dance is a means of bringing her goddess persona to the surface.
But, always, sexual arousal--the hots--produces openness to positive influences that few other states can match. Certain CDs--Reggae music, the Gypsy Kings, African drums-- would be a good choice for lovemaking sessions especially directed towards pattern-breaking. But any lively music you both like that encourages your body to move in a shake'em up fashion would do it.
Shaking our bodies releases energy, and as Julie Henderson writes in The Lover Within, "The life energy we are dealing with here has the quality of flow, just like electricity in a wire" (47). She recommends an old exercise from the Sufi tradition: "Hands over your head, jump vigorously up and down, thumping your heels on the floor and hollering HOO! HOO! HOO! as loudly as you can" (48-49). She goes on to suggest that we fuse this energy with the consciousness moving through us until, ultimately, we are dancing around the room.
You will find, after a while, that you will have no trouble identifying any long-held patterns of a non-constructive nature, especially in a long-term relationship. A weekly shake-up is recommended for all parties when a particular pattern is at issue--like possessiveness, do-it-my-way authoritarianism, resistance to change, whatever. These old, rigid, reactive behavior patterns are so intensely embedded in our daily lives. Such tail-wagging-the-dog behavior is easily seen in most of us and certainly does not preclude our being lovable. If it did, we would all be in trouble. But it does interfere with spiritual growth. You may even feel moved to incorporate the shaking into every love-making session for a while (try three sessions in a row). Or you may wish to combine this technique with one discussed in chapter II (Helping Him Take a Spiritual Leap).
One woman who took a workshop with Adora had been living for fifteen years with a man whom she deeply loved and respected. But his stubbornness and inflexibility could make her crazy. She was a very creative type, with her own successful design company. As she became more financially comfortable, she wanted them to take some trips, relax, and enjoy the benefits of her hard work. But he resisted travel, wanted things to stay just as they were. When Ellen, as we'll call her, found herself all talked out with no result, she turned to the shaking technique. At first, he was resistant. "What are you doing?" he would ask irritably. "Just shaking my love into you," Ellen would respond. "I want you to feel how intensely I love you." He started to discover that he liked the feeling of release, even though it was new to him. After several months, when they were eating breakfast at their country house one morning, he looked over at Ellen reading the Travel section of the Sunday TIMES, and asked, "Want to take a trip?" She was quite amazed, but replied, "Sure, where would you like to go?" "You pick," he said, and they had a wonderful two weeks in Tuscany, biking, hiking, staying at country inns, and eating fabulous food. He had to admit that he had a good time.
We cannot say too often, intention is everything. If you have programmed yourself, preferably from puberty, to use your body and your sexuality to heal and transform your partner, your body will invent marvelous erotic ways to implement this focus. Your body will take you both where you need to go spiritually. No planning, no plotting--after a while, it just happens.
Looking at contemporary American society, Adora recommends this shaking move to first lady Laura Bush. She needs to help her husband towards a loosening of rigid Republican patterns --as annoying as any knee jerk liberal pattern-- and moving him to a closer connection to God/Goddess. This bedroom therapy could cause his concepts and their manifestation on this planet to be increasingly evolved in ways that would satisfy both the American and the world-wide community. Democrats may be wrinkling their brows over this idea, but one cannot really know how effective such techniques are until they are more widely practiced. It is conceivable, if unlikely, that George W. Bush might actually develop a real presidential vision, one kinder to the earth and the people who live on it. Mrs. Bush might also try the technique suggested in chapter II, connecting his heart and his verbal expression.
All sexual partners of people in political power (or other power and influence positions) should do the shaking up move or variations that come to them, with frequency. Also, the heart-to-mouth techniques described in Chapter II; in this way politicians will actually speak from the heart instead of just saying they are. We all can tell the difference. In a world where women really take the lead in breaking up old, destructive patterns, we all move forward. Writers throughout history have tried to imagine such societies, creating utopias to capture such a vision. For Plato it was The Republic. For Sir Thomas Moore, it was Utopia. In the twentieth century, sadly, the best minds turned to creating distopias, like George Orwell's 1984 and Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (where the writer imagines a world where we have no control in some sort of absolute, totalitarian system).
But spiritual evolution is not impossible for human being. Sadly, most people and societies have barely given it a chance. We are stuck with an old atavistic vision that sees many people as inherently bad and our enemy. Buddhists say, start with yourself. The Sexual Shaman says, start with your partner.
Feeling the Vortex
When your vision clears, everything you see is
brighter, crisper, vibrating with life. Even rocks
vibrate. It is not that you see more than before.
