Being religious and being sexual

[Anonymous]

thank you for your replies members.

[Cuddly]

Sexual desires are as natural as hunger and thirst.

There's nothing dirty about any of the other life essential needs, why is this one different? It isn't.

Did that help?
When you find a partner, try to remember how amazing the spiritual connection is, between you. It's the holyest of holy, to be together in such a way. I hope you will come to see that.

[Borg69]

If you're in the throws of passion with a guy nearing the best orgasm of your life screaming, "oh God! Oh God!" You can consider it a religious experience.

[princealbertofb]

If you're in the throws of passion with a guy nearing the best orgasm of your life screaming, "oh God! Oh God!" You can consider it a religious experience.

Borg, in case you didn't know, it's actually the THROES of passion, a game of thrones without an N. Don't mind my corrections. I just wish to help those who might be looking in a dictionary.

[princealbertofb]

If you're in the throws of passion with a guy nearing the best orgasm of your life screaming, "oh God! Oh God!" You can consider it a religious experience.

Maybe not so much religious as Spiritual... Borg.
Religious implies that you would following a number of precepts such as the rest of the group's beliefs, I think. You can be spiritual without adhering to a religion.
Religio = being tied to (a core of set beliefs)

[princealbertofb]

i wanna seek advice about this particular issue.

i am quite a religious guy and i'm gay.

but here is the thing. i feel i am made to think sex is dirty (due to religion). like sex is something very wrong to do. (my culture and society also emphasize it a lot). sex scenes are deleted from movies and amorous language is censored from the local literature here. so, you can get a picture of how the situation is like here.

though deep in my mind and heart, i do have strong sexual urges, i do end up feeling guilty about having them. i fear i might have difficulty being intimate with my partner in the future. (if i have one)

i feel like i'm almost in the same situation as the lady mentioned in the link.
http://www.xojane.com/sex/true-love-waits-pledge

i was thinking if it is alright if you can share with me some advice on how to overcome this unnecessary guilt and how to view sex so that i dun feel bad about doing it.

(i would like to clarify that this has nothing to do with homosexuality. i will also face the same guilt even if i was straight. my guilt is about sexual intercourse itself and not about being gay. i have long enough accepted my sexuality and am proud of it.)

Hello Anonymous, and thank you for your question. It is an interesting one, and one that different cultures treat in very different ways.

There has always been something sacred (but maybe also a bit scary and awesome) about the sexual act. It could be linked, somehow to the very difficulties of bringing a new life into this world, the very awesomeness of such an act making up a new human being, or any other creature of this earth, animal or plant. You must admit it's quite magic. It could be linked also to the very state orgasm leaves you in, semi comatose, with endorphins rushing through your pleasure centres. Should we call it heavenly?

Sex is natural, and sex is not dirty, per se, but like so many other things, religious thinking has tried to bring some limits to some forms of excess, and sex is one of them.

In some societies it would be perfectly ok to talk about sex, in others it is a taboo, and no one is supposed to talk about it, although everyone is constantly thinking about it. Now that we have better medical knowledge, and now that women can actually control births much better, it stands to reason that we can (and need to) talk about it more, because it's become a scientific subject. Science tries to take away the magical element by looking at processes of nature and how nature deals with things.

Through science, humans have also learnt to curb their sexual needs (or to enhance them, actually). If societies and religions didn't tamper with our sexual needs so much, we would probably end up having many more sexual experiences than we actually do, and we'd be the richer for it, no doubt.

The fact that so often sex meant bringing new lives into the world, and therefore having to feed those mouths, meant that it was necessary to keep that balance between unbridled sex and being able to cope as a clan, a tribe, a village, a township etc with feeding new mouths. It was bad enough to have to deal with infant deaths.

Religions rely quite heavily on traditions and rites, and I'm going to say that science has probably evolved quicker than religions, because science is looking for the new, for the discovery that will make people progress, when religion relies on the old, the stable, the traditional. The two sort of counterbalance one another, to a certain extent.

Other than these thoughts, sex can be a spiritual thing. Therefore it could be associated with some aspects of religion. Instead of making sex just a boring function, religion or the spiritual may bring back the magical in sex. But religion also organises the frustration of sex, which might be good, but might also be detrimental to mental and physical health.

If our only pursuit, as humans, was to elevate ourselves to a state of making ourselves completely clean and pure, there would be no more humankind, because we'd have ruled out this elementary need that is sex and reproduction. So don't think of it as dirty, think of it as essential. You can put your own barriers on what makes YOU comfortable with your sex life, whether it's living in celibacy, or having a single partnership, or whether it's having multiple partnerships. Of course you have to be aware of what society (and religion) imposes on you. One thing that society will never get rid of is YOUR imagination and YOUR fantasies (not unless you're braindead, right?).
Take care.

[Virge]

I made a sarcastic comment earlier.... this one is serious......

I like to think god and I are on a first name basis and I don't need anyone else to tell me what god says or wants me to do. Most of the people who try to tell others what god wants others to do are only trying to make a living out of controlling how people think...

[CellarDweller]

don't look at sex as a sin, look at sex as a gift.

gifts need to be shared.

[princealbertofb]

don't look at sex as a sin, look at sex as a gift.

gifts need to be shared.

that's a beautiful thought, CellarDweller, and so very accurate. Sex could become a religion, or a religious experience then, couldn't it? (Actually, some cultures had already instituted it as a part of religious rites, look at ancient Greece for example).