Ending the confusion between sex, gender and feminine/masculine polarities:
- Go beyond differentiating biological nature and learned gender roles between the sexes (which we explored in Module One) by deeply feeling into the opposing energies of the two feminine and masculine polarities that both sexes can equally embody as growth potentials in each of the four dimensions of our being (quadrants).
- Discover the healthy expressions of each polarity that we want to cultivate, and the unhealthy expressions that we want to heal.
This experience will allow you to identify in which of the four polarities and quadrants you have healing and growth potentials to create vibrant and sustainable sexual energy, as well as synergy in your day to day life with your partner, and to support your clients in doing the same.
Spiritual jerks and bitches:
- Understand the important difference between a temporary state and a permanently available stage.
- Identify four basic forms of spirituality and four different levels of spiritual state experiences.
- Learn how to stabilize temporary states into permanently available stages through a meditation/mindfulness practice.
- Realize why meditation does not get at shadow elements which can lead to existential problems such as:
- Spiritual materialism, creating a more subtle separate sense of self and superiority complex.
- Spiritual bypassing which shows up as exaggerated detachment.
- Emotional numbing and repression.
- Overemphasis on the positive.
- Anger, phobias, blind and overly tolerant compassion.
- Weak or too porous boundaries.
- Cognitive intelligence being far ahead of emotional and/or moral intelligence.
- Debilitating judgment about one’s negativity or shadow side.
- Devaluation of the personal—relative to the spiritual.
- Delusions of having arrived at a higher level of being.
These experiences and practices will allow you to cut through ego attachments around your spiritual practice and experiences, to point it out to others, and to integrate the practice and wisdom of Eastern spirituality with the psychological insights of the West.
Waking up and growing up:
- Grasp the difference between “waking up” and “growing up”, and how these two essential integral ingredients form the Wilber/Combs matrix.
- Experience how the Wilber/Combs matrix legitimizes and honors all state experiences at any level of development.
- Learn that a state can only be interpreted according to the stage of consciousness (or awareness/altitude) one is interpreting it from.
- Understand the benefits of a shared spiritual practice for your physical and mental well-being and the health of your relationships.
This experience and knowledge will allow you to differentiate between spiritual development and consciousness development, to no longer confuse the two, to locate yourself and others in the Wilber/Combs matrix, and to see how different state/stage combinations profoundly impact our love relationships. This will enable you to impact, advance and accelerate your own and your clients’ spiritual practice towards the embodiment of a Non-Dual stage realization.
Sex as Spiritual Energy eXchange:
- Explore five different levels of sexuality and how higher levels can be experienced as a state that can be made into permanently available stage through ongoing practice in a committed partnership.
- Learn about the important benefits of a healthy sex life for body, mind, heart and soul in a love relationship.
- See how different forms of monogamy and non-monogamy evolved along the stages of consciousness and cultural development, how they vary between men and women, and how they impact relationships and the evolution of humanity by setting them into a moral, ethical, cultural, and socioeconomic context.
Understanding sexuality from an integral perspective will show you how sexual expression is impacted by our state of mind (the brain is the biggest sex organ), inter-subjective and inter-objective relationship, physical and emotional health, cultural conditioning and social environment. This knowledge will allow you to address challenges in your own and the sex life of your clients in a holistic way, and to realize healing/growth potentials that lead to vibrant and rewarding sexual practices that will keep this important part of love relationships fresh and alive.
I need you, I hate you:
- Learn how to identify in which of the five stages of the Anima Complex in males, and the Animus Complex in females you and your clients may be.
- See how this complex was created during childhood and is projected onto the opposite sex in adulthood.
- Practice how to heal and transcend this complex in order to support your clients in co-creating love relationships between equal and opposite partners.
These insights and therapeutic modalities will allow you to heal in an existing relationship or to make better mate choices for a future relationship if you are single, and to support your patients/clients in their own process of healing and transcending their Anima/Animus complex.
We are our types:
- Investigate different personality typologies such as the Five Love Languages, nine Ennegram Types, attachment styles, and Myers Briggs type indicators.
- See how understanding different types help you to meet your own and the needs of your partner better.
- Learn where you can find tests and how to interpret them to improve all your relationships.
The knowledge about types will allow you to expand your own horizon, to move into uncharted territory of your being, and to create exhilarating synergy between you and your partner, while inviting and guiding your clients to do the same.
Suggested Reading Material:
Deida, David. 1995. Intimate Communion: Awakening Your Sexual Essence. HCI.
Wilber, Ken. 2007. Chapter 2-10 Integral Spirituality: A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World. Shambhala.
Masters, Robert Augustus. 2010. Spiritual Bypassing: When Spirituality Disconnects Us from What Really Matters. North Atlantic Books.
Schnarch, David. 1997. Passionate Marriage: Keeping Love and Intimacy Alive in Committed Relationships. Owl Books.
Young-Eisendrath, Polly and Wiedeman, Florence. 1987. Female Authority: Empowering Women through Psychotherapy. Guilford.
Optional Reading:
Deida, David. 2004. The Way of the Superior Man: A Spiritual Guide to Mastering the Challenges of Women, Work, and Sexual Desire. Sounds True.
Anand, Margo. 1989. The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers. Tarcher Putnam.
*Wade, Jenny. 2004. Transcendent Sex: When Lovemaking Opens the Veil. Paraview Pocket Books.
Chögyam Trungpa. 2002. Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism. Shambala