Woman on Fire Read Online Free PDF Page B

have it? What are you committed to?
    TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO FIRST SEE IT IN YOUR MIND’S EYE, AND THEN WRITE IT ALL DOWN
    Make a list, or draw pictures, write a story, or even make a collage. Whatever works best for you. It might simply be the top five things you want to focus on creating and developing. Keep this image, list, story, description, or collage where you can see it to remind yourself of what you are working to create as you read this book.
    This is a journey, and there will be times when you’ll need reminders about why you started on this journey to begin with. Your commitment is the most powerful reminder you have. Your image and ideas of what is possible will evolve throughout your process. This is a starting point meant to inspire you and to act as a reminder if you find yourself feeling muddled.
    As you begin, allow yourself to want. Stop pretending about the things you really do know. Dream the seemingly impossible dream and live full-out now. There is no other time but now. Your path to a place of true sexual empowerment (which is also creative empowerment and life empowerment) is one you cannot ignore or avoid. You know sexuality is important and valuable. You know there is work to be done and things to be examined. You know there is space to be made and passion to be lived. You know you have a personal power to claim. You know there is a fire that burns inside of you.
    Once you know, there is no going back to not knowing.

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    CORE ENERGY MODEL OF SEXUALITY
THE PURE STATE OF PLEASURE
    By nature, human beings are fully in their bodies in infancy—in a state of natural joy. Ever seen an infant flirt? They smile, giggle, look away, look back, giggle more, flap their arms. They engage in joyful flirtation with the world. Unadulterated glee. It’s pure. It’s beautiful.
    For many of us, that ability doesn’t last long. Soon enough we hear: “Why are you laughing?” “Don’t touch me!” “Don’t touch yourself!” “Stop playing!” “You think you’re so cute!”
    All creation holds a kernel of pleasure and joy in it. Conception comes in a variety of ways. No matter the how, within that tiny cellular creation is the joy of life. We start in a combustion of cells and energythat grows and we come into this world open and ready to be all we are meant to be here as human beings.
    Sexuality is the nucleus of all life. Before we have any physical form, our humbly magnificent inception emerges from an energetic desire for life. Our very being desires birth, love, and connection. It wants to thrive and to live. This erotic impulse that creates us all—even before conception—gives us a preformed desire for more life. That core erotic impulse is the nucleus of who we are from the very beginning. Within the melding of those two nascent cells that birth us are the requisite components of creation and connection. What is more powerful than that? What is more sexual than that?
    The universe gave us this well of energy so that we could fully live and love all of who we are as human beings. It gave us a body so that we had a place to hold this energy and a vehicle for exaltation and pleasure. We would not have been given such a wondrous capacity to feel pleasure through our senses and our body if we were not meant to experience it. Our sexuality is our spirituality in physical form. Stepping into true sexual power is part of the spiritual journey.
SEXUAL AGENCY IN A SEX-NEGATIVE WORLD
    Committing to live a pleasure-filled, sexually healthy life is not easy in a culture that often condemns sex, pleasure, and full sexual expression. The United States is an incredibly sex-negative place. We are born into it, live in it, and are steeped in this sex-negative environment. We are bombarded with its pejorative and conflicting messages from the get-go. We learn the antiquated “sex is dirty, don’t talk about it” messaging, and yet we