Robert Augustus Masters Q&A Part Sixteen
April 16, 2006
A. Bryan/integralshism asks:
This question derives from some discussion in The Politics of Lust thread, which has been discussing a book of the same title written by local Vancouver sex activist John Ince (who, btw, will be hosting a salon discussion during the Vancouver Integral Naked Gathering in June).
In that thread, integralschism/Bryan was talking about a current issue in his life, and he'd like to know what you think. He comments:
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I don't mind admitting that when out and about, I'm constantly sizing up women in a sexual way. Sometimes I can use an intentional strategy to NOT do this. But in the absence of this kind of intentional strategy, it's pretty much a constant. And in many cases I find myself "feeling" that "I want to have sex with this 'woman'".
I remember Stuart Davis blogging about how he was finished with the serial sexual life. That he realized that he built up karma with whomever he was with and that it was more his intention to alleviate karma and not make more of it.
I've never been a serial sexualist. But it wasn't because I didn't want to be. I idolized my male friends in middle school and high school and beyond who were successful in having sex with the most coveted girls/women. Now that I'm older and more mature, it's more of a conscious decision to not be a "player" because that's hurtful to people and not necessarily in line with my moral development. However, I'd be fooling myself to say that it's entirely this "moral stance." What if it became easy for me? What if I COULD? Then would I? I don't know. But part of me believes that some kind of exploration of this issue might be a healthy part of my growth.
In SD terms, I think of it has having gotten to the equivalent of Yellow [integral] in the cognitive line and then going back to other levels to heal up the entire system/spiral within.
So in this case I could see it as my Red [egocentric values] sexuality never having been developed. The whole boy meets girl, boy jokes around with girl, gets girls number, calls girl and has a first date, has sex soon thereafter with girl, repeats with another girl. Red sex. Harmful? Harmless? Dependent upon context?
I want to expand on my last post a bit by saying that, when I think of what I would say to someone coming to me with this dilemma. I'm pretty clear that I would tell them "you're probably going to have to find out for yourself." So there's that.
And I also realize at the same time that I'm searching for some kind of permission to do that. For the largest part of my 34 years, I think my center has been in green [pluralistic relativism]. Since I've been 18 years old I've immersed myself in as much green culture as I could (save for the last 6 or so years). I have always felt most comfortable around the accepting nature of green culture, and I've always found it readily available and resonant with me. And my sense is that the green culture mostly views red sex as being a part of the dominator culture. Now there spring to mind exceptions to this. I think Liz presented the case of a guy she knew who would use green terminology to justify sleeping with multiple of "his sisters." But I think my experience has been that this green culture has recommended that I be a docile guy and "respect women so much that I would not bother them with my sexual interest."
So there it is. I think one thing I've been doing here is asking for permission to be promiscuous. To go out there and see how much fun I can have.
And I think that I'm also scared to death to get that permission. Because then I would actually be faced with the enormity of the situation (which ultimately boils down to facing rejection).
Finally, I've been getting these emails that gives tips on how to approach women, what kinds of things to say, the general disposition that it's best to have, etc. Basically it says to have a "cocky sense of humor" and, well, I won't go into it because it seems cheese-cake.
But I think what I WILL do, is take it as a spectrum. The end of the spectrum is actually having one of these "relatively anonymous" sex encounters. The other end of the spectrum is "saying that funny thing" to a woman and seeing how that feels. So there it is, I'm on a mission to play around on the benign end of that spectrum. Maybe I will report back.
And Arthur, add this into a "question" for RAM if you will!
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OK, since I resonate with this issue, I will cheerfully formulate some questions about it.
1. As an integral therapist and spiritual teacher, if someone who feels highly developed in some ways, but perhaps has not had a lot of sexual experience – or a certain kind of sexual experience (that raw “red” boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, boy finds new girl, lather rinse repeat) – asks you for “permission” to explore that kind of raw sexuality in order to, um, flesh out their being, what would you say to them? Would you advise someone in that situation to go with their impulse to “be promiscuous and see how much fun I can have”? Could this be, as Bryan suggests, a healthy part of one's growth?
2. Assuming you felt such exploration was a good idea, how would you advise them to go about it in a morally or ethically responsible way? [I had advised exploring the polyamorous or swinging communities, where people would be more accepting of that kind of sexuality, less inclined to think monogamy was on the agenda.]
Elsewhere in the thread reference was made to the following blog entry by Stuart Davis: Sex Secrets and The Ethics Of Promiscuity Pre-Dharma Surrender, which refers to his early very promiscuous period and then his personal Dharmic Reformation. Here's a long (but fascinating) entry from the blog:
“there was a good deal of promiscuity, but the thing that i think gets left out or goes unknown is that i went to great pains to behave in a manner that i felt was ethical...back when i was sleeping with so many people, i wanted very much to be ethical. so, i went to great pains to be totally honest, open, and transparent with everyone i slept with. i didn't sneak around, i didn't lie to girls or women about my availability, interest in relationship, my sexual history - i made every effore to be totally up front. so, before we got into it physically, we always had "the talk". i would answer any questions they had, and i would ask them all sorts of questions to make sure they weren't being mislead, deceived, or manipulated in any way. the talk varied depending on the girl and the situation, but the standard points i always wanted to make unmistakably clear were; 1, sleeping together was not an indication in any way that i would be available for a romantic relationship, or any kind of regular contact 2, i was not going to use a condom, and i had slept with lots of other people, the last time i had been tested was on such and such date, and the results were yadda yadda 3, i would be seeing other people.
now, as fucked up as it may sound to some, this was my sincere attempt to remain in integrity with myself, the other person, and most importantly, the Dharma. i felt that if i wasn't being manipulative, and i was straight with everyone, it would still be ethical for me to have sex with as many people as i wanted to. so why did i stop having sex with women? why did i stop with the promiscuity even before i was with my wife?
because it wasn't ethical.
the problem, in my view, is the Dharma. the ultimate ethical fact, according to my interpretation of being a practitioner, or for that matter a human, is that the PRIME directive of being is to awaken for the sake of all beings. in the loosest sense, what is ethical is that which cultivates, supports, or increases awakened consciousness in self, others, and the Whole. Ethics is the code of conduct which a practitioner in Mystery must observe in order to serve Love, which is synonymous with Awakened awareness, or that which simply IS the Reality behind the appearances.
