Freudian Spirituality

Áine Órga has an excellent series on developing a personal spiritual practice, figuring out what your concept of divinity and awareness is, and so on. I would say an equally important question is "What are you into sexually?"

A lot of spiritual seekers are drawn to Jung, but I think sufficient attention should be paid to Freud as well, because Freud was right about one thing : sexuality infuses every part of our psychical being.

How do you feel about your mother?

When developing a personal practice, you are necessarily putting yourself on Freud's couch, so to speak, and working through all the ways in which your sexuality influences your ideas about your own being, about the world, about gods and religion, and the ways you connect with others. It influences what you really want from spirituality and how you're going to go about getting it.

Our rapidly changing sociopolitical environment leads a lot of people to seek out alternative spirituality. But if your sexuality doesn't really align to particular tradition, you're not going to get much out of it even if it appeals to you on intellectual principle.

Over the years, when I've lurked and occasionally posted on alternative spirituality forums, I've noticed a strong trend among those groups toward toward incorporating the Divine Feminine back into their consciousness and their lives. There seems to be a common assumption that the reason people seek out alternative spirituality is because that feminine aspect has been neglected by the western tradition, that the Patriarchy is the a priori reason why new and reconstructed traditions exist in the first place. This is true even in the nominally Christian-based Rosicrucian tradition, with its call to reintegrate with Divine Sophia. But as I alluded to in my post on The Heroine's Journey there isn't a "one size fits all" raison d'être for alternative seekers.

A question could be asked whether the continued predominance of traditional religion is not due, at least in some small part, to the fact that many people still feel more at home in it psycho-sexually than they would feel in alternative spirituality. If their cognitive dissonance resolves itself by siding with the unconscious sexual appeal of male dominance, they will stay put rather than taking the plunge into a tradition that's more in line with their actual philosophical perspective in the modern world, but which leaves them cold when it comes to their deepest sexual urges.

Needless to say, I think this is a false choice. Developing your own practice that is philosophically harmonious is much preferable, I think, even if it's driven by a desire for the Divine Masculine that isn't considered trendy in alternative circles.