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Shame about sexual feelingsFrom: Steven
Subject: Philosophy
Date/Time 2010-02-14 10:39:15
Remote IP: 76.247.139.98
Message>>>S: I don't think I agree with this fully.
>>>"Understanding your true nature" is not the
>>>solution to every problem.
>>
>>>B: Not sure why you make this comment,
>>>it can indicate lack of it.
If, as an example, you injure your hand. You
get physical pain as a response. You can
have perfect awareness of "who you are" and
not identify with the pain felt in the physical
body, recognizing that the pain is not part of
you. This can diminish the degree to which
the pain "bothers" you, but the fact is, is
that the pain still exists and the awareness
does not change the fact that one can observe
an "uncomfortableness". This inner tension
or uncomfortableness is present regardless of
any understanding that it is not part of you.
This is, of course, true provided you don't
buy into the Buddhist philosophy that all
is illusion and delusion, which I don't.
There are things that have a "reality" to them
that are nonetheless not part of my self-identification.
My point is that there are no absolutes
in Daoism. "Understanding your true nature"
is not a cure-all. It does a lot of things,
but not all things. If due to an injury,
you start bleeding profusely from the head,
"understanding your true nature" is not
going to do much, while medical attention is.
This was the meaning to my statement.
Certain things require a pragmatic approach
that "understanding" does not provide.
>>>S: Through a lot of work, I think I understand
>>>my true nature pretty well, but I still recognize
>>>an incompatibility between who I am and "my role in society".
>>
>>>It would be good if you have others confirm this,
>>>if you have not. Often we are not capable of this.
I have not had good experiences with
such approaches in the past. ^_^
>>>>Tension is one thing, judging one's desire as shame,
>>>evil, etc. is another thing.
At least you admit that there is a tension present.
That's promising. ;)
As for the judgement aspect, there can be a difficulty
especially with regard to sexual issues. Your "inner
voice" can tell you one thing; while society can be
saying something different. On one hand, you trusting
your inner voice in contrast to the hive mind of society
is a form of arrogance. It's saying I value the
opinion of 1 person over that of (1 * N) people, where
N=the number of people with opposing views. It is
presumptuous and arrogant to assume that you are "right".
On the other hand, defaulting to the outside opinion
contains a subtle judgement against the self and lack
of acceptance if there is an incompatibility.
My point is, is that it is unrealistic to think that the
heart is not going to get involved in the tension. The
very fact that there *is* tension, creates heart involvement!
Unlike non-sexual issues/emotions--in which there is often
some underlying corrupt pattern that needs to be removed;
on the sexual realm a lot of the pattern is not "viral
software", but is instead part of your internal architecture.
In other words, it is part of who you are, and not something
separate from you you've misidentified as you. This makes
the situation much much slipperier, as you can not just
flush the pattern. This makes it a situation where you
are forced to keep dealing with the tension on a regular basis,
rather than something you "can address and move on with".
Do you know what I mean?
If I get angry, it's because I've misidentified a particular
situation as something personal, and this misidentification
is a false pattern generating the anger. Flush the
pattern/misidentification, and the anger goes away. But
this is something you can't really do with sexual issues,
as the pattern *IS* part of you. You can't flush it. It's
more core, more fundamental. It's a friction that can't be
removed. I suppose you could label it "shame", but we don't
even need to go so far as to label it. Labeling creates
certain concepts and boxes it in to certain parameters. The
bottom line is that there is some kind of uncomfortable
tension/friction that is present--regardless of how you want
to name it.
Dealing with this *ongoing* uncomfortable tension/friction
is quite challenging I find, because it's part of who you are
and is not separate from it.
S
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