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. 

The Four Cs of Love

Sex is the human counterpart of the cosmic process.

(Chinese Proverb)

I was texting a friend the other day and was explaining my spiritual concept of the 3 Cs: care, creation and connection when I saw an object flashing on my phone. Anyone who has texted with an iPhone knows how Apple puts the texts of the conversation partners in different colors and also puts little bubbles around the text. The object that I saw appearing on screen had the form of a penis and given that I was just talking about the 3Cs, the slang version of it crossed my mind. I thought this must be my shadow talking but then lost track of the whole thing as our conversation progressed.

Later that afternoon I read Rollo May's "Love and Will" and in it he discussed the four different concepts of love: sex - libido, devotion to others - caritas, creation - eros, and brotherly love - philia. Immediately my mind went back to my morning conversation. Wasn't that exactly what the 3Cs were about? But what about sex? Was my Freudian Slip just a wake-up call that I had forgotten the physical expression of love?

That's indeed how a shadow works. It reminds you that something is missing in a language that seems a little offish. But the intention is a good one. Yes, sex is a perfect expression of love and it needs to be added as the fourth dimension of love. So the four concepts of love are coitus, care, creation and connection. Actually, the expression coitus is perfect. It means "going together" in Latin - that's something we spiritual travelers can definitely relate to; we always welcome co-travelers along the Way!

The Journey Back to the Garden of Eden

It is a biological fact that once you have climbed out of the mother's womb you can't climb back. The Story of the Tree of Knowledge was exactly that. We left our subconscious connection with God and nature and became aware of our own creative powers. Alas, with the gain of powers came a loss of innocence, a break with our God-connectedness.

When we spend all day getting drunk, stuffing our face, having sex orgies, working ourself to death, or maxing our credit card on stuff we don't really need, we in fact try to climb back into our mother's womb. We want to lose consciousness and experience this feeling of connectedness with artificial means. It backfires as we all know and after a brief feeling of orgasmic bliss we feel even more alienated and irritated. Yet, if we spend time in meditation instead, with people we love or on creating things that are meaningful to us, we in fact are going back to that original state with proper means. 

By the way, we are not saying that sex, alcohol, dancing, working hard or indulging in things we care for is not part of the Way. Drowning out the 'here' with the help of artificial means in order to be 'there' is the problem;  meaningful work, celebration and exaltation is the Way! It is a free joining of a Force that flows through you rather than a desire to escape the here and now.

Living in the Now - walking the Tao as we call it - is the experience of finding this God connection that we once lost. The meaning of life is communicated to us when we experience that divine connection just as in the olden days. We experience life and know that it is "good" without getting entangled in the good versus evil battle at all. 

A spiritual path is the journey Home. We have tasted from the Tree of Knowledge and we now create freely in our Mother's garden. Heaven on earth is right here in front of us. Learn to center yourself as the yin and yang of life unfolds and you can experience Her Presence all of the time. 

On Spirituality and Sex

We ran an interesting poll in the community, Spiritual Networks. The question read, "Does Spiritual Awakening Strengthen or Weaken the Sex Drive?" Some 40 people participated and told us about their experiences. For those who participated in the on-line survey, the majority felt it was strengthening the drive (10 people), whereas 6 reported an unchanged drive. No-one voted for weaken, though in the commentary a couple reported a lower sex drive, at least temporarily.

Sex is a complicated issue for us spiritual folks. So many things are coming together, our biological drives, our longings to express love physically, the hostile stance of most religions vis-a-vis sex, and the different sexual experience of men and women.

The reason for posting this question was the idea that a spiritual path is all about activating and intensifying the movement of energy up our spine which has its root in the sexual organs. It stands to reason that as the chakras open up, at least initially, you would experience the sex drive more intensely.

Actually, the commentary was all over the place. We had a few respondents who reported being sexual abstinent to intensify the spiritual experience. Some reported that the drive was the same, but that the actual sexual experience was so much more intensive as you suddenly activate higher energy frequencies in the sexual union.

A few respondents pointed out that the answer to that question very much depended on your starting point of your spiritual journey; others conjectured that whatever you experience is very much a function of your own belief system.

There seemed broad agreement that sex can be used to experience the highest feeling of unity and love, and it can be exploited by your ego to send you on a meaningless pleasure trip. The different experience of women and men also was briefly discussed; someone pointed out that the restrictive religious rules over the millennia were all male dominated. Perhaps it is a good time now for a refreshing female perspective :)

So where does it leave us? Well, chances are you just cannot sideline your sex drive as many gurus advocate. Suffering is meaningless. If your body and soul tell you to explore your sexual drive then you probably should do exactly that. Express yourself, experiment, but don't lose your Self in this bodily experience either. Expressing yourself sexually is the same spiritual mission statement as everything else about your life: your spiritual path is unique and the Tao will let you know what mission life has in store for you  - don't be surprised if a few lessons take place in the bedroom as well :)

The Field

I am at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas in January 2005. At one of the 300 exhibitors booths on the floor of the Sands Expo Center is Tiffany Holiday, a woman who performs in pornographic movies. She is kissing and touching another female performer, and a crowd of men gathers around. There are rules for how much sexual activity can take place on the convention floor, and the two women are pushing the boundary. The crowd engages them to go further.

