Sex as a Spiritual Exercise

Wariness about sex through those early centuries is understandable. Before modern medicine, perhaps a quarter of all women eventually died in childbirth. No effective contraceptive was available. Children born out of wedlock were social pariahs. A non-virgin woman would be hard pressed to ever find a husband and needed economic support. Sexually transmitted diseases had no cure. Sexual urges were thought to reduce people to the level of an animal. On many fronts, sex was thought to be, and in fact was, dangerous. 

• The powerful emotions that surround sexuality are another factor. Emotions cloud thinking. If truth be told, the heart usually rules the head. So some religious leaders—especially seniors, who tend to hold the influential positions but who grew up in former generations with deeply engrained restrictive sexual attitudes—may actually be humanly incapable of transcending their prejudices. Besides, most younger clergy also grew up in sexual repression. It will take generations before comfort with sex becomes typical of our society.

• Emotional restructuring of the human psyche is a slow process. Deep psychological healing often requires years of psychotherapy. Yet the emotionally laden social changes that assault our era have come quickly—divorce, chemical contraception, racial equality, women’s rights, access for the handicapped, gay liberation, transsexual and intersex liberation, gay marriage, the Internet, the breakdown of national boundaries, the growth of a global community, and terrorism. The human psyche is not built to sustain such rapid-fire assault. By any historical standard, the achievements of sexual liberation, even if halted today, would remain remarkable. In fact, then, it is not to be expected that people in general or their religions will change their sexual attitudes quickly.

• Guilt is another factor. Sexual exploration is a normal aspect of adolescence. In that exploration many people do things that later weigh on their consciences—especially men and especially regarding homosexual play. My human sexuality class in rural, Bible-Belt Georgia, for example, almost always rates as true, without debate, that same-sex experimentation is a normal facet of their culture. But given the societal and religious guilt surrounding such sex acts, adult believers, converted and repentant, are likely to wage a battle against sexual “sins,” their own and everyone else’s. The fact that even these true believers had once “fallen” provides personal proof of the need to vigilantly oppose pernicious homosexuality.

• Reaction formation—the Freudian defense mechanism whereby one opposes in others what one senses but cannot admit in oneself—also plays out in other ways. Carl Jung noted that homosexual people tend to be spiritually sensitive. So they are likely to be overrepresented in the ministry. Estimates of homosexual Catholic priests range from 30 to 60 percent and more. Because of the all-male structure of the Catholic priesthood, this incidence of homosexuality is probably higher than that among non-Catholic clergy. Still, despite the de facto requirement of marriage for Protestant ministers, the incidence of homosexuality among them is also likely to be high. Besides, a recent study suggested that “heterosexual” men who become more sexually aroused by homosexual pornography also tend to score higher than others on a scale of homophobia. Overall, then, some clergy surely oppose homosexuality because they cannot accept the tendency in themselves.

• Changing sexual mores shake the very foundations of Western civilization, so fear also catalyzes religious leaders in their opposition to change. Such change is inherent in the “sexual revolution,” and such change is colossal, so opposition to it is not wholly irrational. On the chopping block of historical change lie the rule of patriarchy, the relationship of man and woman, the notions of femininity and masculinity, the mythically powerful and financially encumbering heterosexual wedding, the popular understanding of marriage, and the Norman-Rockwellian myth of family. The threat also includes the fictionalized energy of “free sex” unleashed, the power of romance to dilute the work ethic, and the loss of easy governmental control over people because they love. The movement toward a global community—built on the axiom of “human rights” and respectful of all peoples and cultures yet manipulated for economic goals by multinational corporations—is another entangled dimension of this intricate scenario. Under discombobulating circumstances like these, it is understandable that religious leaders would tend toward conservatism and, impotent as anyone to restrain the historical trends, would focus on individuals, their private sex lives, and their fear-ridden relationship with God. Evidently and unfortunately, religious faith is not strong enough to allow that all people could be themselves and still live together in peace, joy, and mutual respect. We are still incapable of conceiving a truly new world order.

