“Sex is a form of emotional reassurance, a narcotic to still the pain of the bruised soul. If life batters them, then sex, like drugs or work, may numb the wound. the sexual act offers a momentary transcendence. Orgasm can be an ecstatic experience; for the moment one may feel outside the iron confines of ordinary consciousness. It is the closest that many men ever come to a religious experience. Thus the act of sex may mask a desperate search for acceptance, underneath which lurks the mother complex. This is ultimately a destructive game. Sex as loving, sex as conversing, sex as dialectic, all presuppose an equal partner. Sex as redemption distorts the relationship and allows entry to the Saturnian shadow of power. When Saturn is present, nothing is really fun, luminescent or transforming.”

“Sex, in particular, is given too much importance, for through it men seek to overcome their isolation from their feeling state and from their own body. They ask the Other to reconnect them and to reassure them before the dawn brings new battering. This makes them as vulnerable and dependent as before. As humans must hate those upon whom they depend, so tension and animosity grow, and eros is replaced by the shadow of power.”

~ James Hollis, ‘Under Saturn’s Shadow – The Wounding and Healing of Men’

Photography by Unknown

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What is transparency in relationships?

Transparency means to be open, honest and truthful.In the context of relationships, it is vital to the evolution of the partnership. It shows trust in our partners and our ability to be vulnerable and let someone in to what we are experiencing. Without transparency, there is no sharing and it shuts down growth.

Lack of transparency or openness can cause issues in relationships. Deflection can occur which gets us nowhere and keeps us trapped in a never ending cycle. Keeping someone in the dark and treating them like they have no right to care or to information breaks down communication and leads to the erosion of the partnership.

Why is transparency in relationships so important?

Transparency is important as it sets the depths in which the partnership is able to penetrate. If there is constant deflection, avoidance, excuses, or games there is no way to move deeper. Trust is broken. Communication becomes impossible. The party that is being deflected stops trying. Intimacy is shut down. It closes doors and builds walls. The relationship is effectively frozen.

Relationships are never easy, but they are built for two. If you’re constantly having to beg for someone to let you in, it’s time to walk away. Yes, sometimes we have to spend time alone to figure things out or deal with things. It’s important to have space in relationships in order to figure that out. But if someone is always leaving you in the dark or deflecting when you try to reach out, you need to decide if this is the kind of relationship that really nourishes you. Open, honest communication is vital for the continuation and expansion of relationships. Without this cornerstone, the pillars crumble. The more we open, the deeper we are able to go.

The truth is some people are happy in the shallow end of the relationship stream.

They don’t want to travel the intricate levels of the spirit. They don’t want to open up or have a soul deep connection. And no matter how hard you try to pry them open, you can’t. The important thing in these situations is to acknowledge your own need for greater depth and move on to something that provides that. You deserve someone who is open and willing to let you in. Life is too short to spend begging for someone to open up to you.

~ Ara Campbell

Photography: ‘White Gauze’ by Robert Mapplethorpe

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“If we think that other people can do us good, we will also think the opposite, that they can do us harm. It is an esoteric principle that neither is true. It is a subtle form of idol worship to think that anyone of himself does anything good or bad for us. However, others can be channels for our good.

Genuine fulfillment arises from within yourself. To feel alive only when we are with another person is false vitality, which we fear losing with the loss of the other. By extinguishing that part of us which feels alive only when with another is to live truly.

I want to give you a profound principle which, when absorbed, enables you to live as you like with other people.

You cannot establish a solid and satisfying relationship with another through human devices, such as gifts, promises, persuasions, threats, flatteries. You might temporarily get what you want, but the relationship will not be a happy one, and it will most likely break up.

Satisfying relationships can exist only between people who are more or less on the same high level of psychic maturity. They can enjoyably exchange endless benefits with each other on the psychic level, such as love and understanding. They can, also, without tension, enjoy all the benefits of the human and physical level, like conversation, companionship, sex. But two people on a low level of maturity can only anxiously exchange gifts on the human level, for that is all they have.

