Sunday Sermon [Sex and Money]

Hola mi Gente,

I keep trying to finish a piece on environmental racism, but every time I turn to it, I become so enraged that I cannot finish it. 

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Sex & Money

My life has a superb cast but I can't figure out the plot.

-- Ashleigh Brilliant(1933– )

Imagine, if you can, going out and seeing a reasonably trustworthy-looking stranger you find sexy. Imagine giving this sexually attractive stranger some money, looking him or her in the eyes and saying, “I’m doing this as part of an assigned exercise. I’m supposed to give some money to somebody really sexy. Then I am to have no further discussion with you.”

As you imagine doing this exercise, how does it feel to give someone money while admitting out loud he or she is sexy? Most of us are more than a little conflicted about both sex and money. Essentially, these are forms of energy exchange, which can be as simple as an unexpected gift, or as complicated as a lawsuit.

Sex and money: the sources of our desire and disappointment, our hopes and fears.

To live fully, as far as I’m concerned, is to live every moment so that no residue remains except the free openness of love. Sex and money are most often our least lived domains. In other words, these are the areas smeared with the most residue -- the most baggage. Therefore, few people (if they are honest) can imagine doing this exercise without some lingering clinging of an emotional complication.

I have found that the best way to discover how live fully is to break the usual rules, in the least risky ways, in order to find out where the obstructions reside within us.

Repeat this exercise, or invent one of your own that requires you to imagine offering gifts beyond your comfort zone. As you learn to give despite your fears, your sexual and financial lives can be lived according to what serves openness the most, rather than being ruled by the consequences of living a fear-based life, holding your gifts back.

It’s easy to become stuck in our own personal soap operas of sex and money. What we cannot live as openness, offered without baggage, creates sickness in our lives. It gums up the works and makes it difficult to flow. This much I have found to be true: the price of discovering where you are stuck sexually and financially may be more than what you are willing to invest.

The core question here being do you maintain no sexual or financial secrets? You need to come to the realization that these secrets are among your most insidious refusals to live openly as love.

Are you willing to face, feel, confess, and open beyond your every sexual and financial complication now? My life has taught me that human birth is for those who are not quite ready but may be on the verge -- willing. This is the reason why you are here.

 

My name is Eddie and I’m in recovery from civilization…