HotmailReignite the fire with ‘The Kosher Sutra’
Take a man in his forties who played the field while in his twenties, had a lot of girlfriends, and then “settled down” in his thirties. He is now into his first decade of marriage. He has two kids. He loves his wife but he feels bored in his relationship. He feels tied down by domestic responsibilities. His hair is thinning; his paunch is expanding. He struggles to have his trousers stay up as his belly protrudes. Professionally, he has peaked. He has a good job, but cannot really look forward to any serious advancement beyond where he already is. As far he is concerned, his life has climaxed. He has already peaked. The vitality of his once pent-up potential has been spent. His lust for life has been expunged. He has nothing important to look forward to. He longs for his lost youth, but too late. To his mind it is gone. Hence, he no longer really lives life so much as escapes it. Like a man who quickly falls asleep right after sexual orgasm, this man spends the rest of his life asleep as well. When he comes home, he plunks himself in front of the TV. His children speak to him, but he doesn’t hear them. He wife hugs him, but she cannot reach him. They have sex rather than make love. Her libido sleeps during the experience. He is oblivious to her pain. He becomes obsessed with professional sports as he lives vicariously through the feats of his favorite heroes. And so, the erotic energy of their marriage is lost.
The same is true of so many women who also look into a mirror and see a ghost of their former selves. In place of a smile they see lines. In place of a glow they see wrinkles. They wonder whether they married the right man, even as simple logic dictates that a good marriage is based primarily not on whom you marry but how you treat each other after you marry. They, too, have peaked; they, too, have climaxed; and they, too, have had their life’s orgasm. And it’s downhill from there.
I once counseled a woman who confessed to me that whenever she and her husband had sex, which was about once a month, she always cried herself to sleep afterward. She did not do so because the sex was bad, although it was awful. Less so did she cry because she felt her husband didn’t love her, because she was sure he did. Rather, she mourned her own demise. She was once passionate and alive. And now, she and her husband were dead.
But the same can be true of even teenagers. So many young kids are zombies. They seem energy-less and robotic. The hallmark of youth was once an inexhaustible reservoir of energy. This is no longer true. These kids have peaked at fifteen. It’s downhill for the next five years until they emerge from their cocoon and come back to life. They have lost their innocence. They represent Adam and Eve after they have been expelled from the Garden. They have been exposed to too much, have internalized corruption at too young an age, and they, too, have peaked. They turn to street drugs for the artificial high that real life cannot afford.
The solution is to learn to live erotically, to bring erotic excitement and interest to every area of life. Erotic living is achieved through the constant buildup of erotic energy without allowing it to dissipate. There are many ways to achieve this high station. But all are built around the idea of enhancing erotic consciousness without release. In America, our entire lives are built around achieving erotic release. Americans hate tension. Inner peace is what we crave. And we do almost anything to ?find a false sense of calm. Americans prefer to be dead than to be alive. We take antianxiety medication to feel numb. We down antidepressants to blunt pain. We take sleeping pills to fall asleep. Heck. We even medicate hyperactive children as a less gruesome form of modern lobotomy. And surrounding it all are the tens of millions of corpses that slink down for hours of TV watching every single night — mind-numbing, stupid, idiotic TV that blights the brain and suffocates the spirit.
If we could just learn to foster erotic interest without release, then our curiosity and longing for all that surrounds us would be immeasurably enhanced. In marriage, as an example, this can be achieved through learning to have lovemaking sessions that do not lead to orgasm. Sex without orgasm over a period of, say, a week, leads to significant erotic enhancement that is not diluted by disappointing climax. Erotic steam is built up through sex without climax. The more we make love to our spouse and prolong it by refraining from orgasm, no matter how much we feel we want it, the more we awaken the erotic energy within.
After a few nights of practicing restraint, our entire world changes. We begin to store huge reservoirs of energy and never get tired. We wake up early and never feel drained. We love our spouse more deeply than ever before because every night we are connecting with them without purging the desire from our heart. Our conversation with others changes as our curiosity for life increases. Whereas before the conversations were perfunctory and practical, they now spring from a deep desire to know and understand all that surrounds us. Our curiosity for life becomes insatiable, our enthusiasm for knowledge limitless, our desire to connect with everything around us unquenchable.
Reprinted from “The Kosher Sutra: Eight Sacred Secrets for Reigniting Desire and Restoring Passion for Life” by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach by HarperCollins (USA) Inc. Copyright (c) 2009 by Shmuley Boteach.
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