Tuesday, November 15, 2016

Hunting is (still) not those heads on the wall




The woods at night. Mist in the trunks. Nightbirds, the voice of water. Heartbeats. 
Behind the fronds, the poet, crouched, feathered, fishing with a wand. Aflame with fear. Hush. Heartbeats. A branch broken, arrows loosed…Blood and the juice of berries on the riverbank…

At times it is the poet who brings back the white stag, at others it is the poem that hunts them. Regardless, after whatever frenzy has blown away and the arrows have been carefully fixed in their arcs, there is that familiar feeling of returning from a nighttime hunt in a far off wood. A wood so far away, that Distance herself is animated, has duende, is an integral part of the process. A process cold and slick with sweat; so beautiful, so terrible…

Then some skin the beast and hang it’s head in a museum. Visitors come, admire the royal posture of its horns, wonder at the frost of its white fur. But the head has grown mute, it’s fonts of prophetic speech dried up, and the cord to its music cut. It’s then that we remember Amiri Baraka: Hunting is not those heads on the wall. 

The artist is cursed with his artifact, which exists without and despite him....
   The academic Western mind is the best
   example of the substitution of artifact
   worship for lightning awareness of the
   art process.... The process itself is the
   most important quality because it can
   transform and create, and its only form
   is possibility. The artifact, because it
   assumes one form, is only that particular
   quality or idea. It is,
   in this sense, after the
   fact, and is only important
   because it remarks
   on its source.

Social media is guilty of even grosser artifact worship. Photos, statements, broadcasts about what one did that day are all heads that get hung up on the wall. Hollow posture is favoured to the exclusion of movement. Some apologize for this by emphasizing that sites like Facebook are a tool like any other. However, it is clear that social media sites are the end to their own means. This gallery of heads (faces?) do not tell how they were hunted, they are the hunt itself. When are we going to realize that this is a trap. The feedback loop occurs not only in relation to the ego, to peer validation and the thrills of self exposure, but to the ontology the ego is wed to. By submitting to the waterwheel of embeddable content, we are ever further from the sources of Ideas. No longer able to access Ideas, reality itself becomes diluted and pale. 

Reality’s yardstick—measured primarily in monetary value, and by extension, in Likes and hits—is such that small businesses, activists and their campaigns, artists and their art, must provide a constant supply of content, posts, updates, on social media sites or they cease to exist. While this precarious situation seems to offer little alternative, it might be time to rethink one’s strategy. Social media might offer some gains, but at what cost? Is it really so useful or is that efficacy an illusion? Recall forever, recall a time before the ipad, a time when people were less numb. That if an artist abandons or disavows having an online presence it does not make them ‘less official’. That offline conversations, pamphleting, performing, sewing seeds, speaking, planting food, learning skills, or teaching them, have more power than the ‘clicktavism’ employed (sometimes exclusively, it seems) by so many activists in the twenty first century. One can seek to use an enemy’s tool against them, but in the end one is still dancing to their music, and therefore, unavoidably under their control. Hunting is still not those heads on the wall. Here, what is true for art is even truer for social media. This is a reminder. 

Yet, the esteem of a strategy remains case specific. This is not to advocate that doors be shut without reason. However, there is an extensive difference between the employment of a given tactic as one in many, as something complimentary, and being wholly dependent upon it. What (who) would you be without social media? Would you still be able to do what you do? If you choose to make use of the internet, then let your presence be sparse, and even more so, unpredictable. Like when the dead walk in the world of the living, let whatever posts you make be received as incursions from another world, from outside the aggressive reality of Facebook and all social media; let them be hauntings. 

Reality is throned in the head. The internet (and especially social media) imposes a fatal separation of the head from the body. Poetry, like all art, compels the head to take back its body.  




A Farsi/Persian folksong sung by Azam Ali 
whose lyrics tell of a hunter who is reluctant to set his dogs after 
the rabbits, deer, pheasants, and so on because 
they keep reminding him of his beloved.


Oh to the woods again. To wonder, as all in green our love goes riding…
To pursue those fabulous beasts, not for sport, nor for profit, but to lose oneself once again, in that rapt and enrapturing dance of prey and predator, of bull and torero, or devil and witch…

To let the desert be your home, to thrive in the hinterland, to embrace exile if you must. (Especially if this means exile from social media.)

To see your beloved in all fauna, in all flora! In all things. Whereby the coup de grace becomes a death blow to the poet or hunter herself, whereby she cannot help but feel a great swash of mourning when the stag is taken. 

So in the throes of war, rapine, fear, and vehement environmental destruction, where man burns down his house to roast his pig, some poets seek prizes in the palaces of the academy, or accolades and visibility in the online agoras. 

Others disappear in the desert; their voices only rise over the city walls when the winds pick up. 


And it’s heads they’re after. 




Aquellas cabezas en la pared no son la cacería





El bosque de noche. Niebla entre los troncos. Aves nocturnas, y las voces del agua. Latidos.
Tras las frondas, el poeta agachado, en un disfraz de plumas, con una varita pesca. 
Ascuas de temor en el pecho. Silencio. Latidos. 
Se parte un palo, se lanzan flechas…Sangre y el jugo de bayas en la orilla del río… 

Hay veces cuando el poeta vuelve con el ciervo blanco, otras veces ellos son los presos de sus propios poemas. De todas maneras, después de que el frenesí creador esté llevado por los vientos, y las flechas estén colocadas de nuevo en sus aljabas, viene esta sensación familiar de la cual han hablado tantos poetas, de haber regresado de una cacería mortal en un bosque crepuscular, un bosque tan lejano en que la Distancia misma se personifica, tiene ánima, duende, Distancia que se convierte en una parte integral del proceso. Un proceso gélido y resbaladizo de sudor. Tan hermoso, tan terrible…

Luego, algunos despellejan a la bestia y cuelgan su cabeza en un museo. Vienen los turistas, y admiran la postura real que tienen sus cuernos, y se maravillan por la escarcha de su pelo marfil. Pero la cabeza ya está muda, sus fuentes de lenguajes proféticos ya están secas, el cordón de su música amputado. Es entonces que nos acordamos de Amiri Baraka: Aquellas cabezas en la pared no son la cacería. 

El artista es maldito por su artefacto, que existe a pesar de él y sin él
La mente académica occidental es el mejor ejemplo de la sustitución 
de la conciencia relampagueante del proceso de crear arte, 
por el culto de los artefactos… El proceso en sí es la cualidad más importante
porque puede transformar y crear, la única forma fija que tiene es la posibilidad misma…
El artefacto, ya que asume una sola forma, es nada más que una sola 
idea o cualidad particular. Es en este sentido, ‘después del hecho’:  la única 
importancia que tiene es que nos comenta algo sobre su fuente de origen…

Las redes sociales son culpables de un culto a los artefactos aun más grosero. Las fotos, las exclamaciones, los estados, los informes públicos de todo lo que ha hecho uno en un día dado (acabo de tomar un cafe, acabo de pasear el perro…etc) son todos artefactos, o cabezas que se cuelgan en la pared. Las posturas vacías se favorecen por encima de los movimientos. Algunos intentan excusarse de ello por asegurar que sitios como Facebook son nada más que herramientas como cualquier otra. Sin embargo, está cada vez más claro que las redes sociales no son medios a un fin, sino el fin de sus propios medios. Esta galería de cabezas (¿caras?), no nos cuenta de sus orígenes, de como han sido cazadas. Digamos que la cacería no es más que el propio acto de colgarlas. Cuándo vamos a darnos cuenta que todo eso es una trampa. Este bucle de retroalimentación ocurre no solamente relacionado al ego, a la validación de los colegas, y las ilusiones de la auto-exhibición, sino a la ontología con que el ego tiene matrimonio. Al someterse al gran molino de capas de contenido virtual superpuestas, nos alejamos cada vez más de las fuentes de nuestras Ideas. Ya sin poder acceder a las Ideas, se palidece y se diluye la realidad misma. 

