Original Innocence

I guided a visualization last week that involves a group of men lying on their backs in a circle, nude, with eyes closed. We make an imaginary journey to a Temple of Refuge consecrated to the erotic energy between men. We approach the shrine, enter it, and witness its rituals. We co-create the experience by speaking aloud one by one what rises from the depths of our imaginations. Throughout the exercise, we pass our energy around the circle through continuous heart-centered, non-genital touch.

The exercise turns out very differently every time I lead it. Some men remain reticent; others give free rein and ready voice to their fantasies of what such a Temple would look like, and what would happen there. I have only a vague idea in advance how our visit will end; I follow their lead in guiding our departure and return to the “real” world. The visualization can get pretty juicy, but we agree in advance to clear boundaries, and we end without directly acting on  the detailed sexual scenarios that we’ve sometimes voiced.

Except for last week. Throughout the exercise, the touch around the circle had been sensuous, exploratory, active. As I concluded the visualization and invited everyone to open his eyes, no one seemed ready to relinquish the pleasure of physical contact. Calling a halt to it felt like an intrusion, counter to the clear impulse of everyone present. So it continued, morphing gradually into fluid erotic freeplay, by pairs who’d connected within the larger group, then welcomed a third, then broke apart again into a new configuration. I got up to dim the lights, then returned to my place to cradle the head of a man whose face had relaxed into a moment of surprise and delight.

Looking  back on how the evening unfolded, I still dwell on how easily we all accepted one another’s witnessing presence amidst these intimacies. Derogatory labels of exhibitionism and voyeurism couldn’t begin to capture the unselfconsciousness with which men in the circle allowed themselves to be seen, in trust that we shared a safe, sacred space. We’d established that space together, visualizing the Temple; now it endured, as surely as if we’d built it stone by solid stone. Seeing and being seen was sexy, yes. But more important and enduring, seeing and being seen brought some small healing of the soul, and repair of the world.

When shame and prohibition drop away, it’s possible to glimpse the original innocence of Eden, mirrored in the presence of those who bear witness to it--never destroyed by the eating of an arbitrarily forbidden fruit; unpunished, unrebuked, unafraid, still whole, still available, despite sixty generations of grey old men preaching to the contrary.