Sex without love…
What do we mean by “Sex without love”?
An example could be when two people who don’t know each other well come together in a sexual act, without having created a deep and loving connection first.
Another example could be when a couple has lost their love-connection and engages in sexual activity anyway.
So, maybe in the first example people are coming together ‘just for pleasure’, with no long-term commitment. Well, consider this: is it possible for these two people, who don’t know each other yet, to come together and engage in sexual activity Lovingly… just for pleasure?
In other words, they are coming together for mutual enjoyment and with mutual respect and openness, even though they have just met and even though they have no plans for the future. It sounds fine somehow doesn’t it? At least in a society that allows the use of birth-control or contraceptive methods this seems simple. There doesn’t have to be an established ‘loving relationship’ in a traditional sense – maybe it’s just a fiery passion in the moment – but as long as there is this mutual respect we can imagine that love actually is present.
However, it seems that people usually can’t come together with this simplicity with mutual respect and openness because of a lack of mutual trust. This is why the love is lacking – not because people haven’t made a commitment to a long-term relationship, but because they are concerned with preserving their own comfort zones and for this reason are unable to fully embrace each other and open to a Unitive, transcendental sexual experience that is also deeply Love-imbued.
So, hold on a moment before I get carried away…
What do we mean by ‘love’ anyway?
There are hundreds of ways in which the word ‘love’ is used in different contexts, but maybe we can understand more clearly what ‘love’ is. I’m going to suggest a definition here for the purpose of this article… Maybe it will be useful to you beyond this too. (I have occasionally used here a capital ‘L’… but not consistently… this is partly poetic license and partly sleepiness so please excuse me if it’s confusing.)
I would say that ‘love’ is ‘connectedness’. Where there is a feeling of separation, isolation, estrangement, alienation, etc. there is a lack of love.
Real ‘connectedness’ is felt as ‘Love’. Love is the feeling of Connectedness – the feeling that arises when there is a recognition of Unity.
Love is beyond polarities such as male-female. Love is not the activity of ‘uniting’, it is the always-existing-Union that already Is. It is the ‘undividedness’ that exists prior to and beyond our concepts and our nervous system’s filters.
‘Love’ is the underlying wholeness – the ‘Unity’, or ‘undividedness’, which is why mystics have said “God is Love” and why transcendent-integrative states of Consciousness have led to descriptions of Reality as ‘Existence-Consciousness-Bliss.’
This Bliss is the immersion and dissolution of the self in ‘Cosmic-Love-Unity’.
So, according to this understanding, human Love is the recognition and feeling of unity. This is why it is so mysterious and magical – the ‘Loving feeling’ takes us beyond our mundane state of mind, altering our brain chemistry and providing a profound sense of well-being because it is taking us beyond all survival-based instinct. ‘Survival’ is only an issue when ‘separation’ is assumed. The ‘Unity-feeling’ of Love dissolves survival fears and leaves us ‘saintly’, able to forgive all injuries and able to see the needs of all beings as equally valuable. Compassion and genuine sympathy spring from the Love-feeling spontaneously, which is also why they are so highly valued in spiritual traditions.
Love can be understood as the meta-physical Truth – the Connectedness that exists despite all appearances…. And human love is being in resonance with this Truth. (And fear is the result of ignorance of this Truth. This ignore-ance is the source of all our survival issues – and hence our selfishness.)
But getting back to sex…
The ‘act’ of connecting and uniting is ‘sex’.
Union - as an activity - is sexual. (The word sex is derived from the Latin word ‘secare’ meaning to cut or divide, so sexuality is all about our dividedness – our half-ness and our activities or ideas that relate to this division and of course to our attempts at re-uniting).
In a way, like Rasiko commented, Love and sex are by nature totally distinct. Love is the underlying natural order and the feeling of attunement to that order, whereas sex is a physiological, emotional-hormonal, sensual act that is springing from the experience of dividedness or separate existence.
But also, like Íris said, sex is all about Love - love of oneself, of one’s source and respect of one’s feelings and it can unfold from there as a shared experience of Oneness.
So, I’m not saying that Love and Sex are in any way opposites – one relating to Unity and the other to division. Love, as the Whole Undivided Existence, is Infinite – In-finite, not defined, not definable. Words like ‘Unity’ and ‘Undividedness’ may give the impression of being opposed to ‘separation’ and ‘division’, but really what is being referred to is a reality that is prior to or beyond all concepts of ‘Unity’ or ‘division’. The best that can perhaps be said is ‘Infinite’… and out of Infinity one must naturally expect to find absolutely everything… including division, which is the source of individual perspective-experience. So division can be seen as a Creative manifestation of the Infinite – and not as an something opposite or opposed to it.
Rounding off for now…
When sexual activity is carried out as an opening to Oneness, or as a celebration of Oneness, then it is profoundly Loving and even transcendent and blissful. (This can be carried out in pure innocence, or intentionally as a form of ‘Tantra’, traditionally know in the West as ‘sexual alchemy’.)
However, when one engages in sexual activity as an attempt at compensating for the lack of recognition of Reality/Oneness – i.e. as a compensation for a lack of the love-feeling – there is a tendency to remain ‘self-bound’ unable to emotionally connect… but more important than connecting ‘with the other person’ in sexual intercourse is the basic act of releasing one’s barriers. The effect is potentially not only a connection with the sexual partner but with all of life itself (hence the transcendental-integrative power of ‘sexual alchemy’). As I stated above, the connection with the sexual energy is not only a connection with ‘dividedness’ energy but with ‘Creative’ energy – responsible for the unfolding of manifest reality.
So, at a cosmic level, it is dividedness or separation – the original ‘sexual’ principle – that enables the Creation and development of the experienced universe.
By the way, ‘Re-ligion’ (which has to do with re-connecting) is basically, originally, a teaching about how the human being can ‘have sex’ (dissolve the perceived division) with the Universe or ‘Divine’/‘Celestial’ realm and attain Cosmic Consciousness/ Love-Bliss.
Peter Littlejohn Cook
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário