Everything about our "reality" is illusion, and that illusion is created by our belief, attitude, desire, imagination, and expectation. Only our eternal spirits are actually real. The only aspect of "reality" which affects our essence, our eternal spirit, is our experience while playing Leela, the game of life. The whole game of life is based on supposition. What you believe to be true is true. We as spirits create our body and our physical universe to play in, to enjoy, to experience, to learn, to grow in. And the way we do that is by interacting with the illusions created by other beings, and by experiencing our emotions, our reactions to our experiences, the impact which other beings are having upon us. The only thing which is actually real about "reality" is how we "feel" about it.
Zen teaches that detachment is the ultimate goal... to become emotionally neutral about the entire illusion. not, as Mr. Spock of Star Trek fame strove to be, devoid of emotion... in denial of emotion... but to experience it without becoming attached to it, either positively (desire, lust, possessiveness, greed, etc.) or negatively (hate, aversion).
In short, everything is simply a matter of belief. The reality you believe to be real is the reality you will experience. Those experiences "should" ultimately teach you that the universe, or more aptly, source is loving and giving... and that any experiences you have to the contrary are by your own choice. Now if you believe that you have no choice, that your existence is predestined, then you may simply relax and enjoy the ride, and bother to read no further. For then nothing said here will make any difference. It is said that everything about your life is a metaphor for your relationship with your Higher Self, with source. The goal is to evolve, improve, and make consciously aware, your living loving relationship with your spirit, and with the Source. You are divine. You are of source. All the answers are to be found in your own heart. For it is there that your Higher Self connects into physical reality. And it is through your Higher Self that you connect to the Source, the Supreme Being.
A spirit creates a body to play in, to enjoy in, to love in, to be loved in, and then gets lost in attachments to physical reality. To successfully walk the path to enlightenment is simply to learn to be a spirit in a body without being attached to being in that body, or to any of the experiences you have in your body. Mahamaya, the great illusion, of time and space, has no reality or significance, other than how that experience impacts your spiritual essence, and how you impact others. Hopefully that experience and impact is loving, rather than hurtful, growthful and educational rather than stuck. We each come into an incarnation with specific lessons we have chosen to learn, and perhaps with some karma from past incarnations, and perhaps we create some new karma along the way. The first purpose is to clear your karma, to set yourself free of the past. The second purpose is to set yourself free of your expectations of the future. Then you may arrive in the here and now, the only place your spirit has any creative power while in a body. By accepting responsibility for being the creator of your reality and all your mental states, you have the power to be free and to create anything you want, including the completion of karma, and freedom from the past and future. Having cleared yourself, you may simply play in the here and now.
You create your own reality. Whatever you're getting right now is exactly what you want to get. No "if"s, "and"s, or "but"s. The bottom line of knowing what you really believe is to look at your experience. I create every aspect of my life. If ever I think I'm getting other than what I want, I need to examine my ego lies and find out why I want things I don't like. Overcoming a lifetime of programming into a cultural set of beliefs is not in the least a trivial pursuit, however.
People who love themselves enough to be willing to receive in abundance the love and light of source are healthy, vital, and they are Immune Sufficient. When they connect with someone else they connect on all levels... they create divine and joyous spiritual union, a deeply committed love bond, and a passionate sexual union. They are open and honest and loving with each other. They share all of themselves and all the love and light of the great spirit they are capable of bringing into their incarnation. Their hearts are open... to spirit, and to each other. They do not just "sex" each other.
The heart chakra is the center of affinity and love, for self and for others, from self and from others. The heart chakra rules the immune system. To have a healthy immune system which is sufficient to resist AIDS, is to be totally in the bliss of the love and light of source... to be in the state of ecstasy. The heart chakra and the crown chakra are the primary points of connection between spirit and body, a connection, or more aptly a marriage, which produces the personality. It is here that the light of Self and source manifest into the body, and from there connect with another incarnate being. Yes, we can connect on just the spiritual/psychic realms, but our true power as divine humans is the manifestation of our spiritual essence in the holy vehicle of the human body. Every state (of being) or act (of doing) of love is divine. Our entire essence is divine, and every aspect of our incarnation is divine. To be healthy is to realize this... to recognize, honor, respect and love the divine essence within each and every one of us, and most of all to recognize it when we connect in our love making. The most important aspect of our lives is to love each other, and to not just sex each other.
You don't have to be married, by church or state to create spiritual marriage. You don't have to love each other to sex each other, nor sex each other to love each other. But the union of two incarnate spirits is a divine event worthy of recognition by all involved. It can be all very fun to raise the intensity of union with lust, but the danger therein is that of forgetting that it is more than "sex". It can be very nice to be polygamous, but the danger therein is creating enough diversity so as to be able to avoid ever really achieving deep intimacy and love with any one of those partners, much less many, most, or all of them. Too many people are practicing "safe sex" or unsafe sex where the essential factor is that they are busily having sex without bothering to have love, for self or others. Because if one truly loved one self, then one would be creating a world, a life, a set of experiences where all the sexual unions one engaged in would be recognized and experienced as the divine loving unions they are. To experience safe sex, one must be safe. In self, with others. One must be operating from self love, self worth, self awareness (including awareness of one's divine spiritual nature). One must be uniting with others out of that Self center, reaching out to give and receive love, not out of need... need to be loved as as substitute for missing self love, need to be sexed as a substitute for truly intimate and loving spiritual union consummated in physical intercourse.
You can reach enlightenment just by "running your energy". This is a term we use for a specific (what we belive most appropriate) pattern of flow of spiritual energy within the physical body, associated with an alternate state of consciousness. The longer you do this each day, the quicker you progress. Also, you can utilize sexual intercourse to develop the ability to raise the kundalini energy, which should run up the spine, awakening the chakras of higher consciousness. We are taught both to run earth and cosmic energy, and to run kundalini energy, without sex, in my psychic classes, without getting into yogic breathing patterns, Buddhist sitting patterns, etc. This is in affinity with the right-hand Tantrik path, the path of non-sexual but partner-coupled energy sharing. We also teach the left-hand Tantrik path which specifically includes sexual coupling as a technique to facilitate the awakening and arousal of kundalini in a partner-coupled energy sharing. Spiritual awareness and ability greatly enhance sexual union. Likewise sexual union may be utilized in the furtherance of spiritual growth towards enlightenment. They become intertwined in left-hand Tantra. Angela is a Tantrik Yogi/Yogini, master of both polarities in union, fully mastering the invocation of both the Yin and Yang archetype, and the utilization of both the yin and yang energy.