The Immortal God & The Prison Made Of Guilt & Shame

Our ol' buddy Dr. Freud was ridiculed for seeing 'sex' in damn near everything. The joke that 'sometimes a cigar is just a cigar Dr. Freud' sums up the position of many who saw a little sexual extremism in Freud's version of psychoanalysis--like he was a fundamentalist of a different stripe.

Unfortunately, all joking aside, there are some problems inherent in too readily dismissing the pervasive nature of human sexuality in our everyday dealings. First, such an off-handed dismissal can serve to make us blind to those hidden factors that seep their wat into even the most mundane of settings. Second, that dismissal can serve to deprive ourselves of the vital energy and passion that can be sublimated into our creative acts and efforts in this-world. The result, then is that a failure to inquire into our fundamental sexuality will serve to make us blind and passion-less, ignorant and vacuous. In short, like a zombie.

Freud saw libido as being consonant with a fundamental energy that could be seen as being synonymous with the notion of an elan vital, a Kundalini, an Eros. If we can grant a little lee-way to the discourse surrounding human sexuality--such as I hope is taking place here--then perhaps we can see how both an ignorance pertaining to human sexuality makes us the subjects destined to be acted on by forces that we don't understand (because we refuse to look, let alone consider) as well as the energy-deprived subjects of a life that is felt to be draining and sluggish; precisely because the majourity of Eros/Kundalini/libido lies trapped in a tight ball at the base of the spine.

For many white folks--guys especially--there can be felt a tightness in the area beneath the belly. Not a lot of movement in a white guy's hips does there tend to be. It was initially noticed by Wilhelm Reich in his discovery of the formation of 'character armour' that served just as much to keep energy locked in as to keep a cruel and invasive world shut out. And that is the side of the story that has been little heard from in psychoanalytic circles--how armouring and defense are not just about keeping 'others' out as much as they are also about keeping 'Eros' locked up inside. Like I mentioned before, it is possible to see how it may be that the God of Love is imprisoned in the human body (some more than others).

Imprisoned in such a way that Eros is buried under piles of guilt and shame and denial. We don't want to be sexual. We wish we weren't sexual. We pretend we aren't sexual.

And yet... and yet there is that which we can't eliminate in spite of our guilt, shame, and denial. We simply can't kill the God. Eros is an immortal after all: a fire that we can't put out.

The Erotic Human: (A)shamed Sexuality & Our Vital Lack

Human sexuality is perhaps one of the more--if not the most--intriguing area of interest to anyone with philosophical leanings. Whether we are talking about religion or we are discussing the seedier side of life evidenced in pornography and prostitution, the sexual slave trade or East Asian bordellos, there is a sense of both intrigue and interest on the part of humanity, as well as disgust and aversion. Human sexuality is the beast desired and the beast despised. There is really no other way to say it. It is the primary element in human existence that we seek to control and contain (shame and guilt, taboo and ritual) as well as unleash and let loose.

Consider for a moment if you will how it is that human sexuality is seen as both salvific (that is, human sexuality needs to be unfettered from social mores and a repressed cultural milieu, so that we can be happy and free--i.e., Hippie Generation, Free Love, 1960's) as well as being seen as verging on the satanic (which means that human sexuality needs to be avoided, controlled, contained, and even exorcised from our person in some cases like a demon or spirit might be--i.e., Victorian era, Puritanical Colonies of the Americas, Monastics). It is as if human sexuality were an ink-blot upon which we project both our fears and our longings.

Inter-generational speaking, it is possible for parents to pass their 'sins' (missing the mark) around the nature and significance of human sexualtiy to their children. A mother uncomfortable with her own sexuality may tend to pass that sense along to her child--thereby conveying to the child that sexuality is 'bad' or 'evil.' You are simply not supposed to touch yourself there (even though damn near everyone does!). Which sends the message that you are not supposed to feel there--sensitivity in the root chakra is, well, to be ignored, dismissed. And I wonder when that is the case how much human vitality is lost, not to mention barred from ascending serpentine like up the higher centers of humanity for the purpose of en-light-ening those higher centers.

So, in covering ourselves we symbolically send the message that Eros is better left in the dark, which leads me to ponder if whether or not a God has been banished to Hades by our own discomfort with being all that we are--sexually, sensually, spiritually (and again, remember that an erotic deprivation is a psychological one as well--as the Fate of Eros and Psyche is one and the same).

The distinct possibility that arises, then, is that in being (a)shamed sexually we are in a sense also being (a)shamed psychologically. Much more than our sexuality is lost in trying to hide or distance ourselves from our sexual nature--a part of our humanity goes too, and I would suggest so does a large part of our divinity. Like I said, do we banish the God of Love, Eros, to a fate of darkness; essentially leaving Eros no choice but to work in the underground, plying the black-market, precisely because of our personal and political discomfort with the bare fact of our sexuality?

And when we fight the God of Love--when we fight Eros--how much vitality (libido) is lost? How much (com)passion is denied the world so thirsty... so parched... so in need of a drink from Love's Waters? How might our ages long tangle with human sexuality result in some of the geo-political storms we see raging in the world? After all those busy loving, full to the brim with Eros, do they have time to make bombs... or even an inclinatino to do so? Isn't a bomb just a highly potentt phallic symbol often meant to substitute for the impotent status of Erotic man?

The Erotic Nature of Personal and Collective Well-Being

Can we be happy and function well without a decided activation of the Erotic in our lives? Can we be all that we can be, to borrow a popular advertising slogan, if we are not 'turned on' by at least something in this-world? Can we really be alive if we are not erotically-inclined and/or disposed?

Personally speaking, if I may be so bold, I don't think it is possible to experience well-being apart from Eros, apart from the erotic. We require activation at the deepest level, what those familiar with the Hindu system of chakras call the 'root chakra.' I mean, what plant can be healthy and flower in abundance if the roots are not likewise in a state of premium health? What tree reaches skyward if its roots are debilitated in some way?

This is not to say that well-being is all a matter of sexuality (though that may be the case for some), as much as it is to indicate that unless we are activated 'down-below' we cannot even have hope of actualizing those 'higher capacities' that may lie in a latent state until the sap of life flows upwards, i.e., what those familiar with Eastern mysticism know as 'kundalini rising.'

Even the infamous Dr. Sigmund Freud deemed a functioning 'libido' essential for psychological health and well-being. A frustrated libido resulted in everything from ordinary neurosis to excruciatingly debilitating instances of psycho-somatic distress. This is work that Wilhelm Reich built on, with his notion of the 'orgasm' being an indication of psychological health and/or distress. A tightly controlled and or bottle-necked libido/kundalini/eroticism resulted in what he saw as the inability to have an orgasm (the frozen woman) or in the rush to 'get it over with' ... and as soon as possible... (the prematurely ejaculating man). In both cases there is a repression/constraining of the libido/erotic nature of the human-being.

For the man who is in a rush to get it over with, the belief that premature ejaculation is about him achieving his own pleasure at the expense of his lover is a misnomer. Premature ejaculation is about fear and repression of the sexual energy. In short (pun intended), if it has to happen then it better happen quick... so we can be done with this! Such a man doesn't want to linger in the Erotic. The Erotic is an element to be repressed and feared. or we could say this: that Kundalini is supposed to remain tightly controlled and contained at the spine (tight-ass white guys please take note... though not just tight-ass white guys).

