Let's talk about sex

If we want change, if we want a different culture, a society where the ego isn't calling the shots but that is an expression of sacred unity and rich diversity & creativity, than we have to be willing to look into the deep structures that keep things as they are now.

Sexuality is one of the deepest structures in ourselves and in our culture. It is in some sense still a taboo, it seems to be the sacred cow that very few people want to be objective about. Objective? About sex? Now that's a taboo! Maybe even more so here in Holland because, hey, all those hookers here in Amsterdam are making a living aren't they? Could that be only from tourists? I don't think so.

I am not saying sex is bad, oh no! I just want to open up the subject. I think in Dutch culture the relationship men and women have with sex is defining the relationship we have with each other. And that is culture, isn't it?

To me sexuality always seemed to have to do with being free, successful, wanted and alive. I am considered reasonably attractive and I could usually ‘get' the woman I liked. But the more I got interested in spiritual freedom, the more I started to notice my lack of freedom in this area. I started to experience my relationship to sex as a form of slavery that made me weak and dependent.

Almost three years ago, mainly because at the time my marriage wasn't working out, I decided to become celibate. Guided by my teacher Andrew Cohen I took a vow to abstain from sexual activity for at least a year. As a result of that I slowly started to see things differently over the past three years; I began to see that sex doesn't necessarily make you happy. Granted, it is pleasurable, and sexuality and tenderness between people can be a beautiful thing, but what started to draw my attention was the joy of not being bound, the freedom and dignity of not being in the state of a beggar waiting for the next sexual ‘gift'.

I realized a week ago that in the past, when I would be in love with a woman and it would be reciprocal, what was the most fulfilling about that experience wasn't being in relationship with her, or my feelings for her, nor her feelings for me; the deepest, most fulfilling part of the experience was the absence of wanting. As a result of feeling that this person was ‘the one' for me, I temporarily did not want someone or something else! Looking back I see that, even when I had no involvement in any form of spirituality, I loved peace more than I loved her!

So now it is starting to dawn on me that I do not need sex, or a woman, to be happy and feel whole. It is quite a discovery to find the kind of fullness, that we usually look for in the area of sexuality and relationship, in our own self! To realize that there is no hole that needs to be filled, that literally nothing is missing, ever. It convinced me that, for relationships between men and women to work out, both parties need to stop looking for fulfilment and completion in the other, and realize the fullness that is already in each of us. And I can see how a radically different culture would be the result of this.

On February 13, I will start teaching the introductory course on evolutionary enlightenment in Amsterdam, click here to see a 4 minute video with impressions from the previous courses.