Sex and Healthy Culture

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Hello Reuniting Folks, I was going introduce myself and describe how I got interested in this sort of approach to sexuality but I seem to need to get something off my chest first):

"Solving" a problem in isolation usually ends up creating (or just reinforcing) multiple other problems in areas of life one was not thinking about when one was "solving" the first problem. Science and Technology do this a lot. Witness the Green revolution which solved the problem of feeding people at the expense of the integrity of the natural world. Actually or our culture is crazy myopic and dissociated like this. I guess its the shadow side of "specialization" (I am not really sure what the "sunny" side is) but solutions arrived at in this way are intrinsically unsustainable things that only buy time for the progessive spread of the core disease by putting a bunch of false hope in a superficial treatment of one of the symptoms. Actually even if we were talking about a relatively deep treatment of a relatively major symptom (which I think we are), the result would be the same if would just take longer for that to become evident. For a truely sustainable solution there is nothing for it but to try to diagnose and treat the main disease and to understand and treat its symptoms in a way that makes sense in the light of that. This goes against the grain for many reasons I know but I personally cant stand the inane and vapid insanity that happens without it.

anyway, this crazy myopia extends to the problem of Sex and the above paragraph is meant as fair warning that I intend to keep relating the problem of Sex to other problems and other problems to the problem of sex in the posts I make here, If only just to keep myself sane and interested.

For instance, Sex obviously a part of culture. I think of Culture as a unity comprised of 1. WorldView (ones story of the main thing that is happening and why), 2.Identity-Politics (who am I and who is everybody else in terms of the story that is the Worldview or cosmology), supporting Rituals (repeated actions that reinforce the world-view and Identity-politics) and Infrastructure (the way matter space and time are structured so as to enable and support the ritual and the rest of it. So sex as a kind of ritual that implies a kind of world view, a kind of Identity-Politics, and a kind of Infrastructure; that is to say sex is intrinsic and inseparable part of the rest of culture. We live in a basically sick, alienated, dissociated culture with sick alienated dissociated cosmology, identity-politics, and infrastructure, and so not surprisingly we tend to have basically sick alienated dissocaited sex. Orgasm itself is a kind of dissociated experience that for most people requires actually no real relationship with the person one is having sex with. This kind of experience reinforces (and is reinforced by) dissociated ways of thinking (like for example the habit of accepting and celebrating isolated "solutions" to isolated/dissociated problems).

My point here is that treating the symptom of alienated sex in isolation (with the Exchanges or anything else) is likely to amount to an unsustainable cure since the underlying disease of our individual and shared sick culture is not being consciously addressed in the cure. Either the symptom wont stay "cured" or the patient will just die of some other aspect of the disease before there is time for the relapse of that particular symptom of it. The cure for alienation and exclusion is wholeness and inclusion. Any treatment of a symptom must function as an aspect of the treatment of the whole disease of sick culture and function in conscious coordination with it.

That is all I want to say for now. My next post (unless I get inspired otherwise) will be showing more what I mean by using the example of Kissing Reform. (I will get around to being more biographical eventually).




Have you read our book?

Doesn't sound like it. Smile

The Exchanges aren't a "cure for sex." I, too, am interested in root causes and I think that if you read the book you will understand why I think sex actually is at the root of a lot of our ills, including the ghastly myopia you describe so well.

If you are interested in why I say this, either read the book or let me know and I'll give you some other reading to do. My viewpoint may be wrong (who knows?), but it is certainly not the shallow one you have chosen to characterize it as.

Have you read our book...

I have read (most) of "Peace Between the Sheets" but none of the other one. At some point (maybe a three forths of the way through the "Peace" book, I just started "x-raying" because it didn't seem that the diagnosis wen't deep enough so there was less reason to hope that the prescription would either. I am not finding evidence of what you say in that first book (which I have before me now), but I always have intended to read it more thoroughly...

I would say that sex is one of the main symptoms of the problem of sick culture but not exactly one of its roots. Even it if were one of the main "roots" (i am not sure I like this metaphor but will stick with it for the time being) its clear to me that "pulling just it up" and leaving the others not only doesnt make sense but is not even really possible. I would be possible if you considered sex as one of the main "poison Fruits" of the plant of sick culture....

