The Intrinsic Potential
for Orgasm
Each and every woman arrives on this earth with the intrinsic capacity to
experience the uplifting joy of orgasm. Mother Nature in her unswerving wisdom
has graced the female body with a special design so that this experience can
arise. Women have the potential to live sex fully, as a conscious, guiding
force. However, even though nature may have sincerely intended this for us, in
real life very few women can say that they have genuine command over their
orgasmic experiences. Instead, for most women, orgasm remains quite elusive,
happening now and then, depending more on good orchestration than on an
intimate understanding of our inner design. Love becomes an experience filled
with ups and downs: it doesn't seem to last long enough; is as changeable as
the wind; is one day here and gone the next. Women living without the ambience
of love suffer tremendously, often experiencing states of acute depression and
despair.
In part this unhappy situation can be attributed to a lack of insight into
feminine energy and the female body. Women have no information on how to
intentionally create the orgasmic state or how to embrace the gift of orgasm.
In this void of wisdom, woman does not understand herself as intimately or
expertly as she could. As a consequence, this naiveté about her body
operates unconsciously against her better interests-in life, in love, and in
sex.
Recently, at the end of a couples workshop, a man participating with his wife
summed up his experience to the group: "It is quite incredible. After
spending the last thirty-five years trying to become a really good lover, I
discovered during this week that everything I think turns a woman on in actual
fact turns her off." His observation was correct. I too have observed that
the opposite of almost everything people think or say about sex has proved to
be the truth. As a result of these misconceptions, women on the whole are not
at all satisfied with the state of their sex lives, finding them unfulfilling
for any number of reasons. Perhaps this may not be so at the beginning of a
sexual relationship, but after a period of time many women report that
dissatisfaction has become the norm. The body gradually closes down and a
general disinterest and disappointment in sex begins to creep in. For some
women this shift can occur within a few months, for others it happens over the
course of a few years. The length of time involved is not relevant; what is
most significant is the fact that this withdrawal from sex happens repeatedly
for women.
Not knowing her body and the "how" of expanding into her feminine
energy automatically places a restriction and limitation on a woman's
experience of sex, and therefore of love. And if this reality is true for
woman, it is equally true for man. If woman is living and loving at a sexual
minimum, her male partner also exists at this same level.
For women this sexual minimum is reflected in their tremendous difficulties at
achieving orgasm. So often women share with me their fear that something is
seriously wrong with them because they cannot manage to experience any kind of
orgasm. Or they're worried because they need an hour or more to feel a full yes
to penetration. Or they report that sex has gradually lost its attraction,
though the longing for tenderness and intimacy remains. With these negative
thoughts passing through the mind, old and unexpressed feelings of unworthiness
or inadequacy can ripple to the surface; soon insecurity begins to erode the
joy of a loving heart. For a woman, unhappiness and dissatisfaction with sex
can easily become the acceptable, expectable norm. Women's magazines routinely
give tips on sex and female orgasm and advice about how to achieve orgasm more
easily. Simply because these articles speak openly about sex (a rare occurrence
in everyday conversation), they might gratify and relax a woman for a short
while. But the guidance these magazines offer barely scratches the surface of
the deeper sexual realm that exists for every human being. The advice found in
magazines also reflects the widespread absence of concrete information on the
female body. When last did we hear anything new or inspiring? When did we last
hear about something that works? something that sounds right or feels right?
something that resonates in the body, heart, and soul?
The truth is that your body is fully capable of experiencing deep, rich,
satisfying orgasm. The key is to step inward and observe the physical
sensations of your own body without judgment. How do you feel when you are
having sex with your partner? How do you feel when you are having sex by
yourself? Gather information about your body's responses. What do you enjoy?