La vara que mide la realidad—que se mide sobre todo por su valor monetario, y como extension de ella, en Visitas y Me gustas—es tal que los negocios pequeños, los activistas y sus movimientos, los artistas y sus obras, se sienten obligados a proporcionar un suministro constante de contenido, publicaciones virtuales, fotos, notificaciones y anuncios en las redes sociales o cesan de existir. Aunque esta situación precaria no parece ofrecer alternativa alguna, quizá ya es hora que reformulemos nuestras estrategias. Las redes sociales nos ofrecen algunos beneficios, pero ¿a qué costo? ¿Es que realmente son tan útiles o es esta eficacia un espejismo? Recuerda los tiempos de siempre, los tiempos sin los iphone, un tiempo en que la gente estaba menos entumecida. Que si un artista abandona o repudia tener una presencia virtual no le hace ser un artista ‘menos oficial’. Que las conversaciones cara a cara, fuera de las pantallas, el repartir panfletos políticos y artísticos, el sembrar semillas, el participar en actuaciones artísticas, el cultivar comida, el aprender habilidades nuevas o el enseñar, tienen más potencia que los ‘haz clictavismos’ empleados por tantos activistas en el s. XXI. Uno puede pretender usar la herramienta de un enemigo para luchar contra ellos, pero al fin y al acabo sigue bailando al son de la música que ellos han puesto, y por lo tanto permanecen inevitablemente bajo su control. Aquellas cabezas en la pared todavía no son la cacería. Aquí, lo que es verdadero en el mundo del arte, es aun más verdadero respecto a las redes sociales. Esto es un recordatorio.

Aun así,  el valor de una estrategia dada se estima en casos específicos. No quiero propugnar que cerremos puertas sin tener la necesidad. Sin embargo, hay una gran diferencia entre el empleo de una táctica dada como una entre varias, como algo complementario, y ser totalmente dependiente de ello. ¿Qué (quién) serías sin tu cuenta en las redes sociales? Podrías seguir dedicándote a lo que te dedicas? Si eliges utilizar el internet, pues deja que tu presencia sea escasa, y sobre todo impredecible. Igual que cuando los fantasmas caminan en el mundo de los vivos, deja que tus publicaciones se reciban como si fueran las incursiones de otro mundo, un mundo afuera de la realidad agresiva de Facebook y de todas las redes sociales; es decir, que sean embrujamientos. 

La realidad tiene su trono en la cabeza. El internet (y sobre todo las redes sociales) imponen una separación mortal entre cabeza y cuerpo. La poesía, como todo arte verdadero, compela a la cabeza que reivindique a su cuerpo. 



Una canción persa cantada por Azam Ali
La letra cuenta acerca de un cazador que no es capaz
de soltar sus perros a los conejos, ciervos, faisanes, y así
porque todos ellos le recuerdan a su amado

Ay, de volver a los bosques. De maravillarse cuando, con un arco en las manos, todo vestido de verde nuestro amor va cabalgando… 
De perseguir aquellas bestias fantásticas, no por deporte, ni por ganancia, sino para perderse otra vez, en aquella danza embriagadora entre depredador y preso, entre toro y torero, o diablo y bruja… 

De dejar que el desierto sea tu hogar, de florecer en el baldío, de abrazarle al exilio si debes…
(Sobre todo si eso quiere decir un exilio de las redes sociales)

De reconocer a tu amado en toda fauna, en toda flora! En todas las cosas. Por donde el golpe de la gracia se convierte en herida mortal para el poeta mismo, por donde no puede evitar sentir un gran pleamar de luto cuando se derribe el ciervo macho.

Así que, embrollados como estamos, en las angustias de la guerra, el miedo, el odio, y la vehemente destrucción del medio ambiente, en que el hombre prende fuego a su propia casa como para asar su cerdo, algunos poetas van detrás de premios en los palacios de la academia, o van cazando alabanzas en las ágoras virtuales. 
Otros poetas desaparecen en el desierto. Sólo se oyen sus voces cuando se alzan los vientos.


Y son cabezas lo que van cazando. 



Thursday, July 28, 2016

Part 5 Essays (Ensayos) by Mike Mahoney



Art from Wild Grace's Lapis Lazuli series

El poeta Mike Mahoney continua exponiendo su constelación de ideas escritas en respuesta a La chispa azul libro compuesto por nuestro socio JP Kruse. 

Poet Mike Mahoney continues to expound his constellation of ideas written in response to The Blue Spark by JP Kruse. 

"Changing a way of life means changing a reality, and this is not a minor operation; when imposed forcibly it comes close to the annihilation of an individual or a culture as a whole.” - J.P. Kruse, The Blue Spark

Pure terror is involved here. Nauseating, dizzy, boiling cold & freezing hot terror. Gravity upside-down, blood-chilling terror. For people in prison so long they grow afraid of freedom, I think the word used is ‘institutionalized.’
Perhaps on the larger cultural scale, we've become so incarcerated inside our Pan-repressed terror at the world we've created, that the choice of freedom, suppressed for so long it's petrified in the dream-deep brain sediment & strata of human myth & vague nostalgia, is even more frightening and out of the question than our simultaneously present yet still impending world extinction.
Perhaps we’ve all become institutionalized within the dark prison walls of our capitalist ideas and cultural fears; inside the insultingly tight borders of our story – this fantastically growth-stunting western culture of gizmo-fetish wage-slavery, instant gratification & resource addiction; inside the cancerous catacombs of our inherited linguistic limitations & the gradual disemboweling of our spiritual fortitude.
It feels as if we’re so cut off from life as we knew it for the past two million years that the smell of Earth seems a distant memory. The kindling of fire an ancient lost practice. Lost on our dress shoes and iPads. It’s as though we’re animals who’ve been broken and tamed, humiliated into technology’s house pet, locked inside for so long we’ve become amnesiacs too afraid to go outside because we’ve forgotten there is an outside. Or if we do remember, it’s more we’re looking down at it as a child above the deep end of a swimming pool, scared of imaginary sharks, gripping the diving board with white knuckles too paralyzed with fear to jump. Somewhere deep inside him he remembers this should be fun. Exciting, even.
Without rituals that mark the transition from childhood to adulthood, we spend our culturally-prolonged adolescence erecting walls and motes of behavior around our fears, insecurities, and shames until, by the time we become “mature adults”, we’ve repeated our own & our culture’s lies so much to ourselves we not only believe in them, we identify with them. And in a world as manipulative, cheap and illusory as ours can be, where massive corporations & fictitious markets roam the Earth munching up resources & thriving off of our societies’ lies to itself – the lies endlessly repeated, marketed, advertised, printed & publicized – we all believe we need to believe in something, even if it's believing in nothing. We all need some kind of psychic anchor to feel secure we won’t just drift off into insanity. A psychic mantra to localize us in the fuzzy temporal & dimensional space of ambiguity, abstraction and info-overload swirling all over the world. A psychic shield to protect us from overwhelming grief, anxiety and panic. From manipulative image magic and coercive reality engineering.
These anchors, these identity mantras and nexus points of recognition, these rhythms of refrain and hook, ground & coordinate us in a world where nothing else seems certain. They stake out a conceptual ground upon which we can stand. When this space is threatened, it's defended as if losing it would be worse than death. (And when it comes to moving into a larger reality, most of us would rather be invited than demanded. A smile, an invitation, these are much more persuasive than any demand, declaration or order.)
We hold on with a death grip to our phantom securities and illusory delusions of control in life, & over life. To avoid the nasty feeling of being completely naked, present, vulnerable and intimate with ourselves, with each other and with the surrounding reality, most of us will fight, scratch, kick and claw with tooth and nail to the death when we feel our tough outer shell of a world-view or self-image threatened.
It’s still a fear of death. A fear of the death of the ego if our identity is changed, challenged or threatened – if we lose our job for example, & therefore our confidence because our financial situation has changed, or if we lose our significant other, or a part of ourselves through accident, injury or illness. It’s a fear of death, whether the literal death of our body, or the virtual death of any of the other hundreds of chimeras of self we’ve created – all of our false senses of security, of legacy, of self-image, confidence & ego, of power & privilege, guilt & shame, of invincibility, independence & wealth, etc.. A fear of the death of our knowledge of the way the world works. Or the fear of admitting we’ve had it all completely wrong. The fear of the death of our trust in our world, or the death of our trust in self – (mostly an amalgamation of what the various fears, authority figures, and cultural narratives of our lives shaped us to be, and so probably shouldn’t be trusted anyway.)

