For someone who doesn’t inhabit a body — but speaks through a woman named Mary-Margaret Moore — Bartholomew has an awful lot to say about sex. Unlike so much other advice on the subject, though, these words seem to me emotionally practical as well as spiritually uplifting. It’s not a conventional view — but where have conventional views gotten us?
Mary-Margaret Moore has given hundreds of readings for Bartholomew. Twelve of them, including “The Gift of Sexual Energy,” are in a new book, I Come as a Brother — A Remembrance of Illusions (High Mesa Publishing, P.O. Box 2267, Taos, New Mexico 87571), and we’re thankful to Mary-Margaret Moore for permission to reprint this.
In Issue 114, we published another excerpt from the book, “The Message of St. Francis.” I have, despite my lingering embarrassment at publishing the thoughts of disembodied spirits, become a fan. I guess it’s his mind I love.
— Ed.
In order to sensibly discuss the subject of sexuality, we will have to travel back in time. It will come as no surprise to you that sexuality is not a modern phenomenon and the problems that have arisen around it are ancient, varied, and very exotic. To gain a vaster perspective we will look at what your sexual obligations are. I am not here to lay down laws for sexual behavior. You are responsible for this, just as you are responsible for every law under which you operate. There are no rules — and are you surprised?
So, to travel back, we come to a time, past time as you know it, when your species came to the earth plane, took form, and decided what it wanted to do. At that time you were given powers.
When we speak of sexual energy, we are speaking of one of those powers. You were given this power and this energy to be used as you each, individually, chose to use it. In the beginning, it was not at all separated from the other bands of energy; there was a wholeness and a mingling of them. There was not much difference between the drive that impelled you to go out and hunt your prey, and the drive that impelled you toward a sexual relationship. There was not, in the beginning, much differentiation.
When the energies moved through all of you many lifetimes ago, each one of you made your own choices, choices that seemed in harmony with who you were. Please understand that you did not come to this planet at this time out of the void. You have been on a journey for a very long time. So you have come with certain tendencies, which are outpictured through your own being, your own consciousness, through your own life. These tendencies have produced certain attitudes in you toward sexuality and have become a part of who you are. As you moved through time/space, this energy became a part of your expression and you did with it whatever you willed to do. Sexual energy, like all of the other energies, was meant to be a personal responsibility. It was to be a part of your beingness of which you could be acutely aware. You were intended to experience your own rightness of feeling and action.
By observation, you learn that your thoughts can bring harmony or disharmony into your life, and you are responsible for what you think. So also are you responsible for how you use your sexual energy. You are responsible for all that moves through you. But the days of acknowledging those responsibilities are long gone. Man has constructed codes of behavior on every level of consciousness that he could possibly reach, and you no longer accept your own responsibility. You go to the law, to your rules which tell you what to do, and you think that in that way you can avoid responsibility. Has it worked? Have the sexual codes laid down in the dark ages (under which you are still operating) given you fulfillment?
I would suggest that you become aware of your own sexuality, claim your own reality; do the things that make you feel creative, dynamic, alive, loving, positive, exciting, excited. This is your responsibility. If you look to a code to tell you what to do, you will end up being conflicted in your desires. You believe that God cares, in the most minute detail, what you do with your sexuality. But he doesn’t care. That is your business. He does not care any more than your neighbor should care. He has only one concern, and that is the quality of your awareness, your power, your love, and your compassion. If you have been following the rules and find yourself being angry, negative, resentful, opinionated, or judgmental, do not think that you are in harmony with the divine.
When I deal with this issue in private sessions, I always find the same dilemma, and I know that some of you are in that situation now, so let’s bring it up. The dilemma is this: “If you all started to do what you wanted to do sexually, what would the world be like? If you take away all the rules, what will happen?” This is where you and I part company. I have absolute confidence that if you were to drop your outer rules, you would find that your own inward rules would be so much more humane, spontaneous, loving, and kind. I believe in you where you do not believe in yourself. You seem to think that you are like caged animals, and that if the cage were opened, the rules gone, you would become some kind of beast! My friends, it is not like that. You are a part of the createdness that carries with it an absolute awareness of what is most beneficial should you choose to do it. But when you turn to a rule instead of to yourself, things become unclear. The law within your own being is absolutely predictable. I know that, because I know the Law upon which you rest. I know the Law that created you. Do you not realize that you did not create yourself? You are a given creation! You have been given the wonder of you — whole, immense, powerful, dynamic, alive. This is a Law within you that you did not create, and which is absolutely dependable. It is much more dependable than any law man has ever made. When you decide to trust your own being, you will find there all of the virtues that you have been seeking — compassion, understanding, harmony, courage, wisdom. Your own nature, your essence of being, is absolutely part of the source! Where do you think this “raw material” came from in the first place? In the moment of your creation, you were given incredible gifts; and one of the most important is the gift of sexuality.
