One of the issues in our culture, that deals with the question of controlling our thoughts that is dominant at this time, is pornography. It= s such a problem that the Evangelical church has decided to go public and deal with this issue. They have found that some of their ministers and their congregations are really having great difficulties because of the access and availability of pornography in the community. Dr. James Dobson gave a talk which he eventually printed and he was highly criticized but he made things even more explicit in terms of how this affects the family and children.

One of the facts he pointed out was that since 1994 to present the web sites have increased by a million web sites of pornography some of them are hard core. Also the businesses have backed up pornography because there= s a lot of money in it. That= s the culture.

From the point of view of us, there are basically three steps of growth in the question of controlling our thoughts of sexuality and the first one arises from practicing continence of course, that is, abstaining from all sexuality, sexual acts.

Then the one that we may not pay attention to as such is celibacy, that is making the choice to stand for Christ as your heart’s desire. By doing that you put a focus on your heart and automatically avoid a lot of troubles and close doors to things.

But the real practical level of practicing the control of our sexual thoughts is chastity. The ability to dash against the rock as St. Benedict says thoughts that come up as they arise. The means that are used are not just paying attention to your thoughts but also doing other things that long tradition has shown are helpful ie., fasting, living a prayer life, and for some learning how to balance their life and getting proper exercise is also a very important dimension for their life and learning how to deal with tensions. This is a very important modern aspect to things.

But also there= s something very positive that takes place when we are faithful in our meditations we begin to fall in love with Jesus and that makes our deeper desires for the Lord graced and that graced longing for the Lord is what really transforms us. It moves us in wholeness, it makes us more integrated and it allows us to put these kinds of thoughts aside rather quickly. So this is another important dimension to why it= s important to meditate faithfully.

But there= s also a fruit to this graced desire and that is we begin to be a person of innocence. Also our soul becomes more open. That is the soul as such is open to all that is, but it= s only through grace that it really happens that we begin to have our transcendence dimension of our spirit open to everlasting horizons. So this is a very important dimension our fruits that come from the practice of chastity.

Also there is a peace in our hearts, it= s a very important dimension as well as the ability to seek and find God becomes a lot easier because we are more present to the present moment. We are there where we are and when we are there our consciousness is more open to insights and creativity then being bogged down or in any way chained.

So it= s important to focus on the positive side of the practice of fighting sexual thoughts by really focusing on celibacy so that we fall in love with Jesus to such a degree that basically the temptations become minor and insignificant but they’ll never totally go away because as long as we= re in this life our attention and our capacity to be attracted to the opposite sex is very real and therefore we shouldn’t be shocked if that happens but rather learn to deal with it and grow.

It= s also important to have a spiritual director, someone with whom I can be totally open and have everything on the table, so that I am free to be who I am in the presence of someone so that it extends to the fact that I can be present and open to God all the time with my thoughts and therefore live a chased mind.