Sex

Can a true spiritual practitioner ever walk a path that includes sex?

Many traditions talk about the need to let go of sex, as it interferes with what they say is needed in order to realise the highest truth. But how does sex get in the way of realising this truth?

I've felt different things about sex over the years, from complete abstinence, to only for procreation, to even offering it to god. The idea of having sex can weigh heavily, and the desire to partake in it is one of the strongest we feel. Is it any wonder that something with that kind of pull gets in the way?

Not everyone has an issue with sex – we know many of the religious clergy have to abstain, but not all. Different organisations have different rules for their holy men/priests. Yet you'd think that anyone playing the role of ‘father' would easily see their congregation as their children – and what decent father has sex with their children?

Do these spiritual fathers reflect the highest level of spiritual path, or are they just doing a job? To minister to those in need of guidance seems like a pretty good calling to me, but like any counsellor/psychologist, the idea of fancying those you're there to guide cannot be right. To really help someone, one has to really connect, and to really do that, thoughts of anything along these lines will always get in the way.

These fathers do sometimes experience sexual thoughts, after all, they're only human, regardless of whether they're wearing a costume or taking an oath. Is it unrealistic to expect a father to live a celibate life, and still offer guidance to those who do not? Shouldn't the father have had the necessary experience in order to counsel people on such matters? Perhaps that's why many clergy don't need to be celibate, and why many who are fail at it.

When I've been in the position of counselling another, the responsibility weighed heavily upon me not to allow things to ever go there. It didn't mean there wasn't temptation, even though it wasn't my job to be counsellor, but the ethical/moral aspects still affected me.

The religious fathers have to follow rules laid down by their superiors, but the lone aspirant, someone who may feel similar things without having a calling to become part of an ideology, has to make it up as they go along.

It may feel comfortable when you know what your role is, but the price for this comfort is the loss of freedom to be able to go where another cannot. To be able to change things, and to make those changes when it matters, is the only way to make the kind of changes that will reveal what needs to be experienced.

While nothing is wrong with the celibate life, it isn't right either. What might work for one will get in the way of another, so it really depends on where someone is right now as to how they see these things.

Is there anything you can take from my experience? I don't think so. While there were times when I felt I had the answer to this question, those answers no longer feel certain.

If you're living with the right person. If you're wanting to be a parent. You're probably not looking at life with this perspective anyway. If you've been with the right person. If you've been a parent. You may very well no longer view sex as important or even necessary.

That is where I find myself today. The idea of being with anyone who wasn't my partner left me a long time ago. The idea of wanting a certain kind of partner followed soon after. The possibility of sex is still present, and there are times when the idea does make me want to experience it. It's not easy dealing with this, and I understand why single sex communities come about, although, even that doesn't stop certain things from taking place once an individual's doors is closed.

I would be happy to live in such a community, but I have no problem being around women. Seeing women as Sister feels ever more real, as the idea of Brother has always been so, and the elimination of sex from the equation just makes everything a lot easier. We don't eliminate the desire for sex by avoiding it – we have to transcend it.

I'm not sure if we ever really do anything spiritually by simply avoiding something, other than perhaps believing we do. On the other hand, as belief is incredibly powerful, perhaps that is enough.

 

While I can assume that the majority of people on this forum are under 25, and therefore this subject may be outside the way this age group normally thinks about it, it's interesting that nobody has felt to say anything about this.

I wonder why that is?

Could it be you just can't relate to what I've written? Perhaps this view has no meaning for you? Or maybe you're not interested in looking at this issue from this specific perspective?

Whatever it is, don't worry, I don't mind. I never expect anything when I post these threads anyway. I am a little surprised though. Even though some of my threads don't bring many responses (I'll take quality over quantity any time), they usually do better than no response at all.

 

Good post.

Lust is the key here, but as doublevision stated, there's nothing wrong with sex when it's something you share with someone you feel deeply for.

And what AnoesisOrange said:

makes much sense.

The OP is more for those who feel some kind of calling to walk beyond the average path, and who will have already experienced sharing real love in a relationship, and probably children. It's unlikely to be adopted by just anybody just yet (although the planet might thank us for doing so as it 'strains' under the weight of the many it already carries).

With such easy access to the internet, much, much more can be experienced behind closed doors than was ever possible with a magazine or video, and therefore much more awareness and understanding is needed not to be caught in it.

But even if you still need to experience all that the world can offer in this area, it doesn't mean there aren't those who can't do so in a different/better way than they might otherwise have been.

I don't know how I would've taken being told things like this when I was 18 - I doubt it would've changed much of what followed. But then I was dealing with the effects of the generation that came before me; where the idea of sex was still taboo, where you never discussed it openly, or with the kids, and where you kept what you did hidden.

I remember as a kid, searching in my parents bedroom when they were out, and finding certain magazines my father kept hidden. Not only was it exciting to look at the naked women they contained, but in my young and naive way, the feelings of lust they engendered, and the objectifying of women as sex objects it produced, became something that really messed with me, and it took a long time to work through once I realised how much I'd been affected.

They were never left out for me to find, and had I not been so bloody nosy I'd never have found them, so I don't blame him for having them. If it hadn't been those, it would have been others, as the lure of the top shelf in the magazine shop never stopped calling.

Today it's very different. Some try to control their kids from accessing these sites, which only makes them want to do so more. Nothing should be taboo, as that only makes it seem more desirable.

When I look around at the under 21's where I live, I am encouraged at how much more aware and responsible they are, compared to how my generation seemed to be. They may not reflect other areas in other countries, but they reveal it is possible to be around women and not objectify them sexually.

It may be that the way our vibration is increasing, as a result of the collective rise in consciousness that is happening, despite what the media would have you believe, this issue will take care of itself. It doesn't mean we don't need to take responsible for our own actions right now, but it should mean it won't have to be so hard to see what needs to be seen.

 

Good point. Titles are never my strong point (this wasn't even the first one). Perhaps just 'sex' would have been better.

Fair enough. It can be all too easy to get caught in the way the Christian church does it.

 

Quite a bit of truth I think.

After all, it's our innate imperative to spread the seed. Gotta really feel we must, else we couldn't have survived as a species.

 

I remember the feeling well.

Secret:

Don't try. Don't try to get a girlfriend. Be yourself, accept women as they are, not as potential girlfriend material, and she will appear when you're ready.

 

These are the tests all good men have to go through. I can't tell you when, but she is coming.

 

You often hear of boxers being told not to indulge in sex before a fight.

We know that certain spiritual traditions suggest we must let go of having sex in order to transmute the sexual energy into opening up what would otherwise remain closed.

I've looked at the effects of sex on many levels, at different times of my life, as I mentioned in the OP. Apart from releasing certain chemicals at the time of orgasm, Oxytosin being one of the main ones, the brain makes us feel warm and satisfied, especially in women, after we do.

But there is an effect on the energy I have to channel my creativity into my writing, for example, that seems to increase, when sex, sexual thought, or the desire for it, hasn't taken place for a while.

I find I don't need cannabis anywhere near as much to get the juices flowing (no pun intended), and often start writing something before I've realised that I'm tackling a subject that previously required an altered state of consciousness before anything worth while came out.

This proves nothing of course - it's just anecdotal, but there are changes that appear to confirm why sex, and the thought of sex, on some level, even physically if you include the boxers, has more effect on who we are and what we do, than we might realise.