|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 20, 2007 17:43:06 GMT -8
I am going to post excerpts from a chapter I read a while ago in a book by Ronald Rohlheiser called "The Holy Longing". This little chapter changed my life and revolutionized my thinking on sexuality. It has a Christian bent, and I apologize in advance if that offends anyone.
Sexuality as Divine Fire
Sexuality lies at the center of the spiritual life. A healthy sexuality is the single most powerful vehicle there is to lead us to selflessness and joy, just as unhealthy sexuality helps constellate selfishness and unhappiness as nothing else does. We will be happy in this life, depending upon whether or not we have a healthy sexuality.
One of the fundamental tasks of spirituality, therefore, is to help us to understand and channel our sexuality correctly. This, however, is no easy task. Sexuality is such a powerful fire that it is not always wasy to channel it in life-giving ways. Its very power, and it is the most powerful force on the planet, makes it a force not just for formidable love, life and blessing but also for the worst hate, death, and destruction imaginable. Sex is responsible for most of the ecstasies that occur on the planet, but it is also responsible for lots of murders and suicides. It is the most powerful of all fires, the best of all fires, the most dangerous of all fires, and the fire which, ultimately, lies at the base of everything, including the spiritual life.
But how should sexuality be understood? What are the central prongs within a spirituality of sexuality?
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 20, 2007 17:55:50 GMT -8
Sexuality as an Awareness of Having Been Cut Off
To understand the meaning of sexuality, one must begin with its definition. the roots of a word are not always helpful in clarifying its meaning, but they are in the case of the words sex and sexuality. The word sex has a Latin root, the verb secare. In Latin, secare means (literally) "to cut off", "to sever", "to amputate", "to disconnect from the whole". To be "sexed", therefore, literally means to be cut off, to be severed from, to be amputated from the whole.
Thus, to use a simple example, were you to take a chain saw and go to a tree and cut off one of its branches, you would have "sexed" that branch. This branch, could it feel and think, would wake up on the ground, severed, cut off, disconnected, a lonely little piece of wood which was once part of a great organism. It would know in its every cell that if it wants to continue living and especially if it wants to produce flowers and bear fruit, it must somehow reconnect itself to the tree.
That is precisely how we wake up in the world. We wake up in our cribs, not serene, but crying--lonely, cut off, severed from the great whole. Long before we even come to self-consciousness and long before we reach puberty when our sexuality constellates so strongly around the desire for sex, we feel ourselves painfully sexed in every cell of our body, psyche, and soul. Sex is a dimension of our very awareness. We wake up in the world and in every cell of our being we ache, consciously and unconsciously, sensing that we are incomplete, unwhole, lonely, cut off, a little piece of something that was once part of a whole.
And this is experienced as exceedingly painful---an aching loneliness, an irrational longing, a madness from the gods (as the Greeks put it). But this madness is also a great energy; in fact, it is the greatest energy of all inside us. It is the engine that drives everything else, body and spirit. If this is true, and it is, than we see that sexuality is more than simply a question of having sex and it becomes very important that we make a critical distinction between sexuality and genitality. Sex and having sex are not necessarily the same thing.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:16:49 GMT -8
Sexuality versus Genitality
Sexuality is an all-emcompassing energy inside of us. In one sense, it is identifiable with the principle of life itself. It is the drive for love, communion, community, freindship, family, affection, wholeness, consummation, creativity, self-perpetuation, immortality, joy, delight, humor, and self-transcendence.
It is not good to be alone. When God said this about Adam, He meant it about every man, woman, child, animal, insect, plant, atom and molecule of the universe. Sex is the energy inside of us that works incessantly against our being alone.
Genitality, having sex, is only one aspect of that larger reality of sexuality, albeit a very important one. Genitality is particularized, one of many of the energies that are contained within our wider sexuality.
Some theologians see in sexual encounter a foretaste of the eternal life of heaven and many of the classical mystics use the image of sexual encounter to describe our ultimate union with God and creation. However genitality cannot carry all the things that sexuality is supposed to carry.
Popular culture today teaches that one cannot be whole without being healthily sexual. that is correct. However, for the most part, it thinks of sex only as having sex. That is a tragic reduction. Sex is a wide energy and we are healthily sexual when we have love, community, family, and friendship in our lives. Having these, as we know, depends on many things and not just on whether or not we sleep alone. One can have a lot of sex and still lack real love, community, family and friendship, just as one can be celibate and have these things in abundance.
