“Sex has no intrinsic meaning” says Dr. Marty Klein, Sex Therapist’s Couch “Almost everyone wishes it did.”
Sex is a concept that completely dominates the collective psyche. Some would argue that this is completely natural, that it’s simply an everyday aspect of life in which most living creatures partake. And it’s true; our bodies were made to procreate. The desire to give sex meaning is understandable.
However, sex has moved a long ways from the simple objective of procreation, and our desire for it is taken advantage of in many ways. Most people need sex to have meaning because the alternative is too frightening. Sex without meaning would require participants to “float freely in sexual experience, rather than being snugly anchored in a cognitive framework.” So far, sex only has meaning as we experience it, so its meaning is emergent and not objective. We discover the meaning of sex each time we have it, but that meaning resides only in our experience and it changes each time we have sex.
It’s sad we’ve lost the purpose of sex and connections we can build through it, our ability to seek knowledge and understanding from it. The fact that sex has no intrinsic meaning is, gives us the opportunity to discover an infinite number of meanings in sex. But the fact that sex has no meaning is scary. It means that every time you have sex you’re floating and you take responsibility for your choices and experiences. We get quick pleasures, and that’s what we’ve come to think sex is for: orgasm.
Lack of meaning if sex is scary because our partners are not liable to objective criteria; therefore, they are not subject to our control. What is “right” or “wrong” is up to you. However, it’s important to understand that sex can serve a higher purpose.
Having sex to achieve an orgasm and maximize pleasure, in some ways, is no different from doing drugs or binge eating – pursuits that take us away from the voice of our soul, as many ancients believed. That is why many cultures practiced resisting of sensorial pleasures, in order to become closer with “God.” This includes fasting, abstinence, meditation, and more.
Over time, our attitudes toward sex have been constantly changing because they have been impacted by various influences. One of the greatest is pornography and that is evident by the fact that pornography websites now receive billions of hits per year and are ranked among the most popular in the world. Another influence is media, because media uses sex to sell products and ideas and exposes sex to us at younger and younger ages.
How do you think pornography has shaped our perception of sex?
From very early age, we encounter sex everywhere, but it wasn’t always the case.
As most of you reading this will probably know, here at CE we are big proponents of non-material science. Science has already shown us that matter is not the only reality, and that there is an entire world out there, and right next to us, that cannot be perceived by our senses. Physicists have actually measured this “invisible” world, and science has shown us that thoughts, feelings, emotions, energy transfer, and more all play a crucial role in understanding the makeup of our physical material world. These concepts have tremendous implications in all fields of science, including health.
Since today innumerable reputable and peer-reviewed studies have proven their value, mind-body connection and other healing methods like Reiki (which is a healing technique based on the principle that the therapist can channel energy into the patient by means of touch, to activate the natural healing processes of the patient’s body and restore physical and emotional well-being.), is gradually gaining more credibility from the scientific world.
What’s perhaps most fascinating about these concepts is that modern day science seems to be catching up to ancient wisdom. The ancients have been correct in so many different ways, and we should not limit their validity to quantum physics and neuroscience, where most of the parallels are seen. What about their concepts of sex? Can we learn anything from that?
We recently came across an interview between Norm Macdonald and Jim Carrey, talking about a number of issues, including sex. In the interview, Carrey describes what he calls “alchemical sex.”
“There is a substance or a liquid that comes from your Medulla . . . [and] this substance comes from your medulla, makes the trip down your spine to your sacrum . . . and if you don’t squander that essence, that sexual essence, it ascends again and goes back to heaven.”
Carey is describing what’s known as “Kundalini.”
Steve Taylor, Ph.D, a scholar in the field, describes the concept as follows:
In the Hindu Yoga and Tantric traditions, Kundalini is seen as a “coiled energy” at the base of the spine. Its release (which can be sudden or gradual) results in sudden spiritual awakening, sometimes with disruptive psychological and physical effects. In this article, cases of “kundalini-like” experiences from my research are discussed, highlighting ways in which they seem to differ from kundalini as normally conceived. Here the experiences are interpreted in terms of an “energetic” theory of spiritual awakening. It is suggested that kundalini-like experiences are related to a sudden release of energy normally expressed as sexual energy, or libido. In other cases, spiritual awakening may be related to a dissolution of the normal self-system. or ego.
The concept of kundalini arousal may have been developed as a way of describing the transformational experience of a sudden release of concentrated sexual energy. KEYWORDS: Kundalini, spiritual awakening, ego-dissolution, awakening experiences, sexual energy. In the chakra system of the Yoga and Tantra traditions, kundalini—derived from the Sanskrit word kunda, meaning to coil or spiral—lies dormant in the first and lowest of the seven chakras, the muladhara. According to these traditions, once kundalini is aroused, it travels up through the sushumna energy-channel, located roughly in parallel with the spine (hence the slightly inaccurate but common belief that kundalini travels “up the spine” itself). It travels all the way up to the seventh chakra, the sahasrara, in the crown of the head. Here it manifests itself as spiritual awakening. If the energy can be permanently settled or established at the seventh chakra, the individual will be in a permanent state of nirvikalpa samadhi, in union with Brahman, becoming a Brahma-vidya, with knowledge of Creator Brahman.
As you can see, sex, and the energy that’s generated by having sex, can be used to strengthen our connection with “God,” or Source, or whatever you prefer to call it.
Connect with us