Spirituality and Sexuality

Challenges to Transformation

This is an updated version of the article published Apr 24, 2025, no different than its republished form on May 09, 2025. Keeping both published is to preserve restack links.

The Principle and Physical Pleasures

Loving the enemies of conscience, called the principle, does not work without moral standards. It treats them as secondary though so we can make others more important in our heart and count any differences in their moral standard as being due to blindness in their heart. This does not make our standard automatically right. It simply means that we love them in spite of what we consider blindness in them.

If we are right though, they have a much harder time loving us likewise in return. For behavior repeatedly working in blindness is addiction, which weakens our ability to make our own choices. This is particularly important when it comes to making all others, especially enemies of conscience, more important. For as hard as it can be for some, addiction makes it harder by turning our focus onto physical pleasures.

The strongest blindness in society is sexual addiction. When suffering from it though, we do not consider it addiction but natural, except for extreme cases that even society designates as addiction. I am not saying where the line is between what is natural behavior and what is not—only how to discern when it becomes addiction, blinding us from learning how to practice the principle.

Take the word erotics. Under my moral standard, I believe that it promotes spiritual blindness through excessive focus on sexual behavior and thoughts. But if you do not see it this way under your moral standard, we should consider the difference between us blindness in each other’s conscience. Again, keeping this secondary, we can make each other more important in our hearts without being against ourselves in the world. Continuing in the principle, we can safely discuss the issue without trying to convince each other at the cost of our love for one another.

Spiritual Moral Standards

Word taught that if a man desires a woman in his heart, he has already committed adultery spiritually. The female body is natural as is the male body. Both produce involuntary sexual reactions that are also natural, lasting only a moment unless we pursue them by choice. But when blindness (addiction) is present, there is little or no choice but to stay focused on them until lust occurs, the usage of appearances that blind us to our higher conscience.

Consider this process during the stage of puberty and higher hormone production. Even without blindness, the body’s sexual involuntary reactions during this time are strong enough to warrant more than simple refusal to pursue them. Friends and family support are often indispensable. But when blindness is present, the reactions can be overwhelming but not without cultural factors at work.

In countries where marriage at an early age is part of their customs, some teenagers achieve a level of self-control uncommon in other cultures. The obvious danger is the number of youth and older men who are blind and take advantage of the custom. In any case, most of us here are against such customs altogether even when such blindness is avoided. However, until their economies can establish schooling for everyone, it will likely continue.

Sexual Blindness

Women at any age in any culture who are blind (addicted) to sexual involuntary reaction in their own body have little or no choice but to try to get men to react, regardless of whether they have such blindness or not, and vice versa for men who are blind. Due to the loss of will in such blindness, both sides quickly move to the next stage, jealousy in the conscience, and then to hatred.

Now addiction to hatred obviously works directly against the love needed to love the enemies of conscience. However, addiction to sexual involuntary reaction coupled with its output of hatred are the enemy of every democracy in our world conscience. For, as lust is spiritual adultery and hatred is spiritual murder (consider David’s case), together they devastate the family structure in whatever orientation it takes. And family, as we all know, is the core building block of democracy in every national conscience, enforcing constructive social responsibility.

Freedom in the Exquisite Light

(It should be noted here that although the principle is based on Jesus’s teaching, we do not have to believe in him to learn it.) The only way to achieve the highest vision and avoid the blindness of sexual addiction altogether is through practice of the principle. While practicing it or just learning how, many of us experience the physical act spiritually as well with those we love. That is, as names of light, we become conscious of our names of light permeating each other in our singularity, participating in the exquisite light between Name and Word. The physical act though is not required to become conscious of this supreme experience.

The exquisite light is the source of all our experiences. As agapé¹ names of light, we know it as the source that fills us with all the agapé of Name, the state of consciousness known as suneidesis.² It is what makes it possible to give Name all our agapé through the enemies of conscience, those blind to the singularity of which they are a part and blind to who they are in the Now of Word.

The key to understanding what separates our views is whether we see ourselves as spiritual beings with a sexual body, sexual beings with a spirit, or just physical sexual beings. In addition, it depends on whether we see ourselves as physical beings, with or without spirit, whose soul (our being or identity) cannot be transformed until our bodies die or physical beings whose soul can be transformed through our minds (the should/shall distinction).

