Warning: naughty language ahead!

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I love sex—unashamedly.

Making love sets my soul as well as my flesh afire.

Sex is raw, primal, and sometimes, devotional.

It creates life. That’s powerful!

Sex can lead to bonding between people.

Sex, as an act, can be abusive—physically, emotionally, psychologically, or spiritually.

I consider myself to be a spiritual person. However, the old bearded patriarch sitting on white fluffy clouds judging everyone holds zero appeal to me. And I certainly don’t want that in bed. Religion and the traditional concept of God bear too much dogma.

I believe in a god-force or what I fondly call, Gawd.

Gawd represents my awe with creation and nature. It’s alive. It’s juicy. It’s sexy.

I resonate with the concepts of divine masculine and feminine. Largely because life is a co-creative force. Babies come into existence with the union of man and woman in the act of sex. That, to me, is sacred.

Life is sacred. Life is also messy, vulgar, juicy, hard, and occasionally, profane.

In many religions and cultural traditions (including the new age cult that I was raised in), sex is considered a consecrated act that is to be reserved for the sanctity of marriage. I was raised to believe that certain sexual acts would sully my energy and that without a marriage contract, sex was essentially a sin.

So we are told to wait, to keep ourselves pure, to make sure we are getting something out of it. In this way, sex becomes transactional.

Women are trained to withhold. Men are trained to pursue. These are not hard and fast rules. They are, however, deeply ingrained cultural performances.

Sex, and how we go about engaging with it has changed.

We have access to people 24/7 on apps on our phones. We can practically order sex off the internet. These casual encounters can be fun, liberating, and empowering.

Sex, regardless of how light we make of it is not, however, a casual act.

As a woman, sex involves me taking a man into my body. That requires trust and safety.

There have been times in my life where I wantonly engaged in the act of noncommitted sex. And I enjoyed it. There have been times when I was committed to someone and the sex we engaged in was disconnected and unsatisfying.

Then there is the act of sex where, before he even enters me, I can feel my entire being opening to receive him, where not only does my flesh flush pink but my soul, too.

Intimately connected sex, for me, is deeply spiritual.

My lover, in me, moving in a devotional act is holy. It doesn’t happen that way every time, not even with someone we love, but when it does we know it. Sex then transcends the act itself and becomes something else. Dare I say, divine!

On the flip side of devotional sex is what I call being fucked through.

I imagine we have all had the experience of being the object of someone’s desire. Hell, maybe we have also been on the side of objectifying someone else. It happens. We engage to scratch an itch.

Being fucked through, though, is different. We don’t feel the other person’s presence. It is as if we could be anyone or no one to them.

The least we can do if we are fucking someone is to be fucking present.

Granted, there are sexual positions that are prohibitive to eye contact and those can be great. But we still want to feel someone when they are with us; we want to feel ourselves and the other together.

Sex, as physical gratification, certainly has its benefits. But it is when we have an emotional connection, through the act of lovemaking, that sexual intimacy is birthed.

Too often, shame gets smeared on our sexuality before we have even gotten a chance to explore it. Under no circumstances is shame an effective tool for education. Shaming our own, or anyone else’s sexuality, or the way they choose to explore it, is dehumanizing, toxic, and dangerous.

Attempts at controlling or suppressing sexuality frequently breed neuroses and other potentially abusive behaviors.

Many institutions try to leverage sex as means of control. Often housed within those very institutions are people who, themselves, are responsible for gross sexual misconduct. When sexual abuse is initiated by people in religious positions of authority, it then also becomes spiritual abuse.

The act of sex can be both spiritualized and commodified.

Tantra, an ancient spiritual practice to facilitate intimacy and connection with ourselves and others, is something that has been bastardized by new age spirituality. It’s common to find people making loads of money off of this misrepresentation. It is also common to find predators lurking among the clouds of incense.

The modern porn industry is where we see the most commodification and fetishization of sex. Talk about ordering orgasms off the internet! People spend an average of $2.6 to $3.9 billion a year. That’s a lot of zeros to get our ohs!

All of that being said, I’m not against porn. I’m not against casual sex. I’m not against fetishes, kink, or anything else between consenting adults. I’m not against waiting for marriage if that is what is truly desired.

So we can have sex at our fingertips, but what about connection? What about communion? What about devotion? Does immediacy thwart deeper intimacy?

I don’t know the answer to those questions. But I do know they are worth exploring.

As a baseline in all relationships, I advocate for care, for consideration, for respect. I, personally, sexually and intimately, yearn for devotion, and devotion is what I will offer in return.

Perhaps the true nature of spirituality is in our own striving to uncover it in everything we behold and all we experience. Either all or nothing is sacred. If that is the case, then I can only suggest that we do our best to elevate and celebrate each other, that we start with what is tender, alive, and real, that we offer our reverence and care.

Sex is so sweetly personal. No matter how we expose it, sell it, or even misuse it, it will always be somewhat of a mystery. Therein lies its deeper and possibly even spiritual nature.

There’s the rush of desire—flesh flooded with warmth and pleasure. Emotions swirl as bonds are formed. A dance as old as time itself ensues between two bodies, two hearts, two minds, and—if you believe it—two souls. If we are lucky that dance may go on and on.

Maybe this is the way we touch Gawd—in the flesh.

Maybe unfolding into a state of trust with each other is as close as we can get to heaven.

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