It is that you see differently. Although you may
see more as well—objects your eyes just used to
pass over nonchalantly without seeing: sticks
in a pot, poor people with sad feet, small pale plants,
wispy clouds, things of little consequence.
Just as you might not hear the background music
when busy with gossip or chatter, so too you
might just miss the stunning beauty crying out
from all directions. And you might not love
those who need your love. And you might not
recognize those who are sending you love.
Sometimes you have to listen for the birdsong
only to realize it is all around you. You are drowning
in birdsong and only your ears are deaf.
Like stunted blind people wandering in murky caves,
one day we wake up, breathe deeply, and discover
how sweetly the universe tends us. Then, like honey
on the tongue, everything tastes delicious.
Victoria
Helping Him Rise Above
his Love for Torturing Women
The concept discussed in this chapter was provoked by Adora's year plus encounter with a builder under contract to add two wings to her house. She had lived there for over twenty years with her husband, raising three of their children. It had been off and on the market for most of the ten years since their divorce. They needed to sell it and reinvest the proceeds.
Although only nine years older than Adora, and still her dearest friend, her ex-husband was deteriorating both physically and mentally at an alarming rate, having been diagnosed with Alzheimer's Disease, and then, later, with Parkinson's. For the first time in her protected life, Adora was taking on a serious responsibility that she would normally have shared with her husband. In fact, in the past, he would have largely handled the task. She was terrified that her failure to carry this project out successfully would affect not only her financial state but also that of her ex-husband, who was no longer capable of earning money.
We will call the contractor P.A. (for passive aggressive). He seemed a nice enough fellow, and like so many contractors he kept saying that the construction would take "three months to complete." But six months passed, and then a year, and still the house was in no condition to be put on the market. The wing additions, which Adora intended to rent out until the house was sold, were barely rentable. During this stressful period, Adora became extremely ill, partly from emotional pressure, but largely because of mold and mildew exposure attributed to two long-term roof leaks actually caused by this contractor's work. The man and his work were becoming toxic.
Many days she would lie in bed too weak even to answer a ringing telephone an arm's reach away. She would hear one or two hammer strokes and then nothing else the entire day. When she was able to arise from her bed, it would be evident that no work had been done, no progress made. Adora admits, "It is not unusual for me to be the target of men's dark aspects. My energy in proximity to them just gets things riled up. That is one of my strengths as a healer. I do not take this particularly personally. It's just something that happens and can be used as a tool of evolvement."
But one of the profound joys of writing a book, as any writer can tell you, is righting a few wrongs. And when it became evident to Adora that P.A. was not worth pursuing legally, her energy became directed at helping him move on from torturing women to a higher place. She would do this both for him and for any woman that he might come into contact with from then on.
Her suggestion for his partner would be the same technique that she has tried out on her regular sex partner, who also has a long-standing pattern of torturing women (his being more emotional than physical/financial). The first thing that occurred to her during sex was to introduce a little torture into the pleasure of sex so that at the moment of his climax, she jabbed him with her long nailed finger hard into his side. A bit of agony with the ecstasy. Her lover was not very happy with this combination and thus she only repeats it occasionally. Adora claims, "I am not at all sure what occurs here, but my body was led to this move so I feel sure it has validity."
The second technique involves a more complex maneuver that Adora did not even know was a maneuver except in retrospect. Her partner had been talking about anal sex, which they had engaged in frequently early in their connection. But for reasons she did not fully comprehend, her body just was not moving towards that act. As she tells it, “I had an upset stomach, or my anal muscles would not relax, or my nail polish was wet. Etcetera. Etcetera. All the reasons women give to say ‘no’”. Later she recognized this as a reverse torture of the worst kind for a highly sexual/spiritual man: give him everything but what he really wants.
So if she were P.A.’s sexual partner, she would use both of these techniques, plus whatever moves her body would make until his symptoms dissipate. If they don’t, then Adora recommends that you allow yourself to move on to technique number three: being totally turned off to him sexually. In fact, this is not something that you deliberately do in most cases, but rather is something that happens because of the way you have programmed yourself. How long you stay turned off might run from a day or two to several weeks. Adora says, “I am always prepared for it to be forever as this torturing behavior is basically unacceptable to me and all women.”
When we described technique number three to a male friend over a delicious dinner and fine wine, he was shocked, and immediately attacked its efficacy. "But the man will just go find someone else," he argued. "That technique can't possibly work." If the partners are in fact only involved for sexual purposes, or if their bond is a weak one, then he may be right. But for those couples connected in a number of ways that are deeply satisfying, the woman's sexual turn-off is a wakeup call. And Adora has found that she gets results from being willing to walk.
