Reich, Osho, and the Sexual Revolution

Not having actually read Reich works, though I have experienced Jack Painter’s, I can’t address it’s validity from a scientific viewpoint. 

Having come into the field as a sexual healer, via doing my own heart healing as a spiritual and energy healer for years, I’ve seen too many clients whose issues around rape and incest had been compounded rather than resolved by sexual healers who had not done their own full body self healing.

Blessed IS,
Jeremiah

Reich is one of those maligned, rejected, neglected, persecutedbenefactors of the world, IMO.

Yeah, from what I see about the “sex-positive” community, they feel as if THEIR sexuality is negative for others, so their focus is on gaining social acceptability for their own sexuality, not on a wider social fostering of sexual health or using sexuality for spiritual growth or consciousness-expansion. They are engaged in a tug-of-war, not a path/journey. They are dependent and reactive, locked into battle with the common views and common people; they are not pioneers, creators, way-showers.

Too bad the term is co-opted in that way !!

Not that their battle does not serve a useful wider social purpose, even though it is personal for them. It just isn’t MY purpose.

Don’t get me started talking about Osho’s views on sexuality. Well, just to say despite the extraordinary beauty of much he said (captured by Bernard Gunther in one of the best, loveliest, sweetest, most expansive and profoundbooks about spiritual sexuality ever, Neo-Tantra) it seems plain to me he had a VERY low opinion of sexual energy and sexuality as such. But that’s standard in Tantra.

Not my view. Energy is energy. It can be low or high in any area of life. In my view, spiritual or sacred sexuality is not about raising the vibration of sexual energy, to make it more spiritual, but to recognize its inherent sacredness and its complex and natural place in the symphony of vibrations of the Divine.

Well, ya did get me started, but I’ll stop here, probably off-topic.

I appreciate Jeremiah’s comments.

I think Reich would have loved Riane Eisler’s extensive analysis and discussion in Sacred Pleasure of the inter-dependence of sexuality, gender roles, political freedom or repression, various forms of societal violence, and physical and psychological pain. [She even discusses how child-rearing and body armor, Reich’s term, are related to these.] Her book is IMO one of the most important ever written, for those who are interested in creating a better world partly via creating a healthier sexuality.

So, thanks for the arena for talking about this angle of things !! Taj, I see you as a spark, lighting so many fires of greater illumination !!

Blessings, Rev. O.M. Bastet

I agree re Sacred Pleasure.   It was so heartening to see her confirmation of what I have had been seeing.   It is on the list I recommend for anyone thinking they were interested in sexual healing.   Of course her book Blade & Chalice was seminal in shifting my own sense of the masculine & feminine when I was starting out.

Blessed IS,
Jeremiah

I don’t remember well enough to say whether I got the “against men” impression, Taj. That would be sad and distressing, if true. Against-ness does beget against-ness, and passion FOR can easily contain or include passion AGAINST, an over-generalized “against.”

As a friend pointed out today in a conversation: We need to ask “Who raised all those men we object to?” Of course women are raised within their cages, and carry those, but mothers hold the power to change things……

How can one be “against men?” (That’s a rhetorical question.) Lordy. I am about to do a blog about the all-too-commen viewpoint that we have had “excessive” masculine for all these millennia. We have had SICK masculine, and we have had SICK feminine. The imbalance has not been between masculine and feminine, but between healthy versions and sick versions. We don’t need “more” feminine, not more of the current sick femininity. We need the creation, the co-creation, of the healthy versions of each.

My rant.

Blessings, OM

what you are writing, om, about the sick/healthy duality,
is quite pleasant to read, that seems to be a healthy shift in focus.
on the original post:
i do believe that reichs vision of a healthier society
through healthier sexuality
is not made invalid by the lack of utopia right now.
simply because a lot of sexual freedom
is not the same as a lot of sexual healing.
the only text from reich i have read yet is the masspsychology of fascism,
and there he differentiates between primary and secondary needs.
the secondary needs coming into existens
when the primary needs are prolonged frustrated.
i believe that the by far biggest part of the “more free” sexuality today
falls into category 2,
status or power based sexuality , excessive promiskuity, bdsm, and so on.
while it is a good thing to live out at least these more or less distorted forms of sexuality (instead of no kind, meaning full repression)
it is only a first step in healing sexuality and gender issues.
the difficult part is propably that living out these secondary needs
is so much more  rewarding than a completly crippelt sexuality,
that most people doing this will see no need for healing.
but only completly healed sexuality
will have that big impact in healing society.

love&light
benjamin

I have been told if people received the love they need unconditionally we would be living in a more utopian world that we do now. Interestingly to me people are often not connected to their true sexual natures in a way that serves them in the most spiritual and nurturing way. If more people were honest with themselves and the expression of their sexual and sensual natures then I think we would see more balance and creativity and better overall wellness….

I think by being more accepting of one’s erotic nature and being open and aware of potential exploration… to create energy and gain from the experience…