Virgin Revelation
For the first time in my life, I was dancing in the arms of a prince. But he was not my prince. The orchestra was playing a waltz, and the violins surrounded the dancers with romantic crescendos. But this romance was not for me.
The setting was exquisite. Gilded mirrors lined the walls of the elegant ballroom and reflected the dancers whirling about. Hundreds of white roses and orchids in majestic marble vases decorated every corner of the room. My escort, Prince Hubert de Polgnac, a young man in his mid-twenties, held my waist firmly as he guided and glided us on the dance floor. He had deeply set blue eyes and unruly brown curls that crowned a high forehead above a long, aristocratic French nose. His eyes were shining and he had a mischievous smile, as if he were about to reveal a secret. He whispered tender words to me. He was obviously smitten.
And that, of course, was the plan. After all, I was almost eighteen, a well-educated, elegant, attractive debutante wearing a long billowing gown from Christian Dior.
I was leading the golden life of a young French socialite groomed to marry rich into a good family that would afford class, money, castles, servants, and protection. My mother, herself a contessa and a grande dame, had seen to it that I was primed for the part.
As I looked around, I noticed how magical, how perfect this evening was, and yet it seemed so unreal. Some mysterious part of me felt utterly uncomfortable. There was a contraction in my stomach—a familiar sensation, as if something in me wanted to run away, as if I had been set on the wrong stage, in the wrong play. No matter how well I played the part, my soul did not belong here.
I secretly belonged to the world of the Paris underbelly, in the dark alleys of the night, where prostitutes bargained temptations, drunks argued, and artists stalked the muse. I smiled prettily, of course, in this high-society setting, but oh, how I longed to break out of that golden cage.
My escape was already beginning. Secretly I was leading a double life. At midnight, I gently asked permission to “go home.” Regretfully, Hubert called his chauffeur and sat beside me in the car. I gave the chauffeur another address. I was not going home. But nobody knew.
I said I was staying with my aunt.
This was an easy subterfuge. Young debutantes were expected to live with their families in an honorable, virginal, chaperoned lifestyle. Those who wanted to marry well played the game. But I didn’t care. I had other plans.
“My parents invited us for dinner at Maxim’s tomorrow evening,” said Hubert, taking my hand. “Are you free?”
“Yes,” I said, “I would be delighted.” Maxim’s was the most elegant restaurant in all of Paris. Why this invitation? What if it were a preliminary step in asking for my hand in marriage?
I could never accept such a marriage for one simple reason: I was in love with someone else. I was in love with Richard, my crazy, wild, bohemian American painter and flamenco guitarist. Every fiber of my being desired him. One touch of his hand sent shivers up my spine. Our chemistry was irresistible. But he was not of my world and the passion he unleashed in my being was not allowed in my world.
The chauffeur stopped in front of the building at 52 Avenue Foch. I was lucky, as this was one of the fanciest avenues in Paris. The address looked good. One could believe my tale about the aunt. After a platonic yet tender hug, I left the prince and walked through the imposing front door of the building, toward the elevator. I stopped and looked around. The street outside was empty. Hubert’s car had gone. I tiptoed to a door in the back marked “porte de service” and stepped into a narrow, gray, rather dirty and unattractive staircase that led up to the servants’ quarters.
Climbing the stairs all the way to the seventh floor without an elevator was a challenge. I was wearing a long white ball gown and absolutely needed to avoid getting even the smallest spot on the billowing folds of the long skirt. Nothing must betray my secret.
I was already taking a big risk. I was supposed to be home by midnight. Father might be waiting to check on me. It wouldn’t do to arrive home late in a white dress streaked with soot and the dregs of people’s garbage and deliveries. Hugging the folds of my dress against my heart, I climbed the stairs, slowly and silently. My heart was beating faster with every step.
Behind me stalked a dark vision of “the Ogre,” my powerful, patriarchal father, the guardian of my virginity, keeping watch over his daughter’s activities like a hawk while—and I knew his secrets—he himself spent many a night seducing girls my age.