This leads us right back to the same conclusion: Raise your own level of psychic understanding, of mental maturity. Then you automatically attract people on your new level and with them you can have happy relations.”

~ Vernon Howard, The Mystic Path to Cosmic Power

Art: ‘Electric Love’ by Android Jones

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First, the nature of activity and the hidden currents in it have to be understood, otherwise no relaxation is possible. Even if you want to relax, it will be impossible if you have not observed, watched, realized, the nature of your activity, because activity is not a simple phenomenon.

Many people would like to relax, but they cannot relax. Relaxation is like a flowering: you cannot force it. You have to understand the whole phenomenon – why you are so active, why so much occupation with activity, why you are obsessed with it.

Remember two words: one is ”action,” another is ”activity.” 

Action is not activity; activity is not action.

Their natures are diametrically opposite. Action is when the situation demands it, you act, you respond. Activity is when the situation doesn’t matter, it is not a response; you are so restless within that the situation is just an excuse to be active.

Action comes out of a silent mind – it is the most beautiful thing in the world. Activity comes out of a restless mind – it is the ugliest. Action is when it has a relevance; activity is irrelevant. Action is “moment to moment, spontaneous; activity is loaded with the past. It is not a response to the present moment, rather, it is pouring your restlessness, which you have been carrying from the past, into the present. Action is creative. Activity is very very destructive – it destroys you, it destroys others.

~ Osho “Tantra. The Supreme Understanding”

Photography “Webs of rope” by Garth Knight

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“A soul connection is a resonance between two people who respond to the essential beauty of each other’s individual natures, behind their facades, and who connect on this deeper level. This kind of mutual recognition provides the catalyst for a potent alchemy. It is a sacred alliance whose purpose is to help both partners discover and realize their deepest potentials. While a heart connection lets us appreciate those we love just as they are, a soul connection opens up a further dimension — seeing and loving them for who they could be, and for who we could become under their influence. This means recognizing that we both have an important part to play in helping each other become more fully who we are… A soul connection not only inspires us to expand, but also forces us to confront whatever stands in the way of that expansion.”  

~ John Welwood

Photography by Unknown

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People only pretend the game of love, they don’t go into it. They keep a distance from any deep commitment, from any total involvement, because if you really go very close in the world of love, the flame of love is going to burn your ego.

People love – at least they pretend, they believe that they love – because life without love is meaningless. If they don’t love life is meaningless; if they really love the ego disappears. Hence they make a compromise: they go only so far. They don’t go to the deepest core of it, they only touch the surface. They cannot remain without it; without it they are utterly futile. Then life is a desert with no significance, no song. Then life is utterly futile – you only vegetate, you don’t really love, you don’t really live. Loving and living are synonymous.

So people have to at least play the game of love; that keeps them involved. But they don’t really go into it. They keep out of it, because if they really go into it then the ego disappears. Then they are no more, then God is.

The experience of orgasm, of deep orgasmic joy, is the first experience of God. God comes when two lovers meet and merge into each other. When two are no more two, when that union happens, God penetrates you. Then the beyond comes to the earth, the sky meets the earth.

But rarely are you in an orgasmic unity; rarely are you so much in tune with the other that you are ready to sacrifice your ego. In fact, you go on doing the contrary: your love is also an ornament for your ego; your love is also a new treasure to strengthen the ego, to gratify the ego. Rather than destroying it, your games about love go on nourishing. But, the love can only give you glimpses. If you allow the ego to disappear, love will make you available to something of the unknown.

~ Osho

Photography: Lana Sutra by Erik Ravelo for Benetton

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*

The supramental vision is a global vision. The mind dissects little fragments and opposes them to one another. The overmind connects everything with a single beam, but its beam terminates in a single point, and it sees everything from its own particular point of view; it is unitary and universal either by way of excluding all other perspectives or else by annexing them. The Supramental, or Supermind, sees not only the whole of things and beings within a single vision, connecting all the beams together without opposing anything, but it also sees the point of view of each separate thing, each being, each force; it is an all-encompassing view that does not terminate in a single, central point but in myriads of points.

