SANE SEX, THE LOST HORIZON.

Article by EUGENE DELUCA, Way Out Magazine (Later Magazine Title: 24 Magazine)

July 1970

The oldest documents of our race begin with the mystery and crucial problem of sex, with our first parents as the original actors in the drama. It is not easy, but it is possible to find fulfillment in sex without falling into the primordial traps. Between the sinks of compulsive, insane sex and the rarefied peaks of sacred sex Sacred Sex Post, there is a beautiful middle ground. Here men and women can enjoy all the pleasure and fulfillment of the sex act without fear of harming themselves, others, or their relationship with God. In our age, discovering this middle ground of sane sex has become virtually a lost art. But it can still be found.

I have had a lot of trouble in my life with sex. Beginning in my early teens, I hurt many other people and caused myself all kinds of misery by letting my wants determine my sexual behavior. How I played the sex game depended on what I could get my partners to say yes to and what society would let me get away with. I had some pretty willing partners and society let me get away with a great deal. I had my own way with sex, mostly. That ought to have made me a very happy and fulfilled person sexually.

It didn’t. I got so frustrated, guilty, confused, and obsessive about my sex that I came to the brink of losing my mind. Then, five years ago, I found my way into a new approach to sex that restored my sanity and gave me the satisfaction I had been seeking and failing to find with the maximum-gratification system.

That new way was living by the rules which the Way [TAO] lays out in exceedingly plain terms. I want to tell you what these rules are. Please understand that they are not my idea. When I first started trying to live by them, they seemed awful— more than that, they -seemed ridiculously beyond the realm of what would be possible for me.

But they have worked. With the passing of time they have given me access to a level not of pleasure, but of strength and joy I never knew before or ever thought was possible. Here they are:

1. No adultery. This means no committing the physical sex act with anyone but your marriage partner if you are married, No sleeping with married people if you are single. It also means no promiscuity—petting, necking, etc. —with somebody else’s marriage partner. And it means no fantasying, running dirty movies mentally, about yourself and someone else’s husband or wife.

2. For singles—no fornication, No committing the physical sex act with anyone if you are not married. Keep the -“making out” within strict limits—no mutual masturbating, no petting, no heavy necking, no orgasms. And no fantasying about the sex act.

3. For everybody, married or single—no masturbation.

4. No homosexual experience, no matter what your desires may be.

Well there they are. And before you throw your hands up in indignation about the impossibility of it all, let me go one step farther out on this limb. From a lot of experience—my own and that of a great many people I know well—I make a money-back guarantee that these ground rules are possible even for very ordinary, hot-blooded 20th century American citizens like you and me. They are possible if we will do a few simple things to keep ourselves in right relationship with the Way. And they open up for us the chance of enjoying the terrific rewards of sane sex.

THE DANGER IN CONJUGAL LOVE is its very preciousness. What is sweeter than true love? And what is more beautiful than a faithful marriage which remains a love affair? It is precisely because sane sex is such a great thing that people become attached to it .in wrong ways, that they try to make it the center of their lives, that they put it ahead of God—the only true center for any life. By thus idolizing sex, they turn it sour. Because, big as sex is and terrific as it is, it is not as big as God and can never begin to take his place, When sexual love tries to become God, it departs from reality. It goes insane, and eventually it turns into its opposite, hate. Sane sex remains sane only as long as it subordinated to love for and service of God

If you are still with me, the burden is now on me –to prove my point. So here goes.

First, let me tell you where these rules come from. I did not think them up. They come from Jesus Christ, the Buddha, St, Paul, Moses, Sri Ramakrishna, Gandhi, C. S. Lewis, Jacob Boehme, William Blake—in short from teachers of the Way out of a variety of traditions and ages. They are points of agreement that continually recur in the spiritual wisdom of both the East and West.

And they are truths that every man and woman carries around in his or her breast, God knows, these truths are obscured often enough. I have denied them myself time and -again when I was committed to a relationship which violated them. And I am as familiar as anyone with the viewpoint that all this morality jazz is a Judaeo-Christian plot to keep the troops uptight, and a little discreet fornication or masturbation or homosexuality is good for the soul. But I have yet to meet the first person with whom this thinking was not just rationalization when you got right down to cases. I have never met a homosexual who really felt good about himself as a homosexual, or an adulterer who felt good about himself as an adulterer or a masturbator who felt good about himself as a masturbator. And I am not excluding myself here. When we get to the point where we no longer have anything to gain by keeping up the pretense, we all admit that we do these things, not out of a conviction that they are a good idea, but because we are driven, because the urge is too powerful to resist.

