Some notes on sexuality, part IV

Capital from L'Abbaye Fontevraud

Photo by the author

A virgin who is a wife is free and unfettered by attachment; she is always as near to God as to herself. She brings forth many and big fruits, for they are neither more nor less than God Himself. This fruit and this birth that virgin bears who is a wife, bringing forth daily a hundred and a thousandfold! Numberless indeed are her labors begotten of the most noble ground or, to speak more truly, of the very ground where the Father ever begets His eternal Word: it is thence she becomes fruitful and shares in the procreation. 

—Meister Eckhart, Sermon 8

To examine sex from the perspective of its physical manifestation in me is insufficient. Sex plays a much greater role in the arising of Being in the first place; the very nature of God’s interaction with the soul is sexual.

This question was well understood and deeply examined by the monastic and mystery schools of the European Middle Ages (as well, of course,  as much earlier such schools); and the records of those investigations were subtly encoded in medieval iconography, which sets something of a world record for its ability to conceal questions of fecundity, insemination, gestation and birth in works of art, especially medieval statuary. As my own books on the subject (The Esoteric Bosch, Bosch Decoded and The Reconstruction of the Soul) note, medieval art was rife with sexual and procreative imagery, some of it quite obvious and direct. Much of it, on the other hand, was covert; only initiates fully understood it. The obvious, if not flagrant, tradition of depicting the Christ figure in the vaginal aperture of the mandorla is a classic example, as are the erect penises found on some gargoyles. The tradition of using floral and vegetal imagery to depict cosmological sexual interactions is only less obvious until is taught to recognize it—and they were cosmological, for sex was embedded at the root of creation.

The integration of this imagery into everyday religious practice in gothic cathedrals is striking. Given that any given gothic cathedral represents, in its symbolic entirety, the entire universe means that it (sex) could not be left out; but its nearly ubiquitous presence throughout the cathedral environment indicates how absolutely fundamental a force it was considered to be. The theme of the cathedral was creation and its relationship to God: first as a creation entire (the whole universe) and then the creation of the individual (the soul) as a procreative action—a sexual action, an engendering—on behalf of God. 

Meister Eckhart may not have written about sex “as such”, that is, in its ordinary man-to-woman physical context (daresay the inquisition would have gone worse for him had he done so) but his emphasis on the eternal fecundity of God, who (even now!) forever gives birth to creation, cannot be emphasized enough. He envisioned our spiritual life as a birth into Being, followed by a rebirth into God. His sermons remind us how central this understanding was to the core mystical tradition, even if from a medieval theological point of view sex “in the flesh” was considered by default to be problematically sinful. The idea that it was is, in my own eyes, doubtful. They weren’t prudes—we just see them through our own prudish lenses.

This leaves us, after these questions about medieval Christian mysteries are examined, with the question of the relationship right now between ordinary sexuality and the birth of Being. 

They are not separated,  either conceptually or physically.  

How do I experience that? And, perhaps more importantly, how can I come into a right relationship with it and make my peace with it?

There is an oddly sexual undercurrent to higher energy. Ordinary sex energy actually interferes with that current in the same way that ordinary thinking and emotion interfere with a sensation and feeling from the higher parts. This is why Gurdjieff frequently described ordinary sex (and its ultimate result, orgasm) as “blowing one’s nose.”  The discharge of ordinary sex energy frees up one’s inner life to allow a finer current to flow within. If this doesn’t take place, all kinds of trouble ensues, even in quite ordinary ways. Bottled up and mis-used sex energy is a source of great excess and violence; it doesn’t matter whether we paint this picture in Freudian or esoteric terms, the outcome is the same. Sex becomes explosive if it isn’t discharged. This is, I suspect, more true of males than females. 

It helps if I see this within myself. I consequently have a responsibility to attend to my sexual needs in an intelligent and non-destructive way. There’s no single answer to how to go about this, but the question needs to be there—along with a willingness to surrender any guilt about it. This may prove impossible, because of there’s one thing social forms seek to instill in humans above all others in regard to sexuality, it’s guilt. I doubt we can overcome this issue, inwardly or outwardly, by walking in any straight lines. It’s a maze with a Minotaur in it. 

Now that I’ve brought that analogy up, let me point out that perhaps the value of that myth is in its suggestion that I trace my sexuality and its nature back through its beginnings in a thread from my birth to where I am now. Seeing it in its wholeness is necessary. This is, of course, true for all of life experience; but I think we too often forget that our sexual nature ought to be continually pondered, along with all the other questions our life has raised. Instead, we avoid it... why? It is what gave us Being in the first place. 

My life is born, here and now, through an engendering of Being. In the most sacred moments, my higher parts can sense that. If my lower parts choose to see the world through an inferior lens of the same essential nature, I have to accept that and suffer it. 

May your heart be close to God, 

and God close to your heart.

Lee

Lee van Laer is a Senior Editor at Parabola Magazine.