“I want to get married, have babies, and be taken care of.”

“And speaking this desire out-loud is pathetic and weak.”

Tears rolled down on her already wet cheeks. A fellow female participant yelled out on top of her lungs as she let her raw yearning – and judgment, frustration, and shame associated with that very yearning – erupted out through her lioness roar. Her sounds undulated throughout the dampen, cool air of a temple where we were gathered. The silence following her howl felt heavy and also curiously light. In that silence, her primal, animalistic, authentic cry continued to reverberate. It penetrated my heart, awakening my own desire.

My yearning is deeply personal and private. I had buried it deep inside of me, in a secretive, ironclad safe of dark shadow. Naming it or speaking about it was banned. Because I judged my desire to be pathetic and weak. And I was not pathetic or weak. I thought I needed to be the exact opposite of my desire to be loved: self-assured, self-reliant, and strong.

Witnessing her owning her longing gave me permission to admit mine. I sensed the magnetic lava deep inside of me starting to boil and bubble up, burning down that ironclad safe, cracking it wide open. There, the longing emerges. The desire that I also want to be married to a man who vibrates at my level. We grow our food and cook meals together. We see each other as who we are. We feel met, loved, and supported. While deeply scared to proclaim this out-loud, I also know this is the only way to manifest it into a reality. It is about time to own my own desires. And because this desire is life-giving, I am now stepping into my own power. I am no longer limiting myself from my own magnificence. The weak, the pathetic, the strong, the masculine, the feminine, the wanting, they are all welcome as part of me.

***

I recently attended an edge, intimate, mysterious retreat called ISTA in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala. What piqued my curiosity about ISTA at first was its overt, dare use of the word, Sexuality.

Just like many other retreats I’ve experienced, ISTA was founded upon the idea that healing is about being whole. We become whole by taking the layers of our compulsive patterns of relating and having a greater access to a Deeper Self that is innately loving and dynamically creative.

Unlike any of the retreats I’ve attended, ISTA daringly put sexuality at its center. It is because ISTA believes that our Being has mind, body, feelings, spirit, and sexuality.

I felt drawn to explore sexuality primarily because I knew very little about it. And I am aware of so many of my patterns and beliefs around sexuality. When faced with anything related to sexuality, I was often met with noticeable discomfort, awkward giggles, or embarrassed hush. So I wanted to dive into the mystery of sexuality because, at the end of the day, that is exactly how we all were born into this world.

If I summarize my experience of the ISTA in three words, it would be exactly as advertised: Spiritual, shamanic, sexual.

“Spiritual” refers to our connection with light, God, and the divine. It feels ethereal and above us.

“Shamanic” refers to the connection with the life web, including ancestors and blood lineage, and everything that is. The multiplicity of this world’s existence. It feels more about the ground and below this world.
“Sexual” describes the life giving energy

Through the retreat, I discovered my reverence for sacred sexuality. I had a visceral experience of the rebirth of my divine child, the embodiment of my divine masculine and feminine, and the gut wrenching beauty of the union of the two – Tantra – lived through my energetic body as a whole. I released a lot of emotions and de-energized my patterns. As a result, I feel free and empowered as I embody my divine life giving power with more ease.

***

As I am writing my reflection on the ISTA retreat on Valentine's day in 2022, here are three themes that are alive in me that I would like to integrate. My intention is to be my own valentine today and forever by living my truth in each moment.

**First, honor intention and attention.** Intention sets the direction and attention creates the path towards that direction. I want to be even more clear about my intention and how I am attending to it. I wrote more about this in the third point below as being intentional and aware invites us to stay in the light.

Second, feeling is healing. One of my patterns of relating is my fear of intimacy. Sharing my feelings vulnerably at times takes my breath away – not because of the courage required but because I am extremely uncomfortable and unsafe. My heart is pounding. My eye nerves are twitching. My stomach is churning. As soon as I gain awareness that I stop breathing, I take a slow breath to ground myself.

Then a pattern of “going to my head” emerges. This is a brilliant strategy to disengage from an emotional situation. Instead of being present with my feelings, I ask questions like “how was your last vacation?” or “what’s your plan after this?” While these questions do help me deepen my understanding of their stories and how they may have shaped who they have become today, what I am really doing is escaping the present because feeling all the feelings feel scary to me let alone vulnerable sharing them with a partner. So I escape to the past or the future. I am avoiding my truth and running away from my power.

The funny thing is that it is this moment when I flee from feeling my emotions when my emotions become unsafe. As soon as I escape the present, my feelings are left unprocessed. The unprocessed emotions left festering. They take on this destructive energy and explode at the most unseen, unfortunate time. I end up sabotaging what I want most – intimacy. Feeling the feelings has nothing unsafe about it. The paradox is the opposite; when the feelings are unfelt, they become unsafe. So being alive, I am to let myself feel everything now.

Third, attend each moment exquisitely. I heard about this phrase of “meeting each moment as it is” for a few years now, and I finally experienced what it means. My experience was so deep, mystical, and utterly intimate. It was the most closeness that I ever experienced with another person, and this was possible without any alcohol or mind altering substances.

In order to meet each moment as it is, it requires solid self-responsibility and self-knowledge. It is my responsibility to slow down and take time to feel my truth within. I use inquiries such as “what am I desiring now?”, “what are my fears and hopes”, “what are my boundaries?” to deepen self-knowledge.

Once I have clarity of my own inner world, I let my divine feminine speak with her softness, full expression – yes even that witchy, wild woman! – and movement. Through ISTA, I realized that I have been holding back. I used to be told that I have “too much energy” and that I needed to calm down. As a result, I learned to wear my stoic mask to appear composed and graceful. Today, I give the full expression of the wild, primitive, fun-loving feminine so this mask is also available whenever I consciously choose to play with.

I also learned about the preciousness of the divine masculinity within. It is the presence. In that grounding presence, feminine can blossom and create. I invite this mature masculine presence to listen to my partner when he shares his truth. In this way, he can trust the solidity in the energetic field we create so he is relaxed to be fully himself. In that resting and witnessing, there arises closeness, which I call love. So it is my responsibility to embody both the divine feminine and masculine within to stand true and co-create with my partner. And when I am integrity with this responsibility, I invite safety in the relationship.

How to invite safety? It is through attending each moment authentically because it supports both of us to stay in light, preventing us from being swallowed by our shadow without even knowing. At times, I feel bad about saying no to others. So I compromise my boundaries by rationalizing, “it's a small thing so it doesn’t matter.” In doing so, I allowed my partner to take from me. This may seem kind on the surface but it is done with unawareness, dismantling an energetic shift in the relationship. In my unawareness, I let myself become a victim (as my energy was taken without my consent or aligned with my true desire). And as a victim cannot exist with a perpetrator, my action subsequently made my partner a perpetrator. In short, without radical authenticity and integrity, I pulled both of us into the shadows. (If you are interested in this dynamic, check out Betty Martin’s “The Wheel of Consent.”)

ISTA, and My intention for full expression

What I learned from a 9 year old

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