Gay Spirituality

The Significance of Sameness

Gay Spirituality — Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:10:32 +0000

Either you are reading this or you are not. If you are not, then a philosopher may wonder if this article is being read all. But let’s say that you are reading this article. In that case, I am addressing you. You are not merely a reader, but the subject. You are what this article is about. Because when you understand that you are indeed you, then you have implicitly recognized that there is someone else who is not you. You may know nothing else about the author of this article, but of this much you can be certain: difference exists.

Whether difference exists absolutely or is a by-product of an alienated, distorted, or false consciousness is a matter which has concerned thinkers for thousands of years. For the moment let us just agree that difference exists in some sense, a point which is clearly indisputable. Let us agree for argument’s sake that there are at least two perspectives from which to consider the question or whether difference exists: absolute and relative. The former perspective is that of an unconditioned, indistinct reality which is All-In-All, including all that exists in every world from every perspective. The latter perspective is relative, conditioned by finite human perspectives on reality. Furthermore, let us say that from an absolute perspective difference has no reality; but from relative perspectives, differences are real.

Now let us return to the difference between you and the author of this article, and stipulate that from a relative perspective this is a real distinction. Its most essential nature is that you are what is the same, and I am what is other. You have an innate understanding of what is real and what is not real which is conditioned on recognizing what is the same as your perspective on reality and what is not. The body you are feeling is same, and therefore it becomes part of your self-sense. The thoughts you are thinking are same, and therefore part of your self-sense. The feelings you are feeling are same, and therefore part of your self-sense. What’s more, your self-sense may be extended beyond your sensing, feeling, thinking body-mind, stretching out to consider as same that which is felt to be so similar that it is virtually you. For example, your family, your neighbors, your country, your ideology, your creative work. In other words, whenever there is same, there is also similar, that which is like to the same. The same is the house you live in; the similar is the next-door-neighbor to the same. If our perceptions are a container, Sameness is the base and the similar is the bin in which the perceptions are contained. The same is formless, empty space; the similar is the wind which blows transparently in that space, creating distinctions and differences by virtue of its motion. The same is that which feels safe; the other is that which is not necessarily safe; it is simply that which arises out of Sameness.

The same is that which is identical to itself. The similar is like the same, but not identical because it is partially other. Otherness is the quality which allows us to distinguish degrees of similarity, and therefore have a sense of self at all. In terms of space, that this is other is not here, but there. In terms of time, that which is other is not now, but then. That which is other is that which goes beyond the self, transcending the self as a dream transports a sleeper into a different realm. When the self encounters that which is other, we encounter it as something which is different, distinct, separate, or unique. That which is other is closely connected to what is not. That which is the same is know by affirmation; that which is other is known by negation. Other is not my body, not my feeling, not my thoughts. The negation which is otherness functions as a boundary-less boundary, a neutral demarcation existing basically in the realm of thought. Something which is other is not necessarily better or worse, it is just thought to be distinct. Something which is other is not separated from us not in all ways, but in important ways. A mother and a father are different from a child, but the child contains the DNA of its parents in both a literal and figurative sense, We know ourselves only in relationship to other selves; the self finds its distinct nature by virtue of its relationship to others.

There is a word prefix which English has inherited from the Greek language which designates Sameness: “homo-.” The word itself discloses something of its nuance if you have the ears to listen to the subtle connotations of its sound symbolism. That which is “homo-” is that something or suchness which begins with wholeness and then finds itself at home in the mysteries, a host to another being, opening itself or closing itself, moving from Sameness in ways which intensify the self or enters deeply into emotion or various additional modes of itself. It begins in wholeness and goes to immanence. There is an undertone of sadness to “homo-,” one which is evoked by words such “hole,” “hope,” “mope,” and “moan.” That which begins with “homo-“ enacts a drama of cycles of opening and closing, a change from unconditioned wholeness into an open-ended motion. The word “homo-“ gives us a perspective on Sameness. It points to the dimension of Sameness which is not merely a feeling of safety or security, that which is certain and sane; rather, it suggests that Sameness is something which is paradoxically both an opening and a closing, both a known and an unknown. The “homo-“ is an emotional word, whereas “same” lacks a strong emotive quality. Whether you put much stock or little stock in the symbolic qualities of “homo-“ at the least it must be said that we are talking about a prefix, not a word in itself. Thus, by virtue of the nature of all prefixed, we are talking about something which is a beginning and incomplete in itself. “Homo-“ is Sameness arising in an open-ended way.

