then, is the second gift of the withdrawing: we are seduced onto the spiritual journey, the human journey to maturity, union and transformation.
In every era and in every part of life there is a tendency for us to focus on ‘experiences’, ecstatic ‘thrills’ – the tastes and touches we have been discussing. This tendency is especially marked in sexuality and spirituality, where the tastes are so intoxicating, fleeting and profound. These tastes are essential; they are seeds, glimpses of that fullness to which we are called. However, they are not the Journey itself, not transformation, not mystical union, not enlightenment. They set us on the road – perhaps they are even glimpses of the destination – but we have not yet arrived. Indeed we have hardly set out! If we become addicted to simply seeking more and more ‘experiences’, whether sexual or spiritual, we never will arrive. We all know this tendency in sexuality, but the seduction in spirituality can be more subtle, more compelling and more soul destroying.
So what is happening? Firstly, some element of this ‘addiction’ is probably inevitable in our yearning and longing, for the taste of ecstasy, however it comes, is so delicious, so overwhelming. Of course we seek it again and again!
‘You shed your fragrance about me; I drew breath and now I gasp for your sweet perfume. I tasted you and now I hunger and thirst for you. You touched me and I am inflamed with love of your peace’, says Saint Augustine,8 and in our different ways we know what he means. However, we must allow the withdrawing to take place. It is the withdrawing that will draw us towards the transformation, to the abiding fulfilment of that which we taste so briefly in our ecstasies. How does this happen?
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8 Saint Augustine, op. cit.
To become that which we taste
When we taste the Mystery we long to drink deeply of it, to take it into ourselves, to be possessed by it, to surrender to it, to become it in an abiding way, ‘forever and ever’. To become that which we taste. I think of our images of sexual ‘hunger’ and ‘thirst’, not just our desire to ‘do it’ with this or that person, but to ‘drink them in’, ‘gobble them up’, nibble, lick, suck, swallow – all, the ‘eating’ metaphors and delights of sex. This is mirrored very powerfully in the images of spiritual communion, where we eat and drink ‘the body and blood of the Lord’, our very bodies merging and becoming transformed into the One who is the Beloved of our souls.
This is the heart of our yearning: to become that which we taste and hunger for, not briefly, but fully, totally, permanently, being utterly transformed into that which we desire so deeply. Union. Ecstasy. The ‘Lover with his beloved, transforming the beloved in her Lover‘9, the seeker transformed into that which she seeks.
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9 St John of the Cross, The dark night, st. 5, trans. K Kavanaugh OCD and Otilio Rodriguez OCD, ICS Publications, Washington DC, 1973, p. 296.
This truly is to die to ourselves, to lose our life so as to find it (Luke 9:24), to enter into the mystery of death and resurrection. This is what we hunger and thirst for in our bodies, in our sexuality no less than in our spirituality, and this is what we taste in both. All that is deeply and authentically human is a pathway into this transformation, but sexuality and spirituality draw us most profoundly, most ecstatically. I think of Jesus speaking to the woman at the well (John 4:5-42), seducing her onto her spiritual journey with the promise of a spring of living water that would never run dry. We taste this spring and we thirst for the day when rivers of this living water will rise within us flowing out of our ‘belly’ and welling up to eternal life, eternal union, eternal love (John 7:38).10
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10 There are those who would applaud these words as applied to ‘holy longing’ and ‘spiritual desires’ of the soul, but would wish to accord sexual yearning a lower place. I refer them to the Mystery of the Incarnation. There is one hunger, one thirst, one longing, one love moving in the depths of all that we are. We feel this most powerfully, most physically in our longing for sexual intimacy and ecstasy.
The Mystery that shows Itself must withdraw. It must seduce us. It must play a game of ‘now, and not yet’ with us, enticing us, leading us on and on, inflaming our longing at deeper and deeper levels. It must also teach us that the taste of this ‘living water’ is not enough, and allow us to find both bliss and bitterness in the tasting (especially when we become ‘hooked’). It must teach us to follow the withdrawing, to let go and go deeper, learning the lessons of how to become, in the abiding, ordinary, everyday reality of our lives, that which we taste and thirst for. Nothing less will satisfy our hunger, fulfil our longing, and transform our humanity into the divinity we seek.
How does this look in practice, in people’s actual lives? Firstly, it is important to say that there are as many answers to this question as there are people to ask it. The human journey of transformation, while it has universal qualities, is profoundly personal and particular and will look very different in individual lives as each of us experiences growth and purification in ways we least expect, but most need.11 Those of us marginalised by mainstream society, both secular and religious, because of our sexuality need to remember this, as does anyone who seeks to guide us. The ways we experience and embody our deepest longings often look very different from the ways sanctioned by a heterosexist culture, and likewise our path of transformation will look very different.
11 R Burrows, op. cit., pp. 108-109. Burrows shows how the ‘Dark Night’ can look very different according to people’s different needs and personalities.
In us the free, uncontrolled Spirit of God offers a gift to humanity, freeing others to embrace this journey so particular, so universal. We must dare to be different; we must risk becoming our true selves.
The heart of our longing
What then are the universal qualities of the transforming journey? They are many and there are many books written about them in all religions. However, the ‘bottom line’, I believe, is the fact that, in the end, we are all longing for the same thing. In our spiritual practices, in our sexual desire, in the lives and relationships we build, when all the fetishes, dreams and different ‘shapes’ our longing has taken over the years – when all these have run their course, worn out or faded away – we will find that we are all longing for communion with the Other, and self-transcendence in and through that communion. Communion and transcendence. Intimacy and ecstasy.
From the first orgasm, and in every orgasm since, I have sought that ecstatic moment, and its allure colours so much of my life still. Seeking out its possibility, feeling its approach, surrendering to it and allowing the rigid sense of self to melt deliciously as it rises within me, letting myself be caught up in the juicy passion that draws me toward it. There is an aloneness in this, as I close my eyes, go deeply into my experience of pleasure and let the ecstatic flow become all that I am. There is a deep solitude in the drinking of this water.
However, I also long to share this ecstatic vulnerability with another person, and that which I seek to drink in ecstasy, I am drawn to in and through other persons. Put simply, I long to have sex with another person, however intense solitary sexual pleasure may be. At a conference on AIDS I once tried to persuade a Church group that we needed to reassess the potential goodness and grace in all kinds of sexual relating, including ‘recreational sex’. An agitated woman finally snapped at me, ‘Well why can’t you just masturbate?’ I snapped back, ‘I do, don’t you?’ My real answer, however, would be that it simply is not the same. There is another whole dimension of life – and of ecstasy itself – present in my relating with another,