• Philosophically, as well, the bottom has fallen out of Western civilization. Radical postmodernism discredits the very notions of truth and goodness, and moderate postmodernism has, in the least, demonstrated the difficulty of approaching these traditional ideals. No consensus whatsoever on epistemology or ethics exists in our day. Even the possibility of correct knowing has been—self-contradictorily—argued unflinchingly. No one—except, I believe, Bernard Lonergan—envisages a credible exit from this quandary. Thus, religion’s easy claim to know the truth from God and to announce the good appears as a fiction from a bygone era. Nonetheless, better to have a dubious ethical teaching than none at all. So religion holds to its traditional position. This tendency is blatant in Roman Catholicism, which continues to insist that in every case sex must be open to conception. Other religions are not as explicit in their teaching, but logical analysis of their opposition to sexual variations because of a supposed “complementarity of the sexes” leads to the same first premise. Thus, for want of a coherent alternative, religion insists on the faltering status quo.

In their concern to limit sexual experience, Augustine and Aquinas were correct: Sexual experience does entail a momentary loss of rationality. But with more profound psychological awareness, the wisdom of our age asserts that such a temporary loss might be to the good. The psychoanalytic term that could apply is “regression in the service of the ego.” Sometimes it is useful to experience a break from our too-heady rationalism. Such “regression” allows our mental structures to regroup in a healthier configuration: one step backward for the sake of two steps forward. Just as a needed vacation lets us return to everyday life with a new outlook, so, too, a respite from our over rationalized and over intellectualized pursuits can bring a new sense of wonder to daily living.

To be human is to be ever becoming. Throughout our lives we create ourselves. In the end each of us will be the one and only edition of ourselves. Our becoming depends on a shifting balance in the various facets of our make up. As a pause that gives new life, sex can provide an occasion to shift our inner balance. But what does this shift have to do with spiritual growth?

Without ever explicitly talking of God or of a relationship with God, I have been describing a facet of our minds that is spiritual. If I am correct in so doing, this very aspect of our minds is the basis of human spirituality. Because of it we know wonder and awe, we question our existence, we contemplate the stars, we reach out in love—and anticipating the answer to our every question and projecting the fulfillment to our deepest longings, we conceive of God. The human spirit is the real foundation of all spirituality. Theological considerations are secondary; they are derivative.

To the extent that we allow the human spirit to guide our living, to the extent that we integrate its urgings ever more into the very structure of our being, we grow spiritually; we become more spiritual. However, this self-transcending dimension is not all there is to our minds. There is also psyche. It supports the out going spirit; it “houses” the spirit. But by the same token, the psyche also limits the spirit.

The greatest obstacle to our spiritual growth is ourselves. Although our spirits would soar, facets of our minds prevent such self-transcendence. For reasons also built into our being, we cannot be fully open-minded, we limit our wonder and awe, we fear to strike out on new adventures, we selfishly attend only to ourselves. Our self-limiting self-defense restricts our potential for unlimited growth.

Psychologists and counselors work to free up the limiting aspects of the self. These professionals help us heal our past hurts, give up festering resentments, enhance interpersonal relationships, put aside counter productive defenses. The focus of such healing is emotions, memories, images, and habits of personality. All these make up what Lonergan calls psyche.

Hence, there is a tug and pull inside of us. The urge to grow and the urge to stagnate are at war within us—perhaps like the “spirit” and “flesh” about which Saint Paul wrote. The goal of growth is to integrate these inner forces and to let spirit take the lead until, through repeated self-adjustment, our whole being—body, psyche, and spirit—moves harmoniously in one direction. Such is the path of spiritual growth. Understood from a psychological point of view—that is, a humanistic or naturalistic, not yet a theological, point of view—spiritual growth results via the process of integration of the human spirit.

The mechanism of spiritual growth

The emotional power of relationships is legendary. Lovers interminably challenge each other as they jog to and fro in a dance of on going compromises and adjustments, some steps welcomed and others resisted. Sometimes the power of interpersonal relationships can be explosive; but, to some extent in every case, they pry open the psyche. Falling in love and being in love are exciting and disrupting experiences. When people are in love, from their psyches come pouring out memories, joys, and fears—as well as hopes and schemes: the dreams and promises of lovers, the meanings and values, the ideas and ideals that are the hallmarks of the human spirit. This psychic upheaval turns over rich mental soil and makes way for new growth. With the breakdown of habitual patterns of behavior and response comes the possibility of reconfiguring the self in a healthier form. In this sense people in loving relationships are “good for each other.”

Sex can be used to facilitate self-transcendent experience. Having sex seduces lovers into dreaming dreams and making promises: Human sex engages the psyche, which, in turn, releases the human spirit.

