| This qualitative study investigated women's experiences of spontaneous altered states of consciousness that occurred while making love with a female partner in a group of 69 lesbians (including 4 bisexuals in relationships with women), aged 24 to 66 years old. The purpose of this study was to determine whether Jenny Wade's results regarding transcendent sexual experiences within a heterogeneous (gay, lesbian, bisexual, but primarily heterosexual) population were replicable in a lesbian population with regard to the kinds of states experienced and the impacts they had on participants. The study was also designed to explore whether the kinds of altered states experienced correlated with Karin Lofthus Carrington's 4 patterns of lesbian love and individuation. The narrative accounts solicited by the semistructured interviews were divided into 2 sets of themes. Ten replicated altered-state categories identified in Wade's research: Kundalini, Merged With Partner, Transports, Visions, Past Lives, Nature, Haule's Third Presence, Out of Body Experiences, Telepathy, and Unio Mystica. Eight new categories were found, some of which bear resemblance to states mentioned by Ogden. They are: Oneness, Boundlessness, Sex as Spirituality, The Feminine, Gender Bending, Astral Sex, Partner as Deity, and Collective of Women. A total of 33 narrow impacts of transcendent sex were discovered. Twenty-eight of these narrow impacts fit into Wade's 6 impact categories: Personal Growth, Enhanced Relationships, Healing, Sacralized Sex, Spiritual Awakening, and Comprehended a Greater Reality. In addition, 5 other narrow impacts fell into a seventh broad category: Left Bereft or Fearful. The findings of the study relate to lesbian issues of self-acceptance, healthy expression of same-sex love, increased gay pride, quality of lesbian sex, and sacred sexuality between same-sex partners. |
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