Warning! This essay contains X-rated words unacceptable in “polite society.” If you’re reading this read on because we’re definitely not in polite society.
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Who’s fooling whom?
“Special relationships” receive special treatment in A Course in Miracles, calling for more effort at explanation than usual. The reason being that the ego’s (opposite’s) “crowning achievement” is the body’s reward for making more bodies: the judgment-warping, will-destroying, dignity-stomping pleasure of sex. Tell the average male or female that recovering Self-Awareness means leaving bodies and procreative genitalia behind and they’ll either slam the door in your face or laugh you out of town.
Promises that something better awaits them on the other side – “heaven” -- worked so long as the threat of hell also worked. But by the grace of evolution the average person forgot about hell and promises both, conned by magic and bullied by hell-and-damnation religion no more. Grounding hypocrisy’s virtuous “us” with the ballast of unavoidable truth: “Me.” Insisting on gratification now like a two-year-old in a supermarket, throwing a tantrum because mommy won’t buy it Count Chocula Frosted Fruit Puffs.
The pervasiveness of sex in human culture, its command of human desire, dominance of primal humor, and leveling of pretense in all things, make it at once the great humanizer and de-humanizer of our species. A mockery of the shibboleths of civility, touches of cosmetics applied to uncivil greed and lust. Who’s fooling whom?
The hazards of coupling and uncoupling
If getting laid has been a staple of upper class privilege forever it’s now everywhere. Taboo on surfaces still heated by the fires of hell and haunted by fear, but unremarkable anywhere else. Against this fact of “life,” a seawall no waves can wear away, an addiction in undeniable denial, parting opposite’s captives from their “paradise” can be a tough sell. Had explanation from the I Ching’s Tao, Parmenides’ metaphysics, Plato’s philosopher king, or the Course included in their blessings a nice fuck they would have set the standard for marketing success. Preserved from de-throning by the threat of violence from mobs of rabid supporters.
The Course is sexless. Its treatment of “special relationships” focuses not on the sensuous and sensual but on the hazards of coupling psyches contaminated by the mad idea of separation – the ego. On the hazard of robbing and being robbed, dominated and being dominated instead of reciprocal sharing between equals. The familiar hazards of self-worth contracting instead of expanding, along with dispiriting by involuntary detachment -- failure, defeat, humiliation, shame, and guilt. And if severe enough, the psychic devastation of anomie: involuntary detachment from everyone. Dehumanization. Not exactly how the Course puts it but how I read it.
All opposite’s psychological “gifts” not of uniting mentally and emotionally but of separating. In the manner of opposite loading its captives with its “abundance” so that it can be taken away. Delivering the bodily pleasures of “life” so that they can be replaced by bodily pain and “death.” The idea conveyed by “special relationships” in the Course’s telling is something other than religious twaddle about sin, damnation, guilt, and repentance. It doesn’t take aim at anything associated with bodies, given that they’re illusory, and illusion’s only “function” can be however it’s used by Guidance for communication among occupants of a dream.
An opportunity to perform a miracle
But it does have a purpose: uncoupling. Detachment. Weaning Mind-Child’s projections away from self-delusion. Away from Mind-Child’s “relationship” with its ego, its opposite, an apparition in a mirror. From the mad idea of separation. By debunking its presumed “pleasures,” especially the ecstasy of coupling that can lock “love-makers” in a state of mystical stupefaction. Beyond reasoning, choice, or even communication.
While the ego’s other ramparts could be breached by intellect this one was a Maginot Line, Chinese Wall, and Berlin Wall wrapped into one. Intellect alone wouldn’t put a scratch on it. It’s apperception of what’s not real so thorough and uncompromising that it’s frustrated countless idealogies, West and East, to dislodge it. Providing the Course’s students with a golden opportunity to put their training to use. By performing a miracle.
Executive decision
Opposite’s main defense against the Self-Love of Self-Awareness is the satisfaction of bodily cravings and the psychological and emotional cravings that accompany them. Not the needs of human-animal but the cravings of animal / not-human. Single-minded and impervious to the ditherings of judgment and choice. Particularly when the craving is central to the propagation of the species. Opposite’s Big Lie: the “family of man.” A tribe ruled by herd mentality no more susceptible to persuasion than marauding bull elephants.
The breaching of this rampart calls for a no-nonsense executive decision. The Course’s disciplined recognition of one undifferentiated “Son,” real, meaningful, and relevant. Accompanied by disciplined non-recognition of many differentiated replications, unreal, meaningless, and irrelevant.
Vive la no difference!
Instead of “Vive la difference!” its position is “What difference?” Comparable to a CRISPR solution to a troublesome gene: excising it. “Female” gone! “Feminine” gone! How can the pleasures of romance enchant with only one partner? With only one stick rubbing, one hand clapping? Dinner and dancing for one. “Father” and “Son” and done. “Mother” and “Daughter” stuffed in the closet -- out of sight, out of Mind.
By order of the authorities, the promise of a paradise of romance with sexual gratification is hereby rescinded. Sexual gratification is no longer relevant and there is to be no more mention of it. This briefing is over.
Welcome to the paternity ward
An approach to “Vive la difference!” presaged by the Tao’s I Ching positing the role of Relationship’s “Yang” and “Yin” in Creativity. Their identities as masculine and feminine given away by their attributes but not made explicit. As if acknowledging the obvious would unleash insatiable, ungovernable lust on civil society. Perhaps a display of admirable self-restraint by the Tao but not much evidence of it on the part of Godzilla.
