Say the word "sexuality" to yourself and see what images come up for you. Go ahead...check it out. If you are like me, the first thoughts and visual images that zoom into your awareness have to do with genitalia-related sex. And that's not strange, for there is an intense conditioning bombardment from Western media equating sex with bodies grinding one way or another. There is good sex, bad sex, indifferent sex, fantastic sex, etc. But it's all about physical bodies and the arousal and satiation of erogenous zone activity.

As I reflected on my initial response, my awareness opened and expanded; the field of inquiry increased. I began to muse about the natural world, especially the pistils and stamens of the flowers in my garden. So erotic, so sexual, so fantastico! I saw the earth blossoming -- the result of Father sun impregnating the Earth Mother with his rays of light.

The interplay of yin and yang on all levels of physical manifestation, the joining of opposites above and below, on the macro- and micro-level, is what produces the gifts of creation that we see, feel and enjoy through our wonderful senses. Without this joining of masculine and feminine, there is no world. There is no us as we know ourselves in form.

Enjoying the gifts of creation -- having fun through touching, feeling, smelling, tasting, hearing, dancing, singing, living authentically, eating, drinking, eliminating, writing poetry, celebrating creativity and going for ecstasy, with balance and responsibility, with mindfulness and appreciative for the intelligence that births it all -- is also about sexuality. Yes, it's a bigger sense of it than what is portrayed in the movies and romance novels, but I think we have bought into a myopic view of our God-dess-given potential if we fail to enjoy the love-making that is within and around us always.

Being part of thins love-making universe means making love with it in the way that we live our lives. It means learning, as the oft-quoted saying of the '60s put it, to make love not war. It means learning how to enter the Temple of the Goddess, which is Mother Earth and all her creation, with love, passion, curiosity, presence, thankfulness and awe.

Then, get it on. Be a lover. Have fun. Enjoy lust. Love loving and the natural inherent ability through our senses and our sacred bodies and feelings to make love until we reach a state of consciousness where boundaries dissolve and there is a return to the blissful oneness of pure joy. Thus, we "return to the place from which we started and know it for the first time," as T.S. Elliott said so beautifully.

By loving the beloved, the doorway to the magic tunnel opens and you can journey into the Great Mystery from whence you came. This is Spirit. Celebrate your lover as the best show in the universe, and the dance will take you home, right on through to Spirit. Give to your lover of your true self. Open to receive your lover's true self. Sacred love-making -- with a mountain, a butterfly, a star, a flower, a partner -- when the two become one and all else falls away, is sacred medicine. This is worship of the physical as a means to transcend all limitations and be with your own true being.

Holy Spirit. Holy sexuality. Sacred sex. Enjoyed in right relationship, they are the same.