1. Feature Article: "How DO We Re-Direct Sexual Desire?"
Today's article comes from the Renewed Man Boot Camp. Renewed Man is a systematic teaching and coaching series designed to help men grow emotionally, relationally, and spiritually ... developing the essential character quality of "self-mastery." Even though this community is created for men, the principles are universal --
women will benefit from these insights as well.
We build this teaching around 12 Keys, and this week, we're focusing on Key 4:
RE-DIRECTED DESIRE. Here's how we put it:
4. RE-DIRECTED DESIRE -
We accept our sex drive as a powerful, God-given energy, and are learning how to focus and redirect it towards things that are positive and purposeful, when we choose to do so.
Here's one of the daily messages from this week's teaching series. It focuses more narrowly on a particular
habit that I recommend people add to their environment. I hope this will help you:
************
“Sex, like all other forces available to man, should be understood, mastered, and made to serve him. The desire for sex expression is as natural as the desire for food. The desire can no more be killed than one can
entirely stop a river from flowing. If the emotion of sex is shut off from the natural mode of expression, it will break out in some other less desirable form, just as a river will, if dammed, break through and flow around the dam. The person who has self-discipline understands the emotion of sex, respects it, and learns to control and transmute it into constructive activities.”
“If humans would control their sex desires and transmute them into a driving
force with which to carry on their occupation — that is, if they spent on their work one half the time they dissipate in pursuit of sex, they would never know poverty.” – Napoleon Hill
Today we’re going to talk about the mechanism that allows you to focus and channel your sex energy away from what is destructive, to things that will actually help you move forward in life. It’s wrapped up
in a little-used word these days: transmutation.
Mateo Sol describes it this way:
“Sexual transmutation is the practice of channeling and directing your sexual energy into a ‘higher’ purpose. As one of the most powerful energies in existence, our sexual energy can be directed towards achieving goals, manifesting dreams, and experiencing deeper states of consciousness.”
“Ancient [and modern] cultures have, for thousands of years, recognized the power and force of the libido. While some have condemned and feared it (as the mighty force it is), others have celebrated and channeled
it.”
One of the most well-known proponents of sex transmutation was the grandfather of self-help authors, Napoleon Hill. He wrote a whole chapter on this
topic — sex transmutation — in his book, which has become a self-help classic: “Think and Grow Rich.”
“Sex desire is the most powerful of human desires. When driven by this desire, men develop a keenness
of imagination, courage, will-power, persistence, and creative ability unknown to them at other times. So strong and impelling is the desire for sexual contact, that men freely run the risk of life and reputation to indulge it. When harnessed, and redirected along other lines, this motivating force maintains all of its attributes of keenness of imagination, courage, etc., which may be used as powerful creative forces in literature, art, or in any other profession or calling, including, of
course, the accumulation of riches”.
As I said in the introductory video this week, Hill offers great teaching in this chapter about the WHY of sexual transmutation …
how important it is, and how it helps us … but virtually nothing about the HOW. The focus of this program is to get you started on the “how.” To help you find ways to channel the energy of your sex drive in positive and helpful ways, rather than negative and destructive ways.
Please understand that learning to do this will take time and effort. There is much to learn … and the only way to learn it is through practice and experience, over time. The good news is that many of us are already doing it in some intuitive ways. The goal of this program is to give you some more tools, and help you be more deliberate about it. Today’s action step begins the process.
NEXT ACTION
Today’s action step is to make a list of the things that you really want in your life, but don’t have now.
We’re going to start out the whole process of developing our skill of sexual transmutation in a very broad and general way. Think about this question: If you weren’t thinking about and distracted by sexual fantasizing, porn watching, or other compulsive habits … what would you
have more time and energy for? What would you want to do? What would you want to accomplish? What would you want to spend your time on?
Don’t just THINK about this
… write it down.
Once again, we come back to an issue that has already come up here: you probably will feel content to just think about this for a minute or two, and then move on. Don’t do that. Stop. Think. But … most importantly: WRITE IT DOWN.
Write a paragraph, or make a bullet list. What do you want to do? What do
you want to accomplish? What would you like to spend your time doing, if you had more time? It could be related to money, possessions, achievements, relationships, some project you’d like to accomplish, or spiritual place you’d like to be at.
Now … ask yourself this question: “Is there something I can do TODAY — even a small thing — that will make some progress toward that desired goal?” DO
IT.
The amazing promise of sexual transmutation is that you can propel yourself forward in these areas of your life in amazing ways by focusing your time and energy on THESE pursuits,
instead of the destructive things that are wearing you down right now.
Now, write down this sentence — some variation of it that resonates with your intention:
Today I will focus and USE the energy of my sex drive, rather than letting my sex drive control me.
************
Would you like to go "all in" and join the Renewed Man Boot Camp? It's a 12 Week Immersion in these principles. You'll get these daily teachings, a weekly video on one of the 12 Keys of Being a Renewed Man, and access to a support group and/or a coaching group that I lead.
Find out more about the Renewed Man Program here.