So the basic standards of right sexual conduct are built into all our spiritual traditions. And they run even deeper than that. They are an integral part of our personal sense of right and wrong.

For people who are committed to sick sex as a way of life, means must be found to dull this troublesome inner voice. That is one big reason why alcohol and other drugs so often mix with sick sex. They make it easier to go through with it by anaesthetizing the conscience.

For people who want to commit themselves to a sane sex life, the critical problem is how to restrain the sex force. It is impossible to achieve sane sex by merely refusing to give vent to sexual urges, Such a narrow, negative policy will produce only frustration and misery. Sane sex depends on finding a constructive outlet for the force you conserve when you restrain yourself as much as you need to in order to live by the ground rules of sane sex. Specifically, this energy must be re-channeled into the Way —love of God, service of God in man—to give you a life style you can live with.

I would have to agree with the psychologists and others who insist that it is unhealthy not to masturbate, fornicate, homosexualize, etc., if you have no other outlet for the sex drive—but for one thing. They ignore or reject this principle which all the great spiritual traditions teach, namely that it is possible to redirect the physical sex drive into a spiritual one by giving it a spiritual object.

Man most closely approaches divinity in the act of begetting. Orgasm is preeminently a spiritual experience. And the energy which goes in gratifying the sex drive is spiritual. It is not by accident that the lovers of God in all religions use sexual images -to describe their relations with God. The negative reason for restraining the sex force at the animal level is to avoid hurting yourself and others. The positive reason for restraining it is that you thereby give it the chance to seek fulfillment at a higher level  (see Sacred Sex Post ).

Many are aware of how redirection of the sex drive has worked for saints of all traditions. It is perhaps not so well-known that a modified practice of the same principle works equally well for ordinary people who get something going for them on the Way—even ordinary people with difficult life situations. Among my close friends who are interested in the Way and living by the ground rules of sane sex, two fellows and one girl used to be practicing homosexuals, two fellows are separated from their wives but not free to remarry because of their religious beliefs, and several others are unmarried men and women. A lot of others, including my wife and I, are happily married. But sane sex is less demanding on us because we have a legitimate outlet for our physical desires.

I have never met anyone, married or single, for whom sane sex is easy all the time. As long as I have been actively trying to be on the Way,- I have found limiting myself to sane sex easy most of the time. So have my friends who are in more restrictive life situations than mine. But all of us do have to fight to keep on the beam from time to time. In these periodic rough spells, there are two things which have never failed to bail me out when I did them persistently, One is prayer. Nothing fancy—just a turning to God and yelling for help, and continuing to yell as long as the temptation hangs on. The other thing which helps tremendously is talking openly with several other people on the Way (including your wife or girl, if you are married or in a serious relationship) about the struggles you are having with sex urges.

This much openness about a subject most of us are naturally secretive about takes some getting used to at first. But it has power to break the back of sick, irresponsible desires like nothing else.

Sane sex is worth the work it takes, because it is a joy-maker of the first order. That is a reality I didn’t get a good look at until late in my teens. My own folks were divorced when I was 12, and my friends’ parents all seemed to have a lot more hate going for each other than love. Bickering, cheating, estrangements of all kinds—these were all basic facts of married life as I witnessed it while growing up. Happiness, faithfulness, and fulfillment were not.

BABIES ARE WHAT SANE SEX IS ALL ABOUT. It is clear why the teachings of the Way are so firm about being sane and responsible with sex. Sex makes babies. And babies are among the most vulnerable creatures in the world. They need homes: And homes can only be provided by married couples whose lives are dedicated to taking care of their own. Little children need a world of attention, a world of affection, a world of Personal example from their parents to teach them how to live. Without all these things their delicate spiritual balance is destroyed, and they become subject to all kinds of unhappiness. In a family where both parents are practicing sane sex—as in no other setting—the necessary balance can be maintained easily and naturally.