Para mas información sobre La chispa azul 
por favor, visiten la página siguiente: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

The Blue Spark can be ordered here: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

Para información sobre el poeta,  sus libros y discos, 
por favor visiten la página siguiente: www.mikemahoneymusic.bandcamp.com 

For information about the poet, his books and CD's, 
please visit his website: www.mikemahoneymusic.bandcamp.com

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

IV. Essays (Ensayos) by Mike Mahoney


IMG_3585.jpg

Painting by Wild Grace, from her Wayfarer series.

El poeta Mike Mahoney continua exponiendo su constelación de ideas escritas en respuesta a La chispa azul libro compuesto por nuestro socio JP Kruse. Para mas información sobre La chispa azul por favor, visiten la página siguiente: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

Poet Mike Mahoney continues to expound his constellation of ideas written in response to The Blue Spark by JP Kruse. The Blue Spark can be ordered here: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

Para información sobre el poeta,  sus libros y discos, por favor visiten la página siguiente: www.mikemahoneymusic.bandcamp.com 
For information about the poet, his books and CD's, please visit his website: www.mikemahoneymusic.bandcamp.com

To overcome the inertia of a given situation, a new perspective has to be embraced with an almost blind faith, in order to rally enough force to break through existing patterns and to sustain itself whilst creating new patterns.” (JP Kruse, The Blue Spark)

And from Joe Chilton Pearce: “An ultimately serious commitment of mind . . . can be the determinate in any issue, overriding randomness and chance.”
No illness is cured by anxiously focusing on and worrying about the illness. Only more illness results from this, from self-amplifying the “problem” through anxious worrying and mental dwelling. Perhaps this is old-hat thinking, a kind of rough, blue-collar ignorance, and perhaps I picked it up from reading a lot of Henry Miller lately, but maybe it stuck because it's true.
If one is depressed, it’s the easiest thing in the world to be depressed about feeling depressed, and then to self-mirror this depression through so many lenses that before long you literally cannot recall a time of life during which you weren’t depressed. (“It’s Always Been That Way.”) The more one behaves and perceives and thinks this way, the more self-fulfilling it becomes. The same applies, however, to its opposite, with positive thinking.
Maybe a major part of any positive change comes more from placing our attention on the positive nexus of notions and actions that the new solutions spin around than in investing it into curing the maladies themselves, or at least in feelings and actions which balance out the dis-eased energies at play in our being. Perhaps a big part of it lies more in trusting that the maladies will diminish and dissolve away as the new growth of positive habits and perceptions bloom through our cognitive gardens, even if only in our imaginations at first. After all, the brain-body circuitry seems to have a rather difficult time differentiating between our dreams and what we call & think of as ordinary reality.
Yes, part of 'the change' is identifying & pinpointing what we want to change from, our problem, as it were, but dwelling on the "problem condition" can itself perpetuate and even strengthen the problem. To dwell means to live in, or reside inside of a place, a space, & to pack your belongings & move into the problem – living in it as if it’s a dilapidated apartment you can barely afford – is maybe not the best way to get out of it, let alone solve it, or move through it. It's perhaps a type of razor's edge, this conundrum, & one I struggle with myself in trying to "figure out" "how" to "let go" of my own fears and anxiety. But of course, there's no physical “fear-thing” to let go of, (outside of my mind), and part of letting go of something means to stop trying to figure out how to let it go. To an indeterminable degree, we seem to sustain the very existence of most our problems by believing they’re something we have to work to be free of.
We must stop our clutching and attachment to our problems, stop feeding them with the holy fire of our very creativity and attention. Yes, we must look long enough to clearly outline & identify them, to examine them, but then it becomes paramount we use our imagination, creativity, and the power of metaphor to transform the obstacles into stepping stones which enable even more positive change then was maybe possible without such ugly & clearly presented difficulties.
A change of story, a widening of story to encompass the old within the new, is necessary. And not just to include the old within the new, but for the new story to not be possible without the old, to grow from inside the shell of the old. To bloom its green leaves through the asphalt & cement cracks in the shell of the old. Nature always seems to build on top of and incorporate the old, after all.
This will take creativity, an inescapable part of overcoming anything, and of course in manifesting the new patterns which take the place of the older, ineffectual habits, whether bound up in our perceptions, our thoughts, our reactions and projections, or our emotional responses and fears. Creativity requires a type of relaxed and divine play with our perspective, our perception, and brings into forms the qualities and aesthetics of Beauty, so necessary and lacking in the world our cultural games have created and our history’s wake has left us bobbing up and down in, treading water for our lives in.
It takes devotion to create and reverence to enjoy beauty,” writes Fritz Eichenberg in his Pendle Hill Pamphlet ‘Art and Faith’, from 1952. “We have sold mind, body and soul to the machine and, like the sorcerer’s apprentice, seem to have forgotten the formula to stop it. The magic of art…. Seems almost to be forgotten. But art is still the magic formula which can stop the robots who seem to run our world.” And later in the same piece he shares a quote from Herbert Read: “Art leads from play to fulfillment, from feeling to drama, from intuition to dance or music, from sensation to design, from thought to craft.”
Creativity is a ruling principle in transcendence, in evolution, in growth and novelty and the manifestation of all things new, all seeds blossoming. I truly think there isn’t a problem or hurdle or misunderstanding on earth or beyond perceivable to the human mind that is not able to be gotten around, gotten over or through, hurdled, surpassed, translated or understood, transformed, or, at the very least, softened & made manageable, by a creative rearrangement of perception, of language and processing. By a metaphoric transformation. A perceptual reframing. It’s all about our intent. Or as Joe Chilton Pearce wrote in his book The Crack In The Cosmic Egg, “Intent precedes both acquisition of knowledge and ability to do.”
Another of my favourite lines from that book, which reiterates what we‘re saying here: “A change of worldview can change the world.”

