Finding Your Sexual Self
Sex, lies and… getting to yes.
By Edy Nathan
Ordinally published on PsychologyToday.com
Sex, desire, and lust! The fight to find truth in ourselves is unquestionably one of the most daunting personal obstacles we face in life.
Especially if the truth we are seeking has to do with sex, desire, and lust. What’s often at stake when your sexual personal truth is in hiding, is that no one, including you, ever gets a chance to know you in the way you hunger to be known. Then the lies to the self begin.
Let me ask you a question: Have you known something about your sexual truth, like a closely held dream about an encounter, or a desire to experiment with some sexual dimensions you’ve only heard about, and put these fantasies or experimentation into the box that says, “Do Not Enter?” Let me ask you another question: Why?
Did you find yourself responding with, “I don’t want to expose who I am,” or “Fear stops me. What if I like it, and it changes my whole life?” or “What if I’m judged because of it?” or “It’s better to keep it in my sexual fantasy box, rather than acting on it. I know keeping it a secret to myself and others, keeps me safe,” or “ It feels like I’m re-creating something that happened to me a long time ago, and it creeps me out, Even though I keep thinking about it.”
So you think you’re being truthful, even transparent in your behavior, there’s often an underlying motive that’s kept secret. Secrets get in the way of truth. Yet, is it a secret when we are blind to what we do? If you clearly see the effect the secret has on others and ultimately on you, how blind are you?
To be self-knowing, aware of who we are, why we do what we do and how we get in the way of our own happiness is what all the self-help books attempt to teach you.
If you are blind to what you do then how do you see the self? Is it possible that if you carry, within the depths of your inner life, the secrets that keep others from really knowing you, the secrets actually impede you from being seen? Aren’t you, then, estranged from revealing the real you? When you don’t show you, then how can you ever be in a satisfying relationship? Whether with yourself or with others?
I ask these questions not just because I am writing a blog to pique the interest of my audience, but rather to share my inner emotional sanctuary. We all have that sanctuary. A sanctuary where our vulnerable and ugly questions are asked even when there may not be an answer. I ask, what is truth? What is integrity? How do we hold ourselves up to the standard of what we believe? Do we merely believe it for ourselves and have other expectations of others? I don’t know.
For now, think about these important aspects of being in the true self:
Be true to yourself: Hold on to sexual integrity
Keep your balance while exploring: This is the opposite of internal chaos
Take on new adventures.
Think about what is ahead of you so you can prepare.
Be patient: Change and growth do not happen all at once
Anticipate without anxiety, picture the outcome.
Own your body, own your mind
You are everything.
The truth resides inside of you.
References:
Weiss, Brian (1988) “Many Lives, Many Masters”, New York, Simon and Schuster.