She gets an unmistakable sexual surge when her lover has internally given this torture activity up—at least for the present time. They both know the guidelines then because the torturing he engages in is only of the sort that someone can who knows his lover intimately. He pays the price for this pleasure when his woman turns off to him. Of course, sometimes your lover is willing to be without you sexually because the pleasures of torture are so great, and perhaps he even gets some pleasure from your torturing of him.
Whatever the reasons and the historical ties, the techniques discussed in this chapter bring the urge to torture to reasonable dimensions—the sort that you can live with and even laugh at. We suggest that you use these techniques early and often—at the slightest subliminal suggestion of beginning emotional torture. Be prepared, as a sexual shaman, to come down on this torturing behavior hard and consistently until it is but a shell of itself. It may be a truth worth pondering that “you only hurt the one you love,” but we choose to evolve beyond such sadistic urges towards healing and compassion.
About the drawing:
Death is celebrated in the ‘calavera’ or skeleton motif of the Mexican people. Each year on the Day of Dead, November 1st, the calaveras appear in candies, breads, costumes, drawings and paintings, comforting each one in loss and transforming separation into acceptance.
Helping Him Complete the Life Cycle
This was a difficult chapter to write because it involves deep pain and loss. But we know that life is a cycle, and without dying there is no living. Too often in western culture there seems to be a vast conspiracy aimed at convincing us that we will never die. And because we so fear and stigmatize death, we try to hide it away in hospitals where we cannot see it. Even doctors are often death phobic. But a good sign of changing attitudes in our society is the growth of the hospice movement, a whole community of caring professionals committed to making dying a more meaningful, less frightening and lonely experience.
The serious illness or disability of one’s beloved is a time when new approaches to sexuality can be developed. When physical love-making is no longer possible, sexual energy can still be called upon to wrap that partner in the warmth and humanity we all still need, no matter how ill, no matter how close to death.
In this chapter Victoria tells her personal story about engaging in the dying process with a beloved man. What becomes clears is that one has to draw deeply on her inner wisdom to come to terms with such a painful parting. We are not talking here about techniques, but more simply of presence--being fully present in someone's life as it goes into its final stage. There are no rules how to do this. It would seem that what is called for is an utter commitment to compassion.
Victoria's Story
When my husband Steve was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer at the age of fifty, I was both prepared and unprepared to deal with that tragic reality. I remember so well getting the news in the hospital where he had gone for several days for tests. It was a beautiful June day, the day after the summer solstice--bright, warm, clear. The doctor told me on the phone as I stood by Steve's bed that there was “no hope”, that it had already spread to the liver, that Steve would die. I told Steve and then I crawled into bed with him, shocked that this handsome man, whom I thought might have ulcers or some other fixable gastrointestinal problem, was actually going to die. Soon. I lay curled around him, crying, "I don't want you to die. I don't want you to die." As I drove home alone later that evening, I tried to reach down into my gut and draw up strength. My thought was, I must make this as painless as possible for Steve.
It turned out to be an impossible task. He was a man who was so alive--a jazz pianist and composer, a scholar, a wise, witty, talkative friendly man, with a large circle of friends. He was just too unready to leave this life and never in the long year of his dying came to accept it. Steve believed if you didn't talk about something, it wasn't happening. And so we could not discuss his dying. It was the forbidden topic. I had to learn to live with that prohibition, and as someone who characteristically probes all of life's emotions, even the darkest, this was difficult for me. I had to become the mate Steve needed in that year of dying.
I took care of Steve, cooked special organic foods and soups for him, went with him weekly to his oncologist for experimental chemo, invited his friends over, nursed him through intense bouts of vomiting, fevers, depression, kept him company, and generally tried to be by his side. That was my role. Did I help him complete the life cycle? It's hard to say. I wrote poems. One that I wrote late in the process was called:
Caught in the Slow Jaws of Time
Since everything changes every second,
I must hang on to nothing.
Caught in the flow that feels like stillness,
caught in the dance of love for a dying man.
How can I not cling to this husband body
even as his so familiar flesh ebbs from
his bones? Letting go is like
breathing out, the lungs collapsing.
When I kiss him, he lies very still.
He has grown so fond of sleeping.
Even the clouds that don’t seem to be moving
are. Each day he journeys closer to death.
He dreams that he’s tied down, can’t get up.