and it was only too obvious that running through some fucking check list with women i wanted to fuck was my ego's way of utilizing a Loop Hole in the Karmic / Kosmic Ethical Code for practitioners. nice try, stu. but, the FACT OF FUCK is simply that EVEN when you run down the check list with people, and you're totally honest, and they know and fully realize what they're getting into, and they confirm their full cognizance to all the details, absolving you of any potential karma, blame, or wrong doing... IT DOESN'T MATTER, you are only having a conversation with their frontal structure, you are only making an agreement with the intellectual, cerebral part of the personality, and it DOESN'T KNOW SHIT. it will lie to you, agree with you, and make incredible convincing overtures of every imaginable kind in order to enact the impulses of its sad, somnambulant karma.
like or not, an authentic practitioner in the Mystery (notice i did not say "perfected practitioner" or "fully realized practitioner", cuz i wasn't, and i'm not, but i am authentic simply in that i know my own heart, it is sincere and i do attempt to live in concordance with the codes of the Mystery) is automatically aware of not only what is going on the in personality of the person as they are shaking their head and saying "yes, yes, that all sounds good, i agree, now let's fuck our brains out", but you also get a reading what is going on their heart, their soul, and all the deeper dimensions of their being.
you see, my hope was, that if i had this disclaimer conversation with people i wanted to sleep with, they would be advised, informed, and the fuck session would be "sanctioned" by the Mystery, so to speak. it could even be illumed. but, sadly, what happens is that 99% -and i'm not just making that up, i'd say it's actually 99% in my experience- of the people you're getting ready to have sex with are only able to respond with their head, and their head is a traitor to their heart, soul, and higher self. maybe 1% of the people in my experience were actually in a place where they had command of their heart, soul, and were inhabiting their higher self, and their agreement pertaining to the sex was coming from ALL of those places. everyone else was being dragged around by their deep wounding, their pathologies, their unconscious, their denial of Divinity, etc. of course I WAS as much or more than anyone, cuz i was actually trying to manipulate the Mystery and the relationship by using this loop hole of no manipulation.
what is it to work in the Mystery? to serve the awakening of all sentient beings.
you can't simultaneously fuck someone who's unconscious, broken, damanged, lost (and THOSE are the people who are also most confident, engaging, charismatic, and brilliantly convincing that they ARE ready to show up this way) and also serve their awakening. i'm sorry -literally, i AM sorry, cuz wouldn't it be fun if we could just fuck fuck fuck and it was all cool? the 60's love flower bonanza? but, alas, if our Ethical Code is really the Dharma, or the Mystery, or Divine Love (same things), then we have to figure out a way to deal with the incredibly compelling drives and incliniations of our body, mind, and emotions in a way doesn't suppress or deny them, but doesn't hurt other people, or worse, inhibit their awakening.
this is the problem that i've long had with more sexually orientied spiritual teachers (those who fuck their students or get their students fucking), and it's just a hunch developed from my own direct experience in Ethics, etc. it's just exceedingly rare to find people who are awake enough or healthy enough to play in that arena and not have it fuck them up. and frankly, i am always, always suspicious of the teacher's true motivations.
let me get back to my point. was it fun for "me" to have sex with three girls at the same time? yes. was it in the highest interest of each of them and me? no. it wasn't. does that make me evil? no. unethical? ultimately, let's just say i decided it would be better to be MORE ethical...
i don't regret any of my previous sex life, and i do not want to tell anyone what to do, who to do, or who to do them. one thing i know is that i had to go through what i went through and i had to do it the way i did. i NEVER could have taken someone's word for it, i had to learn the lessons, re-learn them, test them again, and it took years. i'm truly sorry for those who got hurt in any way on my clumsy, turbulent process. i'm still on that path, learning now with a wife, daughter, spiritual teacher, and a community of friends in the Mystery that i depend upon desperately to help me surrender and remain loyal to the ~?~.
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3. What's your take on all this? Do you agree with Stuart's explication of the complexities and karmic issues involved in this kind of exploration? If so, can or should someone avoid this kind of exploration if part of their being is clamoring to explore it? If such free-wheeling exploration is a bad idea, how should they work (or play) with that part of their being?
Robert answers:
1 & 2. Rather than giving or not giving my permission, I would deepen the exploration of what’s motivating his desire, including a more-than-intellectual look at whatever conditioning has shaped and colored it. This would mean, among other things, journeying to the heart of his desire, without shaming himself for having it. No repression, no indulgence, but just a deepening openness as the dots are connected.
Turning away from our “lower” desires only strands us from their hidden treasure, their dark pearl, leaving us in an eviscerated freedom, a spiritual wasteland of sterile attainment and disembodied encapsulation. Turning toward our “lower” desires does not necessarily mean submitting to them, but rather feeling our way to their core, knowing them from the deep inside. Desire can bind. Desire can also liberate. It all depends upon what kind of relationship we develop with it.
I’d also have him locate in himself both the he who just wants to freely fuck (the unapologetically masculine guy overflowing with full-blooded lust), and the he who wants to do otherwise (the nice, relatively emasculated, more “spiritual” guy), and then get some dialogue going between the two, the more dramatic and alive the better; then, I’d have him assume a position that compassionately included both, and see what kind of directions emerged -- not from me, but from him. Perhaps he’d just choose not to go into the kind of fucking he’s flirting with, and perhaps he would. So which is better? This is a question that is but the presenting surface of a deeper questioning that initially goes something like: What will best serve another’s growth? And how is this to be known?
After all, sometimes being off the path is the path. At the same time -- and this is very slippery territory, level upon level -- we cannot afford to bypass morality here. It’s easy to use the notion that we don’t really know what will best serve another’s growth as an excuse for fucked-up or atrocious behavior. (This is the headquarters of idiot compassion and neurotic tolerance.) But rather than impose an outside moral authority on those who are seeking permission to freely fuck, I’d have them access their own innate moral sense -- and I mean in its guilt-free, unconditioned form -- and apply it to the very sexual possibilities which they are considering.
For example, I’ve taught some who were caught up in sexual practices that were insensitive to their partner to make open-eyed, genuinely caring contact with their partner and then see if they could still go ahead with such practices. The result? They couldn’t. And the result of that? Some turned to a more conscious sexuality -- perhaps still raw, still wild, but not uncaring -- and others turned off the lights, so to speak, and continued with their practices. Did the latter group also grow from doing this? Maybe, but even if they did, there was a lot more mess to clean up, far heavier consequences to face, enough karmuppance to generate some massive roadblocks.
