Article August 6, 1979 Issue

From sensuality to freedom

Written for the Sentinel

While grappling with sensualism a number of years ago, I came across a Bible verse that proved to be a turning point for me. In a letter to the Corinthians Paul speaks of "casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ."II Cor. 10:5;

I saw this statement as a divine command and quickly discerned the practicality of such advice. Over a period of time I had accepted the teaching of Christian Science that real joy is an expression of God, the one divine Mind; that all the pleasures of the material senses are nothing more than thought—false thought; that matter has no life or sensation, therefore no power in itself to give us pleasure or control us in any way. Both physical pain and pleasure are mental; they are beliefs, nothing more. Alone, one can become sexually aroused by simply imagining oneself with a very special person; or while with that person one can remain as unresponsive as a doornail by mentally resisting any advances. Matter has no intelligence to react on its own. In fact, it has nothing to do with our real self, which is spiritual and hence free from any so-called biological cravings. Man is not a physical, sexual being. He is a spiritual idea of God, perfect, complete, satisfied.

I saw that instead of filling my thought with material fantasies and alternating between periods of satisfaction and yearning, I must focus on the spiritual truth of being. Again Paul points out the way: "Whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phil. 4:8; I claimed my dominion as a child of God, freeing myself from the downward pull of sensualism.

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