The result is that libido is only allowed to emerge as a trickle; meaning that such a man's life and world essentially become starved for Eros (which, ironically enough, makes the 'erotic' in the form of pornography all the more alluring---how strange we humans are).

The same happens for such a man's internal world. After all, Psyche and Eros share a common, united fate in Greek Mythology. Perhaps they do in fact, as well, as I would certainly attest to. All of which suggests that any erotic deprivation becomes a psychological deprivation. In terms used here on this site, it means that any lack of Eros results in a lack of Psyche.

Kundalini, then, remains trapped at the base of the spine; is not allowed to flood the higher centers of which humanity is capable. The result is a disconcerting lack of psychological development. And because psyche is often used synonymously with 'spirit' it could also be seen as indicating that a lack of the erotic is a lack of the spiritual. Meaning, just as in the Legend of the Fisher King, a wound in man's groin results in the Kingdom turning into a veritable wasteland--both within and without, psychologically and socially, spiritually and culturally.

The world suffers from lack of Eros. Just as Psyche suffers from Eros's absence in both myth and fact. The higher centers starve for the fruit of the lower. Oh, what yet lies trapped in man... in humanity... in this species?

It's The Love... Stupid!

Eros. It's what turns you 'on?' It's whom or what you desire?

There is something basic and fundamental with regards to Eros vis-a-vis human existence. You can sense the utter difference between someone who is 'turned on' by life--by living, by being alive--and someone who has lost (or perhaps never fully integrated) the erotic nature of being human into their daylight character. I am not talking about getting an erection, nor feeling that heat build in the soft space between one's legs (though that is part of the story). What interests me is how we are 'excited' or not. What intriguies me are the ways that we are 'turned on,' and how even the most mundane and a-sexual examples of being 'turned on' are the province and domain of the Greek God of Love, Eros.

For instance, I wonder if the discussion regarding sexual differences (Homo- and Hetero-) would be better left behind for a discussion of the common feature shared in both cases--which is the unambiguous presence of Eros. Eros rules. So what if someone is 'turned on' by sexual sameness or sexual otherness. Big flippin' deal!

What I suspect is lost is the forest for the trees--that, in focusing upon the different trees of sexual orientation we lose sight of the fact that each of these trees are an embodiment and expression of the forest, the forest of Eros. Eros is the atmosphere and the climate; the pervasive environment wherein we find ourselves 'turned on.' Archetypal psychologist James Hillman might say that in our fixation on the particular and the different we are more susceptible to losing sight of the archetypal presence of a God... a Deity. The result is that we don't get a sense of how it is that Eros rules the roost of our attractions. We come to think of Homo- and Hetero- as these alien species, one to another... rather than being the common subjects operating under the law of Eros.

As you may sense, my gut feeling is that the dialogue surrounding our sexuality could stand much benefit from honouring and acknowledging the omnipresent nature of Eros in Hetero-, Homo-, Bi-, and Trans-sexual circles. So that rather than defining ourselves (and our orientation) in relation to strict differences that only serve to separate and divide we could instead appreciate those differences as the diverse expressions of Eros. An Eros that is so full of Love that there is no end to the ways that 'excitation' expresses itself. An Eros that is so abundant with Love and (Com)Passion that there is simply no avenue of desire and longing and devotion and worship and connection that is not explored.

An either/or approach to sexuality is simply to limited for Eros. Eros is a God, thus, infinite in the expression of excitation over the existence of Male and Female, Man and Woman, Flower and Bee, Trans- and Bi-, Earth and Sky. Eros is, in other words, supposed to be infinitely creative and omnipresent in its workings. Eros is not supposed to be localized into a fetish of Hetero-sexuality... or any other narrow definition of whom or what is worthy of being loved.

Lack & Legitimation In Hetero- & Homo-

I am going to broach a very touchy subject here, and hope to do it with some delicacy--provided that is possible to do so given the subject matter. So please bear with me as I venture into the often heated and contested waters of sexual difference vis-a-vis Hetero- and Homo-.

Even when we look at the etymological origins of the words that we use in the English language to describe and define our sexual differences we see that there is an acknowledgement of 'otherness' (Hetero-) and 'sameness' (ala Homo-). The Hetero- finds 'otherness' erotic. It is summed up in the 'opposites attract theory of eros.' Different sexual organs. The otherness and alien-ness of the 'other' is something erotically longed for--with the sense that this 'otherness' will somehow complete us. After all, if the 'other' has what we lack and we are able to unite or join with the other than we will become more than we were prior to such a uniting with the otherness of the Male or Female.

The psychological dimension of Homo-sexuality takes on a decidedly different cue. This is also where I feel some hesitation. I hope to tread lightly and give some added meaning and significance to 'Homosexuality'---not take it away.

If we consider the etymological roots of the word 'Homo-' we are pointed in the direction of 'sameness' and 'similarity.' The erotic nature of homosexuality is referenced to this sameness. Similiarity is what is found to be primarily erotic. And what I suspect is behind this is the psychological call or need for confirmation. Whereas the Hetero- seeks completion of his or her being through the sexual unification of difference, the Homo- seeks confirmation of his or her being through the sexual unification of sameness.

The desire, need, longing for 'confirmation of one's being' is one of the central themes of homosexuality in our times. Acceptance. The homosexual desires and longs for acceptance--wants to have his or her sexuality confirmed. The longing is for legitimation of an erotic longing for sameness and similarity.

Maybe I should be said again: the Homo- desires a legitimation of his or her erotic longing for sameness and similarity, in the same way that Hetero- longing of otherness and difference is already legitimated by most peoples/socieites/cultures.

All of which leads me to ask a question: What can we say about a society/culture/peoples who find that they are unable or unwilling to legitimate the eroticization of sameness and similarity? Does it mean that the erotic dimension of humanity is only supposed to be reserved for difference and otherness?

We can see and note similar evidence for the above in terms of the de-legitimation of masturbation and self-pleasuring by those very same cultures/peoples/societies that have tended to de-legitimate Homosexuality? The message is loud and clear: Thou shalt not experience Eros in relation to 'what you are' or 'are similar to', but only in relation to 'what you are not,' or 'are dis-similar to.'

So, as a Man or a Woman the conventional sexual rhetoric tends to point in the direction of finding the erotic not within us, as much as apart from us.... outside of us... in the Otherness of Male or Female. The result is the sense that our own being cannot be erotic... a holder of Eros, a place where we can find it, discover it, know it, revel in it. Instead, you/I/we have to seek it elsewhere. You/I/we lack it. So now you/I/we must go and find it in what is dis-similar.

Either completed erotically in the other...

...or confirmed erotically in the similar.

The Erotic Nature Of Hetero-Male Lack

What I wanted to initiate yesterday was an inquiry surrounding lack and human sexuality. It struck me so deeply as I was standing there at the bar watching grown men hoot and holler, basically falling all over each other to get a closer look at some sizable knockers on display. I realized then that the erotic nature of what was taking place had to do with what was 'lacking' for each of those men personally. The distinct and peculiar otherness of a Woman's Breasts were fixing their gaze, captivating their attention, holding their awareness in a vise-like grip that they could neither shake themselves loose of... nor even appeared to want to shake loose of!