.... I mean "Sex", as a separate thing from the rest of Life from the rest of a "way of life", or a "culture"), doesn't even really exist.

{this reminds me; there is a cassette recording By Malidoma Some and his wife Sobonfu called "We have no word for Sex" in which they talk about the Dagara (a "primitive" african tribe in Burkina Faso) approach to what we call sex. They never reveal exactly what they do but it certainly seems more in alignment with "The Sacred Marriage" Gnostic stuff (with a big emphasis on Calling in a Ancestors and the Spirit world in general) and with some kind of "reuniting approach" than with anything else. you might be interested in checking it out}

Anyway, I am more than willing to be directed to whatever you want to direct me to in the way of readings.

Also, I am one of those persons for whom criticism is intended (and received unless there seems to be a reason to do otherwise) as a form of good faith collaboration. It is a part of conscientiously trying to decide together what is really going on and what to do about it in the light of the fact that nobodies perfect and that actually we could both be wrong, you know what I mean? There has to be at least some faith or belief in the genuineness of the other persons intention and good will to even bother to offer such criticism, so I hope you get that part of my communications....


I'm not getting much, honestly

I do think Cupid is a much better explanation than Peace. Basically, my view is that perception has a huge impact not only on what we collectively experience, but also on what we attract. In other words, the problems don't start "out there." So you and I will never agree on the set of priorities you keep focusing on.

My view is that the solution has to start with the faulty "projector," us. There are many ways to clear our perception and make it more loving, but all have to do with bringing the reward circuitry into balance. Most great traditions recommend ways of doing that: meditation, devotion, diet, prayer, energy exercises, etc.

Sex is but one more, but a particularly powerful one because conventional, orgasm-driven sex is not only not promoting clear perception, but doing the very opposite (because of perfectly natural neurochemical ripples that follow orgasm).

As long as we keep using sex (or isolation) to create a subconscious sense of lack, we'll continue to create chaos.

Maybe you should find a partner and try the Exchanges before you dismiss them. Although not The Solution, they offer a "taste" of the potential in the larger idea.

Maybe read these too:

The Lazy Way to Stay in Love

Orgasm’s Hidden Cycle


I will certainly try to get the cupid book then. (the remark I am referring to is from the exchange between us that followed my posting of the Edna St Vincent Millay poem in which you wrote: "BTW, Cupid is the updated Peace, not really a new book. You can find much of the updated material in our "Psychology Today" blog: Cupid's Poisoned Arrow | Psychology Today",). I'll check that too as well as the other things you recommend. thank you.

this business about where things "start" is tricky. I don't think that the difference between "out there" and "in here" is a clear or real as people think. I am not sure its necessary or even possible to separate them. meditation, devotion, diet, etc are all act in the "eternal" world that have socio-political, economic dimensions to them (one has to have some degree of leisure, health, etc to engage successfully in many of those things. Also it is completely possible to do such things and Also challenge the outer status quo as well (Lovingly like Gandhi did). I think its likely that unhealthy introvert will choose to start "within" basically out of fear of "without" and an unhealthy extrovert will choose the to start "without" out of fear of "within" (my conversations with such people usually end with them accusing me being too apolitical or "psychological" just as you seem to think I am being to political or socio-economic. actually I am just trying to point out what I think is a false dichotomy....)

I agree whole heartedly with what you say about sex. by "isolation" I take it that you mean celibacy? I certainly have no attachment to celibacy but like I said I really can't relate to finding a partner just for sex (any kind of sex) and my attempts to find a "comrade" (a fellow "healthy culture nerd" if you like) all run up against the obstacles I told you about. I am not despairing or despondent; I feel pretty detached about it the whole thing, I think I re-channel sexual energy pretty efficiently as long as I eat right. Spending a lot of time dancing and doing yoga and stuff seems to be making me rather attractive to the opposite sex but its certainly not the exchanges that they have in mind or seem at all open to....

By the way I don't dismiss the exchanges. I think they are useful to help generate Ideas at the very least. If I did have a partner we would probably go through your book together just as starting place for discussion and brainstorming....

