Nurturing Desires

I am dictating these lines on June 1, 2001—the first day of the first summer of the third millennium.

By the way, the weather outside is nice, and the sun is shining.

I recall a recent conversation with one of my patients.

«One of my acquaintances,» he said, started a romantic relationship. She thought it was love, but it turned out to be passion.

Perhaps it's no coincidence that he turned out to be a drug addict. Maybe they had met on a subtle plane long ago, and her idolization of desires transferred to him and turned him into an addict. But that's not the point.

Some time later, he was diagnosed with hepatitis C, which is transmitted sexually.

'She came to me,' the young man said, 'and asked: «What should I do?» Since she had read your books and attended your lectures, I told her that her only chance was to pray and try to change herself.

She began praying, and the next day the addict was admitted to intensive care. She rushed to me again, in complete confusion.

And I, remembering your lectures, told her that there was no turning back now, and that she should pray the way you had taught in your lecture.

For her, sexual pleasure was a means to discover the Divine within herself. And her relationship with this man, and love for him, was merely a way for both of them to experience love for God.

Three days later, he regained consciousness and was transferred from intensive care to a regular ward. A week later, he was discharged. Before that, they ran tests. Hepatitis C had disappeared.

A month and a half passed. He took the tests again. The doctors were baffled: «We don’t know why, but you no longer have hepatitis C.»

«Many women are unaware,» I think, «of the consequences of their heightened sexuality and inability to temper their desires.»

When I first started exploring this topic, I diagnosed a female patient who had miraculously survived.

Up until then, I had often seen love triangles as a result of the cleansing of souls because, in a way, it’s a purification and humbling of everyone involved.

In this case, however, the woman’s attraction was purely sexual. She was contemplating whether or not to cheat on her husband.

According to my diagnosis, this infidelity could lead to the death of her children. This outcome was a complete surprise to me.

All the books, magazines, and jokes revolve around infidelity.

It turns out that if a woman has a heightened subconscious dependence on sexual desires, frequent sexual pleasure can increase this dependence tenfold.

And in her children, desires begin to actively consume love.

After that, defense mechanisms are triggered to save the soul. To preserve the essence, the form starts to break down.

As a result, the children’s health, personal lives, and all their desires become unachievable, their sexual functions weaken, and frigidity and impotence can occur, possibly leading to infertility.

As much as the energy of desires allows us to grow, dependence on them starts to destroy us.

We often raise both ourselves and our children improperly: either indulging every desire or, conversely, trying to suppress every desire.

Proper upbringing lies in helping a child feel Divine love, from which all desires are born.

We should assist in the development of desires, while constantly emphasizing their secondary nature and periodically limiting them.

In other words, sexuality in itself is not a sin.

Sin is an act performed not under the guidance of Divine love but for some human value.

Attaining the Divine is not achieved by eliminating sexuality but by using it to accumulate Divine love and constantly overcoming dependence on it.

If love can be compared to a rider, then desire is like a horse. The rider must sit on the horse and control it.

If the horse tries to sit on the rider or runs off wildly, nothing good will come of it.

S. N. Lazarev, «Diagnosis of Karma, Book 7»