By Mark Kutolowski
“My God!... She... is… so… beautiful!” A few months into my year of living at Lebh Shomea House of Prayer, she arrived. My days were spent in silence, with a roughly even mix of silent prayer, watering palm trees and weeding the cemetery for my work-trade, and reading scripture and biblical commentaries each day. The rhythm was simple, joyful, and calm, but my heart was anything but calm when I looked up and saw the newest guest who arrived on retreat. She was gracefully gliding barefoot across the lawn, headed to the chapel with her summer dress whipping in the breeze, her sandals in her draped hand, lightly tapping on the most gorgeous legs I’d ever seen. Her face – the face of an angel, radiant with exquisite beauty. I hadn’t so much as seen a woman within twenty years of my age in months, and now the perfection of all feminine beauty had arrived!
That day at Mass, I sat where I could gaze upon her without her seeing me. She was only there for a two-day retreat, and we only spoke a few words. Yet each hour I sat in silent prayer, thoughts of her filled my mind. We were meeting on the path and she was laughing at my jokes. Soon, in my mind we were relishing the delight of our first kiss. Not long after, my imagination had us sneaking behind the chapel for a moonlight tryst. The energy in my body built up, got hot, and filled my legs and arms with tension. Each time I sat in stillness, my heart raced and it felt like I would die if I didn’t have her! In my prayer times, I started planning how I could talk with her, how I could get her number. “Maybe I could leave the retreat center next week so we could spend more time together….”
I never did leave Lebh Shomea to pursue this young woman, but it took a few weeks after she left before I began to experience stillness again in my times of meditation.
“But I say to you, everyone who looks at a woman with lust has already committed adultery with her in his heart” -Mt 5:28
“Love is patient, love is kind… it does not seek its own interests…” I Cor 13:4-5
This week we turn to the second of the thoughts of the desert monastic training – the spirit of lust. Because lust relates to an urge (sex) that is both natural and yet not necessary for individual survival, it is the second thought to be faced in the training of the desert monastics. It comes after thoughts of food, but before the more abstract thoughts that do not arise as directly from the needs and desires of the body.
One reason for doing this series is that the eight thoughts that can draw us away from God thrive in secrecy where they are unexamined and unconscious. There’s very little nuanced talk about sex and sexuality in both our secular culture and in contemporary Christian culture. It’s a loaded topic, one where almost all of us have fear and hang-ups. Me too – writing about this will be a good stretch! But if we’re going to explore the nuances of each of the eight thoughts, we’ve got to enter into the weeds of the thought of lust. So, here we go. Let’s talk about sex!
‘Judge Not…’
Before we get into the thought of lust, I’d like to review an important aspect of all the desert teachings about the eight thoughts. The desert fathers and mothers insisted that the demands of their teachings were meant for individual disciples who had committed themselves entirely to seeking God, no matter what the cost. The teachings were to be applied by the disciple to their own inner landscape, and never to be used as a way to judge others. The desert monks were legendary for their kindness, mercy and forgiveness of others, refusing to condemn even those who had done them great personal harm.[1]Using the teachings on the thoughts to judge another was strictly forbidden. They are meant to be applied to ourselves alone.
This is essential to remember when we attempt to apply the teachings to our spiritual lives today. In our world, there is a great deal of emphasis on analyzing social ills and the failings of those who may act or believe differently than we do. We can spend countless hours condemning others or society at large without making any progress on our own inner life. Only by rigorously examining our own thoughts and relationship to thought can we begin to gain inner freedom.
Furthermore, the desert teachings assume the disciple is on the spiritual journey, and has at least an awareness of God’s infinite presence alive within them. The teachings on the thoughts are designed to diminish or relativize the influence of the psychological/egoic self, in order to live from the true self, rooted in the spirit. The same teachings that may be life-giving to someone with access to their spirit might be psychologically harmful to someone whose only experience of self is at the level of psyche/ego. If a person has not awakened to the spirit to some degree, the diminishment of psyche can lead to psychosis rather than spiritual transformation. This is particularly relevant to the desert teachingon lust and sexuality.
How lust inhibits life in the spirit
Sexual energy is an essential part of nature, and a beautiful and natural part of being human. It’s the energy of attraction, affection, and connection. It draws us to one another, and fuels our longing for intimacy. From the onset of puberty until death, it’s probably the most powerful drive we experience within our bodies. In its natural form, it’s a beautiful thing.