You become confused when you move out into the world. You have certain feelings and emotions that you try to harmonize with other people. You have different opinions; you are different. If you wish to understand sexuality do not pass it through your thinking mind. You learn lessons from that power when it is in motion. I repeat, look to the power of that energy when it is in motion. The energy itself is as pure as any energy that you could possibly imagine. The perversion comes in your mind. The power rises, and the mind then takes over and makes judgments as to right and wrong. If you wish to move with power in your own sexual world, please ask yourself for what purpose you are using it. Some of you use your sexual power to manipulate other people, and become very “good” at it, and use it to control. Some of you use your sexual power to punish other people; you become very “bad” at it, and use it to control. Some of you don’t use it at all.
Sexual energy is an ally, but no ally, no matter how powerful, can help you if you are not there, if you are not listening.
There is a question in you that must be dealt with. If any power were to be placed in your hands, you would ask, “What am I going to do with it? With whom can I share it? How is it going to affect my life?” You cannot see your sexuality, but you can feel it within you. The power is within you, and what are you going to use it for? That is an individual question which must be answered by each one of you in the deepest part of your being. The reason some of you are confused by the question of sexuality in your lives is because you are afraid to address that question. To go back to the analogy of the animal in the cage — you are afraid if you were to acknowledge that power you would run amok. What you will find through a deep probing into the issue is that it is the greatest ally the physical body has. You have allies from the so-called spirit world; but I am talking about an ally that is right here, and sexuality is your ally. And why? Because it has power, and because it moves you. You can better understand yourself through the power of your sexuality because it is a part of your naturalness. And it takes a great deal of courage to become introspective enough to look at that area with honesty. If you have chosen for some reason to be celibate, please consider that. If you do not have sexual expression in your life, it is because you have decided that you did not want it. When sexual power goes out, if it is in line with your beliefs, it will find a match. If you are sitting on your sexual power because you think you are too ugly, or too fat, or too old, or whatever, then that is the belief you project into the world, and that is what you will experience. At any time that you decide to activate that power within you because you want to express and experience it, all you need to do is allow yourself to feel the energy that has always been in the lower chakra.
Some of you feel that you are too old for sexual expression and should not be interested in the subject. But sexuality can always be an ally. It is one of the strongest drives of the physical vehicle. Anyone, no matter what his or her age, who has feelings of sexuality that are in some way distorted, or physical desires that make them unhappy or uncomfortable, should recognize them as areas of unfinished business. Some people feel that avoiding the sexual issue entirely will solve their dilemma, only to find they will still spend many years dealing with it. In countries such as India, men sometimes have operations so that they will not have to deal with the issue of their sexuality. They remove the physical organ only to find that the energy is still present, still moving. You are not going to get rid of the energy, for it is a part of the physical body. Deal with it now, or deal with it next lifetime, but you will eventually have to face this issue. You need only clarify how you are going to use this great gift, and when you decide how you want to use it, your life will begin to change. You will find that your experiences will be different. Things will enter your life that had not been present, and things will leave your life that have been in it. Your responsibility is to ask and answer the question: what am I using this amazing power for?
I would like to be outrageous enough to suggest what might have been the divine hope with regard to this power. Let us use an analogy. You have a teenager, and it comes time to give him or her a car. And, as you present the keys, you are thinking, “Oh my God, oh my God!” because there is the awareness that incredible power can be used to take incredible chances. And so, when the divine gift of power was bestowed, there was ringing in the consciousness, “Oh, my God!” The hope was that the power might be used in many ways; the first level (and some of you will not like this) was for your pleasure! For the sheer wonder and pleasure of it. The second level is the awareness that power is, that it exists, and it moves, it changes, it creates, it takes form, is dynamic and changeable. Can you think of any power, besides the power of your mind, that has that capacity?
