I am the rose of Sharon,
And the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow
with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
And his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples:
For I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up, nor awake my love,
Till he please.
And the lily of the valleys.
As the lily among thorns,
So is my love among the daughters.
As the apple tree among the trees of the wood,
So is my beloved among the sons.
I sat down under his shadow
with great delight,
And his fruit was sweet to my taste.
He brought me to the banqueting house,
And his banner over me was love.
Stay me with flagons, comfort me with apples:
For I am sick of love.
His left hand is under my head,
And his right hand doth embrace me.
I charge you, O ye daughters of Jerusalem,
By the roes, and by the hinds of the field,
That ye stir not up, nor awake my love,
Till he please.
'A beautiful poetic story about a young woman’s choosing between the King and her beloved shepherd is greatly beneficial to everyone especially to adolescent girls, young women, their matron mentors, fathers, and everyone looking after the integrity of young love and marriage.
The lessons in this book are (and there maybe more):
1) true love and choosing the right mate,
2) waiting for love,
3) teaching young women and men about what is most important about marriage,
4) understanding the affection of your spouse, and,
5) remembering when love was fresh.
What better way could have this been taught than from the perspective of a young woman whose loyal love blesses her marriage.'
(extract from: http://godsbreath.net/2009/08/18/song-of-songs/ )
Sacred Sex
I would like to propose to go beyond this meaning and blend the two concepts of sensual love, or passion, with 'true' love.
In the Christian and western point of you which is engraved in our upbringing, is the concept of love and marriage and sex within this boundaries; sex is the carnal expression of love in a relationship between a woman and a man, united in love and creating in this bodily union and producing...oh, well...children, of course.
Where does this leave the sensual love, the love that comes from physical pleasure, the passion? This is of course, seen as sinful and we must all fear the physical, the flesh, the carnal pleasures as they keep us in the earthly spirit and human weakness and takes away the spiritual meaning of love.
I am here opening this vacuum, and I am going through this dark black hole, I am swallowing all of you into my thoughts: I am inviting you to challenge this and go beyond what has been the main divider of the duality in all of us, the internal conflict of freedom versus taboo, love and sex.
I would like to start talking about life force: light, warmth, life flows, instinct, life energy; this is all in us, a very positive and very active energy. We are human, we are alive, we live by growing, feeding our bodies with food and water, ever changing and growing, with natural instincts of growth, reproduction,movement, resonating and responding to sensations, using our senses, feeding, eliminating,and this is naturally human, as we are part of the animal kingdom.
Now the problem arises when we enter the mind and go beyond the intellectual kingdom, beyond the concept of thought and language and enter the spiritual. We have a consciousness and we like to separate us from the animal kingdom because we are conscious that we can and want to aspire to higher levels of consciousness and find eternal truth.
I believe that we make a mistake when we think that connecting to Divine does means we need to separate our physical bodies from the spiritual selves. It is a much more difficult task to achieve in my view to combine the human and the Divine and meet in a 'marriage' of the Earth and the Cosmic.
Through the physical union it is possible to achieve this.; I truly believe this is what we need to work with.
I begin looking at the word ecstasy, which meaning is: an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
Society and religion, upbringing in certain cultures like to deny or dismiss this as superficial, attributing guilt to this feeling, especially if the feeling arises from the physical realm.
Now, from Greek ekstasis 'standing outside oneself' gives me the impression of almost an out of body experience, as if connecting to something higher, reaching the Cosmos. I think this is the true meaning and I like to think of sensual pleasure taking me to these extra dimensions.
We feed from light and food and from the cosmic energy, the Light Divine. I want to go beyond the concept of religion, embracing the Divine, which is ultimately us humans and the Universe, like a circle or spiral of energy that feeds itself as we feed it and we feed from it, too.
Sexual energy is our life force. It can be healing and rejuvenating for us at any age and it is especially important as we age. It is time that we consider a dimension of sexuality that can renew our interest, that of spiritual sex. This is a new yet ancient area of exploration.
What is love: beyond what we know already, which is quite difficult to define, also, breaking through a barrier and rising, elevating, acknowledging, respecting, accepting, opening fully, surrendering, wanting, selfishly and unselfishly, humanly living, breathing, needing, giving and receiving, warmth, passion, sharing, union, ecstasy, purity.
We must not feel guilt or shame when we experience physical pleasure; with a healthy attitude, acknowledging and honoring our bodies, treating our bodies and others with respect, it should feel releasing, uplifting, relaxing and blissful.
We should live for pleasure, and through pleasure to conscious loving, reach a spiritual union: love and sex, a return to the original life force, reaching for purity. If this was a mathematical expression, if love is sex, sex is also pure.
The meaning of spiritual union is enhanced awareness, inspiration and merging with the life force. The purpose for sexuality at this level is to unite with the Source. The energy received at this level is inspiration/illumination that can be translated into divine guidance or simply experienced as pure bliss.
Undress, unveil, peel off these negative layers of shame, guilt, impurity...these attract impure thoughts and negative associations such as porn, degrading women, treating women as sexual objects, fetish and extreme sex, suppression, rape, unhealthy attitude to sex in general, dividing genders, races, sexual orientation, confusion, categorizing, compartmentalizing, labeling, bullying, isolation, feeling abnormal...etc...
