I should have read these words of Joseph Chilton Pearce instead of Nena and George O'Neill when my loins longed to wander. But alas they had not been written yet, and my consciousness was not ready to receive them. Added emphasis appears in red, and my reactions are enclosed in a box: (Note 96)

Shakti is one of the most descriptive words I know. It is the ancient Sanskrit word for the creative energy behind our universe. . . . According to yogic theory, creation springs from a polarity of conscious energy: a non-moving point, called Shiva from which all springs, and the creative energy emanating from Shiva, called Shakti. Shiva and Shakti are complementary - a single, indivisible consciousness, a Holomovement, in effect - but assume division in order to enact the play of consciousness. . . .

When a non-moving point and the creative energy reunite, The Intuitive Self manifests. The awareness in the moment of the Meditator in the World provides a non-moving point - the Shiva half of the complement. The Tai Chi Dancer's flowing connection with the four directions adds creative energy - the Shakti half of the complement. Together they are David Bohm's Holomovement.

Kundalini and sexuality develop at the same time. Sexuality is the highest, most subtle expression of our physical Shakti and the lowest, or most physical, aspect of our spiritual creative energy. Sexuality is a pivotal, transitional energy on which we swing from biological to post-biological development. . . .

Kundalini, sexuality's subtle twin, has the exact opposite as her goal: the realm of insight-intelligence, the Self. Kundalini's job is to wean us away from old attachment to the body and the world, and direct us toward our true goal, the spirit. These two energies, our sexual Shakti and Kundalini Shakti, . . . They are designed to cooperate through bonding, and if that cooperation takes place, we have the best of both inner and outer worlds. . . .

The vertical arm of the cross challenges the Tai Chi Dancer to bond the realms of the imminent and transcendent. The balance ensures appropriate and considerate attention to physical and spiritual needs in personal expression. Had my Tai Chi Dancer been present, heart attention would have dissuaded my affairs.

Under the bonding power of the fourth chakra, pair-bond love is a manifestation of that love that sparked creation in the first place. True pair-bond love is a physical expression of the love of Shiva for Shakti, of God for his creation, the concretized form of love as an abstract, non-localized form. . . .

To the lover, love is spiritual. Each worships the other precisely as a devotee worships God, and rightly so. And in the earliest stage of this love there is only worship, awe, and wonder at the feet of an astonishing, shaking power. The power, whether recognized for what it is or not, is the power of the fourth chakra. . . .

My open marriage was lopsided toward the physical. The spiritual dimension was not totally absent, but undeveloped and crude. Rather than coming from the heart chakra, the extra-marital relationships were driven by unresolved issues in the shadow and anima. I did not have the psychological maturity to recongize this at the time, and my therapist was too shallow to comprehend what was going on.

Were this state sustained and allowed to mature as it should (which is possible only through bonding), the specific, or physical, would be led to the generic, or subtle. At the appropriate stage the two lovers would shift into the heart chakra. Bonded with their own hearts, their outer bonds would reflect this inner power and give the stability needed for a successful family life. . . .

The extra-marital behavior significantly diminished family stability especially as experienced by my wife and daughter. All was done in the name of personal growth. After all, look at the riches I could bring back to my wife and family by expanding horizons - what an enormous crock of horse shit! An active Intuitive Self would have seen through this rationalization in a moment.

This pre-established bond with the model is what establishes Kundalini as the dominant energy over its twin, sexuality, from the beginning. This assures a proper balance between the two Shaktis, Kundalini and sexuality; a balance between immanence and transcendence, between body and spirit. Then a powerful sexual drive can unfold, a drive that is in balance with all needs, since sexuality will itself be bonded, pulled on into transcendence by that heart chakra. . . .

Sexuality would not be denied by the Tai Chi Dancer. Its needs would be balanced with the other members of the family and those affected beyond the family. But only a wounded heart could grasp that level of understanding. That wound had not come my way, but it would! Karma assured that.

Recall that attachment behavior is the attempt to incorporate a higher integral structure into a lower one, rather than allowing integration of the lower into the higher. Kundalini is a far more unrestricted and greater power than sexuality. Under the impetus of attachment behavior, Kundalini, when even partially incorporated into sexuality, seriously over-stimulates sexual energy without any of the necessary balance that only the power of the fourth chakra can bring about. . . .

The gonads took over. Attachment to the perceived benefits of extra-marital intimacies drove my needs. My family and lovers became the props and stage on which I acted out my drama of unresolved emotional issues from troubled relationships in the past.

Each of feels something tremendously important is supposed to happen with sexuality, and this is acutely so at adolescence. For a time the sheer excitement of the sexual venture holds us, but, stripped of its transcendent aspect, its bond with the fourth chakra, nothing beyond physical sensation happens. . . .

So we fill libraries with books on how to enhance this physical sensation, and we enter into a perpetual excess of rutting, searching for something that is supposed to happen and does not. The psychologist writes knowingly of the "post-coital blues" as though they were as natural as the "postpartum blues" of the violated and unbonded mother.

After each encounter, there would be a barely discernible emptiness. But it was not strong enough to really notice and certainly not strong enough to give me pause until I had gone on for quite some time. I am reminded once again of the lust for sex expressed by the "Give 'it' to me!" line from my "God Hunger" poem.

We look for the spiritual in the sexual with no notion of what we are looking for. And we do this under the compulsion of attachment behavior: We unconsciously treat our sexual partners as objects to be possessed (if only temporarily), on the one hand; and unconsciously expect from them a transcendent element they cannot possibly deliver, on the other. . . . The result is almost invariable - each member of the encounter sooner or later disappoints the other.

As later explorations with Tantra were to show, sexuality could be expressed without objectifying and with the hope of experiencing a taste of God. But my development had a long way to go before that level of understanding was achieved. After all was said and done, my partners and I were disappointments to each other. Intuitive sensitivity had lost out to rational insistence.


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