What irritates you? What leaves you feeling profoundly disappointed? Remember
that, as long as you look at them honestly, feelings are always true. No
feeling is ever "wrong." When your partner, consumed by excitement,
begins to move ever harder and faster toward his own climax (the so-called
jackhammer mode), do you feel invisible, left behind, engulfed by a wave of
disappointment that once again he will be all finished before you even begin to
get warmed up? Or perhaps your partner dutifully feels that he should satisfy
you before he allows himself to be satisfied, so he works hard to bring you to
orgasm by stimulating your clitoris. He's doing the "right" thing, so
you don't want to be critical. But is he rubbing too hard? too fast? Do you
need more lubrication? Do you feel pressured to get on with it, to hurry up and
climax so that he can move on to the "real" part of sex-that is,
penetration and ejaculation? Do you worry that he's getting bored while he's
stimulating you? Do you find yourself getting bored? Do you leave your body
altogether and make a grocery list in your head or remember that your second
child needs to take a picnic lunch for his field trip tomorrow? Or do you need
to leave your physical body in another way and engage in a steamy sexual
fantasy in order to come to climax? Do you actually feel disinterested but work
hard at that fantasy, nevertheless, because your partner will be disappointed
or feel diminished if he can't bring you to orgasm? Do you sometimes fake
orgasm just to get the whole thing over with? You are not alone.
Unfortunately, most women in our modern-day cultures have felt some or all of
these ways. And all of these scenarios miss the essential truth that your body
is fully capable of a deep, sustained, fully satisfying orgasmic state. Orgasm
is not a destination that we arrive at by trying-by doing the right thing or
thinking the right thoughts. Rather, orgasm is a state of being that arises
naturally when we are more relaxed in sex. In relaxation woman opens to her
inner world, bringing herself into the focus of her attention. Doing so reveals
the exquisite interplay of active male and receptive female energy, which
flowers into prolonged pleasure for both the man and the woman.
You may well ask, "If this is true why don't more people know about it?
Why has sexual dissatisfaction become the rule for women, rather than the
exception?" It can be said that we human beings unconsciously remain
shortsighted about our true sexual selves. We are unaware of our higher
potential and how to access it. As it stands, in our conventional sexual
expression we are not truly physically sensitive or psychologically receptive
or available enough to invite higher sexual experiences into us-or rather, to
be graced by the divine, which would be a more accurate description. We are as
host, and the divine is as guest, and enormous space has to be created for the
divine to enter us.
These days it has become virtually impossible to shine new light on sex, to
look at it and see it in a fresh, innocent, enlightened way. This is because
there is an inherent limitation in our viewing situation-woman's role in the
sex act is always looked at through the same spectacles, through the prevailing
misconceptions about sex, the very misunderstandings that lie at the root of
the orgasm issue. If you were to always look at the world through rose-tinted
lenses you would begin to believe that everything was pink. If no one ever
suggested that you take your spectacles off and see how the world looked
without them, you might continue to believe in your rose-tinted perceptions.
They would become the norm for you, just as our misconceptions about female
sexuality have become the norm for us in today's world.
Take, for instance, the sometimes-proffered suggestion that a woman use sexual
fantasy to provoke an orgasm. In actual fact, sexual fantasy has nothing to do
with what is happening in the woman's physical body in the here and now, with
this particular man. It is an imagined scenario. It is a deliberate switch over
from channel "body" to channel "mind," using the power
granted by imagination. This can in fact trigger the response of sexual
excitement in the body. But it has nothing to do with the physical penis that
is present right now in the physical vagina. The issue here is that basic to
lack of orgasm is a lack of connection to the body and to its internal
sensitivity, its kinesthetic sense. So the advice of fantasy as a solution to
orgasm-which only absents a woman further from her physical body-keeps woman
circling around in the same sexual frame in which she already finds herself.
Our conventional, socially conditioned view of sex is linear and
one-dimensional, lacking in balance, intelligence, and spiritual insight.
Unless we are taught the full potential of sex while we are young, we inherit a
sexual conditioning just by being a part of our society, by being surrounded by
cultural misinformation that we absorb unconsciously. The rare person is able
to access the uplifting dimension of sex intuitively; most of us are
conditioned and live life in innocence of any sexual alternatives.
