Sundays always bring out the priestess in me. This morning I’m contemplating the verse in revelations, where the prostitute is riding the beast.
Here’s my biblical reframe:
What if the prostitute is not a woman who gives into temptation and unworthiness, but one whose love and courage is great enough to tame the beast of humanity? And what if the beast is not an enemy, but actually an initiator of humanity’s wholeness?
I see sex as a spiritual practice, where I have the opportunity to meet and merge with that which I have judged and felt separate from.
My man has lots of hair on his body, which honestly disgusts me. He also makes lots of disgusting man noises out of his nose, throat and butt throughout the day. He chews like an ogre and frequently has food on his mouth or shirt. He breathes too loud in bed, drowning out the birds. I am constantly feeling interrupted, violated by his vulgar man presence. And this grotesque hairy thing wants to enter my Goddess temple?
We all know the love story of Beauty and the Beast. What I want to know is the sex story.
Because love is safe and clean. But sex is messy and dangerous. Sex involves our bodies. Sex involves life and death. In love we can stay separate, because extending light out to another won’t tarnish our own in any way. But in sex we must be willing to receive another’s dark (which most of us know, but forget, is really our own). We must risk dimming or destroying our own light by taking in another’s dark. We actually secretly think this, because we think whatever we perceive to be less than, lower than, or absent of light, is not only real in another, it also real within ourselves. But what makes something absent of light is simply our unconsciousness of it.
I realize I’ve been having sex with boys or at best highly feminine men for most of my life.
Don’t get me wrong. Boy men with their 24/7 testosterone, hard cocks and hairless bodies are awesome in the sack! So much so, I’ve fallen madly in love with a few of them. But damn my sneaky soul for calling in a man this time! And damn if this hairy, loud breathing, ogre chewing man isn’t pressing me up against the wall of everything I’ve been resisting seeing, healing, forgiving in myself. Damn his relentless penetrating consciousness that will not let me get away with shallow, personality, Tantra-lite sex. Damn his world champion back gammon mind and will to win my heart and break my control.
Damn this beastly king whose love demands entrance to my deepest soul’s gate, who will not leave until he sees the queen.
His knocking cock stirs all of my secret fears. Have I been afraid of letting him or any man in because I am ashamed, afraid to acknowledge my own inner beast?
Maybe it wasn’t Beauty who healed the Beast with her love, but the other way around.
Yes, yes, yes! Some years ago, one of my teachers gave me the name Ciara Maire, Gaelic for Dark Mary, referencing the Magdalene and the Black Madonnas. (Ironically, I suppose, these names were given through a shared Tibetan Buddhist lineage.) little did I know at the time that this name would presage a deep dive into my own darkness, healing and integrating aspects of myself, partticularly my sexual self, which I had violently rejected.
I also recently called in a lover, the first in many, many years who is a man, not a woman or a man-boy. He is helping me go the next distance to loving everything in myself. Thank you for your beautiful sharing.
lisa, you are amazing. i love this writing & know exactly what you are talking about!!! thanks for embracing the work!!
in passion,
kate
You beastly beauty, you! Lisa, I so appreciate your gorgeous courage, your sexy wit, your earthy song. Write on! Love, Kira
thank you so much that was beautiful.