Sexual Energy & Positive Endeavours: My Reflections

[Gale]

I've been thinking...

i've always been interested in sex, since i was really young, its almost unbelievable. i always thought it was just a fasination... but now, i think its more just a part of my nature. the other day i was hacking, and soon as topics turned to sex, i was like, awesome. I'm not very good at hacky sack, but suddenly i looked like i'd been playing forever, instead of intermittedly for a year or so.

now I've heard of focussing sexual energy towards positive endeavours before, but i guess i'd never really thought about that. i wonder now, how far that really extends, and even if there's other 'energies' a person can use for other things. for me, all i had to do was think about sex, and my senses seemed more refined and i was more coordinated, i wonder if anyone can just think of a subject and suddenly they're like that...

 

[Zantra]

You know, It's great to have you here. Just when I think this board is getting boring, you pop in with one of these little topics and liven this place up

Anyhow, I don't think you'll find a person on the planet who hasn't had to channel that engery at some point or another. If I took all that energy and channeled it at once- you I could lift a car or something You saw He-man this summer with his super-human feats? Ya, he's a virgin

But this brings up an interesting point I've always found baffling. And I don't know if will get kicked to general, but if so just say we'll steer back on track. But why is it that women always seem more able to "channel" that energy? I mean women act all aloof as if they are sexual camels. Yes, they would have you belief that they haven't had "fun" in 7 years, and they're just fine with that. Guys go 3 months and they're on the verge of tears. Why is this? I mean we all know that men and women get the same urges, and there's nothingt mystical about it, but women seem to handle it better- Why is this?

as for fascination with it- sex is like air- it's not a big deal unless you're not getting any

 

[jammieg]

All the needs and desires can be sublimated. A hungry wild cat has far better senses than a stuffed house cat, and a wild animal happens to be more intelligent than its domesticated counterpart.

 

[Kerrie]

Originally posted by Gale17
I've been thinking...

i've always been interested in sex, since i was really young, its almost unbelievable. i always thought it was just a fasination... but now, i think its more just a part of my nature. the other day i was hacking, and soon as topics turned to sex, i was like, awesome. I'm not very good at hacky sack, but suddenly i looked like i'd been playing forever, instead of intermittedly for a year or so.

now I've heard of focussing sexual energy towards positive endeavours before, but i guess i'd never really thought about that. i wonder now, how far that really extends, and even if there's other 'energies' a person can use for other things. for me, all i had to do was think about sex, and my senses seemed more refined and i was more coordinated, i wonder if anyone can just think of a subject and suddenly they're like that...

gale, are you a scorpio by chance :P

i have been in the same thought boat you are in...don't know about you, but i have a lot of "energy" and now i focus it on just being as creative as i can :)

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by jammieg
All the needs and desires can be sublimated. A hungry wild cat has far better senses than a stuffed house cat, and a wild animal happens to be more intelligent than its domesticated counterpart.

I agree with you on that. When the senses aren't used they are less attuned. An adreneline rush definitely perks up those senses and keeps you on your toes.

BTW kerrie, I like the sig- how true how true

 

[hypnagogue]

Gale,

There are a whole bunch of historical takes on your observation/questions, but two in particular immediately spring to my mind.

From the rational/scientific side of things, what you described is a classical example of Freudian sublimation. Before I get into this any further, let me quickly define two of the three main components of the mind as identified by Freud: the ego and the id. The ego is basically your conscious sense of self: your thoughts, emotions, self-image, consciousness, etc. The id is basically your subconscious and primitive 'animal' mind: your primal urges and desires, repressed memories, etc.

