Dear Julia,

In the past I engaged in astral sex: by focusing my energy on someone, I would have intense sexual experiences. This was amplified by the use of drugs, and now that I've quit using, I find I can still make these connections but in a far less powerful way. Now I want to discontinue doing this because it doesn't feel right anymore. When I try to draw the line, however, I am discovering that just having an ordinary sexual fantasy about someone connects me to them in an energetic way. I'm starting to think it's impossible to avoid having energetic experiences with other people. What do you think? I've also discovered I need to work on my relationship to the divine as it expresses itself in a feminine way. During the time when I was discovering sexual energy projection, I journeyed into disrespectful and degrading attitudes. I am working on changing that, and am seeking others' forgiveness for my past behaviors.

-L.

Dear L.,

If the past behaviors you're seeking forgiveness for are non-physical in nature (such as fantasies about other people), then you need do nothing but choose to think in new ways and forgive yourself. If it makes you feel better, you can mentally apologize to the people you feel you've wronged and ask them to forgive you. (To speak to them directly would probably really freak them out, which would do more harm than good.)

Regarding your current dilemma, you are absolutely right: it is impossible to avoid interacting energetically with others, for we are in constant energetic interaction with everyone around us. Every time we think of someone, we send them energy. In fact, even if you were to have a fantasy about some imaginary person, you would be interacting with a being in some dimension.

You can, however, resolve your worries telepathically. In becoming aware of auric exchanges, you are moving into some deep psychic territory, and you will have to develop some new psychic skills anyway. If you find yourself fantasizing about someone, and you're not sure if this is okay, you can simply (mentally!) ask them for permission to continue. Think about it: if you can affect them with your sexual fantasies, surely you can also affect them with a soulful fantasy conversation.

Now let's explore sex and spirituality and what a complicated subject this has become for us all. I believe we can tell a great deal about our relationship to life (and God) from our attitude toward sex. People who have yet to develop conscious spiritual awareness tend to be rather animalistic in their approach to sex. As we evolve spiritually, we seek physical release less and emotional union more. At first, we seek this union in another person; in time, however, we realize that what we really long for is union with the Divine.

There is a reason why highly spiritual people often turn to practices like celibacy and tantra. At first glance, these may seem totally unrelated, but such choices reflect awareness that sexual energy is powerful and can be harnessed toward spiritual aims.

Unfortunately, our evolutionary journey in relationship to sex is not simply a matter of how we express our desires. Because sex is so important and so powerful, mankind has developed all sorts of ways to try to control it, from harsh laws and religious edicts to the insidious psychological weapon of shame and social rejection. Depending on how we've been socialized, we all have various degrees of awakening and healing to accomplish regarding sexual energy. Most of us have been taught to believe that sex is dirty, sexual desire is wrong, and even our bodies are somehow shameful. Repression eventually becomes obsession, whether we're obsessed with having sex or with NOT having it.

In backlash to all that control, many people now choose to believe that sex can be purely recreational - that we don't have to exert any self-control so long as we practice good hygiene. Of course, this careless approach breeds all sorts of emotional, spiritual, social and economic issues.

As with anything else that brings us great pleasure, sex is also easy to get addicted to or obsessed with. This is when it begins to rule us and we surrender our freedom to choose wisely. If we can't control our sexual thoughts and feelings in addition to our sexual acts, we can become addicted, and may become earthbound by our desires when we depart this world. This is why great spiritual teachers have warned us against lust: it's not because sex is inherently evil, but because it is so enticing that it's easy to lose our heads about it.

Like all energy, sexual energy can be directed and redirected, stored and released, but it can't be destroyed. When it is repressed, it will seek some sort of outlet. The greater the tension between sexual energy and the forces trying to repress it, the more twisted it may become as it seeks an outlet for expression.

What you call degrading in your question others might call perverted, which simply means distorted or unnatural. Thus sex that is perverse or degrading involves the distortion of whatever would be natural for us if we didn't have so many artificial ideas about it. This sort of perversion is now pervasive and self-perpetuating: it has become yet another thing we inherit from our cultures if we're not conscious enough to choose something higher for ourselves.

Of course, conscious awareness is the key to making wise choices on any path. This involves knowing why we want what we want, why we do what we do, and how what we choose may affect other people. Without such awareness, we can't purposefully cultivate the quality of experience we most value.

To have a healthy relationship to sexual energy, we must recognize it as a normal, natural, beautiful expression of life and love. We must also remain in control of our own thoughts and impulses, and carry the basic intention of loving ourselves and others.

You are at a natural turning point in your own evolution: you're waking up to all the cultural issues you've absorbed about sex, and are in the process of making some new conscious choices for yourself. This is very positive, for it is only in aligning with the loving heart of sexual desire that we are freed from compulsion and empowered to manifest true fulfillment.

The simplest advice I can give you is just to LOVE: Cultivate loving thoughts, send loving energies, and choose whatever is most loving when you're not sure what to do, and you can't go wrong. If you are just sending love and appreciation to others and you end up in blissful sexual fantasies about them, then you are making love to the Universe, my friend - and there is nothing wrong with that!