So what is the rotten root of

So what is the rotten root of our pathology? I agree with what you are basically saying. Our alienation is from ourselves and from our real experience, our real reality; whatever that really is. It is certainly not linear, dualistic or completely material, but these tendencies are fixed into the way we post-post-moderns read into nature and into experience. Any significant deviation is experienced as, I don't know, schizophrenia.

Our vision is skewed and so therefore is our attempt at problem solving. We want to find the One Thing that we can correct. We want a plan that takes us from point A to B with certainty. We want to know where to "start", which side to be on. We want answers! They slip away....

What to do? As far as sex goes, I find abstention form ejaculation to be quite a beneficial practice. I believe that the perversion of sex is a major catastrophe that haunts our civilization; whether it is symptom or cause of our general pathology matters little to me in terms of my own motivation to change my approach to it. I think our language about sex is impoverished, and talk about "orgasm" is very tricky. There is an almost unfathomable range of phenomena that can fit into that word; I think people in general are only aware of the very smallest sliver of that spectrum- the most trivial and perverse part of the spectrum for that matter. Whatever spirituality is connected to sex is largely drained out of it with the fixation on male ejaculation and whatever the female equivalent is, energy-wise. And that is stating it much too simply- the whole thing is muddied up with towering insecurities, inadequacies and physical blockages in the collective psyche/body caused by insane cultural programming.

All I know from experience is that starting to practice sex from a heart-centric place, just as moving any life activity to a more heart-centric place, is a workable way to restore ones sense of balance and sanity to this mess that we find ourselves in.

Dear tornfromabook

Thank you so very much for your beautiful comment! I agree will at least 95 percent of what you said (I am leaving 5 percent out just to be on the safe side--something might come to me...)

I am certainly not trying to dissuade anyone from having heart centered sex. I do have my doubts as to how heart centered sex can exist without a heart-centered way of life (culture) in general.

Think of it this way: the 7 Chakras can be understood as represent a continuum from Attachment (the 1st Chakra here-and-now-physical attachment to existence) on the one end to the relatively "detached" 7th Chakra consciousness of ones ultimate transcendent unity with everything at the other (this is an extreme simplification--and even a bit of a distortion-- but it works for the present purpose). the Heart Chakra is the 4th or central chakra and because it is equal distant from each extreme it can include and balance the interests of the whole person for the good both of that whole person and of the world in general. The Big, picture, the consideration of strangers, of the the future, of generations yet to be born or those down stream ("Inner Adult" considerations) as well of the consideration of "ultimate things" like utimate meaning, Death, "the afterlife" (inner "elder" considerations) are both usually the Provence of those (relatively "detached") chakras above the heart. A healthy heart and a healthy Heart-centered sexuality would be such as to nourish both the relatively detached or broader "inner adult" and the "inner elder" as wells a the relatively more attached "inner child" (emotions) and "inner animal" (sensations) of the lower chakras because the essence of a healthy heart chakra is Inclusiveness and compassion.

If my inner adult is not nourished by the kind of sex i am having because it recognizes that the relevant belief I am trying to feed it; (that non-orgasmic sex alone will somehow magically create a sustainable and healthy world for posterity) as, not wholesome nourishing truth, but the "junk food of rationalization" and that i am really just indulging in a more or less private form of social and emotional stress reduction that has no real potential to address its concerns, then that kind of sex is not really heart centered and the heart in question is not really open because it is closed to my inner adult as well as to the rights of posterity. Real heart-centered sexuality would nourish each of these aspect of myself and of my partner equally and well, and it cannot do that if it refuses to conscientiously and critically try to give more meaning to sexuality (or any other action) by giving more meaning to their Life and way of life as a whole.

The issue is not only "do I have compassion for others beyond myself and my partner" but "do I have compassion for all of Myself"; for my own inner Adult which is in there trying to gets its concerns expressed and realistically addressed and for the inner Adult of my Partner as well, which is trying to do the same thing.