So the Breast is an Erotic Object for Hetero-Man because of its Otherness.

For Hetero-Man the Breast seems to be something that is paradoxically so close... yet so far away. It is both that which one is familiar with (the residue of childhood) as well as that which is so far removed. There is a longing there. Which I take to mean that Freud was at least partly right (true but partial once again) in indicating that there is a symbiosis between Breast and Child that becomes a sort of psychological stain or residue that compels the longing. For the Adult-Child now lacks the Breast that was once so comforting, so nourishing, so near and dear... if not also at times absent, therefore tending to become a 'hated-object,' ala Kleinian psychoanalysis.

I suspect that sizable Breasts also indicate an abundance of that proverbial milk and honey that has long been associated with the Promised Land. And that can also serve to create 'envy' in the Male of our Species. For even after the Child is out of the Womb, the Woman continues to bestow and bless the Child with Life via the Breast. This has been known to create more than a little animosity in more than one man: as the Man neither has the Life-Bestowing Breast to offer to the Child, nor does the Man have access to the Woman's Breast (his wife or lover) as an erotic object--because now the Breast is just a functional object for the Child's welfare and well-being.

So, the erotic element of the Breast is dissipated by the act of Breast-feeding (which I contend may be at least partly responsible for the American aversion to public displays of breast-feeding). Why such aversion though? Is it because America collectively (big generalization, I know) tends to not want to have the erotic element of the Breast eclipsed by the functional element.

Let me restate this differently, if only because I have the feeling that this is key: namely, that America(ns) tendency is to fixate on the erotic nature of the Breast as an object longed-for, which means that the functional nature of the Breast tends to appear as threatening to the erotic nature that America(ns) seems to collectively prefer. We don't want to see breast-feeding as a public display because it shatters the erotic projectons surrounding the Female Breast. It shatters our collective illusions about what Breasts are for.

The aversion to breast-feeding, then, on a collective level, is really a way to protect our fantasies of and about the Female Anatomy.

Lack & The Eroticization of Otherness

A bit of prime redneck Americana was on display lasy night in the small town of Glennie, Michigan. I was invited by a booking agent to go and perform at The Oasis, which was to be the anniversary celebration of what appeared to be the only drinking establishment within a 30 mile radius (that's life in the backwoods, off the beaten path, folks). Anyways, I arrived at about 8:30 PM, in plenty of time for the 10 o'clock slot I was pegged for. Just in time to witness the 'Wet T-Shirt Contest.'

Unfortunately, my date for the evening, Monica, was not nearly as intriguied by the whole thing as I apparently was. After getting a tall drink for myself at the bar, and upon sitting down there at said bar, she promptly decided to turn her back to the whole affair (God, I love fiesty chicks like that!). Me? I proceeded to check out the freak-show aspect of the whole thing. I reassured Monica that it was merely an anthropological interest on my part--not a testosterone laden one.

My initial observation was that Northern Michigan isn't just a place where Big Trees grow. My goodness! Morganna would have felt right at home there on the stage with the 5 other beauties. And being a redneck-haven I would have to guess that this was an au naturale, God-given, Goddess-bestowed display of monuments to fertility. Silicon or saline need not apply! These were the real deal: inherited traits, not manufactured ones.

Afer the first round of elimination--going from 5 contestants to the final 2--my view from the bar was becoming increasingly scarce. A mass of guys about 3 or 4 rows deep congregated in front of me. I could hear the comments that now filled the bar as the girls jogged in place to the tune of OUTKAST'S 'Hey Ya':

'My Baby don't mess around cuz she loves me so and this I know fo sure...'

Like a polaroid picture fo sure! ; o )

Monica was still glaring in the other direction. Gotta love that girl's backbone. I swear she didn't even peek once. Unlike the guys hooting and hollering 'Skin to win baby!' 'Gotta flash for the cash!' (Yeah, this is all true shi-ite folks!).

Standing there swizzling on a tall mug of Amber Bock it dawned on me that this was a prime instance of many of the things I have been writing about on this here blog over the past couple of weeks. It struck me how the utter fascination on the part of the men was relative to what they each lacked!! It was like a form of worship and devotion to some sort of innate otherness. It hit me so hard how guys were so keenly interested in seeing some Big Hooters because, well, they didn't have them. There was a sense of being this other-worldliness to the large breasts. I swear, a UFO could have landed out frickin' side and not a head would have turned to notice. 'Oh aliens have landed! Big deal... we got Grade A Tits in here!'

That is what I was left with last night--that and a date none too happy for the first part of the evening. (Can you hear me now, 'I swear Babe, I didn't know this was going to be part of the gig... I swear! I had no idea!' ... which was true, by the way). It left me with some distinct relaizatons about the nature of eroticization and sexuality: the sense of extremely large breasts being viewed by the majourity of hetero-males as objects that are fit for worship and adoration. I kid you not, though there was something freakish, not to mention objectifying about the proceedings, there was also a sense of spirituality and religiousity present. That many of those guys would not only kill and die for their God and their Country... but would do much the same for a hellacious pair of Tits!

The Soul Of Artifacts

It is a widely held view that 'things' are not just 'things.' Artifacts both invented and discovered are repositories for personal and collective meaning and significance. They become containers of our ideals, our fantasies, our fears and our fictions. Things, then, are alive with soul.

Things are animate objects relative to the human psyche.

To me it is not so important to disocver whether or not 'things' are animate in fact, or whether it is a mere fiction as a result of projections of the human psyche onto 'things.' What is important, is the mere realization that for us--for humans, for humanity--things are alive with meaning and significance by virtue of our psychological relationship to them. Artifacts have soul; they are ensouled.

For instance, someone may literally pour their soul into an artifact to the point where others are able to intuit soul in that artifact. Art is the great repository of the human soul for just this reason. It is not just the material conditions of anartifact that are resonated with. People--well, sane people anyways!--don't partake of an ensouled artifact and then go about analyizing the spectrum of colours used and employed as if it were a mere technical achievement. Sane people sense the existence of soul in the artifact. It could be Beauty. Or it could be Pathos. Either way, what captures the imagination and fixes our attention is the presence of soul.

Perhaps this is why there has been such a steady union of Art and Religion through the millennia. The symbology of Art has tended to serve a Religious function of 'binding' us to soul: the Passion of Christ; the emptiness and space of a Zen Garden; the polytheistic orgy of a Tibetan Mandala. Art communicates. Artifacts communicate. And I suspect that what we are coming to discover in an age of increasing commodification is that there really is a difference between ensouled artifacts and artifacts devoid of soul--which is perhaps another way of saying that there is a difference between ensouled artifacts and mass-produced artifacts generated in an act of devotion to the gods of efficiencyand quantity.