If we’re going to go ahead with our impulse to be, for example, promiscuous, we’d be wise to have already considered the consequences as best we can. Such consideration may not stop us in our tracks, but will likely bring more light to our doings, keeping us from straying for very long into the darker extremes of sloppy behavior. Some say to look before you leap, and some say to leap before you look too much, but I’d suggest looking as you leap, assuming that the leap is inevitable.
And there’s more: Sex is often not just sex, but also an eroticized acting-out of unresolved issues, an arena wherein those needs of ours that we have sexualized are given free rein, as if they are just the expression of our innate sexuality. In considering our erotically-harnessed “solutions” for dealing with past difficulties — low self-esteem, family problems, anxiety, violence, and so on — the explicitly sexual details are not so important as the setting, context, and dramatic particulars. Our sexual arousal might, for example, have much to do with simply wanting to be nonjudgmentally noticed by an obviously attentive fantasy partner. Yes, our excitation or “charge” regarding this may manifest sexually in our fantasy, but it is only secondarily sexual, its primary impetus being rooted in a longing to be openly loved and seen. This is further fleshed out and given deserving depth by closely examining the supporting props (clothing, furniture, words spoken, etcetera) in our fantasy — the details say much about the original context out of which our fantasy arose, perhaps making possible a reconstruction of previously unintegrated events.
Take a darker example: A man frequents SM parlors, getting the most sexual pleasure out of being whipped hard. In his fantasies he associates sexuality with violence, and is drawn to porn that features this association. Some might think he’s just sexually kinky, but what’s truer is that he’s deeply wounded. Take away the erotic overlay in his fantasies and practices, and what’s left is simple violence and, eventually, heartbreak. It’s no big surprise to find out he was severely beaten, literally whipped bloody, by his mother during his boyhood, and that that was the only touch he got from her. Eroticizing his internalized and undealt-with violence simply took the edge off it, providing a way to discharge the surfacing pain of it. Stripping it down to its roots made possible a healing that quickly eroded his interest in SM porn and practices. Once the original pain had been openly felt and skillfully worked with, there was no need to sexualize it.
Another example: A woman, clearly heterosexual, finds to her embarrassment that the most erotically alive fantasies for her involve other women. No men are present. She’s had some sexual encounters with other women, but it just didn’t work for her. What’s going on in her fantasies is a women-only encounter; take away the erotic dimension, and all that is actually occurring is women being close to each other. This woman grew up in a home with a very violent father and brothers, and found her only comfort, however minimal, in the company of her mother and aunts. Understandably, she has charge with being in a setting that features the safety and warmth of other women, a setting in which she can really relax and let go; the fact that she has eroticized this simply means that it represents something that has generated excitation in her for a long time.
So our erotic fantasies are tales well worth investigating, tales that reveal much about us. What they dramatize is simply the sexualizing — arising from the excitement, however negative — of our longing to be fulfilled, safe, secure, loved, needed, seen, touched, known, and perhaps also our longing to find release from past difficulties and trauma through the very excitation (however terrifying) generated by such difficulties and trauma. The intensity of the pleasure or release that such fantasies promise is a marker of the intensity of the pain we are trying to bypass. Some erotic fantasies may be quite complex, but their themes are not; in fact, such complexity might just reflect a need to have many things in order or under control so that the desired outcome can occur, a need that likely has its roots in many things having been out of order or control in our early years.
Now back to the question of following a promiscuous (or otherwise “unseemly” sexual) urge: Go beneath its surface. Get intimate with it. Try stripping it of its erotic components, and see what is left. Let’s say that what’s left for you is fear of rejection. Instead of sexualizing that fear (that is, converting its energetic excitation into an erotic hunger), enter it. Why should your sexuality be sentenced to the task of avoiding your fear? Why burden your sexuality with the obligation to relieve you of your pain? Some men who are filled with unexpressed and unresolved anger may seem to be highly sexed or hypersexual, frequently wanting to fuck, but what they are really doing is fucking away their anger, or at least the branchings of their anger, turning their partners into outhouses for their frustration and rage. Allow your sexuality to be itself, instead of assigning it to stress-release, egoic gratification, spousal pacification, and so on. Free it from the obligation to make you feel better or more attractive or more secure. Liberate it from the sweatshops of your neuroses. And, if you really need to be promiscuous enroute to this, do it with open eyes, so that it becomes a springboard into a deeper sexuality, rather than just an excuse to overstay your time in sexual shallows.
One more thing: Don’t try to work this all out by yourself. Talk about it in depth with good friends, and don’t hesitate to spend some time with a competent therapist. No need for sex therapy; good therapy takes into account and works with the totality of what you are, so your sexuality is viewed and worked with in the context of your entirety. As you come into fuller alignment with who and what you really are, your sexuality will follow along.
And toss this into the mix: Fuck needing to have someone else’s permission to take the leaps you’ve decided to take; finding the balls to do so without having anyone else’s permission will give you the very strength that you need to say a clear yes or no to your impulses, sexual and otherwise. Your wildness awaits you; don’t reject it, or reduce it to promiscuous fantasies, or try to green it. Let it remind you of your true size, even as you learn to more fully embody the deep masculine.
BLUES FOR SEX
Sex got a bad rap, sex got knocked
Sex got stuck in a pelvic headlock
Sex got bashed for burning pious hands
So sex went to church and sex went to hell
And sex did cry out for its abandoned lands
And sex did weep for the return of its lovers
Sex took a beating, sex got screwed
Sex ricocheted between prude and crude
Sex got blamed, sex got sent below
Where there’s too little light to grow
Just drugged heat and hungry meat
Sex got burdened with romantic demands
Sex got hijacked to desperate lands
Sex got bashed for making ends meet
The basement bulged, the house shook, the judge threw the book
And sex did cry out for love and homeground
And sex did weep for lovers awake and unbound
And sex asks for another hearing, a deeper clearing
The machinery upstairs keeps masquerading as us
The mind shacking up with pornoramic views
See all the loneliness too afraid to be alone
Pelvises grinding for promised pie or holier skies
Sex squirms in its cells, doing too much time
And sex longs to be itself, longs to be freed of lies
A flesh-bright ecstasy of passion and grace
A succulently rapturous loss of face
Sex got smeared, sex got caught up in mind
Sex took on so much that it got left behind
Sex to superconsciousness said someone
And what devout humping, what ambitious friction!
