Sep
Teresa of Avila
A couple days ago, I posted an article talking about Tantric sexual practice. This piece from the Vancouver Sun brings the sacredness of sexuality to a more Christian focus. I love the discussion of “knowing” in the biblical sense - a far more intimate verb than I thought growing up.
Sex brings christians closer to god
Professor says the relationship between humans and spirituality is essentially erotic — some Christians even have peak religious experiences while being sexual
WARNING: The content of this story may be offensive to some readers.
When people feel awkward saying the words, “sexual intercourse,” many instead talk about how Jane and John have come “to know” each other (tee hee) “in the biblical sense.”
They seem to believe Bible writers were so shy about sexuality they had to employ a euphemism, “to know,” because they dare not write “sex” or something more graphic.
But B.C. psychologist Chuck MacKnee, a Christian, believes the Bible writers and translators were using “to know” in a surprisingly intimate way.
They were expressing how men and women through sexuality can deeply connect, truly “know each other,” in the most holistic, ecstatic and divine way.
Many people, not only Christians, are afraid of sex, the “amazing, wonderful thing,” MacKnee said. That’s why they deny it, repress it, joke about it and use euphemisms to describe it.
“I think we’re afraid because ultimately in sex we’re going to meet God,” said MacKnee, describing the divine as “big and mysterious and way beyond us.”
Expressing a viewpoint that was once taboo among many Christians, MacKnee believes humans’ relationship with God is essentially erotic.
While popular culture focuses on the sexual philosophies linked with Eastern religions, particularly Tantra and the Kama Sutra, MacKnee has been researching and extolling Christian sexuality for more than 15 years. The 51-year-old married father of three has been a pioneer in a reform movement that has picked up tremendous energy in recent years.
MacKnee now teaches psychology at Trinity Western University, an evangelical school in Langley.
His PhD research at UBC in the mid-1990s was ahead of its time, focusing on Christians who had peak religious experiences while being sexual.
The fact he teaches at TWU, which officially opposes homosexual relations and sex outside marriage, adds to his novelty. More on that later.
MacKnee’s positions on the link between sexuality and spirituality might cause the more demure to blush.
He talks non-judgmentally, possibly approvingly, of an Episcopal priest in the U.S. who told him he once had an orgasm while serving communion, the symbolic blood and body of Christ.
Then there was MacKnee’s client — a depressed Christian woman in her 40s who had never had an orgasm. One day she came in to his office and seemed entirely different. She’d had a religious experience, she said — after her first orgasm.
The TWU professor admits his research has “raised some eyebrows,” both in secular academia and Christian circles. But there are always waiting lists for his TWU classes, and his private therapy practice is full.
Through history, he said, many Christian churches have earned a justified reputation as anti-sexual for constantly preaching “Don’t, don’t, don’t.”
The apostle Paul’s comments in the New Testament on “the sins of the flesh” have led to mixed results. The same is true of church traditions such as celibate priests and nuns (as MacKnee says, the “most holy” are considered non-sexual), as well as abstinence, and sex for procreation only.
To help revive long-buried pro-erotic traditions in the Jewish and Christian religions, MacKnee tells people the Hebrew word for “to know,” yadah, is the same word the Bible uses to describe God’s relationship to humans.
To him, “knowing” a woman or man “in the biblical sense” is a way of describing a peak experience: Unity with the divine in all its overpowering sensuality and wonder.
Like groundbreaking psychologists and philosophers, including Rollo May and Alfred North Whitehead, MacKnee calls God “Divine Eros.”
The Catholics and mainline Protestants who are today joining evangelicals such as MacKnee in teaching about spiritual sex are in some ways catching up with Eastern-influenced New Age spirituality.
In the West, so-called alternative, or “self,” spirituality, has been teaching for decades that spirituality and sex are intimately related. They’ve relied on spirituality from India, whose religious icons can be openly erotic.
Sensual spirituality has been popularized in the West through Hindu Tantric ritual, which links sexual energy with spiritual liberation. There has also been much talk in western pop culture about the Kama Sutra, an ancient Indian text that includes graphic advice on stimulating desire. The early Persian Sufi mystic poet, Rumi, has also helped spread the message.
At Banyen Books, a long-standing spiritual bookstore in Kitsilano, two floor-to-ceiling bookcases are filled with titles on the spirituality of sex.
They include Finding God Through Sex; Tantric Sex and Lovemaking; Western Sex and Mysticism; Zen and the Art of Making Love; Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the 21st Century; If the Buddha Dated; Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence; Soulfully Gay; Tantric Orgasm for Women; Enlightened Sex, Deepak Chopra’s Kama Sutra: Including the Seven Spiritual Laws of Love, and many titles by David Deida, author of Wild Nights and The Way of the Superior Man.