The problem with sexual energy begins when it becomes co-opted by the self-serving nature of the ego. Lust is when sexual-energy is directed for self-gratification, drawing us away from loving connection with both other people and with the Source of life (God). We can recognize the energy of lust by how it narrows us. It contracts our field of awareness. It increases tension and agitation in the body. It arises like a fire and overrides are ability to enjoy the goodness of the present moment. All that matters is the fulfillment of our desire. Through this agitation, lust cuts off the more subtle perception necessary to experience God’s presence within our hearts. God is still present, but the power of lust dominates our consciousness and we can no longer access spiritual awareness. Further, lust leads to objectification of those whom we desire – we can no longer see them in their full human complexity as they become simply objects for the fulfillment of our longing. While love expands the human heart, lust narrows it. Where love is always free (if it’s not free, it’s not pure love), lust is by its nature compulsive. Once we’ve consented to the spirit of lust, it can blind us to all else except feeding its desires. The person fully caught in this passion loses the ability to rationally evaluate the consequences of their actions. They have become a slave to the passion, and may be willing to risk all else in their life to continue to feed the passion.
When I saw the young woman at Lebh Shomea, my thoughts quickly spiraled around my own agenda – how beautiful I thought she was, and then how I could get what I wanted from her. She very quickly became, in my mind, an object for the fulfillment of my desires. Gone was the spacious, unconditional love that I had been cultivating in the weeks of prayer before her visit. The other guests and their needs ceased to exist in my awareness. Neither could I relate to her as a whole person. All my thoughts closed in around the fire of desire welling up from within. This is a classic description of lust – the closing in of sexual energy in the service of self. The wider symphony of life goes silent, awareness of God disappears, and all that matters is the fulfillment of this one desire.
Feeding lust leads us to treat the other as on object for our satisfaction, which ultimately harms both ourselves (by deadening spiritual awareness) and the other person. This can take place in transactional sex, sexual manipulation (even if legally consensual), and sexual abuse and violence. Lust can also gain a foothold within our psyches outside of relationship to another person. Cultivating a fantasy sex life, whether through our imagination, memory of past encounters, or through pornography or romance novels, creates virtual ‘objects of attachment’ that become obstacles to resting in the presence of God in the present moment.
Clearly, the spirit of lust is incompatible with life in God. How, then, do we gain freedom from lust?
The danger of facing lust without spiritual disciplines
Our culture commonly offers two opposing relationships with sexual energy, those of restriction and of boundaryless expression. Neither, in my opinion, are beneficial to cultivating the spiritual life.
The first approach, restriction, is held when we take seriously moral demands and restraints on sexual expression, but without a positive cultivation of sexual energy. This is the traditional public stance of Christianity, and remains the primary teaching around sexuality in conservative protestant churches and the Catholic and Orthodox churches. The teachings are primarily about what is ethical (sex within marriage), and what is forbidden (anything else), often with little guidance about how to hold to this standard other than ‘just don’t do it!’ and ‘pray’!
The problem with this approach is that it doesn’t take seriously the tremendous power of sexual energy, especially as it arises in puberty. Teens being given the church teaching are unmarried and filled with sexual energy, and will likely be both for many years. Statistical research shows that across all denominations, a majority of young adults end up having sex before marriage, being unable to keep the teaching with the tools they were given.[2]What of those who are able to hold to the traditional teaching and remain chaste until marriage? For many, the moral success comes at the price of cutting off access to the warmth and vitality of sexual energy, and they develop a fear-based relationship to their own sexuality that often extends into their marriages. Having trained themselves to shut the gate to sexual energy, it is often difficult to joyfully open to sexual expression. The teaching of ‘just don’t do it’ is ineffective in restraining sexual expression to the traditional ethical bounds of marriage, and even when it ‘succeeds,’ that success comes with a heavy price.
The situation is even worse when we begin looking at church leadership. Research suggests that somewhere around 1/3 of all pastors have had extramarital affairs, and about 4% of clergy across denominations have engaged in child sexual abuse, doing unimaginable harm to those they are supposed to serve.[3]Clearly, morality and good intentions alone have not provided freedom from the demon of lust.
Partially in response to this failure, the secular world has largely opted for the free expression of sexual energy. Looking at the failure of Christians to practice what they preach, it’s tempting to say that sexual energy is simply too powerful to be restrained, and the humane approach is to pursue free expression of sexual impulses and desires. The problem with this approach is that, without substantial inner purification, we still share in the self-centered nature of egoic consciousness. Sexual expression, therefore, will remain tainted with the spirit of lust and its self-serving nature. After fifty years of sexual revolution and ‘free love,’ we still do not have much freedom, joy, and peace coming from sexual expression in our culture. Having access to sex does nothing to release us from the inward drawing, constricting nature of lust – like each of the passions, the energy is typically only strengthened by being fed.
My point is not to critique either our churches or secular sexuality, but instead to suggest that both restriction and free expression of sexual energy have limited value in the spiritual path. We need to find a third way, one that can honor the goodness of sexual energy AND focus that energy as ally in loving God and others. So, how do we do this – what is the way to elevate sexual energy into a support of the spiritual journey?
