The first “S” in the acronym BLISS stands for sexuality and sensuality, which I regard as being as intimately linked as integrity and intention. Sexuality without sensuality is not the genuine article. People too often dispense with sensuality and think of sexuality as merely one’s approach or physical appeal in the pursuit and bedding of another. Sexuality is frequently lost under the layers of clothing, makeup, and cavalier attitudes that we believe exemplify our sexual essence. It is most often buried deep beneath the stories of our lives, the lovers that have come and gone, and a heart that refuses to ache or bleed again because of past experience.

In reality, sexuality is what enables us to live fully, to take in such exquisiteness that we bloom open to that which is God—pure love. Spirituality is God essence expressed in the soul. Sexuality is God essence expressed in physicality.

In the previous chapters on Balance, Love, and Integrity, I discussed at length the importance of deepening each, which propels us closer to experiencing bliss. Sexuality, the fourth element in our journey, is the ongoing process of coming to know ourselves, and love and honor ourselves, in a somewhat different way. It is about self-discovery in relationship to our body, a partner, and all of life. With the awareness and practiced strategies of balance, love, and integrity more firmly rooted within us, our ability to experience our full sexuality will be greatly enhanced.

This chapter explores what holds us back from the full experience of our sexuality, how we can remove those obstacles, and how we can support and nourish our sexuality.

Sexuality and Relationships Are Divine Gifts

Someone once said (my apologies to the author for not remembering who you are): “Sexuality is a doorway to the ecstatic mind of great bliss.” It is natural for us to experience our sexuality as a free-flowing, joyful energy that opens us to the natural state of bliss inherent in everyone.

Enjoying our sexuality to its fullest potential requires us to bring into harmony all of our bodies—our emotional, mental, spiritual, and physical bodies. We operate on our highest level of consciousness when our hearts are fully open and we honor and revere all of our bodies. We experience our greatest sexual and spiritual orgasm when we are completely openhearted and all of our bodies are in balance. We assimilate and create the greatest qualities of life with an open heart and when all of our bodies are unified in their energy.

Full acceptance and loving embrace of ourselves includes accepting and loving our magnificent living organism, the body. A Course in Miracles says, “The body is a tiny fence around a little part of a glorious and complete idea.” If any part of us is taken up with the energy of criticism, self-hatred, self-loathing, or self-deprecation, then the energy running throughout the body is in conflict, and the spirit’s full expression of sexuality and love is diminished.

The factors that most influence our sexuality are our emotions and what we think about ourselves. Our emotions affect us on a daily basis and drive our relationships, with self and others, to success or failure. Most of us spend our lifetime coming to terms with our emotional wounds from childhood and past relationships. That is life’s opportunity, not its sentence. In every relationship we enter, we have an opportunity to heal our wounds, for it is through our relationships that we become aware of our true emotional condition. This is true of all of our relationships, not just those of lover or life partner. Every relationship allows us to witness our own interactions, responses, and behaviors.

We don’t truly know who we are in relationship until we are in one. When it comes to a partner, for instance, it’s easy to be in the comfort of our own home and tell ourselves that we have changed. We might believe that we are no longer a jealous or angry person, that we’re not needy, and we’re emotionally available to be in a relationship with a partner. It’s easy when we’re tired of being alone to tell ourselves that we’re willing to love another unconditionally, or that we’re willing to negotiate the differences between our life and our partner’s life.

But when it comes down to it, it is not easy or simple to live in the present with a fully open, trusting heart, undaunted by the past, and committed to devotional surrender to a partner we have yet to meet, or the one that currently shares our bed.

In relationship with another, we learn things about ourselves that we may not have discovered or admitted before. If we move our egos aside and become a conscious observer while in relationship, we will notice that the relationship brings to the surface every unhealed emotion from the past. We will see that what is necessary to the health of the relationship is what is required for our own spiritual growth. It is our responsibility to tone our emotional muscles and open wide our hearts to better support a new relationship entering our lives, or to invigorate an already existing one.

Choosing a Partner

The choice we make in a partner will either make us feel good about ourselves and our sexuality, or support us in the further robbing of both. The choice will also either bring us closer to or take us further from God. When Rumi wrote about getting deterred by stopping at “mean-spirited roadhouses,” he was reminding us to stop making poor choices that keep us from our Divine joy!

To revitalize our lives and sexuality, we must honor ourselves, and choose a partner who will provide us with opportunities to expand the awareness of who we are and gain more unity with God. Whether we are able to do this depends upon which aspects of ourselves we allow to do the choosing: the personality and the ego, or the heart and soul.

