"Hari Har Singh"  wrote:
>> It looks like the best thing one can do to attack someone is to claim
>> that (s)he's a victim. Victims are always right. Victims can
>> retaliate. Victims don't get blamed. Gee, I should find myself some
>> guru to sexually abuse me, then I'll be really cool. I could make my
>> own crusade, fueled by righteous anger. Never mind that it's only a
>> diversion, a ploy meant to divert attention from the real problems.
>
>Yes, that's a problem posts like Kunal Singhs can create: That ppl react
>like Daniel did.
>Of course there is sexual abuse of women (and man), girls and boys, and of
>course gurus, priests, etc. are able to do this too.
>I remeber just a short time ago the case of a catholic cardinal who had over
>decades used little boys for his sexual needs. This man is still a priest.
>
>In Germany every 3rd woman and every 5th man has been sexually abused in
>their childhood or as a grown up. The number of unknown cases is probably
>much higher.

I don't dispute those facts, and sexual abuse is an unfortunate fact
of our world, as well as female circumcision in Africa, mine fields in
Kambodia, oil spils and nuclear pollution. It shows that people are
disaligned with dharma, and that something has to be done about it, or
everything will keep going to hell.

There are several problems that I manage to notice. First is that some
people, mostly those who are _not_ victims of abuse, exploit sexual
abuse as a means of an ad hominem attack, which is extremely difficult
to defend oneself from. If you have a child and someone accuses you of
sexual abuse, it is a problem to defend oneself even if you're
absolutely innocent. The very thought of being blamed for such a thing
makes people avoid every possibility of an accusation; they will avoid
children, or avoid showing them any physical sign of affection. They
won't hug them or cuddle with them or tickle them until they laugh.
They will avoid touching "problematic areas", thus implicitly making
kids know that something is wrong with that, that they are not fully
accepted and loved, that some parts of them are rejected. This will
create trauma and frustrations, of course. 

And you know what will happen then? Children will want their entire
being accepted, and sexuality is an important part of everyone's
being. They will want others not to be rejected as they were. Since
their thoughts dwell on sexuality, and people's sexuality is seldom
pure, the sexual instincts will become intermixed with protective
instincts, and so they'll want to teach the children how to experience
their sexuality, and the very thought of such education will be
extremely sexually appealing to them, because they project, they
themselves are the ones who wanted to be sexually accepted as
children. 
And so, the righteously appalled individuals, who demonize the
perpetrators and pamper the victims, and who condemn every form of
children's sexual education, are the very ones who produce pedophilia
and sexual abuse.
This is, of course, one of the causes of the problem. The other cause
can be real sickness, pedophilia in the narrow sense, or one's own
sexual victimization in the childhood, which creates an imprint, of
how it's supposed to be, and that pattern repeats itself.
People who demonize the pedophiles and sexuality are in fact afraid of
the truth: sexuality cannot be restrained to just one narrow corner in
human life. It is all-pervading, because it is inseparably integrated
with the life itself. Every aspect of life is saturated with the
sexual force, and in our relationship with children our sense of being
alive becomes very, very present. We open up and play, and when we
open up, all the artificial barriers drop. Similarly, that's how the
relationship with gurus and their disciples become sexual: these
relationships are usually very deep and loving, they go to the core of
the being, beyond the habits and blockages. If one isn't accustomed of
letting one's sexuality flow freely, without restraint and expression
through physical sex, the control will undoubtedly burst and we'll
sometimes have cases of sexual abuse, or mutually consensual sexual
relations that become mistaken for abuse, because of the "villain
guru" patterns. I know all those things from experience with my
students: hugs are normal among us, because people need that physical
contact in order to express love. When we hug, the energy balances
itself, it doesn't build up to explode through sex. People don't need
to have sex in order to express affection, and if they express love
through words and hugs, they won't be forced into sex on one side or
alienation and rejection on the other; they'll have sex when they
really want to have sex, out of mutual consent, not out of despair.
Instead of understanding those mechanisms, people think in terms of
victims and villains; that's because they can't accept themselves and
their own sexuality; they see it as wrong. Those who criticize the
homosexuals are most often desperately afraid of their own need to
express love to other men; they don't know how to do it in a benign
way, but the need doesn't go away, and so they sometimes jump into
another extreme, open homosexuality, which is in fact something they
don't really want; but they don't dare to simply hug another man and
tell him that they love him; in such situations, sex seems to become
inevitable.
If I even for a moment tried to repress the flow of my sexual energy,
by now I would have had sex with all of my students or most of them,
both male and female. That is a fact. In fact, the flow of love/energy
is even greater than it would be if I _did_ have sex with them, but
physical sex is obsolete, because there is no feeling of rejection or
separation. I think that this is the real formula for healing this
problem. 
But I guess that the problem is going to stay with us, at least for as
long as people scream for more sexual repression and alienation in
response to the increasingly greater number of sexual incidents.
So, when you lovingly hug a child, and feel the love flowing through
both of you, and somebody starts encouraging the child to press
charges against you, convincing it that it has in fact been victimized
by the mere loving touch, you will remember me.

-- 
Homepage: http://www.danijel.org