Having taken a look at a few basic distinctions, it is now possible to describe in a tentative way one of the most essential principles of human nature: the principle of Sameness. I offer a definition:

Sameness is the perception of the Same within the entire field of our awareness, reality and all potential realities. This perception is the direction which gives rise to the Self – that is, the “aim of suchness” – which is prior to the Self and which conditions it. This aim tells us what is me and what is not me, what is self and what is not-self. Knowing the Same is a precondition of sanity. The Same is the essential source of all distinctions, itself unconditioned by those distinctions, and yet not arising within an endless stasis but with an actual telos – the “aim of suchness.”

If you accept that difference is real, at least in a relative sense, then the distinction between that which is same and that which is different is absolutely primordial. It is only through this distinction, made consciously or unconsciously, that we are able to recognize that we are not someone else, that we are actually an I, and therefore not the author of this article (unless, of couse, you happen to be me).

Before the Big Bang, before the arising of the first moment of time, there was the Same. And the Same was not eternally static, an eternal steady state, but a “suchness with aim.” The Same is therefore a vitally important concept for understanding the nature of human existence. Through contemplation of Sameness and its distinction from Otherness, one is able to enter deeply into the mysteries which define reality. That which is same is that which is identical. So perhaps the question has occurred to you, especially if you are still pondering the question or whether there is or is not an absolute perspective on difference – that there may not be anything at all which is absolutely identical to anything else. Everything in the universe, after all, has a specific coordinate in space and time which no other thing has. Everything also has the same inwardly felt perception – or prehension in the case of certain non-humans. If there is truly Sameness, then it must be possible to reconcile somehow the notion that the Same is the source of all distinctions with the fact that everything in the universe is evidently radically unique. We must now say that the principle of Sameness does not stand alone. Only when considered in relationship to the principle of Otherness is its nature grasped.

It is not of small significance that right at the beginning of an inquiry into human nature we discover the important role of the Same, and the prefix “homo-“ which is commonly used to talk about the ways that the Same manifests in the world. And at this point in history, in the second decade of the twenty-first century CE, there is a major worldwide human liberation movement which Is predicated on securing rights and recognition of dignity for a class of people who understand that their core identity is shaped by their unique relationship to the Same, such that they are commonly called by a name bearing the prefix “homo-.” And they are sometimes referred to offensively simply as “homos.” Of course, I am talking about homosexuals and others such as bisexuals who have homoerotic attractions. We usually prefer to call ourselves gays and lesbians, and many other names besides, but labels do not erase the clear fact that from a very wide perspective, our liberation movement is the emergence of a new relationship between humankind and the Same, the forging of a new way of being human which expresses an orientation towards Sameness in a deeper and more complex form than at any other time in history. So if something like my understanding that the Same is “suchness with an aim” is correct, then it makes sense to look within the gay and lesbian movement to understand what is happening in the world of suchness today. Perhaps there is something genuinely new and emergent evolving in our midst, a new understanding which enriches our understanding of the Same in a way which is essential for our shared understanding of human nature.

When will the Gay Movement be over?

Gay Spirituality — Tue, 19 Feb 2013 00:50:58 +0000

By Joe Perez

Perhaps the Gay Rights movement will be won when there is an end to discrimination against people on account of sexual orientation, but this is too narrow a vision of what we are called to accomplish in our time. We are in a Worldwide Movement of being Liberated into our Fullest Humanity which is the Embodied Nature of Love.

Don’t reject absolute claims to the truth about Jesus with yet another absolute claim to the truth about Jesus.

Gay Spirituality — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 22:06:02 +0000

By Joe Perez

Who owns Jesus? Can Jesus legitimately be a symbol for “pro-family” and “pro-gun” politics? Andrew Sullivan is doubtful. I think there is enough ambiguity in the Scripture for Jesus to be appropriated by a wide variety of theologies and ideologies each of which have claims of legitimacy relative to their own worldview with their own complex benefits and baggage. An Integral spiritual approach to politicians and religionists who would make an exclusive claim to the truth about Jesus is not to assert a conflicting exclusive claim to the truth about Jesus.

