Calming Sexual Desire

By Brian Kimmel

Several years ago, I spent three months at Deer Park Monastery during the winter retreat. It became very natural to go to the meditation hall and sit silently in front of the monks, with a most pleasant view of morning mists rolling up into the cliffs and into my own body/heart/mind. In one such session, I saw my parents in me. They divorced when I was four, after being unfaithful to one another. Soon after their divorce, mom married my first stepfather who, for six years, sexually abused me.

For many years, before the winter retreat at the monastery, I had attempted to unravel the deep hurt and betrayal of the abuse, particularly around sexuality, sexual desire, the feelings that often roared through me without control, and the memories stored in my body/heart/mind, unable to be released. I had looked deeply into the abuse, and into my relationship with my former stepfather, but I had not known, until the morning in the meditation hall, how much my parents’ divorce, feelings, and desires affected me.

I listened as my parents spoke through me. They spoke about their passion when they were my age. They spoke about their love for each other, the challenges of their marriage, and the difficult choices they made. They spoke about their guilt, their fear, their envy, and their remorse. They said, “Brian, we want you to be loved. We want you to love.”

I quietly observed the thoughts and feelings as they surfaced in many forms, and I asked my parents, “How can I love?” A deep sense arose: whatever my parents had experienced—their desires, habits, and views of love, sex, and marriage—are in me. I heard Mom’s voice. “I needed to find a husband to help support you kids. I couldn’t do it alone. I couldn’t be alone ….” I felt my father’s sadness over losing custody of my sister and me. I heard Dad’s voice: “If only I had been faithful to your mom, had known what would happen, had stayed ….”

The many feelings and desires I’d faced in my life were so similar to my parents’. At that moment, as I sat with the monks, with mists on the cliffs and the fresh air of Sangha, I felt that healing was possible. The desires I’d felt weren’t just my desires. Many of my feelings and habits concerning sexuality and love involved my parents; my parents’ experiences continued in me. And the fear and humiliation I often felt around the topic of sex continued the suffering of my former stepfather in me. It became clear that I had a choice. Transforming the habit energy of my parents, and healing the wounds of sexual abuse within me could, over time, gradually set me free.

“Breathing in,” I began, “I am aware of this sexual desire. Breathing out, I smile to this desire.” I continued, “Breathing in, I am aware of the many sources of sexual desire in me. Breathing out, I calm these sources of desire.”

The simple awareness of sexual desire was my first step. At times, during meditation, it was helpful to listen more deeply to the sexual feelings and sensations within my body as they arose, with the wisdom of knowing they would pass, and that whatever healing occurred in me would take place within my parents too. That was, and is, my gift to my ancestors in me, and the gift I also received. My choices offer many generations, and me, a chance to live in freedom, a chance to love.

Brian Kimmel, True Lotus Concentration, studies at Naropa University in Boulder, CO and is publishing a memoir on healing sexual abuse with mindfulness and love. He participated in the Plum Village Delegation to Indonesia in 2010. He was the first of his mother’s family to return since they left in 1962.