A talk by Belsebuub from his live weekly session on December, 2009
Sex is a difficult subject to approach, as it’s very personal, but there are general principles worth discussing, as the spiritual work is so dependent upon sex. Many try to practice a spiritual work but are unaware that sex is essential for awakening. At the same time that force can be the cause of the loss of spirituality, and can be an enslaving desire.
To awaken is a long term process, which cannot be done without understanding sex and sexual desires. Being ignorant of them or enslaved by them is personally detrimental. To understand sex you need to use the sexual energy itself in tantrism, otherwise known as alchemy, in which the creative energy builds spiritual parts within, and reconstructs the human psyche anew.
If you try to awaken without alchemy you will either continue with multiple sexual desires or repress them and become celibate, neither of these will lead you to awaken. You have to fight fire with fire, use the sexual energy to convert a base energy into spiritual energy, that is the transmutation of alchemy. If you try to awaken without it you will find that sexual desires are an overwhelming force that are too strong to deal with.
Enlightenment is hidden in sex. On the surface lust is a natural process that contributes to the reproduction of the species, but the process of enlightenment runs under the surface, it is hidden and esoteric. So too are the processes of sex when it comes to spirituality. The energy of the spirit, of consciousness, is sexual in its nature, but it’s energy is different to that of lust and is incompatible with it. You either have one or the other, but not both. So to get to the things of the spirit, you have to sacrifice the energies of lust, but that is not to be celibate as spiritual energies are the result of a conversion of basic sexual energy. In alchemy the basic energies of sex are converted into clean pure spiritual energy. While they are dirty and lustful, their energy feeds desires, taking their own shape and form, multiplying and enslaving pleasurably. To create the spiritual within, the nature of the energies has to be changed and purified by alchemical transmutation, then as their nature is different they create the inner person anew, rather than being used to create bodies in their lustful form.
The understanding of sex is part of a greater spiritual work, which is to reach enlightenment. It is not something that exists in isolation from enlightenment. The process of awakening often gets classified into separate boxes such as astral projection, self-knowledge, alchemy, and so on, but they’re all part of the one awakening, the different parts form a whole process of awakening. Each deserves study and attention, but you must always keep sight of the real goal which is to create yourself anew, to return to the source of creation enlightened. Creation was through sex, enlightenment is that process in reverse, the return to oneness is through sex.
Q: I’ve been observing lust and have seen it working in seemingly unrelated thoughts and feelings. There are times when it can seem very strong and overpowering and I wonder how I can fight against that, but there were many other situations where I could see it subtly behind virtually every ego, and in other people too, I’m realizing just how strong lust actually is; it’s really, really strong.
When you study lust you’ll find you uncover desires of huge proportions, with many different aspects. But you learn about yourself as you uncover what’s there, you become aware of desires that have a grip on you, which you didn’t know about. And that is a very important step.
I guess we can learn even in the times that we don’t necessarily succeed if we have the will to correct those things when the next time comes.
Yes, except that failure in itself is not any kind of success, sometimes failure is just failure. It’s worth paying attention to what you consider to be ok or what you allow, and see whether you have the mentality of thinking that although a battle is lost today, you’ll try again tomorrow. Very often that just covers up weakness, or invites it, and by the time tomorrow arrives, you’ll lose the battle again. You have to be able to know the cunning ways of the mind.
From my investigation the thing that stayed with me has to do with sexual energies, sexuality and sexual attraction compared with lust. I’ve been trying to have a reference in my mind of pure sexual energy when I practice alchemy with my partner.
If you’re not careful, that will become an idea in the mind. And that kind of idea can actually harm the practice of alchemy, because every time you bring an idea into alchemy, you can knock out the practice; it’s very tricky. So in alchemy it’s best to forget about that kind of thing, because the difference between lust and sex in the actual attraction is very difficult to perceive in the beginning. And if you have ideas in your mind, you’ll knock out the actual attraction, and ruin the practice of alchemy you are doing. So clear any idea like that out of your mind, because they will interfere with the practice. Be aware that lust can manifest in thought in the practice of alchemy. Watch out for it without dwelling on what you are thinking about either, because that too can knock out the flow in the practice of alchemy.
Alchemy uses sexual attraction and the sexual energies, Jesus was crucified with one thief either side of him. The cross is a sexual symbol, depicting the phallus in the uterus, to die on the cross is symbolic, as his life was. One thief was good and the other bad. The good thief represents taking the sexual energy in the practice of Alchemy and stealing it for the good, for the use of the spirit, while the bad thief represents the theft of the energies when used for pleasure. Now, if you cut off the energy for some reason with thought, you can ruin the practice and you won’t have energy for the good thief to steal and you’ll be stuck. In alchemy, it’s worth knowing how the good thief works to take the energy.