Tuesday, July 5, 2016

III. A THOUGHT ON MINDED ANTS

El poeta Mike Mahoney continua exponiendo su constelación de ideas escritas en respuesta a La chispa azul libro compuesto por nuestro socio JP Kruse. Para mas información sobre La chispa azul por favor, visiten la pagina siguiente: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

Poet Mike Mahoney continues to expound his constellation of ideas written in response to The Blue Spark by JP Kruse. The Blue Spark can be ordered here: http://www.swamplanternbooks.com/books/the-blue-spark

As i loaf in my apartment, letting my mind loose to roam and explore the deep annals and chasms of the past, of the planet’s history and of our brief time upon its surface, it strikes me to imagine how our story would look to us if we were to see it projected onto another animal?
If we were to see the entire tale of our monkey species, the evolution of thousands of cultural narratives, tools and abilities, the evolution of our consciousness through a few thousand years of myth and history, put onto another animal on another planet earth without us?
If our whole evolution and history, from the origins of our imagination on to present day, were mainlined through our third eye and played out like a brief movie for us to watch?
How would we perceive it, looking onto a freshly discovered planet, strikingly similar in size and age, in ecosystemic diversity and chemical make-up to our own, if to our astonished gaze, we discovered an ant, a lowly insect, was undergoing all the processes of imagination and self-reflection present in our own species over the past few million years?
And if, looking through our high-powered and digitally-enhanced telescopes across time & space at this Earth-like jewel of a planet, we could perceive in a type of time-lapse reverie the couple-million-years long development of this ant species – from a primitive creature with a hive-minded mentality slowly dabbling with the taming of fire, then more quickly with the discoveries of art, language and the wheel, more intensely with agriculture and numbers, speeding up all the while and all the way up to the construction of a globe-girdling sprawl of electronics and technological cities similar to our own, a grid of virtual realities connected by pollution and ideology – with say a few hundred years passing every 10 seconds – what would we understand then?
How many times watching it through our monitors and computers screens would it take for our minds to light up into starry exclamation points of jubilant comprehension?
What patterns would we see there?
What future would we see?
In watching the first stirrings of ant-mind painting its dreams onto the walls of underground caves and tunnels, would resonance fill our thoughts as we gradually recognized ourselves in this meta-view of projected self-reflection?
And then would shock paint our faces as those newly minded ants quickly spread out over the entire planet, devouring the earth and taming her plant life and forests into agriculture and suburbs?
Taming the fauna into extinction?
Taming their own minds into ant-culture?
Into eastern and western strands of ant-culture with assorted types and dotted tribes of archaic memory-holders of the "Old Ways" spread throughout the dwindling wilderness areas of this alien, ant-sick planet?
Would we watch with horror as the ants exponentially multiplied within a few a generations, (only a minute or two to us watching from our privileged time-lapse point-of-view), into a gross imbalance of overpopulation so dramatic the world buckled under the weight of sustaining them?
What realizations and emotions would bubble up inside us as an enormous amount of energy from the planet’s incredibly wide spectrum of species withdrew from its vast diversity, from the millions of branches of its tree of life, down to just one twig of an insect: the ant?
After hours and hours of watching them live balanced within their world's harmonious and complexly integrated systems of developing life, diversity and health, only to see them turn left into abstract symbolism and its resulting societies and cultures, its inevitable technologies with globe-orbiting satellites and blood-spilling shames of war and ‘religion’ within the span of a few minutes, would we be appalled?
Nauseated?
Terrified?
Would we try and reach out to warn them when we saw the blood of their planet spilling into its oceans and clouding out its skies while fueling their culture?
Try and make them see they're living amidst the 6th great extinction event of their planet?
Would we put the fucking pieces together finally, and see in them a mirror of ourselves?
And if we did, would we change the way we think?
The way we live?
Or even the way we dream?

Tuesday, June 28, 2016

II. SOME THOUGHTS ON OUR BEING EMBEDDED IN A MYRIAD OF FIELDS & IDEAS

ights Reserved.

La segunda parte en la serie de diez ensayos de poeta Mike Mahoney presentados como contestaciones al libro La chispa azul por nuestro socio el filosofo J.P. Kruse. Cuadro realizado por pintora Gracia Salvaje.

Part two of poet Mike Mahoney's series of essays responding to The Blue Spark by J.P. Kruse. Painting by artist Wild Grace from her Ever Present Series.




