Do you too have an inner conflict between your wild and spiritual parts?
When I was a teenager I was torn. I had a strong calling to spiritually. I was longing for deep meditation time, sinking in spirit and connecting to the Divine. But I had a body. And this body wanted to eat and have sex. I saw how my desires were distracting my attention from the Divine. My inner animal didn’t care about spiritual stuff. It wanted to enjoy life. The meaning of it all didn’t really matter to it.
I wish I could speak today with this suffering teenager. I wish I could show him the way of integration. Becoming a fully integrated human being is the path I walk today and share with others, worldwide. The lack of integration is causing so much suffering. Many religions are based on this inner conflict. Indeed it took me into decades of religious life and devoted practice of orthodox Judaism in a Kabbalistic way.
Years later, in Jerusalem, I prayed from the bottom of my heart to God: You have created me! You have created us with a heart yearning for you and genitals yearning for something else. Why????
Why do I need this penis at all? It’s causing me just trouble and taking me astray. Show me why you did it, please. I can not have it anymore!!
In retrospect, I can say that my prayer was answered. In the years after I slowly started to find hints in Kabbalah about the spiritual importance of sexuality and the Divine aspect of our genitals. It leads me eventually out of religion, to the arms of God and Goddess. Many times people ask me if I do not miss the religious life. I don’t. Not at all, I must say. I was searching for God, not for religion, and once I found the Divine clear enough I realized how the struggle of my youth was unnecessary.
In the war between spirit and sex, one does NOT need to make one side win. Spirit does not need to win matter, since in the depth of it – they are one. I found the way in which sex IS a prayer, and prayers become erotic. The wild nature of my inner animal does not need to be tamed. It needs to be totally exposed! As the deep nature of it is in total harmony with the depth of spiritual life. It is only the shallow aspects of both the animal and the spiritual that are in conflict. Go deep enough and you will find that they are both just “wildly innocent in primal devotion” (Cosmic Snake).
Ohad Pele / November, 2019
