What is pornography? Dirty pictures, right?

Pornography is a billion dollar industry. The entire National Football League budget is small by comparison, as well as the budget of any two or three of the largest corporations.

Over 100,000 websites on the internet thrive on porn. What is the power and pull of porn?

Is money the main motive behind the phenomena for the women and producers who make porn? Is testosterone the driving force for those who look at porn? Are we victims of money or hormones? One of my male clients recently said that he avoids women because he would cheat on his wife without a thought. He said that if a woman is available, if she is naked or spreads her legs, no man could resist.

Affairs and jealousy, along with money, are probably the main "causes" of divorce, crime, murder and suicide. There is a pornographic attitude about both sex and money, is there not?

What is pornography? Why is it so epidemic? Why is it such big money? Why is sex and money so addictive? Porn seems related to both sex and money, does it not? Would women engage in pornography except for money or fame? Women give their bodies and men give their money.

What is the relationship between pornography and prostitution? Both are acts of the imagination, are they not?

I am arguing here that porn is an act of superficial imagination where one object reacts to another. The whole person is not involved in porn. Imagination is being misused. The pornographer is pretending that he or she lacks something that his object of attention does not. Everyone, in this sense, is into porn in some form. We have all made ourselves into objects needing or wanting other objects in order to feel happy or whole. In our story, we are users.

We use people as things because we perceive ourselves as objects. Only objects are limited. The Self is not limited. The Spirit is not limited. Relationships are not limited. Only objects are limited. But curiously enough, objects do not really exist, except in our story. Porn and prostitution may seem like the best we can do in an object world. Manipulation is commonplace. Use and abuse are taken for granted. Porn is one of the major symptoms of our unconsciousness of ourselves as subject. Porn is an attempt to cure ourselves of unconsciousness, but it only increases our experience as objects.

As unaware beings, we have an infinite appetite for whatever we imagine will make us whole and happy. Pornography in all of its forms is an attempt to remedy our stories about ourselves as objects, but does it work? There is no need for any such cure except in our stories. Pornography is a symptom of our human unawareness of ourselves as infinite spiritual beings.

Pornography, therefore, arises from insecurity and anxiety, and expresses as finite hunger, just like financial hunger. Neither sex nor money can fulfill the hunger for our spirituality. Pornographic hunger is infinite in our story-bound condition. That hunger is based upon our mis-use of imagination. That hunger controls us and makes us empty victims. That hunger only exists in our story. Let us wake up to our spiritual wholeness. Awareness of the true meaning of pornography is another tool for enlighten-ment.