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9
Guilt, penance, and reparation
Penance
and reparation are strong motives for being involved sexually with people,
both to make reparation and to receive reparation, and to do penance for
crimes that one has committed. There are women who feel very guilty about
masturbation so they turn to sex as a much more acceptable alternative.
Is this true today?
Often
beautiful women are involved sexually as penance; they feel that having
sex is something they owe for having been given a particular advantage
over other people.
People
also get involved sexually to repair psychic damage, feeling that in a
close sexual relationship a lot of damage can be repaired.
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To put oneself together
People
will search for a person with whom to get involved sexually, or to marry,
as an attempt to put themselves together. If it works that means that
the relationship was put to a healthy use. If it doesn't work it is a
mess.
People
also get involved sexually to enhance their creativy; that is rather rare,
but it happens.
11
To have somebody to do things for
People
will have a sexual relationship, or marry, to have somebody to do things
for and to grow for. This, I think, is one of the most underappreciated
topics in the whole world. We do almost nothing in this world except for
somebody that we care about. I think we can probably get up in the morning
and fix a cup of coffee without that somebody, but the higher our purposes
and goals -- and this is particularly important in learning, the higher
up you go, graduate school, teaching -- what you do is a gift to someone
who means a lot to you. In the ultimate analysis, that person is usually
your mother or a good image of your mother. And the plain fact of it is
that many people just do not have anybody to do all the work for.
I
think that this is where the psychology of the saints is very important.
If you have a great spiritual director, you have got somebody to do something
for -- you are not alone. When your guru shuts you up in a cave in Tibet,
you have somebody that it makes sense for you to be shut up in a cave
for. You see this in football teams. You like the couch; you play for
the coach. In the military life, you die because you like your officers
and your friends. I cannot overemphasize the importance of the notion
of having somebody to do things for.
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