Sin. Temptation. The Forbidden Fruit.

In the judeochristian framework and many other religious doctrines, sin is something to be avoided. Temptation is the tool of the devil. The fruits of knowledge are forbidden, and the price for daring to taste the nectar of the gods is being cast out of the garden. Out of the state of safety and innocence and into a wild and chaotic world.

We’re taught to fear temptation. We’re expected to walk a path of purity, aloof and seperated from temptation and sin.

Primal parts of us, the fierceness of desire – the needs that can overwhelm us – the thirst for knowledge, to know more, to BE more. They are dangerous, we’re told. That we must avoid them at all costs for they could consume us. That by indulging we are damning ourselves for all eternity.

It’s true. They are dangerous. To the powers that wish to control us, to box us in tidy little containers with neat little labels as spare parts for a well oiled machine of consumption and control. God forbid we are given the tools for our own happiness and contentment. God forbids it! Shame is just as much a tool of social control as it is an indicator of our own ethical compass and we must guard against being manipulated with our shames as much as with our desires.

They are dangerous to ourselves, in excess, and without temperance. With knowledge and power comes responsibility. A responsibility to strive for ethical consent and clear communication. To know when enough is enough. To respect the boundaries of others as well as of our own bodies and minds. To devour temptation and sin mindlessly is just as thoughtless as to constantly reject it.

But to push down desires, to cage them and to silence their voices is to invite a special kind of ruin.

A small existence. One where the resentments and simmering anger of doing without overflows and spills into judgements and shaming of others.

I say give in.

I say dance in temptation and desire wildly, and with abandon. Eat of the forbidden fruits, drink of each other, honour the desires and drives that make us beautifully, wickedly human. Do what thou wilt, if it harm none – a gentle reminder that informed and uncoerced consent is the key to ethical sluttery of all kinds.

Explore those hungers, the ones that keep you awake at night, hands running over tingling flesh alive with want and need. Explore those ecstacies that await just below the skin, waiting for you to bite into ripe flesh, juices running down our chins and soaking into our bones. Embody temptation, wickedly leading others down the paths of pleasure. We only have one life to live (in the container of continuous consciousness that we currently inhabit).

Live it.

Temptation and pleasure are rebellion; the original rebellion against the confines of heaven. Taking the hand of the devil of knowledge and pleasure and never looking back.

It can be transformative, pathways to delicious peak experiences that shake the foundations of who we thought we were.

Ecstatic, like the wordless delights of wild dancing, freed from the tyranny of the chattering thoughts of past and future; finally in the moment if only for that moment. Carnal pleasure is one of those beautiful things which brings us squarely and completely into the moment, into our selves.

So let’s cast aside our fear, embrace temptation and pleasure as well as the strength and wisdom to wisely indulge in our beautiful wild selves.

I would rather be damned than live a lie.