Happy New Year Everyone!

I must say, I had the best Holiday and New Years vacation ever. I spent as much time as possible at home alone just regaining my inner-peace and stability. As most of you know, the last 20 years of my life have been intensely busy with world travel, teaching and course development for the institute. This is the longest I’ve gone since I started the institute without having to get on an airplane, and it’s been medicine for my soul.

In the first picture, you can see my son, Paul Jr. next to his beautiful rock stack. Paul is very good with mechanics and like myself, has a background in building and racing cars. Getting together with him in the rock garden was fun because I got to watch his mind take on the seemingly simple challenge of building a complex stack of round rocks. After a few worthy attempts, he put together a great piece of rock art. Putting that big round rock near the top is no easy feat. I watched with the curiosity of a father as he inched his way toward completion. Great Job Paul!

The next photo is one I took from the roof of my house. It shows my newly revised rock garden. I spent three days working with firewood, cleaning my yard and moving rocks in my zen garden. I can assure you, you don’t need a gym if you’ve got a pile of firewood, an ax, and a big yard that needs cleaning and tending to! Some of the rocks weigh in at around 300 pounds and moving them 20-30 yards up hill can take more out of you than most gym workouts could ever deliver. I like to work in my garden barefoot so that I must stay completely present; failure to do so can easily mean a broken leg or a smashed food!

Vidya spent 10 days helping her Daughter in North Carolina after she just delivered a new baby girl. When she got back, we enjoyed creating art and keeping warm by the fire. Penny was as busy as ever!She did a little garden work, reading, playing her favorite farm game and catching up on all the many year-end tasks at the institute. Overall, we had an incredible time with friends, family, and ourselves this Holiday and New Years, and I hope all of you had as much joy as I did!

SPIRITUAL SEXUAL INTELLIGENCE: Part 4
The diagram for today’s exploration of spiritual sexual intelligence is called Tao Expressed. “Tao” means “The Way”, or the middle way. The rich, deep spiritual teachings of Taoism, zen Buddhism (which share much in essence with Sufism) and Tantra offer each of us a way of being that is harmonious with nature and the cosmos at large. As I’ve highlighted in the three previous posts regarding sexual intelligence, we first begin our journey with the Cosmos. I shared in the first edition of this series that everything is in a perpetual process of becoming and transforming (tai-chi), which is THE SEX ACT. Next, I talked about how at birth and through childhood development with the development of sentient intelligence. This gives us mastery over our bodies and teaches us how to care for our body – our temple – our home on the earth plane. I also talked about how the intellectual soul becomes progressively more aware, realizing that dependence on prior ideas (programming), though helpful, eventually becomes both challenging and limiting to our freedom. We realize that to really come to truly know who we are, we must break out of our heads! The beauty and grandeur of life and love simply can’t be contained, nor conceived through the limitations imposed by programmed ideas.

Spiritual sexual intelligence is gained through a process of life experience. It is a product of awareness-soul development. When we understand that the sex act is that which occurs moment to moment through out life, we can come to see and understand that the very process that creates the beauty of the mountains, oceans, skies, gives us food and wants to play. Indeed, sexual intelligence is The Way of Unconditional Love. The entire Universe is the progeny of the Empty of Her meeting the Full of Him and vice versa. As I’ve highlighted previously, there are no rules here – just the unbounded love making that produces Creation.

All things animate and inanimate are spiritual. That which is spiritual is the product of Divine Emptiness meeting Divine Fullness in infinite exchange of potential. In my diagram, you can see Unconditional Love at the top radiating in all directions, like the sun. Below, you see the tai-chi symbol, which symbolizes any and all relationships (be they to person, place or thing). It is only through relationships that we can come to know and celebrate the Truth of our “Selves”; that our consciousness is at One with The Consciousness of the Universe.

The black ‘S’ through the tai-chi symbol symbolizes both spirit, and perpetual transformation. Current scientific investigations in quantum physics has estimated that the Universe’s refresh rate (the rate that it literally “appears and disappears”) is approximately 1 TRILLION times per second! Just as your computer refreshes itself at a rate of about 60 times a second only to hold the “ideas” on your screen as a seeming constant, the Universe refreshes the ideas that are being energized by consciousness at large at any given moment so that we can experience our dreams.

Spiritual sexual intelligence develops as we mature to the point of realizing that each and every relationship we have with persons, places and things is not only an expression of the Universe’s desire to experience itself, but our own desires within the grand experience of the universes to experience ourselves.

Just as the Universe ultimately takes responsibility for all It creates, we too eventually find that we must take responsibility for all that we create. Therefore, my definition of a spiritual person is one who accepts responsibility for what they create moment to moment. Sex becomes an act of spirituality when we:
1. Realize we are participating in the creation of both the world, and our world.
2. Realize that our love has the power to heal and transform others to the very degree that it can, and has transformed us into a more stable, creative, loving and healthy being.
3. Operate from the principle, first do no harm. We have entered the realm of spiritual sexuality when we carefully consider weather acts of intimacy are given with the intention of truly loving, healing and supporting each other, or weather we are simply scratching our itch with someone else’s digits. If we simply ask, “What would Love do now?” before engaging in any sexual act with another, we are sure to be led to love to the degree that love is our motive.

Thanks for letting me share my views (briefly!) on sexuality. I hope you’ve gained some small insights or tips you can use to nourish yourselves and others.

Love and chi,
Paul Chek