Sex and Spirituality: A Survey

Every mind blowing orgasm is spiritual: 3 responses

Sex is spiritual if you express love: 9 responses

Only have sex with your spouse/life partner: 3 responses

Sex distracts from finding God: 0 responses

I started this poll in the Spiritual Networks community as a follow up to an earlier poll that I had seen and that, quite frankly, put me off a little. The question was whether bisexuality is a sin and while most respondents concluded that it wasn't, the survey nevertheless left the impression that sex wasn't supposed to be just for fun. So when I posted these four questions, most agreed that sex is spiritual as long as it is an expression of love. Three out of 15 respondents had the more conservative attitude, arguing that you should only have sex with your life partner (all three were women). Three other respondents were on the other side of the spectrum, arguing that every good orgasm is spiritual, independent of who you have it with.

In the sex is fun category, I especially liked a comment of one participant, defining s-e-x as a "synergetic energy exchange", to which someone else added s-e-x-i-e-r, "synergetic energy exchange in ecstatic release". In fact, she added that she is always happy to share this feeling with "All There Is" :)

Some added that sex can certainly be an expression of lack of love, but it doesn't have to come to that. One woman added the deep insight that men are likely afraid deep down that they cannot have multiple orgasms like the women which explains the subconscious drive for debasement, aggression and lack of love that is often expressed in pornography.

I was actually little surprised that no one went with the fourth option, that sex is a hindrance for finding God. I have met celibates in the Spiritual Network before, but not of these views were expressed when I asked this time around. Overall this survey was perhaps yet another reminder that for 10 spiritual travelers that could well be twelve spiritual paths. In fact, one women said that she would have voted for all four options if multiple answers were a possibility. 

Sex, Love and Power

When the power of love replaces the love of power, (wo)man will be God

Our spiritual community has wrapped a big super ego around sex and given that many of us have encountered a "dark side" in the bedroom, we are somehow afraid that our spiritual leaders are right in their claim that sex stands in the way of experiencing God. This is not so. In fact, we very much have God's approval when it comes to sex. God says in Neale Walsch's Conversations with God " I am in every bedroom." Sex is the ultimate physical expression of love, yet, every path traveler will have to explore and make peace with this energy differently and will probably have to face a demon in the bedroom as well.

A demon has always something to teach us. He helps us getting in touch with our animal instincts and will show us the image that we have of ourself and of others deep down inside. Whenever power symbols appeal to us in the bedroom, changes are that we haven't yet claimed our authentic power base in other areas of our lives. So the demon can in fact show us who we truly are and by claiming our authentic power base elsewhere, we are finally free to discover sex as physical expression of our love.

When we just repress our animalistic drive, we will never understand what sex truly is. George Gurdjieff was an influential spiritual teacher who tried helping people wake up from their hypnotic "sleep walking", as he called it. He would get his disciples completely drunk and would then encourage them to reveal their true colors. For example, he would suddenly shout "rooster" at someone and his drunken disciple would spontaneously let out a loud "Cook-a-Doodle-Doo" while everyone would collapse on the floor roaring with laughter. This is just one way of shadow work when you openly admit to yourself and everyone who you think you are deep inside of you. Perhaps sex can be thought of as a similar eye-opening experience. Your fantasies and your bedroom partners activate a side of you that you normally don't have access to.

Shadow work is hardly a "card blance" for doing everything you fancy doing. You can discover for yourself that if you always do what you want to do, you will face many situations when you cut yourself off the divine energy. Shadow work is pretty straight-forward: do whatever your heart desires and observe how you feel in the process and what kind of energies you carry around in the aftermath. When you fully experience something and afterwards understand what it stands for, you have brought a subconscious drive to the surface. You now know what will happen if you engage in these behaviors, physically and spiritually.Try to understand the meaning of everything you do. Every action, every graphic image that you perceive is a symbol. Try to understand what it really implies for you personally and make your choice.

Sex permeates everything we do and are about so we have to bring this drive to the surface. You can see it so clearly how many dimensions are intersecting in this single desire: our genes, our upbringing, our neurological wiring, our psychology and spiritual norms. Biologically, there is no denying that we are all driven by the "selfish gene" that wants to propagate itself as it has been doing successfully for millions of years. We may aspire to be a monk but our ancestors haven't been monks since otherwise we wouldn't have been around. We have to accept our drives and have a great chance exploring and realizing who we really are and understand other people as well. Let's be happy with the drive that we have in us and be proud of the distance that we already have traveled.

