Tag: sexual healing

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Money and Sexuality Teleclasses Start Next Week

Next week two teleclasses begin: One on Money and many threads that relate to Money and the opposing or uncomfortable beliefs we have about it.

The other on Sexuality and all those thoughts that are most nerve-wracking or frightening or frustrating about THAT topic.

If you’re interested in either one click over to the teleclasses page. You can click on any teleclass page to read all about it.

Both Money and Sexuality are considered very sensitive issues. As in, so sensitive, you may not want to discuss them. Or hear other people discuss them.

It’s like there are certain codes socially that we may find ourselves automatically following, without even questioning whether they are true:

  • never say how much money you make to anyone, especially close friends or family
  • don’t talk about your attractions to other people, it causes trouble
  • don’t ask questions about sexuality, or express concerns—you’ll be embarrassed
  • if you’ve ever owed a lot of money, make sure to keep a lid on that information (people will judge you as a loser)
  • if you’ve ever had a difficult or violent sexual encounter, don’t tell anyone
  • if you’ve been in a troubling financial or sexual situation, there might be something wrong with you
  • don’t do business with friends or family, people get upset and it could ruin the relationship for life
  • if you make a lot of money or enjoy a lot of physical pleasure, people will get jealous, criticize you, feel envious, or think you are undeserving….so keep that under wraps
  • don’t talk about the details of your sexual encounters! Ewww!

I notice that people feel pretty nervous sometimes when we all gather together to identify our most troubling beliefs about Money, Work and Business OR Sexuality.

There are so many assumptions to move through, just to even be able to say your beliefs about these topics out loud! Yikes!

But as someone said recently….it’s so worth it.

Step Number One of The Work is seeing what you’re believing under the surface. These are the thoughts that you think, based on your past experience, that color how you look at your relationship with money, at how you feel about sexual feelings, attractive people, desire, or acquiring things with money, selling things, receiving money, earning money.

Step One is identifying your most upsetting beliefs. Good news: it’s not very difficult to find them.

They are there, often right in front of us in our heads (and felt in our bodies) when we have a stressful experience around one of these topics.

Something happens, and we feel worried, frustrated, anxious.

Our minds start running. These stressful thoughts are the petty, childish, embarrassing, judgmental, bitter, critical, mean, defensive, angry thoughts that are all there anyway, hanging back in the shadows.

They come out when we think we’re in danger, or threatened, or afraid that some past experience will repeat itself.

One of my most favorite discoveries in my life has been the numerous times I’ve found that telling the whole truth, asking all my questions, exposing my inner thoughts….has led to enormous freedom.

Who would you be without the thought that you shouldn’t talk about money or sex, for the danger of other people judging you, or other people behaving with uncertainty, or other people being upset, or feeling rejected?

Who would you be without the thought that you need to be quiet on these topics?

I found that when I didn’t force myself to keep thoughts about money or sexuality hidden, when I wasn’t frightened of my own thinking…..then I could use the thoughts, the issues, the beliefs I have had about these topics to become enlightened.

These areas of life offered amazing areas of investigation, for me to find out what was really true for me, to feel the peace and unconditional love available to anyone.

Who would you be without the thought that you have to hide, avoid, push away, or destroy your thinking or memories around these subjects?

You may find it’s safe to talk about them and investigate them, and a weight that has been on your mind (or physically on your body) becomes much lighter.

You may find that in your investigation and in your safety that other areas of your life, that have nothing to do with money or sexuality, become more clear, loving, and easy.

“There’s no intimacy when we’re in fear and there’s no love when we’re in fear…..it’s there, it’s just that our awareness of it is broken. So we experience this separateness. So what I invite people to do is to identify when they’re stressed out and look at their relationship, you know love and sex and what we’re all talking about here in this particular time together. We look at what we’re believing about our partner, and that either turns us off or it turns us on, physically.” ~ Byron Katie 

Finding out what you’re thinking about money or sexuality, for me, has been finding out what I fear and what I love.

