Pondering sex, evolution, spirituality

[zazen]

If one is spiritually actualised do they transcend lower base desires? Not that they have to deny them, but that they are no longer controlled by them and can choose to act upon them. Being spiritual doesn't mean not being among the physical world or denying it which moralist seem to do. It seems we are at civil war between our animal instincts and our higher intelligence telling us not to indulge those instincts.  Actualisation integrates us, allowing us to have some control over our instincts and the ability to consciously respond to such instincts as we wish. Not all instincts serve us, this falls into the natural fallacy, that just because something is natural (polyamory) it is good for us. It isn't natural for our animal selves to be flying planes, create complex systems of civilisation, say no to calorific highly palatable foods filled with sugar fat and salt. We evolved in scarcity yet live in abundance, theres a mismatch with our genes and our environment triggering such genes. The instincts that evolved over millennia to serve us in the past now have the ability to destroy us if not managed and directed appropriately. Don't repress or indulge instincts, intelligently integrate them. Cultural and technological evolution is faster than biological evolution. We have excelled technologically/culturally, yet this victory has defeated us to the extent that our biological evolution hasn’t kept pace, and the instincts that once served us now hinder our well being when pulled out in the modern environment. 

 

Evolution on the level of biology doesn’t care for feelings, emotions, or our psychological well being. Only to reproduce and survive, it is amoral. But we are no longer just animal, we are more and have evolved the faculties to be conscious of consciousness and determine the path to evolution. We can now live by imagination rather than what our instincts tell us. Humans have a higher level of consciousness on the evolutionary spectrum, which come with a more complex psychology, emotion, rationality and intelligence. Because spirit has evolved this complexity within us, we have managed to build civilisation unlike other animals. Animals just have sex, eat and survive. We imbue these same acts with a sacredness, with our being and consciousness. Animals don’t have a choice in how to procreate, eat and survive, we do. Animals share their bodies, we share our beings. To be human, and to allow our animal heritage to still weigh on us and act upon us is missing the potential of being human. This isn’t to say we shun and deny our animal heritage, or feel guilty, dirty etc about it which is what religion has tried to do in an attempt to keep our instincts in check, that only creates more suffering and a rebellious attitude. We are seeking to liberate ourselves from our animal nature towards a higher divine nature, to live consciously from intelligence rather than compulsively through instinct.

 

Humans have the privilege of having intimacy, to see another human not just on the physical plane, but the emotional mental spiritual also. Our experience of life is more intense, due to our intelligence giving us the faculty for such intensity. Animals just live, humans experience and create art and poetry out of living itself. Because we live more intensely we are affected emotionally more intensely.  We ascribe meaning to the world around us because of the intensity of experience this world gives to our senses and our consciousness that experiences it. On a spiritual level we are one, and we try to extrapolate that out to the physical and promote sleeping around with multiple people because we are all 'one' and connected anyway, and try to normalise it. But in reality the spiritual doesn’t map out or translate onto the physical realm where the laws of biology are at play. Spirit animates the physical, yet we are still bound to the physical world and its laws. It is good that social shame and stigma has gone away from sex and women being more free in that regard,  shame and tying our self worth to our 'purity' causes its own psychological mess. But to promote the other extreme where women are told to sleep around as a man would, when we have different biologies, and to socially nurture something against their nature in the name of freedom and the liberation movement does is ignorant. On a biological level women haven’t evolved to mate with many partners, there is a higher physical cost and due to this it is harder for women to decouple sex from emotion the way man can. Men are capable of sex with emotion, but also are far more easily capable of sex without it, whereas for women the natural tendency is sex with emotion. To nurture a promiscuous society, neurally wires the brain to respond to novelty and dopamine hits, ruining our ability to bond deeper with someone, or be satisfied in a relationship as you have more partners to compare to and are wired for novelty the same way social media wires us for short attention spans. Comparison is the thief of joy as they say. Practicing forming and breaking bonds, or learning to participate in the physical act of sex like a robot, without emotion as a animal would do, is against what it means to be a human. It misses the potential of what our imaginations could accomplish in terms of civilisation, rather than what our instincts would lead us to degenerate into. 

 

Its more plausible for men to go along with this line of thinking and promote free sex as its closer to our biology to mate with many partners, but in the it ends up ruining society as a whole, and the men who aren't able to obtain physical intimacy as easily end up hating the sexual free market we have today, sexual capitalism causes inequalities just as the economic capitalism. Alphas spoil women in the process of going through them hooking up, or occupy their heart and minds away from other men whilst they juggles a few at a time, causing emotional distress and collateral damage in the process when these women can’t tie down such men due to their high demand. These top men are incentivised to indulge in base instinct. If these alpha’s were actualised and more integrated i.e. compassionate for example and had the intelligence to see into society and the impacts there actions had, they would nobly attempt to overcome their base desire to not ruin women in the pursuit of short lived pleasures, and to leave these women for other men. Call it sexual socialism, a more fairer society in the realm of sex. Women who won’t settle for less then they got to experience at their peak (the alphas) or keep waiting out until they lock one down, leaves a lot of men and women without the possibility of love, causing the incel/black pill culture we increasingly have today. If the alphas were truly actualised they would realise the affects of this and have self control, transcend their instincts to stabilise society and give their fellow men and women of the tribe a better chance of having healthy relations, and in turn a healthy prosperous civilisation.  Opening the floodgates of sexuality ruins a society, as Rome fell, the liberal West is having its own battles now. In the past, the left over men channeled there aggression towards armies and conquered lands, or were castrated to protect concubines. Today, to an extent endless porn /  entertainment and a lifestyle causing lower testosterone is keeping things sort of peaceful,yet we still have bitterness taking place and lashes of violence ie shootings etc. 

 

Our animal nature isn’t bad, but to default to it because it is our nature, or that we should act according to our animal instincts is too simplistic and comes with its very own set of issues which we can now see around us in society. Sex isn't bad, but sexuality, an obsession with one aspect of life and to indulge in it has its consequences. Broken families, relationships, bitterness and broken hearts between the sexes. We have freedom and liberation only partially, for we haven’t exercised that freedom correctly in how to conduct ourselves sexually/relationally. We are liberated in the sense of no shame in indulging our instincts, but not liberated from the consequences of indulging those instincts and the pain that brings. We are spiritually liberal, yet biologically conservative. Our spirit is liberal, in the sense it always wishes to expand us as its nature is infinite. Our biology and physical form is conservative due to it being physically finite. Form takes far longer to evolve and has the inertia and heritage of the past, and the traditions that formed around it that keep us grounded to our past. We must keep a balance between the two, for if we force the liberation our the spirit seeks, we shake our biological well being which is still heavily rooted in our ancient instincts and are yet to evolve to where our imagination and spirit wish to take us, which is towards liberation. Ultimately liberation from the self. 

Edited July 22, 2022 by zazen