He’s paralyzed. He asks if he cried out
for me. But all I heard was an inarticulate
moan. Never my name. I wake him when
I hear the nightmare moan. Even in dreams
I don’t want him to suffer. Would that
his passage were like birds smoothly
flying their long journeys home.
Victoria
From the start I knew that it was good-bye. No doctor told us Steve could survive, and we went to a number. All gave him three to six months, maybe a little more. He actually lived one year after his diagnosis, but in the final months he was reduced to being a bedridden skeleton, in pain, frightened, and connected finally only to the regimens of illness. I loved him dearly and passionately throughout this process, but there were times when I was very angry with him. I wanted him to discuss what was happening--both to him and to me--and he would not. He felt he had the right to simply turn his face to the wall and die, "like Marcus Aurelius," the Roman stoic, as he said. Is that the manly way? I wonder. His friends seemed impressed. For me, it was often a horror. And I've never been more lonely.
But, there was love. There was love in my care for his body, and there was love in my heart and soul for this man with whom I had shared so much. Having been sitting meditation for about four years when he was diagnosed, I could turn to meditation to help shape my days. And when home health care people came a few hours a day, I would walk for hours through the city, stopping for coffee, to read, to write, to draw pictures--to regather myself.
It is a long and difficult story for me, and I won't try to tell it all here. I remember giving him a bath one day when he was very weak and emaciated. I decided the best way was to climb in with him: sit behind him, hold him between my legs, and wash his back. As I held him there in the warm soapy water, I knew this was another kind of love. He, with his withered flanks and haunted eyes, had become more my child than my husband. Often in the final six months of his life, I had to dress him, button his coat, lift his head to drink, spoon food into his mouth, and ultimately, for several months, liquid morphine. It is not the way you want your marriage to go in the prime of your life. But we don't get to choose the script. We only get to choose how we play the hand we are dealt. I chose to stay passionate and myself. I never lied to myself. I always felt what was happening, and I poured it into my poetry. For the most part I couldn't tell Steve what I was feeling because he simply refused to hear it. So instead, I cared for his body, and when he became quite weird after months of morphine, I lovingly entered his bizarre world, untangling his confusions and delusions. As our hospice nurse said to me once, when she was trying to get an informed answer from him on something: "You certainly have a wide toleration for psychosis." And I did. My father had died of Alzheimer's disease, and I loved him, too, to the end.
I don't think I was particularly shamanic when Steve was dying. I made a commitment, and I kept it. That is all. But love is energy, and Steve died very slowly, perhaps, because he was bathed in love and energy.
On the final night of his life, lying in a hospital bed in his room in our apartment, he suddenly got a surge of energy and panic, and started trying to climb out of the bed. He had no ability to stand or walk at that point, but a fierce wave pushed him up on the bed, as I was trying to pull a clean tee shirt over his head. He must have panicked, felt it as a death shroud, tried to push me off, and struggled to get out of the bed. I think he knew in his gut he was dying. I finally calmed him down, then climbed awkwardly into the bed beside him, cradled his head, and crooned, "You're alright. You're safe. You're doing fine," words I think I had read in a hospice book or somewhere. He said to me, "You've grown more beautiful," and I knew he meant in the years of our marriage. It was his last gift of love to me. He soon began that strange, hacking, breathy moan that is the death rattle, and went on like that for several hours.
I've never known another man as deeply as I knew Steve. I loved him absolutely. But it was a cruel year, and it has taken me years to begin to heal. I'll close with a poem I wrote about a year after his death.
Ordinary Love
After your husband dies, you hate couples:
the casual way they hold hands when they walk,
the way he holds a car door open, or the smile
on her lips as he talks, or even the way she chides him
for not ordering her food when after thirty years
he should certainly know what she likes to eat.
You want someone on an airplane to turn to
at lift-off, that thrilling rush down the runway
--even if he’s already asleep—and men are
great sleepers, greater by far than women.
And someone to complain to about the pompous fools
at school or the lost glove or the unfair parking ticket.
Aggravation shared is grief relieved.
You remember how you would order in Indian food
after a long day at work, leisurely twilight love-making,
and a brief early evening nap. And those moments
--eating the succulent curry with delighted murmurs
at the glass table in the living room—glow in memory
like a lamp lit on the density of ordinary love.
Victoria
Healing Others Through
Sexual Connection with your Partner
At some point in most long-term relationships, concern and love for each other expand to include other people. The profound sexual energy the two of you are generating can be directed towards another person through very simple means: one) prior to lovemaking, talk about that person and your mutual desire to help; two) visualizing the other person as he or she might be; three) consciously directing the built up waves of heat and energy towards that person. Theoretically this energy could be directed towards entire countries or planets.