I sensed the hypocrisy of the world in which I’d grown up. I saw it at home, watching my mother, the upright, perfectly elegant contessa, hold the fort and maintain the honor of the family as my father acted the part of the impeccable diplomat during the day only to become a wild reveler and womanizer by night.
I watched my proud, silent, dutiful mother sit alone at night with the cat purring on her chest while my father danced through the Parisian night life. That was the moral code by which they lived. That was the way it was supposed to be in a world created by powerful, macho aristocrats. Was I ready to join the club?
With every step up the back stairs, it seemed to me I was climbing beyond the tyranny of class and the oppression of the patriarchy. Yes, I had lived like a prisoner in my own home, not seen or loved for who I was but for how I performed in school, how I dressed, how I played the “good daughter” role and fulfilled my duties. Life had been a long series of rules and carefully learned behavior that must be obeyed as an invisible code of social ethics. I did not know another world yet, but I certainly knew that I no longer wanted to be imprisoned in this one.
In front of me was the unknown, the promise of a new life, even if I could not know what it would be. I was driven by the feeling that I must hurry there, that this moment was of the utmost importance. With every step I climbed, I seemed to conquer a new world of freedom and passion and heart-filled abandon, not over what I should become but over who I had been up until that very moment.
Step after step I climbed, moving beyond the gray, hidden world of those who worked so hard to serve the will of others. I hugged my Cinderella dress and felt a shiver of fear. Maybe I would end up paying dearly for the price of my freedom. Would I be thrown out on the street and be forced to live in such a place, in a tiny attic room, with no money?
Another step. And then, in front of me, finally, was the door to Richard’s student apartment. I hesitated for a moment, and suddenly the door opened wide and there he was. As I looked at him, so much joy flooded my being that I could hardly stand upright. Seeing him was like looking directly into the sun.
“I felt you!” he said, opening his arms wide and hugging me.
I have come home now, I told myself. I can rest my worries and drink in the glory of being loved, admired, accepted, and I can give everything in return.
Richard’s tiny apartment was a converted servant’s quarters—small but bright. I had gone there many times to enjoy his company, listen to his passionate flamenco serenades, and rest in his arms. Until then, we had flirted and kissed, but I had not undressed and he had been respectful of my boundaries.
Every time I visited his home and snuggled in his arms, the longing in me for freedom and abandon grew. But so did the threat of my father’s wrath. Why couldn’t I have the best of both worlds: be a debutante on the front lines and a wild woman behind the scenes? Was not tasting forbidden fruit the ultimate excitement?
I certainly felt it, in that moment, as I breathed in Richard’s special smell: a mixture of the resin in his paintings, the tobacco he smoked in his pipe, and the sweat of a man who was excited about life. His smell was so sensually inviting.
Richard opened his arms, released me, and took a few steps back.
“Let me look at you,” he said.
I put on that “smiling pretty” face I’d worn at the ball and twirled about, showing my dress. Why did I feel so hot, and shy, in front of him? I didn’t feel that way with the others. I tried to imagine him as my escort at the ball, in a tuxedo. How I would have loved to have him there, by my side, instead of feeling split between two worlds. But it wouldn’t do. He did not have the name, the family lineage, the money, the manners. Yet he was so much more sexy and fun.
“You are gorgeous,” he said. “A regal jeune fille bien rangée.” 1
He curtsied, laughed, and gave me a kiss that tasted like wine and tobacco … and shot though my body straight to my loins.
He offered wine. I wanted water. He sat me down and played guitar and sang flamenco while looking in my eyes. I sang with him, in long, deep, throaty wails, and little by little we began a duet, flamenco style, of passionate laments and moans, like two Spanish lovers longing for each other from afar.
We were like two instruments tuning to the right pitch before a concert. Each time we reached a common note and could extend it to a tune, our two voices became one, our energies relaxed in this playful communion of our souls. Richard was so bright and ardent, I felt inspired and I longed to touch him.
I hadn’t told him yet that I had a midnight curfew and was already overstretched. As if reading my mind, or my heart, he put his guitar aside and took my hand.