The other woman leaves, and Tiffany begins to simulate masturbation, all the while talking dirty to the men gathered around her. The crowd swells to about 50 men. I'm stuck in the middle holding a microphone for a documentary film crew. Emboldened by the size of the crowd, the men's chants for more explicit sex grow louder and more boisterous. Holiday responds in kind, encouraging the men to tell her what they like. The exchange continues, intensifying to the point where the men are moving as a unit-like a mob.

Men's bodies are pressed against each other as each one vies for the best view of the woman's breasts, vagina, and anus. Many of the men are using cameras, camcorders, or cell phones to record the scene. It's difficult not to notice- not to feel- that the men pressed against me have erections. It's difficult not to conclude that if there weren't security guards on the floor, these men would likely gang-rape Tiffany Holiday.
(Robert Jensen, Getting Off Pornography and the End of Masculinity.)

Robert Jensen experienced this scene and referred to the excited crowd as mob. Yet, reading about this experience it felt more like a trance. It was as if all the male spectators were caught in a massive dark energy field, and, as the author alluded to, things could have gotten out of control very fast. History is full of scary field stories, like the lynching of presumed criminals or even genocides. Adolf Hitler deliberately created these dark power fields during rallies. The crowd had to gather late at night in massive stadiums, at a time when the will power of the spectator was naturally weakened from the fatigue of standing for hours. After a passionate nationalistic speech he cried "Do you want the total war?" and all they could cry in unison was "yes!"

All these examples are of course dark ones, even though the idea of an energy field of like-minded people doesn't have to. When you go to a rock concert you are caught in an energy field. The experienced artists know that and deliberately manipulate this field. So you could say that whenever like-minded people gather they create a field. You can have economic ones like housing or equity market bubbles, a fashion fad, a shared corporate culture or a community. You could even think of positive fields like a spiritual community, a church or a school.

The field is something you can observe when you are very sensitive and silent.  You can observe the trigger when it touches you and you can feel that your behavior changes as you join a different set of people or go to different kind of place.  When you join a field totally, you can observe that your behavior changes accordingly.  Sometimes you get completely transformed by this field to the degree that you cannot recognize yourself any more.

Say you go to the shopping mall. You feel that impulse to buy, so you end up buying more than you ever need.  When you go home and when you don't look at your shopping bags for a couple of days and open them later, you are in amazed and wonder how you could have purchased so much stuff. As you join the mall you get sucked in by the mood of the like-minded shoppers and the clever store and mall arrangements of the advertisers. Being part of the field happens to all of us. We think we are doing things  out of our own free will but actually are under some kind of spell.  When you are carried away, it is like you are being hypnotized.  No one can force you against your will to join a field but you can be lulled into something in the same  way the guys at the LA Adult Entertainment Expo were.

By Christian and Su Zhen

Don't Confuse Mind Sex with Mind-Blowing Sex

To the ego's dark glasses you need but say " I will not look here because I know these images are not true."
A Course in Miracles

Have you ever observed how different "mind sex", the exploration of sexual fantasies is from actually having sex. When you have sex, your mind gets blown away by the dance of yin and yang energies. When you have mind sex instead, you think this is just letting off a little steam, but this is not so. Every fantasy is a castle of the ego and you are sent on a pleasure trip that takes you away from who you truly are. While sex is of God, mind sex leads is of the ego and thus leads you away from God - it is as simple as that.

It is of little use to condemn sexual fantasies, you would be condemning yourself that way. If you meet someone attractive and if you afterwards have steamy fantasies there is little you can do about it. What you can do though, don't engage in it, just let this energy come and go and then move on with your life. But if you have spent the night watching pornography and next day you get one sexual fantasy after the other, you very much can do something about it. Stop watching pornography!

Many spiritual leaders have described our brain as a garden. Once you let weed in, it spreads fast and you have to painfully pluck it out one by one. Recent neurological discoveries very much confirm this theory. As they say, what fires together wires together. After some excessive consumption of pornography don't be surprised if your first glance goes to the breasts of your potential soul sibling. You may not really have access to her soul after a pornography orgie. Sexual addicts often report that they need to use all their willpower not to view all women as sex objects. And experts of the video game Tetris report that they see three dimensional rectangles floating in real life as well after playing the game. We see in front of us what our mind engages in all day; it is as simple as that.

Pornography, at least the stuff that is geared towards the male audience, is a classic ego device. The camera zooms into body parts and not people; most of the images display a power game that the ego loves. As you watch the graphic images you see in fact a hostile act of body parts which is hardly a symbol for wholeness much in contrast to having sex with your soul partner. Also, as every consumer of hard-core porn can tell you, the further along you go on this pleasure trip, the darker the sexual images will become. Sex addicts will also tell you that if you go down this pleasure ride long enough you will discover a strange trance. Biologically, engaging with the dark side releases chemicals in your brain that can get addictive over time. Psychological and spiritually a lot more is going on: the further you go down the mind sex road the more dirt you will throw on love. It is the demon whispering in your ear, "Go to sleep my friend - just enjoy the joy ride!"

