Crazy Means Nothing Left to Hide

A friend of mine loves to sing and play the guitar, but she has been too shy to play for Arthur, my husband, who is a professional musician. One night recently when she was visiting she grabbed Arthur’s guitar and played a song for us. When we expressed our delight in her performance, she said, “Now that I’ve read We Are ALL Innocent and realize that I’m crazy, it was liberating. I knew that it wouldn’t matter to you how it sounded, because you know I’m nuts!”

Crazy means nothing left to hide. Am I less than perfect? Big deal…I’m crazy. Did I do something embarrassing in the past? I was nuts. Did I do something I feel guilty about? I was delusional. Whatever I did, it was motivated by the confusion in my mind, the programming of beliefs and assumptions that distorted my worldview.

One of the benefits of recognizing my craziness has been the ability to laugh at myself, to stop taking myself so seriously. I no longer have to hide mistakes, or try to explain them away. I can share personal details in We Are ALL Innocent, and on internet forums using my real name, because they don’t matter anymore. Crazy people do crazy things.

In addition, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to promote our good sides, hoping that by an engaging display we can keep others distracted from seeing our warts and flaws. When we no longer feel the need to hide parts of ourselves, we can relax and just be ourselves.

In our culture there’s something almost everyone hides—their sexuality. We are programmed to believe sex is dirty, and the sex act is obscene, and it’s wrong to feel aroused except in very circumscribed situations (like with your spouse).

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve gotten criticism for addressing sex in WAAI. Some have intimated that sexuality doesn’t belong in a self-help book that isn’t explicitly about sex. This stems from the insane belief that sex should and could be split off from the rest of life. Others have warned me that including sex would limit my audience, because people would be reluctant to share the book with others.

But again, crazy means nothing left to hide! I don’t think it’s much of a stretch to say that sexual problems are rampant in our culture. Personally I think this is because we cannot discuss our sexuality freely, as we can so many other aspects of our lives. So our problems stay hidden away where they fester and grow worse. Confusion about sex was just another one of my issues, like insecurity and competition, so why shouldn’t I share about it in the hope that it would help another better understand their sexuality?

In this spirit, my partner in life and in the development of the philosophy behind WAAI, Arthur Hancock, has written a memoir entitled Exposing Myself: A Life of Sex and Truth. In this book he honestly reveals his obsessions with sex, ending a lifetime of hiding the shame and guilt about his sexual proclivities.

Arthur had a life-changing experience at the age of 28, when he realized how superficial his perception of the world really was. The next forty years have been a quest to understand this experience, an attempt to seek truth over lies and love over lust, in the midst of such adventures as playing folk music in St. Augustine. Florida in the midst of a major civil rights confrontation, and traveling to Nepal and returning paralyzed from the neck down (the year of recovery in a rehab center led to some unbelievable sexual adventures).

Exposing Myself is a great companion to WAAI, as Arthur not only takes the reader through the development of the philosophy of universal insanity, but illustrates in his own life how the recognition of his insanity has removed shame and guilt.

Recently Arthur said that publishing Exposing Myself has been of great therapeutic value. By exposing himself he no longer fears his inner blackmailer of ego (remember when you did this? See the cartoon version of this inner blackmailer at Arthur's website entitled "Why the unexamined life is so popular"). Arthur no longer has to be fixated on hiding his sexual shame and self-hatred by pretending to be superior. This has given him a sense of peace; he is free to simply be who he is; he no longer has to hide.

Does Sex Belong in a Book about Insanity?

In We Are All Innocent by Reason of Insanity I use my life to provide examples for various points I make, and this includes some discussion of sexuality. When I am illustrating my insanity, I discuss problems I have had with family, relationships, jobs, self-esteem, etc.; I also include some related to sex. When I describe the lessons I’ve learned—acceptance, humility, compassion, and love—I also include some lessons I learned about sex.

Some readers have criticized me for this inclusion. The sense I get from these people is it’s okay for me to talk about how insanity has impacted my life in every area except one: sex. Somehow that’s out-of-bounds in a book that’s not specifically about sex.

This is a book about insanity, both personal and cultural. If insanity doesn’t describe most cultures’ attitude towards sexuality, what does?

American culture has an incredibly puritanical attitude towards sex: it’s dirty, and it’s damaging to young people and other innocents, so just don’t talk about it. But I would counter that sexual problems are rampant in our culture, and a lot of the reason has to do with our cultural attitudes.

We Are All Innocent by Reason of Insanity argues that every society develops a “consensus reality,” which is a collective mind-generated reality (my definition of insanity is: confusing our mind-generated reality with actual reality). Our individual realities are constructed within the collective reality of our culture. The American (and almost every other nation’s) consensual reality includes the belief “sex is dirty,” and we all imbibe that belief with our mother’s milk. As a result almost everyone in our culture is crazy in the area of sex.

Sex is a natural function of our bodies, like eating, yet we get no guidance from our parents and teachers about it. We're taught how to eat with a fork, how to use the toilet, how to wash ourselves, how to spell and do math, and how to drive a car. But we're not taught anything about how to have sex—because it's dirty. We might have sex education in school, but that’s mostly educating us about the consequences of sex—pregnancy and disease. So almost everyone grows up conflicted, confused, and privately believing that he or she is a monster for the "sick" fantasies and desires in his/her mind. We're taught that sex is something you have to hide.

No wonder half of all marriages end in divorce, with sexual problems as a major cause. Studies have shown that 15 percent of married couples have not had sex in the last six months to a year (or more). No wonder that loads of people sneak around behind their spouse's back to have affairs or watch porn.  A hotel manager once told me that during his career, the highest percentage of guests watching X-rated in-room movies occurred during an evangelical convention—the guests were in a place where they thought they could watch porn in secret (not knowing their program selections were being notated)…and they did watch.

In the chapter entitled My Story, where I lay out some of the major issues in my life, I wrote: 

At one point in my life I read a lot of spiritual books, and always I would wait hopefully for some advice on how to see sex from a more enlightened perspective. It always seemed as if the author either ignored sex completely, or did a whitewash of the subject, as if they were as confused as I was.

I determined not to do this.

I have a vision of sexuality that I call "clean sex," which is sex freed of the beliefs and preconceptions we’ve been burdened with, pre-eminently including “sex is dirty.” Clean sex is like meditating while having sex, but in the nicest way—no thoughts getting in the way of feeling the exquisiteness of the sensations.

Sexual energy is always flowing, like all forms of life energy. You can open yourself to tap into that energy flow at any time, and if you stay open you can ride that sexual energy wave into places of bliss, without need for exotic tricks to keep you interested. I think of it this way: when I want to have sex I shift my awareness to tap into the sexual energy, then I get out on the leading edge and ride the wave wherever it goes. It’s all about staying right there on the edge of the wave, not thinking about anything, just moving with the flow of energy.

Here’s a chart illustrating some of the ideas: 

Clean Sex.................................Dirty Sex 

Present in body...................Absent in mind 

Spontaneous..........................Ritualistic (same combination of elements) 

No goal.......................................Orgasm-oriented 

Whole self oriented.............Genital or fetish-oriented 

Love.............................................Lust 

Variations.................................Fixed theme 

Heightens unity....................Heightens separation 

Sane……………….……….........Insane

 There are many benefits to recognizing our insanity, both personally and collectively. Chief among these benefits will be a new attitude towards sexuality.