My family is leaving today. I will stay here in Montana through August. It’s weird not to know where you’ll be the next month, but I like it that way for now, and I can always make money wherever I am. I remembered that Craigslist has jobs.

I’m going to go look at a motorcycle today. I need one to really be able to get around here. We’re 15 miles from any grocery store. 20 miles into town. 2 miles from a great hike and the next camping spot I’ll go to when my grandma needs me to get off her property.

Celibacy

I’ve been considering a vow of celibacy until I find my husband. Or until God makes it clear that we got what we needed from this time. I don’t want to be distracted from my goals by love island. I don’t want to even feed that little gnawing in me for intimacy and closeness with breadcrumbs (which, by evidence, is all I can get in the dating world). The deep devotional love I seek is actually with God. I am taking the longing for a deep devotional love as a call to be closer to God.

How could I possibly think a man could hold me better than the divine masculine could? That’s what I hold in my heart: the longing for the divine masculine who is perfect at every turn and who loves me unconditionally. That’s not human love. And what an impossible standard to expect any man to meet. I know what false union costs me.

I don’t take this lightly. I’ve been feeling called to this for months, and I’ve been reluctant to openly discuss it because I would then have to hold myself accountable for it publicly. My sexual energy is a powerful, liberated thing. Eros is a fire for creativity. I’m using celibacy not to avoid anything but as devotion to something greater. A refusal to be fragmented. A reclaiming of sovereignty. A protest. A spell.

If he comes into my life, awesome, but he will have to move slowly anyway. He can’t take me off my individuality. And, I trust that when my will and God’s will align, and if it’s in God’s will for me to have a partner, I’ll get one. Until then, I’m here to grow spiritually, make my art, be with the land, and build a business from my gifts. These are the contracts I have with myself. I’m adding another one.

Channeling sexual energy

Sexual energy is fuel for transformation. All of the sects of spirituality and religion that I study have this in common. I find this to be true in my embodied experience as well. The Yamas have the concept of Brahmacharya, which in its broadest sense, refers to the responsible and balanced use of one's energy and desires. It's a concept within yoga and Hinduism that emphasizes self-control, moderation, and the mindful direction of energy toward spiritual growth.

It’s more often than not used during the time period until you’re 25-ish, so you can focus on learning over passions. We didn’t get that in Western society. You were shamed or seen as weird for not having sex. Women are more objectified than ever. Casual sex flows like the Potomac in DC (where I’m from). While often associated with celibacy, Brahmacharya's core meaning is actually about channeling energy effectively and avoiding excess, whether physical, mental, or emotional. 

In the Fourth Way, Gurdjieff taught that sexual energy is the highest form of energy a human possesses. It fuels creativity, conscious effort, higher states of awareness, and the formation of the “higher bodies” (astral, mental, and causal).

But for most people, he said, they leak this energy unconsciously through automatic behavior, fantasy, and mechanical sexual activity. When we do this, we have no energy left for spiritual work.

Programming

A lot of us probably have some white-Protestant-Christian programming about sex that makes celibacy seem icky. If you live in America or Europe, this programming has shaped sex, shame, gender roles, and power in profound and often deeply harmful ways.

We know that sexuality was weaponized as control. Women’s desires were labeled dangerous; their virtue was tied to silence, modesty, and denial. Purity culture framed morality as sexual restraint, especially for white women, creating a double bind where expressing desire meant being impure, and saying no meant being a bitch.

Desire was split from divinity. The body became something to conquer, not to listen to. Pleasure was seen as a threat to God, not a path to God.

Colonial Christianity racialized sexuality. White women were put on a "purity pedestal," while women of color were hypersexualized and denied bodily autonomy. Men were given dominance and women submission. Male desire was naturalized and excused, while female desire was shamed or suppressed.

Even outside the church, the shame lingers in our culture. This programming exists in our public schools, medicine, law, and culture. You don’t need to be religious to be carrying the wound. This kind of programming fragments us from our true nature. It splits: body from soul, virgin from whore, spiritual from sexual. The truth is in their cohesion.

Vow

And so, I am taking this vow. I can’t find many vow examples online. But you, reader, will be the Bishop hearing my prayer and my commitment. Since I can’t find a vow anywhere, I’ve made my own, likely imperfect, more like poem, but effective nonetheless. I’ve added it in PDF form in case it resonates with you. I have you, the land, and God as my witness. These things are typically taken in private, not shared so publicly like this. But I share it to hold myself accountable. And, maybe, it inspires you to consider your own spiritual growth or relationship to sex differently.

👇️ Celibacy Vow Template 👇️ 

Thanks for being here, for witnessing me, for allowing me to learn and grow as the perfectly imperfect human I am.

With love,
Valerie