*

The Supramental is, above all, a power – a stupendous power. It is the direct power of the Spirit in Matter. All consciousness is power, and the higher we ascend, the greater the power, but also the farther away we are from the earth. Thus if we wish to apply our overmental power, say, to the affairs of this world, it must be brought down from one level to another and overcome the determinisms of all the intermediary levels before it can reach the depths, Matter. Finally, there remains only a dulled and weakened overmental reflection, which must then fight against more and more heavy and rebellious determinisms. This is why the spiritualists have never been able to transform life. The Supramental is the supreme Consciousness-Force in the very heart of Matter, without any intermediary. It is the “sun in the darkness” of the Veda, the meeting place of the highest Heights and the deepest Depths. Therefore it can change everything. As the Mother has said, “The true change of consciousness is one that will change the physical conditions in the world and make it into a entirely experience only; it has to go inward in order to change the outward. This aspect of “force” or “power” of consciousness is represented in India by the eternal Mother. Without Consciousness there is no Force, and without Force there is no creation – He and She, two in one, Evolution is new creation.”

*

The supramental consciousness, on the contrary, does not try to know or to decipher what it must do or not do; it is perfectly silent and still, living each second of time spontaneously, unconcerned by the future; then at each second, the exact required knowledge falls like a droplet of light in the silence of the consciousness: “This has to be done, that has to be said, or seen, or understood.”

*

The supramental action does not work wonders with flashes of lightning; it is as quiet as eternity, impelling the world and each thing in the world toward its own perfection through all the masks of imperfection. The true miracle is to do no violence to things, to impel them secretly, almost surreptitiously, toward their own center, so that deep within they may recognize the Face as their own face. There is but one miracle: the instant of recognition that nothing, any longer, is “other.” 

~ Satprem, Sri Aurobindo or the Adventures of Consciousness

Art: The Awakening, 2016, by Mear One

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The Heroine’s Journey begins with an Initial Separation from feminine values, seeking recognition and success in a patriarchal culture, experiencing spiritual death, and turning inward to reclaim the power and spirit of the sacred feminine. The final stages involve an acknowledgement of the union and power of one’s dual nature for the benefit of all humankind (Murdock, 1990, pp. 4-11). Drawing upon cultural myths, Murdock illustrates an alternative journey model to that of patriarchal hegemony. It has become a template for novelists and screenwriters, shining a light on twentieth-century feminist literature.

The Heroine’s Journey is based on the experience of fathers’ daughters who have idealised, identified with, and allied themselves closely with their fathers or the dominant masculine culture. This comes at the cost of devaluing their personal mothers and denigrating values of the female culture. This occurs for both men and women if not on a personal level, then certainly on a collective level. If the feminine is seen as negative, powerless or manipulative the child may reject those qualities she associates with the feminine, including positive qualities such as nurturing, intuition, emotional expressiveness, creativity and spirituality. On a cultural level, the Separation from the Feminine results from a reaction to images of the feminine presented by the media that are impossible to identify with or because of a lack of feminine imagery in religion.

Gods and goddesses are often seen as diverse ways of being in the world and the ancient goddess Athena symbolises the second stage of the Heroine’s Journey. This Greek goddess of civilization sprang full grown from the head of her father, Zeus. Her mother Metis had been swallowed whole by Zeus, thus depriving Athena of a relationship with her mother. This stage involves an Identification with the Masculine, but not one’s inner personal masculinity. Rather, it is the outer patriarchal masculine whose driving force is power. An individual in a patriarchal society is driven to seek control over themselves and others in an inhuman desire for perfection.

The young girl may see men and the male world as adult and becomes identified with her inner masculine voice, whether that is the voice of her father, god the father, the professional establishment, or the church. Unfortunately, masculine consciousness often tries to help the feminine to speak; it jumps in, interrupts, and takes over, not waiting for her body to know its truth.