Just as we are embedded in fields within fields of electromagnetic frequencies carrying their own cosmic oceans of information nurturing, toxic, and neutral to us, we are also embedded in many layers and strata of time: energetic and vibrational time, biological and metabolic time, seasonal and star time, evolutionary time, business time, etc.. We’ve built our entire cultural model, however, on just one kind of time: human time, or more specifically, the abstracted digital time of our techno-linguistic financial economy; the frenetic, bordering-on-panic, rush-hustle time of trying to keep up with perpetual distraction within the “rat-race” of working our life away to buy simulations of our misdirected desire in order for a few to monopolize the many and establish a global oligarchy of management within the homogenized landscape of our illusory “freedom” and government granted right to the “pursuit of happiness,” which can never actually be achieved from the inside since the realization of deep happiness would signal the end of the pursuit on which our entire cultural economy is based, and the population-wide realization of true freedom and happiness would probably end historical time as we know it altogether.
We are encapsulated, enwombed, interwoven and encompassed by many fields and layers of time, of many cycles of rhythm, which we remain blind and deaf to, remain unaware of within this cultural bubble of our historical simulacra. The rhythms of Earth and Her seasons of growth, death and transformation, slip & pass by unnoticed to most of us, which when we do see them it’s mostly for the commodity and sale of Her fruits, or in the clothes and fashions corresponding with snow or spring flowers, autumn leaves or summer beaches. The rhythm time of the stars and constellations, the time and special awareness of mountains, minerals, rivers and forests remain silent to our ears, invisible to our eyes and, perhaps most importantly, absent from our stories, and therefore appear lifeless, meaningless, here simply as our resources. The sacred cycle and spiritual time-consciousness of life-&-death as a single miracle of transformation, and as two sides of the same Grace, seems to be the most difficult aspect of time for us to accept, to perceive in its divine light with any clarity of understanding, and thus we continually suffer, & in a million different ways, from our collective-yet-unspoken cultural avoidance of this central mystery.
We live within the consensual hallucination of linear history, where in the current century of cultural date-keeping, “time is money,” & if you’re not making money or buying your own distraction, you’re wasting your own time & the time of others. But by operating on just this one mode of time, this digital-financial time of distraction and interruption, we’ve shut ourselves out and cut ourselves off from any perception and relationship with life that’s deeper than a surface-reflection, more subtle than an explosion, or which lasts longer than the average commercial spot. We become ignorant of, (or if aware, then spooked by), any experience of time not compatible with the frenetic yet dull pattern-cell of work/consume/work, or slower than the hyper-acceleration of our ever-spawning forms and variations of communication and super-computing technologies. The human world of material capitalism now spreads like a cancer sprawled out across & encompassing the globe, recognizing neither day or night but one seamless and bland blend of time of “expansion and profit,” or of “reduction and debt.”
As with layers and dimensions of different frequencies of time we don‘t notice, we are embedded in thousands of different forms and variations of unheard language, as well. The languages of frogs and birds, of trees, rivers and stones which are slower, of the moon, forests and weather patterns, slower still, of the days and nights, oceans and seasons, years, dreams, generations and millenniums – all of these things have their own languages which we cannot understand as long as we dwell only within the bubble of our own alphabet. And just like those fields of time we move in & through, only seeing & processing within one of the billions of different types and layers, & thus labeling & ignoring as “not real” all of our experience of everything outside of our thin slice of the time spectrum, we do the same with language. We’ve packed all our belongings & moved into just one or a handful of languages, completely oblivious to the voices of Earth crying, or worse, falling silent.
This language we live in seems to be dictated by whatever the predominant “portal” of the cultural era is, itself usually directed by the latest technological inventions, and though it’s safe to say that money and financial value are still the main doorways to our sense of meaning and truth, with the passing of the 20th century those doorways transformed from a million different physical shapes, forms, services and materials, into the singular, world-wide & hyper-compatible, digitally-connected doorway of our techno-culture’s economy, while its binary-shaped & homogenized algorithms gobble up the diversity of species and ecosystems, ideas and even other cultures in its globalizing spread, like a cancer.
A couple thousand years now into the process of cultural abstraction and the symbolic games of our linear and linguistic march through a collective dream we call History, our ears have fallen deaf to the crying world we’ve half-destroyed, (& totally de-story-ed), while we look away to anything that will distract us for a little while, reminding ourselves that the Earth, (that mute lump of dead rock and ocean), doesn’t speak, let alone sing or sob.
The language we choose to live and play out our games in, to think and express ourselves with, adds to & strengthens another field, the field of ideas. The Earth as mute lump of dead rock and ocean is a virus of an idea that propagated itself through a few thousand years of human agriculture and patriarchal religion, of male-dominated cultures filled with Taboo & the Myth of Separation, Law, Ritual & Class Structure, Technology and Abuse of Resources.
In present times, we walk and dance, (or mope and trudge), through a million-plus year-old morphogenic dream-world of all the ideas and currents of awareness every person of our species who ever walked the earth ever had. “We stand on ground that is the whole human adventure,” (Pearce), and whether we’re ever taught it or not, made aware of it or not, it seems to be one of our powers as human beings to tune in to these currents like a radio to all the different stations beamed across the epigenetic sky of our historical trip, and in fact, if we widen our lens of attention through sacred silence & other forms of magic, it seems we can tune in not only to every station in the human spectrum, but to all the different stations beamed across all of the Earth and even the Universe, from protozoa to pulsar, from plants to planets.
We seem to live, however, only within the slim band of attention of our own cultural field & heritage of human ideas. (Are we noticing a pattern yet?) Each day we wake up inside of our culture, inside of the awareness expressed and sustained by our culture. We open eyes inside the thousands of ideas it takes to build a house or apartment building, get out of the idea of bed, go through ritualistic performances of ideas about hygiene and dress, and decorate ourselves in ideas called clothes, jewelry, shoes & identity, drive to the idea of work in the millions of ideas collectively called a car, and generally spend our days moving from one collection of ideas into another – ideas infused into material objects & structures, architectures & automobiles – rarely touching the Earth or experiencing it beneath our layers and layers of virtual realities.
Not only is each object and reified thing of human design we see and use a fossilized fusion of probably thousands if not millions of ideas – some going all the way back to our primate ancestors and before, blobbed together over time and solidified into existence by our use and expression of them, by our inheriting and carrying them over from previous generations through our individual thoughts and behaviors – but even the singing forms and diverse beings of the natural world we share this living planet with are contorted & distorted into the images of our ideas about them; are barely seen or heard through the thicket of stimulus and noise, of concepts and beliefs we lay over top of them as a massive brickwork topology of words and symbols. Of facts, categories, beliefs and assumptions. Of nouns and verbs, hallucination and delusion. Of separateness and fear.
Often times, the longer and deeper the chasms of time and history these ideas span, the more solid they become as a field-effect of culture, they more they take root, grow and expand, and simultaneously the more they evolve and transform, (or further stiffen and harden, fossilized into lifeless artifacts at best, truths at worst.)
The idea of shelter and lodging is a very old idea, hundreds of thousands of years old, hundreds of thousands of years of man’s full attention and ingenuity, although the variation of this idea I pay rent to live alone in, the "studio apartment," is quite a recent style of living in human history. (Note how, as a recent or newer variation on the idea, it’s resonant with an ancient form – the cave.) The chair I sit in is an old composition of who knows how many individual’s ideas based around carpentry, mathematics, upholstery, comfort, zippers, cushions, physics, body mechanics, aesthetic and design, symbolism and myth, fatigue, necessity, etc., all expressing a field or cluster of attentions revolving around the human activity of sitting. The personal computer i will type this poetic essayling into – itself a cannabis-catalyzed litany of ideas being spun out of a web of countless others' ideas, culled and gleaned from a rather wide stretch of time and reading – is a technology of tremendous depth and breadth of ideas; a massive nexus point of millions of ideas, themselves made up of millions of ideas, big and small, brilliant and obvious, psychedelic and synchronistic and profound at every level and scale from every twig, root, bud, leaf and branch of human knowledge and study; a magical machine condensated out of the human imagination (with a chemical dash of help here and there), which took all of human history and the millions of years of stirrings of our creativity & intellect beforehand to come to, and in fact much longer than that, as the rare earth metals and elements used for its construction were initially cooked up who knows how many stars ago?
Perhaps it’s helpful to see ideas as a type of mental technology, and, in some sense, as the cognitive offspring of all of our languages, whether they’re expressed in “a linguistic, pictorial, architectural, mathematical or musical guise,” (Kruse). (Note: I’m entirely avoiding here the type of ideas which are nonverbal, not language-based, even though upon further examination this type of wordless thinking and feeling may buttress, if not underlie and to some degree spark, every language-based idea we entertain.) Just as our technologies, (material objects embedded with ideas), have shown ideas can be as life-affirming and heart-opening as they can be dangerous and deadly. They can destroy empires as well as build them up; can manifest complex labyrinths around us in which we get lost, or they can safely lead us out of them. They can make gods & healers, saints & mystics of men and women as easily as devils and tyrants, savages & worms. They can perform miracles like saving the Earth or illuminating some of Her mysteries just as easily as they can infect and infiltrate our organism, culture and planet with toxicity & disease. (For the past few human generations, at least, it seems this planet has been choking & sputtering on a few of the undigested ideas of humanity’s western materialist culture – undigested by both the planet and by humanity. Similarly, most of our human cultures have an awful time trying to swallow a few of the planet’s ideas, specifically those of her sacred, psychedelic plants – strange, brilliant, poetic and funny though they may be.)
Sometimes an idea, or cluster of ideas, (ideology, belief, technology), becomes so powerful, its basin of attraction so deep, that it nudges the entire trajectory of the human adventure. It releases a charge or “current capable of carrying away generations in its slipstream.” (Kruse). When the true depth of power ideas contain to influence, destroy, create and transform realities is understood in this light, it seems appropriate, perhaps, to consider ideas as mediums which both extend and amputate elements of our reality, and to ask of them the four fundamental questions put forward by McLuhan in his Laws of Media: What is gained? What is lost? What is brought back from an ancient time? And what will come of this if we let it go too far?

Erected and sustained by which ideas they let in and which they aggressively stamp out, ideas are the glue of culture. In looking at the various cultures of Earth throughout history and our present day, we can catch a pretty clear glimpse of what happens when ideas are allowed to go too far – usually through initial success – and what becomes of the cultures built upon such mutations. We see this by the exaggerations of what was gained by those ideas being preserved and distorted, generation after generation; of what was lost by this junkie-like addicting to possession of specific culturally inherited ideas, inherited modes of behavior and attention; and what behaviors or ideas are brought back from previous times, dressed up and redesigned to fit the culture, of course. This is easier to see in cultures than in their individuals simply because of the large scale it takes place on. When ideas are inherited on a cultural scale, below the level of our personal awareness, they are expressed, animated, and reinforced by the unconscious behavior of the entire tribe or community, and folded over again into yet another layer of reinforcement by the compulsive need everyone feels to comply and fit in to their group. These ideas become so deeply ingrained that we often only experience them in our unawareness. As a field of our reality we never question. They become the water we swim in, so to speak, the air we breathe, and the epigenetic field we grow and live within. They become the eyes we see with, and as a result they’re ideas which people barely even notice anymore, let alone consciously engage and play with, or participate in, but rather submit to as pillars of reality, as basic facts and tenets of the fabric of life. As the condition of human nature. ‘The way it’s always been.’

