Sexuality & Spirituality

[三江源]

Maybe I'm untrue and psychological therapy is a joke, and Freud was also wrong - and you're right. Or maybe you're just one of them, as I am too.

Denial is a common response to ugly truth.

 

Ha. I'm a woman. I speak from my own life experience.

 

You might want to wonder what your investment is in being so unwilling to distinguish amongst women, you appear to want to make womankind into an homogenous lump.

 

If you want to talk Psychoanalysts about Women, I wouldnt reference Freud, if you are looking for wisdom.

 

Try Marion Woodman.. she's more of this century, and knows about conscious feminine and unconscious feminine.

[Athanor]

Ha. I'm a woman. I speak from my own life experience.

 

You might want to wonder what your investment is in being so unwilling to distinguish amongst women, you appear to want to make womankind into an homogenous lump.

 

If you want to talk Psychoanalysts about Women, I wouldnt reference Freud, if you are looking for wisdom.

 

Try Marion Woodman.. she's more of this century, and knows about conscious feminine and unconscious feminine.

I admit that not all women are the same, not everyone's behavior can be defined by average observations. Excuse me for drawing inadequately previously. However, I don't think that my previous comment would have resulted in such a conflict if it would have started with "men" instead of "women", although I specifically mentioned at the end of it that the same tendency occurs in men too (which is also only true for the average and not for everyone). I wonder why men aren't incensed about this...

 

immortal_sister:

 

Further more, I bet that most of us here in this forum will never have as much done for humanity as Freud, regardless of whether he was right or wrong in his theories. So even if you think of his work as bullshit, please do it with less arrogance, or show us that you're better.

 

--

 

We're not the elite of humankind. We're just a bunch of guys and girls who're talking about things interesting to us. As a matter of fact, we're no more special than a role-playing game community. We're just talking about different things. So please don't be upset if it turns out that you might be possessing average characteristics, for you see, visiting this forum will not make you better than others.

 

And to turn the conversation a bit back to the original questions, the wisdom which I (and I think many others) are looking for does not appear in smog and smug

Edited March 8, 2010 by Athanor

[Athanor]

Hi Athanor,

 

May I propose a gentle suggestion? I notice sometimes that you speak in absolute terms. Have you visited the ePrime thread? These 8 tiny words appear frequently in your posts: am, be, being, been, are, is, was and were.

 

If rediscovering your writing/thinking style interests you, I encourage you to write in ePrime. It has got a few of the rest of us on this board thinking anew.

 

Best to you.

 

Thanks for your suggestion, you're right. I already know that I do this many times. Although sometimes I do it with the purpose to trigger more responses, most of the time it's accidental. But I try to avoid it - if I notice it

What's the ePrime? I don't know it.

What's wrong with these words appearing in my posts?

[Birch]

What I about men is exactly how varied and different they all are. Trying to generalize about them is like trying to generalize about snowflakes

[Athanor]

What I about men is exactly how varied and different they all are. Trying to generalize about them is like trying to generalize about snowflakes

Very well. Snowflakes ALL consist of crystallized water molecules, ALL have a shape of a hexagon, ALL of them is white (in the sense that they don't alter white light's wave length), and ALL of them is different than all the others in its patterns.

As you see, there ARE common parameters in the snowflakes. Just like in men. And in women. You can't simply say that something is totally different than other things. Ignoring similarities is as narrow thinking as ignoring differences.

[Birch]

Ah TTB's = blunt knife

 

Alright, so admitting that the last idea on my part (not me;-)) was "narrow", how do you want to approach the issue? We do seem to go down the "men this/women that" generalization route often enough that I suspect we might not get much more out of it except maybe to help some people who are having a tough time with the opposite sex make up some more reasons to validate the way they feel. I certainly find comfort in the idea that it's someone/something else's fault;-)

 

I did hear something cool (sort of) this morning concerning the use of precepts about sexuality by religion(s). It went along the lines "to control the men, control the women." THAT seems more of a big deal to me, but if your immediate concern is getting laid then it probably won't help

[Athanor]

Ah TTB's = blunt knife

 

Alright, so admitting that the last idea on my part (not me;-)) was "narrow", how do you want to approach the issue? We do seem to go down the "men this/women that" generalization route often enough that I suspect we might not get much more out of it except maybe to help some people who are having a tough time with the opposite sex make up some more reasons to validate the way they feel. I certainly find comfort in the idea that it's someone/something else's fault;-)

 

I did hear something cool (sort of) this morning concerning the use of precepts about sexuality by religion(s). It went along the lines "to control the men, control the women." THAT seems more of a big deal to me, but if your immediate concern is getting laid then it probably won't help

I don't want to approach the issue. I asked my questions in the initial post and I just want to know more of those. I'm not interested in continuing this pointless argument about men and women.