This first time such healing happened for Adora quite spontaneously. Her partner and she had been talking about a woman friend of theirs who had shown up on his doorstep one day, money-less, physically ill, and in a dangerously stressed state. They certainly wanted to help her. They spoke one day about trying to help her get settled in a new city, find a job, and a place to live. She was still on their minds and in their hearts when they began making love and both became aware that they were generating some energy that was actually going to her. Their woman friend began to really pull herself together and stabilize her life in the two years that followed. Adora feels, “what we did assisted this process. We continued to reinforce that connection from time to time and have consciously done it with other people as well.”
This kind of energy work generated through the sex act has great healing potential. Energy is energy; those who generate it have a miraculous gift to share with others.
What if millions of women picked one, say, three hour time slot and dedicated their love-making in all its power to world peace or world enlightenment or some other agreed upon goal, would it make a difference? Our guess is it could. And if it didn’t, we’ve still enjoyed the connection with our partner and strengthened the bond between us as loving partners in a shared vision.
Body Dreams
This is the skin of my life:
the melon moon turning
my breasts into globes of light
poised above your face,
your glitter eyes.
This is the guts of my life:
the moon, my breasts,
your glitter eyes.
This is the soul of my life:
the same, the same, the same.
Adora
The Sexual Shaman System is simple and beautiful, both in its playing out and in its concepts. Its intent is to help us as women access our power and deploy it in a way that expresses our version of god/goddess and to serve humanity in what I would consider to be the most loving of all possible ways: to support and guide the spiritual expansion of those with whom we connect—hopefully, an ever expanding number and on many levels.
Sexual shamanism is a part of the world-wide revolution of honesty with oneself and others. We speak from the soul level, move as the spirit moves us, and manifest our wisdom in such ways as to facilitate the evolution of society as a whole. The Sexual Shaman System teaches us how to help each other evolve by moving closer to the divine, by allowing the divine to move through us in this life and so fulfill our destinies.
Sex and money: are there any two areas more rife with deceit and exploitation? This Sexual Shaman era is the beginning of a sexual revolution that only a woman could have created. So move over Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt; your day is long passed. The sexual revolution that you helped to create years ago (along with safer birth control and other helpers) was great fun, serving to bring sex and sexuality out of the closet, so to speak. This present revolution is simply another step on a slightly different path that runs parallel but will occasionally cross and join forces. The surface of sexual behavior may stay the same, but, believe me, the intention and effect will be earth-shakingly different.
In a More Perfect World
Children would be supported in being proud of their bodies and of their sexuality and to honor them as powerful forces for transformation, completion and the passing on of knowledge. At its highest level, sex is a pathway to merger with God.
Children would be encouraged to explore and discover their physical selves and to
treat their physical selves as the incomparable receiver and transmitter of divine
energy it is. If every child were encouraged to dedicate their bodies and their
sexuality to the spiritual evolvement of their partner(s) when they reached maturity,
that alone would have a tremendous impact on society. “Doing the dirty” would be
replaced by “Doing the divine”. It can appear pretty much the same.
Adolescents would be given more options for expressing their hormonal fireworks than physical intercourse or other physical touching of a sexual nature. This stage of life can offer opportunities to connect at other levels of reality, to become more aware of vibrations as an element of attraction, and to strengthen their ability to imagine and to fantasize. All of this sets the stage for soul-expanding sex when it is appropriate—according to individual culture, religion, and personal ethics.
What I would like to see in the way young women believe and behave are some options in addition to those that are so vocally and visually presented to us now by the entertainment media as well as those culturally and religiously endorsed. Although it seems to be that the overall concept of the Sexual Shaman System is not at odds with any of these, it could certainly be shaped to coincide even more with these more traditional value systems. The surface and content of the sexual connection can be of its time; the deeper workings are timeless.
Further Implications of the Sexual Shaman System
In fact, the Sexual Shaman System can be used without your partner even being aware of it. Not that I particularly recommend this. In keeping with the policy of openness and honesty in matters sexual, I have never hidden what I’m up to. But the fact is, most men are not particularly interested in this spiritual aspect of your sexual interaction and the vast majority of men would not have the patience for a long tantric-like ceremony and really hate the idea of long-delayed ejaculation.
The Sexual Shaman System combines elements of energy healing and tantric sex in a powerful way that appears no different from “normal”—whatever that might mean to you or your partner—sex. The energy between you, however, is far stronger and much different. You will both become increasingly more sensitive to energy as you engage your new sensitivity towards each other.