The more you engage in these imagination, the more inclined you think that this is who you are; the more power to give to the demon, the more steps you take away from God. Experience for yourself how fear creeps in whenever you give a little finger to your demon. You can stop this nightmare; find a way to disentangle yourself from it. Shadow work is a process, it is a journey towards understanding who you truly are deep down inside. These graphic images may be beneficial to learn something about yourself, but eventually you will have to give up all forms of mind sex. Where your sexual fantasies are, true love cannot be. A spiritual path is a journey towards the light and away from darkness. When you connect with the Tao you will only experience love and all dark symbols will naturally drop by the wayside. After you have walked down the dark alley for a while, after you have understood the appeal of the symbols that you have seen, the Tao will intervene and take you in a different direction for the simple reason that every additional step would just hurt you. You will know when you are ready to drop all that and then it will not be so hard to do.

Just imagine, do you really think you will have sex the way you fantasize right now? Do you really think you will perform these acts that you see in on the internet or in pornographic movies? Just observe yourself, whenever you are doing something that deep down inside tells you that you are throwing dirt on love - you can observe for yourself that you are being infused with a strange dark energy at this moment. In fact, this strange dark feeling can actually add to the sexual excitement and is even something you can get addicted to. It is perhaps obvious to say that for a spiritual path traveler this dark energy is a step away from God. Guilt will surely come your way as the force that first entices you to engage will later beat you up over it.

Forbidden acts have a strange sexual appeal. Writes Robert J. Stoeller in Observing the Erotic Imagination: "In perversion the desire to sin is essential for being turned on." True indeed! Many sex addicts report that the very contemplation of their taboo activity puts them in a strange trance. Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam in their book A Billion Wicked Thoughts suggest that our visceral nervous system is responsible for this. We are wired to release neurological chemicals during periods of extreme stress. In the olden days we had to be on the top of our game when we needed to decide whether to run from the bear or face him. Apparently we can be addicted to these chemicals but we have to keep exposing ourselves to darker and darker sexual symbols to get the same stimulus. That is how the road to addiction looks like. Like with all ego activities, our neurological processes and biological wiring are exploited psychologically and we convince ourselves - consciously or subconsciously -that we are sinning when we engage in these taboo acts. 

Don't beat yourself up over the way you are wired, the whole point of shadow work is to figure out why you respond the way you do. Traveling along the Tao is never about "good" or "bad", everything that comes your way becomes an eye-opening experience instead and this may include mind sex and pornography as well. A spiritual path is all about experiencing and understanding everything yourself. You cannot make a mistake really, all you can do is to delay your homecoming journey, but don't worry, the Tao will at every stage show you the way to the light.

It gets very hard to be on that discovery course if we don't have a partner to play and experiment with. Some people are without a significant other, while others might just be dissatisfied sexually in their relationship. When we can't express our sexual desires we are tempted with substitutes like prostitution or pornography. It is ok to be fascinated with these substitutes but you have to turn towards real life instead if you want to advance on your spiritual journey. Of course you deserve to have a significant other and of course you have the right to mind- blowing sex.

So go out and find sexual fulfillment. The Tao will cooperate with you. Sex is divine and it is beautiful if you manage to get in touch with this natural flow of life. Express this divine energy with the one you love. Whatever your soul partner is, sexual healing will just be around the corner. If occasionally you miss a beat and walk down a dark alley instead that is ok too, your soul partner will pull you right back onto the healing path. Have mind-blowing sex and observe for yourself how the ego's dark symbols fade into the background that way.

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

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/sex-and-spirituality-dance-of-yin-and.html
"Sex, Love and Power"

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/sex-love-and-power.html

By Christian and Su Zhen 

Sex and Spirituality: The Dance of Yin and Yang

 You probably have found for yourself, when it comes to sex, men and woman are quite different. As they say, men are from Mars while women are from Venus. We are wired differently biologically, we role-play differently, we are powered by different hormones. Men are yang energy while women are yin. Men are inherently assertive, direct and to the point; men represent an outgoing energy. Women are receptive, consensus building and emotionally more intelligent; women symbolize the ingoing energy. Yet in all the differences men and woman are the same in that they aspire to find out who they truly are, away from the norms of the society and even away from the notions of religion and spirituality. Yin and yang energies are part of a homecoming journey. When they truly express themselves they will always find love and wholeness in the process.

You can to be in harmony with yourself; you can be in tune with your nature and sex drive. Unfortunately society has expectations about how this dance of yin and yang should look like, as have our spiritual leaders. If you are a man, perhaps you criticize yourself for your urge to chase women; perhaps you mind that you "always want it". Man's sexual nature tends to be more aggressive and that may be be hard to accept especially if this view conflicts with your notion of spirituality. We don’t mean to imply that you should do whatever you want to do, but try to express yourself in the bedroom the way you truly are and not how you want to be. You will learn a lot in the process. Sexual repression doesn't help yin, it doesn't help yang and may also not help God much. Men are attractive to women when they display their "nature". When men embrace their masculinity they are affirmative, active, assertive and strong. The same principles apply to women as well. When a woman is in tune with her feminine side she will become most attractive to a man. She is tender and gentle, passive, colorful, loving and beautiful. She embraces her body and is tune with her hormonal fluctuations.

