Click on the hotlink below to go to the section you’re most interested in. For your convenience, each reference number within the text is a hot-link to get you immediately to the reference, plus there’s a hot-link there to get you back to your place.

A. KEY ISSUES.

• Who and what are you?
• What is your goal in life?
• What do you most want to get out of sex?
• What is the nature of sexual desire?
  • If you don’t want to indulge it now.
  • If you want it.
  • The Kundalini.
  • Negative and positive desires.
  • Diverting your vitality.
• References.

Who and what are you?

You are free to believe what you like about this subject. But your belief is going to influence how you experience and deal with sexual energy. You may believe we are mortal beings that have evolved so far from normal animals that we can control our own mating seasons. You may even think that season is always, and that we should be mating continually, and that some people are permanently “on heat”. (Been watching too many soap operas lately?) If this is what you believe, it is exactly what the advertising industry wants. Sex sells, especially when people buy into the maze of Freudian-like psychology and believe that our life motives and problems revolve mainly around sex. It is only our belief in such theories that results in us getting enmeshed in them. And then we become “good consumers” with an insatiable appetite for goods and entertaining sensations. But don’t expect any sexual problems to be permanently resolved through them.

If that’s not who you believe we really are, then there’s great hope for us. Especially if you believe that we are spiritual beings with immense potential, who are temporarily wearing these 4 “bodies”. (For more details on our bodies, see the page Balancing Our 4 “Bodies”). It can be pretty tricky getting on with what we most need to do while wearing a body that is susceptible to lust and desire, in a society saturated with perverted obsessions concerning them. Does that mean our desires are bad? No, but it means we need to have self-control. This will be discussed further under “What is the nature of sexual desire?” below.

What is your goal in life?

Even if your goal is just to be comfortable and humanly successful and happy in this life, you will benefit greatly from gaining self-control over your sexual energies and activities. It does take work, but if your goal is to manifest the amazing creative potential that lies within you, and to be more of the great spiritual soul who you really are, then you need to decide what price you are prepared to pay for that. Part of the price is gaining self-control over your 4 “bodies”. This might well involve weaning your physical and desire (emotional) bodies off of excessive sexual appetites or habits. Tolstoy must have meant “excessive” sexual activity when he said: “Sexual activity weakens man in his most essential aspect: spiritual expression.” Or it might involve weaning your mental body and soul (inner child) off of self-limiting co-dependant beliefs like equating sex with self-worth. Or stopping the habit of denying yourself loving sex due to guilt, fear or control issues. There are many possibilities, and they won’t all be easy to resolve. But the joy and satisfaction of getting rid of old habits and experiencing personal growth to attain your goals is worth all the effort and inconvenience. And don’t worry, it doesn’t necessarily mean giving up sex. It means gaining more self-control. Just hang in there, and keep your attention on your goals.

“The masters of all the more intensely emotional arts have frequently cultivated a high degree of chastity … Men of great genius have apparently been completely continent throughout life.” –Havelock Ellis. (1)

What do you most want to get out of sex?

Does this sound like a “no brainer” question? Well, the answer’s not as obvious as it might seem. Do you want sex purely for the sensation of the orgasm? Do you desire all the kissing and caressing that goes with sex just as much, or more? Are you using it with a sense of sacredness to enhance your expression of the profound love you feel for the precious soul you are with? Maybe you mostly desire to please your partner, and fear losing them more than you desire the sex itself. Maybe you desire most the security of having others know that you’re in a sexual relationship, which brings you a feeling of self-worth and the appearance of being “normal”. Or maybe you desire most to be able to tell your friends that you chalked up another hit. You might enjoy most the ability to use sex to control your partner (which is usually a subconscious motive). Or maybe you are using sex to numb out your conscience or the pain of your soul who’s crying out for you to heed its real needs. Often the most deep-rooted desire is reunion with God or our soul mate or “twin flame”, who we were created with. The spiritual teaching on this subject has been largely forgotten in our modern cultures. For many people, the only way they know to fulfill this deep yearning of their soul for reunion with the beloved is through worldly sex. The ideal is to realize the fact that on the spiritual level you are already united and whole, and when you have sex it is done as a sacred ritual in celebration of that wholeness.

Uh-oh! We almost forgot what many most want to get out of sex: To conceive a child and start a family!