Let me try another angle to explain what I mean: Lets say I live a privileged existence in some rich suburb of South Africa which (thanks to corruption endemic to the system) is getting almost all of the available fresh water in the area pumped into it, leaving the majority in poor villages to drink from the polluted river (a river polluted largely by industrial and commercial usages for which the privileged like myself are largely responsible). It would be very easy for me not to think about this situation at all. If I was Like everybody else I would probably me infinitely more concerned with my relationship. Maybe I think my wife might be straying. so I run across Marnias book. I talk to my wife; we agree to take up "the exchanges". we reconcile. we stay together. I resume my life as a corporate lawyer for the water company or whatever in the true conviction that I love my wife more than ever before etc...this seems like an extremely plausible story to me. No real or significant commitment to "Peace beyond the Sheets" is required to follow the "peace" between the sheets method" and ones inner adult knows this. Ones Heart nows this. And because they know it, they will not be nourished and truly satisfied, which means there will be not true "peace" between the sheets either. Of course if one just censors and ignores (closes ones heart to) the concerns of the inner adult (and really to those of the inner elder as well), it is easy to declare "peace" just as any corrupt government or corporation in control of the media (and of enough coercive force) can declare "Peace". But then what has happened to "heart centered sexuality"?

On the other hand, if I start with an understanding and commitment to healthy culture as a whole (even an intuitive, non-verbal one) then I commit to a life pursuant of both inner and outer healing equally, (something which implies ongoing and coordinated experiments in each area and moments of life towards that end), then the above story of phony healing would be impossible. In that case, my sexuality would be just one part of a whole coordinated life enterprise of healthy culture with all the creative and synergistic potential for mutual reinforcement and cross-fertilization and that that implies.

Haunting this whole debate is an unhealthy conception of the nature of healing itself. Healing is about Wholeness...Wholeness, like compassion implies Inclusion; it is essentially inclusive and not exclusive or reductive. The healthy heart is naturally inclusive and concerned with the whole; both the whole of oneself, the whole of the other, and the whole that world that includes, transcends and supports both. It does not reduce one part of the whole to another part of the whole but includes each part With the other parts and relates them to each other through its perception of the whole itself. In this way coordination and balance are possible as well as real healing. One must start with the whole, in this case with the whole problem or some tentative guess at it (mine is "sick culture") in order to even see the place of sexuality in that whole and to be able to coordinate the healing of sexuality with the healing of the rest of culture. This coordination (I also use the word "Cointegration") of Sexual Healing with every other kind of healing (including the political and economic kind) IS real sustainable sexual healing and nothing else is. In the same way, political or Social "Healing" that did not address and cointegrate sexual practice would not be sustainable or even real political or social healing. Healing is Healing; "specialized healing" is really a contradiction in terms. All of the specializing adverbs put in front of the words "Healing" and "Health" just turn the meaning of the words into something else.

...Finally; if the Heart is truly "Centric" (and not, for ego reasons, closer to one issue, person, or activity to the relative exclusion or neglect of all or even one of the others) then the very choice of which act to focus on and how long, will be determined by an awareness of the whole and a concern with what is best for the coordinated and healing of the whole...that way, the excluded and neglected problems will not come back (having gathered strength in the mean time through being relatively ignored) to sabotage the whole business. without this, even that which such an "eccentric" heart is closest to will fail to truly heal, perhaps that most of all...

Because... I say, if I had a comrade to try to them with we would probably look them over together and see if some of them could not be modified into experiments in Healthy Culture (my comrade would not be primarily or even necessarily a "comrade in sex" but a comrade in Healthy Culture, which fact itself goes a certain distance in answering your question).

Also, as I said before, the way to my heart (and body) is through my conscience. The suggestion that I go out looking for someone to use for an experiment in the exchanges is just as much out of my frame of reference as trying to "pick somebody up to fuck". A "Sex object" is a "Sex of object" after all, and a "Spiritual Sex object" is a contradiction in terms. I am looking for Friendship and Comradeship people of conscience, goodwill and heart, whether or not we ever have any kind of physical intimacy has to be completely beside the point for anything to even feel right.

I understand myself to be a person in recovery from sick culture and anyone in recovery from anything knows that you would have to get that particular issue worked out with anyone with whom you intend to even hang out regularly with let alone be intimate with. Recovering alcoholics don't go around looking for people in denial of their own alcoholism (in this analogy perhaps of the very existence of alcoholism) to hook up with even if they were just going to take walks by the beach with that person.