It is a difference that a young child knows directly, intimately, beyond conceptualization. The replacement Teddy Bear newly purchased is not the Teddy Bear dripping with soul. It is not the living, animate Teddy Bear that has been there through thick and thin. It is not the Teddy Bear that smells right, that has scars and torn fabric in all the right places. It is a Teddy Bear devoid of soul--the one thing, soul, that matters more than any other to the child. The difference that makes all the difference.

The Search Of The Absent Father

Why is the single-father the exception rather than the rule? Why is the single-mother the rule rather than the exception? Why, also, are 'absent fathers' existent in such epidemic proportions, from the backwoods of the Kentucky hill-country to the boroughs of the inner-city?

In considering any sort of sane and well-reasoned response to such questions I find that personally I am tending to shy away from the conventional views that postulate man's basic nature as an 'asshole' or 'dickhead,' a 'prick' or a 'mother-fucker.' Although there may well be some truth to those accusations, I would contend that much of why the above-mentioned realities are so chronic and persistent an element in so many people's lives--not the least of which are the children--is due to Man's search for compensation related to His Most Obvious Lack.

Again, my hunch is that Man does not feel children to be his in the same way that Woman generally does. He did not carry the child. Man did not birth the child. Man did not nurse the child. So Man oftentimes is compelled to go on a search that has him compensating with his 'little baby' of a red sports car. In short, Man goes on a search--hence the absenteeism--for some 'thing' that will become his 'little baby!' Some 'thing' that Man can nurse and nurture. Some 'thing' Man can give birth to and embrace. Some 'thing' that is his--that belongs to him, that reminds him of his capacity to express care and concern.

The irony, then, is that Man's Feminine-side tends to come out not in his relationships with people so much as his relationships with 'things'---i.e., with artifacts. Though he many love his children, in his imagination those children are really hers, they belong to Woman. He did not bear them. He did not birth them. Heck, he only had a hand (or is it a penis?) in their creation for all of the five minutes it took him to prematurely ejaculate late one September eve!

But his 'stuff?' Those are his babies... his little creations... his little bundles of joy. That's why he spends so much time at the office, in the studio, in the workshop, out in the garage tinkering with his car or motorcycle. That is why he is missing, gone from home, absent, sometimes never to be seen again: because he is searching for his feminine-side to emerge in relationship to some 'thing' that will allow him to say, for the first time, 'Now that is some thing I can nurture and nourish. I could give my life for that.'

The Most Obvious Lack & Man's Compensatory Creations

The most obvious lack of manhood, as pointed to in the preceding article, is the lack of fertility and generativity as evidenced by Woman and Earth. I can imagine Man watching Woman give birth, watching the Earth flower and fruit and blossom and emerge, and wonder to himself why he is seeming to miss out on something so fundamental to existence. Man ponders: What's wrong with me?

The sitting President of a majour Ivy League University, Lawrence Summers, created quite a stir in the academic world when he was reported to have been under the impression that innate differences were the reason why women were not more influential in the scientific community. The reason that women were not more involved in engineering, mathematics, physics, astronomy and the like was the result of a specific sort of lack in their female constitution. Needless to say, his comments drew a lot of ire from many well-informed people, and not only women. Many called for his resignation and asked that he step down from so prominent a position in America's educational community.

Mr. Summers indication of some sort of deficit or lack was right on the money, as far as I am concerned. The only problem was that his indication of lack was pointed at the wrong sex. The lack, as I understand it, should more properly be put in the direction of Man: that it is Man's lack of fertility--the ability to carry Life and have it emerge from one's person--that I suspect is what has driven Man to search out compensatory ways of creating.

If we look at the history of Art, Religion, and Science we see a trail riddled with the achievements of men. Music. Sculpture. Literature. Painting. Philosophy. Politics. Each realm has tended to be the province of Man. Some have suggested that this is due to the fact that Man sought to keep Woman down and out: that it was oppression that relegated Woman to a subservient role on the sidelines of where all the great artifacts of Civilization were being produced. Yet, to me that is an old, outdated argument that has some truth to it (true but partial), but not enough truth so as to be explanatory as to why Man held such sway over all of those realms for so long.

My gut feeling is that Man held such sway over the realms of Art, Religion, and Science because Man was attempting to give birth and create in his own way. I don't suspect that Woman felt such an absence of generativity and life-giving capacity because of Woman's ability to carry and give birth to children. Man very much did, though. Thus Man sought for ways to compensate for the inability to create and give birth to living beings (such as Woman and Earth do) by focusing on the creation of symbols and signs, systems and statues.

Man is still very much involved in that process to this day, still vainly attempting to make his inanimate creations come alive. Cyborgs and Robots. Frankenstein. Frankenstein people! Man's substitution for the lack he is reminded of constantly everytime he sees Woman and Earth is what Man is hoping to one day overcome. The irony in all of this is that Man is envious of Woman (Freud got it at least partly wrong)--as Man wants to know what it feels like to be that close to Life. He wants a baby. His baby! He wants to create a 'living being' in the hope of overcoming his sense of lack. It is how Man has compensated over the course of thousands of years. And little has changed. Just go to MIT. You'll see.

The Primal Lack of Manhood

I feel a real need to backtrack a bit today; to talk natural history, the evolution of a species, the dilemmas of sexual differences and what these have meant for us. I have in mind a discussion related to the primal lack experienced by men, by the male of our species. Guys and girls, this primal lack is, in a word, the lack of fertility.

The Earth is fertile; the land is fertile. Woman is fertile; the female is fertile. Man, however, relative to the Earth and Woman alike--the primary, twin manifestations of the Goddess--sees the lack that he has, is constantly reminded of the lack that he is. Both Woman and Earth remind Man of what he is not. They are a constant indicator of the primal lack embodied in Manhood.

So, how has Man dealt with this fact of natural history in the past, and how does Man still tend to deal with this fact of natural history? In other words, how has Man substituted for the primal lack that he embodies?

Perhaps Man turns aggressive and become territorial in response to his lack. Because Man lacks fertility he has to secure that necessary fertility outside of himself. So Man is compelled to become controlling precisely because of the Primal Lack that is the epicenter of his Manhood. This very tendency has been evidenced in War, when and as the victorious Warriors secure for themselves the Earth and the Women of the conquered. Meaning, it is possible to suggest that Man has gone to War and has sought to conquer so frequently in order to attempt to secure what Man lacks. That is, War is but the effort to secure more fertility... increased fertility... the generative capacity of Life itself. Man has to get it by any means necessary, precisely because in and of himself he lacks it.

Colonization. Conquering the land. The intensified effort to control externally. The unchecked aggression. All of it, to my way of undersanding things, is the direct result of lack. What is perceived to be missing is sought after. And because Life issues forth from a hidden well-spring of fertility and generativity Man understands that his connection to Life comes through Woman and Earth. Man, then, fights his own perceived emptiness through attaching himself to a Lady and the Land--either through cunning and stealth, power and aggression, or a genuine heart open to his own vulnerability, and what that vulnerability indicates in terms of his relatedness to Woman and the Earth--the Goddess.

Will The Real 'Evolutionary Spirituality' Please Stand Up?

Chest out. Thumping it with your fists. Stomping your feet into the ground. Creating the illusion of thunder. Strutting about like a peacock. Sending the message to all gathered around: there is no lack here!

