On Chaste-ness

I'm sitting alone on Christmas Eve writing my blog. So what subject should come to mind but Chaste-ness?

I use the term "Chaste-ness" because the correct term "chastity" is fraught with heavy baggage that includes medieval apparatus designed for its bodily enforcement (see photo; that doesn't look comfortable). But chaste-ness has nothing to do with the body. It's all about the mind.

For any of you who know me well (make that very well, and there are only a few), I will strike you as one of the least chaste people you've ever known. Well, things change.

Chaste-ness has not only to do with sexuality. It pertains to all aspects of life. But for the moment, let's stick with its most well-known benefactor. Believe it or not, your sex drive offers you a unique opportunity for transcendence, one you're wise not to pass up.

Sex is one of your body's natural appetites, and at times it can seem like its most powerful. (As long as you have the others, it feels quite strong, but your body will always pass up sex for, say, air.) And yet, as powerful as the sex drive may be, your body can do without it indefinitely and still thrive. Not so with air or water or heat or food. Herein lies the opportunity.

For millennia, sages from Buddha to Socrates have lamented the fact that pleasures rooted in the appetites of the body--food, water, sex--carry with them also the seeds of pain. You have to be thirsty before a drink of water is pleasurable, and if you drink too much it becomes painful again. You have to be hungry before food tastes good, and if we eat too much (as many of us will today and tomorrow) you'll soon be in pain again. Alas, we are slaves to our appetites.

And the sex drive feels so powerful because we feel the pain of privation so acutely. You feel bad when it's not available to you. And even when it is, waiting can be painful. And then it's possible to have too much sex and that becomes painful. And then you have to wait some time (10 minutes? maybe 20?) to start the pain and pleasure cycle over again.

Wouldn't it be nice to have the pleasure without the pain? That's where chaste-ness comes in. That's the dirty (make that clean) little secret no one is telling you about--no one on either side of the debate, because neither side apparently understands this--chaste-ness is not about going without the pleasure of sex . . .

. . . It's about going without the pain!

Yes, you heard me right. It's about going without the pain. And some have mastered this art so well that they decide to take a vow--priests and nuns, for example--to do it (make that not do it) their whole lives.

But that's entirely up to you, and that's the beauty of it. You can then DECIDE where and when and with whom you will engage in sexual relations as opposed to having the issue decided for you. This is the only true sexual freedom. You are then no longer a slave to this one appetite, over which you can exert complete control.

"Ok," you tentatively utter. "Let's say for the sake of argument that I'm interested in this sort of approach. How exactly would one go about exerting this sort of control?"

I'm glad you asked that question. The way you do it is by simple awareness. Feel the sexual urge gnawing at your soul and your body. Feel the stress of it. Feel the tension. Examine it. Observe. What does it feel like?

In this way you begin to dis-identify your "self" from your bodily urges. Once this dis-identification is complete, sexual urges no longer have the power to control your behavior.

But that probably won't be the case from the start. So continue your observation. What is this drive motivating you to do? Where has it caused you to go? Who has it urged you to associate with?

Don't judge what you are doing. Guilt has no place here. Only observe.

As you watch this process, who "you" are gets disentangled from these urges. You and they are no longer one. You are one thing and they are another. You are discovering your soul, the consciousness that you are.

Once this process begins, you don't need to worry or involve yourself in its completion. The separation will take care of itself.

At that point you will control your own sexual destiny. You can have sex when, where and with whom you choose.

Ah ha! But here's the big catch: when, where and with whom will you want to have sex after this transformation has taken place?

Let's think about this--for now we CAN think about it. Will it be the hot looking chick with the piercings and the tattoos who you're pretty sure will jump into bed with you by tomorrow night?

I'm guessing the answer to this question will be no. Why? Because now you have control. You don't need to do that.

Instead, I venture to guess that you will now listen to the inanity spewing from her lips. You may now ask yourself, "How much more of this can I take?" You may envision what those tats will look like when she's thirty-five and has a couple of kids.

You may decide to take your chances on meeting someone in a library or in a place of worship. Who knows, you might even read something other than Maxim yourself. You might even hit the Saturday night mass.

You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince (or princess), so the saying goes. Well, chaste-ness allows you to work through all those frogs until you get to that prince. You don't get saddled with that clueless dude with the big muscles, for example.

Chaste-ness in life should not be a dirty word. It should be that for which we strive. Mastery over our passions, not mastery by them.

Food and Chaste-ness

Let's take a moment to demystify this issue by taking a look at another passion to which people are prone: food.

As some people are heavy drinkers, some are heavy eaters. They lack a chaste approach to food.