Who continues on its rampage to cram as many bodies onto the earth’s surface as it can. Until it becomes a contest between the earth’s uninhabitability and conflict over lebensraum to determine which one gets credit for getting rid of us. Progeny of insatiable, ungovernable lust – an animal. A beast.
So Jesus -- the Tao with a Westernized name? -- tried something different. A male version of the Church’s “immaculate conception:” Father begetting Son with no need for a Mother. Ave Joseph! Along with the non-material state not able to express itself in the material state because it’s Real and the other isn’t. Lopping off at one stroke two premises essential to the I Ching’s internal Logic: Relationship between Yang and Yin and between Heaven and Earth. Welcome to the paternity ward! Pleasant dreams!
The permanent stain of sex
An approach to “Vive la difference!” presaged later by Augustine’s take on Genesis. Suggesting that it was sex that turned an immaculate Garden of Eden into maculate, a den of sin and shame. Helping to turn sexual intercourse from a necessity of procreation to a necessary evil.
Think Irish mattresses allowing sperm access to egg through a slit in a bedsheet. The banning of “penis” and “vagina” from polite literature and conversation both. It was only from my seventh grade’s dark underworld that I accidentally heard mention of either. Adulterating my pristine memory forever with Lady MacBeth’s damned spot.
Not the place to hold a seminar
Why Father-Son and not Mother-Daughter? Why obeisance to patriarchy and not matriarchy? Why not theory that doesn’t need its manipulation or Houdini’s magic to make an elephant disappear? Executive decision, weakening trust in Free Choice to decide for itself with no effect on the elephant.
Imagine Wisdom, sharing a vision of sexless bliss with logical impeccability, while entering a gymnasium whose floor is covered by bodies surrendering with wild abandon to the pleasures of copulation. Would bodies gasping for more copulation be receptive to talk of less? Would this be a good time for the amygdala – our primitive animal brain -- to set up its lair for tea and scones?
The point where Wisdom’s vision might begin with more chance of success isn’t impeccable Logic. It’s understanding what’s happening on the gymnasium floor. A test of relatability that Guidance can’t meet with unrelatability no matter how elevating its vision or how debased its seeker. Yes, opposite’s version of “love” is a joke compared to the real thing. But communicating this to human mind where it’s taken up with the business of its animal brain can’t have any more success than holding a graduate seminar inside a barn.
Off limits to Guidance
Sex and the animal brain are inseparable. Procreation by copulation is opposite’s version of Self-Awareness sharing Relationship. Tamper with sex and your nice orderly seminar will be stomped into dust. Not by thoughtful consideration but by animal instinct. The instinct of a herd of predators with one overriding purpose: self-perpetuation by superiority in numbers.
Tamper with sex and you’re trying to castrate a herd of bulls. That’s what’s happening when Wisdom ventures into the gymnasium with the verbal equivalent of a scalpel. With the naivete of an idealist, not suspecting that its scalpel might be used on itself.
Understanding the nature of sex calls for understanding the nature of Guidance addressing it. Just as the Self-Awareness of Mind-Child Free Choice required experience with both sides of the boundary, Guidance can’t be helpful without having one foot in Reality and another in unreality. One foot in Mind-world and another in body-world. Jesus is relatable because, being part-human, he knows what he's talking about.
And also because, being part human, he can be unrelatable. By doing what comes naturally: misreading context. By not knowing what he’s talking about when he can’t cross the boundary into the animal side of human. Human can be contaminated by animal but Guidance can’t or it couldn’t be helpful. The presence of Jesus is limited to the human side of human-animal. Where he can address incompatibilities between humans.
Better left alone
When he opines about sex, however indirectly, Jesus is taking on the big incompatibility: between human and animal. Working to diminish opposition on the underside by emulating Mind-Parents’ power of Definition that neither their Child’s Self-Awareness nor Guidance for self-unawareness may possess. By denial of the feminine. An assault on a defining attribute of animal – on opposite itself -- that’s provoked retaliation in the past and will provoke it again. The equivalent of ruining the show in Plato’s Cave with Truth and inciting mob violence. It makes the problem worse.
Just as Choice is the defining attribute of Mind-Child that can’t be breached by its opposite, not-choice is the defining attribute of animal-human that can’t be breached by Choice. Procreative sex = animal = image reflected in unconscious Mind-Child’s mirror = opposite. They can’t be merged into one but neither can they be separated into two. They are two sides of one Definition -- one Self, the Self-Awareness of Mind-Child Free Choice.
Managing the boundary by keeping opposite on its side of it can’t be accomplished by changing it into what it isn’t, any more than Choice can be made into what it isn’t. Ending the hallucination we call “life” by excising opposite from the Mind of the hallucinator is a non-starter. If it weren’t, Mind Logic-Love would have excised it from Origin’s instability. But it didn’t. Because without it -- without opposite’s perverse gift of instability -- there would be no Energy, Self-Awareness, Relationship, Reality, or Creation. When managing the boundary, animal-sex is better left alone.
A better approach?
Newton’s third law, that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction, suggests another approach. Diminishing the power of opposition on the underside of human-animal by increasing the power of attraction on the upper side.
It’s not necessary to mess with sex. To bother the sweating, panting bodies pleasuring one another on the gymnasium floor because it can only alienate them. They appear to be human, accessible to Logic, but they’re not. They’re a herd of animals going about animal business and they resent interference. They’re bulls that don’t take kindly to being castrated.
Always leave them laughing
Why not bypass an unyielding rampart to focus on another less unyielding? Opposite’s crowning failures. Laughable absurdities. That invite ridicule, the response to boorish “humor” before its audience learns that it’s the butt of the jokes -- a fool ridiculing itself. Before it leaves the theatre.