Today's Column

Sex & Spirit (Not Two)

It’s always such a breath of fresh air how truth is stranger than fiction: life gives you surprises you could never dream up in a million years. Back in the 1990s I wrote what I’ve referred to as an adult fantasy, a sort of swords and sorcerers novella, with some rather explicit sexual content. I was always a little embarrassed by it, and even after I revised it about two years ago – and got a new crop of rejection slips – I was careful who I showed the manuscript to. After all, I’m telling people I’m a “spiritual” person, right?

And now that I’m giving satsang the situation is even pricklier than it was before. Will people pay attention to the help I can give if they know I wrote this sexy story? A close friend of mine sent me an e-mail today, and it really touched me deeply. The universe actually is a friendly place, which is why Rumi always speaks of the Beloved, I guess. No names, but here’s what he said…

“Jim! I was just thinking of you and your writing… I was looking at some romance novels and remembered your own story of a man thrust into another world. I told you this before, but I gotta’ say, you have a talent for the sexually intense. I think I even got a hard-on reading your stuff, and I hope you take this as a compliment. I'm not talking porn, I'm talking of sexuality/spirituality. I think the surface was only scratched there.

“For some reason, people like to keep that under their hats, and their hats always on their heads, maybe because sexual fiction is too powerful. Maybe we should just move to France.”

Thanks to my good friend for his forthrightness, his courage, and his manliness, to tell me his deep, risky feelings. It’s so empowering. It encourages and emboldens me to remind the people who come to my satsang that awakening isn’t some bloodless retreat into a mountain cave or monasticism. As Jack Kornfield says, “First the Ecstasy, Then The Laundry.” I would add, “… and the toilet, and the Internet, and the bedroom.”

Wake up, move on, have feelings. It isn’t about some unending bliss, and it isn’t about becoming a saint. It’s about being everything you are, and then being everything. Everything. This is it, right now.