The next stage, like the hero’s journey, is the Road of Trials where the focus is on the tasks necessary for ego development. In the outer world, the heroine goes through the same hoops as the hero to achieve success. Everything is geared to climbing the academic or corporate ladder, achieving prestige, position and financial equity, and feeling powerful in the world.

However, in the inner world, her task involves overcoming the myths of dependency, female inferiority or deficit thinking, and romantic love. Many females have been encouraged to be dependent, to disregard their needs for another’s love, to protect another from their success and autonomy.

We live in a society dominated by a masculine perspective where the feminine is perceived as less than the masculine. The Mother Tongue, the language of experience and body knowing is not seen as valid as the Father tongue, the language of analysis. In some families, cultures and religions, being born in a female body is second rate; the female child has therefore failed from the beginning and is marked psychologically as inferior solely because of her gender. In this century the foremost moral issue, from third world countries to the leading world powers, is the abuse and oppression of women and girls around the globe.

The myth of romantic love is that the other will complete her life whether the other is a husband, lover, son, ideology, political party or spiritual sect. The attitude here is that the “other” will actualise her destiny. This stage is symbolised by the myth of Eros and Psyche.

The first part of the heroine’s journey is propelled by the mind and the second part is in response to the heart. The heroine has been working on the developmental tasks necessary to be an adult, to individuate from her parents, and to establish her identity in the outer world. However, even though she has achieved her hard-earned goals, she may experience a sense of Spiritual Aridity. Her river of creativity has dried up and she begins to ask, “What have I lost in this heroic quest?” She has achieved everything she set out to do, but it has come at great sacrifice to her soul. Her relationship with her inner world is estranged. She feels oppressed but doesn’t understand the source of her victimisation.

At this stage, she is afraid to look into the depths of herself and clings instead to past patterns of behavior, old relationships, and a familiar life style. There’s a fear of saying “no” and holding the tension of not knowing what’s next. In Leaving My Father’s House, Jungian analyst Marion Woodman (1992) writes, “It takes a strong ego to hold the darkness, wait, hold the tension, waiting for we know not what. But if we can hold long enough, a tiny light is conceived in the dark unconscious, and if we can wait and hold, in its own time it will be born in its full radiance. The ego then has to be loving enough to receive the gift and nourish it with the best food that new life may eventually transform the whole personality” (p. 115).

At this point, the heroine is faced with a Descent or dark night of the soul, a time of major de-structuring and dismemberment. A descent brings sadness, grief, a feeling of being unfocused and undirected. What usually throws a person into a descent is leaving home, separating from one’s parents, the death of a child, lover or spouse, the loss of identity with a particular role, a serious physical or mental illness, an addiction, the midlife transition, divorce, ageing, or loss of community. The descent may take weeks, month, years, and cannot be rushed because the heroine is reclaiming not only parts of herself, but also the lost soul of the culture. The task here is to reclaim the discarded parts of the self that were split off in the original separation from the feminine – parts that have been ignored, devalued, and repressed, words and feelings swallowed in her quest for success.

Dismemberment and renewal is a key feature of the ancient Sumerian myth of Inanna and Ereshkigal. Inanna, the Queen of the Great Above, journeys to the Underworld to be with her sister Ereshkigal, the Queen of the Great Below. Ereshkigal’s consort has died and Inanna traverses seven thresholds and seven gates to be with her sister in her grief. At each gate she divests herself of symbols of her power. When she reaches the Underworld, Ereshkigal fixes her with the eye of death and hangs her on a peg to rot. Inanna sacrifices herself for the earth’s need for life and renewal. Her death and subsequent return to life predates Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection by three thousand years.

At this stage in the heroine’s journey, a woman seeks to reclaim a connection with the sacred feminine to better understand her own psyche. She may become involved in research about ancient goddess figures such as Inanna, Ereshkigal, Demeter, Persephone, Kali, or the Marian mysteries. There is an Urgent Yearning to reconnect with the Feminine and to heal the mother/daughter split that occurred with the initial rejection of the feminine. This may or may not involve a healing with one’s personal mother or daughter, but it usually involves grieving the separation from the feminine and reclaiming a connection to body wisdom, intuition and creativity.

