Joe Perez (writer)
Joseph Perez (born 1969 in Moses Lake, Washington) is an American writer in the fields of spirituality and Integral theory.
Life
Works
Soulfully Gay is a memoir developed from a blog, and chronicles his efforts to come to grips with illness and spirituality.[1] It is a chronologically organized diary through which Perez describes the events that led him from being a Catholic youth from a working-class background to a Harvard student, and then on to sexual rebellion, drug abuse, living with HIV/AIDS, and ultimately discovering himself as a mystic and philosopher.[2] The philosopher and psychologist Ken Wilber wrote a column for BeliefNet over a year before the book's publication, in which he compared Perez to the French dramatist Antonin Artaud, in that he "rescued his life from disaster by turning it into art."[3] Perez's primary insight, according to Toby Johnson, is defining what he calls "The Importance of Being Gay." In a series of short essays he argues that there are four major patterns, archetypal and universal: masculine, feminine, other-directed, and same-directed. In Perez's philosophy, Love is said to be a manifestation of the soul's desire to be reunited with God both as love for others (heterophilia) and love for the self or similar (homophilia).[2] Perez himself, in a dialogue with Ken Wilber published by Integral Naked, said that he views the autobiographical climax of his book to be a reflection of homophilia in its positive and negative forms, Love (Agape) and Fear (Thanatos).[4] He lives in Seattle, Washington.[5]
As author
- Soulfully Gay: How Harvard, Sex, Drugs, and Integral Philosophy Drove Me Crazy and Brought Me Back to God
References
- ↑ Graham Christian. "Spiritual Living" Archived 2008-12-04 at the Wayback Machine, Library Journal, 2007-5-5. Retrieved on 2009-12-7.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namedjohnson - ↑ Ken Wilber. "Integral Spirituality in Real Life: Ken Wilber shares with Beliefnet.com users a forward he wrote to the not-yet-published volume 'Soulfully Gay.'", BeliefNet, 2005. Retrieved on 2009-12-7.
- ↑ Editors. "Integral Naked Presents Joe Perez: Soulfully Gay. Part 2. The Power of Integral Reconciliation" Archived 2007-12-17 at the Wayback Machine, Integral Naked, 2007. Retrieved on 2009-12-7.
- ↑ Joe Perez. "About Me" Archived 2009-04-19 at the Wayback Machine, Joe-Perez.com. Retrieved on 2009-12-7.