“Can you stay tonight?” he asked.
I was surprised. He knew I had to go home. I always did. Yet this novel idea suddenly became irresistibly attractive. A free night, beyond rules, beyond limits.
“Father would kill me,” I said.
“He doesn’t need to know,” he answered.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, go back the way you came here,” he replied.
“True,” I said. “We have a service staircase at home as well. I could go in that way.”
After further discussion, we agreed on a scenario that would have me home by 6:00 am. As for the consequences, if I was found out, Inshallah, as they say in the Middle East: “It’s up to God.”
Then I relaxed. He took me in his arms. But the corset of my dress was stiff and tight. He started to unzip it while kissing me. I let him do it. Slowly, kiss after kiss, caress after caress, he skillfully opened my dress and pulled it down to my waist. It was the first time in my life that I had been so close to a man while so scantily dressed. We did not show physical affection in my family. My parents did not hug in front of me. But now, this contact awakened such longing in my body, as if I had been thirsty all my life and didn’t know it.
When his hands glided over my skin, his gentle touch swept away years of anxiety. His tenderness healed the sense of being “on trial,” watched and judged by my father, the family lawyer, while I was rarely hugged or touched by my mother—she had long ago given up on physical contact. I felt sad, because I lived with my parents. I loved them, and it was this love that made it so painful to be with them. My soul felt stifled in their company. I loved them, but that love had nowhere to go: I didn’t know what to do with this love, where to put it, how to express it.
But now, with the stroke of one hand, all this was erased, healed, made right again, as life came back to its warm, relaxed source.
Richard came closer. His smiling gaze poured into me. There was so much acceptance in his eyes that I felt there could be no evil lurking in this man’s heart. His arms were safe. Regardless of the reproaches that might ensue at home, all I could do was follow my heart and my body, and both were drawn to him, closer, deeper, beyond thoughts, beyond all concerns of the future. At that moment, that was all that counted.
“I love you,” he whispered.
“Yes,” I said, “And I love you.”
Those words. We’d heard them in every song, on the radio, in the movies. But now, they were ours. They meant: “You are the one that my soul and my body want to join with.”
I relaxed in the joy that expanded in my heart and let go of any last vestige of hesitation. As I turned my head toward the window, next to the bed we were lying on, I saw a round silver moon shining through.
“The moon is full tonight,” Richard whispered, his lips coming closer to mine. “It is our night.” I could taste his breath. His lips rested against mine and his mouth opened, mine also, and our tongues met and we drank of each other deeply. My spine started to shiver and undulate as the kiss triggered an electric reflex, a current shooting down my back all the way to my sacrum. Now I knew there was no going back. I had been waiting for this moment all my teenage life, fantasizing about the way, the time, the manner in which I would become a woman.
Now I would finally relinquish that so-called precious virginity—precious at least in my father’s eyes, since he was fond of repeating: “Always remember, stay a virgin until you marry, or you will lose men’s respect.” What a cumbersome state, this business of being a virgin to gain the approval of others. After all, why should I need anybody else’s respect? Surely my self-respect was enough.
With every delicious kiss, something unknown and powerful was awakening in me. Every caress was an opening, a liberation. And just as Richard had slipped my dress away from my body, so his loving touch relaxed and healed the armor in my mind, melting the contraction in my psyche.
And then suddenly a hesitation. I knew why: until now, I had belonged to another man. To my father. It was Father who had introduced me to the Paris night life at sixteen. It was Father who had taken me to dance in the discos. When we met his friends, he instructed me to call him by his name, Boris. He didn’t want people to know I was his daughter. He liked people to think I was his girlfriend. There was something unhealthy and intimidating in all this, and over the years, Father had become unusually protective and possessive of me, as if I were “his thing” … almost a second, younger wife.
Richard continued to undress me. I realized that I was wearing the same dress I’d worn at my first debutante ball, when Father, grumpy and bad-tempered, had to officially release his “younger wife” into the social world and company of other men.