Freud had a theory that the fundamental 'energy' or driving force of the human mind is sexual energy, which comes from the subconscious, primitive id. The ego is engaged in a battle for control with the id (partially due to the ego's wishes to conform to the restrictions and values of family and society), and so it seeks to gain control over the id by supressing or censoring its energies and rampant desires. Picture the id as a boiling pot of water and the ego as someone who has been taught not to spout off too much steam into the air for fear of rejection, censure, guilt, and/or shame. The ego wants to be in good standing with its peers, and so it places a lid on the pot and locks it tight. After some time, however, the pressure in the pot will mount to critical levels, and this energy will need to flow out in one way or another or else the pot will just explode. This 'leaking out' of sexual energy suppressed by the ego is what Freud called sublimation. Sublimation consists of taking the raw desirous sexual energy of the id and transforming it into qualitatively different drives and desires which the ego can more readily work with. For instance, if you have ever experienced an urge to create a piece of art or write for writing's sake, Freud would explain this partially as a sublimation of the sexual drive into an artistic drive.

So, a simple Freudian psychoanalysis of your hacking experience would be that the mention of sex aroused the energies of your id, which your ego then managed to sublimate (at least partially) into the physical activity of playing hackey sack. For what it's worth, I draw as a hobby and I find I draw much, much better when 'the muse is with me,' or as Freud would say, when I'm sublimating my sexual energy into art-- I suppose, analogously, Freud would say you started to hack better because you began to sublimate your sexual energy into the game. You ask if there are other energies like this-- from Freud's point of view, there is basically only sexual energy, although it can be transformed to express different urges (such as the artistic urge) and serve different purposes.

Another take on sexual energy is provided by the mystical traditions of India, which give sex its due course in the human experience (unlike some stodgy Western religions I can think of ) and, in some cases, make it an important component of the mystical teachings. For instance, the yoga school of Hinduism involve describing and harnessing the seven chakras, or energy centers of the human body. Of these, the first two are located near the base of the spine and are implicated in the flow of sexual energy. Tantra yoga is dedicated specifically to spiritual enlightenment and promotes tantric sex as one means of achieving it. And of course, let's not forget the Kama Sutra. Unfortunately I don't know the details of the specific principles of sexual energy in Hinduism, but suffice it to say that the idea of sexual energy in this spiritual/mystical context is an important one. In addition, this conception of the existence and importance of sexual energy is embedded into a larger context of bodily/mental/spiritual energies (for instance, the chakras).

 

[selfAdjoint]

Zantra, you wrote
But this brings up an interesting point I've always found baffling. And I don't know if will get kicked to general, but if so just say we'll steer back on track. But why is it that women always seem more able to "channel" that energy? I mean women act all aloof as if they are sexual camels. Yes, they would have you belief that they haven't had "fun" in 7 years, and they're just fine with that. Guys go 3 months and they're on the verge of tears. Why is this? I mean we all know that men and women get the same urges, and there's nothingt mystical about it, but women seem to handle it better- Why is this?

There is an explanation for this out of evolutionary psychology. The woman has evolved to protect her reproductive potential. She is the one who will have the major pain and trouble of bearing and raising a child, and it is evolutionarily important that she not do that lightly, that she get "fitness points" in exchange for any sexual encounter. So she has to be able to hold it in and keep her options open.

The man on the other hand has evolved to spread his seed around as widely as he can. If he hangs back he risks leaving too few descendents to cope with the (presumed) challenges of the future. So he is given a drive that is very hard to resist to force him to go out there and have sex.

That's the story. It seems plausible to me, but some people can't stand discussions of humans as if they were just animals.

 

[Mentat]

Hypnagogue, your posts are always rather long, but well worth it . Well-written.

I myself have never like Freud's ideas about consciousness and the mind (particularly the separation of the "self" into two different parts, which you mention), and I still don't, but I think you have presented them in a commendable fashion.

 

[hypnagogue]

Thanks Mentat, same goes for you (except maybe the 'too long' part )

Anyway, at the risk of getting off topic, I'd like to say that I agree that Freud wasn't on the mark in everything he said, but he did have some compelling ideas. Before Freud it wasn't accepted that such a thing as the subconscious even existed, so clearly at least some of his work has merit. I don't know if we should take everything he says seriously to the letter, but the gist of some of his ideas seem to ring true, for instance in Gale's case.

