Shameless Pleasure?
What It Is & Why You Need It.
There is no one around and deep inside, you feel a powerful urge to express the depth of your ache.
You ache for deep, fulfilling pleasure and you want it now!
Scenario One: You reach for your hidden stash of chocolate and with trembling fingers, rip open the wrapper to reveal the silky, forbidden darkness. As you bring it to your lips, your mouth is flooded with a gush of saliva. One bite and your eyes roll back into your head, you are filled with pulsing delight.
Scenario Two: You start to move your body in ways that allows your pleasure to amplify and express itself more fully. Slowly, in the most luscious ways, you touch your body and moans of delight escape your throat.
Finale: Both scenes end abruptly when you realize WHAT you have indulged in and quickly you are flushed with berating thoughts and you swear you will never do it again.
In our liberated world, it is astonishing to see that the words shame and pleasure are almost synonymous. How did this happen? Why is it so prevalent?
Let’s first look at shame.
In some definitions, it has a positive light of providing us with a sense of humility (albeit at times false) and thus, hopefully leading us to behave respectfully.
On the same breath, those of us who have no shame are regarded to have a lack of humility and thus, believed to behave in disrespectful ways.
This biased definition assumes that we do not have a conscience and that we are not capable of actually behaving according to society’s rules and guidelines.
Do we honestly need shame in order to guide our behaviors? Can we actually become more aware of ourselves without the need to take on shame as our chaperone?
And What About Pleasure?
Let’s consider the ancient myth of Eros (the God of Love) and Psyche (the Goddess of the Human Soul). When they finally marry, they give birth to Hedone (the spirit of Pleasure) which is the root word of Hedonism.
The modern interpretation of hedonism is often linked with negative aspects of sexuality. However, the original definition of a hedonist is a “Follower of any ethical system in which some sort of pleasure ranks as the highest good. The Epicurian identifies this pleasure with the practice of virtue.” — Online Etymology Dictionary.
Reframed in this way, pleasure can be seen as a virtuous and ethical act, not just limited to sex, but also inclusive of other experiences such as enjoying a deep conversation, a delicious piece of chocolate, the scent of spring blossoms, or a gorgeous sunset.
In fact, pleasure is so essential to our well-being that without it we get distressed and eventually may fall ill, psychologically, physically, or both.
When we awaken our Erotic energy (eros) and marry it with our evolving emotional/psychological self (Psyche), we literally birth more Pleasure which in turn sustains our aliveness, keeping us youthful and vibrantly healthy!
So What Does This Have To Do With Being Shameless?
Shame is useless.
Shame is actually not needed in order to make life-enhancing choices.
Shame also does’t feel yummy in our body. Shame actually shuts us down, raises our levels of stress hormones and contributes to our ill health and yes, rapid aging!
Shame is also a choice.
It exists because of our definition.
We think we need it in order to be good women. If we were to be shameless about our pleasure, then we must be bad.
Yet nothing is further from the truth.
When we can learn to trust ourselves and the wisdom of our body, all of our neurosis around pleasure will surface and have a chance to be loved into wholeness.
And if we are willing to embrace ourselves in our totality, free of judgement, we can begin to live from a truly shameless and pleasureful place.
In Fact, Shameless Pleasure Is Our Birthright.
Remember, we are designed for pleasure.
Having over 8000 clitoral nerve endings dedicated solely to the function of activating our pleasure is not only living proof, it is a daily reminder of this truth.
Many medical researchers are still perplexed as to why clitoris even exists, surely pleasure cannot be the sole reason for its existence?
Personally, I haven’t found another use for it.
If accessing your deep, erotic intelligence while exploring and loving yourself into wholeness resonates with you, get started with my book: Emergence of the Sensual Woman. Click here to get it now. If you’d love to dive into a dynamic training that helps make Shameless Surrender an embodied experience, then you’ll love my 6 hour immersion training: Click For More Details.
