A healthy second chakra is characterized by the enjoyment of the sweetness of life. Living in the material world is a cornucopia of sensations - the warmth of the sun on your skin, the taste of the first strawberry in spring, a good story, soul-filling music, dancing, singing, banging a drum, making art, mastering a skill, solving a riddle or a solution to a puzzle, passionate conversation, cuddles with a loved one, passionate sex, orgasm, vulnerability and acceptance in partnership.

There are an infinite number of ways to experience desire and pleasure and enjoyment of life.

Any criticism or rejection of the myriad of pleasurable expressions is received by the child as a wound of Self. A wound to Self at the most core, source part of ourselves.

We come here to enjoy life.

This is simple truth.

Any message to the contrary is a fundamental misunderstanding of existence. The people who have been deciding what life means and how it’s set up here have never understood the purpose.

We are alive to enjoy living. That’s it. That’s all there is.

The ways that we can enjoy life are infinite and personal. Embrace your joy. Embrace your delight. “Follow me, I’m delicious.” Yes Garron.

You have the right to feel pleasure and desire.

You have the obligation to allow others to feel pleasure and desire. You have the obligation to not stand in the way and be a bastard and prevent other people from enjoying their life and feeling pleasure and delight - even if you don’t personally agree or think that is very nice.

Ironically, this is the core need of the sacral chakra - holding flexible balance in the dynamic consistency of ongoing flow.

Allowing opposites to exist and holding balance in the tension of contrast. Filling up and containing, and letting go and expressing. The great challenge of this level is the required flexibility without being too rigid or too weak. It is a balance gained and lost and gained and lost and gained and lost over and over again. Sticking to the middle without movement is just as static and stagnant and muddy as being too rigid or too weak.

My experience with Dave re: monogamy + polyamory.

We naturally gravitate to pleasure and avoid pain. When we allow the free flow of pleasure in our lives, we destress, we soften, we become more flexible and accepting - of ourselves and our needs and of others and their needs. Allowing pleasure and desire as profoundly natural and acceptable allows us to expand and reach out and gives those around us permission to do the same.

Pleasure, desire, passion, excitement - they are all energies of expansion and movement. They are the compass for a Spirit-lead life. They are the energetic flow pointing us towards a life of meaning and nourishment.

Primary vs. Secondary Pleasure

Primary pleasures are the connection, containment and expression of the source energy experiences that are fundamentally simply and profound.

Joining with others, with Land, with Spirit - joining in the way that we come into harmony and connection with ourselves and with others. Connections, sensations and the exploration of ideas and passions. Dancing, eating, sex, discovery, learning, exploration, expansion, beholding beauty… the most simple pleasures of living are profoundly nourishing when we can experience them in their fullness without the restricting presence of judgement.

The judgement and rejection of primary pleasures is what turns us to secondary pleasures that do not nourish us body and soul. If we feel guilty when we eat, we can’t fully enjoy and be filled by the experience - so we overeat as a compensation, which fuels a toxic cycle of unmet needs.

Drugs, alcoholism, sexual addictions all come from the hunger to feel pleasure and be satisfied. We have a deep need and hunger to ‘feel good’. The addictions and compulsive behaviours are not an indication of pleasures being bad - but the exact opposite.

When we deny ourselves the right to feel pleasure and desire, we warp our natural balance into something deeply harmful and unhealthy.

Emotions and feelings are sources of information that are Land + Spirit based. Our bodies are ancient wisdom tools that deliver relevant and significant information about our current situation and which pathways will lead to better outcomes.

We can only make use of this information when we accept pleasure and desire as natural and acceptable and good.

The sexy times.

Who can say what healthy sexuality looks like? Who can say what healthy emotional expression is, or is not? These are highly personal and subjective and not at all universally mandated. My preferences don’t have anything to do with yours.

Sexuality is just a small part of the energy of Eros. Eros is allowing, giving and receiving pleasure in all areas of physical life. Eros and Spirit are held together in a delicate balance, moving Land and Spirit in a beautiful flowing dance. The Temperance card in the Tarot deck is what I think of in reference to the Sacral chakra. The constant, forever moving balance of pouring water from one container to another. The balance being in allowing the flow and the ability to be flexible and strong without binding or breaking.

We are whole here in body and Spirit and the desire for life and the enjoyment of life isn’t a joke or a Pollyanna impossibility. It is the literal ground of our existence.

Touch, food, creativity, action, doing, moving, stillness, peace, harmony - the ecstatic feeling of aliveness is your right in existing and your obligation to allow (and encourage) in others.

Our desire for fulfillment isn’t just a base sexual body gratification.

The moral authorities assert this in an attempt to control us. Your desire for fulfillment is also the compass for your expansion, growth, learning and discovery. Desire moves you towards recovering wholeness and the joy of being alive. Desire and pleasure are the source of your passionate love for all aspects of being.

It is the right of your existence to feel pleasure and desire.

The Practice