Ossification

"Spiritual growth depends upon ceasing to cling to any form of life for security. Forms are not contrary to the Spirit, but it is their nature to die; their transiency is their very life, and a permanent form would be a monstrosity—a finite thing aping God.

"The Spirit uses forms, and reveals itself through them, for which reason they are both wonderful and necessary. But they are not exempt from the simplest law of life—that, like every other living thing, to grasp them is to strangle and kill them. To preserve them in death is to cling to corruption."

---Alan Watts, In My Own Way

"Without a continual infusion of spiritual food you end up with what we would call a religion. The spiritual urge--the need to be part of your whole self--cannot be repressed any more than the sexual urge. But the expression of it always, inevitably--and I say that without any ill will--gets ossified. Inflexible bones lead to further inflexibility."

--James Fadiman, Higher Wisdom

First: what is the relationship between what Fadiman calls the spiritual urge and the sexual urge? My working hypothesis is that they are one, or at least intimately related. Both are characterized by the desire to merge with, to identify with, something outside of oneself; spiritually, with the Ultimate Reality, sexually, with another human. Even the orgasm itself, whether achieved with another person or by oneself, is a distinct alteration of consciousness--for a brief period, one cascades with ecstasy. It can be likened to being struck by lightning, being shot alive by a force much greater than oneself. It is telling that many reports of mystical experience, of spiritual ecstasy, use sexual metaphors. (see Bernini's Ecstasy of St. Theresa below)

What is lust?

Second: Both authors highlight the importance of keeping Spirit "alive" in one's life by continually renewing its expression. Spirit, of course, never dies--but we can become rigid and ossified, restricting it from coursing through us and our lives. Religion, for all of its insights into the nature of spiritual experience, can become ossified, but not necessarily. And if it is assumed, as I assume, that sexuality and spirituality are two poles of the same thing (visually conceived as the root chakra and the crown chakra), both religion and sex can be profound sources of contact with Spirit. Throughout one's life the ways in which the "urges" will be expressed will change, with good reason--to explore and celebrate the infinite variety of the play of Spirit itself.