MyOutSpirit.com Gay Spirituality Blog

Gay Enlightenment

By Joe Perez

Every so often I address a column or blog post to my lesbian, bisexual, and gay readers. This one’s for you. And, because the gay journey is my journey, and ultimately there is only One True Self – this column is really for everybody.

Whereas mainstream pundits and public intellectuals in the U.S. are focused on the next election, and many other folks are focused on the next Saturday night, there is a wider and deeper perspective. Looking as wide as this moment in over 2,000 years of socio-cultural evolution since the beginning of the Common Era, and looking as deep as this moment arising when the cutting edge of individual consciousness is a postmodern mindset, and even this edge has become dull and dismal.

It is an odd time to be gay or bisexual. For American men of my generation – past 40 – our lives have been crises of meaning and meaninglessness. We were born into a world in which the reigning moral, religious, and spiritual authorities condemned how we love and would have forced us into closets, castration, or so-called reparative therapy, We could read the mystics and enlightened sages of centuries past and with only a few exceptions could find no evidence that affirming the spiritual dignity of same-sex love was meriting even a moment’s thought.

And we did, and by unprecedented numbers gays, lesbians, and bisexuals rejected organized religion and set out upon paths of individual spiritual seeking. They found their ways into Zen monasteries, radical faerie gatherings, drumming circles, hot yoga classes, and not a few very, very, very liberal churches and synagogues (places where they worried about marginalizing atheists and making sure language was neutered of any hint of white heterosexual patriarchy).

And yet for all this enthusiasm, a bona fide gay spiritual renaissance never happened. Not in the U.S., and nowhere else to my knowledge. I’ve had my boots on the ground in the LGBT spirituality movement for a decade (longer if I include the Dignity masses and addiction recovery circles of my twenties and early thirties). I’ve seen the energy in the gay spirituality movement ebb and flow. I attended the first and only Gay Spirituality & Culture Summit, an unprecedented gathering of “gay spiritual teachers and leaders” from around the world in Garrison, New York, in 2004 (and I blogged it and wrote about it in Soulfully Gay, my first book). There have been some modest success stories, and I don’t want to diminish the hard work and real progress made by those few spiritual activists to enter the fray.

The silver lining on the United Methodist Church's condemnation of gays

By Joe Perez

In certain places in America, conservatives are so scarce they’ve begun to import them from abroad. Specifically, in Tampa, Florida, where 1,000 delegates gathered for the United Methodist Church's General Conference. While liberal American Methodists pleaded for tolerance for gay people, conservatives from overseas compared homosexuality to bestiality.

A report on Huffington Post:

Gay rights advocates in the UMC viewed the compromise proposals as the best chance to advance their cause at this year's General Conference, which convenes every four years. On Friday, delegates are expected to debate the church's bans on noncelibate gay clergy and same-sex marriage.

With nearly 8 million members in the U.S., the UMC remains the country's largest mainline Protestant denomination. But United Methodism is shrinking in the U.S. and growing in Africa and Asia, shifting the balance of power to overseas conservatives. Nearly 40 percent of the delegates gathered in Tampa live outside the U.S.

Thursday's debate put the denomination's wide diversity on display -- as gays and lesbians pleaded for recognition of their "sacred worth" and an African delegate, speaking through an interpreter, compared homosexuality to bestiality.

The conservatives won the day, proclaiming publicly that “homosexual acts” are "incompatible with Christian teaching" in the largest mainstream Protestant denomination in the U.S.A. Of course, it's their right to run their church as they see fit and nobody is forcing anybody to be part who doesn't find a welcoming home there. And of course, many of us would much prefer that if the conservatives can't at least be willing to agree to disagree, then they would stay quiet.

But then again, we aren't really the folks the Methodist leaders are speaking to. They say they are speaking to the world, but they are really addressing only those willing to listen, mainly their flocks which are increasingly hailing from the developing world and less so North America and Europe. Thus, the fate of gays and lesbians in the "first world" is tied to the fate of gays and lesbians everywhere. There is no progress on the LGBT dignity front in America if the LGBT folks in places like Bangladesh and Uganda and Argentina are left out.

Thus, religion is providing a uniting thread linking the fate of persecuted minorities everywhere. Today there are Methodists in every country, or almost every country, where there are Christians. And where people share a common religion, if their religion leaves them out, they will share a common persecution. Fear will rule over love when love grows too weak.