With alchemy, I start to see the changes that happen, how it affects the psyche, you can get clear, and see changes happening; you can see them in your dreams and you know that things are progressing properly, but at a certain point in the day you make a mistake; an ego is fed in that deep dark unconscious place, and in dreams at night you find yourself in a terrible place and you know you fail and your work just falls back. It happens repeatedly and you just lose where you are within the work, and it just becomes a sort of limbo that takes a lot of hard effort to get back out of.
Yes, but if you keep trying, you’ll uncover more and more layers of the subconscious. That can take time—you can get stuck on one ego, one desire for some time. It can be demoralizing, but if you keep persisting with it, you can overcome it to a degree, then you’ll get to the next layer, where it will be difficult again. But it’s another layer of the subconscious you probably didn’t even know existed, which brings you knowledge about yourself.
Because there are so many different egos of lust and many different layers of the subconscious in which they work—it will seem as though it’s an unending task. But over time you’ll see that you get increasing knowledge about the different kinds of egos of lust, and the ways they work and manifest, and then you’ll start to overcome them. This is all part of getting self-knowledge, to acquire self-knowledge you have to extract light from darkness, and this is the darkness that you’re seeing, you’re seeing into the things that make up your psyche, and you’re getting knowledge about them.
Don’t feel demoralized—if you get knocked down then get back up and keep going and keep getting knowledge. This is how you progress, but don’t get demoralized by it and don’t stay in a rut where you feel as though you can’t move on, because by going through these things, by going into the layers of the subconscious in dreams and sometimes out-of-body experiences, you are doing the work as long as you die to yourself inwardly that is. You’re studying yourself in the physical world where you can see the different egos and die to them and can work in alchemy, so then in your dreams you will be put through various regions of the subconscious to be able to see the different egos, and that’s how it works. Some people might have the illusion that by being spiritual you somehow cut yourself off from everything in your subconscious, from everything that’s lustful and bad, and that you must suppress it and keep it down, or that it’s fine to have lustful desires anyway—but if you did that you wouldn’t get knowledge of it, nor would you overcome it, or transform it; you would only be suppressing it and suffering from its repression.
Don’t get demoralized when you get stuck on something, even though it might feel impossible to budge it. I was working on a defect of lust for some time and it seemed impossible to understand it, but at one point I really thought I had succeeded and had overcome it in the physical world. However, that same night while in the astral plane I was in a room, standing front of a spiritual being, he was sitting at a table, and I went up to him and said, “I’ve overcome it,” and he just looked at me piercingly and said, “Tomorrow”; that’s all he said. Then, the next day in the physical world a situation arose and I found I couldn’t overcome that ego, I overcame it at a later time. It goes to show that it’s part of the spiritual work, and it’s by trying, by making sacrifices, and exploring, that you actually progress. I wasn’t there before that spiritual being because I had done nothing. It was because I was struggling greatly with that desire. I could have been completely demoralized from it, but I had to keep going. There’s no other way but to persist.
Study yourself with the purpose of awakening. You may find that there are parts of the spiritual work you are particularly interested in, such as self-knowledge, astral travel, or meditation, and may feel that some areas are going well or badly, but it’s really how you progress spiritually which counts, that’s the main thing. It’s inevitable to struggle against certain things, but aim for enlightenment, and work towards it. You always have to have that as your goal, and the goal gets clearer as you go along. If you feel a longing to awaken, hold onto it of when things get difficult and use it as a beacon to look towards. Persist with your work, even though you may sometimes feel you have lost the way, as awakening itself is a very difficult thing to do, it’s extremely difficult to go against what you have inside yourself.
To have just a tiny light of consciousness within that’s struggling to wake up, facing the opposition of the subconscious desires of the psyche, the forces of nature, and the values of other people, is a very difficult task. But don’t lose sight of the goal of awakening—this is the most important thing to do in life. Try to do whatever you can to get those spiritual feelings active, to activate your essence which brings about its spiritual yearning, so that the longing to awaken can propel you to awaken, and you have everything that it brings and gives. Develop the yearning of the essence, with spiritual exercises and strengthen your consciousness, which is the spiritual part within, and develop it until it becomes the dominant aspect of your psyche, convert the subconscious into consciousness, leave behind what is not spiritual, and transform yourself and awaken.