The Point of View of the Personality and Ego

When we view love from the perspective of the personality and ego, we look for love outside ourselves. We are either gloriously excited about a new love, disillusioned with an old one, turning to our friends for commiseration when love ends, or desperately searching for love. We boldly claim one minute that we don’t need a relationship, and the next finds us battling with depression over lack of love.

When we view love from the perspective of the personality and ego, we expect another person to fill the void within us. When that doesn’t occur, the personality and ego experience pain, resentment, and bitterness. We then build a fortress around our heart and create a fractured sense of Self.

The personality is formed of those splintered parts of the soul that have emerged to take on experience and require healing in this lifetime. The ego is I/me/mine and uses the personality to further its ends, cheering on the personality and thereby according it a falsely elevated status. The ego tries to ensure our happiness by keeping everything under tight control. The acronym for EGO is Edging God Out. With the ego running things, deep soul connection, and therefore true happiness, is not possible.

Although our focus may remain steadily on love, our perception of what love is tends to be incorrect because it reflects the point of view of the ego and personality, rather than that of the heart and soul. The personality’s urge is for champagne, roses, constant attention, and complete understanding. These great expectations set us up for failure in relationships. In an attempt to protect itself from the slings and arrows of love, the ego sets up scenarios that keep a mild level of misery running through our lives.

The ego uses relationships as a means to fulfill needs as the personality defines them. Perhaps what the personality needs is not to be alone anymore, so the ego settles for whoever is available. Perhaps the personality is desperate to feel loved, so the ego promotes being sexual with someone too quickly in an attempt to achieve that—and the light of day brings the painful realization that love had nothing to do with the encounter. When holidays loom, the personality wants a partner for the festivities. Desperation, rather than consciousness, drives the search for someone with whom to go to parties, exchange gifts, share a bottle of champagne, and usher in the new year. If we are already in a relationship, the personality and ego start expecting of our partner a certain kind of behavior, which coincides with the holiday time of year, not the condition of the heart.

These superficial standards for a relationship are often the reason we attract people into our lives who don’t really want us. We don’t really want them, either. We want what they can give to us on a superficial level. We want immediate gratification. We call forth someone to do things for us or with us, and to fill a void not meant to be filled by another. When we do this, we aren’t heeding the call of the heart and soul by calling forth deep love or opening ourselves deeply to love. We aren’t inviting a beloved into our lives to bring forth the maximal opportunity for our mutual spiritual growth. Instead, our ego and personality want a dinner partner and a bedmate. When we choose a partner in this way, sooner or later we come to realize that this is not a person we can trust. We realize that although we are not alone, we’re still lonely and unfulfilled. If we’re lucky, it will finally dawn on us that we have loved ourselves too little, again, and we will decide to treat ourselves with more dignity.

The Point of View of the Heart and Soul

Like the personality and ego, the heart and soul are unified in their point of view. Their desire to be in an honoring, intimate, illumined, loving, conscious, communicative, nurturing relationship with another is a deep urge like no other. Their urge for a relationship is much different from the urge of the personality and ego. The heart and soul desire true relationship, which means true connection, so we can experience joy, the effervescence of life within us. The heart and soul desire for us to have another person who can serve as a Divine mirror to reflect facets of ourselves that we need to see in order to heal. Ascended Master St. Germain said (via channels Azena Ramanda and Claire Heartsong), “The meaning of relationship is merely the recognition of you in circumstance.”

The heart and soul desire a relationship so that our individuated spirits can be opened more deeply to our true nature by merging in physicality the feminine and masculine aspects of all of creation—and thus experience re-union, or wholeness. Both genders carry within them both the masculine and feminine aspects. When we merge masculine and feminine energy through the physical body, opening the heart as the channel through which unconditional love travels, we have the supreme opportunity of experiencing our true nature: humility balanced with sovereignty. Feminine balanced with masculine. Love for the other, love for self. In a trusting, intimate, sacred relationship, we are able to open deeper, wider, and even beyond where our own imaginations can take us. It is through this merging and openness that we unify the God essence, the oneness within. There, the spark of life called passion is ignited.

The heart and soul understand that there is no separation between spirituality and sexuality. The specific urges of honor, intimacy, consciousness, nurturing, and other noble impulses are to help us become more aware of the need for a deeper heart connection and bring us back to our Divine self. It is through this understanding of the Divine purpose for relationship that the heart and soul assist us in choosing and accepting our partners in a more conscious way.