[Birch]

So what's pointless about it? Unless you are having sexual intercourse with yourself (or the earth as another person suggested as a devotional practice) or able to reproduce asexually? I have to apologise, I'm getting more and more lost theses days when we take this type of discussion very far "spiritually" and neglect (IMO) some of the more mundane concerns. But if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine by me. My opinion is far from settled on the subject!

[Athanor]

So what's pointless about it? Unless you are having sexual intercourse with yourself (or the earth as another person suggested as a devotional practice) or able to reproduce asexually? I have to apologise, I'm getting more and more lost theses days when we take this type of discussion very far "spiritually" and neglect (IMO) some of the more mundane concerns. But if you don't want to talk about it, it's fine by me. My opinion is far from settled on the subject!

Pointless is arguing about what men are like and what women are like - we will never agree, so it's pointless, while we miss the point of the whole topic. I didn't forget that sexuality has a profane side too. That's why I asked how to harmonize that with spirituality. This was the whole post about. At least at the beginning...

[Birch]

Well that's just typical

 

Yeah I'm finding it hard to define where mundane, cultural, spiritual, political, religious (and the rest) all "stop". I reckon they don't stop anywhere they just bleed into each other. In fact as soon as I see a border between one or the other I know it's BS.

[Athanor]

Yeah I'm finding it hard to define where mundane, cultural, spiritual, political, religious (and the rest) all "stop". I reckon they don't stop anywhere they just bleed into each other. In fact as soon as I see a border between one or the other I know it's BS.

I also don't think that there is a straight line between them.

I tried to ask a question about this from Adyashanti, he has an online radio program which was broadcasted last time a few days ago at 5 pm their time, which was 3 am in my timezone. I stood up all night long to listen to him. I wanted him to answer because he is said to be an enlightened person and he is married. He spent all his life from teen age with spiritual development so probably he has experience in how to harmonize sexuality and spirituality. But at the end he didn't answer my question. He didn't answer much anyway, he was very slow, the program was 1.5 hours long and he answered like 8 questions altogether.

[markern]

I also don't think that there is a straight line between them.

I tried to ask a question about this from Adyashanti, he has an online radio program which was broadcasted last time a few days ago at 5 pm their time, which was 3 am in my timezone. I stood up all night long to listen to him. I wanted him to answer because he is said to be an enlightened person and he is married. He spent all his life from teen age with spiritual development so probably he has experience in how to harmonize sexuality and spirituality. But at the end he didn't answer my question. He didn't answer much anyway, he was very slow, the program was 1.5 hours long and he answered like 8 questions altogether.

 

Jack Kornfield wrote an article for yoga journal (long time ago) about sexulaity and spirituality which was based on interviewing arround 50 meditation masters and their top students. About 10 of these were celibate but outwardly many more preahed celibacy while not practicing it themselves. Some were monomgomous, some were polyamorous, some were gay or bi, some were promiscuos, some were open about their choices others lied, some had affairs some did not. Basicly almost none of them activily worked with integrating spiritualiy and sexuality and kornfiled concluded this must be why they did not seem any mroe anlightened in tehir sexual lives than most people.

 

I read this in of Kornfields books but have never read the article. Someone here wrote yoga journal to get it but the issue was out of print. Maybe if you contact Kornifeld directly he could give it to you. If so, please share:)

[Birch]

This is a good one I picked up http://www.amazon.com/Sexual-Spectrum-Exploring-Human-Diversity/dp/1551926814

 

It still probably doesn't answer the spirituality part for everyone, but I thought it was excellent on sexuality (which for me is half the issue )

[rain]

This is a good one I picked up http://www.amazon.co...y/dp/1551926814

 

It still probably doesn't answer the spirituality part for everyone, but I thought it was excellent on sexuality (which for me is half the issue )

 

Interested. Could you draw a quick scetch of the four sexes instead of two, or should I read the book?

[markern]

Interested. Could you draw a quick scetch of the four sexes instead of two, or should I read the book?

 

I recently heard taht there are 17 different sexes

[Athanor]

I recently heard taht there are 17 different sexes

I wonder who could figure this out... and how... and what kind of a pervert he/she is

[Birch]

Interested. Could you draw a quick scetch of the four sexes instead of two, or should I read the book?

 

By the time I'd finished reading it it wasn't so much a question of how many sexes are there. Certainly there was nothing perverse or even titillating in there (if I want that, I know what to read ) in fact it was quite a boring book from an erotic POV. But it wasn't a boring book from all kinds of other POV. definitely increased compassion for others for me (and for me;-)) for example.

[Athanor]

Some people prefer gender neutral pronouns such as ze/zir or hir...

I don't know what ze, zir, and hir means. In my language we don't distinguish male and female gender when we talk about someone, but it's hard to avoid it in English. You know, I really think that there are much bigger problems in life than this...

Edited March 15, 2010 by Athanor