This is the last thing I thought I'd be posting.
Celibacy. What a daunting concept for the inexperienced!
For the past three months, I have been living in an ashram where celibacy is practiced willingly by everyone. When I first arrived here, I was not too thrilled with this aspect of community life. Instead, I was hoping to confirm my preconceived notion that this whole celibacy thing was just bunk, just a bunch of yoga propaganda. I thought for sure the whole idea of a self-imposed dry spell – even with yourself – could be dismissed as an arcane practice of self-punishment, a relic from a time when society was so hierarchical that it could not tolerate even that slight glimmer of individual agency reflected in the human sex drive. Even the instruction on celibacy (bramacharya) in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras seemed suspect: sex should only be used for its intended use... procreation, of course! Wait a minute, I thought, who says the only pure use of sex is procreation? Humans have understood the female fertility cycle for thousands of years. Only recently have we become so cut off from the rhythms of nature that this god-given method of natural family planning has become an “ineffective” method of birth control. So sex can’t be only for procreation. Isn’t it also, and perhaps more often, useful for creating moments (and hours) of blissful, sensory experience of life on earth?
So I was pretty skeptical of this whole celibacy thing. I didn’t really take the idea seriously beyond its social implications at the ashram. I agreed that it would be a good idea to avoid forming “relationships” at the ashram, but I thought of this more from a human resources management perspective than from a spiritual one. It would take a lot of coordinating to get all the pregnant karma yogis (in our ignorance of fertility cycles) to Nelson for their ultrasounds and monthly medical check-ins... and who would be willing to do a town run every time someone craved pickles and ice cream?
Of course, you can’t get pregnant from yourself, no matter how daft you are at recognizing your fertility cycles. So the whole “not even with yourself” thing seemed like rigid authoritarian overkill. Nevertheless, my chances to be a rebel were severely constrained by having a roommate, and by having shared bathrooms. Yes, as you can imagine, the tension was almost unbearable at times. And of course the ashram is over-run with radiant, glowing, shining, beautiful karma yogis and yoginis... ouch, ouch, and ouch. Though initially I schemed for my rare chances to flout the teachings in the privacy of my own company, these opportunities rarely materialized. Instead I often woke up in the middle of the night panting, cursing my body’s desires.
Eventually it so happened that the rigor of the course, combined with this lack of private opportunities, eventually worked together to keep me truly celibate, yes, even with myself, for an epic three weeks.
After the three-week mark, I noticed strange things beginning to happen.
The waking up late at night, the urges, the inappropriate thoughts... all began to melt away. I began to feel peaceful. People started commenting that I seemed serene, that I seemed at peace, contemplative even. I felt calm. I looked at my reflection in the mirror. Who is that radiant one? I wondered. Had I become one of these beautiful, shining yoginis, myself? There was no doubt that my skin had a fresh glow, almost like... an afterglow. I didn’t feel like I needed release anymore. Instead, I was happy to chant in the Beach Prayer room to my favourite god Siva, and let the feelings of bliss radiate up and down my spine, spreading out to my whole body, with each repetition of the mantra. Am I in love with God? I could just inhale, looking out over the lake, and feel waves of pleasurable sensation caressing my whole body. Just feeling the Light brought me to a place that would in the past have required foreplay. And the breeze. OM Siva, you are blowing on my skin in the breeze...
Bliss is everywhere, and it exists on the fine line between the physical, and something deeper. It balances on the fine line of interface between this body through which I physically experience the glory of Creation, and the deeper essence of my Self that underlies and transcends this physical form.
These ‘physical’ feelings were the subtle yet overwhelming feelings I’d previously associated with sex, yet they became so much more available to me as I concentrated my energy on spiritual practices. They are like those waves of joy that I feel in my body when I listen to true music, but even stronger and with a wider range. (Needless to say, my experience of music has gotten to a point where the term “bliss” is far, far from hyperbole.) Was this all part of the process I’ve read of, by which the “lower” drives are transformed into subtler experiences on “higher” levels? I had never understood why anyone would want that because I thought that “subtle” meant weaker, less powerful... while I tend to want more, not less. Yet the experiences I am having are not at all less impressive to my being. The word “subtle” does apply to my experience, but in a different sense. The feelings themselves are not weaker, but maybe the “signal” that transmits them takes more subtlety for me to pick up.
I wonder if I would still have this access to this “subtle” level of feelings if I was having sex again. Of course, I have a mind that is greedy, and usually wants more. It’s also a curious mind that likes to experiment and discover. But I don’t want to put down these aspects of my mind. Though they have at times caused me to overtax myself in life, they have also acquired for me many valuable experiences that have brought me HERE, NOW, to this place and time, which is the perfect place and time for me to be. So I feel like I want to try it. I want to stay with my practices, to stay with Siva’s breath on my subtle skin, to stay with the vibrations of bliss along that subtle line of interface between my embodied form and my underlying transcendent essence... AND have sex. Can I have both? Can’t I make use of my god-gifted sexuality to feed my love affair with the Universe? Maybe there are subtler levels in the physical act than what I have experienced before.
As I like to say ever since being told it in a dream, I may have been born blind but at least I was born with a map. My body is the map. Pleasure is one of its languages, one that I am learning to read on levels I didn’t know existed. I don’t need huge neon signs to point it out to me anymore.
And celibacy? It was a challenge at first, but it has became a gateway to new dimensions of pleasure.
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