Biology verses Spirituality

Am battling this more than ever.

After the message on sexualty I can add some stuff. There is nothing wrong with sexuality. I never know whether to let it go like a dog off the lead however because I can see it getting me stuck in its "honey". That is a very pleasant stuff which is however sticky and makes moving and life difficult.

Sex has a very deep biological basis. Not dismissing its importants in relationships, but the "sex" bit is very defining in these relationships. Boys with girls etc

Now the spiritual bit is quite different to my mind. In spirituality we do not go around judging people by how they look. You don't stare at a deformed person. You understand that within that unusual exterior is a human being like yourself who wants respect and love, and who you should quite naturally feel equal to. The problem with sex is that you do end up staring at people for how they look and for the pleasure how-they-look gives you. And you don't automatically think that beneath that exterior is a human being, who wants respect and love and who I should feel quite equal to. To add to the problems they quite probably are doing the same to you, so it all kicks off and both individuals get drawn into a mutual act of disrespect :-) And its great.

So marriage is invented to place all this before God. Yesterday I understood why. The temptation is to place our partner either above or below us. I am terrible for either idolising girls or pittying them for their own idolatry of myself! Horrible! To live in a equal relationship is extremely hard, and to live in a relationship where we respect the other as a human being above how they look is even harder. The girlfriend starts to put on weight and we begin to wonder whether we feel the same about them - tragically superficial. And to my mind the whole thing is tainted by the fact that we chose them primarily because of their sex not their personality - otherwise you would get heterosexuals marrying the same sex! So its not founded on companionship or any rubbish like that - its biological - its about sex, attractiveness, genitals, sperms, eggs, genes and children. And married people often do just that - a family.

I do realise however that maybe it is possible to exist at both levels however and God is a very good way of doing it. If we join our physical bodies, under the instructions of our biological selves - the feelings of love, attachment and sexual enthusiasm for each other - but place God at the centre of the relationship rather than each other then we have an equal and spiritual playing field. It must be odd to have a partner who puts God before yourself in a relationship, but if you do the same that is true equality and we can be sure the spiritual elements are not subverted by the biological superficiality.

My own approach is different at the moment. If I am going to place God at the center of my life then biological things are actually rather superficial. Why bother with a family? Why bother with a big career? Why bother with a big house and all the trappings of the biological life which seeks status and material comfort. Place God at the centre and all the world becomes a paradise of equality.

Viewed in the light of the "be yourself" undertanding and this makes real sense. Worldly , biological existence has its place but it is not important, and to have it as important is what the Christians call Sin. And what all religions tell us causes suffering. Buddha only said we need to attain "middle path" with the right amount of biological worldly things. Too little and we suffer from neglect, too much and we suffer from indulgence. I recon middle is actuall quite impoverished compared to todays rich Western world.

What I need to do now is make the inner transformation toward "God" so that I am genuinely seeking to "Be myself" all the time. I hate to speak of "God" because it carries so many images with so many people. By God, I at least mean absolutely "nothing", in other words don't even try and picture what that is. The presence of an image is drawing you away from God. It means your Self as you exist without any images of yourself, of what you are, or of what you have to do, or have done - no memories, no expectation, no knowledge of yourself at all.

Just to add I can see why many teachers would disagree with this. Asking myself to be myself is just encouraging me to build up the images of self that I am most probably most attached to "Team Me". Another way is to break the self by asking me to devote myself to outer authority be it other people or ultimately God. The problem I find here is that subservience is impossible in the western world today as we are living in a "free" society and I just don't trust anyone enough to submit to them. Ultimately my own attachment to images of "correctness" and "truth" has hindered me. But the "Be Yourself" motif, if used correctly, ought to do the same job.