As a rule of thumb, whenever you are aware of who you are, when you are in tune with your nature, you will be in harmony with yourself, with life and with the Tao. But whenever you have opinions about yourself, whenever you try to be what society or your notion of spirituality tells you, you are in conflict with yourself, your bedroom partner and the Tao.

Sexy men and women are those who are aware of their nature and are in harmony with themselves. They naturally attract more people to their life because that is how Tao works. The Tao is an energy exchange and if you open up to your true nature you activate every ounce of energy within yourself. You can observe that when the opposite sex meet with each other, the women becomes even more feminine while the men become more masculine. That is how the energy balance works. In this way, they are attracted to each other and complement and help each other to fulfill their respective roles. Both sexes need each other to become whole.

When men and women meet each other and become one, they re-experience and rediscover the taste of oneness with God. When they love each other, devote themselves to each other and forget about themselves, they are in the Now - they travel the Tao. As a matter of fact, it can't get any more spiritual than that. There only is the Now, and the dance of yin and yang gets you there. You experience true love, harmony and creation. The biologists are right in their view that the "selfish gene" works hard in the background to propagate itself. But this is only part of the story. The other part is that the Tao works with this drive and leads you straight to love, to wholeness and with it, to God.

Yin and yang will always be a dance of different energies. This even holds true with homosexuality. When two partners of the same gender meet in the bedroom, someone will be passive and someone assertive, someone will be yin and someone yang. It takes two to tango and in this dance someone will always lead while someone will follow, just as in the bedroom someone tends to lie on top, while someone will be on the receiving end of this sexual energy. That is the eternal dance of yin and yang.

However, don't confuse aggression with assertiveness and don't mix abuse with submission.The dance of yin and yang holds the ticket to manifesting love. If you use the creative powers of sex to throw - symbolically or real - dirt on love, you will cut into your own power base and you will naturally deviate from the Tao. Have a look at pornography and see the ego symbols at display in most of them. Instead of a merger of souls it becomes a battle of body parts. The power of men over women is an ongoing theme that the ego gets exited about. They say that once the power of love transcends the love of power, (wo)man will be God. Make this your spiritual yardstick for everything and say consciously no to the power game when it conflicts with respect and love for your partner.

Discovering the love for power in pornography is not hard to do and, as a rule, men fall more easily into this trap than women to. Yet women are also at risk to fall into the power trap, beautifully ornamented by the appearance of love. Women are attracted by status and by looks. Men go out and conquor the world while women go out and conquer the men who conquer the world. Women are in love with the "alpha male" , the top male in looks, sports, entertainment, business, politics or society and they find all kind of reasons for themselves why it is not about power, but about love instead. If you use your body to get something you are neglecting your soul and you violate the spiritual harmony that way. But you know what, fall in love with whoever you think you love, and use your body however you like. TheTao will always show you the way to true love. Some relationships will lead to marriages, some marriages will lead to soul partnerships. You may "fall in love" for the wrong reasons, but life will always give you a change to heal and be healed. Don't condemn the "selfish gene", just observe and adjust and let the Tao lead you straight to true love and with it to God.

Enjoy the dance of yin and yang, and enjoy it in the bedroom as well. Find the true sexual expression of who you are and overcome the rules of society and your own notions of how yin and yang should behave. Let your body teach you who you are and not your mind. But don't get enslaved by your passion. Observe your ego in action and be mindful when the ego wants to throw dirt on love. Discover for yourself that we can understand our biological roots and our evolutionary strive for power. Be mindful of the chemicals in your brain that get released as you start the physical dance of yin and yang, the hormones that drive your actions and your mood, and the blood that is rushing through your system. 

Power symbols may show up in the bedroom, aggression may meet submission in the bedroom at both party's delight. You have to accept what turns you on, yet understand that this just reflects a power imbalance in the rest of your life. Find out the authentic need expressed by your demon in the bedroom and work on it. Perhaps it is a wake-up call to be more assertive in your interactions, perhaps it is a reminder to ease up a little and to get in touch with your feminine side. Your bedroom can help you find who you truly are. Enjoy the dance of yin and yang, embrace sexual healing and find out for yourself how the power of love can replace the love of power.

This note is part of " A Demon in the Bedroom" series. Please also look for 

"Sex, Love and Power" 

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/sex-love-and-power.html

" Don't Confuse Mind Sex with Mind-Blowing Sex"

http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-confuse-mind-sex-with-mind-blowing.html

By Christian and Su Zhen

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

The Beauty of Sexual Energy

Sexual energy is God's creative force running through you. You can see this force everywhere, in animals, in plants and in us. In nature this energy is innocent and natural. You can observe this circle of creation when animals are in heat or even in plants as they get ready for the next season. Everything reproduces along God's cycle. When we see plants bloom, we are wowed by their beauty and when we see animals mate, we take it as natural without spending a second thought on it.

Experiencing sexual energy is more complicated in us. We are the only ones who can have sex all the time and our mind can get into the way. In some cultures sex is still something that isn't talked about openly. Yet whether our cultures or religions feel comfortable with it or not, it is still a fact that this force drives us beneath the surface. In animals you can see a spike in their attractiveness when they are ready to mate. When mating season is approaching they will present themselves in the most attractive light to the other sex. The same is true in us. Did you know that in an experiment the tips of exotic dancers were tracked over a month's period and that ovulating women received significantly more? We might not be conscious of it, but the creative cycle is alive and well in us very much as in nature.