Sex is divine energy. When you fall in love with someone you have that natural desire to have sex. It is an expression of intimacy. The dance of yin and yang, male and female, push and pull, is divine. Symbolically, we celebrate the divinity of our partner physically. During sex we can experience a glimpse of Oneness. Yin and yang merge literally during the act of ejaculation. During the orgasm, for a brief moment, you experience Samadhi, the union with God. With this oneness, you both are able to create like God.

There is spiritual beauty in the physical act of two bodies joining, but we should not lose sight of the darker aspects of sex. In fact, the shadow comes out at night especially if we only look at our bedroom in rose. Sex can also be a pure expression of power. The evolutionary biologists are right. Our body combines million of years of gene competition. Psychologically, pretty much everything about us is power hunger even though we certainly don't like to put it that way to ourselves.

Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their fascinating book A Billion Wicket Thoughts, analyze 400 million internet searches between 2009 and 2010. Do you know what the second most popular heterosexual sex interest was? It was Cuckold porn, the fantasy of being dominated in the bedroom by an alpha male who has sex with your partner while you watch helplessly. Interesting, isn't it?And can you guess what - by far - the most popular sex search was? It was Lolita sex, the fantasy of sexually robbing the innocence of a young girl. Dominated by stronger bodies while dominating weaker bodies in return; you can see the capriciousness of your ego - the power hunger - right here. The ego whispers in your ear that you lack the power to fully satisfy your partner, but it shows you the appeal of dominating weaker bodies and spirits to compensate for it.

You can tell from these researches that men lust after power in the bedroom with the fear of impotence as its mirror image. How easy it is to impress a young woman who doesn’t have any sexual experience. They feel empowered when they are able to dominate and satisfy their partner in bed. However, sweeping an experienced woman off her feet instead requires authentic power. The fear of impotence always lingers, but few men are willing to face it. By repressing it they grow more distant from their bedroom partners and the sex life is getting more disappointing for both sides. So men express their sexual frustrations with porn instead and rarely realize how different mind sex is from actually having sex. Mind sex in all forms is about power while earth-chattering sex is a physical expression of love.

Do not immediately condemn power and aggression when you see it. The whole point of shadow work is that you reflect on what exactly the demon wants to communicate to you. Our spiritual community wants to embrace the power of love and looks down on the love of power. Yet, all the demon says is please look again. There is something that you currently disown about yourself. While dealing with dark forces is always very confusing and can be quite destructive for us spiritual travelers, try nevertheless to find out why these dark symbols appeal to you. First, understand what these symbols truly stand for, and second, find a creative way to make them your own in real life without undermining your spiritual journey in the process. No matter how scary your demon may look to you, there is always a creative way to express your natural power base without undermining your spiritual path.

All ego fantasies in the end boil down to the fact that you have not yet found your authentic spiritual power base and your demon brings this insight home in steamy images. Learn from your bedroom demon what kind of adjustments likely lie in store for you and work on expressing them. Perhaps you are simply too aggressive in your day to day dealings and your demon encourages you to get more in touch with your caring feminine self. Perhaps you are not assertive enough, so your demon wants you to stand up for yourself. Perhaps there is fear inside you that you are not able to satisfy your partner. Shadow work assumes that you will always find a creative outlet for your authentic needs and as you do, the demon will naturally fade into the background.

We are not condoning sexual fetishes, but we also don't condemn them. Just observe what is going on in your bedroom and explore how you can manifest your authentic power base in real life. Sexual fetishes are certainly not helping your spiritual path but at least the problem statement is out in the open. Suppressing your darker desires in the name of spirituality may just mean that the rude wake-up call still lies ahead. Experiment with your partner and discover how with her help the love of power naturally evolves into the power of love. Love and power do not have to clash at all. Wherever love is you will command natural power. But you may have some work ahead to claim it for yourself.