Rejection culture and the True Self

By Joe Perez

What's the best way for one gay man to reject another gay man online? NYC writer and sex educator Lucas writes:

I'm beginning to think that a simple no-response response is sometimes the wisest solution, although not the most friendly or guilt-free. Unfortunately, we have created a world in which a returned 'hello' often translates through the screen as "do me" rather than a polite greeting. Friendly conversation still works in real-life interaction, of course, but if you actually engage with someone on Dudesnude, Grindr, etc., for more than a couple of exchanges, interest will be assumed and declining an offer will be even more difficult.

via Top to Bottom.

Since it's been several years since I've met anyone online or used social media to hookup, I feel a bit out of the loop. I hear there's something now called Grindr. LOL. But I doubt that I'm missing a heck of a lot.

I have enough memories of gay men's culture of rejection to last a lifetime, and have been on both the rejector/rejectee side of the fence. Maybe Lucas is right about keeping one's hookup protocol to the least offensive means possible; maybe it's best when injuring to keep the cuts quick and shallow.

At the same time, ever since reading The Soul Beneath the Skin by David Nimimons several years ago, it became clear to me that the LGBT community -- and gay men in particular -- are better served if we are also transcending a culture of rejection and not merely trying to make it less damaging.

At the individual level, it is difficult for the average person to shift a culture, but everyone can shift himself or herself. It can start one day at a time by treating other gay people just as you would want to be treated.

Don't be afraid to say "hello," and if a man says hello, don't assume he means, "do me." And don't be afraid to smile, make eye contact, or ask how someone is feeling.

This is a good start. Ultimately, what is at stake is much more important than whether our feelings get hurt or another person's feelings get hurt.

What is at stake is whether we are counterfeiting ourselves by perpetuating cycles of harm to the True Self that is in You and in Me and radiating secretly behind every facade on Grindr.

There is only one True Self, and there is a cost in wholeness to rejecting our beautiful, loving true nature. What are you avoiding by rejecting another person?

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Spiritual mentor, author, poet, and scholar. Joe is best known for his 2007 book Soulfully Gay. one of the first memoirs in the tradition of World Spirituality based on Integral principles. Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for World Spirituality, where he works with Director Marc Gafni in providing leadership to the think tank. He also blogs at Gay Spirituality. Arctophile and ailurophile. A little bit country and a little bit "part and whole." Follow Joe Perez Facebook and Joe Perez Twitter.

I’m coming out of the closet … again (part 2)

By Joe Perez

...Continued from Part 1

Of course, I'm not really a virgin. But there are certain traditional notions about virginity that I have learned to appreciate in a new way: purity and worth. Looking at these two notions will help to establish the context for the conclusion to my new coming out story.

Purity. I must say that as I've begun to notice and accept a greater fluidity and flexibility to my erotic constitution, I am able to look at my sexuality with more curiosity and less robotic reactivity to "my eros as I've known it." Child-like playfulness accompanies a sort of unexpected innocence, a willingness to approach desire with "beginner's mind" (Shoshin, meaning openness and lack of preconceptions).

Worth. There are layers and layers of self-acceptance and self-esteem which can be accreted to the self. For sexual minorities, the "coming out" process often progresses in stages of gradually increasing comfort in expressing more of one's self in wider contexts. And yet the question remains at every stage, "What am I coming out into?" Without deeply rooted self-esteem, the suffering associated with coming out can seem more trouble than it's worth.

With these notions of purity and worth in mind, consider the idea I want to present today: that sexuality is the force of Eros, the guiding principle of evolution, a sacred movement which is rooted in the embodied self and which unfolds differently at different stages of the self. And at later stages of development, the sexual self busts out of conventional and post-conventional identities into new emergent forms.

Eros and Evolutionary Emergence

To approach sexuality from a state which is simultaneously lacking in preconceptions and deeply affirming of worth is a peculiar way of being a sexual being. It is a constant moment-to-moment innocence, a sensual opening to novelty and joy and wonder. It requires greater tolerance for paradox and spontaneity than other approaches. But for many people this simply isn't an evolutionary possibility alive for them at their station of life. It is, I think, a peculiarly late post-conventional style of relating.

Contra late conventional styles (i.e., orange altitude), it is not merely a rejection of obedience to traditional strictures and negative attitudes towards having sex. It appreciates that traditional guidelines can help preserve the integrity of societal institutions yet it also makes room for acknowledging that individuals in certain post-conventional situations can transgress traditional models responsibly.

