sexual deconditioning

Sadly, almost every human being alive today has grown up within a society which says that sex needs to be suppressed, that sexual intercourse is only okay under very limited circumstances, within marriage or at least within a committed, monogamous relationship. And the underlying message, perhaps not said explicitly anymore, but still implicit, is that sex is bad. And yet we are sexual beings, we are a sexual species. And this conditioning arguably causes more misery in the world than anything else, for it makes us all sinners, and that for hundreds of years was one of the primary messages of Christianity: that we are all sinners.

This is the basic conditioning around sex that many of us have grown up with. Nowadays, it’s not so fashionable to say sex is sinful, and yet if we look at the norms of society, we will see that that’s still implicit. If someone has many lovers, enjoying sex whenever the chemistry is right, people frown upon it still, especially if that person is a woman. She will be labelled a tart, a whore, a slut. Why? For being natural, for enjoying the perfectly natural energy of sex.

In tantra, we have to undo all this conditioning. We have to drop it. We have to say no, sex is not bad. Sexual desire is not wrong, and sexual pleasure is to be enjoyed. This is the way of tantric sex. So most western tantra starts off with the mission of sexual de-conditioning: getting rid of all that conditioning. And tantric groups involve a tantric master creating a safe space, and getting this message out to the participants: it’s perfectly okay to enjoy sexual energy in your body, the feeling of it is delicious. In fact, a lot of western tantra doesn’t ever get beyond this step of sexual de-conditioning – the conditioning runs so deep. It is a huge job to overcome it. For most people to reach a space where they can be in a room full of other people copulating, enjoying sexual energy freely, openly, is beyond the realms of their imagination as a starting point. And yet, this is the level of de-conditioning that needs to happen for tantric sexual practice to get anywhere.

Strictly speaking, the word tantra should not be applied to this step. This is just preparation which puts us in the right space to start practising sexual tantra. But people love the word tantra, they are drawn to it, and so the word tantra is often associated with such de-conditioning, and there’s no harm in it. It helps us to drop that conditioning if we think that we are involved in something spiritual. But do you see the absurdity of it? That we need to be practising something spiritual for sex to be okay. What a sad mess we humans have got into over sex.

It is funny, we regard ourselves as the very pinnacle of evolution here on Earth, and yet we are without doubt the most messed up species on the planet, by a long way. And the more we can get back to a natural way of being, the healthier and happier we will be. And we should start with this: our attitudes towards sex. Let’s drop all this conditioning and help each other, encourage each other to enjoy our sexual energy without guilt or shame. Once we have dropped all that conditioning, then we will be in a position to move on to some real tantric sexual practice. But until then, we have this important work to do in sexual de-conditioning.