NaMYste: The Divine in Me Recognizes the Divine in…Me
“Namaste”. The word said at the close of yoga class is a balm on my soul. I feel the deep resonance of connection to my community, and sometimes it brings a tear to my eye. Despite my NYC hardened exterior, my center is ooey gooey. I want to belong in a world that places a premium on peace and love. Had I been alive in the 60’s I would have been an easy mark for a love cult, or started one. Chanting in a group makes my heart sing, and when we end by bowing to one another with Namaste, I am full of peace and contentment, and truly feel like the best version of myself when I am open and seeing others just as they are.
“Bowing to you”, is the literal translation of namaste, but as a greeting carries the deeper spiritual meaning of “the divine in me recognizes the divine in you”. I see you. I see the goodness and richness of your pure soul, and I offer to you all that is good and pure of myself. Love is admiration, namaste is acceptance.
During a conversation with a friend this morning, we wandered onto the topic of sexual experience and she remarked upon feeling low confidence in that arena because she has not had many partners. Oh that pesky Narrative again. I mention all the time my thoughts on The Narrative, that insidious construct of bullshit that we are taught in a monogamous by default world. We are instilled with the belief that we are only good at something or successful or worthy when someone else validates us.
In the age of social media, our value is determined by the currency of likes and comments. Without followers, we are worthless. We are only as good as the engagement of our last post. The Narrative tells us that life is a vending machine where we put in virtue and we get out reward. Be a person of character, have good morals never stray from the path of marriage, kids, career and financial assets and you will be loved and admired. Only when you have attained material wealth and the attention of others will you be worthy…but of what exactly?
In the sexual realm The Narrative tells us that if a lot of people say you are hot, and an acceptable and respectable number of lovers say you are good in bed, then lo and behold, you are deserving of sexual confidence. This idea is such bullshit that the smoke barely covers the mirror. I reminded my friend that she had to look no further than her favorite K-Pop idol to pop a hole in this belief structure. While a parasocial relationship, she sees his sex appeal, and delights in it, not because of how many others like him, and what sexual experience he has, but because he simply, “is”. For her, his worth is not determined by sexual experience, but because of how uniquely himself he is. We believe that only with external validation we are sexy, but the truth is we are completely capable of being so, even if nobody else is reflecting our light back at us.
What if we were allowed to be sexually confident, not for what others say about us, but for what we know about ourselves? Instead of having notches on my bedpost to indicate how proficient I am at sex, I am able to say, “I know I like this thing, I want to share this of myself, but I ultimately am the key to my own sexual worth”. In my daily interactions I try to teach people that they can bask in their own sexual light and not need anyone else to confirm it’s existence to make it their truth.
At 48, with scars on my body, and a body count of triple digits, I sometimes struggle to see myself as sexy. I have aged out of youthful beauty and fucked my way into the category of a woman of ill repute. On my best days, when the divine in me recognizes itself to be divine, my attitude on others not finding me sexy is simply fuck you. I know myself, I know my worth. I am loving and open to loving you in the way you want to be loved. I listen to my body and I am wanting to listen to yours. I stand in my sexual light and I am empowered. My light comes from within and it shines whether or not anyone is there to see it. I stand, at the ready, to see you and accept you exactly the way you are, but I do not need you to determine my sexual worth. I have determined it for myself.
NaMYste.
It is in this empowered state that we truly ARE sexy and completely primed to engage in partnered sexual experiences with the purpose of cultivating intimacy. In a Swipe Right world, we are lead to believe that sex is about getting our needs met through the cachet of having outsourced the orgasm and alleviating us from the shame of simply giving it to ourselves. Masturbating is ok as a last resort, but if you fuck the right amount of people in the bell curve range of acceptable, you are sexy. Too little or too much, you are once again undesirable. Masturbating too much, or fucking too much makes you unsexy, so you better get those numbers right, kid. Goddamn that Narrative.
My counter to this is to invite you to consider that which brings you sexual joy, and to see what aspects of it really and truly make you happy. When you engage in self pleasure, touch your body with loving intention, remind yourself that your ability to feel sexual pleasure confirms your existence as a sexy creature. If you can feel it, you can be it. You just have to take a leap of faith. People do it with religion all the time. Believe in yourself as a divine sexual being. You don’t need the burning bush to tell you it is so. You are already there. Peel the veil from your eyes, disengage from your sexual follower count and revel in what makes YOU feel good, and learn to seek the validation that comes from within. Reject The Narrative and be assured of your worth. When you feel sexy, you ARE sexy. I see you, now my beloved, it is your turn to see yourself.
Namaste.