Hopefully you didn’t answer “All of the above.” : ) But understanding your chief motive is going to help you greatly in resolving any sexual energy problems.

What is the nature of sexual desire?

For a start, let’s say you are busy working on something (at home or at work, if you’re married or single) and you are feeling sexy (or racy, risqué, horny, hot, randy, sharp etc.). It is just a sensation you are feeling. How you choose to deal with it is the crux of the matter. For most people, their mind starts thinking about sexuality and how they are going to satisfy this desire, and we accept this as being “normal”. But that is actually a programmed response, usually deeply rooted in our culture and upbringing. (See “What is Normal and the Ideal?” below for more on this.) What is important is that we can change that program if we choose to. If you think it is best in that situation, while you’re busy working at something, to indulge this sexual desire, then go to the paragraph entitled “If you want it” below.

If you don’t want to indulge it now.

If you want to carry on working, then thinking about sexuality will not help you. So you REDIRECT that energy. You don’t suppress, ignore or deny it, which will just cause it to build-up and make things worse. As mentioned at the top of the Emotional Balance page, emotions are like waves. If we don’t deal with them when the wave is small, it will build and possibly bowl us over later. I’m sure some of you can identify with that. There are several ways (covered under Transformation Exercises below) to redirect that energy and thus TRANSFORM or change it into creative energy in a more useful area of your life. It may be a project you’re working on, physical recreation, artistic creativity or a hobby. But transforming this energy needs a lot of practice at first, because you’re changing an old habit pattern. You have the programmed habit of thinking about sex when you feel this particular sensation in your lower abdomen and pubic area. The true nature of this energy will be explained in-depth in the paragraph called The Kundalini below.

But you don’t have to get metaphysical about it. All you need is a love and a passion for doing what is best for you and for your loved ones and for this planet. With that will come the determination and willingness to endure what it takes to transcend all self-limiting habit patterns, including those of inordinate sexual desire. With it, you will keep your healthy sexual desires and enjoy a great increase in the quality of your loving relationships, plus have a lot more energy and creativity for your other goals in life. Even if you are just committed to physical achievement, it can really help you. But it is more critical in the persuit of spirituality.

“To control the sexual impulse efficiently has always been and ever will be regarded as the highest test of human wisdom.” – Auguste Comte

This process of change takes time, so be patient with yourself. Some issues with your personal psychology will probably also come up, as our feelings and desires are linked to our soul (which some call the inner child). So it would help to complement this work with doing personal psychology work. See the Links page and the bottom of the Emotional Balance page for some ideas. The key is to remember that you are not these “bodies” which you wear, as mentioned in “Who and what are you?” above. This is easy to acknowledge mentally when you’re feeling fine. But when you are experiencing a strong wave of sexual desire that you want to transcend, then you will have to make the difficult choice between making the considerable effort (with it’s accompanying inconvenience or physical discomfort) to transform it or to give in and indulge it. Remembering at this critical moment that you are not your body makes all the difference. But if you love life enough you can do it. And you will feel such joy and fulfilment afterwards, more fulfilling than the temporary thrills that indulgence would have brought. These victories are the kinds of scenes you want to reinforce in your meditations, which will be covered in Visualizing Victory under Transformation Exercises below. When you win over your lesser desires, feel real good about it, but don’t jump too high too soon. You have won a battle, but not the whole war. The tests will come again, so don’t let your guard down, but keep climbing steadily.

If you want it.

So far under this section, we’ve discussed the scenario of you working at something and feeling this sexual desire and not wanting to indulge it at this moment. But what if you wanted to stop what you were doing and fulfill that desire? Or what if you felt this desire because you had been thinking about the opposite sex a lot lately, and you feel you would like some more sexual intimacy. If it’s available to you, it makes it easy. But if your partner does not feel like it right now, or you don’t have a partner available, you still have to make a choice in dealing with this energy. If this is the case, see the section “What if my sex drive is very high?” on the Questions page.

The Kundalini.

