Article by Joseph Dartez (with Doug Esse)

I’d like to introduce readers to a brilliant student of the Law of One. Joseph is no stranger to those who are familiar with a few of the Law of One forum groups on Facebook. He is a graduate student in philosophy at the University of Tennessee and has written extensively on interpretation of Ra, usually focusing on the archetypes. His current projects include a dissertation on the epistemology of scripture and channeled works as well as a book-length treatment of Ra’s system of archetype.

I asked Joseph to write an essay on the Law of One material’s treatment of homosexuality found in session 31 from his point of view. It’s my honor to publish it here. I add a reflection below his.

__________________

In Session 31, Ra infamously describes homosexuality as an “impairment” that is caused by “aura infringement” in urban areas. Ra says further that those whose previous incarnations have been more than 65% of the opposite sex as their current incarnation are vulnerable to this kind of impairment. Those who have this kind of impairment, Ra says, can still be of service to others “in fidelity and sincere green-ray love of a nonsexual nature,” but those who experience such infringement do not “feel the desire to be of service to other-selves.” The take home message seems to be that anyone who is homosexual, or presumably any other variety of queer, is sexually impaired and thus unable to experience green-ray sexual energy transfer. I call this the standard interpretation of Ra on homosexuality.

In this essay, I will offer a number of reasons why we should not accept this interpretation of Ra. I must confess that I do have a horse in this race, since I am pansexual. But hopefully bringing my own experience to the table on this topic will lend me a bit of credibility, even though, as a cis man married to a cis woman, I am clearly straight-passing. But I am not writing this essay for myself. The standard interpretation sometimes prevents people in the queer community from resonating with Ra and from interacting with others who resonate with Ra. I think this is unfortunate, since, in my opinion, the queer community and those who resonate with Ra have a great deal in common. I hope to make this common ground clear.

The standard interpretation is plainly problematic. In the first place, Ra’s description of our world, on this interpretation, is false. Queer persons often express their queerness from a very young age, and this is as true in rural areas as it is in urban areas. If anything, there are merely more queer persons still in the closet in rural areas because these areas tend to be more antipathetic toward queerness. Additionally, it is common enough for queer persons to report an experience of loving, open-hearted sex with one another that we should reject the notion that green-ray sexual energy exchange is impossible between two persons of the same sex. Even setting aside data that can easily be found on the internet, anything Ra says should be weighed against your experience. If you know queer people in a relationship who seem healthy and unimpaired, then the view Ra seems to espouse can’t be right. So because the standard interpretation gets the world wrong in easily discoverable ways, we should resist accepting it. We might just conclude that Ra was wrong on this one, which is where Carla [the instrument in the Ra channeling] herself landed. But does the standard interpretation capture what Ra actually meant to communicate?

Consider the context in which Don raises the issue of homosexuality. In 31.7, Ra says that the feeling of sexual attraction between two persons who are oppositely polarized is inevitable if energy is flowing freely. It takes no act of will. This attraction between gender opposites is analogous to magnetism, so when two such persons come near each other, they will feel the attraction, just as magnets pull toward one another. After explaining this mechanism of sexual attraction, Ra says that the mechanism can be blocked by a belief that the attraction is not desired.

In the very next question, Don asks, “We have what seems to be an increasing number of entities incarnate here now who have what is called a homosexual orientation in this respect. Could you explain and expand upon that concept?” I have italicized the phrase “in this respect,” because I think it is the reason Ra said what they did. In saying, “in this respect,” I think Don took himself to be asking about the mechanism of magnetic attraction between those who are of the same sex. However, because the phrase “in this respect” followed immediately on Ra’s caveat that the mechanism could be blocked by some believe that the attraction is not desired, I think Ra understood Don’s question to refer exclusively to this group of people.

In Ra’s answer in 31.8, they begin, “Entities of this condition experience a great deal of distortion due to the fact that they have experienced many incarnations as biological male and as biological female.” Again, I have italicized an ambiguous reference to something previously stated. Ra, I think, intends to refer to those who are both blocked in the basic attraction to those oppositely polarized and engage in homosexual contact. Since these people do not want to be attracted to those who would naturally attract them, it is a very strange situation to find themselves desiring sexual contact with those of the same sex as them since, presumably, they do not feel sexual polarized attraction to them. In other words, this (probably very small and very mentally distorted) group of people would otherwise be attracted to those oppositely sexed, but express homosexual desire as a result of their rejection of the basic mechanism of sexual polarity.

