St. Augustine speaks - and with him another, pagan master - of the two faces of the soul. The one is turned toward this world and the body; in this she works virtue, knowledge, and holy living. The other face is turned directly to God. There the divine light is without interruption, working within, even though she does not know it, because she is not at home.
When the spark of intellect is taken barely in God, then the 'husband' is alive. Then the birth takes place, then the Son is born. This birth does not take place once a year or once a month or once a day, but all the time, that is, above time in the expanse where there is no here or now, nor nature nor thought.
—Meister Eckhart, Sermon 31
Understanding how independently the rest of my Being’s sex functions becomes more possible if I see how preferential it is, and how distinctly it has formed its preferences independent of my own being. Before I’m aware of it, it has already made up its mind as far as what’s interesting; what body types, what facial features, and so on. It even has its own curiosity and experiments from time to time with attractions outside the normal range. It turns out sex has an intelligence fully capable of appreciating—and respecting—in ways that are hidden to the casual inner eye.
Why is this the case? I believe it’s because it has its own mind, much like the other parts. I’ve spent a number of years observing the fact that the feeling, the intellect, and the body are independent intelligences. It strikes me now that sex is another independent intelligence, although it’s far more automatized than the parts we think of as the three “principal” centers (intellect, emotional, and moving.) This explains, perhaps, why Gurdjieff separated consideration of instinct and sex from the action of the other three centers when it comes to day to day life. They’re too fundamental and too automatic to work directly with the “big three”, perhaps; yet that doesn’t explain why he told people that it’s important to work with their instinct.
Why didn’t he say that about sex?
This idea of working with instinct implies a direct investment in that intuitive part of Being; yet we don’t hear him talking about working with sex, even though sex equally has its own intelligence and intuition—and powerful ones, too. (Remember how Gurdjieff told Ouspensky that if sex center in a person only worked with its own energy, that would be a big thing.)
One might suppose this sexual part doesn’t comfortably fit into the development of our psychospiritual Being; yet that can’t be possible, because it’s such an integral part of it in the first place.
That leaves me with a question of exactly where sex does fit in; it’s a troubling question without any obvious answers, which is probably why it has plagued Traditional religious authorities throughout history.
Approaching this, I ask myself exactly what my sexual intelligence consists of. There must be one; and I believe that I can and have sensed it as an undercurrent in my relationships with women. It I nforms (inwardly forms) a certain intelligent spiritual intimacy. The fact that I simply won’t have sex with the women I interact with doesn’t preclude a psychospiritual acknowledgement of their inherent sexuality; a respect for their sexual nature which gently and honorably pays it its due. This subliminal exchange ought, I think, to be an ordinary part of a healthy, adult exchange between the opposite sexes. That exchange takes place below the level of ordinary consciousness, as a textural platform that grounds the exchange in a certain truth.
That truth is grounded in a finer and higher energy; although that energy seems to be driven by our coarse animal urges, it actually enters this level from a much higher place and actually has the potential to form a more human, more sacred respect for one another.
Admittedly I am reaching, intuiting here; attempting to understand the experience of this undeniable energy, this irrevocable component of human Being, as an active and participating force in the world of interaction between men and women. In me. Not just as a crude force that thrusts me into the conflicts of desire, but into the temples of respect.
I equate this with the observation I’ve had that my sexuality, as animal as it may appear, has a greater, even cosmic, scope to its nature. It’s all of womankind that’s significant in regard to this sacred force; sex is not about my microcosmic attraction to individual women, but to femininity itself. It’s the polarity that attracts, not the individual: man is drawn towards woman in a sexual way because of forces much larger than our individual impulses. In this context, my wish for sex—its driving force—is a wish for sex with all of womankind, not just woman.
It’s a rather more religious and philosophically grounded version of Portnoy’s Complaint, if you will: one that examines the question not from a commonplace, but planetary perspective. The forces that drive my own (and every other man or woman’s) sexual impulse and experience aren’t just planetary, but solar. They come, in other words, from a level so high above me that I can at best barely taste the air they breathe. I ought to respect that; and that respect ought to first be engendered organically, then honored for its authority.
Perhaps these ideas aren’t very new; I doubt it. Yet I find little discussion of the matter among those of us who have a wish for Being. Despite that, it ultimately needs to be examined; and if we attempt that alone, it’s not enough. Questions of this scale may have to begin within the individual, but the culmination of such studies has to be within the community. We can’t, I don’t think, begin to understand both the individual and collective failures of mankind to come to grips with a right attitude towards and exercise of our sexuality towards one another without better understanding its relationship to Being; and obscuring that relationship in a shroud of tantric mystery is not enough. It has gone on too long; and the shroud itself has been, if I dare say so, far too male in the first place.
Perhaps the ancient fertility cults and temples of the Goddesses come from a time when femininity was afforded a better—even primary—place in society. I can’t say. What I can say is that it’s all to evident it isn’t in a good place now.
May your heart be close to God,
and God close to your heart.
Lee
Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.
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