This is a tender area, not so much because it is controversial as because it relates to such a powerful and creative aspect of human life. It is rarely handled with the finesse it requires, since few understand the power and creativity that is possible -- or the destructiveness of its misuse. Sex is more than an act or a feeling, and its handling needs to be more than an attitude. Sex involves an entire principle of living, and in it is a key to fulfillment and personal effectiveness in all areas of life Let's take a look at that principle.
To begin with, think of sex, in the symbolic sense, as pervading all areas of human function: people have "love affairs" with their jobs, their cars, their homes, their spouses, their children, their neighborhoods, their pets, even their clothes. This is not meant to be facetious; in a symbolic sense, this is simply fact. This grand love affair takes on many shadings of appropriateness, as it should, yet it is all a part of one's love for life and its inhabitants, both animate and inanimate. This, in the broadest sense, is sex.
Obviously, we don't have the same feelings or relationships with our car as we do with our spouse. Some people and things seem to be right up next to us, others further away, both in how we feel about them and in how they feel about us. It becomes important to have an accurate sense of where each person and thing belongs, according to the mutuality of the relationship. This is illustrated in the "Rings of Intimacy" below.
Have you ever wished a certain person or object was closer to you, even right by your side? Have you ever wished someone or something further away? We may not realize it, but such feelings affect our relationship with everyone and everything in our "orbit."
It has been said that the way a man shaves in the morning is a reflection of his attitude toward sex. So is the way he treats his mother and his dog. After all, each person is an entire ecology, the center of many rings of intimacy, and how we behave or feel about something on one ring affects every other thing on every other ring -- a ripple effect on the illustration above. If that is difficult to grasp, take a simple example: the quantity and quality of what you eat for lunch will determine your ability to function in many areas for the rest of the day -- even areas that have little direct connection with food. The approach to sex is much the same. It relates to one's entire ecology, and thus sex education is necessarily related to much more than birds and bees. It deals with one's relationship to all things, although it does come down to human interaction.
So having an appropriate relationship with each person and thing is a crucial element in the area of sex. What is an appropriate relationship? There is no fixed answer, but it would be appropriate according to the Creative Process -- no controlling or being controlled, just letting each relationship find its own balance and movement. Change is inevitable, and our ability to let the rings of intimacy move freely will say a lot about our understanding of sex.
Seeing how vast the field is, sex education would rightly begin at the beginning. As parents exemplify proper respect and care for each other, the child absorbs that (both in the womb and later). Beyond that, who is responsible for training the child in this area? The answer is: the same ones who are responsible for character training at each stage. The person responsible for attunement in the Foundation and Gestation stages would also need to be on hand for the pre-parents. Later the parents would be on hand for the child. This is not particularly meant to be instruction in sexual function, but what might be called training in intimacy.
Intimacy training would involve learning to sense the rhythms of the Creative Process in relation to another person. Communication would be a large part of this: learning to speak from the heart, to listen with the heart, to read silences and body language. Training in intimacy would mean learning to be so stable in oneself that another person can be heard and included with complete openness. Such training could be life-changing, even world-changing, for intimacy is one of the most delicate acts of harmonizing with creative rhythms, requiring of us all a deep sense of inner attunement.