Then I met Neal and Ann. I was 18 at the time, and they were eight or nine years older. They had just returned from a four years’ stint in Germany where Neal had sold books to servicemen. He was a big, outgoing guy who made friends with everyone. He was skillful at anything he tried. Baking, farming, trucking, selling, public relations— you name it, he could do it and do it first rate. Ann was quiet but a real strength. They had been all over the world during their marriage, and Neal had done a lot of different kinds of work. Ann had obviously provided the same psychological and spiritual stability everywhere.

Neal and I worked together on a couple of jobs. He got me work with him at a furniture factory in Vermont. Then, a year later, I got him a job with me in the Post Office in the New York suburb where I grew up. I was single and drifting at loose ends at the time. I used to drop over and visit with them often.

I remember one evening I spent with them a few months after we first met. It was one of those bitter February nights that make the warmth of a living room especially pleasant, Their three-year-old daughter was in bed and we were sitting around quietly talking about a Lin Yutang book on China they had lent me.

Part of my attention kept returning in fascination to the details of the room and these friends of mine. All the furniture in their $60-amonth apartment was patchy or homemade. Yet it felt like the snuggest, most comfortable place ‘in the world to be right then. It glowed—softly, warmly. And Neal and Ann—Hollywood material they were not. He was bald, and she had a big nose. But they appeared in my eyes that night to be the most beautiful people I had ever known, as beautiful as any two people on earth. ‘Their love for each other was casting a spell over this ordinary scene and transforming it into a paradise, And I knew in an hour I would leave and go into the cold and be cold and alone because I was single.

For the first time in my life I clearly saw and felt that there was such a thing as sane sex. And it looked as good as any of the makers of fairy tales and movies had ever said it was. The connection I didn’t make until years later was this: Neal and Ann had magic in their relationship because they were playing by the rules. Most of the couples I knew were messed up because they were breaking the rules.

The whole marriage institution was set up by God through great road men like Moses, Jesus, and the Buddha to give us ordinary folks the pleasures of sex, subject to guidelines which protect us from the destructive, degenerative aspects of the force.

In addition to behaving according to the rules enumerated earlier, the further price we pay for sane sex is a lifetime of responsibility for our marriage partners and the children we generate. Because, really, what sex is all about is making babies. If we are going to have sex, we can be happy only if we can and will care for what sex produces, families and children. If we will not take responsibility for what we generate through sex, the sex force will turn on us and destroy both our sanity and our happiness.

I can personally witness that there is no teacher of responsibility like sane sex. Before I started going with my wife, I was committed in several areas of my life to irresponsibility. I was drinking heavily and badly, I was involved in dishonest sex relationships with two girls. I had not ever in my life held a job for more than a few months. I had twice quit college and had struggled through two miserable years in the Army during which I narrowly escaped court-martial once and stole several hundred dollars of the government’s money (an act for which I was subsequently caught)

Even before Sharon and I were engaged, it became obvious that I would have to change my ways if our marriage was to have a chance. By the grace of God and with the help of Alcoholics Anonymous, I stopped drinking. I started to work steadily at a job, And I backed off my extracurricular sex. And now, five years later we have two little girls, a third child on the way, and a faithful, good marriage. I have held the same job for those five years, and have experienced great joy through learning the beginnings of what it means to be a responsible provider, husband, father, and householder. The vision of sane sex which I got in Neal and Ann’s living room at age 18 is now a blessed reality in my own life.

Sane sex is a middle ground, from which you can lean in two directions. Leaning toward sick sex is a loser’s game that many play. Acting according to the rules but dreaming and honing after sick sex eventually puts you back in the mud. That is what happened to me at age 21. After two happy years of living by the rules, I got in trouble with sick sex. And I stayed in trouble for four years until my marriage. I have seen the same thing happen to most of the people I know who were on the Way for a while and then fell off.

If we try to hang on to sane sex and look in neither direction, we are attempting the impossible. Because sane sex is not an end in itself. It is a way station either in an ascent or a descent.

The only secure way to enjoy sane sex is to be leaning at all times away from sick sex and in the direction of sacred sex. The true purpose of sane sex is to prepare ordinary men and women for the level of sacred sex which is the ultimate goal for every human being.

At the level of sacred sex, Truth or God is the only object of desire. Each individual must determine for himself when he is supposed to get to that level. Maybe it is in this life, and maybe it is in a life after the death of this body. God knows. But part of sanity in sex for right now is an attitude of Openness toward possibilities for growth. It is this attitude which makes the joy and fulfillment of sane sex complete.