Avoid Judgment - Just Be Mindful

A grown man kneels on the floor and screams as the whip of the Dominatrix slices through his skin. You can look at this scene and ask why in a normative fashion. Why would a grown man, a judge or a police chief with a family, reputation and a profession to risk, dare to succumb to these dark pleasures? Well, you can, but then you simply continue the same not-so-merry-go-around game that got him in this place to start with. Our ego is the institution that judges our dark desires, but is also the voice that whispers on a full moon night that kinky stuff like that is worth our while.

What we can do instead, we can ask more helpful questions. Why is pain equated with sexual pleasure? Why is there the desire of being beaten up by a surrogate mother figure? Why is there this dark energy floating around in the first place, ready to be expressed in a twisted sexual fashion? Mindfulness is the answer, not judgment. Simply observe! Who can say whether BDSM is the problem or the solution. Emotions need to flow, soul-lessons need to be learned. For some acting out the negative energy might be the way, for some re-channeling this energy, and for others quitting the job that caused the imbalance to start with.

When you look at the situation from a spiritual perspective then you naturally come to the conclusion not to engage in these practices. What use is it to re-activate the negative energy by expressing it one more time in a sexual way? BDSM is a power game. Someone in on top, someone is below. So the judge and the police chief are just recycling violent energy from their work that they have been unable to digest. What looks to be like an honorable and a much needed profession - Law, Law Enforcement, Army - is in fact a spiritual divination from the Way; yet, someone has to do it; and the people who do it need to find their way to deal with the negative energy.

We cannot say what the solution should be. Should they simply quit their profession to find peace of mind? Should someone else do their "dirty" job, that many would say is in fact an honorable and necessary one? Emotions have to be expressed to stay healthy. Perhaps the whole dimension of the problem can only be brought to the surface for some by sexually reliving the professional problem-statement. Isn't it better for all parties involved if they let off some steam rather than falling sick from the undefeated energy imbalance? No-one has the right to say what the solution should be. There is no right or wrong. There can only be observation of the turmoil inside, a contemplation of the question why it is happening in the first place, and an examination of what should be done about it. The heart knows what it wants, and the soul needs to live through what it set out to do.

Avoid judgment - mindfulness is the way.

What Should We Make of Pornography?

It takes courage to endure the sharp pains of self discovery, rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives. (Marianne Williamson)

The 50 Shades of Grey Series should be an eye-opener for anyone who condemns pornography and "perversion". The idea has gone mainstream, so there must be something the sexual theme of BDSM appeals to. If millions connect with it, can it still be a perversion? I remember sitting in a plane once, and a woman in a seat behind me remarked somewhat embarrassed to the woman sitting next to her as she glanced at her 50 Shades of Grey book, "Well, it is really just a love story."

I can't really comment on "The 50 Shades of Grey" as I have never read it, but I can comment on pornography as I have watched it. Like the 50 Shades of Grey it can add a little sparkle to the bedroom by jump-starting our sexual imagination, or it can be a stumbling block along our spiritual path; a "sinful" temptation that allures and we have no idea why.

I had an eye-opener on pornography a few years ago when someone shared a link to some very explicit sexual scenes in a spiritual community. It was titled "Sex is not the Enemy" and showed scenes of some attractive people who appeared to have simply fun having sex with each other and apparently did not mind at all sharing their pleasures with others. It was then that I first understood the core issue with porn, it is a guided trip down the pleasure lane, aiming to steer our lust in a targeted direction. The pornographic agenda rarely has love in mind. Free flowing sex on the other hand has no agenda whatsoever, and mostly, is a physical expression of love.

If you want to read a fair assessment of the pleasures and challenges with pornography, I would recommend "The Porn Report" by Alan McKee, Katherine Albury and Catherine Lumby who provide an overview of the distribution and usage of porn in Australia. The fact of the matter seems to be that porn viewership is widespread, many just want a little extra sparkle in the bedroom while for some, lust is steered into - what our spiritual community would call - a deviant direction.