It had been a prestigious affair. It had taken place at the Palais de Versailles, the sumptuous residence of King Louis XIV—le Roi Soleil, the “Sun King.” As we arrived in the majestic courtyard of Versailles, we stepped out of the limousine onto a red carpet. We walked between two rows of republican honor guards mounted on horseback and dressed in full regalia, their swords in hand (sabre au clair) saluting the “tout Paris” who were attending this rare occasion. Eventually I was presented to Princess Marie de Bonaparte, the great-grandniece of Napoleon himself, and curtsied.
Somehow, it was that debutante life, that night, that moment of emerging into the promised land of high society that Richard was peeling away, as he slowly took the long ball gown off my body. The empress’s clothes were being stripped off, her nakedness slowly revealed.
Richard was taking his time. I liked this slowness. I could feel his respect. He knew I was a virgin. He did not want to rush things. I could take the time I needed to taste each step and let my body adjust. Oh, my body was on fire. I wanted him. I wanted him right then. I had wanted him for months already. My difficulty came from the fact that, as the intensity of our excitement grew stronger, I was getting caught up in some rather unpleasant yet revealing flashbacks, as if his kisses were triggering the recall of some of the most traumatic events of my life. Perhaps our mating ritual was like an exorcism.
I threw myself deeper into the ebb and flow of our caresses. Then he was stroking my breasts, kissing my nipples. It was the first time. Ripples of pleasure ran down to my belly. I was breathing deeper, flowing along, letting it happen. Everything felt good, yet I was scared. And so excited. I could feel my body expanding, wanting, opening.
Then the fear tightened its icy grip around me and everything contracted. But then his hands cupped my breasts and he whispered “I love you” and again my body let go, swept away by a stream of hot, flowing energy … heart beating faster, blood rushing, breathing deepening. Every cell vibrated and danced as if charged with electricity, pulsing with expectation.
Then Richard took his clothes off and lay naked against me. I could feel his skin against mine, his smell, his sweat, and his sex, hard against my left thigh. I tried to imagine how it would feel inside me. I wasn’t sure. I didn’t know. I suddenly found myself reticent. What if it hurt?
“Let’s relax,” I whispered.
Richard held me close. I took off into another one of my difficult flashbacks.
“Wait a minute, I’m scared,” I whispered.
“It’s okay,” he answered. “I’m here. I love you. Everything is all right. We don’t have to go further. There is nothing to do, nowhere to go.”
I am walking back from school. I must be about eleven years old. It’s around five or six o’clock in the evening, with autumn moving into winter. The light of day is quickly fading. I feel a presence stalking me. I quickly round the corner and enter my building. A man is following. I get into the elevator and press the button for the fourth floor, but before the slow, old machine gets going, the man is there, pulling back the elevator door and stepping inside. We start the upward journey. I am looking down at the floor, pretending everything is okay. The man drops his attaché case, opens his coat, opens his fly, and gets out his penis.
Second floor … His sex organ is hard and pointing menacingly toward me. I am petrified. The elevator is small, big enough for three people at the most. I try to fade into a corner, but I can’t go any further back.
Third floor … He is coming closer, panting, with a mad look in his dark eyes … I realize that the only thing that will save me now is to go public. I start to scream at the top of my lungs, so loud the pervert is taken aback. I scream and shout nonstop across the elevator shaft.
Fourth floor … “HELP! RAPE! AU SECOURS! A L’AIDE!”
Now the spell is broken. And the man is scared. The elevator stops, he dashes out, and I run up the last flight of stairs to our apartment, praying he doesn’t follow me. He doesn’t. I ring the bell like there is no tomorrow. My mother comes, incensed about the racket. I dash into the living room and collapse. My heart is beating. I am so scared, sweating, frozen stiff. A few more minutes and his stiff thing could have killed me. What a weapon! And to think that this is what guys do to girls. How weird. I need protection. Father will protect me. He is walking in. “What is this all about?” he demands. I can’t speak yet.
