Sex. Possibly the most loaded word in any language, and with good reason. Sex reaches deep down into who we are at our core, and tells truths about us that are undeniable. Freud tapped into this over a century ago, and his insights still reverberate across the decades, and did a lot to break apart the rigid taboos against talking about sex that are a legacy from the Victorian culture.

And yet most of us grew up with very little honest talk about sex, and very little guidance from our parents in this area. This is a real shame – it means we have to fumble around (both literally and figuratively!) learning about this most basic of energies all on our own.

Tibetan Tantric Buddhism says that sex and death are good subjects for meditation because they are the two natural events in which we are automatically stripped of our illusions and our selfhood.

I believe sexuality is a divine gift. God wouldn’t have given us the ability to feel pleasure in our bodies unless s/he intended for us to feel this pleasure. But I feel God also gave us the ability to feel an ecstasy during lovemaking that is greater than mere physical pleasure – the ecstasy of spiritual and physical energy merging and meeting in our physical bodies – the ecstasy of oneness with the divine at the same time we feel at one with our partner. This is truly one of the best ways to know God, and a great reason to invite God into bed with us!

So how did sex become such a charged issue morally, especially to institutionalized religion, and especially to Christianity and Islam? First of all, I believe that this stems from the root thought that body and spirit are separate, and that only spirit is divine. This has led, in its most extreme form, to the thought that the body is dirty, and that therefore, sex must also be dirty. This in turn leads to the thought that, in order to be spiritual, we need to deny ourselves sex – the essence of the monastic vow of celibacy.

The other reason for sex becoming such a moral issue, from a more metaphysical standpoint, is that sex is a very dense and powerful form of life-energy, and as such, tends to bring up issues in us that need to be resolved. Also, dense forms of energy like this (money is another one) tend to demand that we keep clear agreements about them in order to stay conscious. To me, this is not so much a moral issue as it is an issue about living consciously and mindfully in every area of life.

I think it’s interesting, as we look at this issue of morality and sexuality, to notice that sex (along with money) is often the downfall of fundamentalist religious figures such as Jim Bakker and Jimmy Swaggart. It’s evidence of the phenomenon that what is suppressed is bound to come out into the light of day, often in ways that are undesirable or inappropriate.

The spiritual view of sexuality, as opposed to the religious one, is a little different. This view posits, first of all, that sex is innocent, and that it has been given to us by God both as a way simply to feel pleasure in our bodies, and also a vehicle for spiritual enlightenment.

Spiritual adepts in China and India realized thousands of years ago that we are not simply gross physical beings – we are imbued with energy. This energy, basic to all life, was (and is) called chi in China and prana in the Hindu tradition in India. These early adepts realized also that this energy could be consciously channeled up through the various energy centers of the body (chakras to the Hindus) to enhance spiritual awareness and create mystical states of oneness with the divine.

At the same time, they realized that sexual energy was simply a denser, more intense form of this basic life-energy, and that it too, could be channeled in such a way as to lead to loving, ecstatic oneness with the divine – and one’s partner. Truly the best of both worlds! This, of course, gave rise to the great tradition of Taoist sexual practices, and the sexual elements of Tantric Yoga, in which practitioners learn how to consciously channel sexual energy through their spiritual energy centers.

Isn’t this better than seeing the body and sexuality as sinful or “dirty”? Not only is our physical pleasure enhanced, it contributes to our experience of mystical oneness with the divine. It’s another amazing instance of what I call “divine design”. Of course, it is possible to engage in purely animal sex (in fact, this is still what most humans still do). But even here, the reason so many of us pursue sex so obsessively is because the moment of orgasm is, for many people, their only experience of true ecstasy, or their only experience of the divine moment (although most wouldn’t put it that way!).

So, our culture sees sex either as dirty, something to be hidden, something to be indulged in, or something to be repressed and suppressed. See the contradictions? The two extremes in this paradigm are sexual license and promiscuity at one end, or rigid repressiveness at the other -- where we are supposed to only have sex in order to reproduce with a married partner of the opposite sex. This is a very limited, and very limiting view of sexuality. There is another, higher option that is completely off this track -- that is sacred sex, or spiritual sex.

As Thomas Moore writes in The Soul of Sex: “In our culture, when we’re talking about sex, we often approach sexual problems mechanically, so the result can be that we approach our partners mechanically, without the deep engagement of the soul and spirit that would give sex its depth and humanity.”

I believe sex is designed by God to be spiritual and soulful. Anything less, and we’re not getting the whole deal. We’re depriving ourselves!

Here are some other thoughts about conscious sexuality I offer in my workshop:

Sex without harmony is either rape or mutual masturbation.

Sex without a clear agreement about the nature and structure of the relationship causes disharmony, fear, anger.

Sex without reverence, spirituality and love is like using your partner to masturbate.

Sex without play is work.

Conscious, sacred sex is about communion with the Beloved – both the divine beloved and the beloved in our bed. In healing our own shame about our bodies, learning to love our bodies and the natural pleasure that they experience, we naturally extend this love to our partner. Then when we learn how to consciously channel sexual energy through our chakras, we can create states which combine physical pleasure with spiritual ecstasy. It’s an experience of ecstatic, loving connection – with ourselves, with our partner, with God.