The Madonna - Whore Complex
How Hegelian dialectics can help you improve your (sex) life
We all have an inner virgin, and an inner whore, regardless of our gender… Are you in touch with these archetypes of yours?
Happy World Orgasm Day! On this special date, I wanna share a special quote by Wilhelm Reich, doctor of medicine and psychoanalyst:
“The pleasure of living and the pleasure of the orgasm are identical. Extreme orgasm anxiety forms the basis of the general fear of life.”
In his landmark book, The Function of The Orgasm, he explains how "orgastic impotence" is an acquired fear of sexual excitation, resulting in the inability to find full satisfaction (not to be confused with anorgasmia, the inability to reach orgasm). This always went hand in hand with neurosis, as per Reich’s research, because that person could never discharge their built-up libido, which he regarded as actual biological or bioelectric energy.
Ahhh good old orgasm, probably one of the most pleasant sensations we know… The beginning of all human life, and the end so many people spend their lives obsessively seeking (consciously or unconsciously). A pleasure so total that annihilates our regular sense of self, with all its worries & limitations, even if for just a split second - although you can totally learn to make it last muuuch longer ;)
What the French call “petite mort” (small death), the explosion of life force (libido or Eros) that runs the world in apparent opposition to death (Thanatos). I say apparent, cause Freud notwithstanding, Eros and Thanatos may well end up being the same thing!
When you really think about it, what motivates people to resort to aggression, drugs or trauma is… precisely that they allow for an orgastic release of their libido!
Bear with me, Hegelian dialectics provide the perfect framework for the reconciliation of such opposites. Before we go there, however, lemme share more about this Madonna - Whore complex, closely related to most modern sexual neuroses.
In psychoanalytic literature, this complex refers to the inability to maintain sexual arousal within a committed relationship. First identified by Freud, who called it psychic impotence, as a neurosis developed by men who see women as either saintly virgins or debased whores. People with this complex desire a sexual partner who has been degraded (whore) while they cannot desire the respected partner (Madonna).
Freud wrote, "Where such men love they have no desire, and where they desire they cannot love." Sounds familiar? Most women I know have struggled with this in their partners, as have many men I've met, both inside and outside of my therapy practice.
One of my favorite quotes from Lars Von Trier’s Nymphomaniac, which seems to contradict Freud's point, except it doesn't :p
This polarization of personal preference, together with sexual energy, comes from millennia of patriarchal Judeo-Christian conditioning. Which demonized women and sex, made pleasure a sin, and sanctified martyrdom. However, deep down we ALL crave a committed relationship, where we can be ourselves FULLY…
The kind of relationship where all our parts are welcome, the kind of love that spices up your (sex) life, regardless of your gender and actual level of sexual activity. We're all different in that sense, and it's good to know that as our vital energy ebbs and flows, so will our libido as applied to any relationship. For libido is just that, life force, and we humans are sexual beings.
Which doesn't mean we necessarily need to be expressing that sexuality through sex all the time. Spiritual masters like Jesus (and his counterpart Mary Magdalene, the female embodiment of the Christ consciousness they anchored on Earth TOGETHER) taught precisely that. As had done Buddha, with his Middle Way, of neither rejecting nor identifying with our carnal instincts.
The Gospel of Philip, along with the Gospel of Mary (yup SHE wrote one too) are a couple of ancient Christian chronicles that were left out of our modern Bible, which was assembled by the Church's hierarchy by cherry-picking at their convenience.
The modern obsession with sex comes from millennia of repression, due to manipulation by religious patriarchal structures, who muddled the message of the TRUE spiritual masters. The ones that preached the end of sin, unconditional love, and freedom for all. The crazy visionaries that shook the system up, so of course they were censored, until today…
Enough is enough, it's time to retrieve our sacred sexuality from the mud through which it was dragged. By making anything taboo, by sweeping shit under the carpet, by hiding our skeletons in the closet… We're only giving them more power.
It is by shining the light of our awareness onto anything, that we transmute it into unconditional love, as dark or dirty as it may be. That's the inner alchemy I practice and teach, the Great Work of magic & miracles of Jesus & Mary Magdalene, the sacred whore. Who was conveniently (conveniently for the patriarchy, I mean) vilified, whose Gospel was excluded from the official Bible, just cause she was a woman in the midst of men who didn't know how to manage THEIR sexual energy.
The Gospel of Mary speaks about the end of sin, which is just a product of egoic human judgment, and how Peter was mistrustful of her… Poor thing was just scared, cause she was the highest apostle, in a system where this wasn't common. It's normal to be scared of the unknown.
So they were scared of her. And I understand, the indomitable power of the sacred heart she shared with Christ can be scary, especially when wielded by a woman in a system where power was always in the hands of men. Her teachings (Christ's teachings) were threatening to destroy everything they knew, all the certainties they had worked so hard to achieve, all the attachments of their human egos.
For the main teaching of the enlightened master that Jesus was, which he shared with Mary Magdalene as EQUALS, making her the apostle of the apostles (apostolorum apostola, in the words of St Thomas Aquinas) was this: Spirit rules over matter, those who focus on the latter are fools, who are just begetting suffering for themselves.
This power couple actually practiced & taught buddhism, yoga & tantra. Yup, those ancient mystical teachings permeated early Christianity, then Gnosticism and Theosophy, and now my work. All cause Spirit precedes matter, but they actually WORK TOGETHER, the latter being just a physical crystallization of the former.
Any proposition can be reconciled by its opposite through this process, including the apparent opposition of spirit & matter, of carnality & saintliness.
Now onto the Hegelian dialectics bit, finally: Hegel was a German philosopher whose influence extends across the entire range of contemporary thought, from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political philosophy, the philosophy of history, philosophy of art, philosophy of religion, and the history of philosophy.
His dialectic is an interpretive method in which the contradiction between a proposition (thesis) and its antithesis is resolved at a higher level of truth (synthesis). Which is pretty much what Zen was doing with its koans, and Jesus with his parables, before fancy Western philosophers arrived with their highly intellectual concepts lol
Now, I know quite a lot about both ancient Eastern thought, and modern Western one. As a doctor of philosophy AND yoga teacher, master in psychology and tantric witch, former law professor (yup that happened) and shaman… You can get the best of both worlds when you sign up for my online programs!
In this dualistic Earth we've chosen to inhabit, everything is a matter of perspective… Especially human fights!
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