This client is a coach who helps people on the spiritual path engage in sexual and romantic relationships from a place of higher consciousness. I’ve always been a spiritual person myself and regularly practice meditation, so I was an ideal candidate to ghostwrite his book. His goal was to create a book he could give to clients and prospective clients to use as a marketing tool.
After a few initial meetings to ensure I understood his unique talking points and perspectives, I created an outline for the book. He approved the outline and I moved forward with the writing. I regularly met with him throughout the process to ensure I was getting his message right, and that he was completely happy with the process. He was! He recently told me he still receives compliments on it.
The Problem
We’ve worked with many people, both single and partnered, seeking a deeper, more spiritual experience of sex and relationships.
Throughout our work, a common theme pops up again and again: as people grow in consciousness, they experience discontent, confusion, and even pain in their sexual love relationships. It’s as though everything they thought they understood about sex and love has turned out to be “off” somehow, or there is a deep yearning for something more. Either way, they can’t find a true path to meaningful sexual love.
Most forms of conscious sexuality work (and even tantric practices) sincerely address the symptoms of these recurring themes, yet the core of this distress often remains unexamined.
This theme manifests in different ways:
This is not a unique phenomenon.
Typically, we see sex as a domain to share love as well as the luscious giving and receiving of sexual pleasure, expressing and building love, and perhaps having children. There are even some belief systems that insist procreation is the only point of sexuality.
But there’s much more to sex than that. The sexual drive is a primal force flowing through the fabric of the universe. In myths around the world, some of the most powerful gods and goddesses held the scepter of sex. There’s a reason Aphrodite was the first goddess to come out of the waters in Greek mythology. She wasn’t an afterthought—she was front-and-center.
Without the power behind sexuality, nothing would exist. It’s a motivating, driving energy throughout all of existence—and that includes you.
You are not left out of the equation. The Universe did not forget you. In fact, the Universe is now calling to you to remember.
The root of the problem lies in the mundane understandings we’ve been given of sex and sexual love. It’s an understanding of sex and relationship often based on thoughts, fears, needs, memories, and unexamined ideals.
This is an ego-based understanding. . . an understanding often cut off from the Universe, and therefore limited.
“Dysfunctional,” is a strong term, but we can’t say we disagree with Mr. Tolle. Yet, fully grasping what is proposed here involves a significant expansion in consciousness. Many modern approaches to conscious sexuality simply do not address what Tolle is suggesting here. In our work we do.
This is a paradigm shift in human consciousness which upon us now, and we are being called to inhabit it. And as Tolle suggests, intimate relationships are being particularly impacted by this shift in consciousness when this shift is not addressed. This is a shift beyond our current ego-based understanding of sexual love.
Simply said, this is a radical shift in perception when it comes to how we experience sex, sexuality, and partnering. And this is a profound yet natural paradigm shift; this is the future of sex, love, and partnering.
Making Sense of Ego-Based Understanding
By ego-based, we mean totally identified with the mind’s view of itself, its thoughts, and its emotions. An ego-identified mind believes it is its thoughts and emotions, and has a hard time understanding the concept of a larger sense of self that isn’t defined by things like memories, needs, and fears.
If we’re on a path of spiritual awareness—if we’re actively involved in our own consciousness—of course an ego-based understanding of sexual love won’t satisfy us. Our ego is often limiting our entire experience when it comes to sex and love. And when it comes to sex and love, this can be particularly tricky to see.
Imagine a professional ballroom dancer gets hit on the head and develops amnesia. He can’t remember what he used to do. Then he goes to a party where people are dancing without any particular style or grace (maybe they’re even a little drunk), and he tries to join in. He gets a sense that there’s something important here—something that matters very much to him—but he doesn’t know what it is. Either way, this kind of dancing doesn’t feel right. He decides dancing is not for him, or settles for feeling awkward and out of place, left with a vague longing for something indefinable, but more.
You are dancing, and sexual love is the dance. What everyone else is doing on the dance floor is the ego’s interpretation of sexual love. Of course it doesn’t feel right to you!