But sexstasy blew its cover in hotbeds of spiritualized greed
Its sublime screwing just another ego-fueled doing
And sex did cry out for a deeper embrace
And sex did weep for the return of its lovers
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3. I think Stuart’s right on. We may think we’re being clean, even squeaky clean, in our doings, without considering our operational context in any real depth. We may think that we’re actually choosing this or that, but most of the time, maybe even almost all of the time, we’re not doing the choosing -- rather, our conditioning is doing the choosing. If our actual choice-making (or preference-generating) capacity is not itself a conscious choice of ours, what does that say about us? Put another way, if the self — or personified conditioning — making the choices is itself not a conscious choice of ours, can we really say that we are indeed making choices? We may think that we’re making choices, but in actuality “our” choices, with few exceptions, are making us — and making us up. Seems pretty fucking depressing, isn’t it? But it’s actually quite liberating: The deepest knowing does not choose, and yet out of it the optimal choices are made, choices that are not really choices in any conventional sense, but rather only lucid obedience to the fundamental necessity of a particular situation.
Stuart’s efforts to be honest, upfront, and transparent with females during his promiscuous days was a choice that obscured a deeper choice to validate, sanction, and follow his sexual appetite, as he so clearly describes. We may like the notion of “consenting adults” when it comes to sexual practices, but who’s to say that those involved are really adults (to me, most adults are just adult-erated children and adolescents) and that real consent is taking place? Saying “yes” from an unawakened place is totally different than saying “yes” from an awakened place, but if we have an investment in hearing “yes”, then we won’t give a fuck where it comes from.
Just because someone doesn’t say “no” doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to go ahead; I’ve seen many, many women in therapy who could not initially say “no”, because when they’d originally needed to say it, or had had the urge to say it, they’d been in a situation (like incest or rape) where it was far too dangerous to say “no.” They’d learned, for reasons of pure survival, to shut up. Would they say no to a man who was sexually interested in them? No. Not even if he repulsed them. Once they’d reclaimed their real voice and power, they could of course readily voice and stand behind their no.
As we awaken we realize, right to our marrow, that what we do to another we do to ourselves, and then behaving ethically is not so much a choice as a necessity, a sacred duty, a commitment. So long as we can fuck around with and manipulate others for our own ends (sex here being not much more than a matter of making ends meet), and frame the whole fucked-up scene as not being fucked-up, we are only fucking ourselves. It’s no accident that one meaning of getting fucked is getting exploited. All Stuart needed was to wake up to what he was doing; to his credit, he then acted on what he discovered. Here is what’s really unethical: When we know better and don’t act on it. If you are behaving stupidly and don’t know it, it’s one thing, inviting in its own consequences, but if you do know it and still behave the same way, you’re going to invite in some really heavy-duty consequences, because anything less wouldn’t do the job properly.
I don’t think you can have sexual maturity without a corresponding emotional, moral, psychological, and spiritual maturity. Those who are cognitively very developed, but whose hearts are young, will not be sexually mature, tending to either be shut off sexually or to overindulge in erotic fantasy (thereby bringing their minds into sexual chambers). Those who are spiritually and morally relatively advanced, but who are emotionally immature or stunted, will not be sexually mature, tending to dissociate during sex, or to burden it with tantric expectations. And so on.
Sex does not need to be (and in fact cannot be) crystallized out from the rest of our experience (as those overly focused on the mechanics of sexuality often try to do). Rather, it needs to be seen, felt, and lived in vital, open-eyed resonance — and relationship — with everything we do and are, so that it is, as much as possible, not just an act of specialized function, nor an act bound to the chore of making us feel better or more secure, but rather an unfettered expression of already-present (and, eventually, already-loving and already-unstressed) wholeness.
To begin embodying such wholeness requires a thorough investigation of the labor to which we have assigned — or sentenced — our sexuality.
That labor and its underpinnings are eloquently revealed in the stark slang of sex. Many of the words and phrases denoting human coitus bluntly illustrate the often confused, disrespectful, and exploitive attitude we commonly bring to our sexuality, and sexuality in general. Consider, for example, the notorious and enormously popular multivalent “f” word, for which there are an incredible number of non-copulatory meanings, a fucking incredible number, all pointedly and colorfully describing what we may actually be up to when we’re busy being sexual or erotically engaged.
Here is a partial list, the majority of which overlap in meaning with each other: ignorance (“Fucked if I know”); indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”); degradation (“You stupid fuck”); disappointment (“This is really fucked”); rejection (“Get the fuck out of here” or “Fuck off”); manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”); disgust (“Go fuck yourself”); vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”); exaggeration (“It was so fucking good”); situational MSG’ing (“What a fucking great meal”); rage (“Fuck you!” or “Don’t fuck with me!”); and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”). It is also worth noting that the noun “fucker” is, though usually not complimentary, sometimes used in an affectionate or playful manner. A fine fucking mess.
Throw the various meanings of “fuck” together, plus the “higher” or more “decent” terms for sexual intercourse — including the vague “having a relationship” and the unwittingly precise “sleeping together” — and mix in some insight, and what will emerge, however dishevelled, is a collage made up of (1) the dysfunctional labor to which we’ve sentenced our sexual capacity; and (2) the expectations (like “Make me feel wanted”) with which we’ve saddled and burdened it.
If you don’t want to get fucked, you’re going to have to disturb your slumber, and rub the sleep out of your “I’s” -- a true labor of love this is, asking everything of us. You don’t have to fuck others in order to wake up, but if you’re already fucking others, you might as well allow yourself to be awakened by such activity. I remember someone who was being incredibly promiscuous telling me that he’d given up on meditation and was simply “fucking his way to God” --he rode his wave for a bit before it crashed, depositing him ass-in-the-air on a shore far from the desired one, too exhausted to pull his head from the sand. This is not to say that sex can’t be spiritual -- for it can, in mind-blowing, astonishingly illuminating and ecstatic ways -- but that fucking others is ultimately a dead-end waiting to be discovered. How long that discovery takes varies from person to person, but it awaits us all, inviting us into the ethical heartland of the Real, where integrity is no longer a concept, but a rock-solid given.
