Spirituality and sexuality are vital elements of our human experience - and each can illustrate the highs and lows of our species.
Spirituality spans human history and highlights our search for meaning and understanding of our connection to the universe. It also has led to war, persecution, and discrimination.
Sexuality can be one of the most profound and meaningful experiences people have, or it can be a source of suffering, abuse, and power over others.
I honor the potential of the human heart, enchanted by sex and spirit, calling us to live with integrity that witnesses the sacred in all aspects of life.
Now, many people have an idea of spirituality as being pure, white, and innocent, possibly in alignment with the patterns of traditional religions and their iconographies. Spirituality and sexuality seem to live in different parts of most people's lives, one more in the open, able to be seen and spoken about in public.
The other is more private and not to be mixed with the first.
The traditional difference between spirituality and sexuality
Sexual desirability and availability are communicated through varying types of body language and imagery. These generally are different from what spiritual saints and sages are communicating.
Images of saints and people experiencing sacred moments are shown with upturned faces and hands, usually wearing robes or flowing cloth draping and hiding their bodies. In these images, people's hearts and profiles are often experiencing a feeling of turning towards the divine as an upward pull. Conversely, sexual feelings in our bodies and genitals, our sexual hunger, is more of a downward flow.
Rarely do you see spiritual art that is simultaneously erotic and sexual, although there are notable exceptions. Most traditional religious ideals that shaped Western civilization still have a strong sway over what is socially accepted as normal and appropriate for public display. This historic paragon has centuries of momentum, narrowly viewing only sex between heterosexual married people as ideal.
Today, gay marriage is legal, and many permutations of sexual desire are admitted and recognized. I think that's a healthy thing.
We're watching some social dissonance result as ideals we grew up with - maybe not even conscious beliefs or feelings - cause inner friction between things we see in the world today and what we thought was "normal."
But, of course, inner reactions are just due to patterns imprinted into us early on in our lives; seldom are they the result of choice or intelligent deliberation. They weren't consciously chosen. It's merely karma or the momentum of your parents, environment, and significant early life experiences.
Human history has had many different beliefs about what is spiritual and what is sexual. Here in the West - a rather narrow viewpoint still persists. The big question is, why is the idea of spirituality so thoroughly linked with that of our souls and not our bodies? Spiritual iconography is full of images of piety, conservative dress, modest clothing, and the practice of hiding feminine beauty and radiance. Light, uplifting and inspirational ideas and colors are seen as spiritual, but somehow anything more sloven, lusty, dark, or seductive in energy is not.
People largely feel there's a gap between dusky sensual desires and spirituality. Few, if any, know that the full spectrum of passion might actually be carrying their deepest spiritual revelation -- a calling for how they could surrender into the divine. This feeling of falling, or surrendering to a force larger than your will, is not unlike the ecstasy of saints, or the feeling of falling in love.
How many people know that they could experience god-union through their darkest wanton desires?
What's at stake?
If we don't learn to reconcile these two different types of energy within ourselves, we will sustain a wholly artificial separation between the "sacred" and the "profane," between the spiritual and the sexual.
This dichotomy and duality are self-created. It's a form of separation, and it's an illusion made by man, not by God or by some omnipotent witness. The all-knowing, all-seeing presence that's common to all religions doesn't flinch and recoil from what's here. Infinite love and unbounded consciousness see everything. There's no hiding from reality. It's separation and delusion that cause harm. Like Dr. Bronner's soap says... It's All-One.
The self-generated and self-sustaining guilt and separation between spirituality and sexuality go way back in time. Back to the more masculine and patriarchal view of spirituality as freedom "from" something. Freedom from temptation, from error, from a loss of control, from losing yourself in emotions. Heaven and the afterlife can be viewed as freedom from the feared loss of self — it gives the self hope in its existence after death.
Most masculine spiritual practice amplifies the uplifting freedom "from" everything. In fact, the holiest moments are when someone dies and leaves their body behind, or ascends into heaven. Or in freedom from rebirth, or even in Thukdam: freedom from decomposition after death. Masculine spirituality revels in emptiness and the release from distractions, leaving behind the body and sensations as temptations to overcome and transcend. In psychedelics, the ketamine “K-Hole’ is the epitome of this.