When the hormone surge in you, you will become beautiful and attractive and you have the natural desire to attract a mate. You can see this desire in teenagers. They develop the desire to hang out with the opposite sex and will start dressing up if the culture allows them to. In the Western culture this is accepted now, though parents naturally grind their teeth over the fact that soon their beloved children will be ready to have sex.

Religious mindsets are hindering more than helping when it comes to sex. Why to step in front of this natural cycle of expressing the beauty of the creative force. Why to make it a taboo to have sex before marriage. The sanctity of marriage makes sense for those who believe that a soul partnership allows two people to become whole by devoting a life time with each other and by raising a family together. But why would that prevent us from expressing the creative sexual force with meaningful other partners before this commitment, or if you have a like-minded partner, perhaps even afterwards. If you repress your natural instincts it will have negative ramifications. Our demon pops up often in the bedroom just because we repress this strong and beautiful force in us.

Sex is beautiful if you let God's natural cycle run its course. Sex hormones make you beautiful if you allow their natural flow being expressed through you. Bloom like a flower and attract the right partner into your life. God has a present for you. Decorate yourself with this magic power and shine bright like a diamond. Share God's present with the world.

By Christian and Su Zhen

On Spiritual Purity

When Sri Ramakrishna, the 19th century sage of Dakshineswar, India said that he couldn't associate with money his disciple Vivekananda wanted to test him so he hid a coin under his mattress. Next day Sri Ramakrishna reported that he couldn't sleep at all that night.

Along the Tao you will have to drop some of your habits. You might no longer be able to work in the profession you did before. You may change your eating or drinking habits. Your sexual practices might change or you might drop sex altogether. The thing though is, experience for yourself what this change is about. Just see for yourself what happens when you practice what you have been doing before and how you feel when you drop that activity for good. You can run experiments just like Vivekananda did. However, also remember that we need you to show your true colors. Only because some guru is a vegetarian and lives like a monk doesn't mean you have to. Explore and express yourself. You don't need to worry, the Tao will communicate clearly to you what works and what doesn't.

I have a very simple rule of thumb. I do whatever feels right to express my love. I have become vegetarian because I care for animals. I drink alcohol when I have the chance to toast with my friends. I also haven't found that sex interferes with my spiritual path as long as it is an expression of love. I work in the financial industry which is, many would argue, obsessed with money. It doesn't touch me though as I am focussing my attention on the interactions with my friends at work. This is the path the Tao has chosen for me. I am here to help my friends and will do that happily until I get the signal to move on to my next career, that of a spiritual coach. The Blue Lord was teaching Arjun the path toward enlightenment on the battlefield in the Bhagavad Gita. Define your own path towards purity but remember your starting point in this journey. You have to share your gifts with humanity in your special way. You will see that the Tao encourages you to express your idiosyncratic being. Be creative, be bold and be flexible to change course when the next cue shows up.

The Yin and Yang of the Tao

The symbol of Tai Chi puts the harmonious coexistence of male and female - yin and yang - so powerfully and simply as the interaction of black and white in a circle. This interaction creates wholeness, represented by the circle, and inside the black half there is a little white circle just as inside the white half there is a little black circle.

That is how we are. No matter how feminine or masculine you are, you will always have an area in your life where the opposite energy rules. Some may suppress it, but it is still there. You have been created by the union of yin and yang, you have both your parents in you, just as they were the product of their parents. So inside you, there are these two different energies running.

You might be a man, the embodiment of yang energy; so you extend your energy, you are assertive and are out to conquer, while yin takes energy in, is more passive and inclusive. Surely, there are girls and women who are dominated by male energy, just as there are boys and men who are dominated by female energy, which explains homosexuality. The principle is the same though, male and female energy unite to find wholeness.

The union between yin and yang brings balance. We are all out to find our right partner - the complementary energy that makes us whole. If you live by yourself you must realize that something is missing. So, most of us anyway, are drawn to the opposite sex to become whole, stable and balanced. Just as the Tao stabilizes and harmonizes the energies in the Universe, so in the way, you aim to replicate this feat in your family life. As above, so below, as they say.

Apparently, we can not just simply go out and have sex to achieve this balance and harmony. Sex gives you a temporary high, it allows you to play out the yin and yang dance in the physical exchange. Who lies on top and who is below, who is giving and who is receiving, who is screaming how and when - all these acts are psychological expressions of yin and yang. Yet, as you return to your home after the physical union, your satisfaction soon vanishes. You need to live with your complementary energy field if you aspire to experience wholeness, hard though this sometimes seems to be.

Yin and yang also represent the opposite side of physical world. Actually, they are the polar ends of a complete spectrum. The union is one, that is what the Universe is as well. All energy forces work that way. High energy meet low energy, exuberance meets depression, day meets night and birth meets death. We often want the one and not the other, but we have to wholeheartedly embrace both if we like to be happy. It is all a cycle of energy. When your energy is low, take a rest, just as you sleep at night to be ready for the sunny next morning.