This section is for those who wish to go deeper into the nature of sexual desire. According to ancient spiritual teachings, this sexual desire we’ve been speaking of is one of the consequences of the rising of the Life Force or sacred fire energy within us called the Kundalini. It has been known about either intuitively of via the inner teachings of all cultures for centuries. It is what was symbolised by the brazen serpent coiled around a pole that Moses held up in front of the people of Israel in the desert. Just looking upon it healed them. The esoteric teaching behind it is that looking upon it stimulated the rising of the Kundalini that nourishes and heals the body. Kundalini literally means “coiled-up serpent”; coiled energy in latency at the base-of-the-spine chakra (energy centre) and rises to the crown chakra, quickening the spiritual centres on the way. It rises through spiritual disciplines, specific yogic techniques or intense love of God.

The function of this sacred fire is to provide the small amount of energy needed to sustain our normal bodily functions, including procreation, mainly through our lower energy centres. The rest is intended for our creativity, service and spiritual growth, mainly through our upper energy centres. A lack of energy and vitality can be indicative of using up too much unnecessary energy through self-limiting habits patterns like fear, pride and self-indulgence, including gluttony, lust and other unwholesome appetites. This is sometimes called misqualified energy, karma or sin. Much of it has been diverted right in the beginning at the base of the spine into sexuality that was not based on the giving of pure love to another.

Negative and positive desires.

Our true nature as an immortal spirit is whole, balanced and full of vitality (from the raised Kundalini). Our true needs are already met, and our soul’s desire is to be a creative force of wise, powerful love in the world to serve humanity and to outpicture our full God potential. This is a positive or Real desire, as we desire to be more of our Real Self, and it raises us to a higher level of being (or raises the vibration level of our aura). A negative desire, like lust or jealousy, based on ignorance of who we really are, tries to selfishly get something like a satisfying sensation that we don’t really need. It is also not creative and lowers our energy level. And the funny thing about negative desires is that they are never fully satisfied. The more you get, the more you want. Sound familiar?

”Sensual pleasure is followed by pain, but it is a characteristic of real joy that it never changes into it’s opposite.” – Seneca

The telling sign of an unwholesome appetite (negative desire) is that a little bit doesn’t make you feel better. It makes you feel more “hungry”. (That’s probably why the Internet pornography business is booming.) It is the type of desire that Gautama Buddha spoke about when he said in his Four Noble Truths that suffering is caused by desire. Lust is a good example. And the real bad news is that when we get hooked on a negative desire, it attracts discarnate entities. This is a subject that most people don’t like thinking about, but it is true. And it explains a lot of things in this world that bewilders people, like what drives some people to be murderers, rapists and pedophiles. There is more on entities on the Spiritual Balance 2 page under The Subject of Evil.

Diverting your vitality.

So, back to diverting the Kundalini. The higher your sexual activity, the greater the pathway or channel that diverts the rising energy that is intended for our vitality. What you put your attention on, grows. So if you feel a desire for sex, and you choose to indulge it (either in sex or by looking at pornography etc.), you are helping that diversion channel to grow. This is why, for most of us, it has become a self-programmed response that when the rising Kundalini hits a diversion into the lower energy centres, we don’t just feel an energy sensation that needs redirecting. We skip that first step and go straight into the old habit of feeling the desire for sex. And the longer you wait, the more self-control and energy it takes to redirect it back up the spine, and the less vitality we have for achieving our goals. It also saps the energy and willpower we will need to deal with this energy the next time it comes along. There is always a price you pay for everything, and the price you pay for excessive sexual indulgence can be heavy. This subject will be covered in more detail in the section “Advantages of (periods of) celibacy” below.

”All power comes from the preservation of and sublimation of the vitality that is responsible for the creation of life. This vitality is continuously and even unconsciously dissipated by evil or even rambling, disorderly, unwanted thoughts. … If man is after the image of God, he has but to will a thing in the limited sphere allotted to him and it becomes. Such power is impossible to one who dissipates his energy in any way whatsoever.” – Gandhi. (2)

References:

1. Havelock Ellis (1859-1939), a British physician, is considered to be the first modern student of human sexual behavior. His later works, including ‘The Task of Social Hygiene’ (1912), and ‘Little Essays of Love and Virtue’ (1922) helped earn Ellis a reputation as a champion of women’s rights. However, his repudiation of institutions like marriage is not supported by this author. Back to (1)
2. Page 101, All Men Are Brothers, Mahatma Gandhi (Continuum, New York, 1987).

A great all-around reference for sexuality is: Finding a Higher Love: A Spiritual Guide by Elizabeth Clare Prophet.