The next stage involves Healing the Unrelated or Wounded Aspects of her Masculine Nature as the heroine takes back her negative projections on the men in her life. This involves identifying the parts of herself that have ignored her health and feelings, refused to accept her limits, told her to tough it out, and never let her rest. It also involves becoming aware of the positive aspects of her masculine nature that supports her desire to bring her images into fruition, helps her to speak her truth and own her authority.

The final stage of The Heroine’s Journey is the Sacred Marriage of the Masculine and Feminine, the hieros gamos. A woman remembers her true nature and accepts herself as she is, integrating both aspects of her nature. It is a moment of recognition, a kind of remembering of that which somewhere at the bottom she has always known. The current problems are not solved, the conflicts remain, but one’s suffering, as long as she does not evade it, will lead to a new life. In developing a new feminine consciousness, she has to have an equally strong masculine consciousness to get her voice out into the world. The union of masculine and feminine involves recognising wounds, blessing them, and letting them go.

The heroine must become a spiritual warrior. This demands that she learn the delicate art of balance and have the patience for the slow, subtle integration of the feminine and masculine aspects of her nature. She first hungers to lose her feminine self and merge with the masculine, and once she has done this, she begins to realise this is neither the answer nor the objective. She must not discard nor give up what she has learned throughout her heroic quest, but view her hard-earned skills and successes not so much as the goal but as one part of the entire journey. This focus on integration and the resulting awareness of interdependence is necessary for each of us at this time as we work together to preserve the health and balance of life on earth.

~ Maureen Murdock

Photography: Reflections by Tom Hussey

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“But man always takes upon himself an endless burden. He refuses to let go of anything from his past, and so he stoops more and more beneath the weight of a useless accumulation. Have a guide for part of the way, but once you have travelled that part, leave it and the guide behind, and move on. This is something men do very reluctantly; once they get hold of something that helps them, they cling to it; they won’t let go of it. Those who have made some progress with Christianity do not want to give it up, and carry it on their backs; those who have made some progress with Buddhism do not want to leave it, and carry it on their backs. This weighs you down and slows you terribly. Once you have passed through a stage, drop it; let it go! And move on!”

~ The Mother

Photography: Madisin Rian by Jamie Nelson

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Our longing for connection is natural to human existence. We are all tribal people and our health and happiness are intricately tied to connecting with others. It is often through relationships, especially intimate relationships, that we find meaning and purpose in our lives. Yet, for most of us, relationships are a struggle.

It has been said that relationship is the yoga of the West. An intimate relationship is a powerful mirror that constantly challenges us to take a personal inventory of our lives. It offers us tremendous opportunity for personal healing if we make a conscious choice to move in that direction.

Love is a powerful force. When we don’t know how to handle its power, we slip very quickly into misguided, and often painful ways of being. Love is a force that inevitably brings to the surface the parts of ourselves that we desperately try to keep hidden. It is because of the closeness and the possibility of love in the relationship that these issues emerge. Many of us blame our relationship problems on a lack of love, but it is actually the love in the relationship that has brought forth the issues. A close relationship is a powerful light, and like any strong light it casts a large shadow. When we stand in the light of a close relationship, we must learn to deal with the shadow.

In all of our intimate relationships there is a moment when we first “wake up” and begin to notice our shadows. At first we feel dazed and discouraged, then when the full extent of the issues are revealed it turns to shock. It’s at this point the key choice occurs, to begin a conscious relationship where we move to a higher level of intimacy, or an unconscious relationship which stagnates, or eventually withers and dies.

Typically, our ego resists the personal exploration necessary for a conscious relationship because it wants to hold onto cherished beliefs about who we are, what is right, and what we need. We move toward love and suddenly our ego throws up a wall. The ego fears surrender. Our task in relationship is to consciously break through and soften the layers of masks we have donned to protect us from hurts, losses, and loneliness. Allowing ourselves to be shaken to our roots is a source of a growing relationship.

