Born to Love - Shokti

A collection of excerpts about love, sexuality, and spirituality.

"The human community needs all the colours of loving that its genders allow. The human fabric needs all the colours woven in. The spiritual heart needs all colours, in order to transform human life on this planet, in order to begin the era of universal connection."
From Two Flutes Playing by Andrew Ramer

Celebrating Love and Sexuality:

“You are the children of love, born to give love, receive love and make love...
… and to discover the secret in love's great mystery” 
(the Spirit Mother spoke these words to me in 1995, during my awakening to multi-dimensional consciousness - Shokti)

"Sexuality was a sacrament in the Old Religion; it was (and is) viewed as a powerful force through which the healing, fructifying love of the immanent Goddess was directly known, and could be drawn down to nourish the world, to quicken fertility in human beings and in nature." Starhawk, in her 1982 book Dreaming the Dark.

“Sexuality and spirituality are facilitated by a deep intimacy with one's inner nature, with the physical body, and intimacy with the natural world. This intimacy brings a quality of loving connection and sensitivity to life. It is energetic, spontaneous, and joyful. Sexual or creative energy radiates through all life. Erotic, creative, divine, Goddess energy. Fertile, rich, passionate, abundant energy. There is nothing that is no thing that exists outside of or is untouched by this energy. It is life itself and as such is sacred. The sexual act is but one expression of this energy. We make our sex sacred, in the same way we make any life experience sacred, through our intention.” Diane Mariechild, author of Mother Wit and Inner Dance, who leads workshops and lectures frequently on women and Buddhism. 

“If anything is sacred, the human body is sacred.” Walt Whitman 

“We tend to think of the erotic as an easy, tantalizing sexual arousal. I speak of the erotic as the  deepest life force, a force which moves us towards living in a fundamental way.” Audre Lorde

“Sex, it turns out, is central to what I see in myself and identify as human spirituality. It is, therefore, equally empowered to advance or retard my spiritual development. More sex may lead to a more spiritual life, or it may mitigate against my spiritual goals. Sex approached with more honesty and with an ecstasy-inclined inner adjustment can only lead to clearer spiritual vision. Any soul-to- soul contact between humans awakens spirit, and every degree of awakening is a boon to spiritual development.”
Leathersex Q&A Joseph Bean 1996

Celebrating Queer Love:

"There was a primal calling from within. It was a soul longing for the divine feminine. From early on, the divine feminine was imaged as the arms of a woman.” 
“Being a lesbian has afforded me a certain kind of individuation path, one that was uniquely my own. Homosexual imagery is an image of the Self, a soul image, and she has been wooing me towards her my whole life.”
“For me, eros is a substance that signals through my feelings when my body and spirit are in alignment, and when this occurs I feel a oneness with life. I see now that, when we are aligned in body and spirit, our sexual orientation is an embodied means through which we can experience Eros, the substance of love. Human love mediates divine love and unleashes our creative potential. In this sense, love heals.” 
“When gays and lesbians forge love relationships that are in alignment with the Self, then the collective culture is blessed. In my case, because I am in alignment with divine love through this love relationship, I am a better partner, better mother, better friend, better analyst, better teacher, better neighbour, and even a better friend to my former husband.” Diane Eller-Boyko, psychologist and author

“Gay people have had to live on the edge of the global village or to work within its mainstream in denial or disguise. As a result, emotional wounds run deep and are long remembered. It is here, at this wounded place, that our lives find shared ground, our spirits a common tongue. This myth about our sexuality had been devised by those who could not possibly understand us yet who knew enough to benefit from our oppression...
“I would define gay people as possessing a luminous quality of being, a differentness that accentuates the gifts of compassion, empathy, healing, interpretation and enabling. I see gay people as the in-between ones; those who can entertain irreconcilable differences, who are capable of uniting opposing forces as one; bridge builders who intuit the light and dark in all things. These people who seem to spring from between the cracks, these androgynous alchemists, have a certain and necessary function for life on this planet. For me, gay people represent the archetype of innocence, a shaman’s tool that allows access to a more primal world, one where his/her work is done. By innocence, I mean a wide-eyed sense of wonder about the world and its possibilities. Gay-centred Eros, which illuminates life with its own peculiar light, frees gay people from certain tasks and obligations (which seem assigned at birth to others), allowing them to expand on life in different ways. This freedom usually lasts only until weary defensiveness, self-hatred and cynicism encroach, turning magical potential into the bitterness of failed expectation. How to keep this innocence alive in a time that has lost all heart, centre and balance? Where are the new directions? For gay men there have been precious few beyond the notion of a liberated sexuality.” Mark Thompson, 1987

“The work of love between men is holy, the work in community and the work of two together. The brain is made for two-together loving. And through that kind of loving, love is spun out to the world. For too long love has been denied to men together, love, tenderness, caring. For too long the love between men has been unspoken, and only the outer form, the dance of sex, has remained. Sex is sex when only bodies dance it. But when the heart joins in, then sex is sacred. Sex made holy is that through which two can channel love out to the world. Sex made holy is that through which two connect to the origin of the world itself.”  Two Flutes Playing.

