For anyone on a spiritual path or a spiritual quest, one of the most challenging things to grapple with is the question, where does sexuality fit into the puzzle? The world’s religions have answered with the entire gamut of possible responses, all the way from endorsing the sacred ecstatic (think kundalini yoga, for example) to outlawing sex entirely. The Roman Catholic Church could not be more clear: sex is for the purpose of reproduction only; all other sex is recreational and “recreational” means it is sinful. More moderate views were taken by the Deist philosophers of the Enlightenment. One imagines that comfortable, tolerant old Benjamin Franklin, who believed simply that God wants us to be happy, would have said that one of the ways God shows his approval of us is by granting us the orgasm. Still, most religion, in line with the Catholic Church, would have us put away our sexual desires in a locked box. Stomp on them and stamp them out.
Then again, there is the principle of rising above sexuality. Like monks who devote themselves to God or nuns who “marry” Jesus Christ, Indian yogis like Yoganana forsake the world and transcend their sexual natures. Here, the guiding vision is that our bodies occupy the physical world but our immortal souls dwell on a spiritual plane. Anything associated with our baser, animal nature must be overcome, and what is more animalistic than an urge to copulate? In his Autobiography, Yogananda does not mention whether it was hard for him to overcome his sexual nature, although he makes clear that renouncing sex is a prerequisite to becoming a yogi. The vows of a monk or devotee require renouncing one’s sexuality in order to devote oneself more fully to the only true ecstatic bliss: that of “samadhi,” or God-union, which is presumably a non-sexual type of bliss. In striking contrast, Yogananda speaks movingly of how hard it was for his “young stomach” to fast for hours on end when as a youth he briefly entered an extremely ascetic order.
Apparently, it was much harder for the Buddha. Deepak Chopra presents the Buddha in his larval stage as the monk Gautama, as having to fight hard against his sexual desires. In Chopra’s Buddha: A Story of Enlightenment, Gautama goes deep into the forest where he finds a hermit and sets up camp next to the holy man’s tent. Days of quiet meditation pass between the two men until one day, Gautama sees the image of his wife’s face on the back of his eyelids and bang! He has a hard-on. Lucky for Gautama, it was not the male hermit’s face that aroused him in this manner. Deeply embarrassed by his erection, Gautauma prays to rise above that which rose and eventually his hard-on subsides.
In the October 4, 2010 issue of “The New Yorker” magazine, in a profile on the Dalai Lama, Evan Osnos tells a similar tale about Tibet’s spiritual leader:
“Spalding Gray, the late writer and performer, once asked him in an interview how he deals with distractions like ‘women in bikini bathing suits.’ The Dalai Lama, who has been bound by a vow of celibacy since childhood, responded, ‘Sometimes in my dreams, there are women. And, in some cases, fighting or quarreling with someone. When such dreams happen, immediately I remember, ‘I am a monk.’”
Clearly, it is a lot harder for the rest of us ordinary mortals. I know that I must have many lifetimes ahead of me before I attain Nirvana, because I’m not ready to renounce sex in this lifetime, nor do I particularly feel like turning my love life into kundalini yoga exercises.
What is one to make of all this bewildering range of religious doctrines, apart from the rich tapestry of erotic fantasy that they help weave into our healthy sex lives, from S & M to cross-dressing to any variety of sexual “tastes?” What is a spiritual seeker to do, who has not gone so far as to renounce the world? Can we actually be spiritual without being monks or nuns? I think one answer to these questions may be, be spiritual when you are feeling spiritual, be sexual when you are aroused, and rejoice when the two overlap in such a way that your foreplay and your orgasm, in the love of your partner, both feel sacred.
Sometimes when we share a meal with a loved one, family or friends, it can feel like a sacred occasion, and sometimes, as with Thanksgiving, we declare in advance that it is sacred. At other times, the meal feels like we’re just eating. Why should it be otherwise with sex? At the same time, in this world where the sacred and the profane are so inextricably woven together, the more we can feel and express the sacred principle, the more elevated we become in Spirit. We need more meals that feel sacred and more sexual encounters that feel loving and blessed. It is never enough to feel that we are just eating or coming. When we make love, turning the profane into the sacred is not a bad thing, and the more you can do it, the more I say bravo! Every moment is sacred and if we only felt that in our hearts, we would all be much closer to enlightenment.
Bird of Spirit 