War & Sex

This is the first installment in an on-going series of Blog Posts addressing War, Sex and Humanity. We are living in a time of great paradox; great beauty, great ugliness and great peril.

James Hillman states "there are more wars in recorded history than there are years in recorded history." Modern man is a warring creature. But perhaps it has not always been this way. If this is true then we face the possibility that much of

what we believe to be endemic to our species might only be the modern expression of our species. But the problem with this is that to investigate the possibilities for human expression beyond our war-culture, we have to use our deep imaginations. We must tap into our vast creative capacity as beings with an array of seemingly-exclusive characteristics and qualities. To see beyond, or before war, we must slip into the stream of a consciousness that transcends history books, a way of knowing that allows for the larger story of our human unfolding. We must allow for a 'knowing' that comes directly from the soul.  Sartre said, "he who begins at facts will never arrive at essence." Our task now is to return to the essence of what it means to be human; to revisit what is essential about our species, to remember and revision why it is we are here.

But how can we do such a thing when the process and experience of endless war has likely fashioned us into a certain kind of creature who is, not only deeply traumatized but also acculturated to fear. Fear as a way of life. Fear as our primary decision-maker. There is a lot to undo here; a lot to tease out of the fiber of our human experience that might, at this point feel as if it is innate to our human experience.

At the core of our humanity lies creativity and deep imagination. The primary pathway for the expression of these two wild creatures  is  sexuality (and our longing for true intimacy). The exploration of our sexuality is a portal to the un-doing of war. If invited, our authentic, wild, sexual selves want nothing more than to make love to self, other and the larger world. This life/death/life love affair is the only thing with enough truth and energy to over-power the mythic draw of the life/death story that is war. The mythic proportion of our deep wild love making with this world is the only thing large enough, bold enough and breath-taking enough to invite us away from our obsession with war.

At this point it seems clear; the fate of our species rests upon our ability to boldly, as-if-our-lives-depended-on-it, remember a story of our humanity that casts us as skillful fierce lovers of all life. This story lives intimately within our bodies. And it is longing for expression.