Susan McCaslin, a Vancouver poet, is a mainline Protestant who, like MacKnee, is exploring the links between sexuality and God.
McCaslin recently gave a sermon highlighting how medieval mystics and celibate priests such as John of the Cross often talked about being “ravished” by God.
Such mystical union is captured in the famous baroque statue by Bernini titled The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, which is prominently displayed in a Catholic church in Rome that has become a tourist hot spot.
The Ecstasy of St. Teresa sculpture was inspired by the writing of 16th-century mystic St. Teresa of Avila when she described her vision of an angel who pierced her heart with an arrow “to leave me all on fire with a great love of God.” The sculpture emphasizes there is often little distinction between religious and sensual moments.
The Bible often sends a similar message. McCaslin maintains the frank eroticism of the Bible chapter known as The Song of Songs uses the image of lovers to exemplify humans’ relationship to God.
“What the poem suggests is that Spirit is more like a lover than a lawgiver or judge,” McCaslin wrote, “and that living in harmony with Spirit is more like falling in love than living up to an external standard of rightness.”
The United Church Observer, the in-house magazine of Canada’s largest Protestant denomination, recently ran an article that touched on a sex survey of 3,800 North Americans by Gina Ogden, author of The Heart and Soul of Sex.
More than two out of three respondents told researchers that “sex needs to be spiritual to be satisfying” and 45 per cent said they “experienced sexual energy during spiritual ecstasy.”
The author of The United Church Observer piece, Rev. Trisha Elliott, enthusiastically concluded: “If our ability to love makes us most like God, then it stands to reason that when we make love we might be in our most holy state. Should we break out the linens, candles, incense, flowers and wine? O God, yes! Great sex is not only possible — it’s divine.”
Meanwhile, one of North America’s largest Catholic newspapers, The National Catholic Reporter, has published an article in which Rich Heffern confessed he’d been taught in seminary to believe sex was shameful.
Since then, inspired by writers such as Thomas Moore, a former monk who wrote The Soul of Sex, Heffern has come to believe Catholics need to get beyond their guilt and enjoy sexuality for its sacredness; to experience married sex as a form of religious expression.
Heffern’s favorite gospel story is of the woman who bathes Jesus’ feet with her tears, “wiping them dry with her long sensuous hair. It always knocks me out, reminding me of the intimate Christian connection between sacredness and vulnerable flesh.”
Bodies are “thoroughly sacramental,” Heffern wrote. He goes so far as to make the connection that people who are uncomfortable with their own bodies, alienated from them, may be destructive to the body of the planet, leading to ecological devastation.
Christian sex ‘more fulfilling’
In the 1990s, when people were talking about and researching Tantric sex, MacKnee began wondering why the sex lives of loving Christian couples weren’t also being studied.
He began putting together a research project on Christians, five men and five women, who had peak experiences related to sexuality. No one in the UBC counselling department had ever seen anything like it.
The prestigious Journal of Psychology and Theology eventually published several of his papers, including Profound Sexual and Spiritual Encounters Among Practicing Christians: A Phenomenological Approach.
MacKnee discovered his Christian “co-researchers” (including two evangelical pastors) had 11 common experiences when they engaged in sexual intimacy. They included a sense of wonder, bonding, euphoria, gender equality, arousal, blessing and transcendence.
The sense of God’s presence during sex, in the midst of, as the Bible says, becoming “one flesh,” elevated the Christians’ sexual responsiveness to the point of ecstasy.
Many said they found the experience “unbelievable.” And the after-effects were transforming and empowering.
In comparing the Christians’ ecstasy to research subjects who practised Tantric sex, MacKnee concluded that Christian sex was more fulfilling.
Why? Because Tantric sex encourages men and women not to reach orgasm.
Christian sex does.
“It appears that the peaks of sexual and spiritual connection among Christians were more holistic,” MacKnee wrote in his scholarly paper, “involving full body gratification as well as emotional and spiritual highs.”
Furthermore, MacKnee concluded, “This study demonstrates that peak sexual union requires mutual trust in the security of a committed relationship with another person, just as spiritual union requires unquestioned trust in God.”
Which leads us to the controversial topics — for a man who attends an Evangelical Free Church and teaches at TWU — of sex outside marriage and homosexual sexuality.
Trinity Western University, where MacKnee has taught for many years, requires students and faculty to restrict sex to heterosexual marriage. MacKnee calls such rules “guidelines.”
Asked whether sex could have a peak sacred quality outside heterosexual marriage, including in gay and lesbian relationships, MacKnee replied:
“I think God desires sex to be as whole and complete as possible, to include the whole body, mind and soul. Why settle for something less — for just physical pleasure — when you can have the whole thing?”
