GEN235 The Garden of Eden Story in the Book of Genesis provides us with a working philosophy of sex and love.  [This verse] states, “…the Lord formed [Hebrew, yatzar] man [Hebrew, adam] from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath [nishmat] of life, and man became a living being [nefesh hayah].” The Hebrew roots each have a dual meaning.  Yatzar literally means “create,” but its root has been interpreted in the rabbinic tradition to mean the human desire to create, including sexual desire.  N’shamah means “soul,” but with the addition of one letter, it also means “breath.”  From this, we understand that the combination of desire and soul makes us human.  In the rabbinic tradition, desire is divided into two distinct components: the good or transcendent desire and the bad, or survival- and ego-oriented desire.  Both are required to create the wholeness of desire. With the integrated brain, we have the integration of differentiated states depicted as lower and higher.  If we conceive of the bad and good desire as an image, it perfectly matches the tri-level sexual brain.  Our self-centered desire (consisting of greed, lust, desire for instant gratification, and attraction) represents the reptilian and mammalian parts of our brain, while the transcendent desire, which allows us to connect to others in a deeper way, represents our human brain.  When we add n’shamah (soul) into the equation, we bring the Divine element into our sexual interactions.  DORSEX 129