Joe Perez, author of Soulfully Gay, comes out of the closet again...

By Joe Perez

Today on Awake, Aware & Alive, I make an official coming out announcement Here's how the announcement begins:

Please read the words of this post carefully, because there's a tricky question at the end.

I'm coming out of the closet again. In 2004, I told my coming out story in a newspaper column called "Soulfully Gay," the discovery of Integral spirituality by a 34-year-old gay man. But my coming out story is probably not what you think it is, even if you've read the book inspired by the newspaper column, Soulfully Gay (Integral Books/Shambhala, 2007).

Here's something you don't know about Soulfully Gay

So far as I know, not a single person has ever noticed and remarked on one of my book's odd facts: in the course of a 314-page spiritual autobiography, you will not find a single sentence in which I say exactly that I am gay or homosexual. (I think once I let the words "my homosexuality" skate by, which I didn't think was a big deal.)

Nobody noticed. Readers just kind of make up their own story by bringing in tons of assumptions, but the plain words just aren't on the page. The words "I'm gay" or "I'm homosexual" or their most common variations are simply not there. They weren't true to my inner voice, and I could not speak them into the words of the page, preferring to always find expressions that did ring true, such as talking about "same-sex desires."

I don't even say that I'm gay in the book's coming out story. I talk about "labels" instead, as in an essay that starts like this:

When I was 20 years old, I first put a label on my sexuality. Actually, I was spared the chore of coming out to my mom, because a university librarian outed me.

I had secretly known that I was different from most other boys since I was in junior high school. To explore my sexuality, I had checked out books on the topic at the university. Unfortunately, I returned a few books a day late.

The university's library system was very efficient. They immediately printed out an overdue notice and sent it to my permanent address on file. My mother opened the letter from the library, saw the titles of the books, and mailed the notice to me. My process of "coming out" had begun!

At different times of my life, I have worn various labels for my sexuality. Since coming out, I have used labels including bisexual, gay, and queer. I am a man more attracted to men than to women, so the gay label works just fine for me most of the time.

What I didn't mention is that the books that I checked out from the library were on male bisexuality (which, incidentally, has recently been proven to exist by pioneering scientists!) I didn't think of my omission as hiding anything. It just felt like an unnecessary distraction in the context. You see, I wrote elsewhere in the book:

By my senior year of college, I grew comfortable expressing my sexuality. I came out of the closet and had my first sexual experiences. I struggled with picking a single label and deemed myself too inexperienced to know for sure what to call myself. I chose the bisexual label, deciding that it was best to keep my options open...

You can't expect a memoir written by a 34 year-old man to be fully transparent. I didn't want to call the book "Soulfully Gay-Identified Person with a Not Insignificant Degree of Fluid Bisexual Expression."

In my 30s, I was highly invested in remaining identified as gay and was nowhere ready to start contemplating what alternatives might be out there. And yet, my sexuality was always more complex than anything that I wanted to reduce to one label. I just wasn't always ready or able to act on the full spectrum of Eros within my potential.

 

Continue reading "I'm coming out of the closet (again)" at Awake, Alive & Aware.

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Spiritual mentor, author, poet, and scholar. Joe is best known for his 2007 book Soulfully Gay. one of the first memoirs in the tradition of World Spirituality based on Integral principles. Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for World Spirituality, where he works with Director Marc Gafni in providing leadership to the think tank. He also blogs at Gay Spirituality. Arctophile and ailurophile. A little bit country and a little bit "part and whole." Follow Joe Perez Facebook and Joe Perez Twitter.

Joe Perez's Awake, Alive & Aware

By Joe Perez

July is a memory. August was my second month back blogging since I returned from a public writing hiatus, and it afforded me the opportunity to explore a wide variety of topics on my mind while experimenting with quantity, frequency, style, and delivery medium. In 75 posts on Awake, Alive & Aware, my attention focused on giving you the contours of how I see the integral worldview in general and Integral Christianity in particular.

However, some of the most popular posts concerned the topic of finding one's vocation in life. This blog asked, "How much social media is too much?" and noted some of my experiments with finding a good relationship with Twitter. The former post caught the eye of career guru Penelope Trunk, who is the first "big name" blogger to visit my comment boxes. I'm stilling find my way into an appropriately integral relationship to Twitter, and I'll post more on the subject next month.

