Readings on Love and Sex

In 1984, four years after the first Universal Tao classes were held in NYC's Chinatown, Mantak Chia and Michael Winn collaborated on the publication of a seminal work concerning sexuality, though written specifically for the male (two others, for the couple and the female are cited as well). Within are wonderful descriptions of the forces at play (biochemical processes, emotional underpinnings, and chi) in the discharge of male sex energy and its relationship to the man's emotional, spiritual, and physical well-being.

At the core is a discipline and redirection, ultimately transformation, of the ejaculatory orgasm, a discipline that has been practiced for thousands of years by various groups of people. The underlying principle is based upon commonly understood concepts of electrical charge, as well as cultural dogma on the effects of sex on men and women.

In brief, women present the negative pole of our energetic spectrum, more or less. Slower to be roused, slower to be drained, and, once the fire of sexual energy has grown, longer to be sated. Men present the positive polarity, also more or less, quick to rise, quick to drain, a flash in the pan. Life being sex, that inextricable bind, the loss of charge is death. Metaphorically, it's the nap of the afterglow. Literally, it's what happens to the rechargeable battery that doesn't recharge anymore.

The sexes differ in this regard, and others throughout the topic, in the "natural" or wild state of instinct minus cultural convention (a condition once largely unknown but now dominant). Men cum and lose charge with each instance. Women follow a cyclic loss of charge through the menses. Losses are partially recouped in numerous ways we are all aware of: food, affection, the removal of stagnant energy and blood through exercise and breathing, sleep, and others.

We also regain sex energy through sex, or at least that opportunity exists, for the whole can indeed be greater than the sum of the parts. Women, more or less, pull inward the male energy (much more than the ejaculate, hormones and yang fill the aroused penis), which is a purer form of energy than that presented by food (I.e. doesn't take as much work to utilize). Men, more or less (but largely less), also pull inward the female ejaculate, which is equally rich in hormones and yin per the emotional state of the bearer.

While the Taoist tradition at heart was concerned with immortality of spirit, a concern common to all world religions in some form, it was not concerned with finding one way to get there. Tao means path, but it also means ten thousand paths, from monogamy to the emperor's virgin harem to the celibate hermit. The path itself is the calling of the individual, and the goal of the Taoist was to find ways of walking that did not leave the feet aching and the soul deformed and unable to attain its destiny.

Thus the physical and emotional energies seek to be reconciled. Dissonance brings heartache, revulsion, and a splintering of the individual. Consonance, or harmony, brings oneness and a light heart. This culture we make daily, upon which we look and listen, is filled with dissonance. One example should suffice. In the same breath we learn that the highest ideal is the monogamous marriage of two lovers, and a satisfying love life consists of many partners. Each statement alone could well be representative of the Tao for a particular individual, but these goals taken together are pure confusion.

This confusion is what Chia and Winn looked upon while attempting to share the techniques of transforming male sexual energy into spiritual love (semen retention, testicle breathing, scrotal compression, the valley orgasm, among others). They noted two peculiar problems for men of our culture.

One was the inability to maintain a physical bond to their mate that matched the emotional one, a loss of polarity that results in frustration, sometimes anger, and always detachment from the relationship (through divorce in name and/or spirit or through reorganizing the relationship to exclude the physical). The other problem was the loss of male fertility, commonly classed as erectile/ejaculatory disorders and male menopause.

In short, Chia and Winn provided an alternative to one of our many self-fulfilling dichotomies, this one being that sex is the province of men and emotions the realm of women. I offer thanks from the bottom of my spirit toes.

Theirs was not the first attempt.

But there is another reason for union with the Divine during the act; it is that one thereby enters into fuller harmony with the universe, giving and receiving sexual pleasure, in a way undreamt of without such union. - The Wedding Night

Why should not the modern heirs of the old medicine-man - the priest, the physician and the schoolteacher - resume the position which is naturally theirs, of instructors of the young in that which all need to know who are likely to enter the marital relation? - Spiritual Wedlock

Ida Craddock was born August 1, 1857 to what would be one of the stranger and more beautiful existences to grace the spirit-numbing dissonance of civilized life. Raised in Philadelphia by a fundamentalist mother, Ida had published a textbook on stenography by the age of 18, and she unsuccessfully fought for the right of women to attend the University of Pennsylvania.

Years later, Ida began pursuing a different kind of education, one centered around sexuality and the ancient texts of the world. We know this from the copious citations in her numerous works on the topic, some of which are now available on the web (cited below). Ida lectured and wrote profusely on the confluence of religion and sexuality with a major goal being the rectification of the social plight of women in wedlock. Namely, women were seen as the harbors of emotion and men as the captains of sex, with quite horrid implications.

Ida faced an uphill war. Her pamphlets on marriage sought to instruct men in the arts of spiritual lovemaking and works like "Lunar & Sex Worship" attempted to provide a far more vast context for sexuality, a context the puritanical abhorred. Among the heresies, she spoke that forced marital intercourse was but rape, belly dancing was a means of sexual self-control for women, and that semen retention led to more fulfilling sex.

Being a Miss, how was she to know these things? Ida, as you might expect, was reported to have taken two lovers from 1889-1891. By the time of her persecution, carried out personally by a vengeful Anthony Comstock (he of the anti-obscenity Comstock Laws), Ida was blissfully wedded to an angel named Soph. Ida's angelic husband shared many techniques of spiritual lovemaking with her, and her diary reads that she likewise shared the art of belly-dancing with him.

Facing a second imprisonment on the heels of release from her first, Ida took her life. As her suicide letters attest, she hoped that by her death sexual and religious freedom for the many would be possible to a greater degree than would be attainable in her continued life. On October 16^th, 1902, under the sign of Libra and its ruler, the planet Venus, Ida Craddock retired to the arms of her angel. Blessed Be.

Happy reading!

Mantak Chia and Michael Winn. Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy.

Mantak Chia. Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating Female Sexual Energy.

Mantak and Maneewan Chia, Douglas and Rachel Carlton Abrams. The Multi-Orgasmic Couple: Secrets Every Couple Should Know.

Collection of some of Ida Craddock's writings and a brief biography by Vere Chappell. http://www.idacraddock.org/