Lust and the Vitality of Man
The intoxicating allure of the flesh, the burn and fire of pleasure, and the exhilaration of women have been both a blessing and a curse in our lives. As men, we are lonelier and more afraid than ever before. We live lives of dissipation, intoxicated with pleasure that cannot fulfill, and feel the deep-seated fear that we are not really men, but boys pretending to be something we are not.
Sure, many of us might make a lot of money. We may have reached the heights of power in the worldly sense. A select few may even feel that they have “mastered” women, in a way that inflates the ego beyond measure. But little if any of us possess real virtue, that quality of heart that is the true token of manliness, and is only tried in a fire that few of us have really tested. The fire of virtue is one where very little external reward is found. The fruit is personal, internal, spiritual. No one may see it, but it may be the key to finding an existence where we no longer have to feel like we are hiding behind eyes that betray a lie. We all put up a front, pretending to be confident, arrogant, and cool. We might be able to fool ourselves for a time, but our actions continue to reinforce seeds of doubt.
It is as if women have seen that we as men betray a lack of vitality. They see it in our eyes, our actions, the way we interact with them. There is no middleman between the arrogant player and the shy nice guy who can’t muster so much as a hello. We are either too cocky or not confident enough. Unfortunately, it seems that both minds are still rooted in lust. The arrogant men among us are driven by sex and a deep need for it. It is a way to accomplish the incessant demands of the ego, to feel validated as a man, and to create power where there can only be a sense of disconnect and misuse of a great gift. The nice guy might pretend to be better, to be somehow more “heroic” or a type of saint. He pretends to respect women, but he will not admit that he actually worships them. He has no respect because his mind is rooted in lust as much as the arrogant. He has given himself to a false god of worship in a way that the cocky worship themselves. More often than not we fall into one of these two categories, but neither one is yet to transcend lust.
To find the true vitality of man, where the joy of life fills every breath, where the spirit of goodness is more than sexual pleasure, requires a sacrifice of that social prerogative that maddens us in a quest for sex and power. We need to redefine what power and pleasure are to begin to thirst for something different and profound. This requires a new type of ideal. We chase that banker, entrepreneur, executive type of power. We chase the type of power where we can have endless access to money and all the pleasure that goes with it. Endless women, endless sex, seem to be a huge motivator for us. But how many of us, deep down, hate that ideal? We only serve its end because we are slaves to our desires. The man of the forest, the man that wields ax and sword, the man who is attuned to nature and to women, has all but died.
The quest for vitality must begin with a realization of the weakness we have succumbed to, and the cheap alternatives we have chosen for life. It would be amazing to see what we would seek if we were not tied down to an attachment to sex. How much of our power-seeking is aligned to a craving for sex? How much “power” would we be allowed to forego, if we could seek an alternative quest that would be much more satisfying? We must not let lust dissipate the fire within, and allow it to lead us to a life that is good, but not great. There is no alternative to the battle that must be waged to find this life. We are afraid to face the pain that feels unnatural, unfair, unmerited. We are bitter that we cannot find love, we are bitter that our lives are only pain, and we are bitter that we feel so empty. It is only in facing this darkness that we will be able to be truly free from it. Our love must be transformed beyond the distorted form it has taken. It has become ugly and twisted by its self-centeredness. It has taken the form of temporary thrill with heightened misery. Only when the heart looks outward will we begin to crave more than a body. Until our heart yearns for something more, for something higher, there will be nothing motivating enough to forego the pleasures of the flesh.