We all know the popular saying that it is easier to find a lover than a friend. Sexuality is as much about having friends as it is about having lovers. It is painful to sleep alone but it is perhaps more painful to sleep alone when you are not sleeping alone. Thus, while genitality should never be denigrated and seen as something that is not spiritual or important, it should not be asked, all by itself, to be responsible for community, friendship, family and delight within our lives.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:24:20 GMT -8
Definition of Sexuality
How then might we define sexuality? Sexuality is a beautiful, good, extremely powerful, sacred energy, given to us by God and experienced in every cell of our being as an irrepressible urge to overcome our incompleteness, to move toward unity and consummation with all that which is beyond us.
Ultimately, though, all these hungers, in their full maturity, culminate in one thing: They want to make us co-creators with God....mothers and fathers, artisans and craetors, big brothers and big sisters, nurses and healers, teachers and consolers, farmers and producers, administrators and community builders......co-responsible with God for the planet, standing with God and smiling at and blessing the world.
Given that definition, we see that sexuality in its mature bloom does not necessarly look like the love scenes in a Hollywood movie. Sexuality is not simply about finding a lover or even finding a friend. It is about overcoming separateness by giving life and blessing it. Thus in its maturity, sexuality is about giving oneself over to community, friendship, family, service, and creativity so that, with God, we can help bring life into the world.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:32:18 GMT -8
Four Fundamental Principles of a Healthy Sexuality (part one)
Sex is something sacred. Hence it can never be simply a casual, unimportant, neutral thing. If its proper nature is respected, it builds the soul as a sacrament, and brings God's physical touch to us. Conversely, if its proper nature is not respected, it becomes a perverse thing that works at disintegrating the soul.
Our culture today resists this notion and protests that sex can be casual and neutral, that it need not be a big deal. The irony is that just as our culture is affirming that sex can be casual and spiritually and psychologically neutral, it is recognizing for the first time the incredible devastation of soul that occurs when someone is sexually violated.
Sex contains a fire so powerful, so precious, so close to the heart and soul of a person, and so godly, that it either gives life or it takes it away. It can never be casual, but is either a sacrament or a destructive act.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:39:43 GMT -8
Four Fundamental Principles of a Healthy Sexuality (part two)
Sex by its very nature must be linked to a covenantal commitment. What is wrong with sex outside of marriage for a Christian, is not so much that it breaks a commandment, but that, ultimately, it is a schizophrenic act. How so?
By its very nature, sex speaks of total giving, total trust, and total commitment. There is an unconditionality inherent in so intimate a sharing of one's soul. Thus, if real trust, commitment, permanency, and unconditionality are not present within the wider relationship, sex is partly a lie. It pretends to give a gift that it does not really give and it asks for a gift that it cannot respectfully reciprocate.
Again, our culture protests against this, but it can do little to mend the terrible heartaches, family break-ups, violence, and occasional suicides that result from fractured sexual relationships.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:41:46 GMT -8
Four Fundamental Principles of Healthy Sexuality (part three)
Sex has an inner dynamic that, if followed faithfully, will lead its partners to sanctity. Sexuality is god's energy within us. Hence, ideally sex should lead persons to sanctity and when its priciple are respected it does precisely that.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 8:53:08 GMT -8
Four Fundamental Principles of Healthy Sexuality (part four)
Sex always need the protection of a healthy chastity. Chastity is one of the keys to a healthy sexuality. this, however, needs to be correctly understood.
First, there is the concept of chastity itself: Chastity is not the same thing as celibacy. To be chaste does not mean that one does not have sex. Nor does it mean that one is a prude. Chastity is, first of all, not even primarily a sexual concept, though, given the power and urgency of sex, faults in chastity are often within the area of sexuality.
Chastity has to do with all experiencing. It is about the appropriateness of any experience. Ultimately, chastity is reverence--and sin, all sin, is irreverence. To be chaste is to experience people, things, places, entertainment, the phases of our lives, and sex in a way that does not violate them or ourselves. To be chaste is to experience things reverently, in such a way that the experience leaves both them and ourselves more, not less, integrated.
Thus, we are chaste when we relate to others in a way that does not transgres their moral, psychological, emotional aesthetic, and sexual boundaries. that is an abstract way of saying that we are chaste when we do not let impatience, irreverence, or selfishness ruin what is a gift by somehow violating it. Conversely, we lack chastity when we cross boundaries prematurely or irreverently, when we violate anything and somehow reduce what it is. Chastity is respect, reverence, and patience. Its fruits are integration, gratitude, and joy. Lack of chastity is impatience, irreverence, and violation, Its fruits are disintegration of soul, bitterness, and cynicism.
