Monday, March 27, 2006

Sex, Gender and Healthy Culture

Sex, Gender, and Healthy Culture
Piankhy, March 27, 2006



Healthy Culture is about, among other things, transcending factional identity politics through affirming our primary identity as Individual-Persons. It is about assumptions of Togetherness and it is about Rituals of Togetherness that transcend and heal inner and outer faction and inner and outer competition. It is about inner consensus and outer consensus as Individual Persons and about the Living Friendship that engenders this.

Sex as a ritual, to the extent ( which is considerable) that it is informed by the culture of Apart-ness is, necessarily, about none of this. Such sex functions as a ritual of Apart-ness, of both inner and outer Alienation and exploitation. It is so outwardly, among other things, because it is so tied up with factional identities of gender and of dissociated individuality. This leads to generally competitive ("me or us" against"Them") assumptions with the typically lose-lose results of all competition. It is so inwardly because the very act itself usually involves a separation and Dysmutuality of mind, heart, body, and intuition as a matter of course. In short, the dissociated practice of "sexuality" in our culture  is  a necessary aspect  of  a  distorted conception of  what  it  is,  which in turn is a natural consequence of a dissociated conception and experience of what we are.

Since the culture of Apart-ness is given to ordering things, (once they have been suitably dissociated from there context) in terms of false dichotomies, the whole subject of sexuality, without really even being well defined, is divided simplistically along the lines of religions position and humanistic sciences position. Perhaps in some other essay I will go into detail about how both positions (and all the gradations between them) are essentially similar in that they are all informed by alienated assumptions about nature and the body, and so are equally manifestations of the culture of Apart-ness. What I want to do in this essay is to explain the conception and practice of “sexuality” from the point of view of Healthy Culture and of assumptions of Togetherness.

It is really impossible to fully separate the “vertical” or Individual aspects of what we call “sex” from the “horizontal” or Personal/social aspects of it. If Intuition, Mind, Heart, and Body are all alive, and nourished in the sex ritual than it can be certain that those engaged have transcended the roles and factional identity politics of Gender or of anything else, and are engaged in a dance of mutual healing and living friendship, and visa versa. In the culture of sexuality however, such a thing presupposes an inward attitude of friendship toward the body on the part of all involved.

The body is the part of nature that we are most concretely. And the sexual energy that is expressed through the body is not, anymore than nature is, something to be exploited for the pleasure of a dissociated ego. As Taoists, Tantrics, and other have long known, the purpose of sexual energy is to create Life. That Life can be in the form of another being or it can be in the form of greater Life and wholeness within and between the individuals who are generating it. To put it in more modern terms, sexual energy is the energy of evolution. We can evolve as a species via reproduction and/or we can use that same energy to evolve as Individuals.

In a culture of apart-ness of course, the wilderness of the body, like the outer wilderness, is desecrated and exploited as soon as this becomes possible, in the same way that the earths wilderness is being exploited. Before it becomes possible to exploit much it is usually feared and repressed as evil, though it has also been feared and worshiped in a privileged way, above all other “gods”. What doesn’t often happen is that it is Befriended, that the natural body and that which can be distinguished from it (in our case the mind, heart, and intuition) are, in the sex act or in any other act, brought together in a way that is mutually healing to each and the strengthens the whole. Still the very existence of the Taoist/Tantric forms of sexuality testifies to the possibility of this healing friendship and mutuality. The basics about how this can be done, perhaps kept among the secrets of initiation in most other cultures are readily available in books such as the Multiorgasmic couple by Mantak Chia, or The Jewel in the Lotus.

And yet these Tantric and Taoist presentations of sexuality as a ritual that befriends and heals the body are not quite the rituals of healthy culture that they need to be. Too often such approaches are still informed by (or reduced to) cosmologies that dissociate sexuality itself from the rest of life, and by Identities of Apartness around gender lines that do not transcend the dominant cultures paradigms of competition and dissociation. Even attempts to update, and translate such practices into the modern or western idiom, such as Karezza or the “Peace between the Sheets” literature, do not escape this fate for me. As they are, such practices all tend to function, like most dissociated alternative “healthy practices” or even “spiritual practices”, as things that are co-dependant with, and so ultimately enabling of, the status quo of sick culture.

To really be a ritual of Togetherness, sexuality itself must take place within a cosmological, Identity, Ritualistic, and Infrastructural space of Paradoxical Togetherness. This does not mean, or course, that the Lust (by which I mean a dissociated desire for another who is conceived--or at least experienced-- in an equally dissociated way--e.g. as only “body” to be used”) and other aspects of alienated sexuality are to be repressed. On the contrary, it means that they are to be acknowledged and integrated in to a practice that does not indulge, but rather transforms and heals them.

At this point an example seems to be in order.

