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sacred sexuality

 

GLOSSARY

Abrahamic Tradition
Addressing
Attend
Beloved
Big Story
Bodywandering
Comforting
Crowning
Deep Sleep Dreaming
Dominion

Earthfolk
Earthpeople
Emotion
Forever Family
Heartfelt Action
Intend and Intending
Interiority
Intimacy

Intimate Enemy
Inviting

Memory and Remembering
Nurturing Embrace
Obliterated Womb
Peering
Precious and Preciousness
Presence
Religious Big Story
Ritual

Sensual preciousness
Sensual Immersion
Scientism Big Story
Secular Big Story
Sitting in Silence
Sojourning Aliens
Stirring

Vision
Vital Zest
Wand
Warrior Quest
Womb
Worship

Abrahamic Tradition
A tradition of those who consider the Biblical Abraham to be their cultural and spiritual Father. This includes people of the Jewish, Christian, Islamic and Mormon faiths. The Abrahamics consider themselves a Chosen People. They are monotheists. Earthfolk cites the Abrahamic Tradition as the source for the dominance of the values and rituals of the Warrior's Quest vision and creative imaginings. Top

Addressing
Addressing is a ritual which opens the four directions of the Earth: North, South, East and West. It is a way of orienting yourself and your Beloved so that each of you make present the Living Earth. Top

Attend and Attending
Attending is becoming aware of and engaging your Other through every sense to finally evoke a coupled presence of spiritual intimacy.
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Beloved and Belovedness
The Beloved is the Precious Other. You become Beloved when you both recognize and receive a Precious Other as they recognize and receive your Precious Otherness. The state of being Beloved is a state of ecstatic communion wherein two manifest a new oneness, a new Presence, that of Belovedness. Beloveds experience a birthing which is a new borning of two, already alive in time and space, as one. And as they uncouple, as never the same again. Sensual preciousness blossoms as a wholing and healing of the Beloveds, and its ritual act is the Embrace of the Beloveds. Top

Big Story
Big Story is a people’s source for answering all their questions, large and small. Knowing these Big Stories and their answers form part of the group’s identity. Acting out these Big Stories through ceremonial ritual acts initiates the individual into the group. Big Stories do not readily sit next to one another, nor do their initiates. Knowing a Big Story is a serious matter, and, not infrequently, of life and death.Top

A Big Story has a set of Big Answers to shared key Big Questions. These Big Answers are expressed in words, images and ritual acts. Every group has a Big Story, although while the basic questions about the origin, purpose and meaning of life are shared, each group’s Big Answers differ in respect to images, words and ritual acts.

Big Stories are vast and complex. The carry fabulous accounts, histories, images, rituals, songs, etc., which often overwhelm the individual’s imagination. Individuals live out their Big Story in particular ways. Each selects and arranges certain aspects of the Big Story which becomes their “personal Story.” Their selection is based upon those parts of their Big Story which speak to the individual’s strongly held heartfelt beliefs and convictions. These are heartfelt because they concern matters over which the individual is willing to surrender many things, including her worldly possessions, family and friends, even life, itself. Though it is fairly easy to get people to agree about the commonalities of their Big Story, it is very difficult to get them to change their personal Story.

Bodywandering
Bodywandering is a playful approach to your Beloved’s body. It starts when you peer at your Beloved’s body and perceive that it is a map of mobius pathways. When you bodywander you Attend to the flesh of your Beloved with every sense: sight, smell, taste, hearing and on every level and on every level: physical, mental, spiritually, astrally. Top

Comforting
This is the act of consciously Intending to evoke the sensual presence of comforting and of being comforted. It is letting rise from within your heart the ecstatic joy of just being here, today, right now, this instant. Top

Crowning
Crowning is a ritual where the body of your Beloved is reverenced and worshipped at the points of Reed and Womb. It is a charka melding exercise. Top

Deep Sleep Dreaming
Collectively and communally, every night when you go to sleep, you become a deep sleeper. You re-dream the Biblical stories. You are commonly told that sleeping is a state of unconsciousness or non-consciousness, meaning that nothing happens. Earthfolk hold that there is a tremendously significant “more” to this “deep sleep” imagery. In Genesis, the woman, the female, the feminine and the presence of the Goddess is found from within a deep sleep. Top

Dominion
The power of Dominion, of total control over the Earth and all creatures is how the Abrahamic tradition has interpreted certain passages in Genesis. Chapter 1:26, “Let us make man, in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.” Chapter 1:28, “And God blessed them … and have dominion over ….” Chapter 2:19, “And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.” Top