Thursday, June 23, 2016

DE LAS RELACIONES SEXUALES


SEXO y RELACIONES HUMANAS

Decimos muy a menudo que el Ser humano se convierte en humano con las relaciones que establece con sus semejantes. Estas relaciones se sustentan en la comunicación por medio del lenguaje, palabras o gestos, y se definen usualmente como políticas, sociales, laborales, económicas y familiares. En este último apartado, como una especie de sub-categoría, se suelen englobar las relaciones sexuales.
Sin embargo, entre todas las formas de comunicación que un Ser puede establecer con otro Ser parece evidente que ninguna sobrepasa, en intensidad e intimidad, la que se deriva de un contacto físico entre dos cuerpos animados por un espíritu inquieto y espoleado por el deseo sexual.
Porque el deseo sexual, que aparece como algo principalmente instintivo y destinado a asegurar la perpetuación de la especie, es algo que todo ser humano, macho y hembra, experimenta a lo largo de su vida y, en algunas épocas de una manera singularmente intensa e insistente.
Es el caso evidente en la juventud cuando el Ser empieza a sentir este deseo de manera consciente y anhela realizarlo con urgencia por tratarse de algo nuevo y desconocido. Y es entonces cuando el Ser humano se enfrenta con una larga serie de prejuicios y convenciones sociales, propias de la sociedad en la que vive, que lo sumerge en un mar de dudas, contradicciones y frustraciones con consecuencias demasiadas veces desastrosas para su salud mental y física.
Basta echar un vistazo sobre todo lo que concierne el sexo en nuestra sociedad para constatar el gigantesco descoloque en él que viven nuestros contemporáneos, en su mayoría incapaces de disfrutar de una vida sexual plena, armoniosa y totalmente satisfactoria. Abundan así los hechos que revelan una profunda confusión que conduce muchas veces a dramas tan tremendos como la violencia de género, la pedofilia, la homofóbia o la explotación sexual.
Hace ya siglos que nuestra sociedad abandonó los sabios conocimientos del paganismo para someterse al dictado de una concepción de la sexualidad, derivada de los dogmas judeo-cristianos, que prevalece todavía en la mente de los ciudadanos a pesar de los importantes cambios introducidos en el ordenamiento jurídico de nuestro país a lo largo de los últimos 40 años: divorcio, aborto, matrimonio homosexual, violencia de género.

 

SEXO y CONVENCIONES SOCIALES

El hecho de englobar las relaciones sexuales dentro de las relaciones familiares es ya de por sí, muy esclarecedor del enfoque sesgado que preside en las mentalidades comunes. Se debe a la evidencia de que la copulación es, o ha sido durante mucho tiempo, la única manera de procrear y por tanto de iniciar una familia. Y de hecho todas las religiones monoteístas, (judía, cristiana y musulmana) han estado enseñando a sus seguidores, con más o menos insistencia, que la práctica de las relaciones sexuales debe de tener como única finalidad: engendrar. El practicar sexo como forma de relacionarse o por pura afición al dar y recibir placer, está considerado como pecaminoso y moralmente rechazable. Esta terrible idea sigue muy arraigado en grandes sectores de nuestra sociedad y se trasmite de generación en generación, de forma sistemática, en muchos lugares.
 
Como consecuencia, la primera característica del ámbito donde se coloca las relaciones sexuales es su restricción a la relación de pareja que deriva, en la religión judía como en la cristiana, en la normalización de la monogamia, sancionada por el matrimonio. Un matrimonio que ha sido, y sigue siendo en muchas comunidades, indisoluble e irreversible. La práctica de relaciones plurales, la poligamia y el sexo en grupo que prevalecieron durante muchos siglos entre las comunidades humanas, ha quedado doblemente estigmatizada como perversa e inmoral, tachada de libertinaje; lo que no impide que se siga practicando en mayor o menor medida en todas las esferas sociales. En la religión musulmana, en razón de las circunstancias vitales del profeta, la poliginia sigue aceptada pero sin embargo, en el ámbito de las tres religiones, podemos decir que la poliandria ha quedado en la práctica, reducida a la mera prostitución.

La segunda característica universal, que marca todavía las relaciones sexuales en todas las sociedades, es el machismo es decir la preponderancia del macho sobre la hembra y es el fundamento de lo que algunos prefieren llamar el patriarcado. Se trata de un prejuicio que no es patrimonio exclusivo de los hombres sino que es compartido por un alto porcentaje de mujeres. De él se deriva de que la mujer es considerada como una propiedad del hombre, sometida a su voluntad, incluso cuando las leyes proclaman la igualdad de los géneros. Por eso son tan frecuentes los dramas provocados por la violencia desatada contra las mujeres por parte de sus parejas que se otorgan sobre ella derecho de vida o muerte.

La tercera característica dominante es la condena hecha a todo deseo que no se enmarque dentro de la heterosexualidad, es decir el rechazo a la homosexualidad, tachada de antinatural y tratada por muchos como una enfermedad. Aunque paulatinamente los derechos de los homosexuales se vayan reconociendo en el ordenamiento jurídico de muchos países, el rechazo que padecen es todavía omnipresente y profundamente arraigado.

Estos tres prejuicios son los principales causantes de los traumas padecidos por los Seres humanos a la hora de intentar realizar sus deseos sexuales. Y esos traumas están en el origen de comportamientos realmente aberrantes como la pedofilia que está tan presente en los colectivos que predican la castidad absoluta como regla de vida, imponiendo a sus miembros una sexualidad contra natura. Son también los causantes de un fenómeno considerado universal que es la prostitución o explotación sexual de las personas, consecuencia de la doble moral y de las contradicciones que la religión impone inevitablemente a sus seguidores.



SEXO y DESEO

¿Es realmente reprobable desear varias personas o considerar que todo hombre y toda mujer tiene derecho a desear a otras personas sean o no del mismo sexo? Por supuesto que no. Y no solo que tenga derecho, sino que tales deseos son totalmente naturales, sanos, ética y moralmente respetables. Todos (o casi todos) hemos experimentado el deseo de compartir relaciones sexuales con varias personas, de manera simultánea o sucesiva, y muy raramente la atracción sexual está dirigida exclusivamente hacia una sola persona a lo largo de toda una vida. El deseo de abrasar, acariciar, besar y dar cariño o placer, es un deseo absolutamente natural que ni está ni tiene porque estar limitado a una única persona, tanto en el marco de una relación heterosexual como en una homosexual.
Sabemos que históricamente esta imposición de la relación de pareja como la única socialmente válida tenía un objetivo principal: asegurar la paternidad y en consecuencia la transmisión de la herencia. Hoy en día, una mujer puede decidir con total seguridad cuando quiere o no quedar fecundada, y en caso de alguna duda sobre la paternidad, las pruebas genéticas convierten este objetivo en fútil. Se puede pensar que, entre otras cosas, se mantiene también la preeminencia jurídica del matrimonio para facilitar el control de las instituciones sobre las personas y los bienes.
Pero la opción de una relación de pareja excluyente debe de considerarse como una decisión libre de dos personas, temporal o permanente, que, posiblemente, puede ser muy beneficiosa a la hora de crear una familia y conseguir mantenerla unida. Sin embargo en ningún caso debe de convertirse en una norma obligada, ni considerarse como la única relación social y moralmente válida. En la satisfacción del deseo sexual solo hay una norma de obligado cumplimiento y es la participación voluntaria de cada uno, la aceptación consciente de la relación por parte de los interesados, es decir la reciprocidad del deseo. No hay otra.



