Everyday Enlightenment, page 23
Sexual -Identity and the Two-Sided Brain
The great cosmological truth and symbol of China, and specifically Taoist thinking, is the concept of yin and yang, the dynamic balance of opposites. Yin is the receptive (female) principle, and yang the active (male) principle. This understanding of life was based upon close observation of the world and the cosmos—the operation of natural law. No matter what your gender, the left hemisphere of your brain is often associated with traditional masculine qualities of hardness, extroversion, activity, assertive-aggressiveness, the linear, logical, deductive. No matter what your gender, the right hemisphere of your brain is often associated with feminine qualities of softness, introversion, receptiveness, passivity, stillness, and the emotional-intuitive
Wholeness and Balance—The Best of Both Genders
Clearly both men and women embody capacities reflecting both the right and left hemispheres. Still, left-brain qualities tend to be masculine and right-brain qualities tend to be feminine. About this there is almost universal agreement. Gender stereotyping? Perhaps. A sensitive and provocative area? Undoubtedly. Do these qualities apply universally to all men and women? Hardly. But when you begin to unify and balance both hemispheres of your brain, you expand and even transcend your gender role so that you can animate at will both yin and yang qualities. You become balanced and whole—capable of hardness or softness, able to turn outward or inward. You can be active or receptive as the moment demands. You may act assertive in one circumstance and become receptive the next. You reason logically and clearly but bring forth sensitive emotional and intuitive qualities whe needed.
As you integrate right and left sides and become whole, you remain anatomically a male or female, but your character and qualities evolve to a state of inclusive androgyny. Webster's American Heritage Dictionary defines androgyny as “being neither distinctly masculine nor feminine, as in dress, appearance, or behavior.” Inclusive androgyny entails the ability to access and embody both masculine and feminine qualities and capacities.
I'm just a person trapped inside a woman's body.
—Elayne Boosler
Clearly the battle of the sexes reflects the battle inside each of us, men and women in conflict with our opposite gender shadows. When the male and female sides of our own brains reach a state of harmony and balance, we can truly embrace others, not only as mates and sexual partners, but as brothers, sisters, and fellow human beings in spiritual communion.
Bisexuality immediately doubles your chances for a date on Saturday night.
—Woody Allen
Sexual Differentiation and Doubt
In most societies of the past, when men's bulk and strength led them to the hunt and to war, and women's unique ability to bear children led them to child-rearing and caring for home and hearth, a strong active-receptive, male-female polarity was necessary and natural. Today, those of us still striving to behave and appear as the ultimate male or ultra-female only invite unnecessary worries and insecurities
The old questions or criteria about what makes a real man and a feminine woman persist beyond their usefulness. To reassure ourselves of our genders, we have only to glance inside our underwear. Unfortunately, many cultures deride those who express traits of the opposite sex, as evidenced by our society's persistent fear and denigration of homosexuality. In order to completely accept your own unique sexuality rather than fitting popular stereotypes of behavior, you need the strength to face these issues without flinching.
Common Sense and Sexual Orientation
It's quite common for heterosexuals to have masturbatory fantasies about the same gender and for homosexuals to fantasize about opposite genders—that is, if we have an imagination. Our fantasies do not make us homosexual, or bisexual, or heterosexual; they only make us sexual. As we prepare to enter a new millennium, it seems that we have more important things to worry about than other people's sexual orientation. How or with whom someone expresses their sexuality seems less important than whether they are loving, sensitive, committed, able to give and receive. Any form of sexual expression can be intimate, even sacred—or can become a promiscuous, casual, uncommitted, recreational sport or even an exploitative and loveless form of suffering, an addiction to erotic endorphins, a quick fix of sexual adrenaline.
Due to the nature of our socialization, we may harbor many sexual secrets—hidden impulses, desires, or fantasies—our sexual shadows. Many of us hide sexual secrets even (or especially) from our intimates. These secrets often concern private fantasies, desires, or fears. One important facet of sexual illumination involves bringing your sexual shadows into the light of awareness in a spirit of compassionate acceptance of who you are.
A Self-Examination of Sexual Secrets
To examine your hidden sexual life, find one or more fantasies that you would feel awkward or reluctant to share with anyone. Now explore the following questions
• Why would you want or need to keep your sexual fantasies a secret?
• What do you fear others might think? Is it possible, even likely, that other people have the same fantasies or desires?
• Can your fantasy hurt anyone? If so, who, why, and how?
• Do you think there is anything inherently wrong with any fantasy? If so, what? If not, why not?
• If you told your partner, what do you think he or she would do? Would your partner be troubled by your fantasy? Why? What would you gain by sharing it? And what would you lose?
• Do you feel any tension or loss of freedom by keeping this hidden? Does it represent an obstruction to intimacy?
The preceding questions are not meant to imply that you should or need to share every fantasy that passes through your mind or that you must confess your inner sexual life. Rather, this self-reflection helps you understand what is involved in the dynamics of keeping sexual secrets because of fear or shame.