Earthfolk
Earthfolk became aware of themselves—Awoke!—when they first saw the snapshot of Earth from outer space taken by the Apollo 8 astronauts in 1968, called Earthrise. Their vision is that every human is a parent and child in the Forever-Family which is immortal. They praise and worship the Other as Precious Other. They hold that the spiritually intimate erotic presence which is made manifest when two couple and express a newborn Precious Otherness unleashes an nuclear intimate energy, called vital zest, which heals and whole humans and the Earth. This intimate vital zest is more powerful than atomic nuclear energy. Consequently, Earthfolk ritualize every aspect of their living, for ritual is the way they Invite the Other into their Embrace. Top

Earthpeople
Many of those in the Manhattan Project who spearheaded the creation of the atomic bomb, after it was dropped, were awed by its power of absolute reduction. They saw the elemental unity of all energy, and so of all living entities. They began to creatively imagine holistically and foster integrative creative imagining. Many joined the social reform/social justice movements. They readily described themselves as Green, feministic, egalitarian, holistic, organic, international, planetary, etc. Yet, they continued to faithfully live according to the vision of the Warrior's Quest, most notably, making present Lone Male energy and obliterating the Goddess. At heart they see an Intimate Enemy—a someone or something (corporation, government, The Market, etc.) that must be destroyed before the Earth can be made whole and healed. Dreadful fear distrubs their sleep. Top

Emotion
Earthfolk use “emotion” to define and describe that which individuals share as they experience themselves as a group, whether a pair or a nation. Emotion is that something which no individual can describe in terms of its origins for it is evoked by another rather than generated by an idea. Humans are born from within emotion and have meaning only as they experience emotion, which is a relationship with an Other. What makes humans human is that which they describe in relational terms, for example, love, honor, respect, being free, beauty, harmony, warring, hating, murdering and so forth. Top

Forever-Family
With just a slight bit of peering it becomes clear that all human experiences are emotionally relational and familial. Everyone comes from the human family which has always been and will always be, that is, Forever. Top

Heartfelt Action
A heartfelt action is a defining action of a Big Story. It is how the Big Story is made manifest through the actions of an individual. A heartfelt action describes an act or group of acts which believers in a Big Story must do. A heartfelt action is not optional, it is required. It is the testimonial act which endows the believer with personal and group identity as a proponent or confessor of the truths of the Big Story. Top

Intend and Intending
This is a consciously chosen way to approach an Other through inviting him/her into your intimacy. Intending is a conscious act but it is not simply one of thinking. It is a bit more like perpetual meditation about your Beloved. Top

Interiority
Interiority is an individual’s self-awareness, her/his self-identity. Your concept of interiority, e.g., of your self or ego or person, determines how you understand and value your intimacy. Your intimacy is discovered, notably, only when you are in relationship, and as you become aware of your intimacy, so does your grasp on the character of your interiority become clearer. Top

Intimacy
Intimacy can only occur when two share their interiorities in such a way that each experiences their own Preciousness as they are embraced as a Beloved. Earthfolk use the imagery of two candles merging their flames to form a third which is a oneness of a couple who then become, as they move apart, separate identities, again. For Earthfolk, intimacy cannot be experienced alone. It is a communal presence. Top

Intimate Enemy
Based upon the effect of the Atomic Bomb, that is, the vaporizing of humans, Earthfolk realized that the Warrior's Quest saw "intimacy" as its enemy. Meaning, it wants you to see the Other not just as an external (social, cultural, political) enemy but as a threat to your very existence, your soul. They, therefore, strive to obliterate this Intimate Enemy. Reviewing their Big Stories, especially in the Abrahamic tradition's story of origin, clearly reveals that this Intimate Enemy is the Goddess, the feminine, and females. The War between the Sexes is a deeply mythic battle for dominion and domination. Top

Inviting
To Invite is to open oneself, sensually, so that your Preciousness is made present. When two humans are Inviting, they open for a Nurturing Embrace. It is a giving through receiving. It is an act of vulnerability, of open-heartedness, and fearless surrender to your Beloved. Top

Memory and Remembering
Remembering is not just a wistful act of sentimentality. Rather, it is a centering sensual act of sensual immersion wherein your whole body, every sense, is tuned to your presence in the Now with you feeling yourself as one with all who have proceeded you and all who shall yet come. Remembering is a relational act, wherein you open yourself to relate to the Past and the Future in a robust Now. Remembering is the act of making yourself, through relationship with your Beloved, present as Forever-Family. Top

Nurturing Embrace
Sensual preciousness peers and grasps that your body is only fully present when coupled, that is, embraced. When in a Nurturing Embrace, your body changes. All of your skin becomes your mouth. You speak to your Beloved with and through every fleshly aspect and Memory. Your whole body becomes tongue. You taste each other as you lie upon each other. Every fiber of your being reaches out and grasps your Beloved. Through the Nurturing Embrace you and your Beloved remember what the Lone Male wants you to forget: Her coupled with Him. Top