The stance of the conqueror, of the victor, of the triumphant one--which is to also attempt to assume the stance of the one for whom lack has been dealt a fatal blow--is itself the place of a pronounced evolutionary advantage. Whether by force, by wits, or by sheer dumb luck, the ability to at least subdue lack for the time being seems to me to be some sort of hallmark of evolution. Too much lack and there is not enough surplus of energy/calories/time to pursue the female, to reproduce. The starving are simply not know for their sexual escapades. To the victors go the right to reproduce.

In high school I played on the basketball team (or, played on the bench I should more properly say). There was a tacit agreement between the competing towns/teams that the winners of the game would be allowed to shag the opposing teams cheerleaders (of course, this right was only extended to the top-line players... the best 3 or 4 members of each team, not us bench-warmers who never broke a sweat). Anyway, my point is that to the victors go the spoils. You win the War? Then you get the Women. The right to reproduce--at least in mock, late 20th Century, post-sexual revolution style--was given to the winning team, i.e., the team that didn't lose, the team that had exhibited the least amount of lack that night... the team with the most points.

Definitely there is somewhere programmed into us a sense that 'more is better.' From an evolutionary perspective this is seen as being the primary way that certain beings/entities acquire an advantage of over others. The trouble with this comes in looking at the 'more is better' tendency within us from a spiritual perspective: Do we really want to put 'others' down in order to make ourselves appear superiour? How spiritual/religious is that when we are supposed to have realized our inherent oneness (read equality) with all our relations?

Perhaps that represents a sort of impassable chasm between the evolutionary and the spiritual. While the former is all about securing an advantage--about being superiour in some way, in order to acquire a surplus over and against your competitors--the latter is all about not doing just that! Traditionally speaking, the spiritual has been about resisting precisely the tendency or urge to assume a superiour stance and a dominating disposition; such that we might be led to say that any sense or indication of their being an 'evolutionary spirituality' is itself a sort of oxymoron. It is a statement that may sound good to the ear, but really means nothing, because it is a combination of two elements that lead in two totally different directions.

In fact, I would say that 'evolutuonary spirituality' already exists--and has existed for some time now! I would say that 'evolutionary spirituality' is itself the religious fundamentalism that most of the Planet is dealing with at present. That 'evolutonary spirituality' is the well-known extremism of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Hindu variety (not to mention others). It is summed up in the 'My way is superiour to your way' ethos that operates in each and every instance of fundamentalism, no matter the strain. So, contrary to what some suggest, I would say that 'evolutionary spirituality' is not what we need, but what we need to get away from: that we need to trancend the madness of evolutionary spirituality and the havoc it wreaks, and is wreaking as this is being written and read.

The Hetero-Males Everyday Sado-Masochism

I would be willing to bet that the following probably applies more to hetero-males than to any other sub-species of human-being: namely, a distinctly sad0-masochistic relationship to the world-at-large. A world that punishes and is in turn punished. A world that we 'whip' into shape and a world that 'whips' us into shape.

It is this world-at-large that we need, that we rely upon, that we arise in relationship to. So it becomes a world that constantly reminds one (a hetero-male) of the distinct lack of self-sufficiency that such a man's whole sense of personhood and identity is established upon the basis of. Little wonder, then, that the world can be so hated, so despised, so brutalized and terrorized. If for no other reason than the fact that the hetero-males dominant paradigm is constantly being put under pressure of utter collapse by the world-at-large.

The world reminds such a man of what he is not: that he is not self-sufficient, that he is not completely independent and totally autonomous--not like he thinks he is, and certainly not like specific cultural norms might otherwise suggest to him, from conception onward.

So, where does that leave said 'hetero-male?' In a position where he either has to reconsider those self-conceptions he has adopted as his own? Or in a position where he has to kill, silence, dominate, control, and be overtly sadistic towards a world that is daily re-minding him of his lack (which is to say, of his relatedness)?

Many astute women (though not just women) have come to understand that the bluster of the decidedly independent man, hell-bent on being in control and dominating his environment is really a cover for nothing more than fear. In the extreme this manifests as the many 'passion-killings' that hetero-males have been known for--that is, in a way, their hallmark... their sign... their psychological footprint. Through such killings the hetero-male is attempting to live up to his notion of independence by slaying the very thing that inwardly is felt to be most necessary. In other worlds, the hetero-male is killing the one he knows he needs in order to see if he really is independent and in control. It is murder as a means of asserting one's self-sufficiency. The hetero-male has to kill in order to re-affirm his sense of autonomy. He has to repeatedly stab his Beloved in order to feel like he is 'in control' again. For if he can't divest himself of his inner lack--of his need, of his inter-dependence, of his weakness and vulnerability--then he has to kill the one whom he deludedly thinks is responsible for 'making him feel that way;' the one whom reminds him he is primarily related, and only independent in a secondary fashion and manner.

Binge & Purge, Love & Hate, Lack & Fullness

I love you. I need you. I miss you. I want you. I have to have you. So, I will eat you, consume you, devour you.

Mmmmm.... you are so good...so good for me.

Followed by: I hate you. You disgust me. You make me sick. I feel all bloated with you inside me. I despise you so much. You are awful! Get out of me! I will throw you up, puke you out. I swear to God!

Bllllllaaaaaaahhhhh... you are so bad... so bad for me.

Binging and purging. Quite a dance with emptiness and lack is it not? That desperate need to consume, to devour, to be satisfied and fulfilled. Yet, once all of that is attained there is an equally desperate attempt to get the 'foreign substance' out of the body. It has to be removed. Urgently so! Now! There is no time to waste!

The ravenouse appetite promptly gives way to a sense of disgust. What a cycle that is! What a vicious circle represented by the binging and the purging, the loving and the hating, the desiring and the despising. Desire immediately followed disgust. The thing adored and consumed in an oral frenzy is, once it is consumed and ingested, is suddenly the thing despised and hated.

How can we want and desire so much and so badly only to do an about face and despise and be disgusted with that which was just a moment ago the most urgently desired thing in all the world? How can pleasure and enjoyment so quickly give way to their seeming opposites? How can we want something or someone to so become a part of us, only to feel invaded and infected, impinged upon and corrupted, once that something or someone enters the body-mind?

Does it mean we love the desiring more than the satisfaction? Is the anticipation better than the actualization? Is wanting to be satisfied better than being satisfied? Are we hooked on desiring? Do we, humanity, in a sense have a love/hate relationship with satisfaction and fulfillment?

Maybe we resist a sense of the journey's end because we love the journey so? Perhaps we purge ourselves and make ourselves empty so we can take up the 'pursuit of happiness' once again? Perhaps the bingers and purgers of the world are suggesting that fullness is overrated: that it is better to be hungry; that it is better to be eager to pursue the prey than digest it; that it is better to want than it is to rest contentedly; that the moments before consumption are far better than the moment's afterwards--which is perhaps why that first moment is re-created in an obsessive-compuslive manner, immediately, through the act of emptying and purging.

Either that or we just want to eat to our heart's content and still be thin: have our cake and be thin too!

