Another recent study found that the more pornography people reported watching in a survey in 2006, the more likely they were to report increased doubts about their religious beliefs and reduced importance of religion/spirituality in their daily lives in a follow-up survey in 2012 (Perry, 2017).
However, there was an exception to this general trend for a subset of users. Specifically, those who watched pornography more than 2-3 times a month, and especially those who watched once a day or more, did not experience reduced importance of personal religion/spirituality over time. This suggests that for most people, viewing sexually explicit material tends to weaken their religious/spiritual commitment, yet for some reason this does not seem to be as much of a problem for heavy viewers.
The reasons for this are far from clear, but the author of this study speculated that heavy users of pornography may have found a way to rationalize their behavior and enjoy it without apparent guilt without it interfering with their religious commitments. Perhaps these people find a way to keep their interest in sexually explicit material and their spiritual impulses compartmentalized. Another intriguing possibility is that they find some way to combine the two, and may even perceive a spiritual aspect in pornography?
Scott A. McGreal MSc ‘When Spirituality and Sexuality Clash’
There is a school of thought getting a lot of airtime online at the moment which states that sexuality and spirituality are necessarily at odds. That in order to ‘find god’ one must eschew the ‘shallow’ search for sex and lead an ascetic life of self-sacrifice instead.
This is a fallacy borne out of old-fashioned puritan thinking. Sex and the search for spirituality need not be mutually-exclusive. In fact, they can be part of the same continuum.
The puritan claims that casual sex is based entirely on the need for validation or the desire for escape. But this is merely a value judgement. If you disapprove of casual sex already you will look for ways to disdain it, and the best way of doing so is labelling it ‘shallow’ and a means of avoidance or puffing up one’s pride.
But merely saying something doesn’t make it so, and just because you slur ‘casual’ sex it doesn’t mean that those slurs are ‘true’: they are your opinion, nothing more and nothing less.
So could the opposite proposition be true? Can sexuality bring one closer to god rather than further away?
“You can open to God through sex. By learning to open your heart and body while embracing and trusting all energies, from rough ravishment to sublime gentleness, you can open to be lived by the mystery that lives the entire universe.”
David Deida, Finding God Through Sex
Certainly, friends of mine who are players state that their most spiritual moments have occurred during or after ‘casual’ sex. I too have found that to be the case: in fact, I’d go as far as to argue that the search for sex itself is a search for god. A misdirected search, the puritan would claim, but on whose authority?
Finding God Through Sex
Because god is ‘divine’—that is, not to be found in the realm inhabited by humans—then one’s search for god must necessarily involve altering one’s consciousness in a profound way. This can be done in a variety of ways. Think, for example, of tribal dancing, where the participants dance themselves into a frenzy to loud music. Or the use of mind-altering drugs like ayahuasca. These are both ways in which ones sensibilities can be shifted from the temporal to the spiritual realm.
Now, I personally do not touch drugs these days, and to be honest I find the idea of doing ayahuasca vaguely terrifying. However, I can see why people do it and understand how it could serve a purpose, and as such I would never criticise anyone for using it as a route to enlightenment.
So why are many people not accepting of those who seek to raise their consciousness through sex? Put simply, unexamined thinking. Because the puritanical notion that ‘sex = bad’ has been pummelled into us since time immemorial (and that for largely for reasons of societal control, as I touch on in my book CUCKED) people simply accept it as fact rather than taking the time to think it through.
Of course, I am not trying to argue that all sex under all circumstances is a divine act (although as it happens I am closer to that position than not). What I am saying is that is can be, and people would do well to examine their thinking carefully rather than merely parroting false assumptions they’ve picked up from mainstream culture.
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