Hi Saida,
I like where you spoke of becoming aware of our erotic moments. You related how as you awakened this awareness in yourself, that you would find your self aroused in different situations, not really know why, but still choose to celebrate that moment of life without shame.
I want to communicate to you the deep gratitude that wells up in me as I make choices for the good and find myself aroused; and in those moments I remember your above situations and make the same choice: to celebrate the moment of pleasure shamelessly even if I don’t do anything to satisfy it until later.
Thank you so much for sharing your wisdom. Again, thank you.
Faith
You are welcome Faith! Thank you for sharing here. AND YESSSSSS! to your discovery.
Beautiful, nourishing words as always Saida. Always love reading your posts. xx
Thank you so much Sharon!
I dedicated 26 years to simply pleasuring my spouse at the expense of coming up short of being personally satisfied. He now cannot perform at his discounted level and I have totally blossomed and now completely explode when I pleasure myself. I feel no shame or guilt because I selflessly dedicated 26 years. This validates my positively selfless act of moving on to the best and highest level of self pleasuring. I am not disappointed in my spouse for his shortcomings because it has graduated me to this excitingly shameless self pleasuring status in my life. I raise my glass to the power of eroticism. It is a solid foundation of sexual growth for the next level of my mid-life journey. I love my spouse more for accepting me for who I am like I accept him for who he is at this time in his life. It’s all good!
Wow Teresa, thank you for sharing your incredible journey into claiming your sexual sovereignty and doing so with love and beauty.
Thank you for all you do. Big hugs XOXO
My pleasure Kathy!
Thank you for receiving so beautifully.
Saida- I so appreciate your ongoing reminders about sensuality and pleasure. Thank you!
My pleasure Marie!
What a YUMMY Post! I love that the clitoris was designed for only one function – I vote more pleasure and less shame – let’s just throw that shame right into the fire and burn it up for good shall we?
We ARE designed for PLEASURE!
U are doing a great Job, by taking girls out of shame, It is very necessary for women to enjoy their sexuality and not feel ashamed of it. Three Cheers to you.
I agree. Shame is destructive. I am proud of my female body and I want to live and love it.
Thank you for this post and the permission to be shameless about my pleasure. This is definetly something that has come up for me lately. It has surfaced in the middle of lovemaking, some sort of shame for enjoying myself too much. To which I answer, yes I´m shameless and dive deeper into my allowing of myself to be present in the moment, going even further into my pleasure. Allowing myself to open up to pleasure has led me to experience HEALING.
<3
Thanks, a great reminder. I read somewhere that shame is the only feeling we learn as children. The rest – happy, sad, angry etc – we are born knowing how to feel. Now I’m off to unlearn shame!
Gorgeous Nicole! I love hearing this!!
Thanks Saida,
we shouldn´t let anyone talk us out of it !!!!!
Long live the whole magical Divine Vulva, hips, breasts and exquisite female body! <3
Oh yes yes yes!!! Yes!!!! You know I had the difficult task of lifting the shame from pleasure after I had early childhood memories of sexual abuse; my sexuality changed so profoundly from being a great celebratory expression of aliveness that it had been, to being associated with deep troubled shame.
Thank you so much Saida for your brilliant meme-bashing and passionate pleasure gushing in exquisite verbal expression… you have been one of my main inspirations for exploding shame back out of my consciousness and re-embracing pleasure as the Divine virtue that it truly is, that I knew it as before I had memories. I have re-learned erotic innocence, in fact, today I was just sharing about erotic innocence with a client I will be teaching White Tantra to…. You describe erotic innocence so beautifully, and always inspire me on a deep level with your words. Thank you so much for inspiring women to come alive to our greatest potentials in femininity. What a fantastic contribution to womankind. Love you!!!
Thank you Rachael! I am happy to learn you are teaching again.
I much prefer guilty pleasure over feeling shame. Shame tells us that there is something wrong with us where as feeling guilty tells us we are doing something that was taught to us as forbidden.
Love the image, your words and your sense of humour, Saida! This post really had me cackling x