Concepts like rituals and sacraments may be familiar to many people from religious backgrounds, especially from traditions like some branches of Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism that use a lot of ritual and ceremony. Meanwhile, almost every spiritual tradition recognizes the sacred or the divine in some form or another, whether they use terms like God, the Goddess, Allah, the Tao, the Source, the Brahman, energy, the holographic universe, or a great many other terms.
However, even if we don’t practice any kind of religion and don’t have any concept of the sacred, we don’t have to give up on the positive things that can come from rituals, sacraments, and connecting with the divine. They are not simply superstitious relics, and can improve anyone’s life, regardless of one’s beliefs or philosophies.
For example, rituals and sacraments are powerful ways of shifting our state of being, helping us remember a broader perspective than the ordinary minutiae of everyday life, or the stress, chaos, and crap we all have to deal with in some way or another. Rituals and sacraments remind us that there is something bigger that we are all part of, whether we think of it as just the physical universe, or the vast oneness that some call the sacred, the divine, the source, the holographic universe, what string theory calls the ‘bulk’, or any other name.
There is no reason why we should all have to connect with the sacred in exactly the same way: the sacred comes in so many countless different forms, why would the same sacraments magically work for every single one of us? If the sacraments of traditional religions don’t speak to us, we can choose our own activities, rituals, and ceremonies that help us most effectively connect with the sacred.
In the Path of Eros, many different thing can be treated as sacraments. Since it is a non-dogmatic tradition, everyone can choose their own activities that they consider to be sacraments — there is no reason to fight wars and crusades over what the ‘right list is. Here are the activities that I treat as sacraments in my own life, including some that can be done on a daily or near-daily basis, and others that are intended to be done less frequently.
Daily Sacraments:
However, even if we don’t practice any kind of religion and don’t have any concept of the sacred, we don’t have to give up on the positive things that can come from rituals, sacraments, and connecting with the divine. They are not simply superstitious relics, and can improve anyone’s life, regardless of one’s beliefs or philosophies.
For example, rituals and sacraments are powerful ways of shifting our state of being, helping us remember a broader perspective than the ordinary minutiae of everyday life, or the stress, chaos, and crap we all have to deal with in some way or another. Rituals and sacraments remind us that there is something bigger that we are all part of, whether we think of it as just the physical universe, or the vast oneness that some call the sacred, the divine, the source, the holographic universe, what string theory calls the ‘bulk’, or any other name.
There is no reason why we should all have to connect with the sacred in exactly the same way: the sacred comes in so many countless different forms, why would the same sacraments magically work for every single one of us? If the sacraments of traditional religions don’t speak to us, we can choose our own activities, rituals, and ceremonies that help us most effectively connect with the sacred.
In the Path of Eros, many different thing can be treated as sacraments. Since it is a non-dogmatic tradition, everyone can choose their own activities that they consider to be sacraments — there is no reason to fight wars and crusades over what the ‘right list is. Here are the activities that I treat as sacraments in my own life, including some that can be done on a daily or near-daily basis, and others that are intended to be done less frequently.
Daily Sacraments:
- stretching / yoga
- grooming / shaving
- bodybuilding / working out
- cardio (running, biking, stair climbing, etc.)
- tuning ourselves (e.g. hot tub, bath, shower, sauna, spending time in nature, listening to music, cooling off, applying any opposites that are needed, etc.)
- cock training
- meditation
- edging
- cum training
- Ceremony of Transformation (done as part of cum training, at the end of a ripening cycle; message me if interested in learning more)
- intimate union / sexual relations
- liberation (aka awakening, kensho, satori, samadhi, moksha, transcendence, etc.)