Our core self longs for us to crack our shells. In doing so we become free to experience all that is within us. In relationship not only are we challenged to face our most primitive feelings of longing, love, loss, and fear, we are challenged to welcome feelings of power, creativity, passion and sensual pleasure. Many of us are afraid of expansive energy washing through our bodies, cracking the boundaries of our limitations, exposing us to our primal selves. We have a choice to feel this energy or close down around it. To allow ourselves free-flowing energy is to say I surrender. It means we fear nothing that is human and natural. We release ourselves from the misery of holding back and playing it safe. By contrast, the ego closes down to the free-flowing energy resulting in rigid beliefs, fear of change, and disconnection from our authentic selves and others. All authentic relationships include conflict and the challenge of staying awake.

Conscious relationship also requires an ability to both merge and be separate, to come together and be apart, creating a constant rhythm. It consists of two people, devoted to each other, being true to their individual paths as well as being intimate with each other. We need to willingly open the door for our beloved to spend time realizing his or her passions and life goals.

Being conscious in relationship is another way of saying go slowly. Staying conscious can be difficult because our survival instincts want to avoid discomfort and have things defined and settled. Crawling in love is about staying mindful and aware. It is about going slowly enough to pay attention and hear the inner voice of wisdom when our ego wants to rationalize, analyze, and defend. When we crawl in love we are more likely to deepen our bond through a variety of experiences over time.

We begin our journey of conscious loving always remembering that there is a circular relationship between our ability to know and love another and our ability to know and love ourselves. The more we commit to knowing and accepting ourselves, the more we are able to surrender to loving another person.

~ Mark Walstrom

Photography by Braden Summers

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” Among the ancient Egyptians there were specific rituals for using the ecstatic states awakened through sex to nourish the energy of the subtle body, known to the Egyptians as the ka. The hunger for ecstasy was acknowledged as a real hunger because ecstasy is food for the ka body, giving it vitality and potency. The ka not only sustains the physical cells and tissue, but also provides for the capacity to experience and express the conceptual reality, the Logos, that enlivens the physical tissue. Curiously, it is taught that shame is poison to the ka and that ecstasy is needed to detoxify the bodies from the negative effects of shame.”

“Ecstasy is essentially a spiritual experience. We are ecstatic when our conscious awareness transcends the ego but at the same time aligns with the body, allowing us to be fully aware physically but without the inner dialogue of the mind.”

~ Belinda Gore, The Ecstatic Experience

Photography: Ka statue of king Hor Awibre Hor I

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“Caring about men because of what they do for us is not the same as loving males for simply being. When we love maleness, we extend our love whether males are performing or not. Performance is different from simply being. In patriarchal culture, males are not allowed simply to be who they are and to glory in their unique identity. Their value is always determined by what they do. In an anti-patriarchal culture males do not have to prove their value and worth. They know from birth that simply being gives them value, the right to be cherished and loved.”
~ Bell Hooks

Photography: Tribesmen in the Masai Mara, Kenya, by David Lazar

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“Immature people falling in love destroy each other’s freedom, create a bondage, make a prison. Mature persons in love help each other to be free; they help each other to destroy all sorts of bondages. And when love flows with freedom there is beauty. When love flows with dependence there is ugliness.

A mature person does not fall in love, he or she rises in love. Only immature people fall; they stumble and fall down in love. Somehow they were managing and standing. Now they cannot manage and they cannot stand. They were always ready to fall on the ground and to creep. They don’t have the backbone, the spine; they don’t have the integrity to stand alone.

A mature person has the integrity to stand alone. And when a mature person gives love, he or she gives without any strings attached to it. When two mature persons are in love, one of the great paradoxes of life happens, one of the most beautiful phenomena: they are together and yet tremendously alone. They are together so much that they are almost one. Two mature persons in love help each other to become more free. There is no politics involved, no diplomacy, no effort to dominate. Only freedom and love.”

~ Osho

Photography by Unknown

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