There is something quite vivifying about sensuality. It can increase our will to live, inspire us, give us goals, and give us a way to communicate love or the divine. However, because our mind is not inherently one way or another, sensuality is a double-edge blade.
When our minds begin to fixate on material things (or even abstract things) is when the trouble starts.
The danger of sensuality is believing that happiness is “out there” somewhere; that happiness relies on things that cannot and do not last. We want to be happy and we believe that happiness comes from sense pleasures (or worse when we despair we take pleasure as a substitute). We want the pleasure to last forever so we pretend it will, or we live in denial about the impermanence of things. We fight to acquire things, we fight to keep things, all of us are helpless when things eventually fall apart.
There is also an element of self involved in sensuality. “I” like this, that’s “my” rare, exotic, beautiful car, a lot of our self-definition is dependent on our likes, dislikes, and our possessions. Abandoning a sensual based mentality challenges our self-definition. Without likes, dislikes, beliefs, views, objects, what is left, but our nameless, faceless presence? Craving for a self, sensual things may prove so tempting to our luminous awareness. But, getting lost in our fabricated selves, we lose sight of our immortal, divine, true nature.
The rich architecture of places of worship, as well as holy garments, alters, ritual paraphernalia, paintings and stained glass windows all reveal that sensuality can be used to entice the senses to focus back on something greater than our passing forms, if the state of mind is right.
In one state of mind a magnificent sunset allows us to reach out into infinity, to feel the grand majesty of creation (because we are open to that within ourselves). In a different state of mind the flesh tones may only excite lustful imaginings (perhaps if that mind is too preoccupied with short-term gratification to be open to more long-term possibilities). State of mind is everything. The world around us, and our sense of it, becomes our mirror.
When we settle for pleasure, or allow it to distract us from or entice us to abandon to the truth or the true causes of happiness, is when we begin to loose our way. Like Narcissus we loose perspective, and mistake the reflection for the master.
