Rituals, Sacraments, and the Sacred

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:
  • 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
Occasional Sacraments:
  • 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.)
Don’t get overwhelmed by feeling that we need to do all these sacraments every day — these are just examples of how we can take everyday activities, and treat them as reminders to connect with the sacred. As a great many teachers have noted, anything can be a way to connect with the sacred. If we can treat breathing and walking as sacred activities, why not treat working out, edging, and having sex as sacred activities as well? There may be a time for just being dirty animals, but the more we break down barriers between the erotic and the sacred, the more whole we can be.

Comments

I think I'm on your wavelength, Sir. I agree, and in particular with the advantages of breaking "down barriers between the erotic and the sacred." It has the potential of greatly magnifying the intensity of sexual experience if the person can truly understand it and take it the way it is meant here. "Man is a ritual being." I always believed that from the first moment I heard it.
Thanks for your thoughts.
 
As a Christian, I used to pray every day. Recently I've given that up, and have felt guilty. But you've said go with the flow of what works for you - and I can accept working out (so far as I can during this lock down) as my present ritual - and embrace it as something holy and faithful
 

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