My name is Devi Ward and this is the totally absurd story of how tantric sex healed my soul.
I was born in 1974, the result of an interracial marriage. My father is of African, European, and Native American (also known as Black) descent. My mother is half Polish and half Czechoslovakian, blonde, blue eyed, aka white.
My parents were married in Detroit, Michigan in 1969, just 2 YEARS after interracial marriage was no longer considered a felony in many American states.
I grew up in Maryland, New Jersey, and Michigan. My parents divorced when I was 6 years old, and I lived with my mother in predominantly white, working-class neighborhoods, while she struggled to make ends meet as a single parent.
I am what is called a “hi-yella”, my skin tone is very light, pale, even ivory at times. I burn easily, need sunscreen, and have sun damage as a result of my negligence in this area. My hair, on the other hand, is nappy, frizzy, unruly, and a white woman’s nightmare!
Growing up, the images of female beauty she aspired to had long, wavy, straight, and (usually) blonde hair. All my friends were white and guys liked them. Even in third grade, they were considered “pretty” while I, with my strangely pale skin, ugly hair, and freckles, was more than just an ugly duckling, I was a racial absurdity, and there was no one like me for miles.
At a very young age I was conditioned to believe that white women were superior to me and white men were simply superior. My life experiences confirmed this belief on a regular basis, and the images of beauty that I was and continue to be exposed to continue to reaffirm this culturally conditioned belief.
And then something extraordinary and completely unimaginable happened. I started practicing Tantra. Sex that is. I started practicing Tantric Sex. I started to practice CONSCIOUS SEX, that is, I stopped chasing the romantic dream that had been scooped out to me through the mainstream media as my “fulfillment” and chose to explore sexuality as a path of self-fulfillment, self-awareness, and self-empowerment.
I began to experience levels of pleasure that were indescribable. I literally lost my mind and went into altered states of consciousness, which were generated by physical-sexual happiness.
I began to unlock emotional traumas that had crystallized in my body and had severely inhibited my sense of self-confidence and self-esteem as a woman.
Apparently minor traumas such as; being described as repulsively ugly by these cute little white kids that society treated like young gods.
Doors that had previously been locked were flung open, the result of awakening to feelings of sexual bliss beyond description. Beyond the rational workings of my conscious mind, in the still untapped depth of my subconscious, what was previously hidden came to the surface, as a result of engaging with the shadow of my sexuality…consciously.
I started to heal from wounds I didn’t even know I had. I started to regain sexual awareness…and awareness is POWER! I wish I could convey in words the depth and depth of personal healing that has occurred simply as a result of the practice of tantric sex.
It seems ridiculous, it seems absurd that SEX, SEX, conscious SEX can lead to complete healing of wounds so deep and painful, that I couldn’t see them directly, and the extent of its effect on my life and my choices.
What I discovered through Tantra, of all the weird and bizarre things, is that racism is a cultural condition. It is a program that is presented to us as a society at an almost imperceptible level and is maintained, reinforced over and over again by the mainstream media and our cultural orientation as a whole.
Unless you are on the receiving end of the equation, you will never understand the effect of it. Never. Just like those who have experienced the emotionally crippling effects of living in a culture indoctrinated with racism, they will never understand what it is like to live without its shadow.
As a result of unraveling my social and cultural conditioning around acceptance and sexual normalcy, I began to unravel a much deeper level of subtle programming around race and social acceptance. As I became sexually free and empowered, sexually fulfilled and celebrated, a much deeper level of suffering became apparent, and the ways in which I had been sensually repressed as a woman became apparent. The ways in which that occurred because of my race were even more so.
The divinely beautiful irony is that the catalyst for all of this epic growth was the result of being brutally rejected by one of those superior white men, whom I adored so much, but could never quite convince myself of my worth.
In fact, I was “fired”, to make way for “the great white goddess”, a woman I would always and forever fall short of, based on my racial programming.
Day after day I was faced head on with the inner belief of my inherent inferiority.
Because I’m not white, blonde, rich, beautiful, and socially well adjusted. I’m fair skinned, straight haired, beautiful yes, but socially awkward, and definitely NOT normal! I live on the “fringe” of society and have yet to experience social acceptance at the level of mainstream white society.
Nor do I aspire to reach this point. I have earned my freedom from the dominant mind and I intend to keep it.
I am now married to a white man who, through his love and emotional acceptance, has become my best friend and healer on many levels. We consider ourselves “polyamorous”, we have the ability to love many, not just the romantic dream of one.
This to me is another example of healing and empowerment, because instead of hoarding and possessing their love out of fear of scarcity or lack, as a friend of my partner, I truly want their love and happiness, as well as my own.
We accept that while we can meet many needs of others, we don’t meet all of them, and we celebrate and defend our individual freedom to meet needs for connection, expression, and joy with others and in other ways.
I still find it absurd that the deepest healing in my life results from the simple practices of sexual communication, eye contact, genital massage, and semen retention. It is stupid that something as obvious as SEX can be a gateway to such internal emancipation.
The profound absurdity of my Tantric Healing, is that my fractured soul and the depth of my wound was not only revealed to me, but HEALED through simple, effective, conscious SEX!!… I hope it is for you too, if you choose to walk that path.