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Hieronder de vertaling van “In Praise of Prostitutes”.
De plaatjes zijn nog in het Engels.
Ken je geen Engels? Overweeg deze wereldtaal te leren...
Sex zelf gaat over lichaamsbeleving; in lichaamstaal.
Het is noodzakelijk om onze cultuur te genezen.
Elke samenleving is een organisme
Net zoals elk levend wezen, heeft het voedsel en informatie, onderdak en veiligheid, hygiëne en verzorging nodig.
In onze cultuur zijn een aantal fundamentele waarheden verloren gegaan.
Cultuur is in sommige opzichten vervreemd geraakt van de natuur.
Seksualiteit is een van die manieren.
Seks is een oplossing.
Het is de manier waarop de natuur maakt het mogelijk voor het leven te gaan.
Het is ook de manier waarop de natuur Nieuwheid integreert in wat al bekend is.
Veel samenlevingen weten dit.
Ze respecteren de balans tussen natuur en cultuur,
Vrouwen en Mannen, en beseffen dat de gezondheid van de mensheid is gebaseerd op het evenwicht tussen beide.
Vele culturen, om die reden, overweeg dan seks heilig, en hebben een speciale onderwijs en opleiding in de heilige kunst van seks.
Deze tekst is over die tradities.
It is necessary to heal a culture.
Any society is an organism
Like any living being, it needs food and information, shelter and security, hygiene and care.
In our culture some basic truths have been lost.
Culture has become estranged from nature; in some ways.
Sexuality is one of those ways.
Sex is a Solution.
It is the way Nature makes it possible for life to go on.
It is also the way by which Nature incorporates Newness into what is already known.
Many societies know this.
They respect the balance between Nature and Culture,
Women and Men, and realise that the health of Humanity is based on the balance between both.
Many cultures, for that reason, consider sex sacred, and have special teachings and training in the sacred art of sex.
This text is about those traditions.
"Het is tijd dat je naar de tempel gaat", zei zijn moeder had gezegd.
Zijn vader stond daar maar ... grijnzend.
Bij zijn vertrek gaf zijn vader hem een klein verzegeld pakje.
"Geef dit aan de eerste die je daar ontmoet" zei hij.
En zo begon hij aan zijn reis. Het dal uit, de bergen door en de woestijn in.
De aanwijzingen die hij gekregen had waren o zo belangrijk.
De weinige mensen die hij ontmoette in de bergen en de woestijn hadden hem meteen geholpen, zonder verdere uitleg, zonder verdere woorden, zodra ze hoorden dat hij op weg was naar de tempel.
De reis was lang, en hij moest goed opletten.
Hij had geen eten meegekregen; alléén drinken, voor de 40 dagen van zijn reis.
Maar hij wist hoe te bewegen en te ademen, en hij kon de wolken en het landschap lezen.
En vond zijn bestemming, in zijn bestemming.
As he came down from the hill he could see the Temple. As described, it looked like a crescent moon, with a sparkling gem in the crescent, towards him. When he got closer he saw that the gem was a fountain, with a basis for washing the feet of the traveller fresh from the desert.
He sat down on the seat facing the desert, and washed his feet and hands in the basin that had been made for that purpose. The water was clear and fresh: evidently it welled up from somewhere deep inside Earth. He sipped it, rinsed and washed his mouth first as was the custom, Then tasted some of the water, and drank it, slowly. After being so long in the desert there is no rush, no hurry.
From behind him sounded a voice: “welcome”. It was the voice of a girl or a young woman; he took the parcel from a fold in his tunic, and turned around to give it to her.
She was plain looking. About his age. “I will be your guide”, she said. “I am called Leela. We will share the training”. “I have been waiting for you. Welcome”.
She invited him in. He looked around as they walked through the archers into the building, into the shade, of the while stone building. It had been carved with curves and lines, it evoked curiosity, interest, and changed the experience of the space.
Leela took him through a corridor into a room, small but spacious. “Be welcome. This is the room where you can sleep. Take your time. I will meet you”.
In it, her found a bath and one fruit, he did not know. He installed himself, sat and smelled the juicy fruit. He sipped it and tasted a perfection of ripeness and sweetness and fresh acidity if beginning fermen-tation. It was at its peak. It seemed to feed every cell of his body. He ate it, slowly. He took a bath. And slept, slept.
The hall was large, round and rounded. Later he was told that the subdued light. Moist vegetation, soft sounds and the rounded forms were to have it serve as a womb; a sacred space for new being. Rebirth.
In the middle of the hall was a smooth round table. On it a small golden jewel. He recognised his fathers work; and the size of the parcel. This definitely was the best his father had ever crafted; worth a fortune. It was made to fit the surroundings superbly. As it it had always been there.
