This World, a Boarding School?

I have no reason to believe that I existed before I was conceived in my mother's womb. 

I have no reason to believe that I am an eternal soul that chose to descend from "above", enter a human body, and have a human experience in order to learn an important lesson.

This world is not a boarding school that I attend for a while to learn a lesson and then leave to return to my true home up there somewhere. I'm not just a visitor here.

This world is my home. To this earth I belong. Every grain is my kin, a living universe of learning. It's far more than I could ever take in before to the earth I return. 

The Virtue of Faithlessness

Faiths are mental constructs, jigsaw puzzles of fictional ideas, buffers between us and reality. 

Dare to live a faithless life. 

Shed what you can of your mental construct, inherited from others, and live free.

Dismantle, piece by piece, the jigsaw puzzle of fictional ideas. Peek at reality on the other side.

Exercise the power you have, your innate virtue, to live face to face with reality, buffer free.

Dare to live naked, faithless, intimate with reality, and feel alive.

Contra Descartes

That I am a spirit means that I am spirited, alive. Spirit is that which makes me alive. Without spirit I would not be a living body. Without spirit I would not be a living mind. 

Spirit precedes body and mind because spirit is the life of both body and mind. By my spirit my body functions. By my spirit my mind produces thoughts and images. By spirit I am alive. 

Descartes declared, " I think, therefore I am."

Contra Descartes: I am spirited, therefore I live.

Knowledge and Belief or Wonder and Curiosity?

The previous posts raise a few of the questions we can ask about the great mysteries of life, death and sex. More important than answering the questions is allowing the questions to have their way with us. 

Let's not pretend to know the answers. Rather than knowledge we have beliefs. Wonder and curiosity are better. 

Wonder and curiosity trump knowledge and belief every time.

The Great Mystery of Sex, Part 3

For many sex involves physical pleasure: touching skin to skin, the firm embrace, the moment of penetration, the ride, orgasm, the physical desire fulfilled.

For others sex involves pain, even death (How does the Black Widow spider become a widow?) Why does physical passion go hand in hand with sex? Why are they linked?

For many sex involves intense emotions- fear, excitement, happiness, anger, guilt, shame, and sadness. Why are sex and intense emotions linked? 

Some recognize that sex is spirit-related. It's about life. It sustains life. Why are sex and the continuation of the living linked?

For a few sex is a devotional practice and the sexual embrace a sacred and magical act. Why? What's behind that?

The abundant pleasure, pain, and power of sex raises so many questions.

Why is life squirming in sex?

The purpose of asking questions is not to get answers. Behind our pretense, we do not know. Our questions are met with silence.

It is okay that our questions link with silence. It's okay that the answers remain secret and hidden.

It's okay to stop making up answers to fill the silent void in our mind and eclipse our wonder.

We can open ourselves to wonder and smile in the presence of the great mystery of sex.

The Great Mystery of Sex, Part 2

Why are the living, the spirited, "driven" to sex?

Some have sex with many others. Some have sex with only one for their whole adult life. Others have no sex at all. Why the variety of ways?

Why have some developed restrictions with regard to sex- who can have sex with whom, when and how? Are they about producing the best off-spring? Are they expressions of power? Fear?

How did we humans become so mentally and emotionally conflicted about something so natural as sex? What perpetuates our conflictedness?  How do we liberate  ourselves from it?

Many perform elaborate rituals before they join in sex- strutting, deferring, calling, cooing. Why?

Why do so many of the living have sex for reasons other than reproduction - for pleasure, comfort, bonding, distraction, escape, manipulation, or dominance? 

Has sex always been so complicated? Does it have to continue to be?

The Great Mystery of Sex, Part 1

What death takes sex gives: life.

Sex and spirit go together. Sex is spirited and sustains spirit. Sex sustains life. Sex affirms life. It celebrates life.

As you read this sex goes on all around.

Right now billions of the living are touching, stroking, sucking, mounting, penetrating, thrusting, clawing, biting, smacking, humping, riding, banging, panting, moaning, groaning, screaming, spewing, gushing, collapsing, gasping for air, relaxing and calming back down.

Members of the opposite sex writhe together. So do members of the same sex. Members of the same species join. So do members of different species. Some squirm alone, others in pairs, still others in groups.

By light of day and darkness of night, the living dance a wet and wild orgy.  No law or moral code constrains it.

Why all the slippery, messy sex? Why is it that sex sustains life rather than something else?

Why is it that sex and spirit, that which makes alive, intermingle?

Why are so many conflicted that they do?