The Taste of Aliveness
A few weeks ago, I was at one of my favorite local Mexican restaurants—the kind where the bartender knows your name and the air smells like roasted peppers and slow-stewed magic.
I ordered a simple dish, something I hadn’t had before—a bean and cheese dip served in a cast iron skillet. When it arrived, I took a bite and noticed something… unusual. A faint bitterness. A trace of something burnt.
It wasn’t bad, exactly. Just unexpected.
The flavor carried an edge—acidic, smoky, strong.
The bartender kept checking in, asking if I wanted her to have the kitchen remake it. But I didn’t. I was fascinated.
There was something about that taste that pulled me into full presence.
It wasn’t pleasure.
It wasn’t pain.
It was simply… intense. And my palette was so curious to determine whether I “liked” it or not.
That’s when I realized something: I had a choice.
I could decide that the dish was ruined, that it “shouldn’t” taste this way.
Or I could stay curious, let it be what it was, and explore what it was I found so intriguing.
The more I stayed with it, the more I found myself enjoying the experience—not because it was “good” or “bad,” but because it was alive.
It had character. Complexity. A compelling strangeness.
That bite lingered with me for days, not because of how it tasted, but because of what it revealed:
We are always choosing the story we tell about our sensations.
In sex, I’ve met this same edge many times.
The sting of a flogger.
The ache of restraint.
The breathless moment before surrender.
Sometimes the body doesn’t register these as pleasure or pain.
They exist outside the polarity—as pure, raw sensation.
And just like that skillet of burned cheese, those moments invite a choice:
Do I label this as “too much”?
Or do I stay curious and meet the experience as energy moving through me?
When I drop the story of good or bad, pain or pleasure, I meet reality as it is—alive, electric, divine.
This is what Forbidden Alchemy: Transmuting Taboo into Erotic Medicine is really about.
It’s not about chasing pleasure or avoiding pain.
It’s about remembering that you are the storyteller, the alchemist, the one who decides what any sensation means.
Every experience becomes a reflection of the narrative you choose to project through your own consciousness.
You can call it suffering.
You can call it awakening.
You can call it art.
But the moment you realize that choice is yours—that you are the Creator of your reality—everything becomes an opportunity to taste life more deeply.
Even the burnt bits.
Forbidden Alchemy: Transmuting Taboo into Erotic Medicine is available anywhere books are sold.
And may every sensation remind you how powerful you truly are.
In sovereign aliveness,
-Sharon Marie Scott
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