He was taken to a bath, and oiled, massaged, scrubbed clean with soft sand, oiled again while how muscles were unknotted. Then he was taught how to breathe, and use the breath to discharge his tension. This was needed because when they warned him the next massage would go deep and be painful, he did knot know that they stretched his limbs and pressed his flesh so it hurt that he screamed While he did, while doing his breathing, he saw memories of old mishaps. The time he fell from the rock, the time his grandfather had died. As is watching paintings the memories emerged, shouted themselves out and faded. He felt how his breathing steadied the body, and helped it release the old pains of which he no longer knew they existed. Then when his body was clean and deeply, deeply relaxed, he was soothed and bathed. And slept.
He did not know what happened. Nor did it, to him, make much sense. He simply accepted. And accepted.
He was told stories. Of how the Universe was formed, from a thought to a cloud to shining sparks of light to places like Earth. Four or more veiled women gently touched and rocking his body, humming soft melodies, while two others close to his head told and sang the story of life and creation.
In the singing, the words and the tune always told the same story, and while his body was lulled asleep by their touching, his mind was fully awake by their song.
He soaked in the understanding of how the world was created, rocks formed to plants, animals and wisdom beings. He learned how women held the ring of life, and women and men together formed the wand of life to let life, and wisdom, continue.
He was asked in to the room.
He sat down in the middle, not knowing what to do.
Then Leela walked in, naked. Still he did not know what to do. But not so his body. It seemed to have a mind of its own. And seemed to have some notion of what it could or should do. Leela gestured that he simply sit and experience what his body was doing. Without him needing to act or react. And so he sensed and felt. Experienced his body response. Sensed how it acted an reacted, without him needing to know or to do. Leela simply asked him to wait, and feel, and sense while his body started to speak for itself, as if remembering a long lost long known familiar language. Which, as the story that he had heard, spoke of existence and creation.
Slowly he learned the magic. Leeyla seemed to do nothing. Yet everything that happened made perfect sense. She had him experience touch. She had him feel direct contact. He learned that his body already know, of what she was wordlessly speaking. Slowly he learned to sense, accept, and trust fully. It seemed as if the language they spoke without words, the language of their body, conti-nued an ongoing conversation, which had never ended. His body recognised touch and movement it had experienced already as part of the massages and bathing.
It to him seemed not surprising that much of the conversation took place while his body was asleep and his mind fully awake. As before. But not to that was added the realisation of his body being fully awake, while his mind seemed fast asleep. The silence within of the mind, and the absence if ideas, made him fully aware of what happened in his body.
Then, something seemed to change. The experience was that of hearing a fairy tale, one step leading to another, from one emotional landscape to another. But this was as a story of feeling, for and of the body. The journey had started out in familiar terrain: him sitting in the middle of the room. But the, with Her as his guide, he had walked through fields, still seemingly known, into vast majestic woods ad forests, occasionally through swamps where she had helped hum through old emotions, and lakes of deep joyous feelings reflecting the skies. But now had taken him into high mountains: the feelings went up and down between valley of feelings which he had always known already, but now more as part of a more encompassing whole. And new feelings, soaring high, with peaks of feeling and sensations which gave full vista of a world hew had not known. He knew that one step could plunge him down, but she guided by narrow path from peak to peak.
Then, on what must have been the highest peak, she sat him down and sat with him and slowly showed him the news strange world around him. From above he saw the world he had known; it still existed. But now it had a new and vast perspective: it was part of e much larger landscape of feelings and emotions, A vast open space had opened up of sensations that were large and direct “Openness” best described it. It was a language that he must already have known; a language that his body was naturally versed in. He felt his body learn, remember, talk that unspoken language, and felt that She spoke that language with it. In it. His body and her body were communicating, in poetry, not in prose. In fact it fas a soft song, sometimes louder, sometimes shouting in duet. Singing of the Earth, and the heaven. Het felt, he knew, the uniVerse was a song, and they singing poets. Her face radiated with beauty, Beauty.
From the uniVerse he saw how all was connected. Everything repeats itself, in itself. He felt with his body, in her body, how nothing bagat thing; how heaven begat earth, how earth begat humans, and how women beget men, and women. In her body he saw the shapes of earth, mountains and valleys, plains and gorges. He traced her landscape with his fingers and sensed it under his hand whil he felt that he touched her, her body, the Earth that she was, and the uniVerse within her, It was tangible yet a flow, a song and a dance, stilled in time. Was it the baths? The meditations? The foods and herbs he had had? He sensed in her what seemed to live and be in her, and in her iner uniVerse, and in Earth. It all seemed to make sense. It all seemed to connect. It all made sense. It all connects. He suddenly awed at the gift she had given: the full understanding of life. She had simply opened herself up, to open him up, to life the uniVerse within him. On Earth.
