Today's
Meditation:
It's amazing sometimes to see just how much human
beings encourage each other to repress their sexuality, or
even to deny it completely. We've developed social
attitudes towards sexuality that not only don't make much
sense, but can cause quite a bit of harm to many
people. From a strictly social perspective, some of
our attitudes make sense-- if anyone had sex at any time
with anyone else, we'd see a great rise in the incidents
of STD's, for example. But for the most part, we
attempt to repress people's sexuality because of our own
repressed sexuality, and that's quite a shame.
When I was very, very young, my sister once told me that
my mom and dad had sex. I told her that was
impossible, because they would never do something that
bad. "That bad." I don't know
exactly where that perspective came from, but I do know
that it wasn't exactly a healthy perspective on sex and
sexuality. While my guess is that most people don't
see sex as something so negative in their very early
years, the fact that some do is a reflection of the ways
that our society has made sex a taboo topic for the most
part. It's not something that most of us discuss
with friends or family.
But when we come to terms with our own sexuality-- our
desires, our likes and dislikes, our preferences-- we can
start to make it a very positive part of our lives.
This means also coming to terms with other people's
sexuality, because when we're with a partner, the other
person's likes and desires and preferences are also
extremely important. The idea is to become
comfortable with our sexuality so that the experience of
sex becomes a very positive aspect of our lives rather
than a source of stress.
There are no easy answers, of course. Millions of
people spend billions of dollars on therapy for issues
related to sexuality and its repression or suppression.
And we won't even start on what churches have done to us
historically with their teachings about sex. It's
important that we come to terms with our sexuality and
start to see it as a positive part of our lives if we're
to live full, well-rounded lives and develop and maintain
healthy relationships with those who are our sexual
partners.
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