Recently, I started a series of arti­cles. I sug­gested that four areas (sex­u­al­ity, rela­tion­ships, voca­tion, and self-responsibility) could be looked at for guid­ance on how our lives are pro­gress­ing, and that the four needed to be no less than neu­tral in “feel,” and to be in balance.

To con­tinue with the ideas from the last arti­cle, and indeed from this series of arti­cles, I’m sug­gest­ing that many, if not most, aspects of life serve one or the other of two con­flict­ing pur­poses.

Let’s, for pur­poses of argu­ment, say that the two pur­poses are cre­ativ­ity and striv­ing.

I wrote a series of arti­cles on spir­i­tu­al­ity and find­ing a path of pur­pose and mean­ing. I men­tioned an idea that comes from Matthew Fox – the dif­fer­ence in approach between what he called “Jacob’s Lad­der” and “Sarah’s Cir­cle.” The first approach is lin­ear and hier­ar­chi­cal, the lat­ter cir­cu­lar and egal­i­tar­ian. It’s not a “right / wrong” thing—it’s a mat­ter of appro­pri­ate appli­ca­tion. Sci­ence, for exam­ple, depends heav­ily upon lin­ear think­ing, and “the arts” upon cir­cu­lar “flow.”

Business—“The Political”—is based upon Jacob’s Lad­der —hier­ar­chies.
Relationships—“The Personal”—are based upon the flow­ing dance of Sarah’s Circle.

As I was think­ing about this, I remem­bered past courses in anthro­pol­ogy, reli­gion, and soci­ol­ogy. As fem­i­nist the­olo­gians would tell you, the female side (Sarah’s Cir­cle) of the equa­tion was the orig­i­nal side. When life was agrar­ian, and small farms and tiny towns were the norm, the fem­i­nine deities were worshipped—as was the right brained, intu­itive side of life.

Wor­ship and spir­i­tu­al­ity was a dance of inti­mates, and sen­su­al­ity and sex­u­al­ity were used as tools for deep­en­ing one’s sense of self – for find­ing one’s place in the universe.

I can’t prove this with­out doing some research, but as I men­tioned in the last arti­cle, the Kha­ju­raho Tem­ple in Indiais a sym­bol of this holis­tic and deep form of sex­u­al­ity and spir­i­tu­al­ity. Sex­ual prac­tice became a route to spir­i­tual deepening.

This spir­i­tu­al­ity is built upon the cycli­cal­ity of the sea­sons, the fecun­dity of the soil, and the ebb and flow of the planting—harvesting cycle. Ref­er­ences to female deities abound, for exam­ple, in the Old Testament—the peo­ple shifted in their view toward the mas­cu­line stream, but would erect Asherah poles and place female deities with the crops, just to cover their bases.

The bal­ance began to shift with the change in power struc­tures that came with the devel­op­ment of large cities. At this time, there also was a shift toward male deities, and toward rules, reg­u­la­tions, and priest­hoods of men with noth­ing bet­ter to do than to cre­ate rules and reg­u­la­tions imple­mented through force.

One of the major shifts at this time was the sub­or­di­na­tion of women. In this male-centric world, women were either revered or reviled. Their sex­ual attrac­tion was feared. Soon, male char­ac­ter­is­tics (logic, lack of emo­tion, head over body) became dominant.

Dar­bella and I were wan­der­ing the streets of Kitch­ener the other day, and she men­tioned read­ing a ver­sion of the “Eve” story con­tained in a book we’re read­ing, called The Mag­dalen Man­u­script. The gist of the book, by the way, is that Jesus was mar­ried to Mary Mag­dalen, and that she was a Priest­ess of Isis. Their rela­tion­ship, accord­ing to the book, was based upon advanced Tantric practices.

Dar’s talk­ing about the Eve story reminded me of the Jew­ish tale of Lilith, Adam’s first wife (accord­ing to the Tal­mud?) Lilith was cre­ated as the first woman, who laughed and refused to obey Adam.

“Adam and Lilith never found peace together; for when he wished to lie with her, she took offense at the recum­bent pos­ture he demanded. ‘Why must I lie beneath you?’ she asked. ‘I also was made from dust, and am there­fore your equal.’ Because Adam tried to com­pel her obe­di­ence by force, Lilith, in a rage, uttered the magic name of God, rose into the air and left him.” web ref­er­ence

Adam whined to God, and God ban­ished Lilith and cre­ated Eve, who was suit­ably docile and submissive.

