The Evolutionary Enlightenment teachings of Andrew Cohen

The Promise of Perfection

The sexual/romantic experience is one of the most confusing areas of human life—especially for those who seek spiritual liberation. This is because it almost always creates profound emotional and psychological attachment. It is not a free ride, unfortunately. And therefore, unless we get our priorities clear, it is almost inevitable that that attachment will quickly become more important to us than our own potential for liberation in this life.

From the perspective of enlightenment, to be free means to be free from attachment. Attachment means, “I have something.” To be free means, “I have nothing.”  When you hold on to absolutely nothing, you are free—automatically. And the truth that liberates is the profound recognition of just that fact—that your own natural state is already free. The only thing that keeps us in bondage is the unquestioned belief that there is something fundamental that is missing from our own self. Out of ignorance of our own natural state, we bind ourselves to people and things, convinced that through creating attachment we will find happiness and content­ment. But it never works that way, because where there is attachment, there is always fear of loss. And where there is fear, there can never be real happiness or deep contentment.

It is the revelation of enlightenment itself that shows us this directly—the perennial truth that real happiness and contentment lie within us as our own True Self, our own natural state, already full and complete as it is. But in this unenlightened world, we are deeply conditioned to believe that happiness and contentment lie somewhere outside our own self. So if we truly want to be free, we need to give up that way of thinking, in order to know that lasting contentment that will only be ours when we finally stop looking for it anywhere outside of ourselves.

A Complex Question

The fact is, whether we like it or not, there is almost always an inherent conflict between the longing for inner freedom and the karmic consequences of the sexual/romantic experience. Therefore, the big question is: If enlightened freedom is freedom from attachment, what are seekers of enlightenment supposed to do about the relentless nature of sexual attraction?

There have been widely differing answers to this perennial question that have been offered to spiritual aspirants throughout the ages. On one extreme, we have been encouraged to use the sexual experience itself as a vehicle for self-transcendence and, on the other, we have been told that if we want to be liberated men and women, we have to renounce the sexual experience altogether. I believe that if we want to be truly free, we must think very deeply about these matters for ourselves. If even enlightened masters have come to such contradictory conclusions, we can’t naïvely assume that there is a simple, ready-made answer. If we are sincere, we have to be willing to bear the complexity of one of life’s most challenging questions and figure it out for ourselves.

In the end, if you want to be free, then all you need to know is that free means free from attachment. That simple fact transcends the relative matter of whether you’re engaging in a sexual relationship or not engaging in a sexual relationship. If you face that spiritual truth unflinchingly, then you will be looking into the heart of the matter for yourself. And that takes a lot more courage than blindly accepting someone else’s conclusions.

Free from Attachment

So what does it mean to give up attachment?It means recognizing for ourselves that the promise of perfect happiness and blissful fulfillment inherent in sexual desire is overwhelmingly deceptive. It means that we are very clear about the difference between the personal bliss of the romantic interlude and the impersonal ecstasy of spiritual freedom. It means that we choose to renounce personal affirmation for the ecstatic contentment that emerges spontaneously when we finally stop looking outside our own self for the experience of completion. It means resisting the temptation to be seduced by the most powerful illusion that there is.

That illusion is what I call “the promise of perfection.” It says: “If I follow this impulse to its ultimate conclusion, I’m going to find perfect happiness and total contentment—I will experience wholeness; I will finally be complete.” We do this over and over again and continue to miss the simple truth that the bliss we experience in the romantic interlude neverlasts. It is only when we let go of the promise of perfection that it will become clear to us how, more often than not, the experience of romantic intoxication is fueled by the ego’s need for personal affirmation.

People always ask me, “Doesn’t this imply that we have to give up the whole thing?” And I say, “Well, yes and no.” Yes, if it means creating more suffocating attachment that only serves to perpetuate the illusory personal world of the separate ego. But no, if the context for personal intimacy and sexual communion is authentic spiritual freedom. No, if we want to be free more than anything else and therefore are more interested in impersonal ecstasy than personal bliss. That means that the context for personal intimacy and sexual communion would be the impersonal—a dimension that is unknown in this world, that is beyond ego and free from attachment.

This impersonal dimension is found inside your own self. When you renounce the endless self-centered concerns of the separate ego and its small personal perspective, then spontaneously you will find yourself there. That is where you will discover an absolute love, a bliss that is empty of attachment and free from the conviction that anything fundamental is missing. And it is that context alone, which is one of inherent fullness and completion, that can make it possible for human beings to come together in personal intimacy and sexual communion in a way that is free from the pain, complexity, and unending confusion that are usually such an inherent part of this area of life.