The same consideration holds true for your outer sexual life, including secrets you may hide from your mate, ranging from the harmless (secret masturbation) to the serious (adultery). Consider what you gain and lose by not telling or by telling—and what your partner might gain or lose. Make sure you understand both sides.
Now that you have explored some effects of cultural conditioning, religious socialization, and other factors on your sexuality, you may find it timely to openly consider and illuminate your sexual secrets. We begin the process with two common secrets: masturbation and fantasies.
Masturbation in the 1990s—Sin or Godsend?
We know from books and magazines on sexuality that masturbation is common and natural, even for married men and women. Then why do many of us still feel awkward or embarrassed about it? Do you masturbate? (Aha! Caught you!) If not, is it because you were told not to? Because you don't feel comfortable doing it? Because you believe God will punish or reject you? If you do masturbate, and if you have a partner or are married, are you comfortable discussing it with your mate, or is it something you prefer to keep to yourself
When mainstream religions forbid the practice to millions of people around the world—a practice both pleasurable, readily available, and safe—it may be worth a paragraph or two.
In the film L.A. Story, the character played by Steve Martin says, as he admires a girlfriend's breasts, “If I had breasts like that, I'd stay home all day and play with them.” Then there's the age-old question “Why do dogs lick themselves?” The answer is, “Because they can.” (Wouldn't you?) Self-stimulation feels good. That doesn't mean we sit around and do nothing else, but we need to examine why we are so conflicted about something clearly harmless that feels so good.
Where once masturbation (or homosexuality) was condemned for wasting the sperm that might otherwise help a woman be fruitful, in today's world of AIDS, unwanted pregnancies, abortions, affairs, and undesired population growth, you have to consider masturbation as a harmless and pleasurable way to discharge pent-up sexual energy. And in a marriage where one partner has a strong sexual urge and desires an orgasm daily, while the other partner feels desire only once a week, it serves a purpose.
For singles (or married persons away from home) masturbation is certainly more desirable than seeking someone in a bar and risking problematic, even dangerous, complications. Obviously masturbation is no substitute for a loving, committed bond with another human being, but at certain times it can be a godsend.
Some truths are universal and eternal. Others are conditional, arbitrary dogmas appropriate within their time but no longer relevant in the changing tides of history. Ultimately each of us must live our own lives, free of idealism, shame, or dogmas that do not serve our wholeness or our realities. Never be afraid to ask, why? Never be afraid to answer, why not?
Sexual Fantasies
For those of us, male or female, with high sex drives or promiscuous impulses, it may be more desirable to visualize sex with numerous others while masturbating than actually attempting it. Since your subconscious mind doesn't readily differentiate between experiencing something with your physical senses and imagining it, fantasizing while masturbating fulfills your desires and creates no complications or pain for anyone
The church might declare such fantasies tantamount to adultery, but given the choice, I recommend fantasies. If I imagine murdering someone, that does not make me a murderer; if I imagine myself a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, that does not make me a scientist; and if I imagine having sex with a gorilla, that does not make me a pervert. It may be preferable to fantasize only positive, happy, wholesome thoughts. But wholesome by whose standards? And how does one control one's thoughts?
Fantasies cannot harm us unless we become concerned, guilty, or obsessive about them—or unless we confuse, or substitute, fantasy for reality. The following letter and response, one of many oddities sent to me via e-mail, bears relevance to the arena of sexual fantasies in particular:
I am a married middle-aged woman, fairly conservative in my thinking and sexual activity with my husband. I'm concerned about a fantasy I've been having, about being forced into having sex with several men at the same time. This would be horrifying if it ever happened in real life, but in my fantasy, it's a really powerful turn-on. Is this normal?
Concerned.
Dear Concerned:
There is no such thing as a wrong fantasy. If you are finding pleasure in a forced sex fantasy (and many women do), it does not mean you actually want to participate in this activity. Many women write scenarios in their minds to create an erotic mood leading toward orgasm. Whether yours involves group forced sex, a football team, or just the coach, know that whatever is turning you on is O.K. Fantasy is a healthy way to exercise your erotic imagination. The more comfortable you are with your erotic side, the better your sex life.
The preceding concern and response only point out how we mistake fantasies for behavior, then feel concerned whether we are normal (as if being normal made us safe and virtuous). Behaviors can certainly become aberrant, perverse, inappropriate, or even harmful, but in the realm of fantasy, anything goes. Those of us who judge our own or others' fantasies as wrong need to look closely at where that idea came from and whether it holds up under close examination.
of all the sexual aberrations, perhaps the most peculiar is chastity.
—Remy de Gourmont
Even when we recognize our sexual secrets, achieving an enlightened sexual balance may be difficult simply because we have certain inborn tendencies. In the arena of conduct and morality many of us lean more toward either a puritanical or hedonistic disposition—toward self-denial or self-indulgence. Until we find balance in this arena, sexual enlightenment remains out of reach.
The Puritan-Hedonist Dilemma
of all the dualities that exist within your mind, the puritan and hedonist seem to stand in most dramatic opposition. Yet neither is superior to the other.
Puritanism—the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.
—H. L. Mencken
If you lean toward puritan behavior, you sacrifice, work, deny pleasure for long-term goals, and are fastidious and moral; you go with the rules. You achieve health through effort, but you may not be much fun at parties—if you attend at all.