The black circle in the white half and white circle in the black half indicates the dynamic nature of Tao. It is always changing and moving. When you feel happy, the seed of sadness is already on the way to sprout. Because it is still beneath the surface so you can not sense it yet, but it is already on its way. It is the same when you are sad, the seed of happiness is on the way too. Observe it in yourself, it is possible to see if you are sensitive enough.

Tai Chi studies and expresses these energy moves. Let everything in your life flow as effortlessly; accept every move without resistance and get completely lost in it. There is never any control, never any anticipation, just movement along the harmonious flow. The mind is not involved at all, and the emotions flow in tandem with the Tao. Embrace the Tao, embrace life's energy - lead a life of balance and harmony by effortlessly merging your energies with others along the Tao. When you dance to the Tao's tune you can go beyond the duality of life and taste oneness for yourself. Enjoy!

By Christian and Su Zhen

Be Aware of the Energy Bubble

It is amazing that we have that notion that we exist as a person when in fact all that we experience is to the contrary. It seems much more that we are jumping channels all the times, surfing different energy waves that jump to the surface, driven by a process outside of our conscious control; yet we have the illusion that all these images fit together as part of an overriding movie plot.

Clearly there is sex energy that activates you. Sometimes it comes from within, sometimes a touch activates it, or the sight of an attractive body. Evolutionists tell us that this drive is key to our survival and based on the frequency of this energy wave it doesn't look like we will die out any time soon. Then there is the mind power that sometimes takes off like a rocket, but sometimes is quite sluggish as well. There are the nutrition needs that have to be met; our belly will tells us when we need a little energy boost. There are the instincts that protect us from the life-threatening dangers. There all the emotions, the desires, aspirations, the worries and fantasies. Countless subconscious and conscious programs are running side side, activated and sustained by the environment we operate in, by our conscious thought patterns as well as all the subconscious energy waves that rise to the surface.

Many of us spiritual travelers want to be free from all that. We want to be the conscious director of our movie plot and not a robot at the mercy of subconscious programs. All the different religions develop different methods that try to deal with these drives. They say we should't be controlled by sex urges, should understand that we aren't our bodies and that we should only have holy conscious thoughts. This might be a nice state to aspire, but the question is how to get there? If you only repress your drives in the name of spirituality, you will end up giving up on life. This may work for some spiritual stoics, but is unlikely to be the answer for all spiritual travelers.

We also try to numb our minds with alcohol, drugs or pharmaceuticals as we simply don't like the crazy stuff that our mind comes up with.The hostility, aggression, our fears or anxiety. You have the right to be loved, to experience happiness and peace, yet, our mind more often than not doesn't want to cooperate. No wonder that we want to slow it down or escape from it altogether.

Traditional religions are missing one important step in the homecoming process. You have to accept all the fickle states when they pop up. You have to accept who you think you are. If you lust after an attractive body in the street, acknowledge that you are horny at that moment. If your mind produces crazy thoughts or irrational worries, put them out in the open for you to see. It is the same when you are hungry or if you touch a hot stove with your hand, you also accept to eat something, or to instinctively pull the hand away, right? Don't be afraid of all these energies materializing. The opposite is true, the more you resist a certain energy, the more it will persist, because you will continue to attract it subconsciously until the day when you truly understand it and realize that you are not that energy.

You will be free when all these different energies when all these notions of who you think you are flow right through you. You acknowledge all energies exist, but you transcend them. Only then will you be free. When you understand and experience for yourself that there is a layer of peace, joy and happiness beneath all these energy moves, not any of these experience can touch you. You might experience lust, worry, anxiety, greed, but it will only be an instant because you use the opportunity to reconnect with the True Self without getting involved with the energy that pops up at all. There is no repression involved whatsoever, it is just an act of reconnection with the Source that is always at your disposal. These energy will then go through you just like cloud moving in the sky, they show up, accumulate and disappear. All that will be left at that holy moment is the experience of the Ancient Voice.

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.

The Journey Home

Buddha once said 'The good stuff, do it and the bad stuff, cut it out!' That's indeed a way to return home, yet, even though religions all over the world have tried hammering these moral standards into people's heads, it seemed to have had little success. The problem is that if a spiritual authority or a cultural norm just tells you how to behave, this voice of reason will become a super ego. No, you have to find a way to experience the two voices in you - ego versus the True Self - for yourself. Once you discover who you actually are and once you see for yourself that you can experience Heaven on earth, the ancient journey is over.

You require a Rosetta Stone, a reference point that provides you with a guide post. Some people have a wake up call when they suddenly run into a wall. They realize the hard way that the voice in their head that they always thought was them is in fact alien and not the friend they thought it was. Others discover the quiet voice inside. The voice that always speaks second, the one that is love and that has a constant connection to God.

I discovered a precious insight along my journey. I found out that ego begets ego and that you can very much experiment with that fact. I discovered that the more you engage in ego activities, the more you drain your energy and your peace of mind. Similarly, you can observe that the more you cut out all the impurities along the way, the clearer your thinking, the higher your energy level and the more synchronized you are with your environment.