I will also take the liberty of expanding on my personal comment above: I draw much better when 'the muse is with me,' and the muse has never been more with me than when I was pursuing my current girlfriend. In my constant preoccupation with her I found myself also dwelling much more on my artistic tendencies, and producing some of my better works in the process-- there was even the feeling of some kind of relief after the creative process, as if it were an outlet for mental/emotional build-up. And it's always been that way more or less when I've been infatuated with a specific girl. There are analogous cases throughout the history of art/music/literature where the creator's intense love or desire for a certain person inspires great artistic accomplishments. So in this respect at least, Freud's ideas seem to be on the right track.

 

[Zantra]

I think those of us "in the know" all realize that we operate with a clearer mind when we're not "preoccupied" (trying to keep it somewhat clean). Religion, not ID is what ultimately makes us sexually repress ourselves. ID takes it's direction FROM societal queues.

Take masturbation for instance(it's clean, back off;) It's somemthing that's extremely widely and commonly practiced by both men AND women, yet if you go by acknowledgment statistics, you'd think that 1 percent of women actually do it. We know that is false. But society sees it as "dirty" and women don't want to be seen in a bad light, so they deny it.

Sexual attitudes are changing, but they are still rigid in many ways.

 

[hypnagogue]

Well, it's not the id that does the repressing in the first place; it's the ego. Sexual repression by the ego can definitely be influenced by religious values, but it's shortsighted to see religion as the only source of sexual repression. For instance, if you're very attracted to a co-worker, you may have an animalistic urge to basically jump him/her. But such behavior is of course regarded as very impolite and offensive in general, and has added restrictions in the workplace. Thus it's more correct to assert that society at large enforces sexual repression; some level of restraint is necessary for society to function properly. A state where no repression of primal urges exists would essentially be anarchy.

 

[Zantra]

I stand corrected. I always confuse the ID EGO and superego. You're right, it is more than just religion. I was just using that as an example, and I didn't explain it very well

muh bad

 

[Gale]

well, i haven't studied to much pschology, but i actually picked up a book on freud the other day. had i known he dealt with sex as a topic so often, i'd probably have picked up a book sooner. sex is probably one of my favorite topics, for many reasons, intellectual or otherwise.

anyways, mentat was right about your posts hypnagogue, really great, just the sort of reply i was looking for. obviously I've read the karma sutra, i don't think anyone with my sort of interest in sex wouldn't have by now... and I've studied chakras and whatnot, but i'd never really tried any chaneling, least not of sexual energy, i never even though of the stuff in relation to my hacking. course i was just so amazed that i really didn't think about too much sides how freaking awesome i was.

anyways... is there maybe a limit to how you can chanel this energy? and if a person happens to have a real lot of sexual energy, does this change things at all? and well, since zantra brought the topic up, how about masturbation? does this take away from sexual energy capabilities? or add to it? or what?

 

[Zantra]

that's a difficult question for me. Certainly it relaxes you, but does it take away from your sexual energy? I guess my answer would be yes. But it also adds to your peace of mind, allows you to be less tense, and stressed out for that matter. It depends on your desired affect. If it's to channel the energy, then masturabation would take away from that. If you need to find inner harmony and peace, then I would recommend it. Of course, no need to take my word for it, you can always experiment to find out what works best for you

I've seen the kama sutra too. I'm not a gymnast

I want to point something out about sexual energy. It doesn't give you "super powers" or increase your talent in any way, shape or form. What it does is serve as a focal point and gives you an adreneline rush, which allows you to "hack away" so well. That energy and talent is already in you, and it's a matter of harnessing that energy. It's 80 percent mental, and you just have to train your mind to push your body beyond what you falsely percieve as it's limitations. Try running a mile, and do that for a week straight. (5 days). Time yourself, and each day try to beat the previous day's time. At some points towards the end of each run you will feel weary and as if you can't run any faster. But you can. It's all mind over matter. Your brain controls your muscle response, and makes you move faster. Your mind isn't tired, your body is. If you force your legs to move faster in spite of the pain, they will move faster. But don't pay attention to the pain. Instead, focus on the goal you're trying to reach, and let the pain flow to another part of your mind, like a less important side thought. Focus on other things. When you learn to focus your mind on things other than the task at hand, you will find you can do things you didn't think were possible. This is just a guideline, but you have to use your own methodologies to do it.

