The Sensual Value of Joy

Photo by Sinitta Leunen, Pexels

Joy is often considered a feeling, a momentary experience, fleeting and more like frosting on the cake. I am here to tell you it is the cake if you can harness and work with it.

We have all been taught the idea of “mind over matter.” It is not correct and never has been. What this belief does is connect our survival with a system that is mostly about work and pleasing others. As a result, most people have fleeting experiences of joy and think of it as a nice but inessential part of life, a side benefit if you will. Others think joy is just more of that awful toxic positivity that denies reality.

For a long time, cultural systems have repressed joy. Joy is not something you control; it is innate and unique in many ways to each of us. So those who try to control others have to treat joy as irresponsible, foolish, unrealistic, and even dangerous to get us to sacrifice joy for the sake of others. I have experienced this, and you may have also. 

Life would be much easier if we could allow people their natural capacity to create joy and allow their sensuality a voice to make that happen. Let’s explore this further. 

Feelings Are Energy And Information

Since we are all energy, as is the universe, energy is important information. Our feelings are energy and those feelings give us important information. 

If my joy is painful to others, I must reject it to maintain my relationship with them. That means my loving nature has been coopted; I have been told that to be perceived as a loving person, I have to give up the natural expression of that nature, which is joy, to be accepted. No wonder so many people are unhappy!

By this logic, I also lose the information and intelligence contained in the energy of joy to get along with others. That is disempowering. We need to release the self-rejection that these mindsets demand.

Sensuality Shows What Works Or Does Not

Our sensuality is an important part of our natural intelligence. All of nature, including human nature, is sensual. If you watch animals, they are always connecting sensually with the world. They use taste to know whether a food is good for them or poisonous. They use their senses to identify dangers and sources of nourishment. Our senses are vital for our well-being and safety.

Sensuality can also be used to help with decisions. Your sensuality is at work when you notice that you have enough of something. It helps you when you seek a solution to a problem or difficulty and you notice when something clicks into place as the best answer. It can help you find the highest and best way of doing something because your sensuality will notice the energetic effects of a choice, yours, and others. 

Your sensuality can be a guide. If it is connected to creating joy, it becomes a very valuable guide.

Sensuality Provides Connection

Joy is an expansive energy of connection in which our sensual nature plays an important role.

The emotions expert, Karla McLaren, has written eloquently about joy as an important energy of expansion and connection. Interesting, isn’t it, the degree to which connection is thwarted by those who want to control others? Prejudice, and all forms of inequality, inhibit connection by creating suspicion and distrust. Controlling cultures want to limit that connection to keep the harness of sacrifice in place and themselves in power. If people were to discover their power to work together by harnessing the constructive power of joy, many controlling regimes would become obsolete.

Sensuality can be used for all kinds of connection and expansion. It can help us learn, connect, and develop gratitude. Our sensuality is a wonderful gift and worth learning about and appreciating.

Sensuality Is A Guide To Congruence And Harmony

Sensuality and joy are important tools for problem-solving, which is one way I use them.

I love how I feel when a solution hits that sweet spot, that place in my gut that says “Yes!” to an idea. The feeling of congruence and harmony are off the charts. When we have cultivated our energies as sources of information, when we have released the old ideas and beliefs that cause us to reject the energies that serve joy, including our sensuality, then our gut becomes even more useful than it is otherwise.

People sometimes think their gut is unreliable. What really happens is their head fights their gut. The controlling messages that make joy dangerous or unwelcome fight with the joy-seeking part of you, which has usually not received the validation it needs to show up fully in life. 

Your sensuality is an important part of your being. It is meant to support you to make beautiful choices that create quality of life, yours and others. The more you cultivate the wisdom and intelligence of your sensuality, the stronger and safer you will feel. Sensuality supports the constructive and expansive energy of joy that serves us all. It is worth getting to know.