Sex and the AQAL Model

First, I love the title of this post, and I'm wondering where I get one of those AQAL models. I guess it goes hand in hand with the "where are all the integral women?" question. Fortunately, I already know the answer to that: they are in Seattle. Out of the nineteen people we had at our last Ken Wilber Meetup, half were women. Really.....smart....women.

But back to the sex. After all, that's what caught your attention, isn't it?

I'm not necessarily talking about sex in the "integral relationship" aspect. I'm just talking about good, old fashioned sex. Why? Because I haven't seen it done before (this is not a David Deida moment), and it came up during a particularly appropriate moment afterwards (don't ask).

Using sex to explain Wilber's 4-quadrant model seems like a great idea! I mean, how many times have you tried to explain the model, only to have your listeners eyes glaze over right before they fall asleep? Tag something they nothing about onto something they're extremely interested in (but probably still know nothing about!), and I think you've got a winner!

Okay, so let's assume there are two of you (unless you're having sex alone, which is a different conversation, entirely, and eliminates the LL quadrant). You already have a lower left quadrant "we." Let's assume you find the other person particularly attractive and desirable. This comes from some part of your interior (something inside is turned on by this person), or upper left quadrant "I", or "Who," stuff. Let's also say the other person also finds you attractive. This is good.....She/he knows, as do you, that you find her/him attractive, and you know that she knows (oh, God, get Don Rumsfield out of my fantasy!) you're/she's/he's attractive. More upper left quadrant stuff: fantasy, desire, lust, love, some, or all, of it.

Suddenly, all these changes start taking place in your body: Release of pheromones, chemicals in the brain, breathing increases, etc., whatever comes up (sorry....). This is all Upper Right Quadrant "it" stuff, along with other URQ "its" that might arise in this situation......I think you get it.

So you both (LL "we") individually decide (interior UL) to act (exterior UR) in a particular manner (exterior LR). The LR quadrant is the "how" of sex in the four quadrants...."how to" this, "how to" that......Half the fun is figuring out the "how to's"....

These are the "who," "what," "how," and "why" of sex in the 4 quadrants.

I haven't touched on the "why", you say? If I have to tell you that, this entire article has been totally wasted on you. The important thing here is that, like everything that can be broken down into the 4 quadrant map (and the map is really very much not the territory), it all tetra-arises.

Thank God.......

Integral Sex 4-quadrant map by Gary Stamper. Get the t-shirt here.