As I am getting older, I am learning to savor the pleasures of this life with all the passion that my mind and body can muster. I have become conscious of beauty.  I seek it throughout each and every day.  As I explore the pleasures of my senses I am much more selective in how the next moment should be spent.

Sexuality has become much more than experiencing orgasm. My sexual passions meld with the other senses. Making love is no longer a ritual or a tension and anxiety release; I make love because I love life, I love the moment, and I love the person that I am with. The feelings of togetherness dominate my moments and I can focus my arousal on exploring the beauty of his/her body and soul. Sometimes this sense of attraction and oneness leads to sexual passion, but most of the time, I just want to settle into the glow.

As I continue to read Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Eat, Pray, Love[1], slowly and thoughtfully, I am impressed with the beauty of her words. I would like to explore some of her thoughts on the topic of pleasure and beauty and apply them to bisexuality.

“In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted . . . .  Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal (sex) is the only currency that is real.” (page 114)

This one is about forgetting about the negative aspect of gaining weight and just settling in to consciously enjoying a gourmet Italian meal in a quaint restaurant on the streets of Rome. The same thing can be said about sex. We have to learn to forget the consequences, ignore the negative feelings, and just enjoy the sensuality of touch and taste. For much of my life, perhaps due to my religious background, the beauty of sex has been watered down and devalued, at times to the point of shame and guilt. All of those thoughts imposed by well-meaning individuals have interfered with my sense of pleasure. I have come to realize that those thoughts are not to be trusted.  I will no longer bargain my right to enjoy one of the greatest pleasures of life. The only thing that is real is the pleasure and the knowledge that I can gain through my senses.

“To devote yourself to the creation and enjoyment of beauty, then, can be a serious business – not always a means of escaping reality, but sometimes a means of holding on to the real when everything else is flaking away into rhetoric and plot . . . . You were given life; it is your duty (an also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight” (page 115).

I am leaning to see beauty in everything, especially in the act and art of making love. Seeing the beauty of my own body, mind, and soul has been like coming out of Plato’s cave and seeing life the way it really is. I am beautiful.  My feelings and sensations are beautiful.  I can reach emotional orgasm smelling a flower or seeing a doe curled up in my flower bed, but best of all by experiencing the love that comes from the exchange of touch. Holding my partner consciously and sensuously is the greatest pleasure I know.  She/he is beautiful. I am beautiful. We are beautiful.

”And I will leave with the hope that the expansion of one person – the magnification of one’s life – is indeed an act of worth in this world. Even if that life, just this one time, happens to be nobody’s but my own” (page 116).

My sole purpose is to see myself as I really am and to expand into the most beautiful person that I can be. I have learned to live selfishly.  My own personal pleasure and my own pursuit of beauty is the purpose of my life, but it is a purpose I can share with another human being. By exploring another’s beauty sensuously, sexually, and consciously and reflecting it back  to them,  I provide the divine energy that enables that person to expand and grow individually. And when we perform this act of love together, living and growing itself becomes something beautiful and the source of ultimate pleasure.This is a pleasure that I have chosen to experience with one person because of the intensity of the feelings we can share.  I have become monogamous not because of any restrictions on my mind but because of the expansion of my soul.

[1] Gilbert, Elizabeth. Eat Pray Love. Penguin Books. London, England. 2006.