Judgments

Recently my partner and I were talking about my work and some of the responses he gets from friends and co-workers when he tells them what I do. Most people when they first find out what I do, they respond from a place of habit. Sex work means whore. Whore is bad. And they really don’t think much beyond that. I understand that but that’s simply patterned thinking based upon others beliefs and judgments.

I will freely admit that 5 years ago I held the same beliefs. I certainly don’t remember ever thinking that being a sex worker was something that I wanted to grow up to become. In fact, it was about the last thing that I ever thought I’d find myself doing because I’ve always thought that to be very spiritual I couldn’t be very sexual. Spirituality has been a guiding force in my life and many religious teachings downplay or even demonize sexuality. From as early as I can remember I have dreamed of being a healer therefore I thought I had to suppress my sexuality.

In ancient Babylonia before the birth of the Christian movement, Paganism was the dominate spiritual practice. People believed in worshiping nature and the Earth. They saw man as an extension of nature and sought to live in harmony with their surroundings. By understanding that sexuality was nature expressing itself as the desire to create, they honored its power. They personified nature’s ability to reproduce itself as the Goddess. Their religious beliefs were based upon worshipping the feminine aspect of the Divine.

In their temples, the females were in charge and used sexual energy as a way of connecting with the Divine. At the time, a “temple whore” was the human link to the Divine. They represented the Goddess manifest in human form and they used sexual practices as part of their worship rituals. The whores were highly respected leaders of the Pagan movement.

Other spiritual practices of the time, such as Tantra from India, played a part in this as well. These ancient teachings used the human body as the platform for connecting with the Divine. Rather than judging the movement of sexual energy through the body, they saw it as natural and beautiful and celebrated it. As an expression of the Divine, they knew it held incredible power and sought to use that power to move toward enlightenment.

All that began to change as the Christian movement began taking hold. As the Romans began to conquer the land, they brought their new religion with them. When any group invades a land to take control of it one of the first things they do is destroy the historical record of the inhabitants of the land. The best way to completely defeat a culture is to destroy all records of its existence. They also begin setting up a system of governance like their own. This includes religion and during the time that meant conversion or death were the options for non-Christians. (Does this sound familiar? Art museums and archives “mysteriously looted and destroyed in Iraq”…overthrown government…)

History is written by the winners. One of the easiest ways to control people is to control their religion. Make them fear a God more powerful than man and then align yourself with that God as its human intercessor. By creating doctrine that outlines the behavior you seek and demonizing their former religious beliefs and practices, you can more easily keep the followers of that religion in line. This is what happened when the Romans took over and converted (by threat of death) everyone to Christianity. The matriarchal Pagan teachings were replaced by the patriarchal Christian teachings. This meant that men were now saviors and Divine and women were second class citizens and whores were now considered evil.

As a country dominated by Christianity, does it really come as a surprise then that in America we hold these same beliefs? Whether we follow that belief system or not, that belief is ingrained into our culture and we are all products of that culture. If sex is where our true power to create is generated, then to remain in power over the people, you need to control their sexuality and thus control them. This has been the philosophy that has separated us from our power and causes us to believe that anyone dealing with sexual energy is bad.

It’s time that we looked at the source of our beliefs and challenged those beliefs to decide if they are true for us or if they are beliefs imposed upon or handed down to us. We all have bodies. We all have sex. As long as we believe that either are “bad” then we are locked into the belief that we are bad. The belief that we are bad holds us back from realizing our fullest potential as pure expressions of the loving energy of the Divine.

Just as we do with clothes, at times we must look at our beliefs and determine if they are still the right size for us. Those that we take on in our youth may not truly fit us as adults yet we are too often still guided by and in many cases are imprisoned by them. Unfortunately beliefs are harder to sort through because all too often we don’t even recognize them. We think what we think based upon our beliefs and we believe that “that’s just the way I am” or “that’s how I was raised” and we deny our power to change.

Any belief which causes us to sit in judgment of another is a belief that we need to examine more closely. Judgment separates us. Love and compassion unite us. The more we begin to recognize our oneness with the Divine and ultimately all that is, the more we know we must constantly move toward love in our every thought and every action. This is especially true to those thoughts and actions directed at ourselves. Loving all that is begins with loving ourselves completely and radiating that love outward from there.

Can you love yourself enough to drop your judgments?