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A. Bryan/integralshism asks:
This question derives from some discussion in The Politics of Lust thread, which has been discussing a book of the same title written by local Vancouver sex activist John Ince (who, btw, will be hosting a salon discussion during the Vancouver Integral Naked Gathering in June).
In that thread, integralschism/Bryan was talking about a current issue in his life, and he'd like to know what you think. He comments:
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I don't mind admitting that when out and about, I'm constantly sizing up women in a sexual way. Sometimes I can use an intentional strategy to NOT do this. But in the absence of this kind of intentional strategy, it's pretty much a constant. And in many cases I find myself "feeling" that "I want to have sex with this 'woman'".
I remember Stuart Davis blogging about how he was finished with the serial sexual life. That he realized that he built up karma with whomever he was with and that it was more his intention to alleviate karma and not make more of it.
I've never been a serial sexualist. But it wasn't because I didn't want to be. I idolized my male friends in middle school and high school and beyond who were successful in having sex with the most coveted girls/women. Now that I'm older and more mature, it's more of a conscious decision to not be a "player" because that's hurtful to people and not necessarily in line with my moral development. However, I'd be fooling myself to say that it's entirely this "moral stance." What if it became easy for me? What if I COULD? Then would I? I don't know. But part of me believes that some kind of exploration of this issue might be a healthy part of my growth.
In SD terms, I think of it has having gotten to the equivalent of Yellow [integral] in the cognitive line and then going back to other levels to heal up the entire system/spiral within.
So in this case I could see it as my Red [egocentric values] sexuality never having been developed. The whole boy meets girl, boy jokes around with girl, gets girls number, calls girl and has a first date, has sex soon thereafter with girl, repeats with another girl. Red sex. Harmful? Harmless? Dependent upon context?
I want to expand on my last post a bit by saying that, when I think of what I would say to someone coming to me with this dilemma. I'm pretty clear that I would tell them "you're probably going to have to find out for yourself." So there's that.
And I also realize at the same time that I'm searching for some kind of permission to do that. For the largest part of my 34 years, I think my center has been in green [pluralistic relativism]. Since I've been 18 years old I've immersed myself in as much green culture as I could (save for the last 6 or so years). I have always felt most comfortable around the accepting nature of green culture, and I've always found it readily available and resonant with me. And my sense is that the green culture mostly views red sex as being a part of the dominator culture. Now there spring to mind exceptions to this. I think Liz presented the case of a guy she knew who would use green terminology to justify sleeping with multiple of "his sisters." But I think my experience has been that this green culture has recommended that I be a docile guy and "respect women so much that I would not bother them with my sexual interest."
So there it is. I think one thing I've been doing here is asking for permission to be promiscuous. To go out there and see how much fun I can have.
And I think that I'm also scared to death to get that permission. Because then I would actually be faced with the enormity of the situation (which ultimately boils down to facing rejection).
Finally, I've been getting these emails that gives tips on how to approach women, what kinds of things to say, the general disposition that it's best to have, etc. Basically it says to have a "cocky sense of humor" and, well, I won't go into it because it seems cheese-cake.
But I think what I WILL do, is take it as a spectrum. The end of the spectrum is actually having one of these "relatively anonymous" sex encounters. The other end of the spectrum is "saying that funny thing" to a woman and seeing how that feels. So there it is, I'm on a mission to play around on the benign end of that spectrum. Maybe I will report back.
And Arthur, add this into a "question" for RAM if you will!
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OK, since I resonate with this issue, I will cheerfully formulate some questions about it.
1. As an integral therapist and spiritual teacher, if someone who feels highly developed in some ways, but perhaps has not had a lot of sexual experience – or a certain kind of sexual experience (that raw “red” boy meets girl, boy fucks girl, boy finds new girl, lather rinse repeat) – asks you for “permission” to explore that kind of raw sexuality in order to, um, flesh out their being, what would you say to them? Would you advise someone in that situation to go with their impulse to “be promiscuous and see how much fun I can have”? Could this be, as Bryan suggests, a healthy part of one's growth?
2. Assuming you felt such exploration was a good idea, how would you advise them to go about it in a morally or ethically responsible way? [I had advised exploring the polyamorous or swinging communities, where people would be more accepting of that kind of sexuality, less inclined to think monogamy was on the agenda.]
Elsewhere in the thread reference was made to the following blog entry by Stuart Davis: Sex Secrets and The Ethics Of Promiscuity Pre-Dharma Surrender, which refers to his early very promiscuous period and then his personal Dharmic Reformation. Here's a long (but fascinating) entry from the blog:
“there was a good deal of promiscuity, but the thing that i think gets left out or goes unknown is that i went to great pains to behave in a manner that i felt was ethical...back when i was sleeping with so many people, i wanted very much to be ethical. so, i went to great pains to be totally honest, open, and transparent with everyone i slept with. i didn't sneak around, i didn't lie to girls or women about my availability, interest in relationship, my sexual history - i made every effore to be totally up front. so, before we got into it physically, we always had "the talk". i would answer any questions they had, and i would ask them all sorts of questions to make sure they weren't being mislead, deceived, or manipulated in any way. the talk varied depending on the girl and the situation, but the standard points i always wanted to make unmistakably clear were; 1, sleeping together was not an indication in any way that i would be available for a romantic relationship, or any kind of regular contact 2, i was not going to use a condom, and i had slept with lots of other people, the last time i had been tested was on such and such date, and the results were yadda yadda 3, i would be seeing other people.
now, as fucked up as it may sound to some, this was my sincere attempt to remain in integrity with myself, the other person, and most importantly, the Dharma. i felt that if i wasn't being manipulative, and i was straight with everyone, it would still be ethical for me to have sex with as many people as i wanted to. so why did i stop having sex with women? why did i stop with the promiscuity even before i was with my wife?
because it wasn't ethical.
the problem, in my view, is the Dharma. the ultimate ethical fact, according to my interpretation of being a practitioner, or for that matter a human, is that the PRIME directive of being is to awaken for the sake of all beings. in the loosest sense, what is ethical is that which cultivates, supports, or increases awakened consciousness in self, others, and the Whole. Ethics is the code of conduct which a practitioner in Mystery must observe in order to serve Love, which is synonymous with Awakened awareness, or that which simply IS the Reality behind the appearances.
