In a world where sex and love have been glued together, many live an entire life without knowing or experiencing true love.

Let me explain. Guy meets girl, they both feel an instant attraction and choose to pursue the friendship. After a few dates, the attraction grows and the ability to resist slows—in a week or so they are having sex.

For a couple of weeks, with hormones raging, their new-found passion is defined, expressed and demonstrated by lots of sex—but is it love yet?

In this article, let me travel to one of the most intriguing corners of Ayurvedic psychology, to tease out how true love may be obscured and made less accessible in our culture of dare I say, loveless sex—and how we can get back on track to a life of the greatest joy and fulfillment of all.

Trying to Find the Road Less Traveled

Often, relationships are consummated with sex, but with a strange reluctance to say the words, “I Love You.” With a little luck, the passion, trust, and thus the relationship will grow into something called love, and the couple will live happily ever after.

Sadly, this is not always the case. The road less traveled is the one paved with true love, not sex, and it is hard to find. We all know that when the passionate hormonal bonding wears off, we are confronted with the trials and tribulations of a relationship, maybe even a marriage.

While sex can be a means of expressing love, it is not so common. Sadly, the mind often perceives sex as love, so the more sex we have, the more “in love” we perceive ourselves to be. The brain remembers the days of passion when love was united with love-making.

The trouble is, the brain doesn’t realize the risks, which include missing out on that thing called “true love.” In fact, in many relationships, the only time the words, “I love you” are uttered is during sex.

The road less traveled is the journey many married couples attempt in an effort to patch up a relationship that was based on needing love (or sex), and not expressing love.

The Ayurvedic Energies of Love and Sex

According to Ayurveda, there are subtle channels in the body called nadis that carry the energies of both love and sex. While there are 72,000 of these nadi channels, only one carries the energy of sex, and six carry the energy of true love or pure consciousness.

The six nadis that carry love are actually carrying the purest and most powerful form of energy, called kundalini shakti— the purest form of love. Five of these nadis start in the first or lowest chakra, called the muladhara chakra and culminates in the higher spiritual centers of the brain.

According to Ayurveda, this journey of the love energy (kundalini shakti) from the base of the spine to the top of the head represents the spiritual journey we must all take at some point.

The trick is that the love energy and the ultimate spiritual journey can only travel through one of these six nadi channels.

The nadi that carries the energy of sex is called vajra nadi, and it starts in the second chakra, or sex chakra—called svadhisthana chakra—and culminates in one of the lower centers of the brain. The problem here is that this nadi does not start at the base of the spine and doesn’t culminate at the higher brains centers. As a result, it will never deliver full satisfaction and contentment. It is an incomplete nadi, one only capable of delivering a temporary spiritual experience. When we have to go repeat the cycle of receiving  temporary satisfaction over and over again, this is considered by Ayurveda to deplete the ojas reserves in the body.

Sounds just like sex, right?

Journey through the Nadis—Choosing the Path of Fulfillment

According to Ayurveda, between 16 and 18 years of age the kundalini shakti or spiritual energy that has been dormant in the base of the spine becomes enlivened and begins its spiritual journey from the base muladhara chakra to the energy centers on the top of the head and brain.

The kundalini shakti can choose any one of the six nadis to take this journey, and some are more direct than others. The more balanced the individual, the more direct a nadi may be chosen. Remember, the sex nadi, called vajra nadi, is an incomplete nadi and can never deliver satisfaction or a complete spiritual experience.

If the vajra nadi is stimulated with sexual activity before the experience of true love, then the sexual energy in the vajra nadi will be activated, carrying sexual energy to the lower centers in the brain. This will play out just as we predicted. The experience will abound with passion and sex, gluing the illusion of love and sex together, and leaving both parties longing for more.

Soon, this experience falls short of any sense of true contentment and we start looking for love in all the wrong places. With this lack of contentment, the relationship and the search for true love become fraught with disappointment.

According to Ayurvedic psychology and science, stimulating the vajra nadi or sex channel will never deliver true contentment or real love. From the perspective of subtle energy, to experience “true love” and spiritual fulfillment, the kundalini shakti has to travel back down to the spine’s base in the muladhara chakra and then re-enter one of the complete nadis that will deliver the energy to the higher spiritual centers in the brain, where true love and spiritual fulfillment can be achieved.

Healing Through Non-Sexual Love

This process cannot happen without engaging in a non-sexual experience of true love.

I recently spoke with a patient who attended a cuddling group where folks are guided to cuddle in a non-sexual way. The leader provides strict guidelines that the group must follow, keeping the energy of the group clean, caring and non-sexual. The result for this woman was that she was able to experience touch without having all the sexual alarms go off.

It is in this way and by this logic that parents historically guided their children to an experience of true love, before sex and before marriage.

Historically, in nearly every religion, young adults were taught to not have sex before they were married. In Ayurveda, this was not just unrealistic dogma that a dad demanded, it was based on Vedic science. Having sex too soon would activate a subtle energy pathway that would stall spiritual progress, and potentially mask the experience of true love for a lifetime.

True love is available to all of us, it only requires some simple action steps to give love, care and kindness without the requirement to receive any of the above in return.

Read more about true love without expectations, and the unexpected route to true fulfillment, in my article, “Love Unconditionally on the Road Less Traveled.” Learn more about ojas, the precious substance responsible for our vitality, immunity, vigor, skin, sleep, digestion, spirituality and physical strength, here.

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Editor: Catherine Monkman

Photos: Author’s Own, Matt Anderson/Flickr