Sex and Death

Le petit mort... the small death. That is the French way of talking about an orgasm. When we have sex, we experience life and death simultaneously in the most intense ways possible. Feeling so very fully alive with all our senses open and aroused. So intimately connected with ourselves and in the most physically intimate way possible connected with another. And when we climax, for a moment we reach a different state of consciousness than the state we have been in building up to it, and our state afterwards. When we climax, we sort of die in a way. After all the excitement, tensing the muscles, breaths, sighs, moans, the AHs and OH YESses, there is complete and utter stillness, silence, nothing...
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Sex and death. People are afraid of both. That's why they are taboos. No one talks about sex and no one talks about death. We remain silent about them both. The moment they are mentioned, a degree of discomfort often creeps up on us. Because of this repression we have created substitute words. We don’t say, "we are having sex"; we say, "we are making love". Which might even be false, as love is a totally different dimension. Having sex is having sex; it is not making love. Love may include sex and sex may include love, but they have different qualities. Neither do we ever talk about death directly. If someone dies, we use substitute words. We say they are “diseased”, “passed over”, “left their bodies”, or “gone to heaven”. Death is never faced directly. Why is there a taboo on these two themes? They are deeply related.

Firstly, we are born out of sex; we are made of sex. Birth and death are two poles of one thing. In your very birth, death is hidden. Death cannot happen without sex just like birth cannot happen without sex. Without sex and at least our father climaxing, we wouldn’t be here. Our life started in total darkness, held in our mother’s safe dark womb for 9 months, only to be reborn and take our first breath into our lungs in a totally different world, here. So when you are born, you have already been involved in sex. Whether you repress or express your sex doesn’t matter; death will follow as the only certainty we have.

Secondly, we are made for sex. Most of us are born with functioning sexual thus reproductive organs. It is the greatest creativity we have been given; to create new life through the act of sex. This is why the very basic essence of life is right down there, in our pelvic floor, in our sex. It is why our sexual energy is pure life energy, the most powerful form of energy we have.

Thirdly, in a deep sexual act, you feel a certain death, as if you are no more. If you really dare to go into the act totally, you merge. Your individuality disappears and a greater force takes over. Sex starts as a voluntary act, but it never ends as a voluntary act. A point comes where your voluntary mechanism is taken over by the nonvoluntary. A point comes where your conscious mind is thrown off and the unconscious takes over. A point comes when your ego cannot exist and the non-ego is in control. You feel a sudden death of the ego; you feel like you are dying.

That's why people who are afraid of death and letting go, cannot achieve orgasm; they cannot allow their unconscious to take over. They remain mentally conscious and try to control the whole process. Then, they cannot achieve a deep sexual orgasm. The more civilised and controlled we become, the less possibility there is of orgasm. That blissful moment when your ego is lost and you are merged into existence is a certain death: death of the ego, death of the conscious, death of your individuality. If you can experience death in sex, sex itself becomes spiritual; it becomes a meditation. And that, by the way, is where Tantra kicks in ;-) That's why those who are afraid of sex will be afraid of death and those who are afraid of death will be afraid of sex. They fear that they may be lost and want to know for sure that they will be capable of coming back. You can’t. It is uncertain and that uncertainty is something you need to let go into. Who knows whether you will come back or whether you will go on and on, and disappear completely into never-ending ecstasy or bliss?

The film 50 Shades of Grey opened up the discussion and exploration of darker, the more hidden, unexplored or not talked about sides of sexuality; such as SM, BDSM, conscious kink, and shadow tantra. As well as increasing discussions and publications on sexual dysfunctions, deviations, perversions, paraphilia, and unheard of fetishes.

Dare to explore or at least be open to the possibility of accepting and maybe even appreciating the entire spectrum of sexuality; from light angelic lovemaking to deep dark BDSM and the 50 shades of grey in between. Nobody likes vanilla icecream all the time, right? Sometimes you want a different flavour, like chocolate, or the middle way, straciatella. Hell, there’s so many flavours nowadays; limoncello, blueberry muffin, strawberry cheesecake, smurf, oreo cookies, bounty, honey yoghurt. You might have just one scoop, two or even treat yourself with three scoops. And sometimes you want a little extra, like disco sprinkles, sweetened nut sprinkle, or whipped cream. Sometimes in a cone so you can lick and play around the cream it with your tongue, and sometimes in a cup so you can take neat little bites with your spoon and put your teeth in it.

Let the experience of death around us, such as form a family member, friend, or even of famous person you adored, be a powerful reminder that we can die in any moment, and therefore we should focus on being as appreciative and as sensory, sensual, sexy, and alive as we can in each moment. Having all of our senses open and awake, practising them daily to increase our sensorial capacity and awareness. As we are able to see, hear, smell, taste, and touch more consciously and intensely, so are we more in touch with ourselves, with others, with the (natural) world around us, and with all of our mortality.

With passion & pleasure,

Mandy Selina