The conceptual separation between sex and feelings is, by itself, a non ethical fragmentation leading to a non ethical behaviour. When thought aims at the pursuit of immediate pleasure, in disregard of the existence of the ‘other’ as a sentient being, it is fragmented thought.

Not breaking the unity with the ‘other’ implies empathy, capacity for somatic resonance or limbic resonance, solidarity and responsibility towards our fellow humans. In terms of sexual behaviour, it implies going beyond selfish, solipsistic, pleasure, which when the unity is broken it becomes predatory. Perversions and non ethical behaviour are the product of fragmentation.

I also include in the theoretical framework some thought related to the connection among ethics and suffering. Ethics is related to human beings needing to compensate for our fragility and our inevitable death, thus it emerges at the very threshold of suffering. Ethical behaviour imply, often, or perhaps always, some renunciation, some risk, some effort, some postponement, that is some ‘suffering’, but I try to demonstrate that such ‘suffering’ is in one way or another in the service of life. Our maturity as individuals, involves the process of accepting our own finitude, the acceptance of impermanence that Buddha spoke about, and the awareness of non separateness.

Empathy helps us to feel the ‘other’ and to experience, vicariously, what the ‘other’ experiments, as a mechanism of survival of our species, not just the individual (which cannot survive alone).

Similarly to other organisms, human beings are biologically born in order to survive and to avoid death, in order to feel well and to avoid unnecessary suffering, and to do so in the context of an acquired temperament which is one of the factors shaping conduct. Human beings are born innately expecting to be welcome, taken care of, protected, sheltered, looked at, fed, in other words expecting to be the object of love and affection, fantasies, desire of his parents to have him or her, in particular of her o his mother, and such expectation is tinted by its innate tendencies that will create for itself its own colours. If those expectations are not met, a vacuum is created that the new being always tries to fill up. Needless to say that there are no perfect parents, for we all have ourselves some empty spaces in our life’s… just as often as not. Yet we always try to find whatever is missing, as Ron Kurtz says. We either find such experiences or we are so frustrated by our fruitless efforts that we survive by adopting a strategy, which, together with our innate temperament becomes a character structure. This self constructing process never ceases, because - as Merlin said - we learn until the very instant we die.

Then I offer a brief but necessary discussion related to what psychology has to say about the development of sexuality, the central issue of this project. Since Freud identified sexual satisfaction from early childhood, we acknowledge the existence of infant sexuality. Some privileged body zones are defined as pleasure centres, based on necessity, but ontogenetically, pleasure and the pursuit of pleasure go beyond immediate need and transcend it. That is, sexuality is not tied up to the concept of necessity, but to ‘something’ beyond necessity.

A broad discussion on methodology follows (Section 6). Ethical sexual education, based on values, implies an approach that opens spaces to invite or provide pretexts for integration, in order to overcome fragmentation. Workshops and courses, basically of an experiential character, where feelings and reflective thinking are solidly rooted in real experiences, facilitate not only a conceptual assimilation, but a healing, a repairing thanks to emotionally and spiritually healing missing experiences. The integrated experieces that went missing, or damaged, ill treated, should happen, in some form, whether real, metaphoric or imagined,  but in the final analysis always real, filling up the empty spaces and re-establishing the connection between the fragments split from experience.

The tools I propose to used, par excellence, are the micro-experiments, or little experiments as Ron Kurtz likes to name them, creating spaces where integration, non fragmentation, can be experienced as evidences, not just as concepts. Those are spaces where to confirm, experimentally, the hypothesis that attitudes and behaviour based on integration and not fragmentation, lead to ethics, to an ethical sexual praxis, that is, are ethicant.

Archetypically, each experiment must imply the study and living experience of integration, in a special state of consciousness: mindfulness. This condition is indispensable, for in the ordinary state of consciousness it is not possible to go beyond the apparent, nor is experience freed from the limiting mental control that produces fragmentation.

Reflexive thought will not be based on a rational cognitive process, fragmented from experience. It will not be a purely theoretical study, it is not a theorization, but a construction of a living experience repairing what was destroyed or damaged, or missing. Thinking will not be separated from emotions and feelings, while understanding that there are ethical feelings such as solidarity, respect for others, and feelings that are not, such as sick hatred, paranoid jealousy, filicide, or incestuous fantasies. Thinking will not forget the ‘other’ within me and outside of me, nor from its inspiration in the transcendental ideas  and meanings that we build, individually or collectively, about life (our spirituality), and no thinking will split from its responsibility for a daily integrative praxis, nor from the prerequisite of congruence with all spheres of existence for ethics does not exist as a concept but as a praxis.

The project recognizes that the healthy containment of sexuality, the natural postponement of sexual experiences, has a natural biological foundation that manifests itself as fears, resistance, doubts, natural uneasiness before premature sexual approaches. Yet it also acknowledges that healthy, nourishing human relations are necessary as the enriching cauldron of values helping adolescents to achieve timely and meaningful sexual experiences, good and pleasant, based on the emotional and spiritual nourishment offered by sufficiently healthy educators.

The working methodology I propose is basically grounded on the idea that values (a) are built from early childhood and all along our life, in a natural context, at the individual, family and social level, (b) are complex processes that we cannot and should not aim at controlling from the outside, but rather, (c) we must support ourselves in life’s creative strength and potential, ethicant and self healing, in order to facilitate its most favourable form of development for life’s sake.

Neither children, nor adolescents are to be seen as an empty space where to ‘feed’ values from the outside. They are not a primary matter to be ‘moulded’ to become similar to how we, adults, are, nor are they some sort of pre-adults to be forced into a preconceived adult idea. They are a human reality in themselves, in a full process, persons building themselves and creating their own values beginning from their previous knowledge, their previous experience, as a product of their need to be alive, their vital mandate, biologically, psychically, socially and spiritually determined, and free, at the same time. Apparently that is the way it happens, even if we do not acknowledge it. That seems to be the reason why, from  very early age, we build ourselves to become what we are, thus we are not simply a passive product of adults, no matter how important they may have been for our development.

The above argumentation grants me the obligation to say that we adults mould, modulate and fine tune the responses of the young before ethical issues and dilemmas, rather than with our speeches and lectures. Our capacity for limbic resonance, our responses, in particular our behaviour, living morally, in actuality, something that the young can feel and live with ourselves, reflects or manifests itself in the youngsters self construction, but does not act as a substitute nor can unilaterally determine anything.

Values are not, and should not, be conceptual abstractions but a living experience characterized by its ethicant acts, by emotions, semtiments, body and spiritual experiences. Values are to be elaborated and built into concepts stemming no from discourses aimed at inculcating values but as a form of recording, building and finding a meaning to their life projects, as they self construct their beings in an expanding awareness of their finitude and their fragility and their strive for transcendence.

In the section I dedicate to training, I hold the position that the training of trainers must provide emotional, somatic and spiritual, human nourishment in a democratic way, tolerant, non controlling, not authoritarian, containing, not repressive, capable of creating a new meanings to the old, in a new opportune, appropriate and adequate experience.  This contribution will take the following steps:

1. Individual and group developmental tasks.
2. Living experiences and reflexion upon the ethical issues of sexual education.
3. Elaboration of a teaching plan for ethical sexual education.

Each and all of the proposed contents of this project are accompanied by experiences that, themselves, are to be ethical elaborations, ethical actions, ethicant functions, as we have insistently said, that is, an activity totally and unreservedly inserted in this space of human existence that takes care of life, except that is oriented to the space of sexual education.