“I believe in you my soul, . . . the other I am must not abase itself to you, And you must not be abased to the other. Loaf with me on the grass, . . . loose the stop from your throat, Not words, not music or rhyme I want, . . . not custom or lecture, not even the best, Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice. I mind how we lay in June, such a transparent summer morning; You settled your head athwart my hips and gently turned over upon me, And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone, and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart. And reached till you felt my beard, and reached till you held my feet. Swiftly arose and spread around me the peace and joy and knowledge that pass all the art and argument of the earth; And I know that the hand of God is the elder hand of my own, And I know that the spirit of God is the eldest brother of my own, And that all the men ever born are also my brothers, . . . and the women my sisters and lovers, And that a kelson of creation is love.” Walt Whitman 

Celebrating Trans Spirit:

“Transgendered people have long been robbed of their own spiritual history, not knowing that there were once times and places where ours was considered a spiritual path in and of itself." 
Raven Kaldera, Trans Shaman and author of Hermaphrodeities

A vision from enchanted realms unknown;
Twin Powers male and female, joined in one.
Life's potencies by magic art foreshown;
A miracle conjoined of Moon and Sun.
The Breasts of Venus and the Loins of Pan,
The Antique world knew thee for Goddess-God.
Mystery manifest of Woman-man,
Round thee of old the sacred dance we trod.
Perfect thy beauty of the sexes both.
Through cloudy incense smoke thy deep eyes gaze;
So that we kneel in worship, nothing loth
To do thy will in rites unto thy praise.
Hermaphrodite Panthea, by Doreen Valiente, author of the Charge of The Goddess.

“Mythological images imply that holiness is hermaphroditic, for it holiness is wholeness the complete human being is at once male and female – the man who has developed his feminine aspect, and the woman her masculine. In Buddhist iconography, therefore, the Bodhisattva is very frequently a hermaphrodite... the Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara, who, though masculine in name, is always feminine or near-feminine in form, especially in the Far East, where he appears as Kwan-yin, or Kannon – the 'goddess' of mercy.... it is not uncommon to find ardhanari or 'half-woman' images of Shiva, in which the body is female on the left and male on the right.”  Alan Watts

“O child of Uranus, wanderer down all times,
Darkling, from farthest ages of the Earth the same
Strange tender figure, full of grace and pity,
Yet outcast and misunderstood of men-

“Thy Woman-soul within a Man's form dwelling,
[Was Adam perchance like this, ere Eve from his side was
drawn?]
So gentle, gracious, dignified, complete,
With man's strength to perform, and pride to suffer without sign,
And feminine sensitiveness to the last fibre of being;
Strange twice-born, having entrance to both worlds-
Loved, loved by either sex,
And free of all their lore!

“I see thee where down all of Time thou comest;
And women break their alabaster caskets, kiss and anoint thy
feet, and bless the womb that bare thee,
While in thy bosom with thee, lip to lip,
Thy younger comrade lies.

“Lord of the love which rules this changing world,
Passing all partial loves, this one complete - the Mother love
and sex emotion blended-
I see thee where for centuries thou hast walked,
Lonely, the world of men
Saving, redeeming, drawing all to thee,
Yet outcast, slandered, pointed of the mob,
Misjudged and crucified.

“Dear Son of heaven - long suffering wanderer through the
wilderness of civilisation-
The day draws nigh when from these mists of ages
Thy form in glory clad shall reappear.”
Child of Uranus, by Edward Carpenter, 1883

Celebrating Oneness:

“I celebrate myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”
“I have said that the soul is not more than the body,
And I have said that the body is not more than the soul;
And nothing, not God, is greater to one than one's self is.” Walt Whitman

“… in all countries and in all ages, some form of physical enlargement – singing, dancing, drinking, sexual excitement – has been intimately associated with worship. Even the momentary expansion of the soul in laughter is, to however slight an extent, a religious exercise… It is the infinite for which we hunger, and we ride gladly on every little wave that pioneers to bear us towards it.” Havelock Ellis, The New Spirit, 1892 

“True humanism, primal spirituality, and the energy of evolution must join together in a conscious force, to tell the truth about God and life. The truth is that “God” is not in a book—“holy,” golden, or otherwise. God is not in a church, a cathedral, a synagogue, a mosque. God is not cemented inside any man-made theological system or elitist cultural architecture. God is definitely not bursting neck-veins of righteously profitable baloney at you from the TV screen. God is not for sale, even to the highest bidder, no matter how much it indulges in nationalistic flag-waving and the bellicosity of world power. 
“When are we going to feel joy again?  God is the universe. We are all now living inside the body of God. There is nowhere to go to get there, we are already here. There is nowhere to go to get outside of God; there is just a forgetting of this truth. It is impossible not to be living, right now and always, within God’s body. It is only possible to be aware, or unaware, of this fact.” Monica Sjoo, The Great Cosmic Mother 1973