Sex and Spirit

What is spirituality? 

I mean by spirituality the many different ways people address the innate human desire to experience mystical transcendence.  People all over the world and all through history and all through what we know of prehistory, from every walk of life, in every culture, have pursued such transcendence using thousands of different systems and countless individual practices.  Without excluding any formulations or systems, it's still useful to use words like spirit or divine to describe what people seek and find in transcendence. 

Although there are many systems for achieving mystical transcendence, one of its essential features is that it's almost inevitably personal — it's not something you can attain vicariously from another person's experience.  No matter how elevated your guru, it's still you who has to do the work and have the experience. 

Your spirituality need not require you to "believe in God," or to believe in anything at all.  Agnosticism, the belief that we don't know enough about divinity to impose our personal theories on other people, is a widespread (and to my mind, entirely healthy)  spiritual approach.  Atheism, the belief that divinity exists only in our heads and has no counterpart in external reality, is another perfectly good spiritual idea that many people incorporate into a rich spiritual practice — it certainly doesn't preclude pursuing transcendence.  Materialism is yet another approach (often less satisfying, in my observation) — the belief that our sole or primary focus in life should be to improve our material existence and not waste time on pesky spiritual impulses.

The main thing is, no matter how you were brought up or how you've decided that the world works, you probably do share with the rest of humanity a yearning for transcendence.  It may stay in the background a lot of the time, but it's probably fairly important to you, and often becomes more important over time.  Your spirituality is simply the way you handle that yearning. 

Isn't spirituality just another word for religion? 

I'd like to distinguish sharply between spirituality and organized religion.  People sometimes conflate the two because they've so often encountered spirituality in a religious package. 

I admit, I'm not a fan of organized religions.  To me, the big ones behave far too much like corporations whose products are their traditions (the Latin word corporatio was actually coined in the Middle Ages to describe the Catholic Church).  Like any business, their main focus generally seems to be the bottom line: profitability as measured in money and political power.  Like any business, they strive to suppress competition and create a monopoly. 

That's not to say that religious traditions don't have value — after all, without a viable product, no religion would last long.  But to control their followers, most religions try to make everyone conform to a single, uniform, static belief system, and in my observation, no static system meets people's spiritual needs very well. 

What such systems do accomplish is to satisfy people's hunger for truth.  Truth seems very important for survival, both in this dangerous life and presumably in the next as well.  The trouble is, the word is useful only as a kind of shorthand for reliable information, and doesn't work at all well as an absolute concept (see the articles on truth and faith).  Also, I think it has little or no bearing on mystical transcendence. 

There's a famous passage in Bede where King Edwin is trying to decide whether to convert to Christianity (in the early seventh century), and one of his councilors observes:

"Your majesty, when we compare the present life of man on earth with that time of which we have no knowledge, it seems to me like the swift flight of a single sparrow through the banqueting-hall where you are sitting at dinner on a winter's day with your thanes and counsellors.  In the midst there is a comforting fire to warm the hall; outside, the storms of winter rain or snow are raging.  This sparrow flies swiftly in through one door of the hall, and out through another.  While he is inside, he is safe from the winter storms; but after a few moments of comfort, he vanishes from sight into the wintry world from which he came.  Even so, man appears on earth for but a little while; but of what came before this life or of what follows, we know nothing.  Therefore, if this new teaching has brought any more certain knowledge, it seems only right that we should follow it." 

For many people, this passage stands as a particularly poignant expression of our physical and metaphysical ignorance.  For me, it also reflects particularly clearly the deal that most religions (including dogmatic materialism)  have to offer:

Join us, sign on the dotted line, give us your allegiance — sword, money, mind and soul — and in return we'll give you Truth.  We'll answer the hard questions for you — you'll never have to wonder any more, you'll always be sure.  We'll rescue you from the embarrassments, fears and discomforts of ignorance by bestowing on you the gift of certainty. 

That's not a bargain that interests me, nor would I urge it on anyone, because I've never seen any evidence that the sellers can deliver.  I think all you really get from the deal is the illusion that you don't have to keep doing your homework. 

So if you come to this site with firmly held dogmatic beliefs that you don't want to question, I hope they leave you enough room to explore your personal reality a bit.  Otherwise, you may not find much here that's helpful to you, because we're not looking for absolutes — instead, we encourage you to examine what's true for you at the moment, and to keep exploring and changing that truth as a never-ending process of growth. 

Doesn't the idea that sex is sacred come from Tantra?

Many people associate sacred sexuality with Tantra, a variety of Eastern spiritual traditions that revere and use sexual energy.  There is much to be learned from these traditions, and they suit many people's spiritual needs, but it's also important to realize that they don't hold a monopoly on the sacredness of sex. 

Cave paintings suggest that our distant ancestors recognized the sacredness of sex too — and if sex really is sacred, why wouldn't they?  The spiritual aspects of sex as much as the mundane ones are inherent in each of us, not in any particular sort of tradition or practice.  How you explore that sacredness, work with it and develop it is entirely up to you, and doesn't have to look like anyone else's approach... in this area as in so many others, exploration has been the guiding human principle for thousands of generations. 

So what does spirituality have in common with sex? 