The problem is, this is all feminine-denying and feminine-shaming.
All those thoughts and experiences that the spiritual seeker is trying to escape are judged as inferior and less than perfect because they don't match their spiritual ideal.
This whole notion of spiritual perfection is just a masculine pipe dream — one that causes untold suffering. It's something that's been emerging since ancient times, and once you start to see this pattern, it's hard to unsee it.
We risk missing out on a lot of potential beauty in the world
The other problem built into this worldview is that it misses the beauty and the bliss available here and now, within the simplest worldly experiences. In many religious orders, you often find this ancient masculine spiritual worldview that's all about trying to overcome the world instead of blessing, nourishing, and instigating creative chaos and agile change.
Of course, this doesn't apply across the board, but I want you to try to feel the drift of this because it is the underlying cause of much intolerance we see today. At its root is a fear of the feminine's divine nature, which tends to be more chaotic and unpredictable in its presentation but has so many gifts to offer if met with curiosity and openness.
Sensations and emotions that arise do not require judgment
I recommend entering into an inquiry within yourself, one that softens you and allows space so you can see where the momentum of these past beliefs and patterns come from.
If you can relate to what I've shared thus far, don't judge or label this tendency to see differences between what is sexual or spiritual as anything significant. Simply watch your tendency to do this, particularly if something sexual or spiritual makes you sad, confused or angry, or provokes any kind of darker emotion.
The mind will generally try to escape feeling those emotions, so subdue your reflexive attempt to make them go away, and instead, allow those sentiments and feelings to be present and fully felt. Inquire into how you can detect, or even be aware of, the underlying energy without naming or labeling it.
This can be somewhat tricky. Aversion is the flipside of attraction, and we generally favor one over the other.
Nevertheless, feel the difference in your gut, throat, and heart as you alternate between feeling something uplifting and sacred, and then feeling something a little more profane, sexy, or lusty. There's an energetic ebb and flow in your body when you switch back and forth between these. Many of us have labeled or separated them spatially in our memory.
Notice any body sensations that appear along with the thoughts and emotions. Just bring them into awareness.
One of the helpful things you can do to make this process easier is to give them a spatial location to inhabit. Locate where they are, using your heart as the center of your coordinate system. Ask yourself, where in space and time are these emotions and sensations relative to your heart? There has to be a sensation of some kind, however subtle it is, for you to be aware of them.
“Where?” is a much more productive question than “Why?” in this realm. “Why?” presupposes that things could be different, or better, or easier, than they are the way they are. “Why?” also presupposes that things could be different from how they are and that the source is somewhere in the past. Let go of the “Why?” inquiry, and instead, ask “Where am I experiencing this?” “Where do I feel this emotion specifically in space, relative to the position of my heart?” Emotions are constructed from sensations. Investigate the sensations and their location. Something most curious happens when you do this, instead of pondering why.
This kind of inquiry can help you locate the emotions and realize that they are something that's physically happening inside of you, rather than something outside of you that you're viewing, judging, or reacting to. Remember that all of these sensations and emotions are happening within you as conscious awareness. The content of these emotions is actually just consciousness, appearing as swirling and shifting sensations.
The differences in feelings you notice when you actively make the switch between thinking about the sacred and the profane doesn't have anything to do with physical acts, or the actual things happening around you — although your mind will undoubtedly try to locate the source of this change as external.
The source of the conflict is you
Wonder at how your inner awareness can kick up these different perceptions and emotions. The more relaxed, open, and aware you become, the more you can witness the sources of your reactivity and judgment, aversion, or attraction, particularly in the realm of sexuality and kink.
In resting and being with that open awareness, you can see that the energy is subjective and it's inside of you. It's not external, or resulting from any objective situation.
Offer this deep source of awareness itself, along with the swirling energy of every emotion felt in your body, to your lover and to God. Bring it all: sacred and profane, ethereal and carnal, saintly and slutty, naked writhing entwined sweaty bodies and soaring ethereal angels. Come to the empty openness of consciousness, within which everything is invited, experienced, pushed away, grasped, welcomed, or shamed.
It's within the infinite space of the heart where you will experience all that is divine and where you realize your intimate connection to all that is.
All is one.
Even the kinky dirty stuff that makes your toes curl.