Bahkti

*This is not erotica. This is a confession of how devotion found me through the body.

I found freedom in kneeling.

Bound, blindfolded and unexpected, I found a self that I could scarcely imagine in another life.

Writhing, begging, with all vulnerability on display, I was given a new name.

Branded, baptized- my chest ripped open to receive a dark sacrament.

Sordid, soaring- cresting and breaking inside a bliss that erased the false mind.

Some nights, I recognize myself as a Maenad. Drunk on lust, stalking Dionysius across bonfires, into the woods that bear witness to my offering of ineffable devotion. I did not chase him to be taken. I followed because I was already claimed.

This was bhakti, though I did not have the language yet- devotion not offered through purity, but through yielding.

My testimony is as follows: for me, sexual submission became a doorway to spiritual submission. Something about relinquishing the concept of control- in all of its myriad of meanings- is a release that is mind-shifting. Surrender did not erase me. It stripped away what was never mine.

In my erotic surrender, it became clear that God was not attainment, God was remembrance. God is what you feel when you resonate. God is all that is left when your ego is lying on the floor.

Discarded, abandoned, superfluous.

Truth may be subjective- but once crossed, this doorway does not lead back.

I did not lose myself in surrender.

I was returned.