SPF Journal 2

Possible quotes

• ....the role of the spiritual emotions of awe and wonder, and transcendence in art and religion. Taking their energy and drive from SEEKING and PLAY systems, these spiritual emotions function to temper intense feelings of FEAR or GRIEF in the context of the neocortical imaginative elaboration of culture. The emotionally saturated state engendered in spiritual emotions is immanent  in our neuropsychology, but the ways in which we communicate our experiences in art are unique. (Asma and Gabriel, 20)
• Its worth Paying attention to whatever cultural products draw straightforwardly on sex to gain position, even and especially if women are the driving concept. (Tolentino, 85)
• The Ideal woman looks beautiful, happy, carefree and perfectly competent. Is she really? To look any particular way and to actually be that way are two separate concepts, and striving to look carefree and happy can interfere with your ability to do so. (Tolentino, 89)
• Its possible if we want it. What what do we want? What would you want - what desires, what desires, what forms of insubordination, would you be able to access in becoming an ideal woman, gratified and beloved, proof of the efficiency of a system that magnifies and diminishes you every day? (Tolentino, 94)
• I have so many highlighted in the "Uses of the Erotic" reading oh my gosh

At the end of Tolentino's "Always be Optimizing" she asks a very thought provoking question:

What what do we want? What would you want - what desires, what desires, what forms of         insubordination, would you be able to access in becoming an ideal woman, gratified and beloved, proof of the efficiency of a system that magnifies and diminishes you every day? (Tolentino, 94)

I believe that Audre Lorde actually provides the answer - or rather the exact same answer I would respond with: eroticism. "Our acts against oppression  become integral with self, motivated and empowered within (Lorde, 58)" and that "the erotic [is] a source of power and information... (Lourde 54)."

She defines the erotic a variety of ways:

• It is an internal sense of satisfaction to which once we have experienced it, we know we can aspire. For having experienced the fullness of this depth of feeling and recognized its power, in honor and self-respect we can require no less for ourselves. (page 54)
• The personification of love in all its aspects - born o Chaos, and personifying creative power and harmony. When I speak of the erotic, then, I speak of it as an assertion of the life force of women; ( page 55)
• The erotic is the nurturer or nursemaid of all our deepest knowledge (page 56)
• ...sharing deeply any pursuit with another person... whether physical, emotional, psychic, or intellectual, forms a bridge between the sharers... (page 56)

She goes on to explain in her essay how eroticisms is sensual and the connection made in sex is what makes it erotic - not the sex itself. In fact sex without deep connection and emotion is how she defines pornography, the opposite of eroticism. 

I could easily write multiple pages on this alone, its spiritual significance, my own journey that I learned this with at the guidance of Lilith, and the importance of this lesson being one repeated multiple times in a woman's life because, as Tolentino and Lourde reiterated our society seeks to trap us into the "ideal woman" and it is easy to fall into it - including forgetting our eroticism. However to make what would be a very enjoyable, albeit lengthy paper, short I will skip to the next quote that I feel help connect this essay to our class and the focus on the body, emotions, and self in the power of becoming.

"...we [society] have attempted to separate the spiritual and the erotic, thereby reducing the spiritual to a world of flattened affect, a world of the ascetic who aspire to feel nothing. But nothing is farthest from the truth...For the bridge that connects them [different areas of life] is formed by the erotic - the sensual- those physical, emotional, and psychic expressions of what is deepest and strongest and richest within each of us, being shared: the passion of live, in its deepest meanings. (page 56)"

 This is a very key thing for me, in that sensuality (and as an extension, sexuality) is a very core aspect of spirituality. Lourde makes a comparison later in the reading about how there is no difference in writing a poem than making love to a woman she loves - what she is getting at is that at its core eroticism is a deep love and sense of joy for life. The same, I believe, can be said for the human experience of connecting with the divine. Eroticism, at is core, is one of the things that truly makes us human. 

To me, eroticism is very hard to find when society makes a point to separate you from it, and it is hard to fine alone. Lourde even specifies in the 4th definition above that is occurs when shared with another person. But that deep energy, the power that arises from it, how can one say that it is not of the divine? 

Should the opportunity ever arise I would love to elaborate on this topic even more in connection to how this divinity is accessed and used in spiritual practices (tantric buddhism, sex magic through witcraft or secular "manifestation", etc).