This too shall pass and just because you may be in a dry period now, doesn’t mean you always will be. You can make the best of this time, like any other time of life.
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Sexual Suppression VS Celibacy
So let’s just talk a little bit about the difference between sexual suppression and celibacy.
With sexual suppression, there is a sense of want and desire and frustration. You have all of this desire, and you can’t find any outlet for it. You’re not able to find partners who are interested. You might make attempts, and they’re met with rejection. Maybe your celibacy is about, or your unchosen suppression is about, not having a sex drive, and there’s some part of your mind that might want it, but your body just isn’t on board. And so there’s this conflict involved.
Sexual suppression is also about just, quite frankly, pushing it down—so trying to ignore it, trying to make it go away. And often that is going to turn into frustration, anger, bitterness, resentment, hating the other sex. We see this often. There’s a whole subculture where this is happening, where people who feel like they’re not able to find suitable partners become calcified in that stance and become very much victims of their own perspective, very much blaming whoever it is that they’d like to have sex with for not wanting to have sex with them. So that is just some examples of sexual suppression.
This also could happen in the form of, say, you have a specific kink or sexual desire that you’re not able to get met with your current partner, so you push this down. Say you’re a person who prefers to gender play and be gender fluid and maybe dress up as the opposite sex or be treated as the opposite gender to what you’re identifying as. And since your partner isn’t into that, you push that down. You either just pretend like it doesn’t exist, or maybe you do it by yourself, or maybe you are not suppressed and you find other partners to act these roles out. There is still a sense of suppression if it’s not out in the open with your partner because, on some level, there’s dishonesty there about who you really are.
Celibacy, on the other hand, is the conscious choice to refrain from sexual activity, and it has a range. This could be simply refraining from all and any sexual activity whatsoever, or this could be just refraining from sexual activity with a partner, whereas you still have your private masturbation practices and sexual practices that you do solo. This could also be only refraining from certain sexual practices with others. So maybe you do have partners, but your boundaries are all the way up to, say, oral sex or sensual massage, but you don’t have any penetrative sex with anybody. So it’s a spectrum. It could be complete, no sexual activity, or it could be lots of sexual activity but some practices you don’t do.
The real differentiator is that you’re consciously choosing. You’re consciously designing what your boundaries are, and you’re consciously working with your sexual energy.
So now that we’ve talked about the differences, let’s just talk about this: while celibacy can be very beneficial—we’re going to get into that in a minute—sexual suppression actually makes people sick, and it also can come out in ways that harm other people. Like the example I mentioned before, where a whole group of people decides that the people that they would like to have sex with, since that is unrequited, should somehow be punished.
Interested in using your solo time to hone your sensual skills? Start here.
Sexual Energy is Creative Energy
All of this comes from that sexual energy being pushed down because our sexual energy is very powerful. It’s our creative energy. It’s the kundalini. It’s life force, shakti power. And when that’s not allowed to flow and it’s pushed down, all sorts of different deviations begin to happen. Energy is supposed to flow in a regular path, and when it is consistently pushed down, those pathways begin to get twisted or blocked or otherwise prevented from flowing.
So this can lead to physical sicknesses, mental sicknesses, collective illnesses. We see this all over the place. We have a sort of sex-obsessed culture in the U.S., and yet we have all of these taboos and hatefulness toward it, all of this censorship and all of these kinks that come out of it. And without getting into any kind of moral discussion, I’m just going to leave that conversation right here because the topic that we’re talking about is the powers of celibacy.
I want to talk about this because even if you’re unconsciously celibate—or not unconsciously, but you don’t want to be celibate; you just are because you can’t find a partner—or if you’re consciously celibate, either way, you can decide to be consciously celibate and get the benefits out of it. If you already are consciously celibate, you might be like, hey, you know what, I’m already getting benefits out of this; this isn’t even for me. But if you have no choice —you just haven’t found anybody that you’re attracted to, or you’re setting yourself up for a real relationship and you’re not having sex until you find that real relationship, or you are being rejected and nobody wants to have sex with you right now—any of those circumstances, you can use this as an opportunity for your growth.
