Please Log in to Vote.

0 out of 0 members found this useful.

more on integrating

Posted May 11th, 2011 by Laura Wittke in Sex & Spirit

What do you think an Integral love/sexual relationship would be like? What would make it integral? An understanding of the interior and exterior, the "I", the "Thou/You", the "We", taking place in both parties? A Lower Left connection ABOUT the upper left, upper right, and lower left as well as the Lower Left?

David Schnarch, the sex/marital therapist, foreshadowed Integral Theory in terms of relationships in his book "Constructing the Sexual Crucible" published in 1991. He did not know it, but his chapter on Sexuality and Spirituality attempted to address some of these very questions. He used the stage theorists Loevinger and Fowler to help explore what a more evolved love/sex relationship might look like. He talks a lot about differentiation as key to this evolution.

Here is how he presents differentiation first:

  • the ability to maintain one's sense of separate self in close proximity to a partner;
  • noneactivity to other people's reactivity;
  • self-regulation of emotionality so that judgement can be used;
  • the ability to tolerate pain for growth

(p.114, Constructing the Sexual Crucible)

How do you think this relates to love and sex? How does it relate to spirituality?

Next post will be about intimacy - how we define it, and how it relates to all the above. Please jump in dear integralists!

 

 

Please Log in to Vote.

1 out of 1 members found this useful.

here's what works for me…

Posted May 12th, 2011 by Charles Bowling

Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE

Hi Laura,

Frankly I can't make much sense out of the bullet points you have posted, although taken in their original context there may be more to themt than what meets the eye.

Integrally informed relationships, especially those of the romantic/sexual variety, do not arise in a vacuum. They are deeply enmeshed in a social/cultural milieu, much of which does not and will not support their formation and maintenance. Even a brief overview of how cultures denigrate the feminine (in both males and females) shows an absence of fertile ground.

This means that persons who are inclined to engage with each other in romantic/sexual union are left pretty much on their own; and if they are to continue they'll need to somehow transcend these initial and other difficulties (including marriage and parenting).

Along the way they may find it useful to look upon their relationship (the we-space they create) as an entity, a creature whose unique capacities are directly tied to their own unique potentials. It's possible to map these potentials, but the map is not the territory.

Their best chance for embodiment of a true sense of Eros is tied to the unfoldment of each of them. These chances are enhanced if they each are vibrating at second tier rather than first. One important way to look at the difference between these two tiers is through the lens of gifting; where at second tier it's much more likely to be able to give freely, with no sense of reward or obligation. Where it first tier by contrast, gifts to the other tend to be conditional and tied to some sense of usually hidden or unspoken psycho-sexual deficiency.

Now all this sounds theoretical, but gifting turns out to be central to a realization of their union. Generally speaking he offers a gift, (maybe something small, a smile, a nod, a wink, whatever) she responds, not just in kind, but with a sense of invitation. This provides the basis for an escalation in gifting. He gives to she, she gives to he, establishing a pattern including the possibility of a reciprocal rhythm. At some point, his reservoir of gifting is likely to reach a plateau -this makes room for a switch. Now she can initiate and he responds.

And if they continue to approach an ideal the pace of exchange will accelerate. It's possible that in their union they will enter an altered state, a place where the bonds to their gender identities -which are mostly culturally generated- loosen. If they continue, these bonds can be transcended. It's easy enough to tell when this happens, because there's no seeming distinction over whose penis is whose and whose vagina is whose (assuming heterosexual contact). At this point both inwardly and outwardly we have non-dual experience. Maybe this will be accompanied by a big bang or maybe not. In either case, the participants of this gifting ritual are unlikely to be depleted by the experience; rather they're likely to be energized.

This embodiment, this enactment, can be likened to a sort of mystery play, where the central figures are Spirit and Nature, and whose intertwining is both sublime and powerful, one result of which is the possibility of a bliss that strains the limits of description.

Warmly,

Charles

88W13'31" 41N54'51"