and it was only too obvious that running through some fucking check list with women i wanted to fuck was my ego's way of utilizing a Loop Hole in the Karmic / Kosmic Ethical Code for practitioners. nice try, stu. but, the FACT OF FUCK is simply that EVEN when you run down the check list with people, and you're totally honest, and they know and fully realize what they're getting into, and they confirm their full cognizance to all the details, absolving you of any potential karma, blame, or wrong doing... IT DOESN'T MATTER, you are only having a conversation with their frontal structure, you are only making an agreement with the intellectual, cerebral part of the personality, and it DOESN'T KNOW SHIT. it will lie to you, agree with you, and make incredible convincing overtures of every imaginable kind in order to enact the impulses of its sad, somnambulant karma.
like or not, an authentic practitioner in the Mystery (notice i did not say "perfected practitioner" or "fully realized practitioner", cuz i wasn't, and i'm not, but i am authentic simply in that i know my own heart, it is sincere and i do attempt to live in concordance with the codes of the Mystery) is automatically aware of not only what is going on the in personality of the person as they are shaking their head and saying "yes, yes, that all sounds good, i agree, now let's fuck our brains out", but you also get a reading what is going on their heart, their soul, and all the deeper dimensions of their being.
you see, my hope was, that if i had this disclaimer conversation with people i wanted to sleep with, they would be advised, informed, and the fuck session would be "sanctioned" by the Mystery, so to speak. it could even be illumed. but, sadly, what happens is that 99% -and i'm not just making that up, i'd say it's actually 99% in my experience- of the people you're getting ready to have sex with are only able to respond with their head, and their head is a traitor to their heart, soul, and higher self. maybe 1% of the people in my experience were actually in a place where they had command of their heart, soul, and were inhabiting their higher self, and their agreement pertaining to the sex was coming from ALL of those places. everyone else was being dragged around by their deep wounding, their pathologies, their unconscious, their denial of Divinity, etc. of course I WAS as much or more than anyone, cuz i was actually trying to manipulate the Mystery and the relationship by using this loop hole of no manipulation.
what is it to work in the Mystery? to serve the awakening of all sentient beings.
you can't simultaneously fuck someone who's unconscious, broken, damanged, lost (and THOSE are the people who are also most confident, engaging, charismatic, and brilliantly convincing that they ARE ready to show up this way) and also serve their awakening. i'm sorry -literally, i AM sorry, cuz wouldn't it be fun if we could just fuck fuck fuck and it was all cool? the 60's love flower bonanza? but, alas, if our Ethical Code is really the Dharma, or the Mystery, or Divine Love (same things), then we have to figure out a way to deal with the incredibly compelling drives and incliniations of our body, mind, and emotions in a way doesn't suppress or deny them, but doesn't hurt other people, or worse, inhibit their awakening.
this is the problem that i've long had with more sexually orientied spiritual teachers (those who fuck their students or get their students fucking), and it's just a hunch developed from my own direct experience in Ethics, etc. it's just exceedingly rare to find people who are awake enough or healthy enough to play in that arena and not have it fuck them up. and frankly, i am always, always suspicious of the teacher's true motivations.
let me get back to my point. was it fun for "me" to have sex with three girls at the same time? yes. was it in the highest interest of each of them and me? no. it wasn't. does that make me evil? no. unethical? ultimately, let's just say i decided it would be better to be MORE ethical...
i don't regret any of my previous sex life, and i do not want to tell anyone what to do, who to do, or who to do them. one thing i know is that i had to go through what i went through and i had to do it the way i did. i NEVER could have taken someone's word for it, i had to learn the lessons, re-learn them, test them again, and it took years. i'm truly sorry for those who got hurt in any way on my clumsy, turbulent process. i'm still on that path, learning now with a wife, daughter, spiritual teacher, and a community of friends in the Mystery that i depend upon desperately to help me surrender and remain loyal to the ~?~.
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3. What's your take on all this? Do you agree with Stuart's explication of the complexities and karmic issues involved in this kind of exploration? If so, can or should someone avoid this kind of exploration if part of their being is clamoring to explore it? If such free-wheeling exploration is a bad idea, how should they work (or play) with that part of their being?
Robert answers:
1 & 2. Rather than giving or not giving my permission, I would deepen the exploration of what’s motivating his desire, including a more-than-intellectual look at whatever conditioning has shaped and colored it. This would mean, among other things, journeying to the heart of his desire, without shaming himself for having it. No repression, no indulgence, but just a deepening openness as the dots are connected.
Turning away from our “lower” desires only strands us from their hidden treasure, their dark pearl, leaving us in an eviscerated freedom, a spiritual wasteland of sterile attainment and disembodied encapsulation. Turning toward our “lower” desires does not necessarily mean submitting to them, but rather feeling our way to their core, knowing them from the deep inside. Desire can bind. Desire can also liberate. It all depends upon what kind of relationship we develop with it.
I’d also have him locate in himself both the he who just wants to freely fuck (the unapologetically masculine guy overflowing with full-blooded lust), and the he who wants to do otherwise (the nice, relatively emasculated, more “spiritual” guy), and then get some dialogue going between the two, the more dramatic and alive the better; then, I’d have him assume a position that compassionately included both, and see what kind of directions emerged -- not from me, but from him. Perhaps he’d just choose not to go into the kind of fucking he’s flirting with, and perhaps he would. So which is better? This is a question that is but the presenting surface of a deeper questioning that initially goes something like: What will best serve another’s growth? And how is this to be known?
After all, sometimes being off the path is the path. At the same time -- and this is very slippery territory, level upon level -- we cannot afford to bypass morality here. It’s easy to use the notion that we don’t really know what will best serve another’s growth as an excuse for fucked-up or atrocious behavior. (This is the headquarters of idiot compassion and neurotic tolerance.) But rather than impose an outside moral authority on those who are seeking permission to freely fuck, I’d have them access their own innate moral sense -- and I mean in its guilt-free, unconditioned form -- and apply it to the very sexual possibilities which they are considering.
For example, I’ve taught some who were caught up in sexual practices that were insensitive to their partner to make open-eyed, genuinely caring contact with their partner and then see if they could still go ahead with such practices. The result? They couldn’t. And the result of that? Some turned to a more conscious sexuality -- perhaps still raw, still wild, but not uncaring -- and others turned off the lights, so to speak, and continued with their practices. Did the latter group also grow from doing this? Maybe, but even if they did, there was a lot more mess to clean up, far heavier consequences to face, enough karmuppance to generate some massive roadblocks.