The most radical shift called for, after the re-assessment of sexuality the system necessitates, is a realignment of women’s attitudes towards other women. At this present time, and for the next several centuries, women will be far more out in the world and leading the world: politically, in business, and—most of all—spiritually. The face of God will be a woman’s face. Those qualities connected with female aspects—the nurturing, the compassion, the strength born of softness—will become even more critical if this earth is to survive.
We women need to support and nurture the dreams and visions of other women as we have always done for men. We need to lead the way in refocusing on cooperation rather than competition, most especially in regard to competing for a man’s attention. We need to know deep in our bones that we are here to serve in the role in which we have been cast. That is the honor and duty we must adhere to above all else. All our relationships need to support this commitment—with men, with women, with the environment, indeed, with every living creature, institution and activity.
Once the idea of sex as a transformational tool is truly absorbed, the ebb and flow of sexuality will be celebrated rather than mourned. Often the end of a sexual relationship signals that the relationship is complete—not a failure, but simply has served the purpose for which it was intended. Rejection, jealousy, murderous anger, these all tend to lighten and dissipate as our attitudes change. Women can choose to love instead of resent each other, and they must do this if we are to form a cohesive and effective movement.
Some Suggestions
· Always let your own body, rather than the man’s desire, move you towards him. By their nature men always want “it” or almost always. Your body is far more selective and will move you only towards those men with whom connection serves a divine purpose. You have programmed yourself for this.
· Spend at least as much time and money on your internal self as your external self. The sexual shaman loves beauty, looking at beautiful people of either sex. She loves looking beautiful and the pleasure it gives other people as well as herself. Beauty feeds the soul. We would very much like to see our society’s definition of beauty broaden, especially in regard to women. Surely there is great beauty in shapes and sizes and ages other than the current ideal, which often requires extensive surgical remodeling to achieve that ideal and is not in fact achievable skeletally by the vast majority of women.
· Our perception of beauty will shift as we become more and more sensitive to energy, to vibration of voice, to movement, and to the emanations of the soul as sensed beyond and beneath the surface.
· Start to think flexibly about relationships. Do we have to mate two by two? While we know of no better arrangement for raising children than an in-house mother and father, the advantages of more than one set of partners sharing the pleasure and responsibility and family life of children are evident. Partners who divorce and remarry can even sometimes provide advantages of multiple role models, support in different areas, etc. As a society we can choose to honor triangular relationships and bi-sexual relationships, whether we personally chose to live in these ways or not. Such relationships are a fact of life, and in our opinion, the deception and dishonesty around alternative ways of being is the true corroding element.
· As women grow older and the available men decrease in number (and the desirable men by most women’s standards are never a huge proportion), becoming even more scarce, then new ways of relating and sharing of partners become more common, although not yet sanctioned by our culture. For those of us who are late but potent bloomers sexually, why not have more than a single sex partner? As wife/mothers, we are well suited to multiple relationships and need not feel uncomfortable about this, any more than having several close friends or two cats.
· We suggest that you might give yourself leeway to shift in your sexual behavior throughout your life, in accordance with your own soul expansion. Like many women she has known, Adora’s personal history involved virginity until marriage, years of monogamy while married (generally on the part of both partners), several years of abstinence, and then a burst of artistic creativity and sexuality that may persist for the rest of her life. This phase of her life is likely to include more than one partner, at least from time to time, and if not in actuality (for a myriad of reasons), at least envisioned.
· Honesty and integrity in sexual relationships and about your sexual self is a keystone to your evolution. It is a way of being intimate that truly contributes to your partners’ well being and evolution. It is not at all at odds with being loving; rather, it is a way of being loving both to yourself and others. We hear over and over from partners that infidelity was not what caused them pain and self doubt, it was the deception by a trusted intimate.
The Sexual Shaman Attitude Out in the World
Adora writes, “I had nearly completed the conclusion to this book, or so I thought when the September 11th Terrorist Attack happened. It was a full week or more before I realized that the rest of the vision given to me years earlier might be on the edge of manifesting. The vision was clear in intent: this world was, for perhaps the next 3,000 years, to be led largely by women—women who knew that this life and all its aspects was intended by God (whatever your version is, including that there is no God) to support our individual and collective evolution and the creation of a society that helps this happen.”
