Repost: "More on Sexual Healing!"

Someone asked me an interesting question about sex in a session once. The gist of it was, if nature never screws up (and I always say it never does), why would human beings have sexual desire after our optimal childbearing years have passed? The question, of course, comes on the heels of, and is a variation on, a larger question that many people and couples grapple with, which is why does Eros fade?

I've written a lot about the last question - why Eros fades (and why it doesn't have to) - so in this post, I will respond to the initial question - why does sexual desire continue into the middle and elder years, when it no longer seems "practical" for survival purposes?

In a word: Pleasure. Pleasure actually is is important to human beings, and not just because it is, well... pleasurable, but also because it is essential and crucial to our well-being. And the sexual experience, especially sexual union between two people who are in love, is the highest form of pleasure human beings can experience. Furthermore, the more advanced a person is in their self-work, the more important pleasure is. (Believe it or not, Mr. Spock, the logical Vulcan of Star Trek - channeled by Gene Roddenberry - once pointed out: "The more advanced the species, the more the need for play.")

Here's an excerpt from another must read Pathwork Guide Lecture on pleasure as the essence of life:

"When the deepest layers of the psyche are reached, it becomes apparent that the raw, primitive instincts are concerned only with the experience of pleasure. Humanity often claims that pleasure for its own sake is wrong. The truth is exactly the opposite."

Right. Nor is pleasure-seeking or healthy hedonism "selfish."

The Guide again:

"When the personality is harmoniously developed, the pleasure drive includes others, it gives and receives, and this is as it should be. In a mature individual it is not self-centered and excluding. Hence it cannot be antisocial."

Pleasure. Pleasure, and specifically sexual pleasure, opens the human being and human body up to the higher levels of our spiritual nature, levels that animals and little children are naturally open to. Children, therefore, and animals, except to procreate, don't need sex in the same way as an adult human being does. "Sexual healing," (Thank you, Marvin!) in other words, is real. We need sex to sustain and expand our spiritual connection, to remain healthy, to keep the chi flowing. Will we someday evolve as a species to a place where we will be so open and spiritually connected that we don't need sex? Probably... but why not enjoy ourselves fully in the meantime?