“Cultivate Blissipline”

A  tribute to the sacred prostitute

- perhaps a revival to Mary Magdalene (since it’s Easter for God's sake)

I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumours

But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humour

And when I die, I expect to find him laughing

(Depeche mode, “Blasphemous Rumours”)

Eroticism is not the cherry on top of life, It’s the pulse itself. Still so many of us struggle to inhabit and access it. We tend to block it by the way we live our lives. Many couples (and other delightful unions) experience lack of it or so called mis-matched libidos. We bury our hunger in polite sex and abandon intimacy for the thrill of the forbidden. We call it mismatched libido or loss of spark, but I call it a crisis of integration. What if I told you, you can have both? (maybe not at the same time, but still) it’s a thrill!

Ancient figures of the sacred prostitute symbolizes a bridge between sexuality and spirituality. A sacred source who reminds us that the body was once a portal to the divine, one who shows us the light through dark times. The sacred prostitute plays a vital role in reminding us — not as an object — but as an inner guide. A guide into the divine. She who knows that eroticism is life`s force; vitality, creativity, and how we all connect to each other and ourselves — create belonging. So let’s drop the Madonna/Whore-dichotomy, incorporate them both, a Sacred Prostitute, a Mary Magdalene revival.

Madonna/Whore-dichotomy: One of our deepest collective erotic wounds is the so-called Madonna/Whore dichotomy. So many people suffer unconsciously under this archetypal fracture where we keep our loved ones on a pedestal, yet fantasize about the ones we’re not supposed to desire. The vixen vs. the slut, it’s the complex of the beloved vs. whore.

I can’t help thinking about how much my experience in the Christian community sparked my sexual arousal — all that taboo! No sex before marriage and other sins. As an irreverent little slut, now a scholar (yes, they both exist in the same person), I found my ways around this heteronormative scripted version of what they call sex (because sex is more than procreating-penetration), and ironically the Christians taught me that. “Please whisper in my ear what you’re so forbidden to do to me — or I do to you…”. I mean, God that’s pretty hot! right? I metabolized those forbidden pleasures to my own release. So, Thank you God for I have sinned.

The Holy Whore — The Sacred Prostitute: Nancy Qualls-Corbett, in The Sacred Prostitute, reminds us that the figure of the temple prostitute was not just historical, it’s archetypal. She still lives within us and she’s the part of us that still remembers — the one who dares visit us in our dreams and our longings. The Madonna/Whore split is not just cultural and relational, it’s also internal. We hide because we think we have to be proper to be loved properly. We exile parts of ourselves, cast them into our shadow self. Become the good girls or the caretakers, the competent ones, while the hungry, messy, aching parts of us, are locked in the basement (or dungeon if you will). Stored away to secure our place in the comfort cage. Problem is, these parts of us don’t die, they linger in our dungeon of desire. If unacknowledged we might become numb, this often looks like depression — or seduced towards infidelity, a manic search to stay alive.

The Madonna/Whore split isn’t just a psychological wound, it’s also civilizational. A symptom of centuries forgetting that there was a time when the erotic and the sacred weren’t enemies, but that pleasure was a portal — and temples were built to honor the body’s wisdom. When priestesses of love, the sacred prostitutes, initiated seekers into communion, not just with the divine feminine, but with themselves, an “ecstasy to touch infinity”.

But patriarchy could not tolerate this power (and again, please separate this from the individual man, he might as well be just a victim of this toxic masculinity). So, it did what fearful systems always do, divide what was once whole; sex was severed from spirit, desire from devotion (unless you devoted yourself to God), and the lover from the beloved — where women were split into categories, wife or whore, mother or muse. The result, I think, is a culture filled with longing. An ache that hums beneath the surface of many relationships that have not yet integrated the wholy-whore complex (or whatever we should call it).

Is it cruel or kind
Not to speak my mind
And to lie to you
Rather than hurt you

Well, I’ll confess all of my sins
After several large gins
But still I’ll hide from you
Hide what’s inside from you

And alarm bells ring
When you say your heart still sings
When you’re with me
Oh won’t you please forgive me

…I no longer hear the music…

(The Libertines, “Music when the lights go out”).

We dreadfully drag us through boring dinner parties and secret porn watching, and please let’s stop with the “dishwasher quarrels” already. We are starved for eros — it gets packaged, sold and performed, it's pornocracy for all, just a click away.

The healing of the Madonna/Whore split is not about choosing one side, it’s about allowing and embodying both in the same body-being. It is about becoming devotional and devourable, becoming your “Hungry Holy Whole”.