Finally, I spill the beans. I am crying. I am so sure that now Father is finally going to hold me and offer me solace, refuge, safety. But to my amazement, he smiles, as if he is amused by the story. He almost brushes it off. He acts as if it is no big thing. I feel unloved, misunderstood, alone once again. There is nobody home to take care of me.
Gently, Richard moved closer and the flashback faded. As he was holding me, I felt I was receiving, at long last, the protection I had never gotten. I emerged from the trance and kept the unpleasant memory to myself. I realized that my only hope to heal those old traumas was to surrender to the pleasure of this moment and keep my heart open. Forget the rest. Trust. Breathe. Unwittingly, I was stumbling upon a way of healing that I would later develop as part of my work and that would become one of the cornerstones of my chosen craft: to welcome pleasure, to breathe deeply and allow the sensations to take over the thinking process.
As Richard and I moved gently into loving and caressing each other, desire swept us away beyond thought, beyond the past. And then, Richard moved between my thighs, kneeling there, looking at me adoringly. Melting in his gaze, I opened my arms and called him close. He lay on top of me, his strong, erect member against my pubis. As he covered my body with kisses and my breathing grew deeper and wilder, a dam broke open and a wave of heat flowed down between my legs, where everything became wet and waiting. He touched me there, and I wanted him so much, nothing would stop me from opening.
In the intensity of our movements, emotions were blurred …the fear, the longing, the excitement. Yet something else was also calling me, a sensation so new that I could not comprehend it, a sense of being lifted lightly upward, beyond the body.
Richard was gentle yet deeply aroused. His sex moved closer, deeper between my legs. Something gave way inside me, down there, tears flowed, and his member moved deeper, burning like a blade cutting through the past. And what had bound me until that moment became like a dam breaking open, liberating life and love’s juices, and the wildness of our freedom was discovered, resting at the bottom of my well.
Again, Richard kissed and caressed me and the joy and excitement grew and grew. And so we joined. Deeper and deeper. I did not know where I ended and he began, who he was, other than me … him … us … melting, wild, growing bigger than life, expanding, swelling, throbbing, breathing together and my whole body tingling, cells pulsing, liquid light flowing gold through my limbs as I rose and rose, filled with so much love and erotic excitement. A wild energy was calling, crying, laughing, singing the power of orgasm, the song of life. It was so healing to finally be wild.
Then I was taking off. Something unknown was happening. I was losing control, overwhelmed, projected into space. My whole being began to disintegrate. I was engulfed in the chaos, the agitation, the lust, the shaking and the rumbling, the shouting and the peaking, until, suddenly, life blasted through us like a tidal wave and we climaxed.
And then it all melted away from me, as if I were a beautiful balloon taking off into the sky, silently gliding above the earth, lightly, distantly, beyond it all.
Unexpectedly, there was an intense quiet, as if the sexual orgasm had been a jumping board for energy and consciousness to be projected beyond time and space into a realm of pure radiance and peace. At that moment there was nothing left of the “me” that I’d known before. All the sense of pain and trauma, all the conflicts and aspirations, had dissolved. There was no person there to be called “Margot” or any other name. This “I” was gone and had become pure spaciousness. Consciousness had somehow been carried beyond anything I’d ever known or tasted in this life.
“It” navigated in a luminous field in which all things were joined as one. No being was separate from any other, nor the sky from the earth. I touched and tasted and bathed in that infinite spirit that was never born and will never die. I transcended time. Orgasm had projected me beyond the body into the realm of spirit, and I knew beyond all doubt that my true nature was freedom—and this freedom existed beyond the rules of society, the dictums of my parents, whatever I’d been taught at school, or any other experience. Yes, my true nature was a pure, untouchable, unchangeable consciousness that was part of divine creation, a mystery, essentially unnameable.
Amazingly, unexpectedly, it took an orgasm for me to get there and beyond.
And then, in that blessed moment, I knew that I was One. That I was God. An immense feeling of gratitude expanded in my heart as I rested in my beloved’s arms. And this spaciousness, this luminous awareness, filled me with delight and the simplicity of a truth that had always been there yet had been overlooked. I had touched the light—that which I was before incarnating in this body, that which I would return to after leaving this body. I knew it then … and would never forget.