In sexual intercourse as a ritual of Healthy Culture (at least as it has developed so far) the situation is that the Individual-Persons involved have, in an ongoing way as apart of their own coming-together as individuals, already been befriending their bodies and their sexuality though integral versions of those practices for cultivating sexual energy such as are described in the Books of Mantak Chia and others. Such individuals already have experience therefore in touching themselves sexually in ways that are not exploitative of but healing of their own bodies, and that are a result of inner consensus and good sense. To a certain extent anyway, they have experience turning dissociated fantasies into conscious visualizations of self/other healing. 

 Coming-together with of two such people in what is called dual cultivation would be something that happens (and proceeds) by deep inner consensus in the context of the open ritual of Healthy Culture called the Life-Dance party. In that context, the rule of Inner Consensus prevails and there can be no expectations (since expectations are usually coercive) of the “consummation” of any intimacy, either in a so-called “valley” orgasm or any other kind. No gesture, in such a context, is any kind of coercive emotional investment in something beyond itself, and each is made for its own sake. In such a context there can be no expectation even, that an intimate caress will not be followed immediately by the caresser abruptly getting up and (as a result of inner consensus) and leaving the room altogether.
 
Such a lack of expectation would seem to eliminate, or at least problematize, the anticipatory passion, fantasy, and even the sense of security that we associate with normal lovemaking. To the extent that these things are coercive addictions of “normal” sexuality, this is true. In the mindset of the Life-Dance, the only expectation is that each person listen for, and act on, the Inner Consensus of mind, heart, body and Intuition, and that they befriend each other in doing so through seeking outer consensus as well. In the context of such a ritual, when it is part of a whole Culture of Togetherness shared by the participants, there is no need to isolate “sex” or “the sex act” from any other aspect of the dance of Friendship. What is happening is Friendship and whether it qualifies as sex or not is irrelevant. Mutually listening-for, expressing and acting on the consensus of mind, heart, intuition, and body is the common denominator of everything that happens in a Life-Dance party and, if anything, sexual intimacy would be a deeper expression of the consensuality and Living Friendship of that ritual than whatever else transpires in it.. It would be so much apart of the deeply sublime and yet ordinary beauty of real sarced Life itself that it would dissolve as a separate thing.

I want to emphasize that whatever Sexality or Intimacy happens in the context of the Life-Dance party must, to be healthy, also be happening in the context of the Life-Dance Check-in. and, more generally, in the context of the shared assumptions and practices of Healthy Culture as a whole. This means it would constitute an experiment, within and experiment, within an experiment as it were. The details of that experiment, beyond the modified basics of Sexual Healing as expressed in the Taoist/Tantric literature consist, so far, of expressions, affirmations, and gestures of Living Friendship as Individual-Persons.  Care is taken that the Inner Adult, Inner Elder, and Inner Animal, as well as the Inner Child of each person is acknowledged and nourished though such gestures of intimate friendship. Care is also taken that all the sick-culture energy that might be behind the expectation that physically intimate expressions of friendship will happen at all at the Life-Dance Party be openly discussed and creatively and compassionately engaged.

It occurs to me just now that a joint Vision Dance--see other blog--between those who repeatedly discover  these kind of things threatening and undermining the true affection of Living Friendship that they have for each other, could help shift the paradigm of alienated sexuality that they are caught in. Perhaps such a vision-dance should be the first Life-Dance Party that these persons have together.

Still of course, “shit happens”. Gender based attraction and the dissociations of “lust” are inevitable in these experiments in Healthy Intimacy since no one engaging in them is going to be immune from the strong influence of the dominant culture. I certainly still experience both these aspects of sick culture quite often, though perhaps less strongly than I used to. It is important not to expect (or even seek) perfection or "rightousness" in this or any other single area of ones whole life-dance as an Individual-person, since this will throw that dance out of balance as a whole and is usually just motivated by a kind of alienated vanity. Bouts of sick culture in this or any other aspect of the Life-Dance, as long as they are recognized as such ( as long as collusion or self-delusion as to what is really happening has not crept in to the picture) just amount to "data" or feedback that should sooner or latter lead to postive refinements in the experiment as a whole ( actually, this is true even for bouts of collusion or self-delusion when these are finally recognized as such). In short the ideal i am describing (like all ideals I decribe) has to be understood from a wholistic Life-Logical perspective with the application of large amounts of inner/outer compassion and Good Sense.



Any way, so much, so far, for sexuality from the point of view of Healthy Culture. I don’t know If I’ll see fit to report, on line in the other blog, on the details of my own experiments with this kind of thing, but you can be sure that I am making them (whether failing or succeeding, alone or with others, or—most probably—both, but anyway, making them) and learning.
 
 

posted by: piankhy | 19:22 | comments