When you stop to think about it, spirituality and sex have quite a bit in common:

• We seek and find transcendence in both — many people experience the ecstasy of orgasm as mystical, and many mystics work deeply with feelings of love that are inherently sexual. 
• In a broader sense, both sex and spirituality evoke in us a feeling of magic.  Many of us who experience childbirth, for example, come away feeling it's as close to a miracle as we've ever encountered, not because it's "supernatural" but because it's completely natural and yet feels utterly, profoundly, awe-inspiringly miraculous. 
• Both sex and spirituality are kind of scary at times — they make us so terribly vulnerable.  The very intensity that attracts us also seems to threaten our ability to see clearly, stay in control, fit in. 
• Sexual and spiritual goals and practices often seem quite similar.  For example, common techniques in the BDSM community (BDSM stands for bondage, discipline or dominance, and sado-masochism)  resemble traditional ascetic exercises for achieving ecstatic states, and often have exactly that effect on BDSM practitioners. 
• Neither spirituality nor sexuality tend to be static in your life — in both cases, they look more like a path or pilgrimage that meanders through all kinds of unexpected places, bringing all kinds of unanticipated challenges, ordeals and fantastic rewards. 
• The most important commonality, though, is that both spirituality and sexuality are interior.  They're important aspects of the uncharted wilderness that is your personal inner life.  Personal doesn't necessarily mean private, of course — other people are often welcome to join you in your explorations — but your experiences there are always yours and yours alone. 

One of our main messages is this: when it comes to sex or spirituality, you are the one who needs to be making the decisions.  No one else knows enough to tell you what's best for you.  Getting other people's advice, experience and opinion may sometimes be helpful, but the more you actually explore the territory, the more we think you'll realize that all the things you really find valuable in the end are ones you have to find out for yourself. 

Also, you get to explore on your own terms and at your own pace.  There isn't some final destination or set of right answers you're supposed to arrive at.  You get to relax for years in the same spot if you please, or fortify a mountain top, or wander at will over hill and dale.  There are times to press forward into new territory, and times to rest in familiar places.  What's right for one person is not necessarily right for another, and what's right for you at one moment may not be right for you at another.  One thing is certain: the person who has to figure out what's right for you at each and every point is — you. 

That can be frightening — there are plenty of dangers in the wilderness.  But it's also liberating.  It means you don't have to compare yourself to others, compete, or apply goal-oriented thinking.  You can stop wondering where you fall on the scale of sexual sophistication, or how spiritually evolved you are.  The only relevant question is, do I want to stay where I am, and if not, where should I go next? 

But how can sex be spiritual when it's so physical? 

The short answer to this question is, you don't have to think of the physical world as separate from the spirit world — on the contrary, you can see spirit as an indwelling aspect of the physical world, or the physical world as a manifestation of spirit, but in either case understand them as inextricably intertwined. 

Throughout history, various ascetic sects have posited a dualism that opposes the body and spirit.  Much of the traditional Christian antagonism to the flesh comes not from Jesus, who seems to have been quite sex-positive, but from the experience of unhappy Roman men like Origen, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Augustine, and from the influence of the Manicheans, who were so popular in the Roman army.  Christianity officially rejected such dualism at first, and then ended up silently embracing it, but you can certainly be a good Christian without going along with it. 

For more information about dualism, its proponents, and opposing views, see our religious past section. 

Is it really possible to integrate my sex life with my spiritual practice? 

That depends on your practice.  Most traditions today carefully avoid overt sexuality, and it can be difficult to break that barrier while still staying within your tradition.  At the same time, if you really own and take pride in your sex life, you may realize that it's already an important aspect of your personal spiritual practice.  Beyond that, if you feel moved to create ritual space for aspects of your sex life, we can offer some suggestions based on our own experience (see the section on ritual). 

How much faith can I put in spiritual/sexual teachers? 

Okay, I'm going to go out on a limb here and urge you strongly:

• Be an informed consumer.  Before you pay anyone else a lot of money to teach you spirituality or sex, do some homework.  Most good classes that are really useful are relatively inexpensive, or even free (among neo-pagans the idea is common that essential classes should be offered for free). 
• Don't be tempted to give away your responsibility.  It may sometimes seem like a great relief to let someone else drive for you in uncomfortable places.  Don't.  It's fine to accept guidance as long as it fits with your own experience and deep feelings, but never forget that it's your life and you need to run it.  Trying to get out of that won't take you where you want to go. 

Because both sex and spirituality are intrinsically personal and dynamic, I think you'll find the lessons that serve you best over time are ones you learn by doing your own work.  Good teachers will help you find ways to do that work, but no one else has the right answers for you, because the right answers aren't static or universal — they require you to figure out where you want to go and how you want to go about getting there. 

There are lots of people who will try to sell you answers, in some cases for a great deal of money.  Be very, very suspicious of them.  The more money changes hands, the higher quality the packaging will be, but usually not the content.  In terms of what you're really looking for, no one can do the work for you, no matter how much you pay them, and the most precious help you'll get will be given out of love.  

So before signing up for expensive workshops, prepare yourself. Look through relevant information that's available on the Web and in books you can get at the library.  If you've absorbed the information beforehand, a good workshop can help you explore a practice in a safe and hands-on environment.  And if you can't afford a workshop, be reassured — it may take a bit more effort, but you can learn all the same things on your own with nothing more expensive than a willingness to experiment. 

That's not to say workshops can't be useful — the Body Electric School, for example, offers some excellent ones that many people find transformative, because people find that in a safe environment with communal permission, they're able to explore things they might otherwise never find the nerve to try.   Courageous sex activists such as Betty Dodson, Carol Queen, Annie Sprinkle, and many others and have offered wonderful workshops over the years to help people discover how to own and enjoy their sexuality. 

Still, don't overlook the fact that you have it in your power to find and forge your very own sexual/spiritual community.  What's to stop you from becoming a sex activist?  Only fear and embarrassment.  Among the friends you like and trust, there are very likely people who feel as you do — maybe some of them are also looking for safe ways to explore this area who would like to work with you. 

The main thing to remember is that as long as you're moving at all, you yourself are in the dance, just as much as anyone else in the whole world is.