A couple of weeks ago I received an e-mail from a blog reader, a devoted Course in Miracles student and teacher, for whom I have tons of respect. The reader said:

“If you want a relationship with great sex (which is a great goal), it will be given to you immediately.”

Is that true? I don’t know. It’s a huge question mark for me.

When it comes to relationships, I have the most ridiculous “sticking point” in the world: It’s the actual sexual intercourse thing.

At a certain point you have to laugh. Seriously, I’ve had several marriage proposals this year even though I’m celibate, guys offering to have a baby with me, more suitors than I know what to do with … as long as I resist sex. As long as I have in my mind “there is no way I’m having sex,” then everything goes great. But if I even so much as THINK about actually having intercourse, things seem to go awry. Seriously bizarre divine intervention.

Maybe it’s a subtle form of “oneitis.” I don’t really get hung up on a a particular guy anymore, but maybe as soon as I consider actual intercourse with a particular guy, I get scared, and that messes up my vibe. Maybe.

At times what I really want is for a guy to do an absolutely amazing seduction, and then say, “Baby, I know you’re scared right now, and we’re going to fuck anyway.” I want someone to plow through my fear WITH me.

And at other times, I’m back to thinking that we as a culture are going to move away from sex. A friend of mine told me about a book called Peace Between the Sheets, which essentially advocates monogamy without genital orgasm. The idea is that all the chemicals that get stimulated by orgasm actually drive men and women apart.

Then when I read A Course in Miracles, I still feel unable to reconcile monogamy or any form of sex with its teachings. For example, from Lesson 136:

“Now is the body healed, because the source of sickness has been opened to relief. And you will recognize you practiced well by this: The body should not feel at all. If you have been successful, there will be no sense of feeling ill or feeling well, of pain or pleasure. No response at all is in the mind to what the body does. Its usefulness remains and nothing more.”

http://www.courseinmiraclesforum.com/spirit136.html

The same reader also said: “I know you say you are celibate in the physical sense, but you are actually more sexual than anyone I have ever known in my entire life!!” Lol :-) Which resonated as true with me when I read it.

It’s just, I guess, that my sexuality feels like it’s really my aliveness. I enjoy my aliveness, in the past few months I revel in my aliveness, it feels amazing, and at the same time I’m wondering lately if that energy is meant to be channeled in new and non-bodily directions…..

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Postscript: I just found this fascinating website:

http://www.patanjali.ch/meditations/relationship/relate_6.html (especially enjoying the Pink Floyd reference — some artists are definitely “dialed in” to the Divine, don’t you think?)

and this on celibacy:

http://www.patanjali.ch/library/The-First-and-Last-Freedom/QandA/q_21.html#sex_3