As to the third level, some of you are trying to be on this third level before you have experienced the first level, and this we need to consider. There is gratitude, great gratitude for the physical pleasure, and gratitude for the feeling of being alive, of being more, more than the physical body. And the third level. After experiencing the pleasure, and the aliveness and the wonder of the feeling as it comes in from outside, and fills and moves you, is it not possible that the same power can somehow be seen as being reversible? Let me explain. You now feel sexual energy as coming to you, arising within you. The hope was that one day you might see that it could also move in the other direction; you might see that you could ride that power back to the source from which it came. Energy must move both ways, and if you could ride it back, you could be connected with the source from which that energy came!
There are many ways to ride that energy back to its source. The first person who did that began to make rules — and it happened to be a man who was a renunciate. He concluded that since he had taken that bridge back to the source, then the way he did it was the only way it could happen. So he made the rules. No meat, no women, no fun, and on and on to all the rest of your rules. The hope is that you might understand that there are no rules to riding that bridge back. The difficulty is that you all believe there are. You have all read the right books, had the right teachers, and have all followed in your inner life certain paths, and now you find yourself in a dilemma, those of you who have had even a glimpse of the third use.
Now you say, “But, I am not qualified to ride that bridge back, and besides, in order to cross that bridge, I have to pay a toll.” Therefore, you do not pay attention to the lessons that the sexual energy is trying to teach you every moment of your sexual experience. You leave; you do not stay in that experience. Many things distract you. Guilt comes in; you feel that you should not be doing it, and you hope that God is not watching, or that your teacher is not watching. So you are not there; you go on semi-automatic, and you fail to feel the wonder and the movement. You have lost the teacher.
Sexual energy is an ally, but no ally, no matter how powerful, can help you if you are not there, if you are not listening. You must be there, paying attention to everything that is going on, to your responses, your feelings, how the energy moves, how it liberates, where it is stuck, and what to do with it. If you are not there, you are lost and you have lost the teaching.
So you think that you are not happy in your sexual life, and the answer is to add three more people to your experience. Then, if you still have any energy left to think about it, you realize that you are still not happy — and you have also added a lot more trouble to your life, for now you have three more egos to keep satisfied. Or if you don’t add three more, you may decide that the trouble is with your present partner, that if you found a more sensual person you would be happy. Eventually, you find even changing partners does not work because you still feel unfulfilled. Sexual energy will fulfill you only when it is used on all three levels. Anything short of that, and you will remain unsatisfied, because the energy was never meant to stop at the second, and certainly not at the first level!
How, then, to open? Just as some of you sit in meditation, very aware of the energy patterns as they move, and thereby learn that the energies that move through you are not of the limited self, so with absolute awareness of the sexual energy you will learn about its triggering effect. If you wish to use your sexual expression in such a way that it will nourish you on all of the three levels, you will have to listen, and pay attention to what is happening inside and around you. You will have to become very quiet, very intense, and perhaps not very romantic! You will need to be aware, and you will have to feel and come to know the movement of that energy. With observation, you will find that the genital area is very close to the trigger point of the kundalini. When your awareness is totally present, you will find that you have the ability to pull the power up; and when you pull it up, the explosion takes place. But if you are not paying attention, the energy will go round and round, and you will be like a squirrel in a cage. You will begin to realize that you do not have to jump from the lower center to the highest.
I am very serious about this. If you have defined your use of sexual energy to help move through the three levels I have talked about, then it must have occurred to you that it is your responsibility to be absolutely present, and absolutely aware of what it is that you are trying to do. If you do not feel the wonder of that power, it is because something in your mind has asked you to turn it off. Please understand that this energy does not flow in one direction only. You cannot separate, in a rod of power, one end from the other, for they are joined. Sexuality is God’s gift to you, and every gift that is given has been given for one main reason. It is to be used eventually for the journey home, to be used to come back to the source. The teenager can take the car and the money, and do whatever he wants, but the parents hope he will eventually use them to drive home. It is no different with God. He allows you to go and play, and do all those wonderful things that you and the teenagers do, but eventually He hopes you will begin to realize that you are lonely and want to go home. Do with the energy what you will, in whatever way you want, in whatever lifetime, but understand, it was given so that you could use it to make your way home!
Are there any questions?
Q: I have understood that the kundalini power could be very dangerous, and to seek it one should have a teacher. Is this true?
