The Lustful Path To Enlightenment

“Be here now. Whatever path you’re on, that’s your fucking path to enlightenment.” - Ram Dass



How do we deal with desires when you’re attempting to be on a “spiritual path”?
The answers are:
“Why would you be asking me?"
"How the fuck would I know?”
All I can do is share with you my experiences...

So a sexual desire pops up; what to do about it? That is the question.

Do you view it as an obstacle on your path to enlightenment, because spiritual people don’t/shouldn’t have such desires?

What are your options with that perspective? Denial, repression, disgust, disappointment?

What if you were to view this sexual desire as a natural part of the human experience?

What if you could view it as an opportunity to sit with a desire and, as the Buddha taught, not get possessed by it nor resist it?

When you look at a desire (sexual or otherwise) or ANY emotion or sensation with an open heart and an inquisitive mind, things can get fucking fascinating real fast.

Tara Brach, PhD, in her most excellent book Radical Acceptance, recounts a classic Chinese Zen tale:

An old woman had supported a monk for 20 years, letting him live in a hut on her land. After all this time she figured the monk, now a man in the prime of his life, must have attained some degree of enlightenment. So she decided to test him.

Rather than taking his daily meal to him herself, she asked a beautiful young girl to deliver it. She instructed the girl to embrace the monk warmly, and then report back to her how he responded.

When the girl returned, she said that the monk had simply stood stock-still, as if frozen. The old woman then headed for the monk’s hut. What was it like, she asked him, when he felt the girl’s warm body against his?

With some bitterness he answered, “Like a withering tree on a rock in the winter, utterly without warmth.”

Furious, the old woman threw him out and burned down his hut, exclaiming, “How could I have wasted all these years on a fraud.”

Instead of appreciating the beauty of the young girl, perhaps noting a natural sexual response and allowing it to be present without the need to act upon it (given the entirety of the situation), the monk simply shut down.

In essence, he had trained himself to deny the very core of living and experiencing his human existence.

That’s a fucked up path to enlightenment, and the old woman called him on his bullshit.

Now fuck me, stupid! .