SEXO y AMOR

Muchas personas opinan, en consonancia con los prejuicios anteriormente expuestos, que no debe de haber sexo sin amor. Pero todos sabemos que no es necesario amar una persona para poder sentir deseo sexual hacia ella. También puede haber amor sin atracción sexual ya que el amor tiene una importante componente espiritual que puede bastarse a sí misma. Sin embargo, generalmente, el amor nace de una doble atracción, física y espiritual, entre dos personas. El amor va mucho más allá del simple deseo sexual y se convierte en un sentimiento que exige la continuidad en el tiempo de una relación basada en una afinidad espiritual y que conlleva el deseo mutuo de compartir las experiencias vitales, de caminar junto por la vida.
No hay, como bien se sabe, fuerza espiritual más potente que el amor, que consiste esencialmente en buscar sin descanso la felicidad del Ser amado y encontrar en ello su propia felicidad. El dar y recibir placer por medio de las relaciones sexuales forma parte de esta felicidad que persigue todo Ser humano. En una relación de pareja, amorosa, procurar felicidad al otro pasa por satisfacer, en la medida de lo posible, todos sus deseos, deseos sexuales hacia terceras personas incluidos, cuando estos se dan. La posesión, los celos, los “cuernos” y demás “infidelidades” no tienen nada que ver con el saber amar, sino que son reveladores de todo lo contrario: la falta de amor y la ignorancia. La comunicación libre de todo prejuicio, la franqueza, la claridad, la sinceridad absoluta, son requisitos indispensables para preservar y fortalecer día a día una relación amorosa. Ser infiel no es tener sexo con otras personas sino engañar y mentir a su pareja respecto a sus propios deseos, es no saber amar. La persona enamorada que cae en mentiras o en reproches a los deseos de su pareja, sencillamente no sabe amar porque está contaminada por los prejuicios que acabamos de denunciar. Cuando dos personas se aman y saben cómo amarse, solo experimentan felicidad a lo largo de su vida y por eso se puede decir que el amor es la fuerza que mueve el universo o, como dicen los religiosos, que Dios es amor. Pero, ¿cuántas personas saben amar?



LO QUE ES URGENTE DECIR A LOS JÓVENES RESPECTO AL SEXO.
Resumiendo de forma didáctica lo dicho hasta ahora, nos parece importante recordar siempre que para amar, eso es lo que hay que saber y nunca olvidar respecto a las relaciones sexuales:
- Cualquier clase de deseo sexual tanto del hombre como de la mujer es totalmente respetable, sano y natural. Tener relaciones sexuales es una hermosa manera de comunicar de forma profunda e intensa con sus semejantes.
- La relación de pareja exclusiva y excluyente es solo una opción entre muchas otras que no debe de ser considerada como la única norma socialmente, moralmente y jurídicamente reconocida y aceptada.
- Desear a varias personas de otro o del mismo sexo, de manera simultánea o sucesiva, es tan natural como desear a una sola. El sexo puede practicarse con una o varias personas según se desea y se presentan las circunstancias en cada momento.
- Nadie se convierte en propiedad de nadie por tener una relación sexual. Hombres y mujeres son absolutamente iguales y libres de realizar sus deseos más íntimos como le apetece y de satisfacerlos plenamente.
- La única norma de obligado cumplimiento es la participación voluntaria de cada uno en las relaciones sexuales que mantiene. Nadie debe de tener relación contra su voluntad, ni abusar de nadie por su edad o desconocimiento. No hay más normas que cumplir.
- El amor es libertad y dedicación total a la felicidad del Ser amado. No debe de implicar nunca frustraciones de los deseos del otro sino, todo al contrario, una contribución activa a su realización más armoniosa.


 VERSION FRANÇAISE:

DES RELATIONS SEXUELLES


SEXE ET RELATIONS HUMAINES
 
On affirme souvent que l´être humain devient humain par les relations qu´il établit avec les autres. Ces relations se basent sur la communication à travers du langage, les mots et les gestes et se définissent habituellement comme politiques, sociales, de travail, économiques et familiales. Ces dernières englobent comme une sous catégorie: les relations sexuelles.
Cependant, parmi toutes les formes de communication qu´un être peut établir avec un autre, il paraît évident qu´aucune surpasse en intensité et intimité celle qui provient d´un contact physique entre deux corps animés par un esprit inquiet et stimulé par le désir sexuel.
Ce désir sexuel, qui apparaît comme un fait principalement instinctif et destiné à la procréation de l'espèce, est un sentiment que tout être humain, mâle ou femelle, connaît au cours de sa vie et à certains moments d´une façon particulièrement intense et insistante.
Dans le cas évident de la jeunesse quand l´être humain commence à sentir ce désir de façon consciente et désire le consumer avec urgence car il s´agit de quelque chose de nouveau et inconnu. C´est alors qu' il se trouve confronté à une longue série de préjugés et de conventions sociales propres de la société dans laquelle il vit qui le plongent rapidement dans une mer de doutes, contradictions et frustrations avec des conséquences trop souvent désastreuses pour sa santé physique et mentale.
Il suffit de jeter un coup d´œil sur tout ce qui concerne le sexe dans notre société pour observer la grande confusion vivent nos contemporains, la plupart incapables de jouir d´une vie sexuelle pleine, harmonieuse et totalement satisfaisante. De nombreux faits révèlent cette profonde confusion qui conduit régulièrement à des drames aussi terribles que la violence sexuelle, la pédophilie, l´homophobie ou l´exploitation sexuelle. Notre société a abandonné depuis des siècles les sages connaissances du paganisme pour se soumettre à une conception de la sexualité, dérivée des dogmes judéo-chrétiens qui prévaut toujours dans la mentalité des hommes en dépit des importants changements introduits dans l´ordre juridique de nombreux pays tout au long des dernières années: divorce, avortement, mariage homosexuel, violence de genre...

SEXE ET CONVENTIONS SOCIALES
Le fait de placer les relations sexuelles entre les relations familiales est en soi très explicatif de la projection particulière qui préside les mentalités communes. Il se doit à l´évidence que la copulation a été pendant longtemps, la seule façon de procréer et donc de former une famille. De fait toutes les religions monothéistes: juive, chrétienne et musulmane, ont enseigné à leurs disciples avec plus ou moins d´insistance que la pratique des relations sexuelles doit avoir un seul et unique but: engendrer. Faire l´amour comme un mode de relation ou simplement pour le goût de donner et recevoir du plaisir est considéré comme un péché et une pratique moralement répréhensible. Cette terrible idée demeure très enracinée dans de nombreux secteurs de notre société et se transmet systématiquement de génération en génération, dans les lieux les plus divers.
 
 
Comme conséquence la première caractéristique du milieu où se déroulent les relations sexuelles est sa restriction à la relation de couple qui aboutit, dans la religion juive et chrétienne, à la normalisation de la monogamie et à l'institution du mariage. Un mariage qui a été et continue d'être dans beaucoup de collectivités indissoluble et irréversible. La pratique des relations plurielles, la polygamie et le sexe en groupes qui ont prévalu pendant des siècles entre les collectivités humaines, est restée doublement stigmatisée comme perverse et immorale, tâché de libertinage; ce qui n´empêche pas qu´on continue de les pratiquer dans toutes les couches sociales. Dans la religion musulmane, en raison des circonstances vitales du prophète, la polygamie continue d´être acceptée mais en revanche, dans le milieu des trois religions, on peut affirmer que la polyandrie est restée dans la pratique réduite à la simple prostitution.
La deuxième caractéristique universelle, qui marque encore les relations sexuelles dans toutes les sociétés, est le machisme, c´est à dire la prépondérance de l´homme sur la femme. C' est la base de ce que quelques uns préfèrent appeler patriarcat. Il s´agit d´un préjugé qui n´est pas le patrimoine exclusif des hommes si non qui est partagé par un grand pourcentage de femmes. C´est ainsi que la femme est considérée comme une propriété de l´homme, soumise à sa volonté, même quand les lois proclament l´égalité des sexes. De ce fait découlent les drames si fréquents provoqués par la violence exercée contre les femmes par leurs partenaires qui se croient en droit de vie ou de mort sur elles.