Beauty! He was mesmerised. Amazed. He had seen her face when she had first come out to welcome him in, from the desert. He had seen her body when he had been washed and oiled. He had come to know her body an face better, much better, when he had experienced and learned bodily massage. But now something had changed. Something was different. All was different. In this landscape of feeling she was the master. And her body and face differed. She was sure, and steady, calm and guiding. Gently she had stopped him from plunging in lakes of feeling – a short dip and then onwards. She had led him beyond waterfalls where he would have liked to dive into. She had brought him along narrow tracks, where her strong grip had held him, steadied him, led him further. And now that they were on the peak of the world, of feelings, one with the openness of the uniVerse as a whole, he realised why artists carved statues of women. Sang poems. Painted them again and again. To know, always what she was now showing. The world. As she lives it.
It was only later, much later, that she had showed him. In words without words, she retold the story of creation. In words, without words, she sung of the realms of manifestation. Her body reminded his body, how women carried the unbroken circle of life, from before the start of creation. Her body and his body spoke of the magic wand of life, of which each had half the staff. Her body asked his body of all the things He knew of: from walking the Earth. In words beyond words she explained him: all she knew of life was already embedded in birth; from conception. But His knowledge of Earth was new and recent, and full of experience of His own life. His life story was unique, is unique, but not hers to live with, and continue. She was priestess,. A guide into the world-and-uniVerse of realisation. But he would find his woman. She would come to know him. Come to know his life story. And decide if she would let it live onward. She would know. He would know.
Without words and with words, She had asked him and his body to tell his life story. Some parts were trivial, some gory, but all made sense as one ongoing pattern. A fabric. She – later – showed him that this was how, and why, in the temple they weave carpets: to capture the life story. Men and women, interweaving: a fabric of life. Intertwining, alternating, the one supporting the other; the other supporting the one. Never tied, but always bonding She told him his woman would want to know all details of his life. And, as she did now, lead him through the landscape of deep feelings, of Earth and Heaven. And she would know – the women he met – is She would want to carry the line of his life one tread further That was their gift, as women: the art of spinning thread. Of life. And carry life further Every women he met would always have that choice. Which was hers; which he now respected. She carried the unbroken circle of life. He added the part of the wand that - together – they may spark the spark of life. By her choosing.
He realised why his mother had sent him. She knew. She knew that he was now coming of age: no more a child; and no longer baby. Already he felt his body had changed. His voice, his rhythms, his feelings. Now Leela had showed hem, guided him, to the place where all these feelings make sense. But she had also showed him the story of the fabric of life, the interweaving of men and women, just at the point in time where his life would be his own creation. In looking back at his life – in oneness with the priestess – he was all to aware that some actions were silly. Not the kind one would wish to weave into the fabric of ongoing life. He now saw how all people are interconnected. Parents, grandparents, and so on. Till times past way when. And that each time Woman had decided, if she would, could, carry the line of intent of Life one thread further. He now knew his life was not His life. His life is a tread on the ongoing human fabric It mattered what colour he gave to his life tread... And how it mattered. To WoMan.She would choose Him for weaving more thread to the fabric.
He was not aware that after he had left the temple, left Leela, and left behind his childhood, that times were to change. Yes, he found his tread of his life. Yes, he worked on the colourfulness and richness of his thread. With real gold and silver, of true feeling and being. And yes, the women on his path saw it. He realised that all women saw him, and looked for, or at, the quality of his life thread Young women wished to hear his Life Story. Wise women gave him counsel when he seemed to have lost his thread to his life. And mature women wondered (where the immature worried). And at times he would be invited. To tell his life story, Fully. And yes, there were some who wanted to help continue what he stood for and lived for. They let him speak, through his body, direct in to their body, where Leela had asked him to wait still. He now knew how he helped them weave the fabric of life. And peace on Earth.
"It is all about creation". He realised precisely what she meant, when she said thanks. There is no harvesting without sowing. It is all about meaning, and intent. When she had said it, he had felt how she had received, drank and ingested his seed, to let new life breed. She knew precisely what happened. She acknowledged like, as she had selected him, he trusted her.
Indeed, he would learn that some women who would invite him, would not receive his gift of the seed. They sought to control, forget, claim, or not be alone. There would be a time when the scorned men and women no longer learned the lesson, did not heal themselves, and did not go elsewhere for healing. That was the time they too mated and bred, and filled their children with what they were not fulfilled with. And so he realised how profound her words "Thank" linked her realisation of the value of his gift, of seed and soul, the meaning of her choice of selecting him for life to continue, and their joint experience of the universe as a whole. He remembered the pictures ad the songs of the universe and creation he has learned in the temple. And realised that indeed every act matters, in what you create, in and for the universe as a whole.
Dit was Deel 1: de wisheid van de sexuele inwijding.
Deel 2 gaat over het gestage verval, tot wat we nu kennen.
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