If you are going to use various spiritual disciplines such as long meditation, austerities, pranayama, etc., in order to “get” this kundalini power, and insist that it rise at your command, then you will need a guide. I will speak from my own experience, for I have been in that position in my incarnative pattern. I did not have a guide; I had no one around who had the slightest intimation of what I was trying to do. All I had was the movement of the energy itself. And I will tell you that it was absolutely reliable, it moved in its own way, in its own good time and it did not take me too fast, or too far, and everything was all right. When you let the energy lead the way, and you follow, letting it move as it will, it creates its own pathway. It is like a small stream moving freely down a mountain. But if you break open a dam and release the energy all at once, the rush could be dangerous. Let it happen in its own good and wondrous time.
Do not think that you need to have a teacher for everything. The teacher is you! That power is within you, and you do have a regulatory system. As the energy moves, it will clear the way. Do not take my word for it — but do not take anyone else’s either; play fair and listen to yourself. Once you try it, you will find that you do know something about your own energy, and you will not have to feel alone anymore.
The purpose of sexual union is to nourish you on three levels. If you have a partner who is also interested in sexual understanding, I would suggest that you begin along these lines to investigate the source of that nourishment. Some of you may be tempted to buy some book on Tantric Yoga, but you do not need to do that. Write your own book on your own sexual understanding. You be the laboratory and the subject. Let us suppose that you are at a party. Someone comes up to you, and you feel that energy begin to rise. The disciplined one would at once ask, “What would be the usefulness of this energy?” If you are on level one, the usefulness is obvious. Pleasure. So you go and do, or don’t, as you choose. If you are on level two (I mistrust levels, but aren’t we having fun!), then you will say, “I will have to think about it, for to activate this now would create chaos in my life, and it may or may not be worth it.” If you decide it is worth it, then do it; if not, then don’t. At the third level: “Would this expression, under these circumstances, with this person, be maximum in my reaching divine understanding or not?” In the end, you will learn something that you might not want to know; like attracts like. If you are on level one only, it is most unlikely that you will be much interested in anyone who is on level two or three, for they will appear lacking in spontaneity to you. Level two is where you find the committed lovers, who are not necessarily committed to higher awareness, but to each other. On the third level you will find only those who are seeking to use everything in their universe to come home; and with great honesty, there are not many third-level people around!
You seem to think that you are like caged animals, and that if the cage were opened, the rules gone, you would become some kind of beast! My friends, it is not like that.
Q: How does one move this energy?
You move it by pulling it up. Let us talk about what that means. First you locate the power in a specific part of your body, then you deepen your awareness of it by staying with it. Since you know that thought creates, you consciously decide that you are going to bring it up through your body and it begins to move. You do not have only seven chakras, as most of you tend to believe. There are many chakras located all over the body. When you begin to move the energy, these centers trigger each other to light up. It is a movement in the synapses, and it is very rapid movement over which you have little control once it begins. Your job is to be aware of the energy, concentrate on it, and desire to move it up. Then allow it to move. The moment that you put your awareness on any area of your physical body, the energy will move there. Try it. And remember, this is one of the greatest gifts that you have been given. There were no rules made along with that gift; you have made them all up.
Just as you are responsible for the quality of your speech, for the quality of your actions, for the quality of everything in your life, so also are you responsible for the quality of your sexual activities. It is up to you! There is no wrong, and there is no right; there is simply choice.
Q: Do we make rules because we are afraid to go home?
Sexual rules were made by people who did not feel free in their sexual expression. I am not talking about this modern age, but about the priests of old. They set themselves apart and decided that sex was an activity in which they should not indulge. The minute this rule was made it was imposed on others. When this happened, it became obvious that sexuality would end up with many restrictions. The rules were adhered to, even in the face of the fact that many people have become totally enlightened in the act of sexual intercourse. Still, others refused to believe that it was even possible. If you did not awaken by following the rules, then your experience was not valid, just like the prevalent medical belief that if you are healed by other than medical rules, there must have been a mistake in the original diagnosis. If you are following the religious rules, then credence is given to your enlightening experience.
Please do not believe that it was God who made the rules you follow. God does not make you do anything; and I tell you that much of what is going on is an experiment. Life is dynamic action in creation. What would be the point of God laying it all out, and then you playing according to His script? Life is an amazingly wonder-filled creation that is ongoing, and you are part of it. And all that you think and say and do is a part of it. There are no mistakes; there is nothing wrong. It is all life, manifesting its power, its beauty, its wonder.
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