Elvis had it right.

What we all probably need in our sex life is  “a little less conversation, a little more action.”

But I like to talk. I like mental acrobatics and sparring with words—just for fun. I like to poke with semantics and challenge with concepts, and plain old stir the pot.

When I am under stress, I talk at a higher pitch and at a pace that rivals an auctioneer. When I am relaxed, I talk a bit more slowly and with some degree of forethought. But overall, I am an agile and avid talker.

And yet, I know that in unforgettable moments of illumination—times where I have brushed up against the ineffable and numinous—I have been silent. Silent outwardly, and inwardly, deathly quiet. All those thoughts that give rise to words evaporated, leaving me in an eye-of-the-hurricane stillness. I am in the center of it all, where the roar and gale force of my thoughts cannot reach me.

This simple truth that I cannot talk (and by extension think or philosophize) myself into a state of inner peace just recently landed with the force of a punch. It happened in one of those moments that I can only call surrender.

After months of arguing with myself about the should and should-nots, the pros and cons, and even the rights and wrongs (Rumi forgive me) of my relationship with a man I call my lover, I simply shut up inside. In the middle of lovemaking, I fell into silence and opened into, well, there are no words for it, but this is what it felt like.

Imagine a rose. Now picture that rose right in front of your face, so that you are looking into its center. In a time-lapse photography way, new petals emerge from the center and open outward, and fold open into all the preceding petals. Now see that this is ongoing, that it never stops. Petals on petals on petals emerging, unfolding and opening from the center.

Look now into the center of this rose, the heart of this unfolding and emerging. You can’t quite see what is there so you zoom in, you get closer. It’s dark but warm. It feels inviting in some way you can’t define. You are pulled closer and closer until you realize you are falling into this soft darkness. And then you are inside the center of the rose, enveloped in the complete absence of light, a deep and still blackness.

All thoughts cease. A playful joy and wild delight rise up in you, and a knowing: this is where I am from, this is what I am, this is home.

To say that this is a satisfying experience is a little like saying that winning the jackpot in a lottery is pleasant when in fact it is undoubtedly exhilarating. Falling into this dark center was, for me, ecstatic. And yet, here I am a few days later back to my mortal everyday awareness, wondering if what happened will ever happen again.

I’m watching my mind play games with it all, trying to downgrade the experience to my wishful imagination.

But it happened. It happened when I stopped, as Byron Katie would say, “arguing with reality.” It happened when I moved from resistance into allowance and from grasping into receiving. And there was a choice around this. A moment in which I could have escaped the gravitational pull of god and said no, instead of yes, to grace.

After a lifetime of swimming against the current, I let it take me home.

I stumbled on these words by writer Peter McGugan while Facebook surfing and pondering my transcendent yet immanent (I was having sex after all) instant of falling into grace. These words from his book, When Something Changes Everything, came to fortify me just as the memory of my journey to the dark welcoming center felt dimmed by daily life and all that talk in my head.

Writes McGugan:

“Presence is consciousness, an energy realm that transcends polarity, and pettiness. It opens us through pure energy that transcends words. Open your mind like a great blossom opening out. Allow your mind to open, to receive, to be oneness. And feel the beautiful lightness of simply being.”

If you are reading this article I’ve written, perhaps it’s your reminder of what you already know. Maybe you, like me, are being nudged by god to open, to receive and to simply be.

~
Editor: Jennifer Cusano

Lori Ann Lothian is the creator of the popular The Awakened Dreamer blog (http://theawakeneddreamer.com) which hit the stands following an overnight Enlightenment Episode that revolutionized her sex life and destroyed any chance at ever being miserable again. Lori Ann lives in Vancouver, Canada, where she has learned to transcend the rain and surrender to mega doses of vitamin D

(Photo by Michael Julian Berz)

 

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