I think in infinites, and that’s what makes me afraid to lose control. My spirituality desires infinite complexity, to connect with every possible experience in an infinite amount of space. My sexuality desires infinite simplicity, to connect with one experience for an infinite amount of time.
And yet they can combine: throughout my existence I must be fully connected to certain experiences, like breathing, and yet there is still room for more. There can be both rhythm and melody in music — but my life has focused entirely on melody at the cost of rhythm, fearing that when a rhythm starts, it will never stop and eventually overtake everything. Maybe that’s why it didn’t work out for more than three years with S, out of the fear that if it would last, it would be all that’s left.
Spirituality and sexuality are both cumbersome words, since one is associated with religion and the other with sex, but they're actually far greater than this, and there don't seem to be any other words that quite describe them. A simplistic way of saying it would be that at its broadest, spirituality is any mental connectedness and sexuality is any physical connectedness, but that doesn't do justice to just how opposite they are to each other.
They're completely different ways of connecting, spirituality being a top-down method, starting from the whole, the collective, and sexuality a bottom-up method, starting from the parts, the individual. Spirituality goes outwards: it's expansive, allocentric. Sexuality goes inwards: it's implosive, egocentric. It's hard to combine them, to make them flow into each other like a vortex ring. As it is, I'm stuck in the spiritual aspect and most people are stuck in the sexual aspect, and so far my sexuality can only arise from spirituality, and their spirituality from sexuality.
I desire to make them a part of me, but I don't desire to become part of someone else, to give myself up to someone. I'm afraid to lose autonomy that way… just as S was afraid to lose autonomy by letting me become a part of her — that's what she thinks of as "attachment" while for me, "attachment" is to lose yourself in someone.
Spirituality and sexuality are both cumbersome words, since one is associated with religion and the other with sex, but they're actually far greater than this, and there don't seem to be any other words that quite describe them. A simplistic way of saying it would be that at its broadest, spirituality is any mental connectedness and sexuality is any physical connectedness, but that doesn't do justice to just how opposite they are to each other.
They're completely different ways of connecting, spirituality being a top-down method, starting from the whole, the collective, and sexuality a bottom-up method, starting from the parts, the individual. Spirituality goes outwards: it's expansive, allocentric. Sexuality goes inwards: it's implosive, egocentric. It's hard to combine them, to make them flow into each other like a vortex ring. As it is, I'm stuck in the spiritual aspect and most people are stuck in the sexual aspect, and so far my sexuality can only arise from spirituality, and their spirituality from sexuality.
I desire to make them a part of me, but I don't desire to become part of someone else, to give myself up to someone. I'm afraid to lose autonomy that way… just as S was afraid to lose autonomy by letting me become a part of her — that's what she thinks of as "attachment" while for me, "attachment" is to lose yourself in someone.
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