If you lean toward hedonistic behavior, you live for the moment, for the pleasure, and go with your impulses and tendencies. Your motto is “Life is short; eat dessert first.” You might say of puritans, “When they give up sex, meat, sugar, tobacco, alcohol, and dancing, they don't actually live longer—it just feels that way.”
Are you more of a hedonist or puritan? It is possible to be balanced in the sense of valuing both qualities in different situations. Reflecting on this question in relation to embracing your sexuality is the beginning of finding your balance. In the interest of that awareness, try the following exercise:
Role Playing: The Puritan/Hedonist Game
The following role-playing game, besides providing amusement, will help you clarify on which side of the puritan-hedonist scale you generally reside and will give you a chance to role-play the other side. You'll need a partner willing to spend four to five minutes doing the following:
• The Scenario: You and your friend are to imagine that you are walking through a residential neighborhood when someone calls to you from the upstairs window of a mansion and invites you both to a full-blown orgy in progress, replete with gorgeous, enthusiastic, fun-loving people. Upstairs you will find uninhibited, lusty people with little or no clothing on (you see some underwear fly out the upstairs window); you hear laughter, whoops, and moans of pleasure. Not only that, but they are enjoying the world's finest liqueurs, cigars, pastries, chocolates and other sweets, and every other sensory indulgence.
• You and your partner then discuss whether you should attend the orgy or not. (They want both of you to join in or neither. This ups the stakes for you to convince your partner of your viewpoint.)
• For about two minutes you play the role of a strict puritan, while your partner plays the role of a raving hedonist. Each of you have the job of convincing your partner of your views regarding whether or not to attend. Play your role to the hilt. Really get into it!
• After two minutes switch roles, again trying to convince one another of your perspectives.
Someone of a puritan disposition might raise the specter of AIDS or other venereal disease and invoke the rules of morality, health, and good judgment. Someone of more hedonist tendencies would certainly vow to practice safe sex while praising to the skies the virtues of passion, love, and fun. You will certainly come up with creative arguments on both sides.
This exercise gives you a good sense of which role you are more comfortable arguing. (If you tend to agree with your partner, you know where you stand.) Of course, you may be a hedonist in the sexual arena but a puritan in the arenas of food and health—or vice versa. In any case, insight brings illumination. The solution is to find a state of natural balance where you can relax into uninhibited (healthful) fun and sexual celebration at times and apply your self-discipline and will when appropriate.
In terms of your own sexual behaviors and values, do you behave more as a puritan or hedonist?
There are both healthy and unhealthy puritans and hedonists. If you appreciate your innate worth, you tend to be a healthy hedonist or a healthy puritan. If you are a healthy hedonist, you enjoy but do not abuse; you are open to pleasure and fun and savor the fruits of life. If you are a healthy puritan, you have learned to delay gratification, apply your strong work ethic to achieve goals, and believe in business before pleasure. As such, you are likely to reap the fruits of your labors and discipline; you are good to yourself in the long run and don't judge those who choose a hedonistic path. If you have a low sense of self-worth, you tend to be an unhealthy hedonist or an unhealthy puritan. If you are an unhealthy hedonist, you overindulge in food, promiscuous or indiscriminate, high-risk sexuality, alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs, and engage in self-destructive or ultimately debilitating activities. If you are an unhealthy puritan, you deny yourself the pleasures of life ( such as dancing, occasional desserts, an intimate, uninhibited sexual life with one's companion) and may be self-righteous about your own purity.
Some of us approach sexuality and pleasure in general like the country preacher who every time he made love to his wife thought about praying—and every time he was praying thought about making love to his wife. He never succeeded as a puritan or as a hedonist. (And God didn't know what the hell was going on.) This applies to most of us; very few indeed are complete pleasure-loving, guilt-free hedonists or totally disciplined, nonobsessive, nonfantasizing puritans. So the pendulum swings.
Awareness of your puritanical and hedonistic aspects helps you to balance and reconcile them. In doing so, and in finding a balance between self-indulgence and self-denial, you come closer to embracing your sexuality resolutely, lovingly, and responsibly. The answer to the perceived dilemmas of sexuality is not the either-or choice between flesh and spirit, but the healing embrace and integration of both. This takes you yet another step closer to completing the tenth gateway and practicing everyday enlightenment.
Unifying Flesh and Spirit: The Ultimate Sexual Practice
A culminating phase in our sexual evolution involves connecting your body and physical senses to your emotional and spiritual being. One method for this sexual union is the use of tantric practices.
Spiritualizing Sexuality—Connecting Genitals to the Heart
Most of us associate kung fu with the martial arts, but the words actually mean “skillful practice” and apply to any activity. Just so, many of us associate tantra solely with sexual techniques. But tantric practices are not limited to sexuality. Tantra involves an approach to spiritual practice that embraces vital life, sexuality, food, physical exercise, and all the senses in a sacred manner. Rather than practicing indulgence or denial, it teaches right and balanced use of sensory experience under the dominion of our higher selves