Try cutting out the stuff your ego is obsessed about, the body obsessions, fascination with money or status, or having conspiracy thoughts about others. Sure, these thoughts and feelings seem to belong to you, but you can observe that as you manage to turn away from them, they do get weaker over time, just as they get stronger when you put your mind on it. Try it, it works, you can experiment with these concepts very much like a scientist would.

Let me give you a little example. In a psychological experiment, people were exposed to money symbols, such as having a bank note as a screen saver, or having monopoly money lying on a a table. It turned out that the people who were exposed to these subconscious money symbols were less helpful in the experiment when a person who passed by accidentally dropped things. It appears that for us money is a ego symbol, and once you activate this voice in your head you automatically deviate from the True Self.

Life is a journey and it turns out that you can redefine these dark symbols by giving it a new spiritual meaning. Sex can be an expression of love, work an expression of love for what you are doing, for being with other people and an outlet of your creativity. Wealth and status can become an opportunity to reach out and help others. The beauty is you don't really have to do anything, just follow life's invites moment by moment to choose love over everything else. Headed in this direction, your journey will soon be over.

Transcendence

Stingy people will discover at one point in their life that they only accumulate money because they are afraid of the future. Some people are sex addicts. They have sex to feel good about themselves but at one point they realize that they only want to fill a void in them and they discover that temporary orgasmic highs with strangers cannot replace love. Some people struggle with money, some with sex and others with power or worries. We all have a job to to and find out who we really are and what we really want. The answer to all these problems is transcendence. We can never solve the struggle between our perceived self and the True Self, but at one point you can just grow out of it. You literally leave your problem behind by transcending to the next dimension. If you are at a point, the line will transcend it. And if you are on a line, the plane will transcend it, and so forth.

You can transcend by choosing the spiritual route. You fight your stinginess, or lust, power-hunger or fears by appealing to your Tue Self. You can also follow the calling of your desires and learn that way that you are not these desires. Lastly, you can do what most of us spiritual path travelers do, alternate between the perceived self and your anticipated True Self and stumble your way through life this way. There is no right way towards transcendence, there is only your way. No matter what you do, transcending you will, because that is what the world encourages you to do. Some can outgrow their desire within a life-time; others need several.

Never mind your actions. This world that you think you are operating in doesn't exist and it never existed. As the Course in Miracle sums it up so succinctly: Nothing real can be threatened, nothing unreal exists. Herein lies God's peace. The sin against the Holy Ghost is inaction and procrastination. All the problems that come your way were invented to be solved by you. All your desires were created so that you can make your idiosyncratic choices. Deal with them, embrace them and let them define you. See for yourself that the road to transcendence is provided to you by life - the Tao. All you have to do is to show up, day in and day out; that is all you can do anyway.

On Sexual Healing

When male and female combine,
all things achieve harmony.
(Tao Te Ching)

Sex is a confusing subject within the spiritual community. There are some folks who are adamant that sex is a hindrance in the final steps towards becoming free and then there are others who argue that sex is just like all the other daily dances of the Tao - the yin and yang, the dance of male and female energy - and that it is a creative part of life. More, you can make this activity holy very much like the tantra sex folks aspire to do. My own experience on the subject would be, just do what feels right. The Tao knows where to find you when an upcoming behavioral change is in store for you. Sexual energy is very powerful as we know - you certainly don't want to repress this force ahead of schedule or expect to experience some very powerful Freudian slips.

The sexual dance of yin and yang energies are highly psychological like everything else you experience.You can learn so much about your hidden drives by sexually expressing whatever it is that feels right to you. But you have to make it real for yourself and others.
I remember Deepak Chopra once telling the story of a client who for years had some abnormal sexual desire (he never explained what exactly that desire was about) and when his patient finally got a group of willing participants together, he got afraid in the last moment, grabbed his clothes and ran away, only to find himself fantasizing about his dark desire again afterwards. While Dr. Chopra didn't really have an advice for his client one way or another, the reader of his book was left concluding, 'For heaven's sake, just get done whatever it is you feel you have to do'. That is what life and our spiritual journey is all about, distinguishing the real you from the perceived you. If others want to help you in this soul searching process, then please do your part. Sex is exactly like every other aspects of life, it is your interaction with your environment that allows you to find the real you. The Tao - life - heals, so if you still carry sexual demons around with you, get them out of your mind and let your friends help you in this soul-searching process.

In ancient Greek - the language of the new testament - gnosis means enlightenment as well as sexual union. There might be an enlightened state that is beyond sex, but until you reach that stage, life will probably encourage you to focus on the sexual enlightenment process instead. There is no more powerful way of becoming whole than participating in the dance of 'yin and yang' in my opinion. Christianity takes a very different stance. The number four is equated as the Holy Trinity plus the devil. So in the Christian tautology, you squeeze out everything that is human - and associate it with the devil -and separate it from what you perceive to be the holy part. You certainly can do this - hence the term tautology - but whether this methodology is helpful for you as a spiritual seeker is a very different question. The Asians have a much more holistic approach. The Indians worship Durga (the devine creative force ) as well as Kali (the devine destructive force) while the Taoists consider yin and yang as a symbol of wholeness. I am with the Asians on this one; move with the force of nature and not against it.