The way forward for Gay Spirituality ought to be based on an Integral Methodological Pluralism, which can be simplified (as I did in 2006′s Rising Up) by saying that we need multiple and apparently conflicting and irreconcilable approaches to combating homophobia within the religions. Multiple and apparently conflicting approaches to healing the homophobia are already happening, praise be to God, so the Integral approach does not require a radical break from the overall status quo, broadly seen. Spirit is already moving in our midst in a direction of healing and reconciliation, and our activism is best informed by the maximum degree of openness to Spirit at our own individual level of consciousness and life situation.

For Catholics such as Andrew Sullivan, that can certainly allow for his own rejection of so-called Christianists. But it does not require the rest of us to read Scripture as he does. There are passages which call for total non-violence. There are also passages which call for taking up swords. There is not only one authentic Christianity, but many versions infused with different worldviews — pre-modern, modern, postmodern, and beyond. Sullivan’s “My Way is the Way” approach may work for his own post-traditional theology, but respectfully it is not a universal prescription. Ultimately our activism must entail non-violence in action and non-violence in the “culture war” which pits pre-modern, modern, and postmodern worldviews against each other without a holistic embrace of each worldview as a moment in something greater and more loving, something that we might call an evolving World Spirituality.

Photo: Cyborg Korean Jesus with Gun and Robotic Arm

Gay Love is God’s Love must be the gay liberation movement’s next great mantra

Gay Spirituality — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:44:12 +0000

By Joe Perez

Don’t tell me you don’t believe in God and therefore you don’t need to care about spirituality. Spirituality, as Paul Tillich tells us, is about our ultimate concerns. And everyone has ultimate concerns. Joseph Campbell once said words to the effect that half the world thinks their religious metaphors are literal truths and totally real and the other half things their religious metaphors are literal falsehoods and therefore totally false. In fact, Campbell’s postmodern view from the mountaintop which allows him to dismiss the errors of the religious and secular alike is its own kind of illusion: a pretense that the capacity for tolerance and peace and understanding and the sort of high-level abstract thinking about mythology exists is totally real and universal, whereas in fact it exists only as an artifact of complex developmental systems in which the worldviews of the traditional religionists and atheists each play important and valuable roles in themselves, and not merely as false versions to Campbell’s higher consciousness to be deconstructed or condescendingly embraced merely as means to an end.

Premodern, modern, and postmodern views of God each have ways of understanding the value and dignity of Spirit and Gay Love as playing an important role in the Divine, however it is conceived — as a Tradition-based belief system, as a scientifically-based understanding of the general systems of evolution within Nature, or as a postmodern embrace of virtually irreducible diversity and plurality. There are ways of embracing the essential truth behind the notion that Gay Love is God’s Love whatever your worldview and in a way that respects the integrity of that worldview as offering a genuine platform for enlightened or awakened consciousness. Maybe you will say Gay is a face of God, or maybe you will prefer to say that Homophilic self-immanence is a fundamental drive of all evolving things, or maybe you will say the same essential truth in a different formulation. Whatever the exact phrasing, Gay Love is God’s Love must be the gay liberation movement’s next great mantra.

Our work is to put on the face of Spirit

Gay Spirituality — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 17:34:01 +0000

By Joe Perez

It is understandable to think that getting called names or physically harmed or denied rights are the greatest threats gay people face. But there is a deeper truth: it is society’s ignorance of the gay face of God that we ought to fear most. Only when the world understands that gay people have equal dignity and value as images of the Divine — and gay Love as an image of the way that the Divine loves — that we will be free to be Who We Are: not merely individual selves in search of the freedom to control our love lives, but Unique Selves, each participating in the True Self of which there is only one. We are Unique Selves who are offering our Unique Gifts to the world, including our Gay Love. Truly, our work is to put on the face of Spirit.

