Soul’s Code

GUEST COLUMN: JOANNE EHRICH —I’d always had this thing about Australia’s exotic creatures (when I was a girl, I had a pet cockatiel and parakeet, butterflies with scintillating blue wings and lime-green Aussie beetles in my insect collection).

But it would be a couple of decades before I made my ultimate discovery in the animal kingdom, and was utterly transfixed by yet another creature from Down Under — the koala.

Call it self-pleasuring, call it masturbation, call it whatever you want. But is it “spiritual”?

GUEST COLUMN: ED EHRGOTT — Coming to terms with my identity as a gay man in my early 20’s was the final reason for me to sever my connection to the Catholic Church; for many years, I had no spiritual identity or practice at all.

Raised Catholic, I vividly recall learning that sex and spirit were apparently two different things.

Spirit (which for many of us meant religion) was “good,” while sex was presented as something vile, and sometimes “evil.”

Spirituality was presented in the context of “proper behavior,” which usually meant not paying any attention to your body. In fact, it often meant denying any sexual feelings.

Straddling the masculine and the feminine, sexually and spiritually speaking

Second in a two-part series by SMADAR DE LANGE — Many spiritual traditions, such as Kaśmir Śaivism, Hinduism, Sufism, and Judaism celebrate the union of two “separate” bodies as a sacred act that creates the deep experience of “oneness.”

But when we talk about “the juicy stuff,” the age old question is inevitable:  “What do women want?”

Although a general question, the answer is simplistic and partial: women want to experience their true feminine nature. In other words, they want to be accomplished as feminine, and one with this femininity.

What do men want, sexually and spiritually speaking? A somatic therapist draws on psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, the Tao Te Ching and personal experience

The first in a two-part series by SMADAR DE LANGE — What is a man’s deepest longing?

Some believe the simplistic psychological answer: men are predisposed to merge with their primal mothers, to feel once again the ultimate fusion and primal dyad of mother and son.

Perhaps, in actuality, this longing is for a space in which they may feel absolute safety, sweetness, and bliss.