If we’re going to go ahead with our impulse to be, for example, promiscuous, we’d be wise to have already considered the consequences as best we can. Such consideration may not stop us in our tracks, but will likely bring more light to our doings, keeping us from straying for very long into the darker extremes of sloppy behavior. Some say to look before you leap, and some say to leap before you look too much, but I’d suggest looking as you leap, assuming that the leap is inevitable.
And there’s more: Sex is often not just sex, but also an eroticized acting-out of unresolved issues, an arena wherein those needs of ours that we have sexualized are given free rein, as if they are just the expression of our innate sexuality. In considering our erotically-harnessed “solutions” for dealing with past difficulties — low self-esteem, family problems, anxiety, violence, and so on — the explicitly sexual details are not so important as the setting, context, and dramatic particulars. Our sexual arousal might, for example, have much to do with simply wanting to be nonjudgmentally noticed by an obviously attentive fantasy partner. Yes, our excitation or “charge” regarding this may manifest sexually in our fantasy, but it is only secondarily sexual, its primary impetus being rooted in a longing to be openly loved and seen. This is further fleshed out and given deserving depth by closely examining the supporting props (clothing, furniture, words spoken, etcetera) in our fantasy — the details say much about the original context out of which our fantasy arose, perhaps making possible a reconstruction of previously unintegrated events.
Take a darker example: A man frequents SM parlors, getting the most sexual pleasure out of being whipped hard. In his fantasies he associates sexuality with violence, and is drawn to porn that features this association. Some might think he’s just sexually kinky, but what’s truer is that he’s deeply wounded. Take away the erotic overlay in his fantasies and practices, and what’s left is simple violence and, eventually, heartbreak. It’s no big surprise to find out he was severely beaten, literally whipped bloody, by his mother during his boyhood, and that that was the only touch he got from her. Eroticizing his internalized and undealt-with violence simply took the edge off it, providing a way to discharge the surfacing pain of it. Stripping it down to its roots made possible a healing that quickly eroded his interest in SM porn and practices. Once the original pain had been openly felt and skillfully worked with, there was no need to sexualize it.
Another example: A woman, clearly heterosexual, finds to her embarrassment that the most erotically alive fantasies for her involve other women. No men are present. She’s had some sexual encounters with other women, but it just didn’t work for her. What’s going on in her fantasies is a women-only encounter; take away the erotic dimension, and all that is actually occurring is women being close to each other. This woman grew up in a home with a very violent father and brothers, and found her only comfort, however minimal, in the company of her mother and aunts. Understandably, she has charge with being in a setting that features the safety and warmth of other women, a setting in which she can really relax and let go; the fact that she has eroticized this simply means that it represents something that has generated excitation in her for a long time.
So our erotic fantasies are tales well worth investigating, tales that reveal much about us. What they dramatize is simply the sexualizing — arising from the excitement, however negative — of our longing to be fulfilled, safe, secure, loved, needed, seen, touched, known, and perhaps also our longing to find release from past difficulties and trauma through the very excitation (however terrifying) generated by such difficulties and trauma. The intensity of the pleasure or release that such fantasies promise is a marker of the intensity of the pain we are trying to bypass. Some erotic fantasies may be quite complex, but their themes are not; in fact, such complexity might just reflect a need to have many things in order or under control so that the desired outcome can occur, a need that likely has its roots in many things having been out of order or control in our early years.
Now back to the question of following a promiscuous (or otherwise “unseemly” sexual) urge: Go beneath its surface. Get intimate with it. Try stripping it of its erotic components, and see what is left. Let’s say that what’s left for you is fear of rejection. Instead of sexualizing that fear (that is, converting its energetic excitation into an erotic hunger), enter it. Why should your sexuality be sentenced to the task of avoiding your fear? Why burden your sexuality with the obligation to relieve you of your pain? Some men who are filled with unexpressed and unresolved anger may seem to be highly sexed or hypersexual, frequently wanting to fuck, but what they are really doing is fucking away their anger, or at least the branchings of their anger, turning their partners into outhouses for their frustration and rage. Allow your sexuality to be itself, instead of assigning it to stress-release, egoic gratification, spousal pacification, and so on. Free it from the obligation to make you feel better or more attractive or more secure. Liberate it from the sweatshops of your neuroses. And, if you really need to be promiscuous enroute to this, do it with open eyes, so that it becomes a springboard into a deeper sexuality, rather than just an excuse to overstay your time in sexual shallows.
One more thing: Don’t try to work this all out by yourself. Talk about it in depth with good friends, and don’t hesitate to spend some time with a competent therapist. No need for sex therapy; good therapy takes into account and works with the totality of what you are, so your sexuality is viewed and worked with in the context of your entirety. As you come into fuller alignment with who and what you really are, your sexuality will follow along.
And toss this into the mix: Fuck needing to have someone else’s permission to take the leaps you’ve decided to take; finding the balls to do so without having anyone else’s permission will give you the very strength that you need to say a clear yes or no to your impulses, sexual and otherwise. Your wildness awaits you; don’t reject it, or reduce it to promiscuous fantasies, or try to green it. Let it remind you of your true size, even as you learn to more fully embody the deep masculine.
BLUES FOR SEX
Sex got a bad rap, sex got knocked
Sex got stuck in a pelvic headlock
Sex got bashed for burning pious hands
So sex went to church and sex went to hell
And sex did cry out for its abandoned lands
And sex did weep for the return of its lovers
Sex took a beating, sex got screwed
Sex ricocheted between prude and crude
Sex got blamed, sex got sent below
Where there’s too little light to grow
Just drugged heat and hungry meat
Sex got burdened with romantic demands
Sex got hijacked to desperate lands
Sex got bashed for making ends meet
The basement bulged, the house shook, the judge threw the book
And sex did cry out for love and homeground
And sex did weep for lovers awake and unbound
And sex asks for another hearing, a deeper clearing
The machinery upstairs keeps masquerading as us
The mind shacking up with pornoramic views
See all the loneliness too afraid to be alone
Pelvises grinding for promised pie or holier skies
Sex squirms in its cells, doing too much time
And sex longs to be itself, longs to be freed of lies
A flesh-bright ecstasy of passion and grace
A succulently rapturous loss of face
Sex got smeared, sex got caught up in mind
Sex took on so much that it got left behind
Sex to superconsciousness said someone
And what devout humping, what ambitious friction!