Don, without realizing he had done it, circumscribed the conversation about homosexuality in a way that focused exclusively on those who have a severe blockage and adapt to this blockage through homosexual activity. This confusion between Don and Ra was never revisited because the source of the confusion is so hard to identify. This was the 1980’s, so it was easy to accept the claim that homosexuality was a mental disorder. This re-interpretation might seem like a desperate attempt by a queer person to rescue Ra from an outrageous form of homophobia. But there is more evidence yet.

Earlier in 31.7, Ra says, “This polarity may be seen to be variable according to the, shall we say, male/female polarization of each entity, be each entity biologically male or female. Thus you may see the magnetism when two entities with the appropriate balance, male/female versus female/male polarity, meeting and thus feeling the attraction which polarized forces will exert, one upon the other.” And in 5.2, Ra says that “each biological male is female; each biological female is male.”

Notice the work that the word “biological” is doing here. Where Ra is referring to the two sexes (note that intersex is left woefully unaddressed here, but I will leave that to the side), Ra uses the adjective “biological.” What then, do the terms “male” and “female” mean without that adjective? I think they refer roughly to what we now call gender. Each person expresses each of the gendered archetypes in their own unique way, some placing emphasis more on masculine archetypes, some more on feminine. And this occurs as a natural expression of the true self (or the deeper personality, if you will).

Hence, as Ra says in 5.2, each biological male is female: though I occupy a male body, I express in both masculine and feminine ways. This dual-gendered nature is what Ra means when they use the slash-terms, “male/female” and “female/male”. Someone who is male/female expresses a complex array of masculine and feminine qualities, but the overall vibe the person gives off is masculine.

With these distinctions in mind, let us return to the beginning of 31.7. Ra says that polarized attraction is “variable according to the…male/female polarization of each entity, be each entity biologically male or female.” In the first part of this sentence, Ra is saying that sexual attraction is a matter of the complex gendered polarization of each individual. In the second part, which I have italicized, Ra is saying that biological sex is not the primary phenomenon that drives sexual attraction. The “be each” locution can be understood to mean “regardless of whether.” This interpretation follows from careful attention to when and where Ra uses the adjective “biological.” Hence, before Don even asks the question about homosexuality, Ra has already answered it: people are sexually attracted to one another on the basis of gendered personality expression and not merely on the basis of anatomy. It is easy to see, in this context, how Ra might have thought that Don was asking a more specific question than he meant to.

While male/female polarization can track biological sex, there is no reason to expect it to, since sexual magnetism tracks far more than just the physical form. What we magnetically desire, at the level of the whole mind/body/spirit complex, is someone who compliments us. When we interact with a person who carries an opposite charge from us in a way that makes us feel we could serve each other through sexual union, we feel the magnetism. So there is no need to interpret Ra as saying that being queer is an impairment or that two people of the same biological sex can’t have a sacred experience together. We also do not need to explain away relationships in which both individuals strike us as equally feminine or equally masculine. Each person has a unique resonance; each is a “tone poem,” as Ra says. There is no knowing the unique dynamics of a relationship between two other people since we will never be party to that
relationship. If two individuals find themselves compatible and attracted, then we should assume that they are. After all, no one can say better than they whether they are.

“But,” you might think, “you have just explained in terms of Ra why everyone is really pansexual.” Fair enough, but I do not think that is what Ra is saying. We each experience sexual attraction according to our own patterns, some of which are part of our deep nature, some of which are pre-incarnatively chosen, and some of which are programmed into us by our world. A person who is only attracted to those of the same sex might have chosen pre-incarnatively not to procreate. Or perhaps certain blends of masculine and feminine archetypes are almost exclusively found among other homosexuals. Conversely, perhaps the experience of being heterosexual is more like an experience of almost always being attracted to cis women with the heteronormative programming of the world around us restricting us from recognizing attraction that deviates from this pattern.

The world is varied and manifold. We should expect all manner of sexual expression merely as a consequence of the uniqueness of human beings. And we should not expect to have a single, simple metaphysical explanation for the outward patterns of these attractions, when the metaphysical reality behind them is so often hidden from our view.

You might be convinced, by now, that Ra’s view on queerness is more inclusive than it seems. But I have not yet offered up what I think is the most important bit of evidence in favor of this interpretation. What Ra calls the “disciplines of the personality” are the directions of disciplined practice that accelerate evolution along a morally polarized path.

