The Red Thread of Passion

If you go into your local bookstore, looking for something on sex and spirituality, chances are what you will encounter are a plethora of books about Tantric sex, or at least that's what I found.What a pleasant surprise to open this book and find...an essay on Whitman. And one on D.H. Lawrence, and then lots on some people I had never heard of, but boy, they sounded intruiging. This book is a scholar's dream, and David Guy approaches his subject, sex, and his setting for it, spirituality, with a scholar's diligence, a true researcher's obsession. Whitman, Lawrence, Alan Watts, these are all perhaps predictable choices for a book like this if you consider Guy's approach. But an essay on Marco Vassi, pulp pornographer, bathhouse aficianado and paramour of sex queen Annie Sprinkle? Well, as Guy says, if you want to really research the field, you look to the experts, people who have gone to the edge and come back to tell the tale. Guy divides the book into three parts: a true confessional (this part might make you look at your normally sedate husband in a new light), a look at the trail-blazers of the sex-spirit link, and an introduction to some folks who are perhaps the unsung heroes of the healing arts world, alive and well and doing their thing (alas all on the West Coast).You know, you could write an encyclopedia about the way sex is pushed down in our country, made into the stuff of sleazy porn shops, peep shows, strip clubs, and curb-side pickups. And you can easily find the how-to tantric sex manuals, and try to get your aura flowing as well as all those other body juices. Here is a book that serves as a bridge. Can you consider a former stripper and sexual escort as a spiritual healer? Well, yes. Guy does, and by the time we're finished with his book, we do too.And while you're at it, pick up Leaves of Grass again. You'll read it in a whole new light.

I can't recommend too highly this very insightful, down to earth, funny, honest, intelligent, courageous, clear headed, warm hearted,sensible, provocative...wish this book could be the core of discussion on say tv but you only get moronic level discussions or all that fundamentalistic nonsense...but at least we have books like this. Most excellent!