Reflection 167

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Enlightening Sex

Well, I don't know, of course, what your special problems are. But I do know what their solution is. It's clear what you have to do. No matter what they are, see where they are. In more detail, even when making ardent love - specially when making ardent love - see yourself as absent in favour of the loved one. Don't try to feel or understand your absence: there's Nothing to be felt or understood. Don't imagine it or think it, or verbalize the seeing into 'Here am I, gone!' Just look in as well as out. This way, it's no longer a case of 'How excited I am!' or 'What a wow of a time he or she is giving me!' There are thrills all right, but no one is here having them. No: it's a case of 'How exciting he or she is, how lovely and enjoyable!' A clear case of 'What an incredible partner!' instead of 'What incredible things he or she is doing to me and for me!' The thrills are thrilling because they are genuine - genuinely other-centred and not self-centred, objective and not subjective. Sex of this sort, based on being yourself instead of some wretched stand-in-for-yourself - which means seeing yourself from no distance instead of yards away - is truly enlightening as well as truly sexual. Each partner is enlightened by the other. Somewhat as, when black and white come together socially, they trade faces: so, when man and woman come together sexually, they trade bodies. Each takes in, and takes on, the opposite sex. Without this switch-over, it's masturbation à deux. With it, meditation à deux, of a sort that's no less spiritual for being so physical. (Douglas Harding. Head Off Stress.)


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