While you should express yourself freely and creatively, please also don't get lost in the sexual force since the mission statement of the Tao traveler is to become ultimately free. As my co-author Su Zhen and I argued once in a different note, the actual sexual act doesn't have to lead you astray from your spiritual path, but "mind sex"  does:
http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2013/03/dont-confuse-mind-sex-with-mind-blowing.html

So if you engage in mind sex, you will have to get the demons first out in the open. The practice of sexual healing can do that, sexual repression can only intensify the dark forces in you.

Sex is not the Enemy

I remember someone posting this thread in a spiritual community followed by a link to a website with some very explicit sex scenes. When I looked at them I had to agree with her, you couldn't really call them pornographic just because they seem to portray the natural yin and yang experience of sex, the dance of female and male energies in all their creative shapes and forms. The other day I remembered this thread and suddenly wondered so what then constitutes pornography? When I had a look at a random selection of the images that are so readily available on the Internet, I thought that perhaps the only difference is that pornography is artificial in contrast. It is an act. These scenes are just created to trigger your sexual instincts and fantasies.

A few years ago I had an insight which might be obvious to you, but it was a revelation to me : there is mind sex and then there is real sex: http://zeitgeistinma.blogspot.com/2010/07/sexual-fantasies-sex-and-spirituality.html. When you have sex you do not think, you dance. It is a natural exchange of energy,  a natural expression of our Devine presence. In contrast, the mind sex binds you and can even become addictive. 

So yes, in theory, sex is not the enemy even for a spiritual path traveler. More than that, if you try to repress this natural force, expect some Freudian slips. Yet, if possible, try not to indulge in the dimension of sex that binds you. The whole point of our spiritual journey is to become free. I have a hard time defining what exactly constitutes sex that binds you.This might be the pornographic stimulus or it might be the sexual fantasies that you can spin like a yarn in your mind. Perhaps I can use the same simple trick that  Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart came up with when he had to define on what exactly constitutes pornography. He said,  "I know it when I see it". In the same vein I would say, when you encounter sex that binds you, you will feel it. So see whether you can cut loose this dimension of sex. I hope you will discover for yourself that even a devoted spiritual path traveler can participate in the creative yin and yang without being stopped along the Way. Sex is not the enemy.

On Goals

In a psychological study, some men were asked to play some word association games that all centered around the theme of power. They were then asked how attractive a female participant was and it turned out that many (though not all) men were more attracted to the opposite sex after being primed by the power theme.

I often wonder about the connection between the Tao and the Law of Attraction. Being a Tao traveler, I instinctively feel that the 'Secret' works. Yet, I ask myself, what exactly is it that I should be manifesting mentally? I might have some general goals of how I want to live my life, yet, I pretty much leave the execution up to the Tao. How different then must the psychological mind set be of someone who actively goes after money, status, power or sex. The psychological study suggests that you trigger all kind of other subconscious behaviors when you go actively after your passions. In contrast, along the casual stroll of the Tao traveler, you are actively encouraged to de-emphasize all these subconscious associations. That is, according to the study, if I don't run after power, I may have an easier time withstanding the charm of the opposite sex, as one example. The Tao traveler has only one goal, keep your eyes, ears and all other senses on the Way, while everything else fades  into the background.

Sexual Energy

That which at first is like poison, but at last like nectar - It is the happiness, arising from the serenity of one's own mind.
(Bhagavad Gita)

I remember having as a child a lot of sinus issues. I think I was stuffed up most of my childhood. Whether it was the polluted Berlin air, or just a symbolic expression that the real me hadn't shown up yet, I don't know. But I vividly remember the feeling of one day waking up a few years ago and I could finally breath freely from that day on. They say that breathing has a deep spiritual function besides providing the oxygen. They also say that the word Atman - our God-connection in Hindi - has the same root as the German word 'atmen', to breathe.

 I also observed something else around that time of breaking free, I felt a presence of sexual energy that I had never experienced before. It is as if the whole system just cleared up one day, allowing the free-flow of chi and a lot more sexual energy was pumping through the system. The chacras start in the lower body and the chi energy works itself up until it finally reaches the forehead. This process takes a while and in the interim you feel that sexual abstinence feels like poison. I am not saying sexual abstinence is necessary along a spiritual path but it nevertheless has been my choice since  I just couldn't handle the drop of energy after each ejaculation any more. It might be like poison to do nothing about your activated sexual energy, but before you know it your higher chacras will kick in and the free-flowing chi will bring serenity, peace and bliss with it. You will drink the divine nectar before you know it, enjoy!

Mind Sex: 21 Days to Serenity

Watch a pornographic movie, masturbate, get drunk, chat with others in adult web communities and see what happens in the following days. Observe how you perceive people you  see and meet in the street; do you see them as bodies or as spiritual beings? Watch your thoughts, are they replaying the events of the night before? Wean yourself from all sexual activities for 21 days and see what happens. Do sexual scenes still capture your imagination afterwards? Do you perceive people that you see and interact with any differently. Our scientific folks would perhaps conjecture that your sexual drive is going up after 21 days of days of abstinence. My claim, the opposite is true. Try for yourself' just understand that 21 days of abstinence is a steep climb. But once you have made it you will perhaps see for yourself, passion and serenity is a choice. You  can have peace of mind or the spice of life, the choice is up to you.