I would be "out of the Tao" myself (in particular out of harmony with my inner adult, elder and concience in general) to just "try the ideas" in the way that you suggest. I mean, there are all kind of things and ideas that a person can try in the world. One has at least to have some intuitive sense that what is being tried will work (of course it also helps to have seen or experienced the success of whatever it is). Since my criteria for success is not that couples stay together and live "happier" lives etc...I have neither witnessed it working, nor have any reason to think it is a good experiment (as I have so far understood it). Which as I said, doesn't mean that some highly modified version of them might not fit in somewhere along the line...

Everyone seems to have their "pet virtue"; the thing about which they seem to believe that if everyone did it the "rain would come". I think that the only thing that this is true about is acknowledging and dealing with your shit (And not some little "decoy shit" that your ego pics out so that you can become spiritually vain while trying to address it, but ones core shit, ones individual version or our shared sick culture). The reason for this is that the undealtwith shit is going to corrupt and make unsustainable whatever temporary idyllic state would be achieved by everyone being a vegan, becoming literate, recycling, practice birth control, yoga, the exchanges, tantra, or whatever the particular pet virtue is (given the truth of this it probably makes sense to put the word "virtue" in quotes, reserving the unqualified use of that world only for things for which the above is not true),

what makes sense to me is to stay in inner conference (between my own mind, heart, body, and intuition) about what experiments (performed in what order) are likely be inwardy, outwardly, and progressively healing (and which ones are not) and to act when some kind of consensus on this is reached. The fallaciousness of the Means/End dichotomy is relevant here: This process of inclusive uncoerced conference ("coinference" is the word i use for various reasons) is real, living, healthy culture in me, there is no way that by abandoning this means t I will achieve the end I intend because this means itself contains that end in embryonic or "holographic" form. The Idea is to enhance and cultivate that seed of wholeness and conscience in me and not abandon it for some experiment of which my conscience and heart do not yet approve.

Building... the wrong metaphor

(sorry for the late reply. I replied to this before but then my server went down--or so I thought, turns out its my wifi so I've been posting using another computer).

Healthy Culture has to be Alive, a Living inner/outer relationship and process, it cant be just an outer thing that one builds eternally out of discrete pieces and in a specialized way. My defining culture as "cosmology, identity, ritual, and infrastructure" does not contradict is its usual description as "a way of Life". Healthy Culture has to exist as a whole "way of life" however rudimentary and imperfect. That means I have to be doing my best for be in (and remain in) recovery from the dominant cosmology of apartness (with its assumptions of primary separation and its dualistic competitive, and dissociated logic), its Factional "us vs them" Identity-politics, its rituals of apartness (rituals of inner and outer censorship, exclusion, and dissociation) and infrastructures of apartness (dissociated alienating arrangements of entities in space and time).

it is like a Heat or warmth of recovery that I have to try to keep alive and nourish in myself. A few other people responsive to this whole idea, not moved in their ego by my (non-existent) perfect modeling of health or even of recovery but moved by the resonance of their own hearts, and minds, and intuitions and conscience, to see that a culture of inner/outer recovery is the only sustainable way forward, will perhaps be inspired to enter with me into recovery themselves thus adding their own "heat" to the enterprise and its experiments. Together, making use of whatever "cultural airlocks, or greenhouses we can find (Given that the "wet" and "cold" environment provided my the dominant culture will be none too nourishing, some kind of protection seems necessary) we will, by patiently "rubbing the sticks" of experimental rituals together" cultivate and nourish our own warmth till a living "ember" of Healthy culture appears between us, which we will then nourish until it becomes a fire from which others can find warmth and light...

The ends and the means cannot be separate here; Logistical, organizational details and tactical plans must a come out of the "living fire"itself ",which is the living dynamic of inner/outer friendship, understanding and compassion that is the recovery process itself, and must always be such as too nourish that process, that fire in all involved. Successfully cultivating and nourishing such a fire is a tricky thing, its very easy to put out a fire by piling up too much tender or wood on top of it too early..)