Sublimation – Transforming Eros to Agape
Transforming raw sexual energy into spiritual love and freedom is called ‘sublimation.’ The word literally means ‘to raise to a higher status,’ and refers to the work of refining, focusing, and cultivating our sexual energy in a way that serves God and others in an unselfish way. If lust is sexual energy directed towards selfish ends, the work of sublimation is the art of directing sexual energy toward unselfish ends – towards unconditional love (or agape in Greek). Can we de-couple sexual energy from self and liberate it in the service of spiritual love? What does this work involve?
The first step in sublimation is to recognize the relationship of lust to fantasy. Lust drives us to pursue what we do not have. When the energy of lust arises within consciousness, it always bring with it a sense of lack. If we consent to the thought, we then begin organizing our energies towards fulfilling our unmet desire (whether through actual encounter or through fantasy). To counter this, the desert fathers taught that we can do one of several things:
1. Letting go: We can simply notice the thought arise and refuse to follow it, as one learns to do in a practice like meditation or Centering Prayer. Over time, the presence of the thought will fade.
2. ‘Guard of the Heart’: We can turn our attention to our immediate external reality, looking at our external environment and paying exquisite attention to whatever tasks we need to do in the present moment. We disconnect our mind from the build-up of the energy of the fantasy. This practice is known as ‘guard of the heart.’
3. Work or Exercise: We can engage in vigorous physical activity, either manual work (a favorite of the desert fathers) or exercise. By activating the body, sexual energy is redirected from the realm of mind/fantasy and redistributed throughout our body. This tends to reduce its intensity and bring it back into the realm of conscious awareness.
4. Redirect to God: We can actively redirect the rising desire towards a desire for God. We consciously remember past experiences of God’s goodness and grace, and fill our mind and emotions with longing and desire for intimacy with God. By focusing our affection on the One who is without limit and cannot be manipulated, we diffuse the energy of lust which seeks to fixate on a finite object of attachment. This can be done as an immediate spiritual ‘gaze’ upon the infinite (the more difficult but direct path), or through an intermediary like gazing with love and affection at the beauty of nature and, through this intermediary being drawn up into loving intimacy with its Creator (an easier but more indirect path).
Of these four, the first three serve to limit or neutralize the influence of lust when it arises in consciousness. The fourth is a more advanced practice in that it works with the energy to turn it towards our divine goal, intimacy with God. Over time, with practice, this fourth practice can lead not only to freedom from the inward drawing nature of lust, but to a flowering of ecstatic love with God.[4]
The Monastic Way
The Christian tradition offers two vocational pathways of spiritual discipline to direct sexual energy towards the transformation of self in God – the paths of vowed celibacy and of spiritual marriage.[5]For monastics and other vowed celibates, celibacy means committing to having no expression of sexual energy with a partner. They then seek to practice sublimating sexual energy into a more diffuse, unconditional love and affection for all people. Whenever a monastic finds their sexual energy ‘collapse’ into desire for a specific individual, they turn away from the thought and return to the intention to desire God alone. By consistently refusing to provide any specific outlet for sexual energy, they turn all their desire towards God. This can be a long struggle, but gradually desire is de-coupled from specific thought forms and turned towards the infinite, and through the infinite, into an undifferentiated, universal love that can then be given freely (though non-physically) to all whom they meet. Eros is transformed into agape.
Not all monastics have mastered this practice, of course. But I have had the blessing of knowing several who have. They are delightful people to be around, filled with generosity and obvious delight in each person they interact with. A sweetness and lightness permeates their whole being. When I’m around a person like this, the feeling is similar to the feeling of being around a best friend – even when I’ve barely met them. Having transformed their sexual energy into spiritual love, they exude warmth and affection without any desire to possess.
Marriage and the Transformation of Eros
The second vocational path used in the Christian tradition to transform Eros is spiritual marriage. Marriage can involve atraining of sexual desire and energy that is just as rigorous as the monastic path. In marriage, we commit to exclusive sexual expression with one person. This has the effect of confronting our sexual desire with the full humanity of our spouse who can never quite fulfill the fantasy of the ‘demon’ of lust. The day-to-day commitment to love this person in their particularity drains lust of some of its power to capture the imagination. The closeness of married life together combats the objectification that is central to the spirit of lust. Sexual expression is integrated into the context of the many other aspects of love – of listening, understanding, acts of service, and cooperation in housework and parenting. Marriage is a commitment of love and service involving two whole persons giving their full selves to one another. Sexual expression is caught up into the larger gift of self, combating the self-serving nature of the ‘demon’ of lust.