That’s about as far as we got with that line of questioning.
Shifting the topic, MacKnee said his current research is into female sexual esteem, including among Christians, and how males who are hurt in relationships often succumb to pornography addictions.
He doesn’t want to “deliver” Christians, or anyone, from the temptations of sex. Ultimately, he wants to help them fulfill their sacred desires. In that way, he believes biblical laws against such things as promiscuity and adultery were not prohibitions against pleasure.
Rather, he maintains they were guidelines designed to help humans attain deeper pleasures, which he believes can be found in sexual intimacy within the unity and security of marriage.
But what about the sexuality of Jesus, who the New Testament says never married?
“I think Jesus was celibate, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t sexual,” MacKnee said.
Jesus appeared highly sensual, he said. “People loved him and were in awe of him. I think there was a lot of sexual energy there.”
As in Celtic Christian tradition, MacKnee believes being sensual and sexual creates a “thin zone” between humans and God, reducing the usually thick barrier between this world and the sacred realm.
And should there be any doubt, MacKnee makes it clear he has experienced this spiritual connection himself, along with his wife.
“In our own life,” he said, “we’ve found the more we’re connected with God, the better our sex lives.”
dtodd@vancouversun.com
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Sep
I ran across this article in the Daily Camera - an interesting look at Tantric practice that highlights its deep spiritual nature. I grew up in a very conservative religion, though luckily, I learned that sexuality is an extremely sacred and beautiful practice with the ability to connect us with the divine. Personally, I don’t see the core aspects of Tantra as incongruent with anything that I grew up - though if you read the comments at the Daily Camera website, you’ll see a few disagreements.
I’ve reprinted the article below - but for the responses, as well as further resources, definitely go to the Camera.
Sacred sexuality: Some say sex may be the key to spiritual enlightenment and unity
One day, Dawn Beck decided she wanted more.
“We wondered how we could go deeper, how to take what we already had, which was wonderful … and go deeper with the intimacy, love and connection,” Beck says.
They weren’t trying to fix a problem in their relationship, although some couples are when they head this route.
Beck and Gatz wanted to learn about tantric lovemaking.
Despite the misconceptions around the word “tantra,” the Boulder couple wasn’t seeking crazy new kama sutra positions, a sex club or hot and steamy demonstrations from tantric teachers. That’s not tantra, they say.
For Beck and Gatz, it was about “sacred sexuality.” That is, acknowledging the divine element of sex and connecting with their sexual chakras. Beck says she felt her sexuality, and she felt her heart, but the two were not fused together.
“This was the piece that was missing,” she says.
After a three-day workshop, the couple say they fell more in love than ever before and became so inspired they decided to become certified tantric educators themselves. Five-and-a-half years later, Beck and Gatz teach sacred sexuality workshops through Tantric Sacred Journeys and are among a growing group of local tantra advocates and experts.
Boulder County is hands-down Colorado’s hot spot for tantra, with regular workshops and at least a dozen educators who’ve made a business out of it. The third Thursday of every month, Tantric Sacred Journeys co-hosts a “Puja” devotional circle to “celebrate the divine presence in all of us” (read: learn the principles of tantra). Others offer classes specifically for women, private sessions for couples — and individuals (you don’t need a partner to practice tantra) — and group workshops for lovers.
Today Beck and Gatz will run a tantra intro course for couples and singles. Participants will learn about the importance of breath, meditation and how to build connections. The event is fully clothed and considered sacred.
Boulder’s sexual educators’ guild boasts about 20 members. Some of the nation’s big-name tantra experts, such as Caroline and Charles Muir, have Boulder ties. In 1978 the Muirs founded the Source School of Tantra Yoga, which certifies teachers, organizes weeklong vacation seminars in Hawaii and teaches the most popular and successful tantra seminars in the country. The workshops were the basis for two Hollywood movies, “Bliss” and “The Best Ever.”
Many local teachers are also members of the national Association of Sexual Energy Professionals, which is holding its third conference this month.
Members say sacred sexuality is a growing movement, as more people yearn for “something more than the jaded world view of sexuality promoted by the advertising and entertainment industries,” in the words of one Golden-based tantric educator who goes by the name Jane. She recently released an educational DVD on the sacred ceremony of lovemaking.
What is tantric sex?
There are various definitions of the word “tantra,” just as there are as many different ways of practicing it.
Some say it means “to weave.”
Suzie Heumann, with the Web site www.tantra.com, says it means the “direct experience of the Divine.”
Beck says “tantra” comes from the ancient Sanskrit word for “expansion through awareness.” As she defines it, tantric sex is a spiritual path that uses breath, sounds, movements and symbols to quiet the mind and activate sexual energy. It can be used for pleasure, enlightenment, connection and sexual healing.
