Few of us grasp the wholeness that is love-making. In true love-making, two people come together, open in body, mind, heart, and soul. They are intimate in love, and they join together and become one. They move together with pleasure toward an ecstatic moment. It is a moment beyond words, thoughts, form, and separateness — a state of bliss. They come to experience their own, and perhaps a still greater, wholeness. A part of what occurs in this moment is that they experience a loss of their ordinary, "minimal" self, and in its place they experience a greater fullness.

When we experience this greater fullness of self, we know in a different way than we ordinarily do through minimal self, which knows only through the ordinary, common-place, outer-oriented mind — a limited way of knowing that prevents us from experiencing ourselves as we truly are.

When we move beyond minimal self and ordinary mind, we let go of much of what we think we are and move into something immensely greater. We move beyond the delusions of the commonplace, day-to-day mind and connect with something that cannot quite be known by means of that mind, with its limited concepts, ideas, and perceptions. We move into the mind of love that sits deep within us.

ORGASM: MOMENT OF TRUTH

In love-making, and especially at the moment of orgasm, we experience the wholeness of love. Be it only for a moment, we experience something we can call our true mind, the mind of love. We step beyond words, thoughts, and concepts. We even move beyond time. And as we surrender to love, the seed of truth within us comes to life. We momentarily lose all self-centered sense, including the physical, and move into a totality of love. We experience bliss and freedom, and in this experience we catch a glimpse of who we truly are. Sadly, it is an experience that most of us fail to know or else fail to recognize for what it truly is.

While love-making and orgasm are among our most pleasurable physical experiences, their greater capacity is to take us beyond physical pleasure. We long for wholeness, union, love. We long for the healing of our deepest wounds, which come from our separation from love. Many people, if only within, are desperately searching and crying out for peace, for satisfaction, for truth, for love. In genuine love-making, we find at least a temporary satisfaction of these longings, one that may even be pointing us to a more permanent satisfaction and the wounds' deepest healing.


innerself subscribe graphic


BUT ONLY FOR A MOMENT?

This satisfaction may be momentary only because we have not yet come to know and experience love in the fullness of its beauty and power — its reality (and ours). When we do, the experience will remain alive within us. We shall no longer glimpse the wholeness of love; we shall become it. Here, then, we find the true meaning of love-making and orgasm.

CREATIVE NATURE OF LOVE-MAKING AND ORGASM

It is important to understand the nature of love-making and orgasm. Being more than merely physical beings, during love-making we encounter levels of experience that go beyond the physical and emotional. Here we characterize them as energetic; they are also regarded by some as spiritual in nature.

Love-making and orgasm create an expansion of energy in the energy fields of the lovers when the sexual energy merges with the deeper, more profund energy of love. These two potent forces converge only if the lovers' hearts are open and the centers associated with sexual energy are open and their energies flowing. This powerful fusion fills the lovers and their energy fields with the creative, blissful, healing energy of love, reaching its climax in orgasm.

The lovers experience this energy flowing in them, around them, and between them. Such expansion of energy has the power to move them into a still higher vibrancy of energy and an even higher level of awareness. Further, in orgasm it is possible to experience something like formlessness — a moment in which we experience intensely, and know directly, what we can only conceive of as our very "essence."

What we experience in love's orgasm allows us to know that we are love and that we too can create life — and not just biological life — out of love. We can give birth to love and beget enlightenment on many levels and in many ways. We can begin to know ourselves as much more than physical beings and experience ourselves outside of our ordinary, mundane consciousness.

We can also know that, underneath our perceptions and concepts and beyond the limitations of the body we are getting at the "truth" of ourselves. In love's orgasm, however briefly, we experience the reality and truth of who (or what) we really are. We experience our purest and highest energy, which is love.

ORGASM: PORTAL OF THE EXTRAORDINARY

Because of the profound nature of love-making and orgasm, when we come together with another in love-making, we experience a sense of beauty and wonder. When we are open and the sexual energy joins with the vital energy of love, we step out of the ordinary into the extraordinary -- a
state of bliss, the potential for which we first began to feel in the initial stirrings of romantic love.

Something very true, very real, comes to life at that time. We feel within us, and in the relationship with the beloved, the dance, the bliss of pure love and want to remain forever in this state. We want to touch and feel this love just as we want to touch and feel the beloved and to be touched and felt by him/her. We want to make love and to create over and over again this experience of love.

The experience, however, does not happen in isolation apart from who and what we are in other parts of ourselves and other areas of our lives. Life is more than a bedroom. What we experience in love-making and orgasm is a reflection of the degree of wholeness we have achieved and the integrity that exists in all areas of our lives.

When we bring to love-making a consciousness of love and a desire to be open and intimate with another in love, then the fullness of love can come alive within us. In contrast, when we bring to love-making a desire for something other than love and a lack of openness to the other, our experience of love-making and orgasm will reflect this. In other words, for better or worse, we bring to the experience who and what we are, and this will determine what the experience is for us.

AND A PERFECT UNION

It is no wonder, then, that so many people are desperately searching for meaning and even transcendence in romantic relationships. Each time we truly make love, join together with another intimately and with an open heart, we are enjoying the experience of something authentically us, intimately true to ourselves. At the same time, in these experiences we have the opportunity to join completely with another. There is no separation; there are no boundaries, no "private" thoughts or self-consciousness. There is nothing but bliss.

But we have to be willing to step out of the ordinary mind and our limited experiences of who we are. We have to be willing to take the giant step into the truth of love — not just in love-making and orgasm, but in all areas of our lives — over and over again until we incarnate that truth.

Love in its essence is about union. It is about merging and becoming one with the truth of who we are; one with the beloved; and — some might add one with a still greater truth that dwells beyond all the illusions and limitations of the world of ordinary consciousness.

THE "THIRD WAY": HEIGHTENED CONSCIOUSNESS

What are love-making and orgasm really about? We can experience sexual pleasure on a physical level and consider it a thrill, using it to satisfy physical urges and emotional needs. Similarly, love-making and orgasm can be regarded as something mundane, a biological process that is part of our physical makeup. But there is a third way to see and understand these experiences: as a means of raising our consciousness and moving to higher levels of energy.

The heightened awareness and the energy of love experienced in this way can then be held and carried into other areas of one's life. The process is one of awareness and energy very naturally and freely flowing within and through oneself, eventually expressing as oneself. This energy can further flow beyond these experiences to touch and benefit others in ways seen and unseen.

A WORD OF CAUTION

We must never think of these matters as "high-minded," idealistic notions, philosophical abstractions, or wishful thinking. They translate into experienced energies, ranging from harmonious, healthful sensations all the way to awakened joy. Nor has anyone the right (or evidence) to deny this who has not attempted to be free from the destructiveness of mass-minded sensualism and the minimal, truly subhuman experience of sex and orgasm with limited understanding of their true nature and power.


This article was excerpted from:

Sex True or False? by Michelle & Kevin Hennelly. Sex True or False?
by Michelle & Kevin Hennelly.


Reprinted with permission of the publisher, DeVorss Publications. ©2003. www.devorss.com

Info/Order this book.

More books by these authors.


About the Authors

Michelle Rios Rice Hennelly & R. Kevin HennellyMICHELLE RIOS RICE HENNELLY is a healer. She received a BA from the College of Santa Fe and a MSW from New Mexico Highlands University. ROBERT KEVIN HENNELLY is a former attorney and currently a psychotherapist. He received a BA from the University of Notre Dame, a law degree and MS in Foreign Service from Georgetown University, and graduate degrees in counseling and clinical psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and the Fielding Institute. Visit their website at http://www.ourladyoflightpublications.com.

More articles by these authors.