This note is part of "A Demon in the Bedroom" series. Please also look for
"Sex and Spirituality: The Dance of Yin and Yang" and
" Don't Confuse Mind Sex with Mind - Blowing Sex"

By Christian and Su Zhen

Spirituality and Sex

The essentially religious or creative motive is the first motive for all human activity. The sexual motives comes second. And there is great conflict between the interests of the two.
D.H. Lawrence in 'Fantasia of the Unconscious'

When my older boy was quite small he drew a picture for me, which took me my surprise because art was never really his thing. When I looked at it I could have sworn I saw something that looked like a penis next to an object that I couldn't make out. But then I saw that he had turned one of the P in 'FOR PAPA' upside down, so I flipped the painting and was really surprised about what I found instead. Both objects were now clearly visible and the picture displayed a Christ figure who was blessing a child instead. I thought this was a very symbolic message from the Tao ...share your sperm or share your holiness; you can't have both. Isn't that the message many religions have been preaching since the olden days?

In my experience I don't see how sex should be in conflict with spirituality. Sex is a physical expression of the love you have for a person and the sexual union is a symbolic expression of wholeness: yin and yang finally merge into oneness. I also can't find any fault with tantric sex - you experiment with sexual energy in a spiritual setting with a likeminded partner; where is the harm in that? Experiment with it and see whether you can manifest Heaven on earth that way.

Body obsession is something very different though. Observe how different it is to have sex instead of watching pornography or engaging in sexual fantasies. The bodies merge in the sexual act; the mind has nothing to obsess about. In fact, the mind shuts down when the yin and yang energies dance in harmony. But watch how different mind sex is - the mind is racing from body to body, while the soul level is entirely lost on you. Along a spiritual path you have to be able to appreciate everyone on a soul level, and you can only do that if you can look through their body completely. It is possible to do it, but it is a choice very much as my son's painting indicated. If you engage in mind sex, the spiritual and physical worlds will start interfering with each other.

The process of ejaculation is another debated point in the spiritual community. I discovered a couple of years ago that ejaculation drains my spiritual energy and that it takes me several days to recover from this shock. This obviously is one idiosyncratic male perspective and I have been talking to female co-travelers who do not experience any loss of energy when they have sex. I have no idea how representative my experience is for the male spiritual community, but just in case if you are affected like me, it turns out that there is a tantra discipline that allows you to experience orgasms while your sperm never leaves your body. So you can experience the best of both worlds, physical and spiritual, with that technique.

My hunch is that we are all traveling on different paths and we all return home to our Source from different directions. Some eat meat, others not; some have sex, others stay abstinent and some earn a living in ordinary occupations, whereas others spend their time in seclusion. Just experiment for yourself and see what works along your spiritual path. In my experience there are no taboos, just activities that are consistent with your spiritual progress and others that interfere. Once you have gotten a taste for how blissful the connection with the Tao really is, you will find it in your best interest to cut out all the interferences anyway. So please don't lose sleep over the potential conflict of sex and spirituality, just see for yourself how you can combine the physical and the spiritual in a way that works for everyone.

Highway to Heaven and Hell

A Buddhist monk was once asked how he can live without sex. He thought about it briefly and then said, ' Well, when you experience an orgasm all day long in whatever you do, you don't miss it that much at night!' There is a lot of wisdom in this statement. Sex gives you a taste for the orgasmic heights we can achieve. All addictions are the attempt to get this state of well-being with artificial means instead. A spiritual path is the journey in the opposite direction, that will teach you how to experience bliss all the time.

Addiction is an escape from freedom. Once you think of whatever it is that makes you high, you already feel the blood rushing through your brain. As you get access to your substance, a strange trance takes over and you give in and let that force run its course. The longer you stay on this highway to hell, the harder it gets to turn your car around. It is a joy ride, no doubt, as handing over the reigns to this force lightens up your pleasure center in your brain. But alas, life becomes unbearable without your fix afterwards and the fix needs to get ever more intensive if you want to experience a similar high next time around.

Walking the Tao is the opposite experience. You interact with life in ever more subtle ways as you understand that life communicates with you always. The joys you experience  day in, day out, become more frequent until you experience bliss wherever you are. The Tao sets you free in the way that life dances with you constantly and you have to stay way too alert for the 'robot' inside of you ever having a chance to take over. The Tao gives you increasing freedom from the  subconscious thought processes. Along this journey, there is mental clarity, a feeling of joy, peace and bliss that you have never experienced before.