The practice teaches men to raise their sexual energy upward, into their stomach, heart and throat, which can delay ejaculation and allow more pleasure throughout the entire body.
Women are taught how to feel their own power, magic and wisdom and how to embrace their sexual energy, rather than push it away, as society often teaches.
“We’re told it’s not ladylike, good or healthy,” Beck says. “Instead, let’s embrace our sexual energy and utilize it for the good of us, our family, home, community and world. Let’s take this sexual energy and utilize it to manifest peace and love.”
When practiced alone, tantra helps awaken the “essence of your being,” she says. And when shared with someone else, the belief is tantra helps expand this love beyond you to share with your partner, and ultimately, the universe.
The sacred side of sex
Some people look to tantric sex because they’re bored with sex, want to know how to attract a meaningful relationship, want to improve a current relationship or are trying to heal past relationship or sexual wounds; things from the past can block your ability to be intimate, instructors say. The hang-up might be abandonment, loss, sexual assault, molestation or feelings of unworthiness.
“Intentional” breathing, massage, making sounds and setting intentions in a safe atmosphere can help open up these blockages. In sacred sexuality, they call it “moving energy” through your chakra system to essentially clear out the injuries to open a channel to your spirit, to connect you with a higher power.
Hence the term “sacred sexuality.”
Judith Davis, of Boulder, teaches sacred sexuality as a way of reclaiming the divine nature of our bodies as a path to God.
She calls it an extension of the mind-body connection, and the idea that we create our own realities. In other words, we know you can train your mind to separate the body from physical pain, or at least minimize it. Mind over matter.
So the flip side must also be true, Davis says. You can train your body to make something true for your mind, as well. Physical pleasure can heal you internally, she says. Tantra teaches how to “move” your orgasmic energy into different parts of the body that need healing, from a hurt foot to a broken heart. Literally, sexual healing. And pleasure, specifically, makes you focus on the present moment.
Sexual energy is the life force, Davis says, and it affects your soul, or “that which is more than the body and mind separate. The sum of the parts is greater,” she says. “That’s what I mean by a path to God.”
And not in a denominational or religious sense. She says there are sacred sexual paths in every major world religion. This Puritan-based society just suppresses it.
“This is my god,” Davis says. “My god or goddess. That which is divine in everything.”
Jade Beaty, of Longmont, has been studying tantra since 2000. She says the main purpose of sex is spiritual — “What we all seek through religion, without the dogma. It’s a direct experience of God through sex.”
Our society values the mind more than emotions and the body, which can cut off access to so much wisdom of the body, she says. Think about the definition “to weave.” Tantra teaches a level of sexual intimacy where the bodies merge into one, healing the illusion of duality — especially the masculine and feminine opposition, Beaty says.
“You feel like there’s only one of you. It’s trippy. It’s wonderful,” she says. “It starts to help you gain a world view about connectedness, about unity. And that’s just a wonderful way to live.”
The sacred sexuality teacher, Jane, says you can do this work on an individual, as well, by balancing your left side (the “yin,” feminine or receptive) with your right (the “yang,” masculine or releasing). She specializes on “polarity body work,” helping people accept certain affirmations (such as “I am beautiful”) while releasing other thoughts (such as shame and guilt).
The pleasure point
You can’t leave out the physical benefits of tantric sex — a major selling point.
Beaty remembers her first “full-body orgasm.” She says it felt like she entered into an “outwardly, pulsating expansion of everything that exists for about 20 minutes; every cell in my body was alive.”
This so-called Kundalini Awakening, or gift of grace, was acquired through techniques of breath, intention, movement of the body and a “sacred spot massage.” That would be the G-spot, which she says stands for “goddess,” not Gräfenberg.
Judith Davis says when she first attended a conscious-loving seminar with her then-husband, it was mind-blowing. She learned that women have the ability to ejaculate, and men have the ability not to — and to have multiple orgasms (not to be mistaken with multiple ejaculations).
“I learned things in my late 30s that I couldn’t believe I had never been told, things your mother should have told you,” Davis says.
But tantra is not about orgasms or about having sex for 10 hours straight, as some celebrities have bragged (ahem, Sting). In fact, tantra aims to remove the pressure of orgasms and performance.
Davis says it transforms the entire concept of sex.
“You wake up. You don’t make love with your eyes closed,” literally or figuratively, she says. “From that place, you have to relearn how to feel again, from that awake place. And that is how the body starts to connect with the spirit.”
Contact Camera Staff Writer Aimee Heckel at 303-473-1359 or heckela@dailycamera.com.
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