Whenever there is violence, disrespect, emotional chaos, lack of community, bitterness, cynicism, and sexual irresponsibility, there is a lack of chastity. Those are its infallible indicators.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 21, 2007 9:03:06 GMT -8
Sex Needs the Protection of Chastity
Sex, precisely because it is such a powerful fire, always needs the protection of chastity. As Karl Jung suggests, we should never be naive about the imperialistic power of energy. All energy, especially sexual energy, is not always friendly and it often seeks to take us across borders prematurely or irreverently. There is more than a little wisdom in some of the classical sexual taboos. Fire that is so powerful and sacred, sexual fire, needs to be disciplined and contained by more things than just our emotional state on a given day.
The wisdom of the ages, some codified in the commandments and buried archetypally in our instincts, tells us that, before the fire of sex, we should stand in a certain reverence and holy awe, knowing that divine fire demands that we have our shoes off. Before anything as powerful as sex there need to be some taboos.
Again, of course, our culture objects. Few things are as subject to cynicism today as is the concept of sexual chastity. Contemporary culture considers the overcoming of chastity as moral victory, one that has finally helped set us free sexually. We could perhaps take that claim more seriously if this supposed sexual liberation had in fact translated into more respect between the sexes and into sex that acutally relieves loneliness, builds lasting community, builds more stable souls, results in less sexual exploitation of others, and helps create a society of less lonely, more loving, more gracious, and happier adults. Sadly, that is not the case.
Our culture must relearn the value of chastity and purity. As long as the world continues to see chastity as naivete, fear, and Victorian morality, it will reamin its own enemy.
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 25, 2007 12:08:24 GMT -8
The Frustration of a Lifelong Unfinished Symphony
Karl Rahner once said that in the torment of the insufficiency of everything attainable we eventually realize that, here in this life, all symphonies remain unfinished. He is right. In this world there is no such thing as a fully consummate joy. We are always in some way frustrated, in some way sleeping alone, whether we are having sex or not.
This is true especially of our sexuality. Ultimately, as Freud suggested, everyone is sexually frustrated in that we all have sexual needs that can never be met, regardless of how much sex we have. Our sexual hungers are simply too wide and all-encompassing to ever be fulfilled and they are of such a complex nature that sometimes having sex does little to fulfill them.
What are we to do with this? How are we to live with that frustration so as not to unconsciously take it out on life and on our loved ones? How do we live in an incomplete world without demanding that our lives, our spouses, our friends, our homes, our vocations, and our jobs give us something that they cannot ultimately give, namely, the final symphony, full consummation?
|
|
|
|
Post by rosemay on Nov 25, 2007 12:31:49 GMT -8
Understand How Wide is Sexuality's Hunger
Janis Joplin was once asked what it was like being a rock star. She replied: "It's pretty hard sometimes, You go on stage, make love to fifteen thousand people, then you go home and sleep alone."
Jesus was once asked, as a test: If a woman marries seven times and all her husbands die before she dies, whose wife will she be after the resurrection? He answered that, after the resurrection, we will no longer marry or be given in marriage.
These two answers, Janis Joplin's and Jesus', are not unconnected. Each, in its own way, says something about the all-embracing intent of our sexuality. What Janis Joplin is saying is that, in our sexuality and our creativity, we are ultimately trying to make love to everyone. What Jesus is saying is not that we will be celibate in heaven, but rather that, in heaven, all will be married to all. In heaven, unlike life here on earth where that is not possible, our sexuality will finally be able to embrace everyone. In heaven, everyone will make love to everyone else and, already now, we hunger for that within every cell of our being. Sexually our hungers are very wide. We are built to ultimately embrace the universe and everything in it.
To understand our sexuality and to live with its unfulfilled tensions, it can be most helpful simply to understand this: In loving, the ultimate wound is not to be able to marry everyone, The greatest human hunger, felt in every cell in our being, is that we cannot be completely united with everyone and everything.
Sidney Callahan says: "We are united through all matter with all creation, and we are united as a species destined to come together in an ultimate unity in a new creation. We are destined to end up as members of one body in Christ. Is it surprising then that we hunger for this along the way?"
It is important to understand this, but it is also important not to misunderstand it. Because our sexuality is ultimately geared to embrace everyone does not mean that we can be promiscuous and, already here in this life, try to live that out. In fact, paradoxically, it means the opposite. In this life, even though our sexuality has us geared up for universal embrace, we only have two options that are life-giving: Either we embrace the many through the one (by sleeping with one person within a monogamous marriage) or we embrace the One through the many (by sleeping with no one,in celibacy). Both of these ways are ways that will eventually open our sexuality up so as to embrace everyone. If we go the route of promiscuity, eventually we wil embrace no one.
|
|
|
|
Post by salutations2you on Aug 4, 2009 18:46:58 GMT -8
awaken the kundallini , ie sexual fire
|
|