I’m men­tion­ing all of this not to get on a rant on the past, but to indi­cate a very Zen thing. We are great believ­ers in bal­ance in all things. Bal­ance between left and right brain hemi­spheres, between yin and yang ener­gies, between body / mind / spirit. We see the way we engage in all aspects of our lives as indica­tive of our balance.

From a sen­sual / sex­ual point of view, bal­ance is essen­tial. You can choose to see sex, for exam­ple, in a num­ber of ways. It is, at it’s base level, how we pro­cre­ate, as do most ani­mals. Noth­ing spe­cial there, just sperm and egg.

It’s also some­thing we can do with friends and part­ners, as recre­ation.

Many peo­ple think of it as a “mar­i­tal duty” – an oblig­a­tion – some­thing demanded, bartered, and refused.

On another level alto­gether, sen­su­al­ity and sex­u­al­ity are tools for get­ting inside one’s body, out of one’s head, to feel the move­ment of energy inside.

Over aeons, many philoso­phers, teach­ers, and writ­ers have indi­cated that sex­ual ecstasy is a divine expe­ri­ence, and the clos­est we get to tran­scen­dence. (Scott Peck used to say that’s why we cry “Oh God!” at orgasm.)

Sadly, in our rush to rush, in our panic to suc­ceed, time for con­tem­pla­tive and deep love­mak­ing flies out the win­dow. We’ve got­ten so bad that many peo­ple have to sched­ule sex, or rush it, lest the chil­dren need some­thing. As time goes by, sex­ual adver­tis­ing intrudes every­where, yet the more uncom­fort­able peo­ple get with their own sex­u­al­ity. Most peo­ple avoid sex­ual dia­log or sub­jects, and pre­fer to hide and pre­tend that sex is not impor­tant. Oth­ers use past abuses to keep them from present healing.

The coura­geous few engage in a process of (to quote the title of a Mar­vin Gaye song), sex­ual heal­ing or bet­ter put, heal­ing through sex­u­al­ity. This requires a fierce deter­mi­na­tion to process through the culture-induced uncom­fort­able feel­ings to a depth and breadth of sex­ual and sen­sual expe­ri­ence. This is the whole point of the work being done a places like Body Elec­tric in California.

The rea­son for this sen­sual and sex­ual work is to develop and strengthen of our life force, or chi. This energy, for most, is at a low ebb, and stag­nant. With Breath­work, Body­work, and focus, the energy can be unblocked, built upon and directed. As blocks, both phys­i­cal and men­tal, begin to dis­solve, one finds increased cre­ativ­ity and focus. This, how­ever, requires rig­or­ous dis­ci­pline, prac­tice and ded­i­ca­tion. As well as a will­ing­ness to unblock and let go. Espe­cially in areas sen­sual and sexual.

We sug­gest that exper­i­men­ta­tion with mas­sage, erotic mas­sage, Tantra and Chakra / Kun­dalini exer­cises are ways to broaden one’s expe­ri­ence and to increase one’s level of inti­macy with oth­ers. If you’d like to know how to play with erotic mas­sage, e-mail me and I’ll send you links to male and a female erotic mas­sage exercises.

The most basic way for begin­ning this explo­ration is by using dia­log, touch and com­mu­ni­ca­tion. I men­tion this exer­cise in This End­less Moment, and it was first sug­gested by Mas­ters and Johnson:

One per­son sits with “his” (or her) back to the head­board, legs extended and feet spread wide. “She” (or he) sits with her back against his chest. She tells and shows him how she likes to be touched. He fol­lows her lead. Then, they reverse positions.

The goal is to become goal-less. This is not a pre­lude to any­thing else, but an exer­cise unto itself. The same can be said for many of the med­i­ta­tive pos­tures one learns by prac­tic­ing Tantra.

Other exer­cises are included in This End­less Moment.

At the end of the day, the state of our sex­ual and sen­sual lives speaks vol­umes about who we are and how much of life we are open for. Work­ing through hang-ups and fears with a ther­a­pist and Body­worker is essen­tial if one is to progress in self-understanding.

If you are resist­ing doing this work, get over your­self and begin!

Next issue, we’ll explore ele­gant relationships!