Sacred Sensuality in the eastern Yesu tradition is not, as some
assume without investigation, a Tantrik orgiastic excess -- it is a
celebration of sensuality, an awakening, and innocence of the senses.
Visit our Sacred Sensuality pages for an introduction to the ancient
art of being a whole, healing, fully sensual being. Living without fear,
anger, excess, greed or need.
Sacred Sensuality
(Extract from the beginners course in Sacred Sensuality)
The philosophy of Sacred Sensuality can be understood from the
etymology of the term.
We have to study the term Sacred. The word Sacred is
synonymous with the word Holy, or Sanctified, all of which means
'dedicated to God'.
In this regard there are, generally speaking, two schools of thought.
The one stating that 'All things are sacred', the other stating that,
'Nothing is sacred until understood as such by the human mind'.
Paradoxically we hold to the latter view and I will explain the reason
why. If everything is/was sacred then we had no need of declaring holy
days, sacred areas, sanctuaries, sacred vestments and other.
We are aware of the human mind's general inability to understand the
Truth that 'God is in Everything' and Everything is therefore Sacred. It
is for this reason that human language is so constructed to be able to
denote the special characteristic Sacred to certain things,
people, places and events. The term Sacred thus tells us that a
particular thing is willfully and specifically understood to be 'Devoted
To God'.
It is in this light that we understand sensuality to hold the
potential to be a Sacred vehicle. We can willfully, intentionally,
Sanctify our sensuality - making of sensual experiences events which
lead us closer to understanding and experiencing the Divine in us, in
our cosmos, in our fellows, in everything.
Sacred Sensuality is an acquired art, a religious
art, a Way of walking toward God.
Not denial, but affirmation of experiencing life
Contrary to those sacred traditions that advocate a denial of one's
God given senses, we believe the senses are important vehicles by which
one's being can be sanctified. Following Yesu's teaching on the matter,
we understand the senses to be enhanced, experienced to the full, and
made innocent to serve our quest for sanctity.
What does this mean in practice?
Sacred Sensuality is a field of study; an ascetic, sensual
spirituality which is the focus of The Magdalenes. Members have full
access to material and courses in this regard.
(Extract from the beginners course in Sacred Sensality)
Sacred Sensuality
Our six senses are the gateways to impressions upon our
spirit. In a simplified way we may talk about the ideal state of gaining
an innocence of the senses -- and this is what we strive to bring about.
Innocent Sense?
What makes of a sense experience to be 'good' or 'bad'?
Usually the average sense experience in itself does not have any of the
qualities of good, bad or neutral. It is what we make of the
experience that allows it to be such.
Nowadays there is talk of 'good' touching and 'bad'
touching, which intimates that there is also a 'neutral' touching. There
is talk of 'good' kissing and 'bad' kissing, 'good' sex, 'dirty' sex,
'bad' sex, and the same qualities are ascribed to taste and smell
sensations and mind sensations -- 'good' vibe, 'bad' feeling, etc.
In general, how do we decide when it is a good or a bad,
and how it should affect us? We refer back to our programmed library and
we search for similarities and then decide which way to react. We are a
conditioned people. Our cultures and environment, our parents and peers
-- these are the ones who conditioned us. We are not generally free
thinking beings, we think as we were taught to think. We are more like
computers than like humans in this sense. We tend to run on a culturally
generated Disk Operating System. True, some of us have upgraded to Win98
and talk of being able to deal with Win2000 is about town -- but truth
is, some other people wrote our operating systems.
Examples
The drifting smell of pork tripe in the cooking pot
beckons not only flies but also many Portuguese men to the kitchens of
their suitors. The smell brings him close to the stove, his heart fills
with good warm feelings as his operating system finds affiliated files
from his youth, family dinners, cold nights around the fire with
Grandpa, his first wife in the kitchen... Then he searches the pot and
the oily top layer with its just-right amount of dung floating there
tells him the cook is doing a wonderful job. He is pleased and his
senses trigger saliva, stomach acids, adrenaline, endorphins and other
interesting stuff.
To the contrary. Another person from another culture
walk by this house and upon sensing the tripe at cook, he
searches his database and comes up only with affiliated files from the
trash bin. He decides this is time to be nauseated. He runs in the house
to find what the hell went wrong, what died, who is sick, who got sick
on the stove? He looks in the pot and he is about to be violently sick
but contains himself. Then the housewife comes and tells him what the
broth is -- and he runs for his life. Later that night he comes back to
see the people eating heartily -- and he thinks them overboard and
totally weird.
Please Note: We are responding to requests for more
pages about this topic. Please watch this space for future additions.
