spiritual hunger: the soul of sex
What do sex and spirituality have to do with each other? How could the physical sexual act be an expression of our divine and spiritual nature? After all isn’t sex just sex? We certainly see and hear allot about sex everyday and little is ever mentioned about the deeper aspects of this powerful tool to connect on a spiritual basis. On the contrary, our culture creates confusion and distorted messages around sexuality and our sexual behavior. We say sex is good, and that sex is natural, and we nearly celebrate sexual explicideness in our society. Sex is good, or rather it can be. Yet we nearly never acknowledge the deeper and denied shadow aspects of our shame, isolation, guilt, and inner disconnection we have from this miraculous means to connect our souls. I do not mean merely by following our societies proscribed ideas about sex and marriage, but rather to develop our ability to look within ourselves and experience and express the divine nature of who we really are.
We live in perhaps the most overtly sexually liberal and permissive country in the world. Nudity and sexually explicit material are readily available, yet we have more covert and unconscious problems with sex than can be imagined. Teenage pregnancy, sexual transmitted diseases, sexual dysfunction, sexual addiction and compulsions, and confusion about what a healthy approach to our sexuality should consist of. The Internet alone has reduced the threshold for the ease of access to sexual and erotic material to a simple pick and click--a virtual sexual smorgasbord. I’m not that viewing such material is morally wrong or psychologically damaging (that would be too simple) but rather our current attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors serve to disconnect us from our true inner voice of sexual feelings and behavior. Pornography and erotica can distort our inner compass of what feels real and good, and instead inserts distorted images of what love and sex could or should be about. We become actors with each other instead of experiences. Our soul wants to connect not perform. In short, it serves to both numb and alienate ourselves from ourselves and each other. In addition, this can serve to ignite and highly addictive pattern of behavior.
We suffer from a severe disconnect between sex and love and the ability to bring intimacy to the sexual union. I do not mean simply through the simple aspect of having sex in the context of marriage. Marriage in of itself doesn’t guarantee anything in term of sex and love. Again, we tend to focus on the more superficial aspects of what is deemed appropriate and we therefore focus on the external appearance of intimacy. We focus on the issues associated with the more functional or technical aspects of sex or on the external context within which sex should occur. The external context is not the issue at hand, but rather the degree to which we are connected with our inner sexual and spiritual nature. Our souls journey is connect with our divine voice and by doing so we gain the ability to transform that connection by sharing it with others. By simply focusing on the external definitions of what, when, and where sex should be, and with whom it should be with, we confuse our ability to connect with our goal to connect with ourselves and another through the sexual act. In reality there is no difference or separation between us, as we are all part of the same; we forget this and spend ours lives trying to remember that we are all part of the same divine nature.
Spiritual sexuality has to do with our connection with our soul’s sense of ourselves and how we can transform this connection by sharing it with another person. We do not need to focus on the external attributes of what creates a potent sexual experience. We have created medications to enhance the performance of our sexual act, but we do nothing to enhance the inner experience of intimacy and love along with that act. We focus on “sexual performance”, as if it is an act we are preparing for, not an experience of intimacy and love making. Our focus on sex has typically been on the external and on the physical sensate experience of sexual arousal and satisfaction. However, we are a society that is extremely ambivalent. On the one hand we advocate open sexual behavior and attitudes, but on a deeper level we are more confused and disconnected around our sexuality and sexual activity. We talk about sexual openness, but still maintain deep inhibitions and distortions about our true sexual nature. This is the reason for the epidemic levels of sexual dysfunction and addiction in our culture. We consume massive amount of pornographic material, view sexual suggestive and provocative images in magazines, television, and on the Internet, yet people do not feel good about their sexual nature and the sexual behavior they engage in?
The emotional and spiritual pleasure in life (love) can transform sexually addictive and compulsive behavior. In order to do this we have to confront our fear and feeling of deep lack in ourselves and to move toward connection with ourselves and others around us. We have to have the courage to look behind our eyes into our souls view to see our purest sexual nature. We engage in compulsive and addictive sexual behavior when we separate our soul’s knowledge of our connection to each other combined with the desire to avoid pain by numbing our ego-based emotions. All addictive behaviors serve to numb and to distract us from the lack we feel inside. To attempt to address that unsatisfied craving we use our sexuality like a tool to accomplish a job--to achieve and end state or desired result. All addictions separate us from the world, they isolate us from ourselves and alienate from connecting with other people in our lives. Ultimate all this is an illusion, as it is only a temporary separation from who we all truly are. The trick is to remember our souls nature, now, while we are living and learning and not at the end of our lives. Part of how we live this truth now is through our sexual and spiritual connection; this confluence is where our life force connects to all there is.
Copyright ©Dr. David Greenfield and Dr. Andrew Magin, 2006