For a while, we rested and slept. Suddenly the shrill ring of Richard’s alarm cut through our drowsiness. I was jolted back into my body enough to clamp my hands down on the ungodly machine to stop the sound, enough to remember that it was time to go back to my life of the past. My life before liberation, before “de-virginization.” The new “woman” had to go back and play the virgin.
Slowly I got up and put my costume on. I would look strange wandering the streets dressed in a ball gown at 5:00 am, so Richard took me to the taxi station. One last hug and I was on my own. I would have to perform the next maneuver perfectly. I got to the front door of my parents’ house and followed the plan, climbing up the service stairs, once again hugging my white dress to avoid any dirt. Silently, slowly, stealthily, I turned the key in the lock, hoping, praying, that no one would hear. Luckily it worked. I was home free!
What I Learned
If you are thinking, “This reads like a romantic novel you buy at the airport to help pass time on a long flight,” then I can only agree with you. However, it happens to be true—every word of it. This event became a turning point in my life.
I wondered whether it was appropriate to think that I had met God in that moment of illumination. I found an interesting answer to that question in Shantaram, the book by Gregory David Roberts:
“Are you saying that light is God?”
“No,” he answered. …“I do not think that light is God. I think it is possible, and it is reasonable to say, that light is the language of God. Light may be the way that God speaks to the universe, and to us.” 2
In any case, that cosmic orgasm, as I now call it, was uniquely significant in my life—because after that experience, I knew without a doubt that sexuality, for me, was the door to spirituality. I knew that the two were intimately linked. And this revealed a new world of infinite possibilities. There was an orgasm of the body and an orgasm of the spirit. That was bliss. To me, it was proof that “God has orgasms.” And now I knew that pleasure and bliss were not indulgences, but the rewards of those who dare to follow their truth, beyond the anti-ecstatic attitudes that society and education have imprinted in our conscience.
That night of revelation happened in part because I consciously chose to break the rules. I spent the whole night out, regardless of the consequences, and I offered my virginity to the divine. It was definitely worth it.
My rebellion against my parents and the risk of being discovered made the moment of forbidden pleasure even more intense. All of this combined to create an unforgettable experience of liberation.
I pledged that night that I would live my life by my own rules as soon as I became eighteen, the legal age of independence. And I did.
Another breakthrough happened that night. Because I had a most exquisite first sexual experience, I thereafter trusted sex, I trusted my body, and I trusted that men could be great lovers. I had received a positive imprint. Later, as I worked with people all over the world, I realized what a huge impact one’s first sexual experience can have on one’s life. I am grateful to Richard for being such an impeccable Shiva.
But there was a mystery in this experience, and it took me thirty years to understand it. I tell that story later in this book. My first lovemaking led to my first orgasm, which proved to be a jumping board to something much more powerful and overwhelming. I was carried into a state of consciousness that was beyond the body and its pleasurable sensations—even, to my surprise, beyond the feeling of intimacy with my lover.
Imagine the paradox: We had been waiting for that moment for what seemed like eons. We were hot and eager. And yet, moving through the door of orgasm, he and I disappeared on the other side and became … well … unimportant.
How amazing! It was not our bodies, not our senses, not being a man or a woman, not being in love, that counted here. What counted was becoming universal, expanded, boundless, timeless.
This experience, I was to discover later, is Tantra. This is the weaving of energy and consciousness that leads us to our true nature, which is infinite and eternal, which is light.
It may seem beyond the reach of most lovers, but these kinds of experiences are not as unusual as they may seem. As a teacher of Tantra, I have coached and guided thousands of people to explore their sexuality, and I know that, in the moment of orgasm, many people catch a glimpse of meditative states in which time appears to stop, the mind becomes silent and spacious, and physical sensations seem to expand beyond the boundaries of the body.
What was unusual in my case was that it all happened at once: first lover, first sexual experience, first orgasm, and first glimpse of pure consciousness.