What turns me on, or turns me off…with working, loving, spending, giving, receiving, being, conversing, connecting…finding out what I am believing is an amazing journey!

Come join other inquirers in exploring your thoughts and beliefs, what you have learned, observed, repeated to yourself, worried about, feared…..and see what can happen.

You may be surprised.

Who would you be without your stories around money, attraction, promotion, receiving, giving?

Who would you be if you felt joy, happiness, simplicity, love, health and ease with money or with sexuality?

“Not-knowing is true knowledge. Presuming to know is a disease. First realize that you are sick; then you can move toward health. The Master is her own physician. She has healed herself of all knowing. Thus she is truly whole.” ~ Tao Te Ching #71 

Money Teleclass: July 11-Aug 29, 5:15-6:45 pm PT, 8 weeks
Sexuality Teleclass: July 12-Aug 30, Noon-1:30 pm PT, 8 weeks

Freedom To Speak
“Thanks to all of you for such a wonderful teleclass and the freedom to speak about sex as if I was talking about a nose or arm, how cool that we have this time together…and thank you Grace for having the foresight to bring this topic to the open space of presence for us to question it.” ~ Tanya, teleclass participant

Marketing Became Easy 
“Through Grace and her class, I confronted my issues with marketing my business with patience, ease and self-compassion. She helped me open up to all my fears and depression over this issue and move beyond that without pressure and impatience. I learned so much from this course. I highly recommend it. It helped me understand that real freedom is not a how-to-do-it job. It is through being with myself as I am that I can find all the love and enthusiasm I relish from life. Results came out of who I was being, not in doing it “right” or through effort.”- Ben, teleclass participant

Love, Grace

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The Secret Hush Hush Topic

The topic of sexuality and sexual expression fills a lot of the human race with resistance, anxiety, repulsion or anger.

So much so, that I almost don’t want to write about it, even though it’s one of my favorite topics and I love assisting people through their beliefs about it in individual sessions and teleclasses. I love where I’ve landed after doing The Work on tons of concepts around sexuality.

Some people will actually think “I prefer not to think about sex, talk about sex, be aware of sex, or be concerned about sex! Ever!”

It’s like we’re talking about something very painful, or sick, or confusing. So let’s just sweep it under the rug .

Or more like, bury it 20 feet under the ground with no markers for where it is, just in case we get the wild thought to dig it up some day.

Many people grow up in families that felt both interested in sexuality and its expression, and confused or against sexuality in varying degrees.

There are many revolving rules, attempts to control sex, do’s and don’t’s:

  • only have sex with one person and don’t ever switch or change your mind
  • focus on pleasing the other not yourself
  • don’t talk about sex too much, don’t use “crude” sex words
  • don’t even think or fantasize about others if you’re in a committed relationship
  • if you really, really want sex with someone, you won’t feel satisfied until you have it!
  • there’s something wrong with you if you don’t know what you really want
  • there’s something wrong with you if you’re SURE you know what you want
  • keep doing it even if you don’t get that much out of it, because your partner wants it, and they may not stay with you if you don’t!
  • stay away from those nasty, sicko, creepy people who are violent, who use porn, who are attracted to children
  • don’t say No because that might hurt someone
  • don’t say Yes because that might hurt someone
  • have sex with strangers or people you don’t have to talk with much
  • you must make sure you are attractive if you want sex
  • it is possible to be unattractive
  • only have sex with people you “love” (whatever that means)
  • get sex from the internet or pictures or paid venues—no strings attached that way, no need to care about anyone but yourself
  • banish sex from your interests because its too complicated
  • be very careful when it comes to anything having to do with sex…careful careful careful!
  • control yourself!!!

Not only do we have all kinds of alarm about our own sexual feelings, but we’re often terrified of other people’s sexual feelings, or their LACK of sexual feelings.