About the word "integral"

I've experimented with writing the word "integral" in different ways: Integral, integral, and just plain integral. I've called "integral" a consciousness, worldview, community, culture, perspective, philosophy and spirituality. And then there's Integral Theory, which has a definite style guideline. I don't buy into the idea that there is a big "Integral" for Ken Wilber's Integral Theory and a little "integral" for everything else. That's just too fixed. My approach is not to set a style and stick to it, but to gradually find my way into a good mix of usages appropriate for various contexts.

I'm gravitating towards a mix of integral (to describe a level of consciousness) and integral (to praise attributes that are positive). In this approach, I am putting into practice a distinction which I wrote about in the month's most popular post, "Defining Integral, or: What Harvey Milk might say to the Integral movement today."

One of my personal favorite posts of the month is "Are Big Ideas dead? Here's one to watch out for," because it helps to explain why integral thought is marginalized in the culture. It's not a reflection so much of the merits of Ken Wilber's thought, the article suggests, but a problem with modern culture's relationship to information. Many comprehensive, Big Idea thinkers are just as marginalized as the Integral ones, and this post offers recommendations for helping to break integral memes out of the cloister and a bit more into the mainstream.

Out Compassion

We are hard wired for compassion. It is part of our spiritual positioning system. It is at the core of our journey to being fully alive and fully human. When I am compassionate I yearn for the well-being of all. I become conscious of my oneness with all things.

In Galatians Paul ends the final chapter with a blessing of “peace and mercy” on those who follow a journey to a new creation; on those who believe that there are no divisions within the human family. In his mind the divisions of his time – male and female, slave or free, Jew or gentile, circumcised or uncircumcised – are all irrelevant. His talk of peace is helpful. His blessing of mercy is arrogant and disconnected from peace.

So what does this mean? Peace is about the social, economic and spiritual well-being of all. It is not about the absence of conflict. When my life is grounded in seeking the well-being of others it leads me to help resolve conflicts that keep you or me from knowing peace.

So what does that look like? Peace is about a way of consciousness that says you and I are part of a oneness that exists between all things and people. I understand that you want to live in happiness as much as I do. When a GLBTQ teenager is bullied for who they are, a Muslim vilified as the enemy, women denied full equality or the race of an immigrant is used to conjure up hate talk I will not be passive.

The blessing of peace is only a blessing when I choose not to be silent. Peace becomes a blessing when I am proactive – in my words, intentions or actions. Elsewhere Paul is clear that the spiritual journey invites you and me to “walk in love” and become like a “fragrant offering.”

I believe that the only criteria for whom we are, how we are and where we are on our path is the intention to love with abandonment. Love defines us. In the world of the ancient Middle East love was a contractual arrangement – a promise to come to the aid of another who was attacked in any way.

So coming to the aid of another who is vilified or attacked is an expression of love that bring us alive and of seeking well-being or peace.

That’s why Paul’s blessing of “mercy” is an arrogant disconnect. Mercy comes with an imbalance of power. It assumes that you have the power to dispense it over another. This is not part of an ecosystem of oneness! It ruptures your spiritual positioning system.

Compassion is the sibling of love. It makes me think of two Jewish names for the Holy – God of the Breasts and God of the Womb. Compassion invites us into nurturing, feeding, sustaining and growing the ecosystem of oneness and well-being for all. Compassion, not mercy, is a way of walking in love that is transformative.

So mercy be darned! Blessings are revealed in our intentions of peace and compassion. How do they co-exist in your spiritual positioning system?

Robert V. Taylor is a speaker, blogger, author and Chair of the Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation in New York. Visit him at www.robertvtaylor.com or www.wakeupforlife.com

Rob Bell Questions Hell, Christians' Heads Explode

Rob Bell, the straight Christian pastor of Mars Hill Church in Grandville, Michigan, bestselling author of Velvet Elvis, Sex God, and Drops Like Stars, and creator of the groundbreaking NOOMA film series, has a new book coming out this month that, despite its palatable title, Love Wins, has already ignited a firestorm of controversy in conservative Christian circles. Why?

Bell dares to question whether or not Hell is real.

Publisher HarperCollins explains: "In Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived, Bell addresses one of the most controversial issues of faith—the afterlife—arguing that a loving God would never sentence human souls to eternal suffering. With searing insight, Bell puts hell on trial, and his message is decidedly optimistic—eternal life doesn’t start when we die; it starts right now. And ultimately, Love Wins."

