There is something rarely spoken about in spiritual spaces, even though nearly everyone feels it. After years of meditation, study, and inner work, there is an expectation that sexual desire should fade. Many believe awakening means rising above the body and its urges. Yet sooner or later, desire returns with force, heat, and clarity that feels impossible to ignore.
One day everything seems settled and calm, and the next day the body reminds you that it is alive. The pull is ancient, physical, and insistent. Lust appears without apology. The confusion comes quickly. How can this still be here after all this work? How can desire feel stronger now than it ever did before?
The truth is simple and uncomfortable. Desire never left. What changed is awareness. Awakening does not erase human instincts. It shines a bright light on them. When awareness deepens, nothing hides in the background anymore, especially not desire.
This is where many people feel they have failed. They believe something went wrong. They assume awakening should make them calmer, purer, and untouched by physical longing. Instead, they feel more sensitive, more alive, and more aware of everything moving inside them.
This experience is not a mistake. It is not regression. It is the natural result of being awake. Awareness does not numb life. It amplifies it. And that includes desire.
Across cultures and traditions, sexual desire has often been treated with fear. Many spiritual paths place heavy focus on renouncing sex, as if it is more dangerous than any other pleasure. Food, music, beauty, and nature are rarely targeted the same way. Sex is singled out because it ties us deeply to the body, to flesh, to mortality.
The physical world changes and fades. Bodies age. Skin softens. Strength weakens. Because of this impermanence, spirituality has often taught people to detach from the body in order to avoid pain. The fear is that attachment to what decays will lead to suffering.
Yet sexuality cannot be removed. It is woven into existence itself. Every cell carries its imprint. Life continues because of it. When something so fundamental is labeled wrong or dirty, it does not disappear. It becomes forbidden, and forbidden things grow stronger in the dark.
Repression does not remove desire. It magnifies it. What is denied sinks into the unconscious, gaining intensity and control. Over time, sexuality becomes loaded with guilt, fantasy, and obsession. The taboo feeds the fire.
Many imagine awakening as a final breakthrough where desire simply falls away. The image is calm, detached, and perfect. But awakening does not subtract humanity. It sharpens it. Awareness turns up the lights and reveals everything that was already there.
Before awakening, desire runs quietly in the background. Attraction happens automatically. After awakening, the process becomes visible. The heat rises in the body. Thoughts appear. Fantasies follow. Excitement and guilt arrive together. Nothing is hidden.
This can feel overwhelming. Like walking into a room that has suddenly been fully lit, every detail stands out. The dust was always there. The cracks were always there. Now they can be seen.
Awakening makes people more sensitive, not less. Senses sharpen. Emotions deepen. Life feels richer and more intense. Desire follows the same pattern. Feeling it strongly does not mean something failed. It means awareness is working.
Impermanence sits at the heart of this struggle. Every body desired will eventually change and fade. This truth has been used to argue against attachment. But impermanence does not remove value. It creates it. Things matter because they do not last.
Like a sunset or a blooming flower, the body is precious because it is temporary. Beauty gains power when it is fleeting. Awareness sees both truths at once. The body changes, and the body is sacred.
The body is not separate from consciousness. It is consciousness expressing itself in form. Touch is not just physical contact. It is awareness meeting itself through sensation. This is why desire feels powerful. It is life recognizing life.
Problems arise when desire is split off and treated as an enemy. Many spiritual people create a false divide between the peaceful self and the animal self. One is praised. The other is controlled. This inner split creates shadow.
What is pushed away grows stronger. What is denied finds other paths. Pretending to be above desire does not remove it. It simply drives it underground, where it acts without awareness.
True awakening does not create war between body and spirit. It dissolves the idea that there was ever a war at all. Desire is not a flaw. It is energy.
The universe itself is creative. Life moves through polarity, attraction, and connection. Sexual energy is part of that creative force. It is not separate from spirituality. It is one of its expressions.
Suffering begins when desire becomes identity. When desire is labeled as “me” or “my problem,” it tightens. Awareness changes this. Desire can be noticed without becoming personal.
Just as fire can be observed without becoming it, desire can be felt without being consumed by it. When desire is seen as energy passing through awareness, it loses control.
Living with desire does not mean repressing it or obeying it blindly. It means feeling it fully without being owned by it. Awareness creates space. In that space, choice becomes possible.
Desire becomes sensation instead of compulsion. Energy instead of guilt. Weather instead of identity. It rises, moves, and passes.
Freedom does not mean the absence of desire. It means no longer being trapped by it. Feeling desire without fighting it is where wholeness begins.
MY CLOSING THOUGHTS…
The struggle with desire is not proof of failure. It is proof of awareness. Feeling deeply is the cost of being alive and awake.
Awakening does not make people less human. It makes them more human. More present. More sensitive. More honest.
The tension between awareness and desire is not something to escape. It is where growth happens. Wholeness lives in holding both.
There is nothing to fix and nothing to conquer. Only something to understand and accept fully.
When the fight ends, peace appears. Not by removing desire, but by allowing it to exist without control. Awakening does not erase humanity. It embraces it.