Robert J. Stoller, M.D. has an astute observation in "Observing the Erotic Imagination" when he writes, "In perversion the desire to sin is essential for being turned on." That is indeed a very interesting problem statement. The purpose of pornography can be to break moral taboos. The sex addict ventures further and further down a road to nowhere just to keep the climax going. Expect pain along this road as the same institution that gets you exited about the pleasure trip - the ego - beats you up over it afterwards. Yet, as Marianne Williamson points out, if that activity is useful in the sense that it brings to the surface certain aspects that you have repressed before, who but you can say whether it is a hindrance or a help along the spiritual path.

A spiritual journey is quite simple really. It is all about falling in love with life and all the people in it. Shadow work is the opposite. It is about discovering why there is a lack of love in some areas of our life. And instead of just brushing it aside in the name of spirituality, we openly and honestly ask, so why exactly is that? Have a look at all the hidden symbols in pornography and try to understand why they appeal to you. Sex is not the enemy but the lack of love is. The problem statement is that this lack of love is hidden inside and it may be a good idea to bring the true cause out in the open until one day you are finally able to choose love every step of the way. 

Who Would Judge the Judge?

He is a well-respected judge and gets his job done with authority and ease. Most decisions come easy to him; he knows where to research, and sometimes just knows who to ask for advice. Sure, once in a blue moon he feels indecisive but after a little soul searching he just goes for the "right" decision, that is what others would consider to be the letter of the law. The community and the family adores him but what they don't know is that every other Saturday when they think he is at work, he in fact indulges in his fetish, a paid visit to Madame Noire who humiliates and tortures him for three hours straight. There was a time when he fought his dark passion but over the years he just accepted his occasional trip to the wild side. He is at peace with himself but hopes that his dark secret will never come out.

They say that a disproportionate number of bondage and humiliation fetishists are "men of power" like the judge in our example. The desire to submit sexually may just be the mirror image of the role he has to play in society, to define what is wrong or right even though truth may be a little different than the letter of the law imply. So what would you do if you were in his shoes? Should our judge exert more will-power to control himself, not stealing away from his family on a Saturday to have his steamy fun?  Isn't that what our spiritual community does, attacking the dark side, asking for more will-power to stay on the right path? Well, what is the right path anyway? Wouldn't our judge just fight the symptoms of his problem, leaving the root cause as is?

Think of your ego as your conscious 'I' and your so-called dark side as your subconscious counterpart. The stuff you don't want to accept on the surface will bubble below it until one day it erupts. Think of it as the suppressed "I" that screams at your well-crafted persona, "Hey, what about me? Deal with me and I will give you your energy back." The reader of this blog knows we are not ego basher; we want you to respect who you are. We just advise you to be aware of who you think you are; aware of the persona that you and society have created.

So you might say where exactly is the friction - the violation of the Tao - in the case of the judge? Spiritual truth is different from the letter of the law and that unfortunately is the uphill battle the judge has to fight against. We as a society force him to violate the spiritual laws and all he finds left to do is to - subconsciously, of course - set the record straight by getting humiliated. A Tao traveler would tell you that "criminals" who violate others are as much on an evil subconscious mission as someone who "accidentally" insures someone else in a car crash.  Yet our law would never quite see it that way.

A Tao traveler would also say that God created everyone equal. The idea that someone could judge others is intrinsically flawed. The judge consequently has to experience the yin and yang of this artificial hierarchal imbalance. J. Krishnamurti talked often about this concept. The fact that some professions such as police, army, judicial professions, etc. are intrinsically violent. Sure, our society values their efforts for the simple reason what we are not yet spiritually ready to live without them. Yet the problem statement remains. Whenever you deviate from the Tao you build up a spiritual and psychological imbalance that you have to dispose of in one way or another.

We claim that once you start looking for the friction in your life you will be able to make the proper adjustments. Life - the Tao - has a habit of encouraging you to express who you truly are. It can be hard work to let go of crusts that have formed over decades, but if you follow the signals of the Way they will slowly erode as you venture into a new direction. When you are shy, life may encourage you to be more outgoing; when you are risk-averse, the encouragement may be to be more entrepreneurial. While it is hard work to face life openly it is also very rewarding. There is fun, there is creative anxiety and there is a steady erosion of your dark outlets. You harness the energies of your demon in an authentic way when you show up for life. Both the angel and your demon will cheer you on as you venture in a new direction. We don't know what works for the judge, only he will know that. What we would emphasize however, no matter what his decision might turn out to be, who would dare to judge the judge?

