post, and I hope others will join in the discussion. I appreciate your courage in sharing your personal experience and insight.

I have to say that you may be exactly right. It has been clear to me for some time that if people had to choose between sleeping with each other and intercourse with lust in it, even a little, they would HAPPIER with the first. This is exactly what you have discovered.

Any lust seems to increase the craving neurochemistry...and then we are left feeling dissatisfied, or incomplete. People can't believe how contented they can be until they do something like the Exchanges for two weeks without orgasm...and see that they feel better and better, not worse and worse. I believe it's the *sleeping together* that accounts for lots of the benefits.

So the big question is, "do we need the physical joining at all?" I have done a lot of inner listening on this point, so I will tell you what I "get." However, I encourage everyone to ask the Divine for themselves.

I have come to believe that the ultimate goal is complete, fear-free union with the opposite sex...without "fervent desires" present. That is, without lust.

I agree with you that that is not easy. I also think you're pointing to the right approach...lots of heart-based, delicious sleep and companionship with someone for some period of time. Ideally, that period of time should be extended until there is a clear signal from Spirit that it is time to move to still (physical) union, as a meditation...not as an exercise in "normal" lovemaking. The goal, as Hotspring posted, is a "dynamic stillness," where the energy moves and the bodies don't do much.

The reason that sleeping together may not be the ultimate goal is that it preserves the separation of egos/bodies. It also has to potential to make people feel like sex is "bad." That attitude easily gets projected onto the opposite sex...as has often happened in religions where celibacy is believed to be holier than physical union. (That often leads to separation between the sexes, as apparently happened in Christianity.) The result is that men subconsciously begin to think that women are bad, and women that men are bad.

In fact, it may be that we need each other, and the experience of joining "beyond the physical body" to see who we really are...spirits traveling in bodies. That experience is important (says my inner guidance) because the part of us that God created is the "spirit" part, the eternal part that is really "one" with Him. So the experience of joining with another at an energetic level is potentially an important reminder of who we really are...and it seems to be dependent upon complementary energies.)

The odd thing is...that I'm sure that if someone had no genitals, he/she could still experience this deep union. But the *desire* would have to be for the most complete union possible - without any reservations or fear of deeper union.

I fear that if people were convinced that they could *only* sleep together, an emotional gap of some sort would remain in place. People would think that genitals were a *problem*. They aren't. They are immaterial...but they shouldn't be accorded extra attention by avoiding them. That makes them more important than they are. If this sounds confusing, I'm not surprised.

I guess I think we need to...gently, slowly and with our hearts wide open...want to unite without any defenses...and show our fearful egos that we need have no fear union.

Humanity typically seems to jump from impassioned lust...to rigid, self-righteous celibacy. It may be important to find a middle ground. I'm afraid that if people don't treat "sleeping together" as an interim step, confused people will ultimately condemn the practice. That's what happened with the Catholic church and the "spiritual brides" practice. Somehow we have to make sure that as we learn to remove lust from the equation we don't lose the selfless union on which that feeling you described so well of peace and wellbeing depends.

All that being said, here's a story that confirms your experience: http://www.reuniting.info/wisdom/von_urban_sex_perfection_and_marital_ha...

I, too, think you were lucky to grow up in your culture. I think the USA would be a less war-like nation if we all had that kind of start. Unfortunately, I think we would also have way too many human beings here, who would be wretchedly poor. (We're headed that way anyhow.) Do you suppose the human race could ever learned to be heart-centered and also voluntarily control its replication???

rboothe

Zendel: I don't know how old you are now, but usually the instinct to make love stems from being IN love. When you find someone who really moves you, everything else follows. Instincts arise that lead us through a whole series of actions, different in every situation, and over time. This is different from lusting after someone or the opposite sex in general.

Then there is lusting for a particular person because they really turn you on. This may not be the same thing as falling in love, but it can be very powerful - and also lead to love. They say that women desire sex after they fall in love, and men desire sex THEN fall in love. While that's pretty true, it certainly doesn't apply to situations where one falls head over heels in love - either at first sight (or smell: more on that later) - or increasingly with each new meeting. For example, I was initially attracted to a much younger and very sexy female, with whom I discovered that we shared the same interests and views on a multitude of subjects. She was crazy about sex, and soon I was crazy about her. We never had a opportunity to make love, due to external circumstances, yet it was a powerful relationship-experience just the same. Another time, I was making an operator-assisted phone call down in Mexico, when I bent over to speak to the operator, caught a smell of her head, and almost swooned in ecstacy. I could barely keep myself from grabbing her. As I am half Spanish-Basque, some racial/genetic similarity must have made this girl's smell so incredibly intoxicating. If we had embraced, or even danced closely, I would have been powerless to resist. I had never before, or since, had such an experience. Just recently, however, I read an outstanding article in Psychology Today probing the connection between sex and smell. Researchers found that liking someone's smell is one of the most powerful sexual stimulants, whereas disliking it was one of the most frequent reasons given for divorce. So, perhaps you just need someone whose smell turns you on . . . .