Obliterated Womb
Biblical Genesis is the story of the Obliterated Womb. There, Adam’s body is substituted for the female womb. From his body a Rib is taken and with that the Lone Male god creates a woman. Earthfolk understand the Rib as the penis, and see the act of female creation as one of masturbation. In Genesis the visual icon is Adam’s penis, and the hidden icon is the Obliterated Womb. The concept of the Obliterated Womb stands as the primary Lone Male sensual preciousness concept. It is what the Lone Male God proclaims, namely, that there is no Womb! Earthfolk ritualize to makes present this Obliterated Womb so as to heal this Shadow act through the presence evoked by the Nurturing Embrace. Top

Peering
Peering is not just staring or a visual act. It is also an act of acceptance of the Shadow, of the dark which accompanies light. It involves quieting the senses to open them to fuller input, from a trickle to a flood, of information and/or insight. This is a sensual discipline in that Earthfolk seek to evoke the full range and subtlety of emotion which accompanies peering and sitting in silence. They hold that until the emotion of a word, sound, image or insight is grasped in its robustness, the depth of information and truth is not properly tapped. Top

Precious and Preciousness
The iconic Starship Earth image (1968) stunned the gathering Earthfolk as they sensed that other human bodies were their own. That every Other is a Precious Other, and that through Embracing is how everyone's Precious Otherness is evoked. The Embrace of the Precious Other makes present each as Beloved. The discovery of the Precious Other as Beloved is a sensing which redefines and re-images who we are as individuals and who we can become in group identity, namely, a Forever-Family of Beloveds. Top

Presence
Presence describes that moment when the Womb is no longer Obliterated. It is the realization of the Nurturing Embrace. Presence evokes the Memory of Forever-Family. It is a moment of being in the Now with all Memory, which Memory is also anticipation of the Future. Top

Religious Big Story
The Religious Big Story is robust. It defining characteristic is that it seeks to answer all of the Big Questions, once and for all. It has well defined doctrines and required dogmas, and a profusion of ceremonial rituals. While there are quite a few Religious Big Stories, the dominant one which reflects the values of the others, is that which sources the West’s quest for global Dominion. This is the Abrahamic Big Story which encompasses the Jewish, Christian, Moslem and Mormon traditions. Top

Ritual
A ritual is a performance which normally employs all five senses to make present a new presence. It is a repeated performance which builds upon Memory. For Earthfolk ritual is the way two Others approach one another as they seek each other’s Preciousness. Ritual is the defining of a safe, special wholing and healing space and time in which two seek the Other as Beloved. Top

Sensual Preciousness
Sensual preciousness reflects the vision which sees that the life force is, itself, and arises from, a preciously intimate Nurturing Embrace. The preciously intimate Nurturing Embrace of Beloveds releases the creative Precious Otherness from which all life flows. Sensual preciousness’ vital zest expressed by Beloveds through a Nurturing Embrace is the only intimate energy which can counteract atomic nuclear energy. Top

Sensual Immersion
This describes the immersion of information gathered from the five senses in the emotions of the present experience. From this moment of sensual immersion do humans form their thoughts, unleash their intuitions, and free their imaginations. Top

Scientism Big Story
Scientismists apply the scientific method to obtain an understanding of what something is or what is happening. Since the scientific method properly works with exploring and ascertaining empirical data, there is no necessary theory or Story which emerges from its application. Scientism is the peering at and sitting in silence with empirical data and telling a Big Story which makes a whole narrative out of discrete parts. Top

Secular Big Story
The Secular Big Story's defining characteristic is that it develops its Big Answers primarily as a negative reaction to claims of the Religious Big Story. In contrast to the Religious Big Story the Secular has not evolved a tradition with well defined doctrines and required dogmas, nor a profusion of ceremonial rituals, nor authoritative institutions. While individuals will claim to be secular, and scholars will cite a “secularizing” influence or trend, there is no indisputable definition of “secular” or “secularizing.” Earthfolk see this Big Story as a movement within and not outside of the Religious Big Story. Secularism describes the transfer of spiritually erotic power from traditional religious language, imagery, laws and institutions to secular language, imagery, laws and institutions. Top

Sitting in Silence
To initiate sensual immersion, Earthfolk peer as they sit in silence. Sitting in silence is the practice of opening one’s self to what is not apparent or obvious. It is a way of tuning one’s senses to pick up information which lingers around, within and surrounds a commonplace image, word or insight. Top

