It’s oddly warm in Montana this week. It’s been in the mid-60s and I’m loving it. My boyfriend tells me not to get used to this. Grandma sat outside this morning like it was a summer day. I took an evening walk with just a light jacket. I needed it warm just a little longer.

Spiritual discipline

I’m sitting with my total lack of spiritual discipline this morning. Yes, I’m undisciplined, and I’m undisciplined about the thing that is the hardest for me to say no to: the erotic.

It’s difficult for me to talk about. I feel a lot of shame around the fact that I don’t have discipline here. And that’s where I get conflicted even more. Then I’m both weak and in a shame puddle, either seeking validation or support to get out of both.

I took a vow of celibacy until I met my person. I really wanted that. I’m still holding that contract. But I think I made a bad contract because I shouldn’t have made it about the other person; If they’re “the one”. That’s almost impossible to tell, and I thought it would be totally clear. And I do think I’ve met my person, but I also define them as my person if we’re married.

What I should have done was make it about ME and GOD. So instead of setting this contract basically to say, I’m not going to have sex before marriage, I should have said, I’m looking for a deeper relationship with God, and the container for a better relationship with God is celibacy. But I didn’t do that. And now, I’m here, conflicted by the primal desires of the body and the spiritual contract I made with myself for something bigger to unfold.

Conflicted

I’m learning a lot, to say the least. But why is this difficult? What can I understand about myself? It’s no one else’s job to hold this boundary but ME. It’s no one else’s job to live by my values and uphold my values.

And what I’m really understanding differently about sexual discipline is that it’s a spiritual discipline. I kept having this feeling like this is how it’s “supposed” to be (what is with me and that phrase?), and so when I can’t meet it, I let something be wrong with me. Well, I must just be a sinner (we all are), or I must be a slut (I’m not wrong), but I use it as a shame mechanism to try to keep myself in line. And it sort of works, and it sort of doesn’t.

Because it works to keep me in line, yes, but I’m just a mess, suffering in my own shame puddle because I’m actually just attaching sexual discipline to a “good girl” identity, and I’ve never been able to fit into that identity. AND, I’m confusing my partner. He can’t trust what I say, and he needs to be able to. That’s fucked of me.

Identity

I’m still using identity as the container for discipline. And in a lot of ways, that's not a bad use of identity, but when the square peg doesn’t fit into the round hole, I have to find the strength needed for discipline in something else.

I look back at why I don’t have discipline here. Why saying NO is hard for me. For 1.) I spent years not believing it was necessary or needed. Most of Western culture is hedonistic about sex. 2.) I basically just left a quasi-sex cult (the conscious kink, neo-tantra world) where we had put the erotic as, like, a core value. Let it flow, feel it all, be led by the erotic. Erotic as awakening.

So my whiplash shift to, I’m not having sex before marriage (also, I never had sex in the sex cult, for what it's worth), I think just isn’t integrated. I took that vow, and then I think just a month later I met the man I want to spend the rest of my life with. The man I love in a way I’ve never loved anyone before.

I feel tested in my own spiritual discipline about this, and I also feel the desire to throw it all out. I’m rigid, and I’m trying to get out of that. But I’m also, historically, weak on boundaries, and I’d like to be disciplined. I’ve never been disciplined. It’s the thing I have to work on the most.

And I desire to be disciplined because spiritual life requires it. Maturity requires it. Children require it. A relationship with God requires it. And those are things that other people don’t have, and I want what is beyond the ease and convenience of modern life.

Choosing a path

I have another mentor who explained to me why I’m conflicted. And said, basically, that if I just choose one way or the other and then stick to it, the conflict goes away. Okay, sounds easy enough, so why can’t I choose one with clarity?

The thing is, I’m not actually conflicted about him. He’s basically perfect. But what’s really going on is I haven’t chosen a hierarchy of values.

Right now, I’m trying to hold two opposite identities at the same time: 1.) the woman who wants chastity until marriage and 2.) the woman who loves erotic intensity and sexual teasing. Yes, both can be true at the same time, BUT you can NOT lead with both at the same time.

The issue here is self-governance, my dearest self.

I let my primal biology set the boundary, rather than what I say is true for me on a soul-essence level. And, the body will always say YES to primal urges; that’s biology.

But that’s the thing I’m realizing. It won’t essentially bring me joy to just “be biological” if I hold a value of marriage, and I do. I want that as a spiritual path. It’s either that or I go be a fucking nun or something. I’m just here for a spiritual experience at this point. I’m dissatisfied with “normal” life.

Men and women are built to bond sexually at the primal level. We don’t negotiate our faith and theology in the moment of primality. God made our hormones to lead us to make children; they are purely biological. So they’re not here to protect virtue. And, they won’t when lack of sexual discipline is the problem.

This is why German New Medicine says that the feminine biology won’t be forgiving; we cannot say “I want to wait until marriage”, and then simultaneously indulge all the activities that activate the nervous system and flood the female brain with dopamine, oxytocin, and testosterone. It’s like an alcoholic saying, “I’m sober,” and then taking shots of tequila for taste.

My issue then is really to ask myself if my erotic-romantic boundary is incompatible with my behavioral choices. And it’s not on my lover to manage that for me.

And so I must make ONE decision.

Do you want chastity or primal excitement?

We don’t have both at the same time. Once I TRULY, WHOLEHEARTEDLY CHOOSE, everything else becomes simple.

Because, if I choose erotic partnership before marriage, I can also stop calling myself “conflicted”. When I admit I’ve chosen sexual connection now, I can release the shame, admit my true standards, and tell the truth.

So do I want to be sexually faithful to my spiritual convictions or faithful to my hormones?

What would you do?

Love,
Val

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