Now it could very well happen (it is probably extremely likely) that I have no luck and find no collaborators, so that the "blizzard of sick culture" that we live catches up with me before I "catch up" with it. But, to switch metaphors for a moment, I see no reason to give up one the only real sustainable cure I know for the patients disease just because success is an extreme improbability. If what is extremely improbable of success (and perhaps dangerous) will, nevertheless really and sustainably work if it can be accomplished, while all of the relatively easier things to accomplish are superficial and will not sustainably work, it makes more sense to me to devote my life to the former...among other things it makes for a more meaningful and interesting story...

there is more about all of this at among other places...

thanks for your interest,


Sorry you see things

that way. This is not about using each other, and I think that if you had a partner your brain would be better nourished and perhaps able to perceive my proposal more clearly. As it is, you're missing the entire brain balance piece.


every one who does not see things your way and is not already doing what you suggest has some kind of unbalanced Brain? Well that certainly protects you from having to actually consider or meaningfully respond to anything I or anyone like me says in critique of your approach. Now your conscience (the part of you that is capable of questioning your initial assumptions and your motivations for them) can be permanently put to rest because you have found the One Right Way or something. You must feel very safe...This is a very common and a very sad phenomenon but I guess its pretty understandable when someone puts so much energy into one approach...

I very much like my conscience however so I don't want do go any further down the road of some kind of mutually defensive hardening of hearts and minds. I want to say here that I tend to assume that "everybody has a piece of the Truth and Everybody has a piece of the Lie" (this is a healthy culture proverb) so that the purpose of discourse can be not competitive but collaborative (we can help each other see each others piece of the Lie, so that we can both evolve). This can only happen between two functioning pairs of Conciences, so let me at least demonstrate that mine is working;

I could certainly be wrong in what I am saying or some part of it (or perhaps in the gesture of saying it--or trying to say it--in this particular context), and I imagine my brain has its problems like everybody elses, but none of your responses to what I am saying seem to indicate that you really get my point. As I said in my initial post, the approach of science itself (including brain science) is dissociated and fragmented in the extreme (by the way, are all of those scientists practicing your brand of Kerrezza so as to warrant your trust in their data? Or better; where the founders of the scientific approach to reality all doing Kerrezza at the time so as to warrant your trust the Their brain balance and general way of looking at things?).

If the critique is against relatively one-dimensional, reductionist approaches, justifying the content of one such approach with (selected and interpreted) data from another such approach is not answering the critique at all. And though they are (arguably) not very reductionistic, I think even the so called Great Religions such as Taoism etc should have a Conscience, should be open to further growth, and transformation through a willingness to question their premises and assumptions and the motivations for them; why should not they themselves also have "a piece of the lie as well as a piece of the truth...?

In order for us to stop implicitly competing or arguing defensively we would have to both be open to the idea that we could BOTH be wrong (even fundamentally wrong), and we would have to want to evolve, grow, and be sustainably effective and facilitating this in the world, more than we want to be right and keep to what every inertial trajectory we are already on in life...

I am not sure how to get that kind of energy in this situation or if amounts to a reasonable request under the circumstances, but that is what I want....

Ha ha!

No one could write about the unfamiliar approach to sex I write about without asking themselves if they might be wrong...a lot.

My suggestion was for you to actually try the ideas rather than engaging in abstract debate about them. It was through practice that I learned their merit, and I'm not much interested in abstract debate. Either they work for you or they don't. for your consistent trollish behavior, I will say that I've learned over the years that it makes other forum members feel unsafe if I allow others to abuse me. So if you want to stay, please stop the spin, stop mischaracterizing my motives, and so forth. Otherwise...adios until you have actually tried the ideas.

Unclear text

I must admit confusion as to why someone so holistically-minded would bother to write so much. You propose and reject a lot of theory - fair enough - but you are quick to list the shortcomings of action. Apologies, but this is all I have time or skill to reply to:


You're assigning false motives to worthwhile acts. The aim of veganism, tantra, socialism, recycling, etc. is not Instant Utopia - it's the reduction of suffering. Nobody believes the problem of existence would be solved by karezza or vegetarianism in isolation - I think there are very few people who conform to your 'pet virtue' theory.

The idea that compassionate acts encourage "spiritual vanity" is often espoused by people who don't attempt them. You are looking at things in terms of receivership (as your conception of a "spiritual sex object" also implies -- for, if bringing comfort to another person doesn't interest you, then you will of course see it in terms of using someone).

