How is our sexual drive connected to spirituality?

Our sexual drive, more than any other instinct, can be a bridge to the Fourth Instinct and to our future. By removing the dullness of habitual perceptions, by awakening the loving inside us, by transcending both the self-centeredness of the instinct for power and the self-preserving calculations of the instinct to survive. Through sex, we can stand naked -- physically and spiritually -- vulnerable to each other.

 

We hear it in the stanzas of popular love songs or in the sensual mysticism of Saint John of the Cross: the principle of union, of the binding that frees, and the love that liberates. Perhaps this is why the instinct for sex and the Fourth Instinct share so much common vocabulary.

 

Our desire for wholeness can drive us both into the arms of a lover and into the arms of God. "If I can say to somebody else, ‘I love you,'" wrote Erich Fromm, "I must be able to say, ‘I love in you everybody, I love through you the world, I love in you also myself.'" Love is the bond we share with each other and with God.

All human beings are sexual beings. Not only have we been blessed with sexual identities (as our genitals dictate), we have been blessed with the capacity for sexual union with one another. The ability to orgasm is a gift, whether the release it offers occurs in solitude or with others. It is a natural and human opportunity to momentarily heighten our consciousness through the release of Serotonin (the “feel-good” neurotransmitter in our brain). Clinical studies have connected elevated Serotonin levels with a greater aptitude for accessing that which is mystical or spiritual. Hence, expression of our sexuality may provide us with a sense of feeling closer to God. When we conjoin sexually with a loving partner, the special synchronicity that transpires may cause both partners to climax simultaneously, further heightening perceptions for a spiritual experience. Some people may try to achieve this experience in ways that are not authentic, be it reckless sexual misconduct or promiscuity, or by attempting to replicate a similar effect artificially with drugs and alcohol. Ultimately, these methods will leave the perpetrator feeling hollow, angry or unsatiated.