June 2, 2012
I Learned More About Sex When I Gave It Up . . .
The best way to learn about sex is to give it up for a while . . .
Thirty years ago, when I was in my mid-twenties, I was a serious spiritual seeker. I’m married now, but during that time I had a number of committed relationships, and when I wasn’t in a relationship, I had flings. Being young and healthy, I was endlessly attracted by the sexual allure of beautiful women. And because I was also a committed meditator, I was becoming more and more aware of the many different ways, both gross and subtle, in which I experienced a profound lack of freedom in relationship to the arising of sexual desire. Over time, I came to recognize that the sexual impulse, once awakened, has a mind of its own. At times I found myself almost feeling used by the force of nature for its own ends. It’s not that I wasn’t enjoying the ride. It’s just that it was dawning on me how little control I really had over this overwhelming biological instinct. I didn’t have a problem with sex per se, but I felt more and more uncomfortable realizing how little freedom I experienced in relationship to it. Like so many men, when I felt the itch, the only obvious response was to scratch. The erotic imagery that was pouring through my mind, when seen in light of my growing meditative awareness, made me feel more like a conditioned robot than a freely choosing sexual being.
During this same period, I was also reading about great Eastern enlightened masters who were proclaiming the enormous spiritual benefits of sexual abstinence. While I had no intention of becoming a monk or a lifetime renunciate, I became more and more curious to find out what they were speaking about. When my lover at the time and I broke up, I decided to take the plunge. And please keep in mind, I was not living in some monastery high up in the mountains. I was living in the heart of contemporary culture, with all its inherent stimulations—sexual and otherwise—the Big Apple. One day followed another. One week followed another. One month followed another. And suddenly I found myself six months into the wild adventure of celibacy.
I can still remember the dumbfounded look on a friend’s face when I told him that I’d made it through half a year without having even one orgasm and I was still alive and well! He obviously thought I was mad and couldn’t relate in any way, shape, or form to what I was talking about. I can’t tell you how happy this made me—not happy that I wasn’t having sex, but happy that I no longer felt like such a victim of my own lust. I experienced freedom for the first time in my life in relationship to the most overwhelming force in the universe. And it was so sweet.
In this experience I saw clearly that my access to happiness, joy, and lightness of being was not dependent upon the regular experience of sexual intimacy. This was nothing short of a religious revelation and it was so, so liberating. “You mean that in order to be truly happy, deeply happy one doesn’t have to be with anyone or have anyone?” No, not really! Wow . . . Many men feel that if they don’t have sex or regularly experience an orgasm that they’re going to die. Maybe not literally die, but close to it. It’s an irrational, biological fear that our culture stokes on a daily basis. That this is not in fact true may sound obvious to some of you, but at a semi-conscious level, I truly believe it’s not that obvious to most men. So to know that we don’t need orgasms to be happy or to feel free is a truly enormous and liberating discovery. It certainly was for me.
After maintaining the practice of celibacy for almost three years, I started to notice a shift in myself. It seemed as if the lesson had been learned and that my position of abstinence was becoming inauthentic. So when I met a beautiful Chinese woman who was an acquaintance of my brother’s, it was just a matter of weeks before we became lovers. Sex was the same as before—but it was also different. After my “fast” I noticed a freedom in my consciousness that had not been there before. I didn’t feel like a sexual robot living out someone else’s fantasies. It also was refreshingly simple, sweet, and human.
I learned more about sex during that three-year period than I have before or since. I know beyond any doubt that my own inner freedom and happiness are not dependent upon the presence of another human being or on any particular biological experience. If we know we don’t need each other in the desperate ways in which we often imagine we do, it changes the romantic and sexual dynamic that we share culturally in dramatic ways. If we can let go of the false promises of the sexual and romantic impulse, when we do come together, we will be able to so from a much deeper place in ourselves.
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Join me and Ken Wilber on June 2nd for a free broadcast exploring sex and sexual ethics. Register here.
This article was originally posted on my BigThink.com blog, “The Evolution of Enlightenment.”
