91 — AFTERTASTE
Now, if we are courageous enough to walk one step further, we will see that sex follows the same formula. Every human being engages in two very different forms of sexuality. The first is, by whatever your own inner standard may be, sacred sex, and the second, fallen sex. Everyone’s examples will be different, but everyone understands the distinction.
How to tell the difference? Aftertaste. The first leaves you with a wonderful aftertaste; the second leaves you with an uncomfortable feeling, which you try to shrug off as quickly as possible — a minor or major spiritual hangover.
Watch yourself very carefully over an extended period of time (which is really the only path to enlightenment). You will see that shortly before you feel sexual arousal toward what is fallen sex, you somehow brush up against your emptiness. It may be an old tape triggered in your head by some association, perhaps a tape from childhood that says you are not worthy. It could be a feeling of jealousy or incompleteness triggered by a friend’s accomplishment or one of a hundred other things. As soon as your system receives that jolt of emptiness, it moves frantically, yet imperceptibly, to send you symptoms of sexual arousal, hoping to fill the void quickly. Next time you find yourself following your arousal, ask yourself whether you are nourishing yourself with sexuality or you are trying to fill up the hole inside of you, desperately trying to avoid the void.
Now, here is a wild idea. Biblical practice suggests that, just as a fast day is helpful in sensitizing you to distinguish between wholesome and desperate eating, regular short periods of voluntary sexual fasting can be ever so enlightening. It is critical in helping you to distinguish between fallen and sacred sex, between the sexually erotic and nonerotic. It is a brilliant spiritual practice for the clarification of desire and the purification of sex. As a side benefit, sexual fasting is also the best practice available for reclaiming passion in a marriage, because anything that is always available, such as marital sex, can soon become terribly boring.
— An excerpt from the book “A Return to Eros” by Dr. Marc Gafni and Dr. Kristina Kincaid