I'm enjoying this disuccussion. There are other questions I'd like to pose, but as this forum is rated PG-13, I won't

 

[phoenixthoth]

i've concentrated all my sexual energy on intellectual affairs and I'm completely celebate. any "hole" (ie incompleteness) is just dying to be filled [by my mind's energy]. sorry if that's blunt, but it's honest.

cheers indeed,
phoenix

 

[Gale]

well... i happen to have a lot of thoughts now, about masturbation and sexual energy, but come to think of it... it doens't fall into the pg13 rating eitherr. so, 1st Q, is there some forum somewhere i can go to, to find intelligent conversation regarding sex, without too much pervertedness?

anyways, Zantra,
i just can't help myself, but you just said that 80% of harnessing this sexual energy is mental... i can't help but be reminded of mental sex, and that whole concept in general. How mental/physical is sex really? if you can chanel your own sexual energy, could you chanel someone elses, maybe?


aslo, on a tangent, since i mentioned mental sex, just thought i'd share a quick story...
other day, my math teach was talking about how on an atomic level we never really touch anything and how really its just electrons repelling each other ect, apparently some teacher later told his students that my teacher was wrong. when my teacher confronted him, he likened it to "mental masturbation" (haha, he actually said that!) and i was thinking about it, but how funny it that... since techinically masturbating on an atomic level involves no touching so that teacher actually made sense sort of... cause masturbation could be conceived as mental in that sense...
haha, ok well i was terrribly amused...

 

[phoenixthoth]

mental masturbation is an artform that I've delved into deeply.

i had a dream once where i went to a room and i was physically alone and i made love to the presence, the quintessennce, of a former lover of mine. it was wonderful. there was no physical sex at all, just a mingling of spiritual energy. kinda like a sexual vulcan mind meld. subsequently, I've done this with someone in person who was about ten feet away. we saw each other's faces melt into those of our past lives and we could see more than the tip of the iceburg into each others souls. it was equally wonderful and very real. far more rewarding than just sex. now i want to try physically making love while peering into their souls; perhaps together we can redefine what a multiple is.

cheers,
phoenix

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Gale17
well... i happen to have a lot of thoughts now, about masturbation and sexual energy, but come to think of it... it doens't fall into the pg13 rating eitherr. so, 1st Q, is there some forum somewhere i can go to, to find intelligent conversation regarding sex, without too much pervertedness?

anyways, Zantra,
i just can't help myself, but you just said that 80% of harnessing this sexual energy is mental... i can't help but be reminded of mental sex, and that whole concept in general. How mental/physical is sex really? if you can chanel your own sexual energy, could you chanel someone elses, maybe?

Well you can mentally stimulate someone else, if that's what you're referring to, but I'm not sure it is, based on your posts about this topic before. Women percieve sex on a more mental level. They require intimacy, and a close connection with the other person to be aroused, whereas men operate on a more physical level, requiring visual and other sensory queues. It's been scientifically proven that certain women are capable of arousal without any physical contact. Of course each person is different.

And I said 80 percent of harnessing ANY energy is mental. As far as weather you can harness other people's energy. I wouldn't visualize it so much harnessing it as feeding off of other people's energy. It's kind of a symbiosis. You sense their arousal, which increases your arousal, etc, etc. So in a sense yes it is possible.

 

[phoenixthoth]

in the gnostic text of thomas, the gospel of thomas, if you please, jesus said that males and females will become one gender.

what i believe he meant is that both genders will learn to use both hemispheres of their brains that each gender stereotypically only uses one hemisphere primarily (males being left and females being right).

so one can think that for females, 80% of the arousal is mental whereas for males, 80% of the arousal is physical. (i'm not a typical male at all, in fact i have very little interest in physical sex.)

but why not have both? put your heart, brain, and soul into love making and become one individual for at least a split second. much can be "gained" or "taken" or "feed off of" from this experience that i can only imagine and have never had.

cheers,
phoenix

 

[hypnagogue]

Originally posted by Gale17
anyways... is there maybe a limit to how you can chanel this energy? and if a person happens to have a real lot of sexual energy, does this change things at all? and well, since zantra brought the topic up, how about masturbation? does this take away from sexual energy capabilities? or add to it? or what?