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Andrew Cohen is a spiritual teacher, cultural visionary, founder of EnlightenNext, and the author of 
In 1995 I made a conscious choice to become celibate during the act of sex. I was in an unfulfilling relationship and in that moment I realized that something was missing. There was an emptiness and void in my soul so deep that I felt “dead”!
I rolled over and looked directly in the woman’s eyes and said “I can’t do this anymore” and I apologized and assured her that it had nothing to do with her but I had to end the relationship.
This event prompted me to begin my inner journey of transformation. I then made the conscious decision to become celibate and figure out why I felt so empty inside.
For five years I maintained my celibacy while getting in touch with my authentic self. It was the most challenging yet rewarding and fulfilling experience of my life and it brought me to a place of oneness, acceptance and freedom that is nondescript.
As a result, I experience deep levels of connection and intimacy that I couldn’t have imagined when I began my journey of celibacy.
So I completely agree with Andrew’s assertion about learning more about sex by giving it up.
Andrew– thank you for an interesting article. I’m curious about the fact that at no time do you mention the ethnicity of your wife or of the other women you write about in this article, yet you mention that you ended your abstinence with a Chinese woman. I wonder why.
After listening to the conversation Cohen Wilber I want to express to both of you, that this is the first time in my life that I have heard a real honest explanation of your thoughts as men on the issue of sex and its implications with moral and in relation to spirituality.
I am very gratefull and happy for this event in my life that will never forget and will be a true guide for my own search of truth and healthy growth even though I will be sixty years old next september ja ja ja !!!!!!!!.
Greetings and Love
Rosa Delia
Wow, that was really helpful. I am not a man, but I am a female in my mid-thirties. Everything you said about the strong conditioning either culturally or biologically was something I was really buying into, and was blatantly causing such suffering. Feeling I needed to have a sexual partner, maybe especially because my sex drive was so strong, I felt I needed to take advantage of it. But that thought only caused suffering and confusion. Thank you, I have been celibate now for almost six months, I’m desiring to have a whole shift around my perceptions of relationships and sex.
Just listening Q&A from Ken and Andrew…
I was struck by some of Andrew’s last words : “ the Freedom of Choice”
… and my Utopian mathematical voice followed :
Within Absolute context … the Choice would be Free from the sufferings caused by Karma… as karma would be irrelevant…
Sex would be One and Sum Total of the Many manifestations of LOVE !
Does marriage prevents from succumbing to Temptation ?
I too listened to the conversation between Ken and Andrew. I am sad. My favorite quote from Ken is “As the simplest, most accessible, most here-an-now transcendent experience that anyone can have, it is the most common doorway to the Divine, the most ordinary (in the best sense of the word) altered state that accelerates the stages of realization.” (From the forward to “Transcendent Sex”). I could have cried when the caller asked, “Then what is sex?” I hoped to hear Ken describe it this way one last time…but no. So sad. I concur that sex is confusing, bewildering, and downright risky (protected or not). And perhaps for all those reasons, it is still an altered state and the most common doorway to the Divine. Is it a new dawn, a new day, or more of the same old, same old? No, I will tell the children that it is a new day, that the involution of Spirit has reached their bodies, that Spirit’s favorite game is hide-and-seek in their flesh, and when they find that which they are seeking, that’s when things get really interesting.
I learned more about Enlightenment when I gave it up.
So whenever I meet another human being, be him or her the most ignorant soul in the universe or the most known avatar of the world, there is no way for any mutual exploitation.
It is so sweet and so simple and completely human . Is it Love ?
And it seems that where there Love is, sex or not sex is not a problem to be solved by the mind.
Paramhansa Yogananda talks about sex a bit in “Spiritual relationships” -also how to have a spiritual child
I’m not an advocate of celibacy or abstinence etc. There is nothing wrong with sex or no sex. I appreciate that you gained control over yourself — that’s really important. Congratulations.
This is awesome…we are in a relationshps not as a seekers of compitement ,not as a traders,…but we are enjoying one another and growing into one soul.Making love is connecting with your lover on a very deep spiritual level.