The Spectrum Of Sensuality

Not all pleasures have to do with the senses.  Delight in reason, self-awareness, and the knowledge they provide all pertain to the laws of logic and one's mind, and they are the prerequisites to even understanding experiences by proving truths about them in the first place.  Some pleasures are or could be experienced with or without any sensory input.  Even when it comes to sensory pleasures, without a consciousness animating the body and experiencing the sensory perceptions, there would be no sensory pleasures because there would be no senses.  But what is the real spectrum of sensory pleasures?  In a culture where many people might reserve the word pleasure for describing sexual experiences and could fail to look past words to concepts that transcend sexuality, pleasure's true nature can go unnoticed, or at least unfocused upon.

Sexual pleasure already has mental and bodily components: pleasurable feelings of sexual attraction have to do with the contents of one's consciousness and pleasurable experiences with physical arousal require a body, for instance.  The same is true of other pleasures, for there is always a mental component to recognizing, experiencing, and at least mildly understanding any other pleasure derived from the senses.  It is just that sexual pleasure that comes from seeing, touching, or hearing something sexual (I mean something truly sexual, like having sex with a partner and not just looking at an attractive, exposed body) is but one subset of a wider range of sensory pleasures that almost everyone with functioning senses already experiences every day.

The taste of delicious food, the feel of comfortable clothing, and the sight of a preferred style of architecture can all instill a distinct awareness and appreciation of pleasure, and yet none of these things have anything to do with sexuality despite having to do with the senses.  Even the sensuality of the naked or clothed human body is objectively nonsexual; it is a nonsexual thing that is sometimes perceived and acted upon in a sexual manner.  Pleasure, including pleasure that involves the senses, is far broader than the strictly sexual contexts it is sometimes associated with.  The spectrum of sensuality extends into many things that the word is not necessarily used to reference despite the nature of sensuality being obvious to anyone who contemplates it while making no assumptions and looking to reason.

Sexual pleasure is still one of the deepest, most philosophically and personally stimulating (if one approaches it with rationalistic and introspective depth) kinds of pleasure it is possible to experience, whether it is the pleasure of having and reflecting on sexual feelings or the pleasure of acting upon them alone or with a partner.  This does not mean that sensuality does not need to be understood as fundamentally nonsexual when it does or does not pertain to the sight or feel of the human body--especially if someone wants to have both superior awareness of the nature of things and a fuller range of pleasurable experiences.  The only things to lose are the chains of assumptions and a more limited degree of self-awareness.

In the context of Christian theology, embracing sensuality actually takes on further significance.  To embrace sensuality without assumptions and irrational beliefs, hedonism, or the pursuit of sinful acts is for Christians ultimately an expression of love for God and what he has created.  This can serve as a way to explore the potential depths of one's own self and the nature of logical truths about pleasure without forfeiting the realization that there is more to existence than pleasure of an intellectual or sensual kind.  It can even be done with prayerful gratefulness for the nonsinful nature of many pleasures--including sexual pleasures of the senses like masturbation.  What a rational person will not cease to believe, though, is that sensuality encompasses more than sexuality and that pleasure encompasses more than sensuality.