Well, just going by the Freudian theory, people with a lot of sexual energy would tend to be more driven or passionate about things in general. Enthusiastic, charismatic, etc. That doesn't mean that the life of the party is the biggest catch-- you could have a quiet type who is very passionate about things in his/her own more introverted way. I doubt that it's strictly true that higher passion for something = higher sexual energy but it makes sense how there could be a correlation.

As for the masturbation thing, I agree with Zantra-- if anything masturbation would seem to be just a release of sexual energy/tension, so short term at least I could only see it lowering sexual energy. Of course that's only if you go all the way... if you know what I mean.. heh.

Originally posted by Zantra
I want to point something out about sexual energy. It doesn't give you "super powers" or increase your talent in any way, shape or form. What it does is serve as a focal point and gives you an adreneline rush, which allows you to "hack away" so well. That energy and talent is already in you, and it's a matter of harnessing that energy.

I agree that release of adrenaline is a big factor in performance of physical tasks, but that can't be the only thing accounting for the influence of sexual energy. For instance it's hard to see how an adrenaline rush would automatically inspire a person to write a great piece of music. I think the relation between sexual energy and other 'drives' is more complex and subtle than that. You said that success is mostly mental and I definitely agree-- so it would make sense to think that having extra sexual energy to work with would help one to become more inspired and 'passionate' or absorbed in whatever task they're doing, which is more a framing of a mental state than a physical state. Unless, of course, that energy isn't being sublimated somehow and all you're doing is explicitly daydreaming about sex-- probably more distracting than anything.

[edit]In fact, the fact that tantric sex is used as a means to achieve spiritual enlightenment in Tantra yoga should tell us something. Having sex or being absorbed in sexual thoughts is almost a kind of altered state of consciousness in itself-- there is clearly something going on here that has transformative powers over one's mental state, well beyond just physical pleasure. Zantra, I think you hit the nail on the head when you mentioned sexual energy as a focusing agent. Sexual energy makes us more passionate, inspired, locked in, in the zone, whatever you want to call it, whether it is being expressed directly through sex/sexual thoughts or indirectly via sublimation.

Achieving such a 'locked in' mental state is also the goal of meditation, which (like tantric sex) is also a traditional method of approaching spiritual enlightenment.

Being 'in the zone' is also a relatively common experience in sports-- the player feels so locked in and focused into the game that s/he effortlessly performs at levels much higher than his/her normal ability. This of course mirrors the notion we've already brought up of sexual energy improving performance in a variety of applications. Being in the zone is also a very nice feeling, sometimes even ecstatic-- analogous, again, to states of heightened spiritual awareness and (lest we forget) sex itself. Interesting patterns and connections showing up here.[/edit]

I would also add that you can't arbitrarily apply sublimated sexual energy to whatever you're doing. Just going by intuition/common sense here, but it stands to reason that while you can funnel sexual energy into something you genuinely enjoy doing to get you into kind of a zone, I doubt that all the sexual energy in the world would get you motivated to do your taxes.

 

[hypnagogue]

Anyone mind explaining this mental sex thing to me in more detail?

Reminds me of an episode of Insomniac with Dave Attell...
Random Guy: We're experiencing mental intercourse.
Dave Attell: Oh really... Am I on top?

heheh... sorry, couldn't resist. But seriously though, my interest is piqued and I'd like to hear more.

