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Sacred Sexuality in the 21st Century
One of the most neglected areas of spiritualized personal growth is the development and integration into our lives of a transformed relationship to our sexuality. If we want to truly grow in self understanding isn’t it time to see this powerful creative force for what it is, a master key to reclaiming our nature as ecstatic beings an intelligence capable of filling us with super abundant health and psychological balance.
While potentially beneficial information on sacred sexuality has been made available through books, Tantra workshops, specialized teachers and groups dedicated to a “sex-positive” outlook, finding a way to make an entry into this fascinating world can be confusing to say the least. When the Wall Street Journal runs a lengthy front-page article titled “Naked Ambition—Ancient Sex Practice Gets a New-Age Makeover” claiming that top Tantra teachers make $50,000 per weekend, or journalists from Oprah Magazine and What Is Enlightenment go to investigate Tantra workshops and find themselves in let it all hang out and if you don’t you’re “hung up” situations, is it any wonder the public remains confused or ridicules the possibilities of enlightened sexuality? Mainstream society remains as confused as ever and addicted to mechanical sex, while the media pokes fun at anything relating to alternate consciousness. So those of us who represent any aspect of personal growth, (especially in regard to sexuality), need to present ourselves in public in a clear, practical and manner, while personally embodying the beneficial results of what we practice and teach as vibrant health and a sense of personal well being. In other words, we need to be living demonstrations of wholeness!
In 1985 I studied with master Mantak Chia, the first teacher of Taoist sexuality to come to the West and reveal to Westerners a time-tested lineage of ideas about transformative sexuality. Not only did I learn to become the kind of lover I had always wanted to be, I learned to gather my creative sexual energy and use it to create not only deep states of ecstasy while making love, but how to recharge my brain and vital organs (lungs, heart, kidneys, liver and spleen etc.)., with positive states of life energy (Chi). The benefits from this that carry over into my everyday life include a continuous sense of mental, physical and emotional well-being and an increase in personal magnetism that empowers me to attract success in many areas, including prosperity. When we are not grounded in the centers of power in the lower part of the body, our lack of self connection disconnects us from the natural flow of goodness within ourselves and life. In his groundbreaking book “Think and Grow Rich”, Napoleon Hill devoted an entire chapter to the transmutation of sexual energy in relation to prosperity. But even today, decades after its initial publication, few people know how to take advantage of this knowledge in real world terms. Having been fortunate enough to learn how to do this myself, I’m happy to pass what I have learned to others in my workshops and classes.
Many of our personal difficulties stem from having unbalanced energy running through our bodies on a more or less continuous basis as a result of our interactions with today’s stressful world. People can be unconsciously disconnected from their sexual energy and even their own bodies, as a result of unsatisfactory past experiences in the romantic arena. Reclamation and resolution of our relationship to the tremendous creative power of the life force within us is absolutely essential, if we are to live the kind of spiritually empowered and personally satisfactory lives for which we were created by evolution.
A newborn baby lives in a state of bliss. With thumb and forefingers connected in a yogi mudra, the soft center at the crown of the head pulsating up and down (indicating and open connection to the flow of universal life energy), eyes and face scrunched up Dalai Llama-like, the infants consciousness absorbed in the experience of the ecstatic nature of its own being. The natural state of the atoms that make body cells and all material creation is love, joy, bliss and ecstasy. Even our cats know this. When we stroke them their eyes scrunch up with bliss as they purr with the pleasure of our touch. Why are most of us so far away from this and how can we get back to this Eden of innocent happiness? More importantly, why don’t we want to?
Learning to love ourselves or make love in such a way that the cellular essence that makes up our bodies can experience spiritual ecstasy as well as sexual ecstasy, connects the soul and body together in a sacred marriage. Our personalities become balanced and our mental outlook brightens as we start to see ourselves in the light of wholeness that is based on direct experience of our natural selves. And this can also lead to more or less permanent states of enlightened consciousness.
All our spiritual and meditative practices are enhanced when the natural vitality of the power which has created our bodies flows easily through them, unimpeded by our unreasonable yet too often rationalized resistance to experiencing joy and pleasure.
The root cause of this resistance is not fear of the unknown, although that may be present at some level.
It is our addiction to dysfunction, psychological, emotional and mental, and the sense of separation from ourselves and others caused by this that we have become used to and take for normalcy, as we have become used to living without a true sense of ongoing happiness.
The remedy for this is simple. It is the blissful experience of ecstasy, because ecstasy heals. And unless we are natural ecstatic saints like Rama Krishna or Teresa of Avila, the way for 21st century man and woman to do this is to spiritualize our sexuality, Nature’s gift that allows us to directly experience and reclaim the native joy of infancy.
Is it necessary to go to expensive workshops to learn this? I don’t believe so.I recently heard an ad on the radio forclasses by a well-known Tantra teacher andif you called within the next two or three hours you could save $1900 in registration fees. Can you imagine what such a course must cost if you can get a discount of almost $2000? And how can you know if this outlay willlead to what you are looking for?
Although the Neo-Tantra movement (as it is sometimes called) has done much to open the door to expanded forms of lovemaking, a common pitfall among practitioners is that they mistake mind blowing physically generated orgasms for the bliss of the soul. Some Tantra adherents tend to view Taoist sexuality as too self discipline oriented, while Taoist practitioners may view Tantrics as undisciplined hedonists. In my opinion, neither view is generally correct, although in come cases either viewmay be true. So as a student of Mantak Chia, do I advocate Taoist sexuality over Tantric sex? Not at all. Why should one approach preclude the other?
Abraham Maslow pointed out that we are living in an age of synthesis and I have taken the best of both worlds, ancient and modern Taoism and Tantra, and combined this knowledge with the latest insights of practitioners in both those worlds, to produce a continuing balanced (read sane) approach to spiritualized sexuality. To be truly successful and access lasting benefits from the transformative power of Eros, there needs to be knowledge of how to blend our physical, emotional and mental selves with the energy generated by sexual arousal and natural bliss of the higher self. Through this we experience, not just new forms of pleasure and enhancement of our relationships, but a quickening of our personal evolution.
When it comes right down to it, sexuality is a private matter, a personal experience and we should be able to learn most of what we need to know about it in the sanctity and safety of our own homes. However, we are going to need a guiding compass and for this reason I occasionally give extremely low cost talks and workshops on this subject and it is why I wrote my book Eros Ascending: The Life Transforming Power of Sacred Sexuality.
My wish is to give the broadest possible overview of this fascinating world to newcomers while opening the door to still higher realms of experience for those who are already practicing some form of sacred sexuality.
What could be more beautiful than reclaiming a blissful and more enlightened sense of self and the happy life, than through the joyful experience of uniting Soul and Sexuality as we travel homeward on the Path of Ecstasy.
John Maxwell Taylor will have two events in San Diego Feb. 27 and 28 at VISION: A Center for Spiritual Living. See www.visioncsl.com and the VISION ad in the calendar section.