Spirituality and Sex - How to Do Away With False Guilt

Sex can be spiritual, though it's all too common to forget and feel guilty about sex, and much of the guilt is hidden in your subconscious mind. We'd like to help you escape the baseless sexual guilt trap.

It's detrimental to your emotional, spiritual, and mental health to possess baseless guilt about sex. Additionally, false fear and guilt about sex prohibits you from experiencing the spiritual and healing benefits of good sex.

How to Escape Feeling Guilty About Sex

First, it's important to understand that, from a spiritual perspective, there's nothing wrong with non-adulterous sex between consenting, married or single adults of the same or opposite gender. Your conscious mind may believe this, but your unconscious may not.

The most common source of sexual guilt is the notion that it's a sin. Cultural biases and fears, sometimes stemming from religious conditioning, can be very difficult to shed.

You may be surprised to learn that sex wasn't considered a sin in ancient times. It's only in the last 2,000 years that joy and spirituality were separated from sex and replaced with darkness and fear.

Vicki León, author of The Joy of Sexus: Lust, Love, and Longing in the Ancient World, writes the following:

"First of all, neither the Greeks nor the Romans thought about sinfulness and in the Judeo-Christian sense. The idea of mankind's fall from grace never occurred to them. Even women, despite having to endure a lifetime of domineering males, would laugh incredulously at the thought of sex being a sin. Adultery could be a crime, as could rape, but for reasons other than sinfulness. A tangle of laws eventually would seek - not always successfully - to control some sexual behaviors and criminalize others. In their polytheistic societies that we call pagan, there were no churches or congregations as we know them, no priests to lecture or act as middlemen to a deity. They believed in a celestial place, jam-packed with gods and goddesses who were divine yet flawed. In them, Greeks and Romans saw themselves, at once perfect and imperfect. Some of their supreme beings were lifelong virgins: Artemis, Athena, and Vesta. Other deities were sex addicts, troublemakers who rarely paid a penalty for their misbehavior."

Unfortunately, negative impressions about sex still permeate the collective unconscious today. The prevalence of "slut shaming," aimed at people who dress provocatively, is an example of this. Madonna was heavily criticized recently (also an example of ageism) after she appeared topless in this month's Interview Magazine. Another illustration of our sex-shamed society includes couples happily participating in open relationships being vilified by so many intolerant people who insist there's only one acceptable relationship model.

One may tend to believe that the twenty-first century has brought about a sexual awakening and more sexual freedom. Perhaps in some countries, but that doesn't seem to be the case everywhere, especially when considering how sex is still severely stigmatized in many cultures around the world.

Ways to overcome innate sexual guilt, aside from first consciously accepting that consensual sex between adults is perfectly acceptable, include the following: subconscious positive programming, including MP3 hypnosis audios; past life regression MP3s to find the root cause of sexual guilt; daily meditation to detach from hidden fears; replacing feelings of guilt with gratitude for the opportunity to enjoy sex; completely embracing safe sex; and of course the regular practice of being sexually active with your lover or lovers, while simultaneously affirming that it's not only all right, but for your highest good.

It's okay to have fallen into the sexual guilt trap, but now you realize that it's not for your highest good, and you can escape it using the advice above. Once you do, you'll allow yourself the physical, mental, and emotional benefits. You can also advance your spiritual awareness through intimacy; connecting with your lover can be a spiritual practice similar to meditation.