The Empty Cup of Humanity

Experimental physicists have confessed that the majour component/property of matter and energy alike is nothingness. Seemingly empty space is the fundamental constituent of all that we see, all that we witness, all that we observe, all that we relate to and with. Form is emptiness.

Empty form--like a cup, a chalice, a womb... like the Holy Grail--is empty in such a way that form becomes merely a shell to house and hold something other than itself. Cups are not meant to house and hold and contain cups. The purpose and functional nature of a cup is to house and hold something other than itself.

Perhaps human-cups are similar in that our own empty nature is an openness meant to house and hold something other than what is specifically human. Perhaps our lack/emptiness makes us receptive to spirits, to possession, to memes, to genes, and megathemes. Perhaps our lack/emptiness is functional and effective in the same way that any vessels emptiness is: it renders us capable of holding and containing something other than itself. Could it be soul? Could it be the Wine of Spirit? Could it be the Cosmos? Could it be all sentient beings contained in us, housed and held in our inherent emptiness, coddled like a mother carrying a precious child?

If so, then our emptiness/lack is not a problem as much as a solution: for it allows us to see our 'self' as a functional shell, inherently empty inside, for the purposes of creating a Pearl of Immeasurable Worth and Inestimable Value. The self, then, indeed is empty in the Buddhist sense; just as it is also the domain wherein our Jeweled Nature thrives.

Emptiness To The Nth Power

Something about the sorrow and grief of emptiness is the shit hitting the proverbial fan today. I notice myself feeling grief over the craving--that incessant need to consume and swallow and digest and assimilate, day-after-day-after-day, all in order to just maintain a semblance of apparent existence in this-here-world. My personal existence, as a human-being, David Jon Peckinpaugh, requires innumerable sacrifices in order to go on. It is as if my life here in this-world is based upon a fundamental requirement of War and Bloodshed, Carnage and Crucifixion.

In order to have lack adressed and dealt with on a daily basis someone, somewhere (or, check that, many someones in many somewheres) are going to have to suffer on my behalf. The long, sweaty hours in a factory are the toil someone else pays so I can experience a fleeting sense of satisfaction. The gasoline I burn in my car so I can go and amuse myself at a department store comes to me courtesy of blood and death. BP, Shell, Exxon-Mobil, and Chevron have been able to fund bands of mercenaries paid to make the life of certain Indigenous Peoples hell, so that new oil reserves can be dredged up from the ground and shipped to markets in North America where we can all happily speed our way down along the superhighway to nowhere.

So lack, and the dealing with that lack--which is another word for happiness and contentment--tends to require a sacrifice on behalf of someone somewhere else in the world. That is the damned nature of material happiness, of the consumer heaven that surrounds us on all sides, it is steeped deep in the dark underworld of death and devastation. I mean, how the hell else can you get a bargain unless someone else, somewhere along the line of production, was made to suffer a formidable loss. That good deal was, dare I say it, someone else's existence.

And so that is what we do, eh? We ask others to bleed and suffer and die for us. We ask others to become ill, to have their lives become a trainwreck, just so that we can litter our homes with bargains. The whole planet bleeds in the name of lack. For lack's answer is death.

The Many Faces Of Emptiness

In many ways I take the following to be synonymous: lack, absence, emptiness, spaciousness, openness, expanse, void, and even invitation. Yeah, emptiness as inviting. Lack as an open door. Step right in here please.

I bet you have heard it said that 'Nature abhors a vacuum,' that openings simply get filled. At the very least openings and absences become passageways; serving a role of alllowing the transit of seemingly diicrete entities from here to there, from him to her, from us to them, and from this to that. Lack allows for exchange, trade, commerce, novelty, and emergence. What would we do without it? If there were not emptiness there would be no movement, no change, no flow, no exchange, no relationship. That is the odd thing about emptiness: initially everyone suspects that emptiness means a total absence of anything and everything, i.e., the BIG NOTHING AND NOWHERE. However, insight over time developes to the point where one realizes, in an immediate fashion and manner, that emptiness allows for everything. Without emptiness there could be no relationship. Apart from emptiness there is no movement. Apart from emptiness there is no flow. For flow cannot flow where there is obstruction. Neither can relationship occur where there is no capacity for inter-change and inter-penetration.

So, oddly enough, it is emptiness that literally makes the world go round. Each and every step we take confirms that it is so. For we could not even take a step if there were something there instead of nothing. It is that nothing that we step into, that we meet in the atmosphere of, as well as where we go when we part company and continue on our way; entering into the open and empty nature of every moment.

The War Against Emptiness

Emptiness. Vacuity. Absence. Lack. Nothing. Being bored. Lonely. A vague sense that something vital is missing. Emptiness in the barrio. Emptiness in the ghetto. Emptiness in the suburbs. Emptiness in the first-world. Emptiness in the third-world. Emptiness in the boardroom. Emptiness on the assembly line. Emptiness for the migrant, farm worker. Emptiness for the clientele of the up-scale restaurant where the produce that was hand-picked by that migrant farm worker ends up. Emptiness.

It is odd, really. Think about it. Just a moment. That's all it takes. Think about how the front-line battel against emptiness is indicative of a War that is never won, a War that is never over, a War that never ceases. It is like emptiness says to each one of us... to us all... 'What have you done about me lately?'

As soon as those words are spoken in the vague pangs of physical, emotional, psychological, or spiritual hunger we are off on the pursuit of something or someone that will serve to keep the ever-encroaching emptiness at bay. We turn to the world for stimulation and distraction. We turn to the world for nourishment and sustenance. We turn to the world for meaning and signficance. We turn to the world for direction and guidance. We turn to the world for information. We turn to the world for relief... period.

If we believe the Buddhists of the world--we turn to inherently empty people, places, and things in the attempt to have ourselves a personal victory over the Army of Lack. In other words, we go for the empty to address the emptiness. We turn to the inherently insubstantial in order to have our own personal sense of absence and lack dealt with. Which is perhaps why most conventional measures to address and deal with emptiness offer only fleeting, short-lived success. Then the War is on again. Then the battle rages.

Just look at all the people scurrying about in the effort to 'fill themselves up.' Look at all of the people... look at us... look how needy we are. Look how we are never satisfied. Even the ravenous appetite of Global Capitalism is not leaving humanity on top in this War against Emptiness.

Fat Cats & The Mother Of All Wars

Phoebe shares a house with me. That tattered, malnourished, abandoned calico kitty of a year ago is now a happy mouser living in the lap of luxury. She went from being dropped off outside a convenience store in the middle of last summer, festering in her own piss and shit, concealed in a box, to somehow magically roaming the woods; stalking moles, voles, and mice with reckless abandon.

Oh, and she gets a little Purina Cat Chow supplement twice a day. And God does she let me know about it. When it is time that is all I hear, and all she is concerned about. Meow! Meow! Meow!

Indeed the absence reconvenes and the lack reasserts itself. It is like a constant battle: the perpetual struggle to offset the reassertion of nothingness. Momentary satisfaction keeps the offensive Army of Lack at bay. Nourishment the best weapon, the first line of defense, the cure for the dis-ease known as lack.

