Transforming the Mind ~ by Peter Shepherd

One of the most important areas of mechanicalness to observe in yourself is your sexual activity. Man is a sexual being; it is normal and natural for men and women of all ages to have sexual experiences covering a wide range of variation. It is both a genetic drive and also an opportunity for sensuality, togetherness and the aesthetics of erotic play.

However the religious ethic has for centuries foisted a distorted sexual image upon man. It states: "Anything pleasurable is sinful". Why? Because having followers in a state of guilt and shame enables them to be more easily manipulated and to accept the Church's power and control. Sexual sensation being the most pleasurable sensation known to man, at least at his present state of awareness, it naturally follows that sex should have the most stringent restraints, taboos and restrictions placed upon it by the Church. All of us in the West, atheists included, have been born and reared in a basically Christian culture and its doctrinal anti-sexual (anti-life) attitudes are rooted deeply in our basic personality, if for no other reason than the "osmosis" of race consciousness. This has caused more suffering, more guilt, more inhibition, more physical illness (due to repressed natural drives) and more insanity than any other teaching in history, and is linked to the other inversions of truth such as Original Sin and the Final judgment, which have similarly caused such unnecessary consternation. Whilst not necessarily believed as such nowadays, these erroneous concepts have left an insidious undercurrent in our psyches.

Strange as it may seem, spirituality and sexuality are inseparably related. It is impossible to evolve into higher consciousness without a true understanding and embracing of authentic sexuality. For example, extra-sensory perception, intuition and creativity cannot function in individuals who are sexually inhibited or who repress sexual guilt and shame. Unconsciously recognizing this fact, churches have for ages attempted to control and regulate the sexuality of their members.

What the dogmatic religions fail to understand is that love as a creative expression is the higher purpose of sexual expression - whether heterosexual or homosexual - and that the production of offspring is in that sense incidental. Only animals use sex solely for procreation purposes. It is exclusively humans that experience the conscious psycho-emotional pleasures and ecstasies of the sexual expression that is rightly called "making love". By insisting procreation is the only valid purpose of the sex act, under the penalty of sin and Hell, religion lowers man to the level of animals. It is also a degradation of what is in itself a beautiful process, the creation of new life. This has caused untold numbers of men and women to experience guilt in their sexual contacts that were directed solely at bringing pleasure to each other, as an expression of love and intimacy.

All expressions of love are essentially sexual in their nature: a communication where one is being the other - where empathy is duplicated and understanding is complete. Sexual energy is therefore not limited to the physical act of sex alone. The energy of sex is sublimated as creative energy at any and every level you find yourself in the universe. Energy travels between positive and negative poles. Indeed, every ascent of consciousness is, in this sense, a sexual process. Sex and love are a fusion, a coming together of thought and feeling and body, the synthesis of masculine and feminine, and this is the essence of creativity. So any creative act is driven by this urge, at all levels of our being, to share pleasure and feeling - from the writing of a book to baking a cake, from designing a bridge to painting a picture, from a love affair to playing a musical instrument, from a discovery or invention to raising a beautiful family.

Sex need not be expressed at the expense of someone else but may uplift and illumine all concerned. It is important to realize that as a human being you are sexual, and that your sexual activity, in whatever manner you find satisfying, is normal and natural for you. Sexual denials, shame, embarrassment, inhibition and guilt concerning your own body organs and natural sexual acts causes a great deal of stress and resulting problems. Fulfillment of the sex drive and sublimation of it through creative pursuits of all kinds, accompanied by self-knowledge of its higher source that is love, may then lead to uninhibited happiness and ecstatic satisfaction.

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