http://www.care2.com/greenliving/the-spirituality-of-sex.html
The Spirituality of Sex
By Jurriaan Kamp and Tijn Touber
During the 10th and 11th centuries in the Indian town of Khajuraho a remarkable series of “sex temples” was built. Temples with the most explicit images of erotic encounters. All that in structures reaching up to God. Sex, it was thought, was the path to spirituality. The Khajuraho built their temples to exhibit the secret potential of sex to all.
During that same era, Western societies were doing everything they could to suppress sexuality and keep it behind closed doors. They lived for centuries without having a clue about the positive nature of sex. Taboos were used to restrain this tremendous, startling power. Sex was the night, sex was mysterious and dirty; something to be played out secretly in the dark.
Europe hit a turning point in the 1960s. Subjects that had been off limits for ages were suddenly opened up for discussion. For many this was a liberating breakthrough. Oppressed women found freedom. Homosexuals who had stayed “in the closet” for fear of public disapproval, no longer had to suppress their feelings. Then things started to move fast. Once the dams had burst, sex rushed from the darkness past the light and into the floodlights. Or rather, into the television lights. According to the new adage, everything had to be public and television producers were only to happy to go with the flow.
Now sex is everywhere. Increasingly explicit, in more and more programs on more and more channels. Nearly every television commercial, advertisement, billboard and music video makes an implicit reference to sex. The financial and moral barriers that kept prostitution and porn films out of the public eye have been eliminated by the arrival of so many commercial television channels and websites.
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21 comments
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Kabin
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why is this inappropriate?
Problems in a relationship should be dealt with by those involved and not blamed on outside influences. Those will always be there, sexual influences, ie media, free sex 60's error, beautiful people, whatever.
Those things don't matter so much when you desire that person's company in a relationship.
Fact, humans are sexual by nature. Fact, try to manipulate someone long enough and they will catch on and resent it.
You cannot make someone love you, you can make them marry you, you cannot make them love you. Face it.
If you have problems ask yourself why you are there. Truth will be revealed anyway. You cannot even fake physical aspect forever. Blaming/accusing/critizing someone being angry, arguing causing pain is a discredit to yours and their humanity & just squash their nature, damage human dignity.
Not righteous, no piece of paper makes it right. No wonder people want out or feel trapped. No surprise marriages/relationships falter, maybe things just did not work out, only they know the truth, are they willing to face those facts?
We are born here for a short life with purpose, I feel love is about being encouraged to grow, be awesome happy individuals who feel loved and trusted.
That is a relationship, desired by both.
In any relationship we should desire each others company, be excited, happy, gracious.
If not the case, look within not to others,or the world. Decide what is best, make things right, life is short. Be happy. peace love happiness.
send green star | flag as inappropriate
why is this inappropriate?
Problems in a relationship should be dealt with by those involved and not blamed on outside influences. Those will always be there, sexual influences, ie media, free sex 60's error, beautiful people, whatever.
Those things don't matter so much when you desire that person's company in a relationship.
Fact, humans are sexual by nature. Fact, try to manipulate someone long enough and they will catch on and resent it.
You cannot make someone love you, you can make them marry you, you cannot make them love you. Face it.
If you have problems ask yourself why you are there. Truth will be revealed anyway. You cannot even fake physical aspect forever. Blaming/accusing/critizing someone being angry, arguing causing pain is a discredit to yours and their humanity & just squash their nature, damage human dignity.
Not righteous, no piece of paper makes it right. No wonder people want out or feel trapped. No surprise marriages/relationships falter, maybe things just did not work out, only they know the truth, are they willing to face those facts?
We are born here for a short life with purpose, I feel love is about being encouraged to grow, be awesome happy individuals who feel loved and trusted.
That is a relationship, desired by both.
In any relationship we should desire each others company, be excited, happy, gracious.
If not the case, look within not to others,or the world. Decide what is best, make things right, life is short. Be happy. peace love happiness.
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why is this inappropriate?
I think this was a really good article; an eye opener for some; debatable topics for others...all in all an article which will no doubt evoke / continue to evoke response.
Bottom Line: it felt right and made sense...it hit home
Thanks!
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congratulations! it was an interesting and different article.Thank you.
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Your high minded and ethical approach would seem to fall below the horizon of diversity. Men and men; women and women have -- often by design -- spiritual loves first that then become life bonding intimacy. My nature as a gay man is to merge with a hu-man partner and emerge as two or three shared identities...combinations and compromises that I never considered possible until we mastered each other and our selves. As a legally married couple, we care and share deeply ... even touching each other's birth religions and cultural teaching. We seek spiritual connection and physical happiness. Why should we be absent from your abstractions?
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I am a 76-year-old male retired psychologist. I dealt with both genders for over forty years. The number of people I dealt with in private practice, institutions, schools, and universities is unrecorded but I can estimate it to be many thousands. Early on, I began to form the opinion that the human being is extraordinarily plastic, capable of being and behaving in a vast variety of different ways. I inferred from observations of people over decades that most remained rather constant over time but that these were people who remained in the same or similar environments. Of those whose environments changed dramatically, their way of being and behaving also changed dramatically and for those who did not change with the changed environment their tenure in the change was short-lived. Reflecting on my many encounters with people who confided in me about their sexual behavior and preferences, I concluded that the human has the potential to form a wide variety of close relationships with a wide variety of types of other people and that they can derive sexual pleasure from anything that can stimulate their sex organs. Circumstances are a significant determinative factor. Cultures, periods of history, religion, life circumstances, and so many other external factors can shape proclivities and temporary alterations. Over the last almost sixty years, I have also noticed that psychological 'conclusions' tend to trend with the vogue. I would caution psychologists who write for the
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What ever GOD gave us naturaly is GOOD,it is up to us to maintain it.Wonderful article.
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Delightful article, reminds us that these are things we should know in the first place before advancing into any relationship. Well written, insightful, poignant.
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Sex is a bodily function the art of love making is unity of the spirit, soul, mind and body. To have senseless sex just to scratch the itch is pointless as it leaves you less satisfied. The effort of making love so completely is pure love and highs so far out into the universe that no amount of just f---ing will ever replace. So fall in love commit embrace, give and receive but lay it all out there, because when you do connect it is like nothing else in the world, so cosmic.
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