By Christian and Su Zhen

Authentic Love and Authentic Power

I remember once a professor of moral philosophy asking, do we really have the right to look down on BDSM (the practice of sadomasochism)? After all, if one loves to get abused and the other is happy to abuse, who are we to judge them? Actually, I have a hunch that this is the direction that we as a society are taking anyway. Many of us "liberal" folks would say, well, if this is their notion of fun, so what. Some like it spicy and hot, some like it not.

Yet most spiritual travelers will also ask when it comes to BDSM, so where is the love in this stuff? That is certainly true, but where is the love in the stuff that we sometimes think,  sometimes say and sometimes do? Yet, we think what we think, we say what we say and we do what you do anyway. Even if we were to repress the dark stuff  in the name of spirituality, the negative energy wouldn't go away. It would just linger in the dark chambers of our being, ready to pop out once a blue moon. Fact of the matter is, we have to accept the yin and yang of life, the beauty as well as the perceived ugliness. We have to make our choices, have to let life define the notion we have of ourselves.

You may say, but what about self-improvement.  Sure, you can put yourself in a different environment. Sure, you can hang out with new friends, and sure you can learn to say more positive things. But understand as you are trying to become a better you, you naturally will violate something deep inside that minds what is going on. A  spiritual path is really a desire to be free and a desire to experience love wherever we are. Sure, you have the right to look for Heaven on earth, and you know what, you are sure to find it as well. Where there is a will, there always is a way. We even have a name for it - Tao. Life is designed to bring you home, back to the Source.

Yet, as sure as there is a Tao, as sure it is that you will stumble at times. You walk towards the light and your demon forces you to take a step back; you step out of the light and your angel encourages you to choose love instead. No matter what you to, the yin and yang of your soul will follow.

Taoism is this study of yin and yang. A step towards darkness is viewed as such, just as a step towards light is viewed as exactly that. A Tao master would state matter-of-factly that many of the the submission fetishists are people who use power excessively in their day-to-day operations. You find judges, police, business executives, college deans. So they just play out yin symbolically in their sex lives to compensate for all the yang that happens  in their day to day activities. You may find that repulsive, but it  is as it is.

Walking the Tao sets you up for the optimal experience of love and spiritual maturity. Be mindful of everything you do, say, react to, in the same way as you observe everything that is going on in your environment. Monitor but judge not. Let the yin and yang of psychology unfold to the fullest moment by moment so that you will be free of conflicting energies when you come home at night. Draw the sword once in a while when it is necessary and push back when you face unreasonable demands. Don't wish to be good, figure out a way of living that allows you to be good! I have no advice to give you how you should live your life, I just claim that authentic power and authentic love are always at your disposal. Empower yourself and enjoy the love that always surrounds you.

Observing the Thrill to Sin

When it comes to fetishes there is no telling what turns people on. Consider this fantasy, an eighty year old scientist pictures himself finding the Nobel prize award in his letter box. This thought fills him with an incredible adrenaline rush and he masturbates to the idea. You find this result and hundreds of others in Brett Kahr's book "Who has been sleeping in your head?"  You find sexual fantasies as straight-forward ego outlets. In the case of the retired scientist, the fantasized professional award is the  feeling of power and intellectual recognition that his ego gets excited about as he masturbates.

Not that there is anything wrong with that. We always say the homecoming process starts with acknowledging and understanding the "I". We already know from Freud that the sex drive is an incredibly strong energy field. If you repress that in the name of spirituality, expect a few Freudian slips along the way. Perhaps we are a little wiser today than a century ago when Freud developed his theories. We probably no longer presume a "normal" when it comes to sex. Actually the survey results in Brett Kahr's book would suggest there is no normal sexual fantasy. The results were all over the place. You have the traditional  versions, a woman who just wants to have good sex with someone tall, dark and handsome. You have a few respondents who report they don't have any sexual fantasies, and you have the ones that are a little out of the ordinary, like the fantasy of the European scientist. And then you also find a few that many would find pretty extreme, like rape fantasies or other subjects that are kind of out there.

