Great Sex Makes $$$!
It took studying money manifestation and creation for me to realize how inextricably linked money and sex are. The quantity and quality of both are a measure of how willing and able we are to authentically give and vulnerably receive.
I grew up with my mom being a single mother during my early years. In this time, she modeled, “if you want to get something done, you have to do it yourself.” She heavily embodied her masculine qualities as a way to protect her broken heart, take care of her two young children, and get the shit done that needed to be done for survival. She did a fantastic job accomplishing this goal of me being provided for, while at the same time knowing I was loved by my mother.
I adopted these patterns of protection. Without even realizing it, I guarded my feminine essence with a fierce warrior that battled any intruder who seemed to want anything from me. I was unwilling to receive much as I feared this vulnerability would crush me. I gave a lot, and a good bunch of it was (unconsciously) motivated by me feeling like I had to, out of some burdensome obligation handed down to me via both lineages and cultural messaging. I gave because I was supposed to. I gave because I needed to feel in control. I gave because if I was (over) giving I didn’t have to be receiving.
It took me many years to realize how distorted my practices of giving and receiving were and how integrally this impacted the amount of joy and pleasure I could experience in life. It also profoundly affected my relationship to money and what I thought I was possible. How I gave and received was based on what I thought I deserved. The flow of money coming in and out of my life, the quality of all of my relationships, and the quality of sex I was having were extremely limited because of my inaccurate perception of what it meant to give and receive. I was already deep down the rabbit hole of transformation when I stumbled upon this treasure trove of realizations. As I began to right my relationship to giving and receiving, the results in my life immediately began to shift.
One of the first changes I saw was money began to flow in. I had always been resourceful at creating money when I needed it for something, but I never made more than I needed in a given moment and I would always have it spent before I had it in hand. It was the pattern of me immediately giving it back, feeling uncomfortable with receiving, at play. I decided to take a closer look at my relationship to giving. I studied why I gave when I did.
Why do you give?
As women we learn to give so well. It is our cultural M.O. to prepare us straight out of the womb for our life of martyrdom. By society’s standards, we are the most successful version of woman when we put everyone else’s needs before our own. This expectation is stamped upon us. My giving muscles were therefore well-exercised by the time I reached adulthood. I just needed to clean up my intentions for giving. This has not been a small feat, but somehow it felt more manageable because I had a frame of reference for it. Amidst the distorted reasons for my giving, I also gave from love. My moments of greatest joy have come from giving without needing anything in return. These moments of pleasure were inspiration enough to take action towards evermore intentional giving.
As I mentioned earlier, the key reason I gave was to stay in control so I didn’t have to experience the vulnerability of receiving. As we get honest answers to the question of why we give, we can better see how to make a different choice. Once we have clarity, we can seek out the support we need to nurture the parts of ourselves that feel afraid to be out of control. Often, our reasons are based on survival patterns of fear, shame, and abandonment. They are the most tender parts of us and we need to meet these parts with a commensurate amount of love and acceptance to allow ourselves to soften. In our softening, we already know the truth and beauty of pure giving. It is effortless because it is our essence. It is love. When love becomes the source of our giving, we are nourished rather than depleted by our action.
Deepak Chopra beautifully comments on giving from a place of least effort in his book, The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success. He says,
Least effort is expended when your actions are motivated by love because nature is held together by the energy of love. When you seek power and control over other people, you waste energy. When you seek money or power for the sake of the ego, you spend energy chasing the illusion of happiness instead of enjoying happiness in the moment… When your actions are motivated by love, your energy multiplies and accumulates – and the surplus energy you gather and enjoy can be channeled to create anything that you want, including unlimited wealth... when your internal reference point is your spirit, when you are immune to criticism and unfearful of any challenge, you can harness the power of love, and use energy creatively for the experience of affluence and evolution. (p. 55-56)
While giving is the moving towards, receiving is the allowing in. It too is motivated by love when it is in its highest expression. Receiving for me has felt so much more terrifying to surrender to than giving. It has felt threatening to be so exposed and be witnessed feeling so much. Still when I am afraid, my default is to immediately shrink my capacity to receive. It has been a decades long journey to cultivate the trust in myself that I will give only when I want to give (and not because I feel I have to) and therefore that I can trust another to witness my vulnerability. It is in the safety I cultivated for myself by knowing I would always advocate for me first that I have been able to open to receiving a deeper level of love and pleasure. Because this has been a journey of self-worth, the lessons I have integrated have a direct impact on what I feel I deserve in intimate relationships and in my career/money/lifestyle. As I made the hard choice each day, even in the smallest interactions, to speak my truth, I felt my capacity for receiving expand. It felt very uncomfortable, and still does in some moments, and the more I am willing to show up for myself, the easier it gets.
Learning how to give and receive from a place of greater integrity is invigorating and life sustaining. When we give/receive from love we lean into more life. Leaning into more life allows us to experience more beauty, joy, ecstasy, and pleasure. It softens the blow of the pain and suffering pervasive on our planet. The quality of our lives is a direct reflection of how purely we are willing to give and receive. In this pureness of heart we are infinite. We are inexhaustible. We are embodying the fullest expression of spirit in form.
Dare to Desire.
Kristen