“Kinkology”: We often say use it or lose it, and today couples have lost their divine sacred union through stress and rigid routines. So, please guide me, my sacred prostitute — may all you couples with deceased eros be with me — because from darkness comes light; What if we could introduce some sacred mess, some playfulness?

“Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack, a crack in everything

That’s how the light gets in”

(Leonard Cohen, “Anthem”)

So, as Cohen too, inspires me to do, I look for the cracks. An invitation to engage in a shared investigation, to crack it open; because in the problem lies the solution, a flip of narrative to what is missing. Let’s make kink a portal, not a pathology — let’s do Kinkology without apology!

I invite couples to step outside of their scripts; to play with power, surrender and archetypes, because the path back to eros begins with playfulness. Explore what is forbidden, unspeakable, exquisite, to embrace it. Couples might discover that kink can offer something they never knew they needed: A structured space to explore power, desire, shame, surrender, then potentially transcendence, through a shared, safe and consentful inquiry.

Fear of enmeshment: The erotic equation says longing nurtures desire; I need some space so I can long for you, create distance, a gap — a gap that I want to fill. If there´s no gap, if we do everything together, that might be a beautiful friendship, but it seldom sparks sexual desire and arousal. The fright of engulfment is often what makes people withdraw from their relationships. I don’t want another mother, or I don’t want to be someone’s daughter (or any other faux-cestuous constellation).

In David Schnarch´s “Constructing the Sexual Crucible”, he writes refreshingly that true intimacy arises not from sameness or comfort, but from differentiation. In the erotic crucible, he states that each partner must be willing to tolerate the heat of their own discomfort, to face their desires, their limits, their fears of rejection, without demanding that the other soothe them. This is not a comfortable place, It’s a holy fire. But also, this is where play begins. If I am you and you are me, who plays which part? Which role? Let’s stop pretending we have to be the same, let’s inhabit different roles. Invite polarity to disrupt the daily practice of sameness. (No, I’m not trying to impose old fashion rules, some call it gender roles, but that’s so 1950s. I’m all about equality and consent, and I think kindness is sexy. But please be naughty in the right way — let’s play!)

It’s not childish to play as a grown up, it’s courageous! Make that conscious invitation to step outside the daily scripts, see what happens when two adults dare to say “let’s try something that scares us a little”, or “who would you like to be, right now, right here? Let’s give each other permission to explore and play, to step outside of our comfort zone, break free from our comfort cage. In order to break free from our comfort cage, we need a limited amount of safety and trust. So before we can open ourselves to each other, we must return home into ourselves. Co-regulation begins with self-regulation, and eros begins in a body that feels safe. Then you can straddle the edge of resilience, where learning and growth takes place — but avoid trauma that puts you back into your comfort cage. That’s the key to expanding our pleasure principle (not in the Freudian way!), but by making new neural pathways that enhance our capacity for bliss.

Sex makes you smart? (yes, you may read the link). Let’s dump the ego biscuits (the compliments to anyone hungry for validation and praise to boost one’s self-worth), and give us instead a Chemical treat, a potent elixir of norepinephrine, oxytocin and dopamine. Yes, pleasure boosts the brain, sex actually makes you smart. That is, pleasurable sex (!), not performativ orgasm gaps — where one has none, and the other is the winner. But sex, when embodied and alive, does more than nourish the brain;

In moments of electric desire our bodies surge stress release. In the tide of bliss our cortisol arises, not the toxic, but the kind that signals aliveness. Our cortisol becomes our courtesan. She’s effective, not destructive. She’s awakened, and tells dear Hippocampus, our holder of memory and meaning, that something new is in beginning! But, Oh dear Dendrites! When your tiny branches begin to thicken and explore, you connect those other brain cells who keep wanting more. This growthful connection — internally, neuronally, emotionally, is our body-mind. It’s a pleasurable “brain-fuck lobotomy” to enhance plasticity.

When this experience isn’t just a one-night stand, a one-hit wonder, but a regular rhythm where pleasure is restored to its rightful place; a source of vitality — something even more remarkable happens. Anxiety softens. No, you’re not going numb, you’ve just learned that pleasure is safe, intimacy is nourishing, and that you’re allowed to feel good! We’ve made new neural pathways. And this my friend, is not rocket science, it’s neuroscience. Repeated joy rewires us — pleasure isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity. So please make space for yourself, cultivate Blissipline.

Bliss me father, for I have sinned

I`m sorry for these and all of my sins

I now confess with Bliss

And promise to adhere to thy Blissipline

May God blas(phemous) us all,

Happy Easter everyone!