Sojourning Aliens
The unintentional impact of the military expedition which took the snapshot of Starship Earth is that it awoke the Earthfolk. All at once they were present on Earth but as if aliens from outer space. They felt themselves as sojourners who were present among others who did not and could not see them. They realized that they began to see Others in a profoundly new way, namely, as Precious Others. They realized that, while many Earth people were living in misery and found the planet to be just a ball of dirt, they were comfortable and at-home on Earth, which, for Earthfolk, is a Living presence. Top

Stirring
A ritual which is a preparation for Dreaming. The Beloveds grapple and lock, hinge and enfold each other in Nurturing Embrace so that everything physical and emotional and mental and astral has been stirred. Top

Vision
Vision is seeing. Every people has a vision, that is, a way of looking at what is around them and interpreting it in a certain way, that is, they creatively imagine reality. This is a way which is particular and often peculiar to them and not to other people. For Earthfolk, a vision of a people includes what they claim to see and what others who do not share their vision see that they do not see. Top

Vital Zest
A key Earthfolk discovery is that the only power which can counter Endless Warring and atomic nuclear power is the intimate nuclear energy called vital zest that is made present when humans intimately embrace as Beloveds. Earthfolk—as they contemplated the dreadful fear which peering at the image of the Atomic Bomb’s Mushroom Cloud chillingly evoked—were paralyzed by the terror of impending nuclear self-annihilation. Astoundingly, at this moment they broke-through to an experience of the power of intimacy. They discovered the Other—you—as precious. They discovered that embracing you—the Other—as precious released an intimate nuclear energy as physical, quantitative and powerful as the Atomic Bomb’s nuclear energy. Earthfolk named this intimate energy, vital zest.

As this vital zest is shared within an intimate embrace it makes manifest the presence of the Other’s preciousness. This is the presence of the Other as known only as each share their preciousness. It is a presence evoked in a moment of transformation, that is, as intimacy opens to Belovedness. For Earthfolk, the only transforming and controllable power which can counter nuclear power’s obliteration of intimacy—Poof!— is the vital zest made manifest through and evoked by your rituals of intimacy, your practice of sensual preciousness.Top

Wand (and Reed)
Earthfolk’s words for the penis when understood as a ritual instrument of a sensual preciousness ritual. Wand carries a sense of magicalness and the power to make something appear which was not there. It also carries a sense of trickiness. Earthfolk saw the Wand in Genesis, but there in its character as trick. For the trick of Genesis is to assert that the penis is only a penis and not a Wand. Top

Warrior's Quest
The Warrior's Quest is to vanquish the Intimate Enemy. In the Abrahamic Tradition, the Warrior's Quest is the singular way a male experiences and understands his masculinity—as a Lone Male. There are no other manly options except to find both initiation and redemption through the warrior act of slaying an enemy. In other traditions the warrior is simply one among many masculine expressions. In them the male has a broad-range of possible heartfelt acts which can define him, including acts of healing, compassion, etc., or what the Abrahamic would, condescendingly, call feminine traits. The Abrahamic Warrior's Quester is hard as steel, and his penis is both Adam’s Rib and Aaron’s Rod.

As Earthfolk see it, the Warrior's Quest is sourced in Genesis’ Obliteration of the Womb. Consequently, the Abrahamic warrior’s prime Intimate Enemy is Her, the Mother Goddess, and every female. Warrior sex is termed the War of the Sexes. Endless Warring is the Abrahamic Warrior’s idea of “peace.” The Mushroom Cloud and Starship Earth are fitting icons of the Abrahamic Warrior's Quest tradition. Top

Womb
Womb is Earthfolk’s word denoting all of a woman’s private parts. Just about every Warrior word for a female body part is a denigrating one, part of a vocabulary of sexual abuse. Earthfolk use Womb because it carries many notions, such as the sensually precious ground where semen seeds and life begins to grow, the cave in which all human life resides in preparation for the transformation into a independent living being, and the power which a male has when he couples as Beloved and is Invited to the Crowning ritual. While the Warrior's Quester will endow no word referencing the female with honor and respect, when Earthfolk say Womb they are making present a moment of worship. Top

Worship
The ultimate comforted presence to be evoked through all rituals is that of the worshipping moment. This is the instant of breakthrough to the sense of thirdness, of the two Beloveds as freshly One. The worshipping Flash! for sensual preciousness is that breakdown/breakthrough experience and event when two couple and become one. This is not an “egoism of two.” Rather, it is a marrying and parenting moment. Marrying in that it is the unleashing of the dynamic precious eroticism which vitalizes the personal relationship of the two who are intimate foci, each for the other. Top

 

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