When I feed Phoebe and she gets done with her meal she is quite a peaceful and content cat. A Fat Cat for sure! All of a sudden, where before food was all that was on her mind, she now feels likes playing. She can relax the search and the anticipation of such. She may rest and take a nap. Or she is free to just chill on the porch. That satisfaction provided by a full belly relaxes Phoebe's self-contraction--the one that commences when lack is in the foreground of her experience.

When lack is dominant and nourishment is not at hand, we--all sentient beings--appear to become bitchy, whiny... total complainers and nags! Emptiness has us crying out. Emptiness has us suffering from a deficit. Emptiness compels us to nag the world, to whine about what is not right, to complain till we either drop dead or have the lack appeased. Where there is suffering, there is probably some lack.

Psychoanalysts might say that there is a lack of holding and containment for the child, which is later expressed in a neurotic and anxious stance towards the world-at-large: the child never feels safe, never secure enough, not even as a an adult. Buddhists might say that there is a lack of realization and/or insight, meditative equipoise and/or enlightenment, which is expressed in the unnecessary exacerbation of suffering in realms so near and so vast as to boggle the mind. Politicians say there is a lack of government funding for this or that program--which if funded properly we are told would result in the immediate relief from suffering for innumerable citizens. Lack, and what to do about it.

The single, constant theme is: Lack = suffering: Fullness = contentment.

So why are Americans so bloated and obese? Have we unwittingly taken the aforementioned equation and gone to an extreme with it? Perhaps our unconscious rationale has been something like the following: If fullness = contentment, then more full must = more content. So it should be little wonder why American-culture is so obsessed with stuff and substance and a 'more is better' atttitude. For we are literally in the midst of a War against Lack. People are right now stockpiling money and food and storing grain and acquiring a surplus of everything from shoes to notches on their belt. Why? Because lack constantly reasserts itself; because absence reconvenes; because we are stockpiling munitions so that we can fight the biggest War humanity has ever seen, the Mother of All Wars, the War that has never ended: that War against Lack.

Lack, Love & Lust

Different formulations of what lack means--of the meaning and significance of lack--seem to have arisen in response to the question posed by our inexplicable incompleteness. One of these is the Western, Romantic formulation of the significance of our lack. The Romantics answer to lack is someone else: an 'other' who completes us; an 'other' whom we simultaneously raven and are ravened by; an 'other' whom we consume and are consumed by; an 'other' so absorbing that we cannot escape the indelible pull of their gravitational field. We are sucked in. Drawn deeper. Total goners. Done for.

The allure of this 'other,' of that someone else, can be so intense that we cannot 'help ourselves.' It is like being sucked into a vortex--a riptide of lack, love, and lust that is so damn powerful that surrender becomes our only sane option. We simply can't fight it. This 'it' us bigger than us. Fighting it only leaves us fatigued. Fighting it only leaves us exhausted.

And yet, for all of the force of attraction--the pull--there is, at the same time, a psychological dynamic of internal resistance. Yes, there is the pull of a force and power greater than the mere self alone; however, that doesn't keep us from wondering what the hell is happening to us, why we feel so 'out of control,' how come we cannot 'contain ourselves.'

That is the irony surrounding lack, love, and lust--that we both a) want to be swept away and taken up by these powerful forces associated with the Romantic, and b) are scared shitless and literally undone by exactly that which we have wished for. After all, what is it to confess that 'I need an other?' Is that not a confession of the natural limitations of the 'self?' Is that not a direct acknowledgement of some sort of inherent lack that is/can only be filled by this 'other?' Is saying 'I need you'--swallowing, with a big lump in our throat--not a confession of how someone uplifts our life; of how someone empowers, encourages, nurtures, supports, goads, highlights, and blesses our very existence?

The problem with confessing our need--our lack--in the Romantic-formulation, is that we make our vulnerability conscious. That, to me, is painful confession beneath the veneer of a night on the town: Is this person going to be the one I can't live without? Is this person the one I will not be able to get out of my head at night? Is this person the one who will remind me of just what I have been missing--of right where my greatest lack is?

In This Life: Managing & Administering Lack

How to deal with the hunger, the need, the deficits, the emptiness, the lack? Does it control us, define us, determine us? Do we allow the lack to make us the rapacious consumers of innumerable communities and cultures (and what might History be but one long lack-inspired nightmare we dream to awaken from)? Do we allow the emptiness to drive us to rape, murder, and pillage on the darker-side... or to co-dependent relationships and gross consumerism on the more socially acceptable side?

How do we deal with the hunger? Meaning, how do we deal with the hunger in ways that are not totally destructive and debilitating? How do we have a relationship with someone in an intimate way without being a consumer of their soul and person? How do we deal with lack?

My own suspicions tell me that this is the fundamental question we are dancing around... beating around the bush of... can't get out of our head... are unae to elude or escape in this human lifetime: How are we to manage the sense of lack that just is, and do so in a skillful way?

Does lack send us to the pill rack, the liquour store? Loneliness. Lack of companionship.

Does lack have us playing the lottery and the slot machines so that our kids are left with ketchup sandwiches? Finances. The economy stupid.

Does lack turn us into a consumer of porn and cheap sexual thrills? Stimulation. Simulation.

Does lack make us wonder why there is lack, and how we are meant to wrestle with absences our whole lives? Moral inquiry. Ethics. Psychological insight and discovery. Philosophy.

Does lack inspire us to become wise and compassionate? Or are we sent on a feeding frenzy, literally sweeping over the planet like a marauding band of scavengers with an appetite fit for a planetary-strain of human pirahna?

In other words, will I/you/we eat others, whether alive or dead; consuming all in our wake in the unconscious attempt to make ourselves feel full (American epidemic of obesity anyone)? Or will we embrace lack and dance with absence and engage emptiness with the skill of an artiste' and the heart of a lover?

Can we make the (w)hole a part of Being?

Lack & The Ideal

In actual terms there may be two operational aspects of our movement and motivation in life. These can be seen as complementary (though not exclusively so). One of these is lack--which has been touched on in brief previously. The other operational aspect is the ideal. It is the the ideal that plays as answer to the question posed by lack.

If lack is the question, the opening, the empty--if absence is the void--then the ideal stands as the much-hoped for and anticipated answer to the open-ended question that lack presents us with. Absence is the Alpha and the Ideal is the Omega.

What is so ironic, is not that absence and lack stand as these empty and void realms that ought to be resisted and fought against with every stitch of our being, but that lack and absence --when embraced and conjoined with in a conscious manner--are literally the wellsprings from whence issue those novel and emergent solutions that sentient beings ache for the innumerable worlds over. Like was mentioned previously, lack becomes a primary impetus at the evolutionary level of being. The person who knows no lack knows no growth. The person who knows no deficit knows no development. The one who knows no absence knows not what the heart is fond of.

Jesus is reported to have put it similarly when he noted that, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit.' For those who lack are blessed in the seeming poverty of their ignorance and incompleteness. As I heard someone once put it, the holes and cracks in us are where the Light pours through. Or, as Ramana Maharshi stated the same Truth, 'You will know in due course that your glory lies where you cease to exist.'

Our lack: Is it but one of the 84,000 Dharma-gates?

