We have seen that the unconscious self-image of having a genital hole is a universal phenomenon. This means that for the majority of humanity, there is no real sexuality; the majority of humankind, normal or neurotic, is not connected and integrated with their sexuality. How can there be complete, full, and integrated sexuality, if unconsciously there is the deep and powerful threat of castration? The defenses against the hole create all kinds of deep tensions and contractions in the pelvis, which greatly hinder the flow of energies and bodily fluids in the area. It is not only bodily fluids and energy that are hindered in the genital region; essence itself, the true substance of our being, is blocked. This is so prevalent that the average person does not know what it means to have real sexuality. The average individual is not a complete man or woman. Almost no one completely and fully experiences his or her genitals, owns them, or values them. Because full experience of the genitals would bring to consciousness the genital hole, experience of the genitals is partial, incomplete, and superficial. The average individual does not know what it’s like to have integrated genitals, or to have essence flowing and filling them, so real sexuality is rarely experienced.

Complete sexuality, as we see, is not concerned only with sex or with intercourse. Intercourse is only one expression of sexuality. Sexuality is part of our basic nature. It is the true acceptance and integration of our bodies and genitals; it is free and unconflicted presence in the pelvis. It is our being, our essence, allowed to exist and flow in our pelvis, to engorge our genitals. It is the experience of ourselves as pleasure, as delight, as beauty, as value. When the genital hole is allowed and understood, space arises. Space eliminates our defenses, our identification with personality. Then essence unfolds and flowers in its various beautiful manifestations. Filling and bathing our sexual area, this essence allows us to feel rooted and grounded in this beauty, this certainty, and this preciousness. Our sexuality is our relatedness, our grounding in Being. Essence is no more an idea, a concept, a feeling. It becomes our grounding in pleasure. We experience our nature as pure, unadulterated pleasure and preciousness. This rootedness and grounding occurs only when we accept completely and fully our genitals—the man his penis and the woman her vagina. Our sex becomes our rootedness in reality. Our physical reality is completely supported then, completely integrated with our true nature. Sexuality is not only for intercourse, is not only for reproduction. It is the grounding of our Beingness.

Other than the well-known Freudian theory of the castration complex, which is more a description of how the mind relates to the experience of a blocking or deficiency in the genital area than a causal explanation of the hole, there may be several factors which contribute to the importance of the phenomenon of the genital hole in the self-image. Both the genital pleasure of orgasm and the symbiotic pleasure of nursing that releases the orgastic reflex in the infant involve a “melting” of the boundaries of experience, and often a sense of merging with another person. This may be experienced as somehow a direct threat to the sense of the individual’s constructed self-image. The orgasm is often referred to as “le petit mort”—the little death. As we have seen many times, the dissolution of boundaries always involves the arising of space, and the functioning of sexuality involves a flow of being which tends to temporarily dissolve boundaries and would thus tend toward the experience of space. The causality could go any number of ways in this complex; for instance, blocking the flow of physical and subtle energies in the genitals could be motivated by the attachment to the sense of rigid self-boundaries, and so be seen as a defense against the dissolving effects of space which would arise if the flow were allowed.

Suppose that whenever a man expressed his anger as a child, his mother rejected him, withdrew, or was frightened. Since the mother is identified with love and merging (at least in infancy and early childhood), when this man later experiences anger, he will fear the loss of love and merging. In his past, the qualities of love and merging were not compatible with anger. His mother withdrew her love when he expressed it. In this Work, we understand that strength and sexuality are closely related to anger; they both involve the energy of separation or aggression. So when this man experiences love and merging with another person or situation, he will feel a threat to his strength and sexuality. This is the fabric of pain and confusion we suffer in our daily lives. As many of you have seen in your work here, we generally cannot approach the essential states connected with love, anger, or sex without experiencing anxiety, fear, even panic.

The presence of both the Merging and Strength aspects of Essence is a specific state of consciousness, the essence of sexual energy. One feels sweet and soft, but also strong and hot. One feels the simultaneous presence of both closeness and distance, alternating in dominance. One feels playful, but in a very specific way. The playfulness has a flavor of teasing and flirting. It can become sexual, but it need not. One feels innocently naughty, the kind of clean and joyful naughtiness or mischievousness frequently observed in young children. It is a state of play, pleasure and delight. Frequently this brings about the emergence of the Personal Essence. Then there is added to the experience a sense of fullness, sensuousness and presence. The state attains a pure kind of voluptuousness, where body and Being are indistinguishable. When it becomes sexual it does not become full of desire or longing. It is more the happy interplay of sweetness and excitement, now experienced with the fullness of the Personal Essence. The physical contact becomes enhanced and filled with the sensuous contactfulness of Being. It is play, involvement and pleasure, in which bodies are merged as part of the interplay of the colorful qualities of Essence.