How DARE he? bellowed Christian conservatives like Justin Taylor, John Piper, and others. They are blowing up the internet, condemning Rob Bell as a heretic and suggesting he be shunned. Without reading the book, mind you - just based on the publiser's description and a short video introducing the book (below). But they're likely to be even MORE inflamed once they actually read it, and thank god for that.

There are multiple developmental levels active in the Christian community (and, to be clear, there are wonderful people and good Christians at every level). In this case, the authoritarian, rules-are-rules, it-says-what-it-says, Jesus-spoke-English, because-that's-the-way-we've-always-done-it Crowd is not capable of going along with a postmodern Christian like Rob Bell. 

We talk a lot in this blog about the human predicament of being stuck in our stories (for example). These critics are happily encased in their little shell where they know all the answers; asking them to admit that they do NOT know - asking them to question their faith-based worldview - is a lot to ask.

You've heard me tell the story about my father, a lifelong Christian and deacon in his church, who was self-aware enough to beg me to stop sharing my questioning process with him. He said to me flat-out, "I need to believe what I believe." If he accepted he might be wrong about what the Bible says and means, that his faith might be misplaced, then his entire life would fall apart, and he couldn't handle that. 

So I don't expect conservative Christians to break out of their shells just because Rob Bell leads them in that direction. It's just too scary out there. It requires way too much courage. And frankly, I suppose it's great that they're giving him so much free publicity!

But it will be wonderful to see more Christians and their churches let go of Fear. Ironic that letting go of Fear is so damn scary, right?  

"If we can't threaten nonbelievers with eternal damnation, how will we get converts?" "If I don't have to be good so that God won't punish me, why shouldn't I sin?" "What really happens when I die?" "What does it mean to be saved if there's no pit of fire to be saved from?" 

Kudos to Rob Bell for daring to enter into the questions, for slipping into not-knowing, for standing up for love, and for encouraging millions of other Christians to go there with him.

Thank God for Heretics.

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Support Rob Bell, Pre-order Love Wins from Amazon.com

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P.S. Speaking of heretics, here's the ever-wise Bishop John Shelby Spong on Hell:

Top 10 Signs That Your Spirituality Might Be "Integral"

By Joe Perez 10. You don't find yourself easily offended by slights to your ego, subculture, or group identification; therefore "political correctness" has little appeal to you (though you intuitively tend to avoid causing others unnecessary pain through your words or deeds).

9. You have come to a compassionate stance with regard to religious fundamentalists and conservative zealots because you recognize that their own stage of evolution may be less than your own. You pick your battles for justice carefully and strategically, not by reacting out of anger or fear.

8. It doesn't much matter to you what labels other people call you: "gay," "homosexual," "LGBT," or whatever. You wear all signs of identity lightly and strive to avoid compartmentalizing your sexual and overall sense of identity.

7. You don't look for "explanations" of homosexuality as exclusively the domain of biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, social historians, or theologians, but seek comprehensive approaches that include individual and collective dimensions in subjective and objective perspectives.

6. You are non-judgmental not because you want others to like you or you because you seek to avoid being judged by others, but because you recognize your own "shadow" in everything you judge. Nevertheless, you are willing to make value judgments and rankings when it's necessary and practical towards contributing towards your own or another's holistic development.

Read the full list...

Note: In this post, I am using the term "Integral Spirituality" in a way informed by the AQAL Integral Theory and overall philosophy of Ken Wilber and the spiritual teachings of Dr. Marc Gafni, whose understanding of Unique Self (explained in Marc Gafni's TED event) have been of great value.

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Spiritual mentor, author, poet, and scholar. Joe is best known for his 2007 book Soulfully Gay. one of the first memoirs in the tradition of World Spirituality based on Integral principles. Scholar-in-Residence at the Center for World Spirituality, where he works with Director Marc Gafni in providing leadership to the think tank. He also blogs at Gay Spirituality. Arctophile and ailurophile. A little bit country and a little bit "part and whole." Follow Joe Perez Facebook and Joe Perez Twitter.

EnlightenNext Pursues the Next Women's Liberation

EnlightenNext (then called "What is Enlightenment? Magazine) started this deep conversation in 2007 with their first "Woman" issue, which is HIGHLY recommended reading.  Click here to check out the back issue.

MyOutSpirit.com encourages lesbian, bi-attractional and trans women to join in the conversation by writing emails, comments and letters to EnlightenNext and participating in events.  Whatever your gender and sex, we should ALL follow this deep work; the implications are really transformational. 

Learn more about everything EnlightenNext does at EnlightenNext.org.