Instead of DECIDING when and where and what they will eat, those decisions are made for them by their hunger pangs. And not only the pangs themselves but even the mere anticipation of hunger pangs causes them to head for the refrigerator.

This is because they are at one with those pangs. There is no separation between who they are and the pangs.

And on top of the pangs themselves, most people with an unchaste approach to food will add a level of resistance to the pain they feel. That is, they will resist the pangs, wishing that the pain they feel would not be there. They are resisting that which is, always feudal, thereby doubling their suffering. This is true of sexual urges too.

The same process of dis-identification from sexual urges will work for the symptoms of hunger as well. The difference, of course, is that the body will eventually actually need to eat. But that's ok because now you will eat because you need the nutrition or the energy, not because you're afraid of the pain of hunger.

This approach will work for any undesired behavior, licit and illicit. And the process is self-sustaining. Once it begins, it will continue to completion. Residual mind-identification (what our good friend Eckhart Tolle calls ego) can only hope to delay it. But it can't be stopped once it has begun. Why? Because once the illusion has been shown up as such, you can't go back to seeing it as something that's real.

Marriage and Chaste-ness

For most, after singleness comes marriage. And chaste-ness has a role to play there too.

Marriage is not a finish line, after which you go crazy. Believe me and everyone else who has ever been married, it doesn't work that way. Nor should it. Chaste-ness, if you practice it as a single person will follow you into marriage and will help make your marriage a happy one.

Ladies, hear me here. I'm not saying that we should expect chaste-ness from our spouses. That's not what it's about. It's about expecting chaste-ness only from ourselves.

And chaste-ness is a double-edged sword. It allows you to do it when and where and with whom you choose. And sometimes that includes doing it when you don't feel like it, because that's what you DECIDE to do. We can practice chaste-ness in all aspects of life, even chaste-ness over other physical demands.

And hopefully during the courtship phase, you put chaste-ness to work and found a man equally chased who does not demand sex when it is clear you are not into it at that particular moment.

Any other mode of sexual communication between husband and wife is of the ego.

And what if you took this a step further? What if you applied the principles of chaste-ness to procreation? That is, what if you were so chaste that you could MANAGE your sex life so that you produce a desired number of children without having to resort to synthetic intervention, such as pills or condoms?

"Ok," you say. "Here we go, the Catholic thing."

No, that's not it at all, though this may be the basis for their positions, I don't know.

I realize this is a bridge too far for many of you. But remember, the goal is enlightenment. The goal is NOT to establish a lifestyle that will afford us every opportunity to give free reign to our appetites, which as previously discussed leads to pain as often as it does to pleasure.

Just something to think about.

But now let's hear from . . .

The Other Side

"Why is all this necessary?" the other side of this question says. "Can't I just masturbate when I need to and take pills and use condoms to avoid the consequences of sexual activity?"

Yes, absolutely you can, and many do. But you're still identifying your "self" with the world of form. This will never lead to mastery; it will only perpetuate slavery. You're robbing yourself of an opportunity to use your sexual appetite to dis-identify from the world of form and thereby identify the soul within you.

If you go this route, you're continuing to identify yourself as a human-animal as opposed to a human-being. This process you (the other side, that is) describe is devolving us back into the animal kingdom, rather than helping to usher in a new consciousness that is at one with all that is, a consciousness compatible with a better world.

The Real Question

The question, however, is not CAN you do this. The process is pretty simple. The question is WILL you do it?

As Eckhart has said, "Trying to become a good or better human being sounds like a commendable and high-minded thing to do, yet it is an endeavor you cannot ultimately succeed in unless there is a shift in consciousness." A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose (Oprah's Book Club, Selection 61), p. 12)

Couple that with a later passage:

"[I]t is true that there is nothing you can do to become free of the ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego’s cleverness begins to operate in your life.” (A New Earth, p. 117)

But:

“Only the first awakening, the first glimpse of consciousness without thought, happens by grace, without any doing on your part.” (A New Earth, p. 260)

To find your responsibility in all of this, add to the foregoing something Jesus said: "Seek and you will find."

If a shift in consciousness is required to make any deep and lasting change in your life, and that shift "happens by grace," we need to begin seeking that shift. And if you seek it, you will find it.

In the meantime, if you want to keep trying it the old-fashioned way, go ahead. Go all the way with it (as it were). Knock yourself out. That's one of the best ways to learn its emptiness, prodigal-son-style.

But bookmark this page. It might help you a little on down the road.

You might also like: Black Marriage Day a Celebration of Suffering

Please, post comments. Let me hear your point of view. It will be helpful to everyone.