I'm sorry if I have misread your post, but your meaning is often unclear and that suggests unclear thought. Consider less time inventing neologisms and more time acting, if you truly wish to see change in this 'sick society' (or whatever the phrase is). Good luck.

"Vice Mask Replicas" (a reply to Beefheart)

writing is (or can be) as much a part of wholeness as anything else.

I think there are many times when people conform to my pet virtue theory if you just add a few more "pets". My point is not that people expect instant utopia from the acts, its that people often behave as though they think that if everybody else performed those acts there would be utopia, and I don't believe this for the reason I stated. Bracketing how worthwhile the acts may or may not be, I have attempted all of them at some point in my life. They have not effected me as "pet virtues" because I regarded (and still regard some of them) as aspects of a general ongoing experiment in healthy culture.

I have experienced what seemed to me as feelings of "righteousness" from many people who do such things as well as many people who do other, quite different things. Its not so much the things themselves as the myopic , dissociated, and credulous attitude towards them that I am critiquing. It is easy for the ego to use anything to buttress itself as long as it itself and the very specific version of sick culture it represents is not targeted. Such ostensibly virtuous acts then become only virtuous "masks" for the vice of spiritual arrogance...this doesn't mean that they are that way intrinsically; as a part of a general recovery project they could indeed be virtuous experiments...

as I said in another post, both giving and receiving imply some form of exchange which in turn implies assumptions of unilateral ownership and prerogative as well as preexisting conditions of primary separateness. Charity assumes that have by right what you "have" and flatters your ego for giving it. It also assumes that your gift has real value (that your "comfort" is real comfort for example), and further that the other person needs it from you. It also seems to assume that "comfort" is somehow more relevant than general healing and coevolution. I don't think any one can be fully comfortable doing anything that fails to address ones own core sickness and keep one on the path of healing it because (if nothing else), ones conscience will not be comfortable with this. The above assumptions and many others implied in the giving/receiving model tend to distract one from ones own (really from our SHARED) sick culture and so inhibit collaborative recovery from it.

Well Yes...

in varioius ways...

It would be misleading however not to recognize that science itself is reductionist its tendency and brain science implicitly even more so. Using a reductive approach either to contradict or reinforce a wholistic one is a bit philosophically dodgy especially since scientific data is intrinsically incomplete and subject to ongoing recontextualization and paradigmn shifts due to new information and ideas. Moreover neither the direction of medical research nor the inteprepation of its findings are open and disinterested, but are both determined mostly by the biases of corporate funding (particularly that of the pharmaceutical industry).

Given all of that its not a wonder to me why so many people still found their world views on things other than science.

All that said, I do think that dopamine tends to play the same role in orgasm sex as it does in drug addiction and for the same reasons. I am not sure that the oxytocin brain chemistry engendered by kerrazza and no orgasmic sex is sufficient for a healthy balanced brain though I think some form of nonorgasic sex is necessary for this.

In an intial comment in the humour/inspiration section of this site i alluded to "solution addiction" meaning addiction to the brain chemisry of the anticipation involved in having at last found THE solution to lifes problems...I was only half kidding about this and think that reductionistic solutions and reductionist thinking in general (as well as a great many newage and self help book sales) are supported by and themselves support such addictive brain chemistry.

More than this I think that both the nurturance that should have happened to us that didn't and the trauma that shouldn't have happened to us that did, have effects on the developing nervous system such as to form a receptive foundation for the dualistic, dissociated, fragmented and alienated logic that is imposed on it though schooling and in other ways at a later stage of development. Thus deeper and intrinsic forms of miseducation and imbalanced brain developement lead to/and are an inseperable part of a intrinsically unsatisfying and painful way of life, with which people then learn to cope via recourse to the anesthesia of various dopamine and opiate engendering addictions including that of sex among other things.

I think that the non ejaculatory sex we are discussing, while not engendering addiction of the kind described above can nevertheless be problematic or controversial in that oxytocin itself might be pressed into the service of merely facilitating coping with, rather than healing these outer (as well as some inner) conditions of sick culture. I did not have this consideration before having certain discussions on this site, but now am wondering whether even not non-ejaculatory sex can be used, if not addictively then in some similarly unhealthy way.

