Sexual Desire and Monasticism.
When your mind and heart are truly open abundance will flow to you effortlessly and easily.
Question:
My son has just begun in the last few weeks to study to learn enlightenment. He has the book A Course in Miracles and Eckhart Tolle’s Book (CD) that I gave him. He studies your books and others from libraries…my question…
A week ago he left on a bus to go out west as he felt overwhelmed here where he grew up. His plan was to isolate himself from distraction and try to find the oneness. He is doing quite well but when I spoke to him he had a question I could not give a decent answer to. He seems to be having an issue with his sexuality, his desires for the ladies he is encountering. He is 26. His question had started as a relationship question, but he then narrowed down his confusion about wanting gratification.
What can I tell him, or where can he find an answer? Is there a specific chapter in a specific book that may help him see what he is going through and how to deal with this?
Response:
This is not so much a question about sexual gratification, as it is a matter of your son finding a deeper understanding of his inner nature so that his sexual desires and his spiritual quest are not in conflict. He’s a 26-year-old man, and it’s perfectly natural for him to be sexually attracted to women. There is nothing wrong with that. But he has decided to isolate himself from others to give himself an environment that won’t distract him from his spiritual goal. And there is nothing wrong with the impulse to be isolated for the purposes of understanding and insight for a while either. But now that these two desires are arising simultaneously, there is a conflict between the desires.
But beneath this conflict there is a simple mode of being within him, a creative natural expression of who he is that has nothing to do with the conditioning and expectations that these two opposing impulses represent. What he needs to do is find that inner path that isn’t dictated by his sexual desires nor his concepts of spiritual ideals. Neither of those two options is necessarily in his spiritual best interests. If he were to resist his sexual instincts out of principle, he may be missing the greatest spiritual opportunity of his life. If he abandons his spiritual commitment just because it’s hard to resist sexual desire, then he also may be passing up a wonderful spiritual breakthrough. There is no way to figure this out intellectually or based upon outside principles or opinion.
He needs to go within and find that course of action based on the truth inside himself that exists independent of all these divergent tendencies. When you claim that truth as your Self, as your Being, then you act from a position of freedom and authenticity, and in the knowingness that the action you take is exactly what you need at that time.
Love,
Deepak