Good/Bad…Right/Wrong…Yes/No…Turned On/Turned Off…Passionate/Bored

Just a small gesture, a tiny comment, a look or raised eyebrow can set our minds off into thinking “WHAT DID THAT MEAN?!”

We think we know what it means. Or we don’t want to risk finding out what it means—too scary (which is the same as thinking we know what it means).

Even though sexuality seems so fraught with nerve-wracking thoughts and feelings…..really, this amazing topic is about communicating, just like talking.

Humans making contact with other humans.

Just like every other situation, our thoughts that feel uncomfortable, fearful or disgusted about sex are temple bells ringing, saying “ding-a-ling! This is bothering you! Time for inquiry!”

When I was younger, I absolutely believed that if I felt sexual, I was playing with fire. Dangerous territory. Gross. Yet I continued to feel sexual. It would just appear. Like most people!

I didn’t even ask more thoroughly WHY this might be dangerous….the explanation that you can get pregnant (horrifying) or get diseases or have a bad reputation were the obvious repeated reasons. Those things were all assumed to be BAD BAD BAD.

Basically, my parents wouldn’t approve. Or my grandparents. And probably not their grandparents either. Or my family religion. Or my neighbors, friends, or their parents.

One little problem was that my grandfather appeared to be interested in sex. Most kids notice SOMEONE who is more blatant about sexuality. Or they see a sign on a building that says GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS and they learn not to ask about it.

So, apparently sex is allowed, but only over there for those people, hidden away.

Something was DEFINITELY wrong with my grandpa, that was obvious. He had Playboy magazines and a baseball hat that had written on it “dirty old men need love too”.

Jeez, didn’t he get it? Was he stupid or something? Why would he subject himself to ridicule or admit he was interested in THAT?

I was already filled with moral judgment about the wrongness of his behavior.

When someone is particularly forceful…when they do very intense things like rape, molest, abuse, spend tons of money in the sex industry, chase, manipulate, or physically control others, we often cast them into hell in our minds.

There is nothing wrong with staying away from people who scare you, this is not a weird test of learning to handle everything, but every area of pain offers amazing opportunity for expansion of the mind. Freedom from fear, attack, judgment, condemnation. Genuine acceptance. Including sexuality.

“To exclude anything that appears in your universe is not love. Love joins with everything. It doesn’t exclude the monster. It doesn’t avoid the nightmare—it looks forward to it.~ Byron Katie

I have found that to question my rules about others and about sex, I find great peace with my own experiences; my feelings, what happened to me (which is now over), what I invited, what I thought I wanted, how I live now.

It is absolutely incredible to not have to reject, rebel, fight against, feel enraged, push, long for, control, or suppress what I’m thinking or feeling.

It seems that what has occurred, by having troubling experiences and then bringing them to inquiry and dropping the rules and judgments, is that sexual expression for me is entirely clear, fun, happy, passionate, awake and wonderful.

Anyone can do it. All you need is a pen and paper and then to start writing down all your beliefs that produce anger, resentment, dischord, or fear in you.

Go ahead and pull back the rug and let’s clean it up under there. Let’s dig up the beliefs that have been buried underground so deep.

This is just inquiry, it doesn’t mean to take action, or do anything at all for that matter. This is about watching, observing, noticing and staying with yourself, to find out the truth, for you, before anyone taught you anything.

In fact, it may be most peaceful NOT to do anything, except inquiry.

“When people see some things as beautiful, other things become ugly. When people see some things as good, other things become bad. Being and non-being create each other. Long and short define each other. High and low depend on each other. Before and after follow each other. Therefore the Master acts without saying anything. Things arise and she lets them come; things disappear and she lets them go. She has but doesn’t possess, acts but doesn’t expect. When her work is done, she forgets it. That is why it lasts forever.”~Tao Te Ching #2

If you’re ready to do this in a group setting, with guidance, then join Our Wonderful Sexuality this week, there is one space left for the Thursday evening group.

If you’re not ready for a group….go for it on your own. You can free yourself with your own answers…and potentially change your entire life.