This is where we all need to start, unfortunately, the world we live in now, even at this modern age, still makes us believe that being sexual, expressing our sexuality, embracing, exploring it and celebrating it is wrong and makes us impure.
-to be continued, interrupted and expanded by comments and questions-
Susannah Andrews
“Here in this body are the sacred rivers ; here are the sun and moon…I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body”-Saraha Doha
The lessons in this book are (and there maybe more):
1) true love and choosing the right mate,
2) waiting for love,
3) teaching young women and men about what is most important about marriage,
4) understanding the affection of your spouse, and,
5) remembering when love was fresh.
What better way could have this been taught than from the perspective of a young woman whose loyal love blesses her marriage.'
(extract from: http://godsbreath.net/2009/08/18/song-of-songs/ )
Sacred Sex
I would like to propose to go beyond this meaning and blend the two concepts of sensual love, or passion, with 'true' love.
In the Christian and western point of you which is engraved in our upbringing, is the concept of love and marriage and sex within this boundaries; sex is the carnal expression of love in a relationship between a woman and a man, united in love and creating in this bodily union and producing...oh, well...children, of course.
Where does this leave the sensual love, the love that comes from physical pleasure, the passion? This is of course, seen as sinful and we must all fear the physical, the flesh, the carnal pleasures as they keep us in the earthly spirit and human weakness and takes away the spiritual meaning of love.
I am here opening this vacuum, and I am going through this dark black hole, I am swallowing all of you into my thoughts: I am inviting you to challenge this and go beyond what has been the main divider of the duality in all of us, the internal conflict of freedom versus taboo, love and sex.
I would like to start talking about life force: light, warmth, life flows, instinct, life energy; this is all in us, a very positive and very active energy. We are human, we are alive, we live by growing, feeding our bodies with food and water, ever changing and growing, with natural instincts of growth, reproduction,movement, resonating and responding to sensations, using our senses, feeding, eliminating,and this is naturally human, as we are part of the animal kingdom.
Now the problem arises when we enter the mind and go beyond the intellectual kingdom, beyond the concept of thought and language and enter the spiritual. We have a consciousness and we like to separate us from the animal kingdom because we are conscious that we can and want to aspire to higher levels of consciousness and find eternal truth.
I believe that we make a mistake when we think that connecting to Divine does means we need to separate our physical bodies from the spiritual selves. It is a much more difficult task to achieve in my view to combine the human and the Divine and meet in a 'marriage' of the Earth and the Cosmic.
Through the physical union it is possible to achieve this.; I truly believe this is what we need to work with.
I begin looking at the word ecstasy, which meaning is: an overwhelming feeling of great happiness or joyful excitement.
Society and religion, upbringing in certain cultures like to deny or dismiss this as superficial, attributing guilt to this feeling, especially if the feeling arises from the physical realm.
Now, from Greek ekstasis 'standing outside oneself' gives me the impression of almost an out of body experience, as if connecting to something higher, reaching the Cosmos. I think this is the true meaning and I like to think of sensual pleasure taking me to these extra dimensions.
We feed from light and food and from the cosmic energy, the Light Divine. I want to go beyond the concept of religion, embracing the Divine, which is ultimately us humans and the Universe, like a circle or spiral of energy that feeds itself as we feed it and we feed from it, too.
Sexual energy is our life force. It can be healing and rejuvenating for us at any age and it is especially important as we age. It is time that we consider a dimension of sexuality that can renew our interest, that of spiritual sex. This is a new yet ancient area of exploration.
What is love: beyond what we know already, which is quite difficult to define, also, breaking through a barrier and rising, elevating, acknowledging, respecting, accepting, opening fully, surrendering, wanting, selfishly and unselfishly, humanly living, breathing, needing, giving and receiving, warmth, passion, sharing, union, ecstasy, purity.
We must not feel guilt or shame when we experience physical pleasure; with a healthy attitude, acknowledging and honoring our bodies, treating our bodies and others with respect, it should feel releasing, uplifting, relaxing and blissful.
We should live for pleasure, and through pleasure to conscious loving, reach a spiritual union: love and sex, a return to the original life force, reaching for purity. If this was a mathematical expression, if love is sex, sex is also pure.
The meaning of spiritual union is enhanced awareness, inspiration and merging with the life force. The purpose for sexuality at this level is to unite with the Source. The energy received at this level is inspiration/illumination that can be translated into divine guidance or simply experienced as pure bliss.
Undress, unveil, peel off these negative layers of shame, guilt, impurity...these attract impure thoughts and negative associations such as porn, degrading women, treating women as sexual objects, fetish and extreme sex, suppression, rape, unhealthy attitude to sex in general, dividing genders, races, sexual orientation, confusion, categorizing, compartmentalizing, labeling, bullying, isolation, feeling abnormal...etc...
This is where we all need to start, unfortunately, the world we live in now, even at this modern age, still makes us believe that being sexual, expressing our sexuality, embracing, exploring it and celebrating it is wrong and makes us impure.
-to be continued, interrupted and expanded by comments and questions-
Susannah Andrews
“Here in this body are the sacred rivers ; here are the sun and moon…I have not encountered another temple as blissful as my own body”-Saraha Doha