Now then – sex and the spirit! The verb sense: sex as an act, primarily of procreation. The noun sense: sex as that which is duality: male and female. Dualitywhich is the essence of movement. Movement which is everything.
Is that a fair start?
Spirit: the essence of essence. An invisible power, rising. The breeze, the gale, the great calm. Universal breath. That which provokes the heart to beat and is at the heart of art.
Sex and the spirit inseparable?
Then why do spirituality and sexuality so often quarrel? And if not quarrel, try to suffocate each other? Why does one appear to negate the other on too many supposed ‘roads to enlightenment‘?
How come doctrinal religious belief cannot mention one and yet likes to claim ownership of the other? Are ‘seer’ and ‘lover’ mutually incompatible states?
Let’s start back at the beginning: duality. The number ‘one’ does not really exist except as a description of completeness, wholeness – “oneness”. One is actually two. One is composed of two.
Of two oscillating and opposing forces: the forces of attraction and the forces of repulsion, in an eternal dance: Flamenco. The divine dance that drives this Universe; which excites positive and negative charges of electricity; that is enjoyed by fully charged protons and electrons and is explored in depth by Quantum Theory physicists. It all starts in duality. Everything.
It is the friction between essential attraction and essential repulsion that gives rise to the ‘standing wave’ at the heart of Quantum explorations. The inhalation and exhalation, the peak and the trough, the Yin and the Yang – are all about inherent and complementary duality.
So why are we frequently misled into believing that the path of deeper spirituality lies in a domain which appears to demand the quiescence and sublimation of our friction fed duality?
Why do so many who claim to be on a spiritual journey fear an act of confrontation and engagement? Are sex and the spirit really so incompatible as to mean that one has to be negated or suppressed so as to make possible the flowering of the other?
That particular dilemma will probably be viewed as out-dated and old fashioned by those who are teaching themselves to walk the Tantric path. Here sexual energy is channelled to accentuate spirit. The spontaneous is sacrificed for the controllable. Sex becomes a tool in and for the process of acquiring higher and more refined powers of connectivity with ‘higher’ dimensions.
Yet can there be a higher dimension/action than the interaction of the forces of attraction and the forces of repulsion that govern the very heart beat of life? Which are embodied at the core of the Chinese wisdom that speaks through the I Ching? (The Book of Changes); which so beautifully express the state of universal dynamic balance lying at the pivotal point between two polar extremes.
That ‘balance’ is achieved via what the Indian master P.R. Sarkarcalled “clash and cohesion” and not by its avoidance. Do you think that the universe was born on a whimper of dissent? Are we really ‘finding ourselves’ only through acts of studied introversion? Unlikely.
Or do we start to really find ourselves once we combine the inward journey with a corresponding and complementary outward action – and I don’t mean getting up from cross-legged meditation to make ourselves an organic smoothie! But I do mean getting to grips with altering the course of history; of taking an action to prevent the dark side’s take-over of our planet, country, state or community.
It is only in the face of adversity that we discover our true selves. It is when confronting the oppressors of the human spirit and the destroyers of nature that we, so to speak, ‘come alive’.
That is the true litmus test for us all. It happens when the love that flares up in us is brought abruptly up against a deliberate act of sabotage of that very love. At that moment we either retreat, hide and try ignore the act of sabotage – or we channel our rising power of love into an action which stands up against the further march of the destructive force. Activism, of this nature, is the expression of a manifestation of the higher truth in man. It is a spiritual response.
We are dual in nature. Everyone of us is both female and male. But a woman is more female than male and a man is more male than female. That is why the xx and xy chromosomes are what they are and produce distinct physical differences (male and female) as well as different ways of seeing the same truth. Without this difference there would be no reproduction, no mystery and no attraction or repulsion: no Divine energy.
Beware those who want to smooth out existence. To flatten the waves. To homogenise the differences. To take the easy road – the road of mediocrity. Mediocrity of place, person and perception.
Beware the ubiquitous hip expression “you guys”, for it is draining us of our sexual distinctiveness.
Our God given differences. “You guys” reflects a sickness manifesting at the root of our so called ‘civilisation’. A seemingly flippant little utterance that ends up becoming a denial of the make up of our very existence. Our Universal existence. It takes sex out of the spirit and leaves us neutered.
This is not a brazen attempt to shame American ways or to cause offence. It’s a reminder for us all that laid-back Pax Americana is a failed experiment. The plot is lost. But that does not mean it cannot be recovered. However, that recovery will only come about if we are willing to change our ways and live by truth.
Do not be ashamed to be a woman or to be a man and to call one’s self that. For that is who we are.
Our Universe was blasted into existence upon the love that two seemingly opposing energies felt for one another. We are dual in nature. Oneness is achieved via a marriage of opposing yet complimentary forces. There is no oneness without that. Children would not be born if this was not the case. Trees would not blossom. Oceans would have no tides. The Universe would lose its magnetic dynamism. E would not equal MC2 (or very nearly). Torpor would set-in. Things would fall apart. Does that sound just a little too familiar?
There is great benefit to be gained from consciously going inwards: practising pranayama/asana; exercising ourselves; entering into serious contemplation and developing the power of prayer. But only if the benefits are then harnessed to actions that go outwards to make change: directly confronting the forces of attrition and destruction that are paralysing this planet.
