“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

This also forces you to guard your emotional life very closely. As a result, any show of love is to some extent inhibited unless it can legitimately find expression sexually. In many instances love itself seems wrong because it must imply sexual expression at times when such expression is not possible, or even desired. Some people have a great capacity for love, devotion, and loyalty, which would naturally seek expression in many diverse ways — through strong enduring friendships, devotion to causes in which they believe, through vocations in which they help others. They may not be particularly sexually oriented. This need not mean that they are inhibiting their sexuality. It is pathetic and ludicrous for them to believe that they must have intercourse frequently in their youth, or to set up standards of normality against which they must measure their sexual experience.

(9:51.) In fact, Western society has attempted to force all expression of love and devotion into sexual activity, or otherwise ban it entirely. Sexual performance is considered the one safe way of using the great potential of human emotions. When it seems to you that society is becoming licentious, in many ways it is most restrained and inhibited.

It means that all options except sexual freedom have been denied. The great force of love and devotion is withdrawn from personal areas of individual creativity through purposeful work. It is being withdrawn from expression through government or law. It is being denied expression through meaningful personal relationships, and forced into a narrow expression through a sexuality that then will indeed become meaningless.

The Church did not restrain the sexuality of its priests or the expression of sexuality in previous centuries as much as it tried to divorce the expression of love and devotion from sexuality.

A high percentage of priests of the Middle Ages, for example, had illegitimate children. These were considered products of the weak and lustful flesh — bad enough, but considering man’s fallen state, understandable lapses. Such situations were overlooked, if not condoned, as long as a priest’s love and devotion still belonged to the Church and were not “squandered” upon the mother of such offspring.

There were also some women who passed as monks, living lives of a solitary nature and carrying on for years. No works bear their feminine names, for they used male ones. It goes without saying that lesbian and homosexual relationships flourished in such surroundings. The Church closed its eyes as long as the relationships were sexual in nature. Only when love and devotion were diverted from the Church was there real concern. Intellect and emotions became further divided then. This resulted of course in an overemphasis upon dogma — rules and the ritualization that had to be colorful and rich because it would be the one outlet allowed in which creativity could be handled. The Church believed that sexual experience belonged to the so-called lower or animal instincts, and so did usual human love. On the other hand, spiritual love and devotion could not be muddied by sexual expression, and so any normal strong relationship became a threat to the expression of piety.