At the time, I had no idea how such a thing could happen. Later, I came to understand: one does not need previous training to be able to surrender to pleasure and ecstatic experiences, to welcome those states as meditation, independently of the physical body. It simply requires opportunity, courage, and the understanding that each of us is an orgasmic being, with infinite orgasmic potential.
Why do I say courage is needed? Because the decision to give oneself over to exploring the secrets of sexual energy may not be easy to carry out. There may be all kinds of social barriers. You may be in a relationship with someone who is not interested in such an exploration. You may be concerned about your social reputation, your neighbors, your job, your family, your children.
There can be many potential obstacles, and these need to be met and overcome. And there is no single, ready-made solution that will apply to everyone. I cannot say to you, for example, “Leave this man … divorce this woman … find another partner … enroll in this Tantra workshop … join this social group …”
It is up to every one of us, as individuals, each in our own unique situation, to find ways that will lead us toward fulfilling our potential as ecstatic and orgasmic beings. I spent decades hunting for the bliss of that first night’s cosmic orgasm. It is what motivated me to explore Tantra.
Tantra begins with following the guidance of existence so that it can show you how to become alert and present to what brings a taste of spirituality into your love life. In this way, your sexuality becomes sacred—a sacrament that can contribute to the inner maturing of your self-awakening. This is the beginning of the quest. This is the great adventure on the path to bliss.
The Practice: Enjoying Presence
Special occasions, surprises, unexpected and dangerous situations … They all have something in common. They give us a powerful experience of living here and now, with our attention focused on this, the present moment.
Imagine, for example, you are walking along a familiar street in your neighborhood, mentally preoccupied by some problem, hardly noticing where you are, not bothering to enjoy the sunshine, your surroundings, or the simple sensation of strolling along the sidewalk.
You turn a corner and suddenly you find yourself face to face with a large black bear. Everything stops. All mental preoccupations cease. You are astonished, amazed, filled with a mixture of fear, curiosity, and adventure. Is the bear friendly? Is it dangerous? One thing is for sure: this unexpected situation has brought all of your attention and energy to now—to this single present moment.
Mountain climbers experience the same phenomenon of total presence in a different way. They put themselves in dangerous situations where they cannot afford any distractions—it is simply too risky.
My first act of lovemaking with Richard had a similar quality. Everything was so risky, so unknown, so exciting, so filled with wonder. I had no choice but to be present every moment.
Presence is a magical alchemy in the sense that it can work both ways. Just as an exciting situation brings presence, so can being totally present make an ordinary situation exciting. Experienced meditators—Zen masters, for example—know this secret. They are able to focus all of their attention on a simple, ordinary act, such as drinking a cup of tea, thereby transforming it into a sacred act.
With these examples in mind, I invite you to explore the art of being present in your sexual life while making love. I don’t suggest you make this a general ongoing activity, covering a long period of time, because unless you are a seasoned meditator, you will be likely to soon forget your practice.
Rather, make a decision to focus for a short time on a particular aspect of lovemaking. For example, say you are enjoying the delicate caress of your lover’s hand on your back. Allow yourself to focus completely on this sensation, without carrying any extra mental baggage, such as wondering what your partner is expecting you to do next. Or, in that first moment when you begin to feel sexual attraction, when you detect the first tingling of a sexual urge, resist the temptation to rush into the future, imagining what may follow. Instead, enjoy this sensation for its own sake. Be with it. Be with it totally. Ride the current of your breath all the way to the origin of your pleasure. Feel it in every cell of your body. Stay with your breathing.
This can be helpful because breathing is always a “here and now” experience, so being aware of your breath can help you remain in the present moment. Let your awareness be a witness to the experience of this moment, without expecting something more to happen, without anticipating what will happen next.
Relax. Do not look for anything.
Do not be attached to any outcome.
Be with what is.
Presence is the key to leading an alive, vibrant existence.
Just as a desire leaps up,
And you perceive the flash, the sparkle,
Quit from its play,
And maintain awareness
In that clear and shining place
From which all desire springs. 3