Watched “Eyes Wide Shut” last night. Definitely plenty of material for Movie Yoga.
Few thoughts:
1) Being a man, this just occurred to me, but sex is not just about sexual feeling. It is about all feelings. It is about eliciting a non-ordinary state of consciousness, and going wherever it leads you. It is not different in principle from Holotropic Breathwork, if you let your inner healer, inner guide, take you where you need to go. Every time can and should be different, if you open fully to the energies within you.
2) 50 Shades of Grey. I don’t think I have asked a woman if she has read these books and been told no. At least two married women have mentioned it to me with what I took to be a sparkle in their eye–one certainly, beyond any doubt. I am an honest monk, so nothing happened.
But those books were written by a woman, and I think they take the logic of feeling to its natural conclusion: sex which is more or less purely feeling. And as I have mentioned, being contracted–tied up, as I understand happens in those books–is followed by a release which need not stop where you started. It can become a larger circle. I am not saying that I think those sorts of things are healthy, but the emotional basis for them is becoming more clear to me. I think over short term periods they could be liberating, but that anyone who does these things long term is simply “stuck in a moment.”, to borrow a phrase from U2.
3) The cult. I think it worth noting that the orgy was not really about sex at all. All of these men were presumably wealthy, and able to hire hookers, or find “spares” easily. What it was about was creating group cohesion, community. I am increasingly inclined to view the nature of what we call a church–a cult merely being an “odd” and/or secretive church–is altered states of consciousness and a group. You come together, and you may listen to Plainchant/Gregorian chanting. You may sing with others, and see an ocean of hymnals. You may conduct a rite of initiation, and then have public sex while disguising your face.
I had the vague impression that I was supposed to be horrified by the idea that our power elite behaves like this. I wasn’t. In fact, I think such cults meet a cultural need. The “math” in our modern society does not add up. We do not have formal ways in which to contact non-ordinary states of consciousness. I have argued this for years. I have argued for temples with temple prostitutes.
Think about this: we all have a lovely vision of a man and a woman meeting, falling in love, and aging gracefully together. But can anyone honestly say that neither of them does not have to fight off thoughts of being with someone else, likely in many cases for years? Think Bridges of Madison County. Yes, it is Hollywood, but there is, I think, truth in it.
Why not a holiday once or twice a year, or every other year, or every 5 years, or something, where both partners can be with someone else briefly? If both can manage the jealousy, their wandering eye is stilled, and they can refocus on their love for one another.
And to this I would add the regular practice of emotional skill, of experiential enhancement, via something like Kum Nye.
4) Cult, part two. Obviously, the violence–the murder of that woman–was wrong. But Tom Cruise was stupid. Violence was not an innate or intended outcome.
What is truly sinister, what bothers me much more, is that in daylight hours many of these men, now wearing expensive suits. collude with one another to defraud the rest of us, to damage our nation. They provoke wars, cause famines, and impoverish people who otherwise could be well off. Our entire world could and should be relatively wealthy, in my view, but our power elite does not pursue this as a primary objective. Their daylight faces are what are evil.
Everyone who belongs to the Federal Reserve, every bank being given billions of dollars a month in printed money to do whatever it wants with it, knows that it is taking wealth away from ordinary Americans. They know this. But they keep doing it. Money is addictive, and so presumably is power.