But sexstasy blew its cover in hotbeds of spiritualized greed
Its sublime screwing just another ego-fueled doing
And sex did cry out for a deeper embrace
And sex did weep for the return of its lovers
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3. I think Stuart’s right on. We may think we’re being clean, even squeaky clean, in our doings, without considering our operational context in any real depth. We may think that we’re actually choosing this or that, but most of the time, maybe even almost all of the time, we’re not doing the choosing -- rather, our conditioning is doing the choosing. If our actual choice-making (or preference-generating) capacity is not itself a conscious choice of ours, what does that say about us? Put another way, if the self — or personified conditioning — making the choices is itself not a conscious choice of ours, can we really say that we are indeed making choices? We may think that we’re making choices, but in actuality “our” choices, with few exceptions, are making us — and making us up. Seems pretty fucking depressing, isn’t it? But it’s actually quite liberating: The deepest knowing does not choose, and yet out of it the optimal choices are made, choices that are not really choices in any conventional sense, but rather only lucid obedience to the fundamental necessity of a particular situation.
Stuart’s efforts to be honest, upfront, and transparent with females during his promiscuous days was a choice that obscured a deeper choice to validate, sanction, and follow his sexual appetite, as he so clearly describes. We may like the notion of “consenting adults” when it comes to sexual practices, but who’s to say that those involved are really adults (to me, most adults are just adult-erated children and adolescents) and that real consent is taking place? Saying “yes” from an unawakened place is totally different than saying “yes” from an awakened place, but if we have an investment in hearing “yes”, then we won’t give a fuck where it comes from.
Just because someone doesn’t say “no” doesn’t necessarily mean that they want to go ahead; I’ve seen many, many women in therapy who could not initially say “no”, because when they’d originally needed to say it, or had had the urge to say it, they’d been in a situation (like incest or rape) where it was far too dangerous to say “no.” They’d learned, for reasons of pure survival, to shut up. Would they say no to a man who was sexually interested in them? No. Not even if he repulsed them. Once they’d reclaimed their real voice and power, they could of course readily voice and stand behind their no.
As we awaken we realize, right to our marrow, that what we do to another we do to ourselves, and then behaving ethically is not so much a choice as a necessity, a sacred duty, a commitment. So long as we can fuck around with and manipulate others for our own ends (sex here being not much more than a matter of making ends meet), and frame the whole fucked-up scene as not being fucked-up, we are only fucking ourselves. It’s no accident that one meaning of getting fucked is getting exploited. All Stuart needed was to wake up to what he was doing; to his credit, he then acted on what he discovered. Here is what’s really unethical: When we know better and don’t act on it. If you are behaving stupidly and don’t know it, it’s one thing, inviting in its own consequences, but if you do know it and still behave the same way, you’re going to invite in some really heavy-duty consequences, because anything less wouldn’t do the job properly.
I don’t think you can have sexual maturity without a corresponding emotional, moral, psychological, and spiritual maturity. Those who are cognitively very developed, but whose hearts are young, will not be sexually mature, tending to either be shut off sexually or to overindulge in erotic fantasy (thereby bringing their minds into sexual chambers). Those who are spiritually and morally relatively advanced, but who are emotionally immature or stunted, will not be sexually mature, tending to dissociate during sex, or to burden it with tantric expectations. And so on.
Sex does not need to be (and in fact cannot be) crystallized out from the rest of our experience (as those overly focused on the mechanics of sexuality often try to do). Rather, it needs to be seen, felt, and lived in vital, open-eyed resonance — and relationship — with everything we do and are, so that it is, as much as possible, not just an act of specialized function, nor an act bound to the chore of making us feel better or more secure, but rather an unfettered expression of already-present (and, eventually, already-loving and already-unstressed) wholeness.
To begin embodying such wholeness requires a thorough investigation of the labor to which we have assigned — or sentenced — our sexuality.
That labor and its underpinnings are eloquently revealed in the stark slang of sex. Many of the words and phrases denoting human coitus bluntly illustrate the often confused, disrespectful, and exploitive attitude we commonly bring to our sexuality, and sexuality in general. Consider, for example, the notorious and enormously popular multivalent “f” word, for which there are an incredible number of non-copulatory meanings, a fucking incredible number, all pointedly and colorfully describing what we may actually be up to when we’re busy being sexual or erotically engaged.
Here is a partial list, the majority of which overlap in meaning with each other: ignorance (“Fucked if I know”); indifference (“I don’t give a fuck”); degradation (“You stupid fuck”); disappointment (“This is really fucked”); rejection (“Get the fuck out of here” or “Fuck off”); manipulation (“You’re fucking with my head”); disgust (“Go fuck yourself”); vexation (“What the fuck are you doing?”); exaggeration (“It was so fucking good”); situational MSG’ing (“What a fucking great meal”); rage (“Fuck you!” or “Don’t fuck with me!”); and, perhaps most pithily revealing of all, exploitation (“I got fucked”). It is also worth noting that the noun “fucker” is, though usually not complimentary, sometimes used in an affectionate or playful manner. A fine fucking mess.
Throw the various meanings of “fuck” together, plus the “higher” or more “decent” terms for sexual intercourse — including the vague “having a relationship” and the unwittingly precise “sleeping together” — and mix in some insight, and what will emerge, however dishevelled, is a collage made up of (1) the dysfunctional labor to which we’ve sentenced our sexual capacity; and (2) the expectations (like “Make me feel wanted”) with which we’ve saddled and burdened it.
If you don’t want to get fucked, you’re going to have to disturb your slumber, and rub the sleep out of your “I’s” -- a true labor of love this is, asking everything of us. You don’t have to fuck others in order to wake up, but if you’re already fucking others, you might as well allow yourself to be awakened by such activity. I remember someone who was being incredibly promiscuous telling me that he’d given up on meditation and was simply “fucking his way to God” --he rode his wave for a bit before it crashed, depositing him ass-in-the-air on a shore far from the desired one, too exhausted to pull his head from the sand. This is not to say that sex can’t be spiritual -- for it can, in mind-blowing, astonishingly illuminating and ecstatic ways -- but that fucking others is ultimately a dead-end waiting to be discovered. How long that discovery takes varies from person to person, but it awaits us all, inviting us into the ethical heartland of the Real, where integrity is no longer a concept, but a rock-solid given.
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posted by adastra at 7:20 AM