“When injustice become law – resistance becomes duty” (anon). Resistance that recognises the world as our garden and cultivates that understanding by experiencing the trashing of the planet in just the same way as we would experience the trashing of our own garden. It is the same garden. We are the trustees of both. It is when we step forward with a decisive response to the trashing that the Godly starts to emerge in us. We become worthy of our decision to come back to this planet. To take-on the injustices of this world.
If we retreat into the safety of the mystical we (humans) may well ultimately end up like those pictures of seemingly sexless ‘other-dimensional’ triangular shaped, glassy eyed beings that some would have us believe are our ‘higher evolved’ selves, transitioned into some extra terrestrial existence devoid of friction and duality. A cul de sac of human evolution.
No thanks. Leonardo De Vinci‘s depiction of the human physique is not redundant. In fact, it has barely started to discover its potential. Man was not meant to sit with legs bent double underneath him/her – frozen onto a thin cotton mat for eight hours a day – and I strongly doubt this cuts much ice with our Creator. We have legs to dance, run and jump: look at children. But as a counteraction to an over hyped and stress laden working day – twenty minutes in this position will bring benefit. Bring us back to a starting point. Centred and ready for the next action. Yes, the next action.
I fully acknowledge that we are about correcting an imbalance. A great imbalance. That an increase in Yin energies are needed to counterbalance the out of balance Yang influence that permeates this competitive, consumer based, war-readied, macho, capitalist driven era.
That means that we men have to get in touch with the female in us and be at peace with it. Our actions, in the struggle to save our planet, may likely move into more of a martial arts arena and away from a blood and bullets one. An arena that brings the female into balance with the male and has the capacity to land our opponent on the deck without him or her quite knowing how it happened.
It is my experience that our energy flows alter during the course of our lives. As we age, the pituitary powers wane and the pineal powers increase. We become wise. The libidinous sexual energy calms and evolves into a deeper, more mature power of spirit. We acquire depth of being, insight and the knowledge born of experience. This process cannot be simulated by disciplines of a yogic nature. It has to be lived out and ‘arrived at’ as a process of natural maturation.
But we humans have been subverted. We have allowed our cognisance and consciousness to be high-jacked. We have made a cult out of ‘youth’ and discarded the values of ‘age’. Therefore wisdom remains in-activated; replaced by Viagra. The world will remain off-balance until such a disparity is rectified. We are as fragments – trying to piece ourselves back together. At least that is how it appears. Of course in truth, somewhere underneath, we are whole. But we have been psychologically fragmented and blocked from connecting to our wholeness; from recognising our essential integrity. But it’s there. Just reconnect.
We talk of physical, of mental, of emotional and spiritual as though they were quite separate components within the sphere of human existence. And this has made possible that which should be impossible – under the laws of nature. And because of this we can now indulge in designer sex and designer spirit – without ever touching the depth of joy and compassion, which is at the root of both.
We can, and often do, produce an intellectual alibi for avoiding hearing what it is that our deeper intuitions and instincts have to say. We can somehow convince ourselves that we shouldn’t react ‘emotionally’ and fight for truth and the preservation of our planetary home, even when yet another component of our resource base is plundered and snuffed-out right in front of our eyes. Believe me, this is not natural! By tricking ourselves out of making a stand we are going against nature – our nature and the greater nature of which we are an expression. And in this way we are contributing to the human race’s evolution into a herd of insentient cyborgs.
So let’s stop posing as sensual and spiritual beings. Lets actually be them. Let’s embrace duality. Taking it a step further, let’s reflect on the notion that the state called ‘ecstacy’ is the true celebration of all that is Divine and not a pill. And lets not make any kind of moral distinction between sexual and spiritual ecstacy – but pour the fruits of both into the myriad tasks that are crying out to be undertaken for the emancipation of our species and this scarred and wounded planet.
Ah, now we are closing in on something a little more real. Now we are stepping into the great explosion of Life, which has acquired the name ‘the big bang’. The original impulse that stands behind all motivation and aspiration. You see, we experienced that. We were there. We are there. No surprise that it sounds orgasmic. It was. It is. The birth of this Universe.
Can one have a birth without sowing a seed?
Only in a cyborg, genetically modified, dumbed down, laboratory world. The one we are hard wired to fight to the death. Hard wired – and yet too often fearful of the power of our own hard wired passion – the engine of all creativity. This Universe is a passionate being and we are its children, so we must keep alive all the faculties that fuel our survival as a sentient, loving, responsive species. And to do this, it is my contention that we must embrace equally both sex and the spirit. Take all ugliness out of that three-letter word. Give it back its true beauty and pass some of its juice to the spirit – then let some of the spirit flow back to it. For they are but two halves of one whole. Ah yes!
In the explosive emergence of this Universe we find the seed of our very being. It is on fire with love. A love so great that it can be experienced as pain. A pain so great that it can be experienced as love. The pain of birth. The birth of pain.
Enter here at your own risk, for there is no protection against the onrush save our own raw courage and the unyielding conviction that truth and love are worth fighting for – and dying for.
About the Author
Julian Rose is an organic farmer and international activist. He is the author of “Changing Course for Life – Local Solutions to Global Problems” www.changingcourseforlife.info His next work: “In Defence of Life – Essays for a Radical Reworking of Green Wisdom” is to be published later this summer.
This article is offered under Creative Commons license. It’s okay to republish it anywhere as long as attribution bio is included and all links remain intact.
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