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December 2008....

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Before I elaborate on the previous post of this title, let me recap.  I asked that spirituality be conceived in a novel way.  Here are a few points from my proposal (not all of them).  ....

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—Spirituality is a congeries of modalities, not an “it.”....

—Spirituality is not merely admirable; it has a nasty side.  (As with all the effort that has been devoted to divorcing the compliment ‘smart’ from “tells the truth,” and to deriding accuracy as “square.”)....

—The mythology of the mind that lives on forever after the body decomposes is unhelpful; it calls forth effort in aid of an incredible goal.....

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And, our concern here, ....

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—Spirituality should affirm the flesh.....

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That is to say, the goal should not be to discard the flesh, to wrest the mind from the flesh on the premise that the mind can thereby flit in the ether forever.  ....

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The flesh?  Spirituality needs to affirm perception, emotion, kinesis, the realization of choices (intentional action).  The flesh is fallible and impermanent because we are—but the notion that the mind can escape fallibility and impermanence by discarding the body or swallowing it up is wishful thinking.  ....

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In fact, let me recur to my post on religious tenets. There is no reason to humor someone who believes that the mind can attain a perfect eternal existence by discarding the body.  Let us demand the exact details and the full details as dictated by this or that religion.  It will quickly be evident that the promise of disembodied bliss has innumerable trick clauses.....

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To continue, a perspective of mind over matter in the magical sense (the goal of commanding matter by wishing, by casting spells) should not define spirituality.....

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But now we have to confront the death-grip that the institutional religions have on humanity.  The Indo-European religions hold up asceticism as an ideal.  Buddhism, at least, has no role model other than the ascetic—no matter that some (most?) of its adherents lead worldly lives.  ....

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Some apologists for the religions have learned to say that their religion “takes care of sensuality” because it has an antinomian fringe.  (More realistically, it has masters who cheat their followers by cavorting in the back room with nubile acolytes.)  In the hippie era, it became even more corrupt.  A few entrepreneurs preached compulsive debauchery while wrapping themselves in the robes of an ascetic religion.....

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To say that these adherents know a spirituality that affirms the flesh is an intolerable insult to the spirituality of the flesh.  The first insight of the spirituality of the flesh is that furtive indulgence inside a temple of condemnation is the opposite extreme from the spirituality of the flesh.  ....

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That this even has to be said reveals another prevalent horror.  The overwhelming majority of people know of no vantage-point from which to address existence but hypocrisy.  They have never known a moment of authenticity.  The only thing they know how to do is to compensate lies with lies.  (And nasty spirituality rears its head.)....

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Religion and hypocrisy indeed.  Some of the religions have cultures and cultural achievements which we respect.  Then they are necessarily sincere at some point—or better, they “mean business.”  At the same time, they give so much evidence of being cynical to the core that I don't know what the magnificent cultural achievements crystallize from.....

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In English, “the flesh” has a broad use encompassing all of the corporeal.  Simultaneously, it is an idiom for sex.  (In other languages too?)  This latter narrowing of the meaning may reveal a wishfulness that is foolish.....

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It is annoying when people assume that "the flesh" means sex, no more and no less.  While the phrase has that meaning, it also means corporeality, which includes sex, but includes far more.  Something is badly awry if people think the corporeal begins and ends in sex. How about perception?  How about emotion?  How about the realization of choices?  Moreover, there are natural responsibilities, such as parenting, which are of the flesh.....

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Sickness, death, and war are “of the flesh.”  All of this begins to teach the lesson that “the flesh” is not self-explanatory.  Nor does it provide a self-guided exaltation or a self-contained fulfillment.  “The flesh” has liabilities—and it confronts you with them forcibly.....

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Biology does not provide that sex is safe.  There are the biological pitfalls.  Unintended pregnancies.  Infections that most people don't know about and don't want to know about.  If there were an honest statistic about the proportion of sexually active people who suffer negative consequences biologically, I wonder what it would be.....

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Then, there are the behavioral pitfalls.  Not only rape.  Sustained relationships can be coerced:  incestuous child molestation.....

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Sex, jealousy, and the pair bond are not reconciled easily.  Almost anything we do is required to satisfy multiple demands.  Most especially when we do something that matters socially.  Especially in today’s culture, people are on different journeys (they evolve different aspirations relative to their "abilities").  People are under the imperative to “make something of themselves.”  A sexual bond does not relieve people of that imperative, and the effort to make something of oneself will not necessarily bring one closer to the other person.....

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A pair bond is not only strained because different people have to “make something of themselves.”  People carry different baggage from the past.  The other person will have baggage that does not emerge until you get to know them rather intimately.....

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The lesson, again, is that “the flesh” is not self-explanatory.  Nor does it provide a self-guided exaltation or a self-contained fulfillment.  In fact, we have only begun to explore the liabilities.  What vernacular custom makes of sensuality or the carnal is often horrible.  Vernacular interpretations of sex are horrible more often than not.  ....

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If we focus on what humans do, humans are capable of being abusive when it is merely self-serving—or not even self-serving.  Humans are at risk of falling into a destructive equilibrium (actually, a disequilibrium).  To repeat, “the flesh” of itself does not lift the spirits.  Wallowing in sensualism is too crude to bring us to our full stature.....

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The human lot is even more grim.  People have a tropism for degradation—or else they find their way to degradation given the slightest push.  If the slide down the slope of cruelty were not easy, then many practices of an earlier age—or practices inherited from an earlier age—would not have arisen in the first place.  ....

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Are almost all people subjected to pathological upbringings which condition them that sex and abuse are the same thing?  Or is it inborn?  Are people like this by nature?  If they are, then nature has much to answer for.....

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Some people may have advantageous inclinations from birth.  Then they may have to fight their upbringing to preserve those inclinations.  In other cases, people may have to be steered to the advantageous inclinations by external discipline.  ....

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So neither nature nor nurture can be trusted to bring people to their full stature, to a spiritual fulfillment. ....

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When spirituality affirms the flesh, we should probably picture it as tiptoeing through a minefield—if one has to think of everything that can go awry across the human spectrum.  (Perhaps most people only encounter a fraction of the possible pitfalls.)....

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There has to be a synthesis in which considerations beyond carnality steer the sensual inclinations. (Considerations beyond carnality:  in previous texts, we listed them as the modalities that comprise admirable spirituality.)....

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Again, to be told that I am saying something that the ascetic religions have already taken care of—by winking while the guru sneaks in the back room for hypocritical hanky-panky—is infuriating.....

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A person is called on to invent him or herself beyond nature or nurture.  I don’t know whether this sounds like Existentialism—I certainly don’t take my cue from the Existentialists.  But we have a responsibility to invent ourselves under unfavorable conditions which vastly outruns both nature and nurture.....