2 results for (book:notp AND session:774 AND stemmed:express)
[... 4 paragraphs ...]
Dictation: You are obsessed with sexual behavior when you proclaim it evil or distasteful or debasing, hide it, and pretend that it is primarily “animalistic.” You are also obsessed with sexual behavior when you proclaim its merits in an exaggerated fashion from the marketplace. You are obsessed with sexual behavior when you put tight, unrealistic bans upon its expression, and also when you set up just as unrealistic standards of active performance to which the normal person is expected to comply.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
You begin to program sexual activity when you divorce it from love and devotion. It is very easy then for church or state to claim and attract your uncentered loyalty and love, leaving you with the expression of a sexuality stripped of its deepest meanings.
I am not saying here that any given sexual performance is “wrong,” or meaningless, or debased, if it is not accompanied by the sentiments of love and devotion. Over a period of time, however, the expression of sex will follow the inclinations of the heart. These inclinations will color sexual expression, then. To that degree, it is “unnatural” to have sexual desire for someone whom you dislike or look down upon. The sexual ideas of domination and submission have no part in the natural life of your species, or that of the animals. Again, you interpret animal behavior according to your own beliefs.
[... 9 paragraphs ...]
Again, all love is not sexually oriented. Yet love naturally seeks expression, and one such expression is through sexual activities.
When love and sexuality are artificially divided, however, or considered as antagonistic to each other, then all kinds of problems arise. Permanent relationships become most difficult to achieve under such conditions, and often love finds little expression, while one of its most natural channels is closed off. Many children give their greatest expression of love to toys, dolls, or imaginary playmates, because so many stereotyped patterns have already limited other expressions. Their feelings toward parents become ambiguous as a result of the identification procedures thrust upon them. Love, sexuality, and play, curiosity and explorative characteristics, merge in the child in a natural manner. Yet it soon learns that areas of exploration are limited even as far as its own body is concerned. The child is not free to contemplate its own parts. The body is early forbidden territory, so that the child feels it is wrong to love itself in any fashion.
Ideas of love, then, become highly distorted, and its expression also. You do not fight wars for the sake of the brotherhood of man, for example. People who are acquainted with undistorted versions of love in their relationships would find such a concept impossible. Men brought up to be ashamed of the “feminine” sides of their nature cannot be expected to love women. They will see in women instead the despised, feared, and yet charged aspects of their own reality, and behave accordingly in their relationships.
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
[... 3 paragraphs ...]
Love itself seems to quicken the physical senses, so that even the most minute gestures attain additional significance and meaning. Myths and tales are formed in which those who love communicate, though one is dead while the other lives. The experience of love also deepens the joy of the moment, even while it seems to emphasize the briefness of mortality. Though love’s expression brilliantly illuminates its instant, at the same time that momentary brilliance contains within it an intensity that defies time, and is somehow eternal.
[... 1 paragraph ...]
All of this also applies to the animals to varying degrees. Even in animal groups, individuals are not only concerned with personal survival, but with the survival of “family” members. Each individual in an animal group is aware of the others’ situations. The expression of love is not confined to your own species, therefore, nor is tenderness, loyalty, or concern. Love indeed does have its own language — a basic nonverbal one with deep biological connotations. It is the initial basic language from which all others spring, for all languages’ purposes rise from those qualities natural to love’s expression — the desire to communicate, create, explore, and to join with the beloved.
(Long pause at 11:22.) Give us a moment… Speaking historically in your terms, man first identified with nature, and loved it, for he saw it as an extension of himself even while he felt himself a part of its expression. In exploring it he explored himself also. He did not identify as himself alone, but because of his love, he identified also with all those portions of nature with which he came into contact. This love was biologically ingrained in him, and is even now biologically pertinent.
[... 17 paragraphs ...]