From: karenm@yenta.alb.nm.us (Karen Millar)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage
Subject: Sexuality & Religion
Keywords: tagi reply
Date: 7 Oct 92 00:09:22 GMT
Organization: yenta unix pc, rio rancho, nm



In talk.religion.newage, Tagi@cup.portal.com writes:

>As was more apparent later in your post, I think that you posit the
>separation of body/mind/spirit which is quite Christian in origin.  You
>also seem to accept a definition for 'spiritual' which is novel, yet
>traditional in some senses.   I'm not using 'Christian' like a 'bad word'
>here.  I consider myself Christian in many senses.  I don't feel like
>the material or attitude is representative of very many Eastern traditions,
>which (in soc.religion.eastern) is where this thread began, but I'm far
>from an expert on Eastern things.  Then again, your name indicates a
>Euro-American upbringing, so I guess I assumed some things about you.
>Please correct me if I'm off-base.

Hmmm... I dont intend to indicate that the body/mind/spirit are separate
at this time, but just as parts of a whole. I think that the spirit 
creates the body/mind, although as far as the details are concerned
I dont know, and am open to discussion thats for sure... hehe European,
yup... Strandberg is the name I was born with, and its Swedish, with 
a little English, French and Sioux thrown in, just for your info. :-)
Yeah, I guess that I tend to take bits and pieces from diverse areas
and congeal them into a belief system that seems to be working for me.

(referring to sexuality and spirituality being different things:)
>Later on here it seems you do.  Certain TYPES of sexuality are NOT
>spiritual, you say.  I encourage you to more explicitly define for me
>what you mean by 'spiritual'.  Thanks.

Well, maybe all of life and all of experience is spiritual, in the 
sense that you are talking about it... I take the tack that some 
things that "further" one on a path (apparently, in the conscious mind)
are more spiritual than those that apparently dont, but this could
be false. One certainly learns from ones mistakes as well if not better,
than ones easy flowing times... I guess the net of it is that I am
tacking on the qualifier "advancing" and making a judgement about it.

>Also, I question the accuracy of that 'old adage' that 'we each create
>our own reality', especially if you mean by that some conscious direction.

I believe that we create our own reality whether we do it consciously
or unconsciously, and I tend to want to do it consciously, but that 
may be egotistic of me, and thus affect the outcome as well. I used the
term old adage in a facitious way, in that I dont think its particularly
old at all.

>Response:

>'Real' behavior or experience?  As opposed to what?  Abstract?  Perhaps
>you intend to mean 'concrete' here?  I was speaking in terms of personal
>experience/behavior (i.e. one's subjective experience of the world as
>it happens - this may not look like much from the outside, however).

>I don't seek out people with whom to 'have sex'.  I take 'sex' to be a

Ahhhh.... and why not?? 

>much deeper thing than simply physical intimacy.  For me, sex begins and

ahhhh... but to many physical intimacy is what sex "IS"... and then I 
ask, if you do not seek out people to have sex with, then it looks to
me like a discernment has been made by you, one that I would definitely
concur with; I only seek to get closer to certain people through sex,
in that it is a deeper sharing of our individual selves. I only do
this with a very few. 

>ends with life.  Each interaction with another is in some way sexual. We
>learn to isolate one aspect of this and consider it 'sex' because then we
>we can feel more comfortable about our lives.  'Sex' is such a horrid taboo
>in modern Western culture that Madison Avenue can yank us all around
>by our sex-glands and induce mass-purchasing using naked bodies.  

Hehehe... yes sex is defined as being "insert tab A into slot B" or
other reasonable facimiles... but the energy between people is also
sexual as far as I am concerned... as well as many aspects of our
interactions... most in fact, as you point out.

>To 'define myself more succinctly' would be to lose much of what I was
>saying.  It concerns one's experience of the world.  You stated that
>you thought people naturally sought out people who had 'similar paths'
>or 'were on similar places in their path' as they 'progressed'.  I only
>questioned the accuracy of this because my experience is one of 
>unification of seeming opposites.  
> ...
>Let me give an example.  My Abyss (lover), Lisa, is UNlike me in very
>many ways.  She likes to interact with lots of people directly, I often
>only do so via computer; she frequents the outdoors, I tend to stay at
>home inside; she tends to work out personal issues by engaging emotion
>directly, I was taught that emotions are dangerous and tend toward
>intellectualizing them so as to detach and examine them carefully.  We
>are in many ways on opposite poles, yet we share many values (of self-
>exploration, of honesty, of communication, and more).  

Hmmm... she sounds like my kind of person, but here I must say that 
I have found very few who are my kind of person and yet are on a 
path of any kind... these deep rooted values you speak of are the 
kinds of things that I am talking about when I speak of similar
paths or places on the path. If she didnt believe that she needed to 
explore herself, for instance, and/or if she thought that any kind
of religion or way of life leading to or including spirituality
was bunk from the word go... you would have a person who was not
on the same path or level as you. This is what I was talking about.

>BECAUSE we are so different we have much to learn from one another.  There
>are definite areas of agreement and some very firm commonalities which
>provide for our interaction, yet on the whole we can be seen as coming
>from two very different places and are more like 'two ships passing'
>(and perhaps merging for a time) than 'two birds flying South for the
>Winter'.  I hope I've made myself more clear.

Yes, but these are temporal things in my assesment... she likes the 
outdoors, etc., she lives her emotion in the moment... these are
personality differences, and to me are not the deeply rooted value
differences, or soul differences that I meant.

>The word 'sacrifice' literally means 'to make sacred'.  It has come to
>be used to indicate denial of oneself (through personal or property
>restriction) as some form of 'worship'.  I agree with you here that
>sex has been denied and repressed through guilt and other social
>mechanisms.  It has been a very effective means of depersonalization
>and disenfranchizement.  Those who are without their personal power
>are easier to manipulate.

Well, thats not the way it is used in the United States these days...
I was not hitting the dictionary for the origins of all the words
I used, so your response was somewhat unexpected. hehe

>I realize this and am attempting to understand ...
>1) The value of labelling anything 'bad' or 'wrong'   and

What if I just say that something "does not forward one" as in the
I Ching...?? 

>2) What is the problem with impersonal sexuality?

Hmmm... I dunno... I must say that I've done it a few times and
was happy about it, but there are probably more times that I have 
not been happy with it.

For now... hugs and good\\\\ warm wishes...

Karen.


-- 
    Love is the answer...
	Communication Facilities Designer
	Freelance in the Land of Enchantment              Albuquerque, NM
	karenm@yenta.alb.nm.us                             (505) 266-8659
Newsgroups: talk.religion.newage