Transformation through the mind requires the practice of envisioning each other as agapé names of light in Word—according to symbolic images that trigger visions beyond explanation in this world. Trying this with images based on our physical body do not trigger such visions and thus do not transform us.

Therefore, the practice of seeing Name, Word, the sacred Mother Mary or any other sacred female figure in our beliefs—according to physical forms—is powerful for our faith but not effective for transformation. For transformation is the death of the soulish body, the false identity-experience working through our physical body, which does not die due to the death of the soulish body.

Simply put, these are gender bodies while our spirit has no gender, bodily light in the singularity needs no such distinction. Once we know our true identity-experience through envisioning Word, the seed process of our spiritual body, the soulish experience is no longer believed or needed. The work of the Holy Spirit, or whatever the Great Spirit is called in our beliefs, is to take us through the stages of child-like faith and transformation.

Challenges to Transformation

May this encourage you to begin the second stage if you have not already. Two obstacles to transformation are the notions of weaponizing our bodies and making them holy. Weaponizing our bodies to get revenge is obviously a hateful act, using them to sexually tempt others to see them weak and vulnerable. But during transformation, we may deceive ourselves into thinking this is our duty to save others from whatever we have suffered. We are actually modelling hatefulness to those we want to save, which will only prevent them from seeking maturity.

In the basics of spirituality, we learn to make our bodies holy, morally or ethically clean, but it takes us a while to understand that it is our suneidesis³ that needs to be clean and that cleanses our perception of the human body. With a soulish body still, we identify with our physical body so we think that, according to our physical actions, the body itself is holy or defiled. When having suffered abuse, we are also led to believe that the trauma has scarred us permanently. Knowledge of Word states:

“To the clean [in mind and conscience, possible by practicing the principle], all things (are) indeed clean [including perception of all physical bodies], but to those having been defiled [in their mind and conscience, due to disrespecting others or failing to forgive others] and unbe­lieving [since Word did not exclude those of us who do not believe in him from learning the principle, this refers to not believ­ing in the principle], nothing [appears] clean, but both their mind and con­science is defiled.” Titus 1:15

(“Mind and conscience is defiled” is not a grammatical mistake. See The Oneness between Mind and Suneidesis.)

During transformation, there is the belief that our bodies are now holy and should be displayed for the natural beauty that they were created in. However, their natural beauty should be seen in accordance with the greater beauty our spirit is now manifesting—in love for everyone, particularly the enemies of conscience. For such enemies blindly try to get us to defile our conscience again by denying the truth and deceiving ourselves again—thinking falsely that we are these physical bodies and that, more important than loving our enemies according to the principle, we should not be ashamed of displaying who we are as these bodies.

The truth is there is no shame in displaying our bodies in modesty—as an expression of agapé according to the principle. It is agapé not only for the enemies of conscience but for all those still falsely identifying with their body, who are vulnerable to sexual temptation, whether or not they see it as such, and thus see all things as defiled, whether they realize it or not.

Word said that the burden is light and the yolk is easy. Agapé always has a burden and a yolk, minor though in comparison to the burden and yolk of hatred. But we alone are free once we see the real power of agapé. In gratitude, believers preach the agapé of Christ, nonbelievers teach agapé. Any trauma suffered or guilt experienced can now be understood in the misperception of spiritual darkness—put out by the light of our agapé names in Name.

Suggested articles:

Jane and the Image of Woman

The Eyes of Democracy (Introduction and Index of Articles)

1. Agapé means unconditional love in Greek.

2. Suneidesis is pronounced soon-eye-day-sis. After reading the link explaining it, you will see how central it is to this teaching. Using this foreign word regularly in discussions helps us get accustomed to experiencing something new and positive in our awareness. When the word conscience is used, it will refer to the aspect of suneidesis that involves right and wrong, but this aspect cannot be separated from our co-conscientious awareness of all things.

If I understand that my awareness of something as simple as a cup includes co-conscientiousness, I do not allow myself to get blinded by the cup alone but know it as part of all creation at the hands of the Creator or the universe, depending on one’s beliefs. Spiritual maturity does this naturally.

3. The repetition of suneidesis is meant to challenge you to consider this dimension in your awareness. Apologies, but it will only be a necessary annoyance until it becomes natural.