Bringing a purified mind to sex also transforms sex itself. Therefore, compared to the unaware, people who meditate regularly can be more personally engaged in a sexual encounter. They can approach a partner with clarity of focus, knowing why they are there; with intensity of action, being fully present to every movement, touch, and gesture; with emotional attunement, flowing in synch with the partner; with responsiveness of presence, attending spontaneously to the other; and with profound identification, finding themselves in the other and the other in themselves.

At the same time that the regular meditator brings a richer self to the sexual encounter, the bodily and psychic effects of the encounter also further intensify the meditator’s personal presence. This reciprocity creates a snowballing effect. Multiple systems conspire to increase personal—and now interpersonal—integration. Bodies, psyches, and spirits flow in the transcending, ever-renewing course that is determined by the open-ended dynamism of the human spirit itself. A unitive experience—a sense of oneness with oneself, the other, and the universe—may sometimes result. This is to say, in sexual sharing or in reflection on it, one can know a moment of mystical ecstasy. As does every “religious experience,” this moment helps to further transform the psyche, opening onto the possibility of still further experiences of self-transformation. In this fashion, loving sex can become a path to spiritual fulfillment.

However, my down-to-earth sense of life requires that I add a qualification. It must be recalled that most often sex is a rather prosaic event. People usually end up enjoying sex not because it can open the door to mysticism but for this or that more mundane reason. As with spirituality itself, we must be careful not to idealize sex. It is often less than it is cracked up to be. Sex is, after all, a human affair, and, more often than not, human affairs fall into the gray range, not into black or white.

Be that as it may, sex and spirituality can be integrated. They can mutually enhance each other. However, as the close relationship between sexuality and spirituality becomes a topic of popular discussion, misleading oversimplifications emerge. I explained the inherent relationship of sexuality to spirituality on the basis of a facet of our human makeup—namely, the open-ended, self-transcending, dynamic, and normatively structured human spirit. Granted this understanding, not every sexual encounter is spiritually useful. In itself, of course, as sheer titillation, sex has a magic of its own. But this merely physical and emotional excitement is not the self-transcending wonder of the human spirit. Not just any sexual arousal leads to spiritual fulfillment.

Drugs can induce spiritually useful altered states of consciousness, and many indigenous religious rituals—not to mention Christianity’s use of communion wine on an empty stomach—utilize psychedelics for this purpose; but people also use drugs on the street and end up in enslaving addictions. Similarly, sex can be used for spiritual growth, but it can also be used for escapism. In its own way sex can also become an addiction. It would be a compounded illusion to believe that an insatiable pursuit of sex has spiritual growth as its motive or its likely result.

The spiritual path follows a fine line. It is the narrow gate of which Jesus spoke, the razor edge that the bodhisattva must walk. If a former age fell off the edge into an other-worldly extreme, advocating a spiritual fulfillment that required the denial of sex, our own age tends to fall off the edge into a this-worldly extreme, ignoring the spiritual and touting the value of physical pleasure. Finding and expressing a balance is not easy to do. But worse than missing the balance is to not even attempt to find it. Integration of sexuality and spirituality may call for some experimentation, and along the way one may make some mistakes. One only hopes that we all have the good sense not to make irreparable mistakes—such as unwanted pregnancies, incurable sexually transmitted diseases, broken hearts, or scandalous betrayals of solemn commitments. I treat the integration of sexuality and spirituality in detail in Sex and the Sacred.  

Spirituality is a quest. Composed of body, psyche, and spirit, we live pulled in many directions. The challenge each day is to pursue a new balance as life inevitably changes and moves on. The key to the balance is attunement to our own spirit, for the spirit holds a vision of unity, an orientation toward transcendence, and a fountain of wisdom that are beyond our deliberate control.

For that very reason—because our own spirit seems to operate from beyond ourselves, because we are more than our small, conceptualized selves—people tend to attribute spiritual experiences to things outside of themselves, most commonly, to “God.” I have attributed spirituality to an aspect of our own beings. Properly understood, this approach leads to no solipsism, selfishness, selfism, godless humanism, atheistic naturalism, or myopic pettiness—as critics allege—for our spirits are essentially outgoing, geared to the universe, oriented to all that is true and good. Fidelity to the human spirit could not but lead godward.

One advantage of this approach is that it easily explains the close relationship between spirituality and sexuality—and many other facets of human living, as well. Another advantage is that it counters the centuries-long embarrassment of Christianity—the religion that believes God became flesh but has treated the flesh as unworthy.