photo by Craig Sunter
Your ecstasy wants you.
It wants to be relished, loved, savored. It wants to fill you until your skin tingles and your face glows.
It gives you signs. Signs that life is close, that deliciousness is about to happen. And as you learn to recognize the signs, you get to relish those moments even more. You get to spread them around as gifts.
You actually radiate your aliveness.
The usual moments of ecstasy – like sex – become even more delicious. You’ll feel more, flow more, enjoy them more.
The less obvious moments in your life become everyday ecstasies. Your senses come alight, quivering with anticipation for connection. You feel ecstatic when you eat, when you walk, when you create – when you do almost anything.
The easiest sign of your ecstasy is a physical one – an actual body reaction that means something great is coming: You know you can make love with this moment. It feels right – the right place, the right time, the thing you should be doing.
This sign could come as a tingling in your skin, a pleasant leap in your belly, a warmth in your face.You might even feel turned on – not in a gotta-have-you kind of way, but more with an inner glow that warms your core with delicious yearning.
My physical sign is that my mouth waters. It happens when I’m making decisions along the right track, when I’m writing with words flowing from my fingertips, and when I’m engaged in a rich conversation. It happens on walks, when I’m working, when I’m just hanging out.
My mouth waters – and this is key – when I commune with my life – when I intimately connect with the experience of that moment, both spiritually and sensually.
You have a physical sign of ecstasy, too. I mentioned a few above, and yours could be anything – from a particular posture you automatically assume to your stomach gurgling to a full body sense of excited connection. You may have more than one.
I was pretty surprised to notice my mouth watering at unusual times – then amazed AND surprised to understand what it was about.
Find Your Sign of Everyday Ecstasy
The signs of your ecstasy are like the precursors to foreplay, a flush of anticipation before anything actually happens.
Can you feel that just imagining it? Often just the thought is enough to create a glimmer of the sensation in your body. If not, don’t worry – your sign will reveal itself.
Moments of anticipation are the best times to discover your signs of ecstasy – they are ripe with sensation. (Once you’re in the moment, it can be harder to notice the pleasurable, subtle signs we’re looking for.)
Try this: Think about a situation or activity you love – bonus points if it’s something you actually have in your calendar. It could be a rendezvous with a lover, a time you’ve set aside for your favorite hobby, a special meal you have planned. You can also think about an event in your past – the way it felt to complete a project, an inspiring conversation with a stranger, or a deep moment of connection with the Divine.
Notice how your body responds. Do you feel a little head rush? A “swoosh” through your body that makes you want to dive in? A pleasant flip in your belly? That could be your ecstatic sign! Let that sensation spread through you, so you can remember it better. Ignore the concern about whether or not you have the right sign. Just get curious and enjoy the moment.
Now, look for your ecstatic sign during the course of your day. Do things that make you feel joyful or connected or creative. Put yourself in places you love. See if the sign you noticed comes up again – if the situation feels mouthwatering.
When you find it, relish and indulge, even if it’s only for a few seconds. You may feel your ecstasy watching your kids, eating something you like, sitting down to relax. You are looking for the sign of your everyday ecstasy, which allows you to commune with the little pleasures in your life and leads to tiny delights you hadn’t noticed before.
On great days, I feel mine many, many times a day, some expected and some surprising. On really rough days, I may not feel it at all…unless I remember to find it on purpose.
Make Your Days Ecstatic
Once you have an idea of what your everyday ecstasy feels like, you get to experience it more often. At first, you may just want to savor and watch it grow – as you give it more attention, it becomes more vivid and easier to notice.
Start inviting your ecstasy everywhere. Take it to work and inject your day with more pleasurable interactions. Fill your projects with a dose of creative happiness. Do your chores with it and leave your house sparkling with gladness. Hold it in your hands as you touch your family, your friends, and your lover and infuse them with your joy.
In all of these places, connect with the physical ecstatic sign in your body and let it become part of your communion with the moment. Use your body and mind focus to bring it consciously with you, even to places you wouldn’t expect could be turned on by life.
The key is to play! Communion, spirituality and joy might feel like serious matters, but this is fun! Ecstasy is your new toy, to be rolled and tossed and kept in your pocket – more pleasurable than even your smart phone. Don’t worry, it isn’t going to wear out, and you won’t break the screen if you drop it.
And, the more familiar your ecstasy and its signs become, the more likely you’ll be able to use them on those rough days. On those days – the ones when you’d rather just give up, when joy feels far out of reach – you can remember how it feels to be ecstatic. You know more clearly what to do or where to go to get yourself back on track. In fact, just imagining what it feels like can get you closer.
Those difficult moments are when ecstatic practice really counts – instead of being stuck for hours, days or weeks, you can invoke the feelings in your body and follow your signs back to your joy.
Mouthwatered
You may be curious about why I would call a post “Mouthwatered”. Is that even a word? Wouldn’t mouthwatering be a better choice and not trigger the spell check?
Here’s the difference: Mouthwatering is something that happens. Mouthwatered is something you allow.
So far, I’ve talked about ecstasy as something you can go out and find – if you follow your signs, more ecstasy will come into your life. Then I encouraged you to consciously bring it with you everywhere and actively integrate the physical sensation into your experience.
But, if you really want to explore the depths of ultimate bliss and joy, the key is Surrender.
You have to open up and let life ravish you. 
Once you give yourself fully to an ecstatic moment, the experience changes. You are swept away in the awesomeness of its pleasure. The physical merges with the spiritual, and you become enraptured with life. There is clarity of purpose with that rapture, a connection with the divine and a communion with the world that enlivens everything.
You have to allow yourself to be Mouthwatered.
It starts with that literal connection in your body, the physical sign that your ecstasy is close, and then you follow that sensation into an amazing world of sensual spirituality where you can touch the face of holy desire.
It’s one of the best things in my life – knowing this sign, following where it leads. I don’t usually go as far as it can take me. Surrendering isn’t easy. But as I’ve practiced, I feel mouthwatered several times a day. Those little communions fill me with more joy than I thought possible, and feel like a divine gift every time I feel them.
It might seems strange, all this passion and purpose from the realization that when my mouth waters, I could follow it to something bigger. But that little sign is bigger, and I am grateful to have it.
Find your sign. Play with it. Follow it… See where that little wonder might take you.
