Can sex be more than an exchange of pleasures? Can it be more even than the expression of romance? In the paradigm of sacred intimacy, sex is holy. Erotic energy is life force energy. It is an aspect of constellations, trees and tides. Sexual ecstasy is a way to honor and practice the divine in ourselves and others. It is a way to pray, celebrate, heal and transform. With every cell in our bodies, we can be and become love.
Sacred intimates are professionals who help others access the joy and power of erotic energy. It is a career and a calling. We teach technologies of ecstasy. We are guides and we are whores. We are lovers who love you more than you have ever been loved before. It is our job and our vocation to cherish your soul as we guide you to expand your capacity for intimacy and bliss.
Love within the paradigm of sacred intimacy is a pledge to love in a universal sense that invites ongoing courage, exploration and growth. It is a pledge to treasure the unfolding of your deepest vulnerabilities, and to meet your monsters with equanimity. Sacred intimacy exceeds the dead forms and obligatory gestures of conventional relationships. It invites you to life.
The exchange of money for intimacy is widely denigrated, and even (in some forms) prohibited and criminalized in this culture. Sex work can be a desperate choice by marginalized people who are injured and endangered by the thousand ways sex work is despised. But why is prostitution subject to this scorn? The historic enclosure of sex in married monogamy coincides with the enclosure of the commons, the consolidation of patriarchal power, and the violent suppression of erotic alternatives. When sex escapes the prison of prescribed lifeways, it admits the dream of freedom. This dream can be defused in soul-free hookups or one-sided exchanges with disempowered sex workers. Or the dream of freedom can be fostered through the mindful cultivation of sexual energy. Sacred intimates offer a path for the conscious practice of erotic freedom. We are creators and innovators who see a universe of possibility in the fact that getting paid gives value to our time, our learning and our love. Money allows for an exchange of erotic energy that owes no fealty to compulsory forms of social organization based on family, faith, gender identity or sexual orientation. With loving relationships based on joyous and equitable exchange, we can practice a possible future through the medium of money.
Sacred intimacy need not be confined to arrangements with a professional. Indeed our goals involve teaching how these acts and attitudes can be aspects of any relationship, including married monogamy. What sacred intimacy means is that you consciously craft a container for ongoing learning through expanding erotic capacity. It means that you regard sex as potentially offering a way to open the heart and become joyful, to heal personal and cultural wounds, to experience our wholeness, and to know the divine in ourselves and others. It means respecting, loving and cherishing. It means witnessing guilt, shame and fear arise, with deep compassion for our beloveds and ourselves. It means experimenting and getting messy, playing and having fun.
Those of us who practice sacred intimacy are flawed human beings who exhibit the usual gamut of untidy emotions. I am greedy, jealous, fearful, angry and sad. And I aim to relax into it. My job is to keep my heart open when it’s trying to close and open when it wants to cling. I want to be fully present with all that is actually unfolding, in myself and my beloveds, in our bodies and our souls. As I experience the joy of working and playing with erotic energy, I channel grace and love through me. I am filled with gratitude and compassion. Waves of energy awaken within me. They are waves of bliss.
For an online program on the art and science of sacred intimacy, see www.IntimacyEducator.com