La troisième caractéristique dominante est la condamnation faite à tout désir qui ne soit pas exclusivement hétérosexuel, c´est à dire le rejet de l´homosexualité tachée d´antinaturelle et traitée par beaucoup comme une maladie. Bien que peu à peu les droits des homosexuels soient reconnus par l´ordre juridique de nombreux pays, le rejet qu´ils subissent est toujours omniprésent et profondément enraciné.

Ces trois préjugés sont les principales causes des traumatismes qui affectent les êtres humains au moment de tenter de réaliser leurs désirs sexuels. Et ces traumatismes sont aussi à l´origine des comportements réellement aberrants, comme la pédophilie qui est si présente dans les collectifs qui prêchent la chasteté absolue comme règle de vie, en imposant à leurs membres une sexualité contre nature. Ils sont aussi les causants d´un phénomène qui est considéré universel comme la prostitution ou exploitation sexuelle des personnes, conséquence de la double morale et des contradictions que la religion impose inévitablement à ses fidèles.

SEXE ET DÉSIR
 
Est-ce vraiment blâmable de désirer plusieurs personnes ou de penser que tout homme et toute femme a le droit de désirer d´autres personnes qu'elles soit ou non du même sexe? Bien sur que non. Non seulement on a le droit sinon que de tels désirs sont totalement naturels, sains, éthiques et moralement respectable. Tous (ou presque) nous avons expérimentés le désir de partager des relations sexuelles avec plusieurs personnes,
simultanément ou successivement, et beaucoup plus rarement l´attraction sexuelle est dirigée exclusivement envers une seule personne tout au long de la vie. Le désir de toucher, de caresser, d´embrasser, de donner tendresse ou du plaisir, est un désir absolument naturel et qui n´est ni doit être obligatoirement limité à une seule personne, aussi bien dans une relation hétérosexuelle comme homosexuelle.
On sait que tout au long de l´histoire cette imposition de la relation de couple comme la seule relation socialement acceptable avait un objectif principal: assurer la paternité et par conséquence la transmission héréditaire. Aujourd’hui, la femme peut décider en toute sécurité quand elle veut être ou non fécondé. Et en cas de doute sur la paternité les preuves génétiques rendent cet objectif futile. On peut penser également qu´entre autres choses on maintient la primauté juridique du mariage pour faciliter le contrôle des institutions sur les personnes et les biens.
Mais la possibilité d´une relation de couple exclusive doit se considérer comme une décision libre de deux personnes, temporaire ou permanente qui incontestablement peut être très positive pour former une famille et pouvoir la maintenir unie. Cependant en aucun cas cela doit être une norme absolue ni être considéré comme la seule relation socialement et moralement acceptable. Dans la satisfaction du désir sexuel il y a une seule norme indispensable et c´est la participation volontaire de chaque partenaire, son acceptation consciente de la relation, c´est à dire la réciprocité du désir. Il n`y a en pas d´autre.

SEXE ET AMOUR

Beaucoup de personnes pensent, en consonance avec les préjugés exposés auparavant, qu´on ne doit par pratiquer le sexe sans amour. Mais nous savons tous qu´il n´est pas nécessaire d´aimer une personne pour la désirer sexuellement. D'autre part il peut exister amour sans désir sexuel car l´amour possède un important composant spirituel qui peut se suffire a soi-même. Cependant, généralement, l´amour naît d´une double attraction physique et spirituelle, entre deux personnes. L´amour va beaucoup plus loin qu´un simple désir sexuel et se convertit en un sentiment qui exige une continuité dans le temps d´une relation basée sur une affinité spirituelle et qui implique la volonté réciproque de partager les expériences vitales, de cheminer ensemble tout au long de sa vie.

Il n´y a pas, comme on sait, de force spirituelle plus puissante que l´amour, qui essentiellement consiste à chercher sans répit le bonheur de l´être aimé et de trouver en cela son propre bonheur. Donner et recevoir du plaisir à travers les relations sexuelles fait partie de ce bonheur que poursuit tout être humain. Dans une relation de couple, amoureuse, procurer le bonheur à l´autre passe par la satisfaction, autant que possible, de tous ses désirs, y compris les désirs sexuels envers des tiers, quand ils surgissent. La propriété, la jalousie, les "cornes" et autres infidélités, n'ont rien à voir avec savoir aimer, bien au contraire ils dévoilent le manque d´amour et l´ignorance, La communication libre de tout préjugé, la franchise, la clarté, la sincérité absolue, sont des conditions indispensables pour préserver et enrichir chaque jour une relation amoureuse. Être infidèle, ce n´est pas maintenir des relations sexuelles avec d´autres personnes mais tromper et mentir à votre partenaire au sujet de ses propres désirs, c'est ne pas savoir aimer. La personne amoureuse qui ment ou reproche à la personne aimée ses désirs, simplement ne sait pas aimer parce qu´elle est contaminée par les préjugés culturels que l´on vient de dénoncer. Quand deux personnes s´aiment et savent réellement comment aimer, ils n'expérimentent que du bonheur tout au long de leur vie. Et c´est pour cela que l´on peut dire que l´amour est la puissance qui anime l´univers ou, comme disent les religieux, que dieu est amour. Mais en vérité, combien de personnes savent comment aimer ?


CE QU'IL EST VRAIMENT URGENT DE DIRE AUX JEUNES AU SUJET DU SEXE :

En traçant un résumé didactique du texte antérieur, il nous paraît important de rappeler que pour aimer, ce qu´il faut savoir et ne jamais oublier au sujet des relations sexuelles est que :
- Tout désir sexuel de l´homme ou de la femme est totalement respectable, sain et naturel. Avoir des relations sexuelles est une belle manière de communiquer profondément et intensément avec ses semblables.
- La relation de couple unique et exclusive est seulement une option et choix entre plusieurs qui ne doit pas être considéré comme la seule norme sociale, morale et juridique reconnue et acceptée.
- Désirer plusieurs personnes du même sexe ou d´un autre sexe, simultanément ou successivement, est tant naturel comme en désirer une seule. Le sexe peut se pratiquer avec une ou plusieurs personnes selon le désir ou les circonstances du moment.
- Personne ne devient la propriété de personne dans une relation sexuelle. Hommes et femmes sont absolument égaux et libres de réaliser leurs désirs les plus intimes comme il leur plaît et de les satisfaire pleinement.
- La seule norme obligatoire est la participation volontaire de chaque partenaire dans les relations qu'il établit. Personne ne doit avoir des rapports sexuels contre son gré ni abuser de personne en raison de son âge ou de son ignorance. Il n´y a pas d´autre norme à suivre.
- L amour est liberté et dévouement total au bonheur de l´être aimé. Il ne doit pas entraîner de frustrations des désirs de l´autre sinon, tout au contraire, une contribution active pour atteindre une réalisation des plus harmonieuse.



Vincent – Septiembre 2015