A woman asks Barry Long how long she should give her man to get rid of his sexual deception. She says she discovered that for the last three years he has been buying pornographic magazines and masturbating habitually, although he said he had stopped, and that this has happened before over six years. She felt this was the end of the relationship, she stopped making love with him, and says it seems she has no choice but to go. Barry responds to her, telling her that the point of her life with this man is to do her level best, to love him, to endeavour to make him honest. There is no fixed “how long”; something in her will either stay with him or not, and that movement is guided by a greater intelligence. She will only leave him when she leaves him.
Barry describes how woman, through repeated disappointments, becomes filled with disbelief of man. He says, 'I as man' must take that disbelief out of her not by professing everlasting love, but by actions. She, in turn, has to remain 'as wise as a serpent and as soft as a dove,' not doubting him and not believing him.
She adds that she is terrified to leave because she has no money, has a child and nowhere to go, and says it would be like death to leave. Barry acknowledges this loss as a kind of death, yet says the circumstances of her life are God’s will to make her more pure and to face the human past, especially the mechanical sexual part. He says our task is to bring consciousness into that which is unconscious and mechanical, and that you cannot do anything until you do it.
A man follows up and asks whether it is a matter of disciplining yourself when sexual tendencies arise and what to do when sexual fantasies come. Barry replies that the thing to do is to stop it, not by suppression but by knowing from experience that it leads to excitement and interferes with love. He says sexual fantasizing is a habit ingrained in the human race by society, and that to get rid of it a man must stop reading pornographic magazines and magazines with sexual articles. He says – “You can't play with this thing. It's a beast... There's nothing like sex to become a habit and a momentum. It's the most powerful thing on earth apart from love.”
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This exchange is drawn from recording 4 of 6 from the 5 day talks in Eindhoven, first recorded in 1996. These and many other never-before-published recordings have been meticulously digitised only recently and are now available for listening in high quality through the Barry Long Archive.
Direct links to the full recording will be posted here, as it becomes available.
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From the archive:
📃 Transforming sex into love – https://www.barrylong.org/archive/articles/12/transforming-sex-into-love – All love, fundamentally, is the love of That, the love of God, the love of It, that is behind everything, all existence. All love is that...
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Barry Long Answers is a new, free podcast that invites listeners into the intimate dialogue of audience questions and the spiritual master’s answer. These exchanges provide universal guidance to a range of everyday issues concerning man and woman. Each episode begins with a direct question put to Barry and his uncompromising response. The series draws from the Barry Long Archive, a repository of over 20 years of Barry Long’s teachings.
For full-length talks and extended dialogues, besides 'Barry Long Answers', the usual 'Barry Long Podcast' continues as a separate stream, with both free and subscriber-only editions available. Or if you'd like access to the full Barry Long Archive, the Barry Long website offers a subscription to this.
The Barry Long Podcast: https://www.barrylong.org/podcast/about
The Barry Long Archive: https://www.barrylong.org/archive