“These women and the men who support them, whatever form this takes, will be: HONEST with themselves and others, integrity being a key element of this vision. They will be women of WISDOM, of the heart as well as the head, women of COMPASSION and EMPATHY and CREATIVITY. There are many of them out there. I see and hear them on television; I read their books and articles about them. They are leaders, usually with an area of deep expertise. They are quite ego-less, but they know who they are. They also ‘know’ that they have been chosen to pioneer this Spiritual Revolution. These women and the men who share these qualities have their work quite literally cut out for them. They are to redesign society in terms of both intention and details, experimenting with everything from education at all levels, recreation, sexual attitudes to economic disparities. And this is not to mention the usual famines, thermal warming, currently incurable diseases and other scourges of present day life, somewhere in the world, if not presently here in the United States. And it is clear now that we are truly all connected, and we had better know just what it is our right hand is doing while our attention is elsewhere.”
All the old ways of being and doing need to be re-examined in the light of the possible annihilation that lies ahead if we fail to address major issues in a truly creative, loving way.
Adora explains, “I believe in consensus—more deeply all the time. There is a universal intelligence—call it God, if you will—and those tuned into this intelligence, and there are many who should largely agree because they are getting the same basic messages.” Of course such messages may be hugely distorted by areas within ourselves of blocked development and/or distortions of the filter through which we absorb perceptions. That is why each of us has a personal obligation to evolve and to help everyone we connect with, if they so wish, to evolve as well.
“This is a kind of love for humanity,” says Adora, “and for ourselves that seems to me to be the truest of love, the purest of love, the most profound and the most needed. Especially now. The Bin-Ladens of this world cannot hear their God in an undistorted way because they fail to get—at the body level and at the emotional level—that the suffering of anyone hurts all of us. The empathy is missing. The sense of connectedness to all living creatures is missing. There may be an intense depth of feeling for family, tribe, countrymen, for people of the same religious and/or political persuasion, but the linkage of all of us as being human is missing or pushed down so far that it doesn’t cause a ripple in murderous intent.” To the women of terrorists, Adora says this: “Use every weapon at your command. Help him transcend this stuck place with frequent horizontal motions across the heart area with whatever body part he most responds to: hands, breasts, vagina, buttocks. Whisper to him during sex that we are all connected, that he will feel the pain of anyone he hurts ten-fold. That making a hell out of life on earth is no way to prepare for Heaven.
“In the case of Bin-Laden, the still current symbol of terrorism, my sense is that he was not his mother’s favorite, so I would redesign this past relationship by lavishing upon him the loving nurturing he both longs for and is fearful of.” (See Chapter I.)
Like Bin Laden and other extremists, terrorists, and tyrants, Adora loves “the idea of being part of something larger than myself; being willing to die for a divine vision. Of knowing a higher power is behind me, within me, whispering in my ear. That higher power is telling me, telling you through me, that the time has come for women to band together to empower each other in a way unprecedented in history. To make love manifest this side of an after-life; to give men a chance to explore and develop other aspects of themselves that leadership and money earning and societal conditioning don’t encourage. Breathe a sigh of relief, guys, all is up for negotiation in any given relationship and world view.”
“Men May Come and Go, but Women are Forever.”
from a tee shirt seen everywhere
Repeat after me:
· I am supportive, loving, and empathetic to other women, even when there’s a man around; even when it’s a man to whom we’re both drawn.
· I am as mannerly to women as I am to men. I respect and value women’s intelligence, skills, intuition and sexuality as much as I do men’s, as much as I do my own.
· I support women’s confidence in themselves as much as I do men’s.
We are not in competition for men. We cooperate to support each man’s enlightenment, and with it our own. It has been my personal life experience that “bad treatment”-- however you might define that—of women by men can’t compare to the cruel treatment of women by other women, especially in relation to men. Well, ladies, this may well be the critical issue of this entire movement if it cannot be resolved internally in each of us. As members of a mass spiritual movement, there may not be a mass movement.
A message for men and women from Adora
The other impediment to the success of this movement in my view is the ages old
double standard of sexual behavior imposed by men and often supported by
women. This is not acceptable in an enlightened society for several reasons: 1) no
one owns “any” body; 2) each person’s body may be considered an antenna for divine messages and intuitions; who would dare to put restrictions on this for reasons of competition, jealousy, or territorial rights? 3) Women will have a difficult if not impossible task attempting to change such territorial behavior. Ultimately, it is up to men to make this shift. 4) As women, there are certain ways we can help support this change in men; one way would be to stop taking a possessive, jealous attitude on the part of men as testament of how much they love us. If he hits you out of jealousy, that means he wishes to restrict your freedom to respond to divine guidance. If he kills your ability to freely follow your body’s lead, you are partially dead in terms of fulfilling your destiny here on earth. And just how insane does violent jealous behavior get? If he kills you out of jealousy, does that mean he really “loves” you?