 

[phoenixthoth]

mental masturbation.

i read what I've written. and find it utterly beautiful while not neccessarily worthwhile or not a waste of time. i forget what i write because i write so much and it's almost like a different person wrote it.

i've read my own poetry at least a hundred times and i find a new subtlety every time. it's a snapshot of my mental/spiritual state at the time.

also, posing mathematical problems to myself and setting arbitrary dumb goals and then meeting them is another way i mentally masturbate because when i get done i feel like I've accomplished something, when, in fact, I've done nothing new in mathematics.

i also like to watch experts amuse themselves with debate and i try to follow their reasoning.

i also love bombarding myself with what can only be called weird, abstract imagry in the form of artwork by those considered to be schizophrenic. i had a book full of such artwork and my brother is such an artist; i amuse myself on his site frequently.

well, i think it's about time to go back to reality now. phoenix to ground control, I'm buzzing the tower.

cheers,
phoenix

 

[Gale]

phoenixthoth, i think that whole right brain left brain thing makes sone good sense in certain ways, since as zantra mentioned, i happen to be one of those females who can be aroused with no physical contact...

also the thing hypnagogue said about people with more sexual energy might be passionate or whatnot, also makes sense. i happen to be a person with a lot of sexual energy, and it holds true to me at anyrate...

i think sexual energy is a pretty complex thing, but I'm going to read some freud before i post many more threads on the topic... I'm also going to look into tantric sex before. i was actually too afraid to when i was younger, but maybe now i won't get so scared...

anyways, as far as mental sex, or at least what zantra and i mentioned, i posted a while ago in general chat about it, perhaps i should have posted it here, maybe then i would have gotten phoenixthoth's input about is 'mental sexual experiences' that certainly would've been more intereting than the demolition man thing...
the reason i posted the topic was because, as stated above, i can get all aroused without much if any physical contact. a friend of mine considered then, that if there were two people like me, there could be mental sex. i think we decided it wasn't possible... but i dunno, if someone has some opinions on it, maybe there should be a new thread here...

 

[Zantra]

I understand what you're getting at gale, but it's basically how you're looking at it. If two people are in each other's prescence and stimulating themselves mentally through visual cues from the other person, I guess that would technically be considered mental sex, though they're just stimulating themsleves. If you're referring to to some kind of "energy transfer", then you've lost me.

 

[Kerrie]

hehe, a young gal mentions sexual energy, and the topic is flooding with the menfolk...

 

[Gale]

wow kerrie, i actually hadn't even realized that... i guess it'd be nice to get some female input too. ladies, your thoughts?

also, sorry I'm slow... but no, I'm not a scorpio, I'm a libra, make of that what you will...

 

[Zantra]

Originally posted by Kerrie
hehe, a young gal mentions sexual energy, and the topic is flooding with the menfolk...

Well somehow talking to hypna and mental about sex is not the same

But they want to share their ideas on "sexual energy", I'm all ears

 

[phoenixthoth]

mental sex is very real. I've had it.

let me tell you again how it worked. i (a "male") and a "female" BIOLOGICALLY, though not sexually, speaking, had mental/spiritual sex in the following way [i use quotes because at the moment we were both genderless]:

we stared into each others eyes for about an hour. we saw each others faces melt into those of our "past lives." we saw other faces overlap our physical faces; it was like special effects you see in a movie. she told me how she saw an old man with eyes sunk deep into his head; her impression, her intuition, told her that the man had SEEN alot, almost too much. the eyes were instinctively hiding from the bright light when, in fact, they were just adjusting to be in a position to peer more carefully.

on some levels, everyone in this thread is engaged in group mental sex already. notice how utterly honest we're all being?

this i find much more stimulating than any physical sex. physical sex pales in comparison and i seek it not.

there's an interesting song by nine inch nails that had a profound impact on me growing up. perhaps you've hear it. "closer." in it, trent sings,"i want to f*** you like an animal." later he says, "you bring be CLOSER to God." so he reveals what "closer" means. this is what tantric sex is about, to me.

cheers,
phoenix

 

[C0mmie]

Hi everyone.
I was reading over the thread, as I've been absent from PF for a while (new school, new job, family) and I am a bit confused as to the meaning of the word 'energy' in the conversation. Does this refer to a supernatural energy, something in the area of stimulation of the charkas, or, as prviously mentioned, the Freudian idea of the Id's primitive desire?

 

[phoenixthoth]

a start:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=energy

at least one thing energy can do is create change. that's about as specific i want to get, for energy is a broad term. i see basically three flavors of energy: spiritual, mental, and physical. there is kinda some overlap. the best unions take place on all three levels, i think.

cheers,
phoenix