A Brief History of Lack

One can easily look at the evolution of species--the origins of our descent--as a series of attempts to address lack through what are often novel and ingenious ways. This is not so much the spiritual, psychological, or political dimension of lack--which has been touched on briefly in previous posts--as it is a look into the natural history of lack.

For instance, the migration of various species over the course of what are considered geological aeons by us and our few fleeting decades at best disclose the 'operational presence of lack' in compelling the migration of species to areas where a specific lack may be addressed. Even today one can say that male Chimpanzees of mating age, for instance, will feel compelled to address the lack of accessible females by traveling into a foreign territory. In essence, it makes us humans no different in the principal ways that we are pushed and pulled by forces--especially forces of absence.

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to stumble across a new form of psychological understanding that I came to call Absence Psychology. It struck me how ever since the time of Freud there had been a sense of human motivation deriving from the presence of various drives: sexual drive being Freud's foremost prime mover. B.F. Skinner developed behaviourial psychology on the basis of rewards and punishments, i.e., that we are compelled toward things on the basis of a sense of future reward, while being pushed away from other things on the basis of a sense of future punishment (which we can see evidenced in the penal system). Carl Jung attributed our motivation to archetypal forces that acted upon us from some deep reservoir of collective unconsciousness. Richard Dawkins wrote about the 'selfish genes' that move and shape us to do their bidding. In each instance I noticed the naming of these invisible forces that were considered to be the prime movers and shapers of our existence. INvisible forces that one could see the effects of, but not the cause. No one could see them... only their apparent evidence in how we acted.

It was that understanding right there that led me to begin to consider, 'What if nothing moves us?' What if we are motivated not by the presence of something... but by the absence of something?'

What if it is... as quantum physicists explain about the origins of matter... everything comes from nothing at all? What if our motivation is rooted in emptiness? What if we are not moved by a force or a presence at all? What if absence really does make the heart grow fonder?

Lack & Kenosis: Filling The God-Hole

It's not the parlor game known in bars and restaurants across America as Keno, but there is an arcane Christian notion of the Self-emptying and Self-sacrificing Nature of God known as Kenosis. The theological notion of Kenosis is based upon the sense that the Divine has literally poured itSelf out in the creation and manufacture of these worlds, these beings, these realms and domains. In Hindu cosmology the process is called involution. God is emptied of God. God then becomes deprived of His/Her own Nature. It is felt, tacitly. So God then goes seeking for Him/HerSelf.

Involution is the emptying, the kenotic nightmare. Evolution is the fulfilling, the return of God to God, the redemption of nature unto Nature, the utopic dream.

If there is even a semblance of truth and merit to the initial, and even long-term, Kenotic Nature of the Cosmos, then it would serve to confirm the Buddhist apprehension of the fundamental emptiness of all phenomena. The lack evidenced in the universe--whether real or imagined--is the direct result of the Self-emptying Nature of the Numinous. Our lack is God's lack. Our desire for redemption and fulfillment is the same sense of longing that God can be said to feel in His/Her gestures of being emptied out into the kaleidoscopic display known as the Cosmos: that desire is for a Return... that longing is for one's own Nature.

To get a sense of this: Imagine if you will that you empty yourself of yourself. You don't know where yourself went to. That self is gone... nowhere to be felt or intuited. You are empty of you. But you can't rest in that state. It is the primordial agitation. The activity that is generated is the result of some deep ontological unrest. You literally need to find and discover and locate where you are. You just know that it is somewhere else other than where you are empty of you... hence, it must somewhere out there. So you commence a search and take on innumerable forms seeking to discover yourself, find yourself, be united with yourself. Until one day you are redeemed. You find yourSelf. You find where you are. The Emptiness is penetrated with God-Form. Lingam and Yoni merge. Shiva and Shakti embrace. Finally One is at rest. Content. Fulfilled. At peace.

United with your own Nature, the God-Hole is no more. You have wandered lifetimes in anticipation of this moment. Lifetimes of anticipation! The longing to behold the Original Face of your Lover who is your Self. Awash in tears. You sob. Relief cascades over you, because your greatest fear was that the emptiness would continue unabated; that you would never find yourSelf again; that you would wander in Infinity bereft and broken: a God who can't address His own lack: a Goddess who can't find where She Is.

Oh, but that is no more. The greatest of all fears never materialized. For God is infinite. Her lack isn't.

Always Missing Something: The Never-Enough Life

One of the more trenchant critiques of Capitalism, especially the Western, consumer-driven variety (which, I should add, is an increasingly Global phenomenon), is that in order to grow the economy there is a need on the part of the masses to consume stupendous amounts of goods and services. Commodity-driven economies of that sort have a vested interest in ensuring that people are always wanting. Desire must be chronic, perpetual, unending.

If we are satisfied--as Thoreau, put it, 'One is rich in proportion to the things that one can do without'--then we are, in a sense, not good for the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy based upon desperation, desire, and lack. The ideal subject for the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy is one who is hungry--rapacious even. One who is never satisfied and always eager for more and more is itself the 'subject' that the Global-Commodity-Driven Economy is eager to help create. Thus, there is a constant reinforcement of a sense of lack. The airwaves are full of ads telling us what we are missing. The billboards are replete with examples of how our lives are currently insufficient, because we don't yet have 'such-and-such' a product or service. So sign up! Sign up now!

But it doesn't end there. It just doesn't end. There is going to be someone else to come along and tell you what you are 'missing out on.' There is going to be someone else to come along and define a new lack for you, a novel-form of absence. So that you will live a life of not-knowing what you are missing out on until someone comes along eager to tell you who or what it is. That is, to tell you the nature of your absence and how to fill it.

'Oooohhhh... I have just the product for you. It must be your lucky day.'

The Politics of Oz: Locating The Self In Absence

The politics of absence seems to me to have been a pervasive fact of life. History has been an apparent series of gestures by a select few who have pointed to what is missing. That missing element, once named, is then promised to be delivered by the politician, the leader, the despot. 'Here is what you lack. This I will give you.'

Salvation. Jobs. Security. Vengeance. Empire. Conquest.

Capitalizing on a sense of absence, incompleteness, and insufficiency is often the most politically expedient way to secure the devotion of the masses. Tell people what they are missing--play a ruse on them in the name of lack and deficit. Explain to them how this glaring absence is the fault of some Other, and then promise to offer a plan to correct it--to fill the gaping hole in the Body Politic.

Point to the 'lack of national security.' Point to the 'lack of economic growth.' Point to the 'lack of solvency in one or another government program.' Point to lack, and lo and behold you will be pointing to something that every human seems to inherently have a keen understanding of. We know lack. We know insufficiency. We know dis-content dear Dr. Freud. Therefore, any mention of the missing and the insufficient is sure to draw the interest of the masses. Invoke lack and you have the ear of Joe Public.

Like in the Wizard of Oz, where the Scarecrow lacks courage, the Tin Man lacks mind, the Lion lacks heart, and Dorothy lacks a home. So they all go to the Wizard to get what someone, somewhere has told them they lack. The journey is but a journey to satisfy their sense of lack. Or, should I say, the false, socially-imposed sense of lack, i.e., the lies about lack... the illusions about what is missing.