Elevating Celibacy to a Spiritual Practice
Okay, so basically what we’re talking about here is what the religions and the spiritual schools have been talking about, and it’s using celibacy to cleanse and purify the mind, the body, and the spirit. Because sex is a natural urge, when we refrain from that consciously, we get an inflammation that happens, and inflammations are often called internal fires. So think about how a fire cleanses the whole ecosystem. From a purely ecological level, a fire burns up any unhealthy plants, any toxicities that are there. Things get burned up and they get composted. There’s a rich ash that forms from fires that then fertilizes the soil and starts the next growth phase of the ecology there. And so any sort of internal fire can also be used in a similar way.
You can compare it to fasting. Fasting generates that metabolic fire, which then goes and burns up unhealthy cells and dead cells. It clears the body out. It’s a detoxification method. Celibacy can be used in the same way, as a detoxification method, a purification of the self.
If you think about sexual intimacy, especially full-on sex, this is why there’s a range. Full-on sex—mixing of the body fluids, mixing of energy, mixing saliva, the skin contact—so all of that is exchanging subtle energy, of course, and it’s also exchanging gross information. You’re sharing bacteria, you’re sharing enzymes, you’re sharing your hormone metabolites, you’re even sharing your DNA material through the saliva, through semen, through vaginal fluids. You’re merging with another person or with many other people.
And so just like how eating food impacts us, sex does too. What we’re taking in as food changes our body. What we’re taking in through sex changes our body. When our body changes, our mind starts to change, our emotions start to change, our whole experience starts to change. We’re merging with other people in sex. With food, we’re merging with the plant world, the animal world.
So when we don’t have that, when we don’t have those outside inputs, we begin to purify, to refine into ourselves—ourselves without outside inputs. Who are you without someone else? What does your body become without having inputs from other people?
And so we can use that energy that starts to build up—that energy of desire—to let it burn off and metabolize the imprints from past lovers, the imprints from interactions that we’ve had with others emotionally, sexually, sensually, and just kind of let that fuel that process of burning off anything we’re ready to let go of.
Even if you are in a relationship with somebody—you’re married or you’re in a partnership and you love that person, you don’t want to let go of that person—but you find that there are times when you don’t really want to have sex and you don’t want to be sexual, you’ve gone off for a little bit. A lot of times people get very upset about this and take it personally. I’m inviting everybody to kind of look at it like a cleansing period. Just like sometimes you do a forty-day modified diet because you want to purify your body, in that way we can look at celibacy as the same thing. Instead of taking this personally, we can say, my partner wants to purify themselves and get more real about who they are as their own person.
Secondly, the sexual energy will still be there. So we’re not talking about suppressing it and just pushing it down. We’re not talking about trying to ignore it and escaping into media or any other escape—food or whatever. The sexual energy will still be there.
Consciously using this to purify, but then also to enliven your body, your mind, other aspects of your life. We’re talking about circulating the sexual energy consciously rather than ejecting it out. Rather than releasing it, we’re building it up. We’re building it up in a conscious way where we can then transmute it into other creations, or we can keep it growing to power up your body.
And this powering up your body is about increasing capacity. This is important: to circulate it and learn how to do that in ways that begin to become easier and easier, more natural as you do it, so that you’re then enlivening your whole life and consciously choosing where you’re going to direct that sexual energy. Into what creative project are you going to direct it? And so on.
So that is what I wanted to say today: using celibacy as the fire that’s priming the pump, and how to use celibacy to build that fire up, the chosen or unchosen sexless times, how we’re transmuting that, how you’re therefore, if you are in an unchosen sexless time, taking your power back. You’re making it a conscious state of being rather than being a victim. You can transmute that fire into what you want.
We’re talking about the range of celibacy. This can just be a small amount. Maybe you just need to pull back a little bit to purify yourself. What happens when it’s not transmuted, when it’s just suppressed, versus it being conscious. And then, of course, using it as a cleansing and purification practice and embracing all the phases of your life, of your sexual life, and directing it consciously.
xo
Violet