This demand for equity is not to say that women would use their sexual freedom the same way men do, and have traditionally done, but the female right to have that freedom is an essential point.
As much as I love men, I believe in being as loving and supportive to other women and think women can easily examine their own behavior and motives and make shifts quite quickly in the interest of a greater good. Many have already done this.
I am less encouraged by men’s attitudes and the attachment of otherwise developed men to this old double standard. They will speak of freedom, and certainly their own sexual freedom, and act upon it. But when their female partner shows an equal desire to be sexually free and follow her own inner guidance, such men may go berserk. What will it take to shift this? Maybe millions of women saying this is in the way of our love; this is in the way of universal love. This outmoded possessive behavior is essentially unfair to women and ultimately to men and women. Given a generation or two, women—who usually set social standards in most cultures—may prevail and help these healthy changes in consciousness to happen.
It’s time.
A vast and gorgeous tapestry is about to unroll. It is the next story in the history of the world. It will glitter and whirl with billions of little stories—one for each of us—and the big story made of all these glittering pieces will come together in a way that is so incredibly beautiful, it will take your breath away. So, men of the world, get ready, you are about to be conquered by a vast army led by women. Highly sexual, highly spiritual, divinely led by women of integrity and creativity and passion. Women willing to die for a vision, if necessary, but never kill for it. Only someone who fancied himself God, rather than God’s messenger, would have the arrogance to do that.
These women who are already getting ready will empower other women, who will empower other women, who will empower other women, who will empower . . .
Message
I can’t do this myself…
Maybe I haven’t told you this,
but we’re going to recreate the world together.
Did I tell you? Maybe I forgot to tell you.
All of us.
Allowing the God and Goddess power to work through us.
We’ll recreate the world the way it needs to be,
the way we all want it to be—together.
We’ll each light a candle, and others will light their candles.
There’ll be millions of candles and then a million, million candles
until the light blinds your eyes with its beauty.
So incredibly beautiful
you are all so beautiful, I can hardly stand it.
She takes these gnarly sticks, some mud,
the common stuff of life
and weaves them, pats them, coaxes them
into something quite beautiful
an icon, a nest, a poem
a candle lit in the dark.
We know what it needs to be complete:
a bit of your body, some drops of your blood.
Adora (from Light & Shadow CD, MESSAGES series, 1997)
Adora
Adora is a performance poet/healer and was artistic director of a poetry performance group in Florida from 1992-98. When she began doing healing work in 1994, her poetry made a natural, sometimes startling progression from orally composed poetry to poetic channeling to music, and her voice became an increasingly powerful instrument of healing and transformation. She has helped many healers to speak spontaneously to music and, with a small company of healing artists, will do spontaneous performances in large venues as appropriate.
Victoria Wolfe
Victoria is a widely published poet and playwright, who has had seven of her plays performed in New York City in Equity Showcase Productions. She has appeared on television and in public at bookstores, bars, and college performance spaces performing her poetry and discussing her playwriting career. With her Ph.D. in English literature, she has taught poetry, drama, and creative writing at several colleges and universities. She has published on the subject of the battle of the sexes and had film and drama criticism on the male/female relationship published in the New York Times. Her interest in shamanic sex comes from her spiritual and Buddhist studies, as well as her work with the body as a vehicle of emotional healing.
SIMPLE
· THE SEXUAL SHAMAN SYSTEM IS SIMPLE. You will embellish it in your own way, but the basic system can be learned in a couple of hours.
SECRET
· THE SEXUAL SHAMAN SYSTEM CAN BE SECRET, when appropriate. It can be used with little or no surface sign that it is at work.
SEXY
· THE SEXUAL SHAMAN SYSTEM IS SEXY. It is beyond sexy. It is the most compelling, enchanting, deeply satisfying sex your partner has likely ever had—assuming he is at some level committed to his own spiritual growth and development.
Blog photographs and art work
Women in water tank (CHO MU DREAMS) copyright 2008 Jean Germain
www.jeangermainphotography.com
Nudes copyright 2008 Peter Gedeon
www.gedeonphoto.com
Paintings of Alamos copyright 2008 Cervando Perez Marquez
springjustin@yahoo.com
Cover Art and Chapter Illustrations by Mary Grace Northbeach.
Adora’s share of the profits from sales of this book
will be used in the creation of a special fund to support cutting edge projects.
soulspeakspring1@comcast.net soulspeak1