To be non scientific for a moment, it is thought among the gnostics, tantrics and in other traditions, that nonejactulatory sex awakens kundalini and that the energy of this is to be used, among other things to destroy the 'ego" or "egos" and that when it is not used thus it actually can strenghten the ego and dissociate and distort the personality in ways that could be decribed as worse than if one had not started on the path. If, as I believe, the purpose of sexual energy is evolution either through reproduction or inwardly, an abridgment or cessation of this process of evolution initiated by the ending of orgasm in sex might result in some other form of brain imbalance due to that increased energy being diverted from its proper developmental channels. There are probably many ways in which this can happen but if oxytocin really is the "amnesia" chemical that the author (i forget his name) of "the Brain that Changes itself" reports that some brain scientist are beginning to think it is, is seems possible that it could form a part of new form of brain imbalance centered on amnesia facilitated denial and dissociation.

The brain chemistry of trauma, stress, and related mindsets of denial and dissociation are certainly related to the brain chemistry of sexualtiy as is I am sure the brain chemistry of the pineal gland, the neurochemistry of the other "Brains" in the heart and in the "stomach" among many other things. All in all, i think a "bio psycho social approach" (I first head this phrase from the Physician "Gabor Mate") to sexuality serves better than a merely biological one and that the even more inclusive "Cultural" approach such as I am taking even more use full.

Your argument seems to boil down to one repeating theme . . .

Your argument seems to boil down to one repeating theme; culture is sick and Karezza can't fix all of the problems so that makes it just a band-aid. According to that logic; one brick won't keep the Mongolian hoarde out of China so there's no use in trying to build a Great Wall. I'll let Theofore Roosevelt address this.


Karezza won't solve all of the problems in the world, but if it helps even a relative handful of people to have better relationships how is that a bad thing? If its not for you feel free to move on.


you are right about moving on. you will notice that I havent made any new posts besides replying to comments and questions about what I have said already. It would be nice to see that somebody actually got my point before I went though.

I showed up here to share some ideas about the nature of healing, wholeness, and healthy culture and the nature and possibilites of "healing with sexual relationships" in relationship to that. I offered an example of one possibility with the "Kissing Reform" post. Some people seem to get what I am saying (i am referring in part to certain private messages) and some like your self don't seem to even want to.

Obviously the issue with Kerreza is not whether or not it will "solve all the problems of the world" but whether or not it can be done such a way that it is not a part of the problem itself ; not another distraction from the main thing that is happening inwardly and outwardly, not another treatment for the symptom that just buys time for the disease to progress. As I said before, thinking of "the problems of the world" as a bunch of mutually isolated things that can each be solved in isolation just insures the the solution to one problem will likely be such as to reinforce other problems that were not being considered when one was "solving" the first as well as likely create still more new ones. I don't think Kerreza (or something similar) needs to be such a "solution" and have been trying to show how it needn't be. I see nothing wrong with that...

I find your quote rather ironic given what I know about my life. I think Roosevelt was much more interested in "spending himself" (and getting a lot of ego stroking in return for the expediture) than whether or not his cause was a worthy one. When the house is on fire it makes a great difference whether your "devotion" is to dealing with that, (with main thing that is happening inside you and outside you) or whether it is to something that is really just fuctioning to distract you from that. After all, people have "great enthusiasms" for video games.

Critcal thinking is simply matter of fact consequense of anyone really wanting to be doing what they say they want to be doing (and I hope you would agree that most people want to be doing what they are doing in the right way, at the right time, in for the right reasons),..openess to critique about this needs to be an ongoing thing for the obvious reason the Life is Life, things change, and one never knows... Given that you are not God you could be wrong in general or in some important detail about whether this or that relationship is really being "helped" or not... or even about if "relationships" concieved of in such isolation from the common good can be "helped" at all without reconcieving them in a more healthy and coordinated, less private and alienated way...

Wanting to be and remain a decent responcible person with a functioning concience on a healing path should take presedence over any other "enthusiam" so far as I can see, and this is never something that, in the nature of the thing, can be taken for granted. If you are too busy "Striving" to care about whether or not you are "striving" in the right direction or for the right thing, then that to me is at the very least proof that you are striving in the wrong way...