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Thoughts About Sex

• Few reach the ideal of chastity. The chaste person has passed beyond all physical expressions of sexuality, beyond all erotic thought and even beyond subconscious desire. A joyous state of freedom has been reached and the chaste person experiences peace and bliss.

• Chastity is heart work. One must never judge another but do own inner work and is always a beginner. This affliction strikes anyone at anytime.

• Sex-thought is like food only the desire is for physical enjoyment of another’s body.

• Sexual thoughts live beneath consciousness

• Gift of equanimity on the thought of sex is rare

• Three degrees: continent, celibate, chaste

• Goal is nakedness before God. Heart not divided from vow. (Vow in Greek is the same word as pay—one pays their vow and vows to pray—play on words in the literature).

When night arousals cease or are only from needs of nature…Then he has doubtless arrived at a condition where he is found the same, day and night, the same in bed as in prayer, quite the same alone as surrounded by men, or finally, that he never see himself in secret as he would blush to be seen by others, nor that the all-seeing eye should see anything in him which he would wish to hide from others. He says, “Even the night has become my delight.”’

• Chaste thinking is a practice not just a fruit of celibacy. ‘The more one grows in sweet patience, the more one grows in purity of body. The further we remove the passion of anger from ourselves, the firmer will be our grasp on chastity. For the heat of the body will not cool unless the outbursts of the heart are restrained.’

Then it goes on to say that some heat you don’t want to lose. Sexual expression cools the energies. So, it’s back to discernment as to the kind of energy one wants to store in the body.

• Practices: fasting and ceaseless prayer, short prayers

• Distance from object of desire

• Examine dreams

• Days’ walk from monastery

• Remain at the Eucharistic table

• Exagoreusis: manifestation of thoughts to wise elder

• Guard of the Heart…takes sanctuary in the heart
• Vigils (staying alert into the night)

• Internal tryst: notice the thought, refrain from adding thoughts to the train of thought. • • Direct attention to prayer. Lay aside the thought, resist commentary

• Check any compulsive behavior (overwork, eating)

• Criteria of wise elder: one who has tamed passions

• Elder knows her/himself

• Is compassionate especially to sinners, the poor and the elderly

• If no teachers or wise elders are available the teachings are to be studied and followed ‘as a teacher.’

• Be on the alert for (anticipate) self-deception.

• Self-sex is contrary to training that is to transmute (sublimating but using the very same energy to accomplish a goal)

• Benefits of the use of sublimated sexual energy: improves memory and meditation. Sex cools energies.

• Motivation for celibacy:

• Simple-one mind (mind is stabilized)

• Work of contemplation is like a husband or mate

• Transcend sexual consciousness, gender consciousness
• Creates community toward God and apostolic love
• Hindu life stages: Indo-Aryan life: student, householder, hermit (retired), monk (renunciate). Celibate except in householder phase when the sex is promoted with the partner.
• Christian Western tradition: solemn vow of celibacy
• Meditation roots out unconscious motivation and compulsions
• Meditation practice also raises energies like Kundalini

• Fruit of celibacy: (Institute IV) The disciple who has sublimated his or her sexual energy has all the benefits of sex and more. In all these matters, the mind attains a subtle purity and will experience an increase of devotion that is difficult to describe or narrate. Just as one who has not experienced this joy cannot conceive of it, so too one cannot express it when one does conceive it. If you want to describe the sweetness of honey to someone who has never tasted it, that person will still not be able to experience with his ears what his mouth has never tasted. Likewise, those who have experienced the joy of the taste can only wonder at it within themselves. Thus, one with a quiet mind is inflamed with the words of the psalmist, ‘Wonderful are your works, and my soul is pleased to know them’ (Ps. 138:14).
• Cassian describes the heavenly infusion of spiritual joy by which the despondent spirit is quickened to inspired gladness; those fiery transports of the heart and the ineffable and unheard-of consolations of joy by which we are sometimes aroused from an inert and stupid torpor to most fervent prayer, as from a deep sleep (Conf. XII.12)
22. Heart is not divided, is at peace.