Sacred Pleasure

To experience pleasure is to enjoy delight, gratification and satisfaction through all of ones senses. Pleasure is an important, nurturing part of our lives that makes us feel light hearted, relaxed, energized and more integrated into our body. Pleasure is associated with sexual energy, earth and nature, human embodiment and creativity. There is a distinction between healthy and unhealthy pleasure. Healthy Pleasure is consensual and within proper proportions. This kind of pleasure brings balance and nutrition to our health, heart and spirit without harm to the self and others. Unhealthy pleasure is often due to the repression of pleasure and leads to overindulgence perversion and the crossing of boundaries. This kind of pleasure is not respectful of the person's well-being or the others involved. Many spiritual traditions perceive pleasure to be separate from and inferior to spirit. Spirit is associated with mind, heaven, out of body experience and rationality. Out of this assumption, there is a common guilt complex associated with experiencing pleasure. Guilt is our internalization that spirit and pleasure are at odds. Symbolic of this internal conflict is the glamorization of pain with pleasure, such as sado-masochism, and the fascination and reliance on dangerous substances to experience pleasure. Pleasure doesn't have to be painful, distorted or separate from our spirit. Ancient people from places like Egypt, the Mediterranean, China and India recognized pleasure as a pathway to spiritual consciousness. They thought that sexuality, nature, beauty, the body and creativity were sacred. Right relationship on a daily basis with them was essential to a healthy, well-balanced long life and spiritual development. Consciously connecting our spirit with pleasure brings us into a state of integral wholeness, health, acceptance, emotional fulfillment, and ecstasy within ourselves. Pleasure is an exquisite celebration of being human. It can bring balance into our lives and inspire sacred delight, play, love and happiness.