In response to the unconscious female conditioning of our society, the
essential female qualities often become distorted: Softness can become
weakness; receptivity can become passivity or resignation; the nurturing
quality can become overbearing; the beauty of surrender can become submission;
absorption might turn into sucking; the ability to sustain long-term waiting
can shift into indolence; love can turn to jealousy and the use of female
qualities for manipulation; the joy of non-doing and relaxation can express
itself as the dead weight of inertia and laziness. Feminine fluidity might
become a state of collapse; the free expression of individual feelings shifts
toward sentimentality or moodiness; intuition and psychic abilities can slide
over the line into paranoia and hysteria; the ability to allow events to unfold
without trying to control them can become inappropriate indecisiveness or lack
of initiative; sensitivity twists into victimhood or is used in the service of
fear; appreciation for beauty becomes attachment to outer appearance; the
nesting impulse can become a compulsive obsession with security; silent
strength can turn to masochistic dependency; the awareness of connection to the
universe beyond one's personal boundaries can go too far, resulting in an
individual who is vague and spaced out and lacking enough personal definition.
The currently accepted view of "normal" sexual experience keeps women
in bondage to an expression of a male type of sexuality, with no room for
expression of the equally important female pole of sexual experience. The
current male-oriented approach features an outward, sensation-directed
expression of sexuality that effectively erases intrinsic female qualities, and
in so doing firmly plants the roots of sexual dissatisfaction and dysfunction
in both sexes. It is exactly the feminine, receptive qualities (undistorted by
cultural misinformation) that are absolutely essential for the orgasmic state
to arise in woman and also in man. Woman is required to be physically more
poised and at ease so as to absorb the true male force, transform it, and
channel it upward through her receptive feminine powers.
At this point in time women unconsciously, and sometimes consciously, support
men in their male-oriented expression of sexuality. Many women report a high
incidence of pain during and after sexual intercourse, but they endure it
silently in order to satisfy their partners. Many others assume that sex will
be a rough, aggressive experience with no expression of love or tenderness. I
remember a woman telling me during a workshop that she had no idea that sex
could be considerate and gentle. We collude with the dominant form of sexual
expression simply because lovemaking has been "done" in this way for
as long as we can remember. By now it seems utterly normal and we are unaware
that alternatives exist.
While it appears that the conventional model of lovemaking is more satisfying
for men than for women, in truth men's sexual fulfillment could also be much
fuller and deeper, more sustained and more satisfying than it is now. One
reason for this is that male ejaculation is commonly understood to be the male
version of orgasm. For many men ejaculation is the sexual experience. However,
ejaculation is not the equivalent of orgasm. There is another type of male
orgasm that happens without ejaculation and release of semen, an orgasm in
which the energy is retained in the body, expanding upward instead of being
released outward.
Women have enormous difficulties in reaching any kind of satisfying orgasm,
while ironically (and yet somehow not surprisingly), men face the completely
opposite problem-orgasm (or at any rate, ejaculation) is uncontrollable. It is
impossible to delay or avoid. Usually it happens immediately upon penetration
(or shortly before), or else within a paltry few minutes. The amount of time
that passes between penetration and ejaculation is way too short for the
purpose of raising a woman's sexual temperature to a sufficiently high degree
that she will experience orgasm.
Once a woman discovers the art of expressing herself within the female element,
with more serenity and receptivity, she will find to her surprise that she
automatically reduces the likelihood of her man ejaculating prematurely. In
this way, woman has the power to extend lovemaking from minutes into hours. A
perceptive, sensitive internal environment can be consciously created by a
woman. This environment changes the whole quality of the exchange and has the
added power of strengthening the true masculine response. Distressing male
sexual problems such as impotence and premature ejaculation are also symptoms
of the prevailing confusion and lack of information about sex, and particularly
about the female body. When woman develops the ability to shift into her
feminine nature, exercising her receptive powers, many of these sexual
dysfunctions and dissatisfactions can be healed.
At first most women will feel that they have little idea of how to shift into
their feminine aspect or what that truly means. In reality it is easy-and it is
absolutely natural. When we connect with our feminine qualities we can truly be
who we are, with nothing forced and nothing acted out, we are simply open to
receiving love. Relaxation, innocence, grace, and loving spontaneity are at the
core of femininity. Women in my workshops frequently describe the shift toward
themselves as a "coming home" to something they have always known
intuitively. Some share with me the sadness of recognizing now, so many years
after their first glimpse of the truth, the insufficient trust they have had in
themselves to follow through on their intuition and bring it into
experience.
Feminine wisdom is nature's jewel, held deep within woman. The pages ahead are
an attempt to help women uncover something they already possess, a crystal
waiting to receive the light of inner intelligence. |
