There's another way to look at your sexual fantasies. A way that suggests that your having them is anything but a waste of time.

JUST SUPPOSING...

Let's suppose that I was your soul. (Just pretending, okay?) And let's further pretend that I had a message for you, but you weren't listening.

As your soul, I know better than anyone that you've had good reasons for not listening. Maybe you haven't known you had a soul, or you've been taught not to listen to unknown impulses from inside. But all the same, I want to get a message through to you, because I want to give you something very special.

Suppose that (as your soul) I want you to process some issues that have been festering inside of you for a long time. For a man, it might be issues like these:

• Your masculine nature keeps oppressing your feminine nature, so you aren't balanced
• You could grow very fast right now if you could only accept some unconditional support for your creative potential
• You've got some dark stuff to eliminate from your mind, and you need to look into it
• You need to be fed by a Divine-Mother type of blessing
• You keep beating up your inner child, so you live in a brutish world

A CALLING CARD

If I were your soul, I might want to send you a little calling card. Something that gave you a picture of some emotional work you could do on that issue. Work that would help you cut right to the core of the issue you need to address.

Now, being your soul, I wouldn't want to force this on you. I wouldn't want to rub your face in it. No, I'd rather leave you free, by talking to you in code. A code that you could ignore or deny or maybe look into. As your soul, I prize your freedom above all things, because I know that only if you freely choose to do this work will it really stick.

So, I'd send you a fantasy. I'd create a little movie that plays in your head. And I'd pick the actors to represent the different parts of you that need to be addressed.

ROLL 'EM

If you were a man whose masculine side was oppressing your feminine side, I might pick a voluptuous woman to play the feminine and a brutish man to play the masculine. And I'd send you this little movie where the brutish man is sexually oppressing the voluptuous woman.

If you were a woman wanting your power, I might pick a strong, wealthy man to play that part, and I'd send you a little movie where an irresistible woman is attracting that man.

And all the while, I'd be hoping that you might get what I'm trying to say in code.

NOT FOR THE REAL WORLD

As your soul, I'd want you to understand that I wasn't sending you this movie so that you could live out this fantasy in the real world. (Not unless you are with someone who understands you and can help you process what comes up.) No, I'd want you to engage in this fantasy in a symbolic way, so that no one got hurt, and yet you could get the maximum learning about who you are at this moment in time.

As your soul, I would hope that after engaging in this fantasy in a symbolic way, you might get that the movie is meant to show you something about yourself. If you're a man, I would want you to get that if you've been oppressing your feminine energy in a brutal way, you might want to let her get up off her back and cooperate in your life a little more. If you're a woman, I would want you to get that if you've been without your power, you might want to find it inside yourself so that you don't need to get it from a man.

TIMING IS EVERYTHING

However, I would want you to get this only if you were ready to get it. Only if you were in a place to see and learn and grow freely from it. And if you weren't ready to get it yet, then the movie would just lodge in your brain as a "dirty" movie that you could easily deny and repress. That way, the movie couldn't force you into anything.

As your soul, I would go on hoping that maybe one day, when you became tired of being plagued by a movie in your head, you might eventually look into it.

Hey, only if you're ready.

Cliff Barry is a certified Shadow Work® group facilitator and coach living in Boulder, Colorado. Read more about Cliff.

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