The boundaries of marriage, like celibacy, also provide a training in renunciation. When we commit to loving only one other for life, this doesn’t stop the thoughts or desires for other people. I adore my wife and I’m delighted to be married to her. Yet, in my five years of marriage, I find that I can have just as many thoughts of desire arise for other women (whether real women I meet or through seeing idealized images in the media) as before I was married. However, because of my permanent commitment to my wife and our marriage, I let these thoughts come and go without feeding them. They become stripped of their power. In a sense, Lisa (my wife) becomes a unique representative of God for me. My spiritual task is to re-turn to her and our marriage each time a thought of desire begins to attach itself to another person. It’s very similar to the practice of Centering Prayer, where we learn to detach from each thought that arises and return to resting in the presence of God. In this way, spiritual marriage can be a training ground for intimacy with God. In learning to love one person uniquely above all others, we practice a parallel to seeking first the Kingdom of God[6]above the attraction of all other thoughts and desires. Just as with monastic love, marital love elevates sexuality into service of agape.
Within a marriage where both spouses are committed to seeking God, the boundaries between divine and human love begin to intermingle. The love between partners spills over into mutual love for God, and the experience of resting in God in prayer overflows into an experience of resting in the radiance of each other’s goodness (itself a reflection of the image and likeness of God). Sexual intimacy itself is freed from the grasping quality of lust, and is yoked to peace, freedom, stillness, and an expansion of conscious love beyond anything imaginable to secular notions of sexuality.[7]As with transformed monastics, married people who have entered deeply into this realm become peaceful, contented, and generous with all they meet. Their sexual energy, transformed from eros into agape, becomes a blessing not only to their partner but to their children, to their community, and to the world.
What about those who are vocationally uncommitted? The primary message from the Christian tradition is the value of committing to a vocational path that trains and disciplines sexual energy (celibacy or marriage) as soon as possible. Many people today do not commit to a vocational state of life until their late 20s, 30s, or later (I only married at 39), and many older adults live as singles. There is no easy answer for how to square this teaching with modern life. Again, it is worth remembering that the desert teachings are not intended as advice for society as a whole. It is a path of renouncing the typical patterns of this world in order to pursue the spiritual life above all else, taught to those who have committed to this ‘narrow way’. I have found committing to marriage to be a tremendous enhancement to my spiritual life beyond what I was able to do as a single person. There’s no way for me to deny the power of vocational commitment in the spiritual life.[8]That said the practice of sublimation can be done by anyone who prays, regardless of their state of life.
Of course, sexuality is not the only way we end up collapsing our desires onto something smaller than God, thus limiting our access to divine freedom. We can just as easily turn to grasping at things or possessions in a way that keeps us from an open-hearted embrace of God and life. Thus, the desert elders followed their training on the spirit of lust with their teaching on greed. Next week, Lisa will explore our relationship with thoughts about things as it relates to our spiritual life.
[1]For example, there’s a story of a monk who returned to his dwelling to find thieves loading up their camel with his possessions. Without identifying himself as the occupant of his dwelling, the monk offered to help the thieves load the camel and then cheerfully sent them on their way.
[2]For example, the 2012 National Survey of Reproductive and Contraceptive Knowledge reported that 80% of American evangelicals aged 18-29 were engaging in premarital sex.
[3]https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/do-the-right-thing/201808/separating-facts-about-clergy-abuse-fiction
[4]The writings of certain Catholic monastics (including St Teresa of Avila and St Bernard of Clairvaux) give vivid portrayal of this sort of ‘love mysticism’.
[5]I use the term ‘vowed celibates’ to distinguish those who have made a conscious commitment to celibacy as a lifelong spiritual discipline from the ‘situational celibates’ for whom celibacy is a product of life circumstances. Similarly, I use the term ‘spiritual marriage’ to refer to those for whom marriage is a spiritual discipline, distinguished from the ‘civil marriage’ that is a common practice in human cultures worldwide, which often does not contain any intentional spiritual component.
[6]Mt 6:25-34, Lk 12:22-34
[7]The very physiology of the human body, and of sexual exchange, undergoes a profound transformation in this type of sublimated lovemaking. But this is a topic that goes far beyond the limits of this post…
[8]A related thought: I’ve often pondered how a temporary commitment (1-2 years) to monastic life and discipline early in adulthood would be an ideal way to develop the psychological maturity and fortitude that prepares one for entering into a spiritual marriage.
Winter: the time of fires inside and large brush bonfires outside
This post is part of the ongoing series:
Purifying the Heart: What the Desert Teachers Can Teach Us About Healing Ourselves - And Our World
Through the season of Lent, we are posting a series of reflections based on the teachings of the desert fathers and mothers. Each week we are highlighting one of the ‘eight thoughts’ of the desert system of inner transformation. In this series, we’re drawing on a deep well of ancient wisdom from an era and culture very different from our own, so it requires some translating. Read the introduction here.