Your body is both a mirror of your soul and a vehicle to it.

It is a holographic print-out of your inner spirit, projected through your DNA blueprint. The universal intelligence within you designs your DNA, and through it builds your body.

Your body is like a work of art. Every work of art reflects the artist that created it. It is a mirror of the artist. It is the artist's thoughts, feelings, ideals, etc. expressed in physical form. In the art, the artist is made manifest.

At the same time, artwork is a vehicle by which to know the artist. By taking in the art, we partake of the artist. In grasping the art, we fathom the artist. By diving into and exploring every nuance of the art, we unearth the inner essence of the artist. By losing ourselves in the art, we even merge, in a sense, with the artist. We commune in spirit with the artistic genius in the art.

This is why your body is sacred. It is both a sacred image and a means to sacred union.

Sacred sex honors this sacred bodily truth.

Religion all too often teaches that God (or Goddess) is only found in church and temple on prayer day. But divinity is not present only in certain places on certain days. It is an everyday, omnipresent reality here & now, throughout the body of creation. You are fully capable of communion with that divinity - in whatever form you choose to worship it - everywhere, at all times. Specifically, you can worship the sacred within you in your own sacred body.

Religion, particularly in the west, also often portrays the body as debased, dirty, and sinful. Yet our own scripture speaks differently about our essential created nature:

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"And God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him. He created them male and female." -- Genesis 1:27

Whatever the current state of our bodily nature - whether exalted or 'fallen' - we honor our Creator when we honor His Creation. We decry Him when we disparage His Work.

Honoring all of God's creation, including the body, its desires, and its love relations is natural. It has also been common in various cultures at various times, as shown in the examples below:

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PRAISE BE GIVEN TO God, who has placed man's greatest pleasure in the natural parts of woman, and has destined the natural parts of man to afford the greatest enjoyment to woman. He has not endowed the parts of woman with any pleasurable or satisfactory feeling until the same have been penetrated by the instrument of the male; and likewise the sexual organs of man know neither rest nor quietness until they have entered those of the female. .... I, the servant of God, am thankful to him that no one can help falling in love with beautiful women.... -- The Perfumed Garden, Introduction; 16th century Arab text The man sees the woman as a goddess. The woman sees the man as a god. -- Chandamaharosana Tantra; circa 7th century, India

All creation is the body of God, and therefore sacred. The human body is not only part of that, but is the evolutionary crown of that. What more sacred could there be?

Famed poet Walt Whitman lauded the body's special place in creation:

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"If any thing is sacred the human body is sacred...." -- I Sing the Body Electric

Even in secular humanist terms the body is sacred in the sense of expressing the highest values of life. Your body is the manifestation of your innermost thoughts, desires, personality, and ideals.

Modern science increasingly recognizes this. Genetics understands that your body is the manifestation of intelligence encoded in your DNA, just as a building manifests the knowledge of its blueprint. Your DNA contains building blocks arranged in particular order. This genetic 'code' guides the construction of every aspect of your life, including your physical body.

Beyond this even, physiologists know that your thoughts create neuropeptides that are metabolized by the body. These physical correlates of thought literally become part of your cellular structure.

Thus your body directly reflects the inner you. Even if you suppose your inner self to be impure, the idea of a physical body that mirrors inner life is sacred.

The great English poet William Blake wrote of this relation between the inner being and the outer body:

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"Man has no Body distinct from his Soul; for that call'd Body is a portion of Soul discern'd by the five Senses, the chief inlets of Soul in this age."

Thoreau succinctly said the same:

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"Every man is the builder of a temple called his body."

The sacredness of the human body is one of the basic tenets of sacred sex. By this, the body becomes a temple in which we may offer worship.

This is admittedly a bold claim, one that religion may adamantly deny. But reasonable inquiry shows it to be so, and religious thought and custom even support the idea.

Let's start with a definition of the word 'temple' (from the 2006, Random House Unabridged Dictionary): "an edifice or place dedicated to the service or worship of a deity or deities." Put another way, a temple is any place in which divinity resides and can be worshipped. In non-deistic terms, it is a place for communion with one's chosen spiritual ideal.

Your body is such a place.

If this still sounds strange, the same dictionary entry continues with this meaning: "any place or object in which God dwells, as the body of a Christian."

Christ himself clearly saw his body as a temple:

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19 ...Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up. 20 Then said the Jews, Forty and six years was this temple in building, and wilt thou rear it up in three days? 21 But he spake of the temple of his body. -- John 2

Lest Christians distinguish between the body of Christ and that of common men on this point, Paul observed:

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19 Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Spirit in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? 20 For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. -- 1 Corinthians 6

Also, Christ essentially calls the body a temple in teaching, "the kingdom of God is within you" (Luke 17:21).

Built temples, in fact, pale before that of the human body in many ways:

• the body is created by God; buildings are raised by men.
  
• the body is perfect; buildings are as good as their builders.
  
• the body is a living, breathing temple; buildings are brick & mortar.
  
• the spirit of God is more awake in the body than in a building.
  
• true worship takes places within; the body is better suited for this.