To rebel is to ring a bell of Awakeness for all beings

Gay Spirituality — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 20:10:56 +0000

By Joe Perez

A rebel is only as good as his cause. If you choose the path of the rebel, make service to all sentient beings your cause. From this wide stance which is completely un-alienating because it affirms the entirety of your Being, a more specific focus for rebellion may be seeded. It is by aligning our unique sense of cause or purpose with the good of all people and ultimate all beings that we avoid a painful mistake: allowing our rebellion to set one part of the Self against another part of the Self, a stance which is ultimately Self-defeating. Violence and burnout and consuming anger are signs that one is rebelling against, and not for. To rebel for is to ring a bell of Awakeness for all beings.

Persisting in envy is to stay stuck in egoic self-contraction.

Gay Spirituality — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 19:08:41 +0000

By Joe Perez

To have envy is a very human condition. Do not allow the envy to fester. Instead, notice the object of your envy and ask what it is telling you. What gold or beauty or wisdom or power do you think you don’t own, when in fact is part of your Supreme Identity when looked at from a higher level of consciousness? Let your Unique Shadow guide you into your Unique Self.

For example, you may be a man with an average or shorter than average endowment. It is very understandable and human to feel envious of a man with a large endowment, but envy is not the only possible response. Envy will do you no good psychologically. And from an authentic spiritual perspective, it is a feeling based on a misunderstanding of your True Self and therefore a hindrance to a more enlightened self-sense.

There is in truth no separation between Good and Truth and Beauty, and the number of True Selves which exist is only one, so how can one man’s cock be any more or less a reflection of the True Self or of any ultimate Good or Beauty? To persist in envy is like imagining that, if you are right-handed, that your entire Self is actually just your left hand and so is jealous of the right hand. (Or vice versa for left-handed folks.) When you see it this way, envy is just a peculiar form of stupidity: identity with a false and partial self. The left hand needs to wake up and realize that it is not just a left hand — it is YOU and YOU are both left and right.

To persist in the envy is to stay stuck in a contraction of the egoic self rather than open up to the expansive possibility of living habitually in your True Self. As awesome as your ego may think it would be to have the penis of a porn star, You are actually already that awesome. You don’t need to wait for a penis enlarging miracle. All the magnificence and confidence and sex-appeal you think you would have if only you weren’t limited in some way is already available to you … so let go of the envy and take it!

Andrew Harvey: I had to fill the void within me with Divine Love.

Gay Spirituality — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:46:43 +0000

In this passage from 1994′s Gay Soul, mystic and poet Andrew Harvey addresses the topic of wounding.

Mark Thompson: In Hidden Journey you movingly write, “From the deepest wound of my life grew its miraculous possibility.” Most gay men, having been deeply soul-wounded themselves, would be able to relate to those words. Still, I want to know how we can best address the wound, to perceive and allow for its mystery. How do we transform the pain of being wounded from unconscious self-betrayal to self-discovery?

Andrew Harvey: Had I not been so wounded, I wouldn’t have burned my life away in the ways that I have. I think I wouldn’t have constantly hungered and searched, certainly not with the intensity that I have. After long years of mourning this wound, which is essentially my abandonment as a child by both my father and my mother, I have come to understand that it was in many ways the karmic preparation for the work that I have to do. The wound carved out a void I had to fill with divine love because all human love would fail me, necessarily. It compelled me to look for final healing. Emily Dickinson wrote, “The wounded deer leaps highest.” The wound was savage enough to make me leap into the arms of the Divine Mother.

Read the rest of the interview in Gay Soul.

The two fundamental drives for encountering God

Gay Spirituality — Sun, 27 Jan 2013 18:31:25 +0000

Human beings seek to experience reunion with God by encountering God in relationship to one another. At a fundamental level, hetero-philia is the drive to encounter God in The Other or Different. At a fundamental level, homo-philia is the drive to encounter God in The Same or Similar. It is impossible to imagine a universe in which there were not both drives of hetero-philia and homo-philia because both conceptions of Same and Other depend on the other. — Joe Perez in Soulfully Gay (paraphrased).

Does being gay give you a desire to always look for secret hidden patterns?