Brett Kahr is a psychoanalyst and he does a good job in explaining where some of these sexual fantasies are coming from. One theme became pretty clear in his book, for  people who have suffered sexual abuse or have experienced other traumas in their childhood, sexual fantasies can become a way to work through these painful events. That of course begs the question, can we actually look down on any of these so-called sexual perversions. If they are just a psychological outlet to come clean with the past, they can be welcomed as a part of the recovery process instead.

We have come a long way in tolerating all kind of sexual desires. Not to long ago homosexuality was called a perversion whereas today few would.  BDSM is  perhaps still considered by many as extreme, but with a little help of the romantic novels "50 Shades of Grey", even that lifestyle has become somewhat of a household name. So what if we have the desire to be bound and spanked a little. If you see your ego in action played out in a sexual fantasy you perhaps have a much better chance to be mindful of it.

We are spiritual writers, not psychoanalysts or sex researchers. So we would say that it is a fine line acknowledging and expressing the demands of the "I" without being taken on yet another ego trip in the name of sexual liberation. But then, who exactly determines whether sexual drives are consistent with our spiritual path or not. If we look down on our sexual fantasies, it's probably still the ego talking, only dressed up in holy clothes  beating up our "darker" desires. Perhaps this ego bashing is actually not helpful for us at all. Perhaps the guilt is standing in the way of expressing some repressed sexual energy that simply wants to come to the surface. So back and forth goes the war inside without ever resolving anything in the name of spirituality.

We advice you  to be mindful of everything you are thinking, feeling and doing; listen to all the voices in your head, and let all the emotions pop up without judgement and you will know what works for your spiritual path and what not. Listening to your fantasies, perhaps even expressing some of them physically might certainly be part of your self- discovery process.

The "hunger for more" can certainly be part of our sex life, you probably have already experienced it for yourself. Expressing this drive is a road to nowhere and the sooner you jump of this train, the better off you will be. Our spiritual community has written about this restlessness already many millennia ago. The hunger for more can be found everywhere: more money, more status, more lovers, more extreme sexual experiences; you fill in the blanks. Just as we are able to observe a divine origin in us, the ability to love, a state of innocence,  the ability to be absolutely still, the experience of connectedness and peace, we can observe the opposite force as well.

 In fact, there is a "thrill" of going in the opposite direction of spirituality, especially when it comes to sex.  The time when you zoom into body parts not people. Getting a high from watching or expressing erotic anger, or pushing the boundaries of what others would consider normal and sane. The spiritual community reminds us what you probably already know: stillness and love can be experienced and enjoyed forever, but lust will never be satisfied, no matter what we do.  Reading some of the more extreme responses in the surveys you definitely wonder whether Robert J. Stoller was onto something when he developed the idea of the " thrill to sin"  in "Observing the Erotic Imagination". He claimed that in sexual perversion the excitement really comes from the notion of sinning.  So the "perverse mind" gets a kick out of imagining or practicing stuff that others consider taboo.

When you think about it, it is very hard to tell what exactly is sexually arousing. Your blood is rushing through your veins, your heart is beating fast, the hormones are circulating.  The chemicals in your brain go into overdrive.  Could the initial kick be stress related, but you mistake the physical symptoms as sexual arousal? The initial stress is related to push the boundaries, in doing something others would find revolting. But you cannot tell what is cause and what is effect. And in the end you don't care, either, all you know us that you are turned on and that you like the thrill ride.

There actually was an interesting psychological study done to illustrate this point. An attractive reporter interviewed two groups of men in a city as well as on a small bridge in a high altitude and gave them afterwards her phone number with the interaction to call her with any follow-up questions. It turned out that a significantly  larger number of men did the follow-up call of the group  interviewed in high altitude. Apparently they mistook their fear of heights with sexual arousal!

So where does that leave us with? Walking the Tao is never about right or wrong, it is about studying the yin and yang that lies behind everything. Who can say what sex practices and fantasies are healthy outlets of our whole being and which ones are knocking us off our spiritual path. Each spiritual path traveler has to make that call for herself. Perhaps one signpost could be stability, the absence of restlessness. The above quoted European scientist claimed that he had masturbated to the same fantasy for decades, so chances are one day he will just grow tired of it. In the "thrill to sin" the boundaries always have to stretched otherwise the experience will get boring. It is also highly addictive  because that is how the hunger for more always works. When you observe this restlessness inside there is really only one practical solution: get off the treadmill and there will be peace.