Taoist Spiritual Sexuality
Taoist sexuality is a spiritual tradition that embraces our sexual desire and uses it within our bodies as a force for healing and spiritual growth. Desire is a rich and potent part of human experience. The Taoists think of desire, called sexual energy or chi, as part of our life energy or chi. To be passionate is to be full of chi. The English words "desire" or "passion" connote a feeling of yearning and fervor that includes sex, but they also reflect our strongest feelings about life. When we are passionate about anything--our family, our work, our spirituality, an important social cause--we are investing our chi in this experience. Our passion is what moves us to action and ultimately is what gives us joy. We are passionate about the things that matter most to us.
Anyone can develop the ability to use concentration and breath to release and circulate chi. By looking at sexual practices as a form of active meditation you can become more aware of the energy moving throughout your body and learn to circulate the energy through Micro Cosmic Orbit, this being imagined as an energetic superhighway of the body. The Micro Cosmic Orbit is said to run from the tailbone up along the spine to the brain and then returns downward along the front of the body. This focusing and channeling of chi through the Micro Cosmic Orbit is the primary motive of all Healing Tao meditative practices.
As you become practised at sensing and circulating your chi, you will also be able to move your sexual energy along the same channels. The ability to expand and circulate sexual energy is what increases your pleasure and intensifies your orgasms, no matter what your current level of sexual experience. It also enables you to transform your sexual energy into chi, our life force, which will give you a great deal more energy both within your sexual experiences and in your everyday life. And when your chi is strong and your intention is clear, your chi is transformed into spiritual energy, or shen.
In sexual practices such as this, it initially takes some time to tune in and become aware of the chi circulating in your body. As you develop this awareness the benefits will just naturally be experienced within your lovemaking with beautiful results: more pleasure, orgasms, intimacy and vitality than you've ever experienced.
Taoists regard sex to be as natural and indispensable to human health and longevity as drinking water and eating nourishing food.
The intense sense of shame and guilt that just about all religions associate with sexuality is, in the Taoists' eyes, most unpleasant and incomprehensible.
Society's hypocrisy towards sex has prevented serious study of human sexuality in the Western world until just a few decades ago. Like everything else in Western philosophy, sex is viewed through the lens of dualism; it is seen as either sacred in marriage or profane out of marriage, with no room for anything in between. For some reason marriage is considered as the only really acceptable form sexual lifestyle and is highly rewarded went entered into.
The Taoists, however, do not perceive sex as being sacred or profane. As far as they are concerned, the only important distinctions regarding sexual activities are those between healthy and unhealthy habits, what will promote health and what won’t.
The Taoists approach the subject of human sexuality with inquisitiveness, awe, health and wellbeing, just as they do all natural phenomena. For both men and women, sexual essence is an important storage battery for vital energy and a major source of health and wellbeing.
In conventional sexual relations, a man ejaculates every time he has intercourse, with this being his primary motive for having a sexual experience, regardless of his own age or condition. This habit gradually takes away from his primary source of vitality and immunity, leaving him weaker and vulnerable to disease, and shortening his life span. Meanwhile, the woman gets stronger and stronger, both from her own orgasmic secretions and from her absorption of potent male semen.
The different natures of male and female orgasm is reflected in the various terms to describe that magic moment in both the Chinese and Western languages. The most common Chinese term for female orgasm is gao-chao, literally 'high tide', a graphic and poetic image drawn from nature. But when man ejaculates, the Chinese say that he has 'lost his essence, 'thrown it away', 'leaked semen', or 'surrendered'. If a man ejaculates before his partner reaches orgasm, the Chinese say that she has 'killed' him. The French refer to ejaculation as 'petite mort', or 'little death'.
Men can learn how to replenish themselves by having orgasms, even having multiple orgasms, without needing to ejaculate; women can also learn how to be multi-orgasmic and even ejaculate. Female ejaculation is considered to be cleansing and an important part of women’s health and wellbeing.
In the ancient Taoist sex manuals, women are described as the keepers of sexual power and the supreme source of life-sustaining essence and energy. In these texts the woman plays the role of the facilitator of sex, while the man is described as a sexual key to unlock her powers.
Jolan Chang (Taoist), in his book The Tao of the Loving Couple, quotes some conclusions by Mary Jane Sherfey regarding the power of female sexuality:
"All relevant data from the 12000 to 8000 BC period indicate that pre-civilised woman enjoyed full sexual freedom and was often totally incapable of controlling her sexual drive. Therefore, I propose that one of the reasons for the long delay between the earliest development of agriculture (c. 12000 BC) and the rise of urban life and the beginning of recorded knowledge (c. 8000-5000 BC) was the ungovernable cyclic sexual drive of women. Not until these drives were gradually brought under control by rigidly enforced social codes could family life become the stabilizing and creative crucible from which modern civilized man could emerge."
Although man took control of the family, village, economy, religion and state, he still found himself at woman's mercy in bed. No amount of human artifice can mask or alter the fundamental facts of Tao. Hence, there arose a deep contradiction between man's artificial social superiority and his genuine sexual inferiority to woman, and this gave rise to the battle of the sexes that still rages in most boudoirs today.
As men slowly took control in society, including the sexual arena, there was still the issue within the bedroom; women’s sexual prowess. Thus arose the contradiction of men needing to be superior while not being able to accept women as sexually adept. This may explain the fears and resentments that many men hold towards women, despite women's supposed 'inferiority', and also may explain the battle of the sexes that still corrodes many societies and fuels many wars.
This sad state of affairs is due primarily to sexual ignorance and lack of acceptance of the natural way of things. Any man open-minded enough to take a meditative look at the way of nature and self-disciplined enough to practise it will find that the Tao completely eliminates the fundamental inequity between male and female sexual potency.
Taoist practices enable men and women to let go of the control and power-plays that have been carried on throughout the centuries. It promotes open communication, understanding and acceptance of our differences while focusing on our similarities and using sex as a platform for intimacy and spiritual growth.
