Some notes on sexuality, part II

Capital from L'Abbaye Fontevraud

Photo by the author

Now I say as I have often said before, that this eternal birth occurs in the soul precisely as it does in eternity, no more and no less, for it is one birth, and this birth occurs in the essence and ground of the soul… God is in all things as being, as activity, as power. 

But He is fe­cund in the soul alone, for though every creature is a vestige of God, the soul is the natural image of God. This image must be adorned and perfected in this birth. No creature but the soul alone is recep­tive to this act, this birth. 

Indeed, such perfection as enters the soul, whether it be divine undivided light, grace, or bliss, must enter the soul through this birth, and in no other way. Just await this birth within you, and you shall experience all good and all comfort, all happiness, all being and all truth. 

—Meister Eckhart, Sermon 2

I’ve been noticing on this trip that the question of sex instantly inserts itself into every woman I look at or have an interaction with. There’s a part of my male function that evaluates every woman first in terms of sex; it’s an entirely automatic reaction not under the control of my intellectual direction. It doesn’t matter what they look like. I’ve been watching this part in operation; it’s remarkably quick, inserting itself into the front of the impression so swiftly that it’s nearly impossible to get there first. Once it does that, it acts as though it owns the situation, filtering the rest of the exchange through that question. Even if I overcome it and “forget” it (and let’s be clear, it would prefer to be forgotten, so that it can function without being observed) it remains there as an undertone. It is, furthermore, very selective; for example, my sex-center interest is distinctly racist and edits women of color (but not asia women) right out of the picture. They don’t register; nor do, for example, underaged women, ever. And it’s safe to say that I have never looked at a man and seen this part which instantly propagates a sexual interest as functional. I don’t have explanations for this; but the preferences are, in my opinion, organic; that is, wherever they come from, they’re rooted deeply in instinct of one kind or another. There’s something of the essence in it.

This function isn’t attached to desire, either. Desire comes later. It exists almost independent of the emotional and feeling centers, functioning on its own. It occurs to me in realizing this that the sex center is fully capable of dictating its own terms in every single human being. It’s strong, it’s powerful, and it flexes its muscles mostly through moving center, directed as a form of innate sensation. 

While the conventional world of romance, wooing, marriage and family thinks of sex as largely connected to emotion, in males, I don’t think it functions this way. We indulge ourselves in false pictures that distract us and make us feel better. 

Sex is a wild card, an animal function, and like a grizzly bear it does, so to speak, whatever it wants. Perhaps this brings us a little closer to what Gurdjieff meant when he said that sex is a function. The word means an action or purpose natural or intended for a person or thing. The root of the word lies in the Latin functio— from fungi, to perform. It is, in other words, automatic: strangely, biologically mechanical, and in certain mysterious ways alien to an inner conscious Being. Its certainly strikes me that way as I watch it—as an alien. It is not “me;” but it is an inner force that has its way with me.

This may go along way to explaining the dysfunctional way in which male sexuality expresses itself in society at large; one of the difficulties we have is that we keep perceiving it as a controllable function, whereas it operates quite independently of the rational and feeling parts of Being. The mistake begins when we assume that sex is under our control. Really, from a functional point of view, it’s the other way around. 

Presuming that social forms can leash this beast is a huge mistake. The cultures that have put the tightest and most restrictive leashes on it – for example, Hindu and Muslim cultures —accidentally turn it into a violent weapon, tragically used almost exclusively against women. I think this illustrates the limits of trying to control the problem with mechanical “moral” solutions. All mechanical solutions turn out to be immoral in one way or the other. Prostitution, for example, which functions both as an acknowledgment of the basic facts of sex-as-function and a commercial enterprise, is far less immoral than the practice of honor killings in East Asian cultures. Yet prostitution, strangely enough, has a terrible reputation in those same countries where honor killing is considered not just acceptable, but necessary.

Again, I come back to the question of how this particular function exists in me. Examining the outer forms and the way that they dysfunctionally attempt to deal with it, it occurs to me that the only real way of dealing with sex is to see it from within. It can’t simply be banished; I have to acknowledge its existence and find a place for it along with the function of my other parts. 

If you’ll excuse the pun, they are unlikely to be good bedfellows; in order for sex to find a reasonable place within the context of feeling and intellectual centers, some difficult compromises have to be arrived at.

An additional note to readers:

A new series in the continuing essays on Metaphysical Humanism and the Laws of Being will start publishing in this space on January 11, 2020.

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.