Gay Spirituality — Sat, 26 Jan 2013 18:51:06 +0000

By Joe Perez

Does being gay send you from youth onward always looking for secret hidden patterns, secret codes that will unlock the mysterious workings of the universe for you? That’s the theme broached recently by Daniel Mendelsohn and Andrew Sullivan. Their view — Andrew calls his part of his “pet theory” about gays and art — comes not from anything inherent in gayness itself, but in the defensive mechanisms learned by learning to cope with the closet.

With all this talk of secret codes and unraveling mysteries, I wish these two sophisticated writers wouldn’t stop as short as they do!

Journalist Andrew Sullivan writes in “The Gay Bullshit Detector”:

Daniel Mendelsohn reflects on the way being gay, with its frequent “knowingness and irony and the sense of access to special codes and secret knowledge,” has impacted his sensibility as a critic:

I was doing an event with James Wood a couple of years ago when my first collection came out and somebody asked me, “Do you think your being openly gay for so many years as a writer influences your criticism even when you’re not writing gay things?” And I said yes because you’re trained as a gay person to smell bullshit a mile away. You know when people are bullshitting because you’re bullshitting so much yourself, just to get by; so you know when people are faking it. And that is a kind of tool that comes in very handy as a critic. You’re always looking for the secret hidden patterns, the secret codes that will unlock something for you—because that’s what you’re trained to do as a gay person. So I think I’m always a gay writer in that sense because the tools that I acquired just from being a gay person are necessarily the tools you need as a critic.

Readers will not be surprised by my admission that I am often alert to weirdness on the surface that others dismiss…. As Daniel notes, when you know you are different, especially in your teens, you keep very careful tabs on what is regarded as “normal.” You become obsessed with giving nothing away. You have to develop much sharper skills of human observation, and learn how to mimic what comes easily to others. This is one pet theory of mine about the long history of gay involvement in theater and art. The art of mimesis comes early – as part of self-defense. That’s why I put this new Youtube from Towleroad at the top of this post. Jacob Rudolph is explaining that for much of his teens, “acting: was his only option.

But then there is the opposite. What happens when you decide to tell the truth about yourself knowing it could divide your family, alienate friends, threaten careers, etc? Coming out – much more often in the past but still true now in many places – is a form of liberation into truth. And the truth really does set you free. I once described the impact of my first kiss with another man as being in a black-and-white silent movie that suddenly becomes full of color and sound. Then I came out as HIV-positive (because I could not ethically write about a subject I felt I had to write about without being honest about my bias). The result? A scarred soul from the hatred that came my way from so many gays, but a psyche highly trained to observe and pathologically unable to keep what I see in front of my nose as a secret.

These are valuable perspectives to add, however much they remain trapped in the limitations of the expression of one person’s belief. Daniel looks at his life experience, says what he thinks is true for all gay people. Andrew looks at his experience, gives his pet theories. And from their perspective, that’s all one can do: opine from the epistemology of the ego reflecting on an identity forged through a history with other egos. And that’s as I said a valuable thing to do.

But Mendelsohn does not stop to ask, “Who is the ‘I’ that is spotting these hidden patterns? Is my identity exhausted by the mechanisms of bullshit detection?”

And Sullivan does not ask, “What is the ‘truth’ about the Self which is the outcome of the liberation of truth-telling that he practices? Is his greatest truth that he is a separate self, what Allan Watts called a skin-encapsulated ego, or is he staying in the closet about his Supreme Identity with his many millions of readers?”

The path of liberation into truth is two-fold. As I wrote in Soulfully Gay, the path of mysticism and self-discovery only seem opposed (and at times they are), but in fullness they are united. We plumb our “scarred souls” and enter into the Descending paths of spiritual realization. We free ourselves from all identities more limited than All-That-Is and we take the Ascending road. Where those two roads met, straight or gay or in-between, we find our True Self.

Attending to the source and nature of one’s gayness can be a way for opening up answers to the Great Questions, for finding one’s Ultimate Identity in a profound and truly healing way for both individuals and societies. But to hear Sullivan and Mendelsohn speak of “bullshit detectors,” well it’s just a bit demeaning to gayness and the human spirit.

Is the grandest benefit of gayness to enhance one’s olfactory senses in its capacity to recognize the smell of feces? I smell something a bit off-putting about that.