Wild erections and speculations
By RAVI DYKEMA
Do you think Sex is sacred? Is your desire for your penis or vagina
to merge with another’s penis or vagina sacred? Do you think sex
has been given to humanity by our “creator” as a means to
achieve our spiritual potential, however it is variously described in
religious traditions: joining Jesus in Heaven, union with God, dissolution
of ego, enlightenment, etc.?
Or do you think sex is not sacred? Is vagina-embracing-penis-leading-to-orgasm
just for briefly making babies? Does sex-for-pleasure constitute a road
to suffering and damnation?
This is the subject we discuss with three experienced folks in “Sacred
sexuality, intimacy, orgasm and spirit” (page 31 in the print
version of Nexus).
Perhaps our personal sexual road could go in either of the above directions,
to sacredness or to suffering. One of the greatest scholars of world
religious history, the late Mircea Eliade, wrote in Yoga: Immortality
and Freedom, “The tantric texts frequently repeat the saying,
‘By the same acts that cause some men to burn in hell for thousands
of years, the yogin (tantra yoga practitioner) gains his eternal salvation.’”
In this country, experimentation with and teachings about spiritualized
sexuality accompanied the advent of feminism. This may have been a coincidence
but I doubt it. I was a student of traditional tantra yoga in India
when I was in my 20s, and I grew up during the great social transformation
wrought by feminism. These influences, along with the nascent environmental
movement, got me thinking. I think huge social structures like patriarchy
and humanity’s destructive exploitation of nature relate to our
comfort or discomfort with our own body’s nature, especially our
sexuality, and especially our genitals.
Here’s the “establishment” male-centered formula that
expresses the sex-is-dirty philosophy, as I understand it. Woman equals
sex, pleasure, seduction, sin, debauchery and spiritual death. Man must
control her (and himself), resist her (and his urges), rise above the
lure of her vagina, dominate his penis (which is inspired by her), and
only then can he become good, clean, redeemed, saved, spiritually liberated
and pleasing in God’s sight.
I think humanity’s attitude toward Earth’s environment,
toward nature, parallels this formula. To see the connection, replace
“woman”, above, with “body”. Our bodies ARE
our most intimate contact with nature/wilderness. Nature courses mysteriously
through our inner wilderness all the time in the form of sensations,
emotions, urges, thoughts and actions. Have you not at least once viewed
your own sexual urges as a wild thing, mysteriously wet and panting?
If we consider our body’s nature as devilish and bad, leading
us into temptation and ultimate suffering, than we must use our intellect
(or something holy and external to our bodies) to dominate it and to
avoid its panting, in order to be happy and fulfilled. Similarly, I
think, humans in the developed world have “conquered” and
“tamed” Earth’s wilderness through powers of the intellect,
often in appallingly destructive ways, and we numb ourselves to filthy
rivers and oceans, smoggy skies, rampaging species extinction and ravaged
ecosystems. This numbing parallels our numbing ourselves to our penises
and vaginas, to our own wild nature.
Enter tantra about 1500 years ago, in which “the human body acquires
an importance it had never before attained in the spiritual history
of India,” according to Eliade. “The body is no longer the
source of pain, but the most reliable and effective instrument at man’s
disposal for ‘conquering death,’” he writes.
OK, I know it is a long way from Indian tantra’s esotericism and
extreme discipline to modern Neo-Tantra and other sex-and-spirit teachings,
but at least some people are exploring a new formula: Our bodies and
our urges for pleasure offer us a heart-and-spirit-opening opportunity.
The vagina is a sacred temple; the penis is a divine scepter. Nature
is our ally, nay; it is an essential guide, on our journey to wholeness.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2008 FEATURE ARTICLES
