There exists a “myth” that the world was originally a matriarchal paradise and therefore was sex-positive, before the conquest of the patriarchy about 5000 years ago. Feminist researchers such as Eisler and Gimbutas have written extensively about this subject. Jeffrey Kripal (2020) even states, “Among...
My question became: which, if any, of the spiritual traditions of the world understood sex to be a valid path of spiritual development? Did any of the traditions value sensuality and the body, the couple rather than the lone practitioner? There’s big difference between spiritual...
Being involved with Western tantra for decades, the idea that sex is a valid path of spiritual development has deeply informed my life. This is a minority opinion, however, and it turns out that it has been so worldwide and throughout most of recorded history....
When I was in a bookstore in the 70s and first encountered a book on tantra and the concept that sex was spiritual, it stopped me dead in my tracks. “Of course,” I said out loud, under my breath, “what else could it be?” I...
I was surprised to find these three areas of life put together into one threshold until I heard the lecture (Erickson, class video) explaining that these three are potential exceptional human experiences (EHEs) that take us out of the mundane and put us in touch...
In this module we saw how Daniel’s (2008) extending line involves engagement with the community, family, and work in the world, and that these areas of love, atunement, and collaboration might be portals into spirituality or extraordinary human experiences. Most of us have been taught...
Erickson opened this class by talking about the “rare and precious” quality of silence and solitude, which I would certainly agree with and add that for some of us it is so precious we make and have made time for it daily. Our lives are...
I was especially moved by the writers collected in Johnson’s book Borderlands (2018). I had no previous experience of the first-hand voice of an autistic person, especially not such an articulate one as Nick Walker. I could clearly see how socially indoctrinated I had become...
In the readings and video for this module I was happy to be exploring the erotic and the body, as sex is my main area of research in my doctoral work. I was surprised to learn in Erickson’s video (2023) that Jung had said the...
One of the challenges in transpersonal psychology is that it is most often attempting to study the non-rational with the rational mind. As transpersonal psychologists, we are trying to put into words the ineffable, or, that which cannot be expressed in words. We attempt to...