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Also on this website:

Toby Johnson's books:

TWO SPIRITS: A Story of Life with the Navajo, a collaboration with Walter L. Williams

GAY SPIRITUALITY: The Role of Gay Identity in the Transformation of Human Consciousness

GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe

SECRET MATTER: updated, revised & expanded edtion from Lethe Press with Afterword by Mark Jordan

GETTING LIFE IN PERSPECTIVE

PLAGUE: A NOVEL ABOUT HEALING.

CHARMED LIVES: Spinning Straw into Gold: Reclaiming Our Queer Spirituality Through Story

About ordering

Books on Gay Spirituality:


  Articles and Excerpts:

Read Toby's review of Samuel Avery's The Dimensional Structure of Consciousness

Funny Coincidence: "Aliens Settle in San Francisco"

The Simple Answer to the Gay Marriage Debate

Why gay people should NOT Marry

Wedding Cake Liberation

Gay Marriage in Texas

What's ironic

Shame on the American People

The "highest form of love"

 The cause of homosexuality

What is homosexuality?

What is Gay Spirituality?

What Jesus said about Gay Rights

The purpose of homosexuality

Interview on the Nature of Homosexuality

What the Bible Says about Homosexuality

Mesosexual Ideal for Straight Men

Varieties of Gay Spirituality

Waves of Gay Liberation Activity

Why Gay Spirituality: Spirituality as Artistic Medium

Easton Mountain Retreat Center

Andrew Harvey & Spiritual Activism


"It's Always About You"

The myth of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara

Joseph Campbell's description of Avalokiteshvara

You're Not A Wave

Emptiness & Religious Ideas

Experiencing experiencing experiencing

Going into the Light

Meditations for a Funeral

Meditation Practice

The way to get to heaven

Advice to Travelers to India & Nepal

Nate Berkus is a bodhisattva

John Boswell was Immanuel Kant


Curious Bodies

What Toby Johnson Believes

The Joseph Campbell Connection

Campbell & The Pre/Trans Fallacy

The Nature of Religion

Being Gay is a Blessing

Freedom of Religion

The Gay Agenda

Gay Saintliness

Gay Spiritual Functions

The subtle workings of the spirit in gay men's lives.

The Sinfulness of Homosexuality

Proposal for a study of gay nondualism


 "The Evolution of Gay Identity"

"St. John of the Cross &
the Dark Night of the Soul."

Avalokiteshvara at the Baths.

 Eckhart's Eye

Let Me Tell You a Secret

Religious Articulations of the Secret

The Collective Unconscious

Driving as Spiritual Practice

Meditation

Historicity as Myth

Pilgrimage

Next Step in Evolution


Teenage Prostitution and the Nature of Evil

Allah Hu: "God is present here"
 
Adam and Steve

The Life is in the Blood

Gay retirement and the "freelance monastery"

Seeing with Different Eyes

What are you looking for in a gay science fiction novel?


The mystical experience at the Servites'  Castle in Riverside

The Great Dance according to C.S.Lewis


The Techniques Of The World Saviors

Part 1: Brer Rabbit and the Tar-Baby
Part 2:
The Bodhisattva Avalokiteshvara
Part 3:
Jesus and the Resurrection
Part 4:
A Course in Miracles


The Secret of the Clear Light

Understanding the Clear Light

Mobius Strip

Finding Your Tiger Face

How Gay Souls Get Reincarnated

About Alien Abduction

In honor of Sir Arthur C Clarke

The D.A.F.O.D.I.L. Alliance

More about Gay Mental Health

Psych Tech Training

The Rainbow Flag

Toby's friend and nicknamesake Toby Marotta.

About Michael Talbot, gay mystic

About Guy Mannheimer

About Dennis Paddie

About Sterling Houston

About Michael Stevens

Our friend Tom Nash

Second March on Washington

 
Book Reviews

Be Done on Earth by Howard E. Cook

Pay Me What I'm Worth by Souldancer

The Way Out by Christopher L  Nutter

The Gay Disciple by John Henson

Art That Dares by Kittredge Cherry

 

shirtless man with good abs

The necessary corollary of affirming pleasure is that incarnation in the flesh is a thing to be honored, relished, and celebrated. Such an affirmation directly challenges the dualistic notion that the soul and body are separate, even conflicting, entities. Body and soul are not in opposition. The body is good.

toby johnson

It's a kindness to others to show your body and to enjoy seeing the bodies of others. Because our sexual awareness is tied into vision and objectification, we males especially long to see others' bodies. We feel frustrated when we can't satisfy our curiosity. For gay men, nudity is an affirmation of us as curious bodies. It feels good to go bare chested. It feels good to see other men shirtless. It reminds us we're in pleasure-loving flesh. Nudity is good.

 

People clothe themselves for decoration and for protection from the elements (these days including unfiltered U.V. radiation). Clothes are wonderful. One of the joys of being gay is often knowing how to dress well: to adorn oneself and others in ways that create beauty and interest. People also clothe themselves for protection from other people's judgment and sexual interest. Clothing can enhance attractiveness by hiding flaws. Though that kind of thinking supports the notion there are such things as flaws. The obsession with hiding our bodies causes untold suffering, unhappiness, and frustration. Baring all allows these anxieties to abate. Naked, we forget to be ashamed of our bodies.

In our all-male world, we seldom worry about being raped if we show our bodies. In the straight world, this is a real concern. Women are raped in part because sexually repressed, angry males rebel against the competitive, hierarchical system designed to restrict sex to alpha males through the dynamic of women's selectivity. Rapists force themselves on women who are helpless or whom they imagine to be "asking for it" by making themselves attractive. Modesty is both a mechanism of self-defense for women and a demonstration of power and ownership by dominant males. (Middle-eastern cultures that veil women and seclude them from public view demonstrate this in the extreme.)

In a very practical way, feeling good about one's body and showing it proudly--and appropriately, of course--helps self-esteem, allays neurosis and anxiety, and motivates one to take good care of oneself. Concern with the body is not foolish vanity; rather, it is good stewardship over one's place in creation. Taking care of yourself and sharing your success in that endeavor with others is a simple, practical way of creating beauty and improving a little piece of the world. Appropriate nudity is a dramatization and demonstration of God's primordial "Behold, it is good."

Excerpted from GAY PERSPECTIVE: Things Our Homosexuality Tells Us about the Nature of God and the Universe (Alyson, 2003)

 


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