For those attempting to walk the right-hand path (which, I assume, includes everyone reading this essay), Ra says in 74.11 that the heart of this disciplined practice is: “One, know yourself. Two, accept yourself. Three, become the Creator.” And in 18.5, Ra says “The proper role of the entity is in this density to experience all things desired, to then analyze, understand, and accept these experiences, distilling from them the love/light within them. Nothing shall be overcome. That which is not needed falls away.” So we are enjoined to know ourselves, accept ourselves, and experience everything we desire in the process, so long as all parties consent (Ra expresses the need for consent through a “consonant with the Law of One” caveat later in 18.5).

Now anyone who has spent some time interacting with a queer community or even just a queer acquaintance might be aware of just how important the first two tasks, know yourself and accept yourself, are to a queer person. This world has made it very difficult to express our queerness, so it takes a great deal of will and courage to face the unique sexual reality within ourselves and then to accept it as it is rather than try to change it. There is, I think, no dimension of the human experience that has been more distorted or more afflicted with mental confusion than the sexual dimension. So those who, in the spirit of love and acceptance, face the sexual repression and confusion programmed into them by our punitively heteronormative world—in spite of the great social costs of doing so—are in fact models of the practices that lead to a disciplined personality. Far from being sexually impaired, their sexual nature is liberated from the mental cage into which it had been placed.

Moreover, the support, acceptance and love that people in the queer community so readily offer to one another models green-ray based interaction in which each seeks to accept and love each just as they are, without requiring them to be any different. This culture of support and acceptance fosters an environment in which mindfulness about consenting sexual relationships is paramount. This is especially true in trans communities where the constant need for mindfulness about how we speak to and think about each other makes obvious the importance of consent. I do not mean to romanticize queer communities. I know they have their own tendencies toward manipulation, objectification, ostracization, and so on. I only mean to say that the shared project of attempting to know the self, accept the self, and explore the self’s genuine desires is what binds queer communities, despite all their imperfections.

We are each imprisoned in our own socially programmed cages and we each need to know ourselves and accept ourselves to emerge from that cage into full self-expression. We might not all discover ourselves to be queer, but we will all discover ourselves to deviate from social norms. Hence, just as members of the queer community might benefit from Ra’s message of radical self-acceptance and open-hearted love of all, so also might students of Ra benefit from witnessing and interacting with the praxis of this self-acceptance as found in queer communities.

This, then, is the primary reason I recommend rejecting the standard interpretation: the process of accepting oneself as queer and allowing that queerness to find expression is so clearly a manifestation of Ra’s injunctions to those of us who walk the right-hand path that the standard interpretation is inconsistent with Ra’s philosophy. Each queer person who rejects Ra because they do not believe they are impaired offers yet another data point in the case against the standard interpretation. Ra would have us see ourselves as unimpaired, since the process of healing the mind is to discover one’s own lack of impairment. Once we finally allow ourselves to fully see ourselves, whatever we find is innocent, beautiful, deserving of love and support, potent, and capable of deep relationships with others.

Be who you are. Act on your sexual attraction (with consent), however it is. Love your partners. And see the Creator therein.

——–

* I prefer the term “queer” to LGBTQIA+, because “queer” is already an umbrella term.

____________________

Doug: I’d like to add a couple of points of reflection on this subject as a student of the Law of One and a mental health counselor. I am informed by the famous psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who believed that a more fully mature person would be one who can put together the masculine and feminine in balance inside themselves. This inner androgyny is often present in those whom I would intuit as “advanced souls,” as it were.

I do not feel that one has to be queer to have this kind of balance of the masculine and feminine. You can see androgyny also with mature people who may identify as straight and cisgendered, too. In my own life, I feel comfortable in my male body and with my straight sexual orientation. But on the inside, for as long as I can remember, I have felt both like a woman and man in equal measure. I discovered the phenomenon of androgyny in graduate school while researching sexuality for a counseling class. It was a comfort to see that there was such a phenomenon which always described my inner experience, even as a young child.

For many of the queer folks that I have met in counseling and in my personal life, and for those straight folks who feel an inner androgyny, I hold it quite possible that they are resonating strongly with the green ray energies of fourth density. They often are more heart-centered and see the world with a more expansive vision. I would speculate that they are heart-activated to greater extents than those whose inner lives are less balanced between the masculine and feminine.

And finally, I’d like to share that I believe that many queer people are actually agents of the divine feminine and have chosen to incarnate in this late stage of Earth’s third density in order to help loosen the grip of dogmatic heterosexism. It makes sense to me to think that people with strong heteronormative attitudes which exclude, shame, and oppress other sexual identities are blocking their hearts to fourth-density energy.

• Cosmic Christ