Beyond Tantra: Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex (8 page)

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 41

Dealing with Belief Demons – Mieke’s Story 41

woman felt, what she wanted, or did not want. The man’s happiness and satisfaction were what mattered. I also acquired a lot of unspoken beliefs from family, friends, and society.

At the time when Stephan and I started working with Dual Cultivation, I thought that I was, when it came to sexual matters, quite progressive in my thinking. What I soon discovered was that what I thought did not really match up with what I was feeling. I discovered that I am one of those people who learns best by doing something, through body experience. Yet here I was, practising and learning new communication skills and new Sacred Sex techniques, and really struggling with them. I was shy, I felt useless, I often felt unwilling to go along with things. I heard a part of me telling myself, ‘A good girl does not do that!’. I became more and more aware of these old beliefs from my childhood and began to identify quite a long list of why I should not enjoy an orgasm and why I should never reveal my pleasure to my partner.

I decided that I wanted to do something about this. I found that just sharing it with Stephan was not going to help me get rid of these old beliefs that definitely did not serve me anymore. One day, during one of his many research sessions on the Internet, Stephan found an interesting course for women like me.

The course was designed for mature women who want to heal the separation between the sacred and the sexual. He encouraged me to go, and I’m happy to say I agreed.

Over the next six months, I participated in three workshops with around twenty-five other women, all from very different backgrounds and countries, mostly around my age, i.e. forty-five to fifty-five. We danced, meditated, laughed and cried together. We went for walks in nature, spent time in solitude and quiet, shared thoughts and experiences. In a safe and controlled environment, we also participated in exercises where we shared sexual pleasure and orgasm with each other.

The course leader, a woman, was very skilled at gently pushing us beyond our limits. If we asked the question ‘why?’ about anything, she would answer:

‘why not?’ Under her guidance, we used sexual energy to blast through old patterns and thought-forms that we no longer wanted or found useful to us. I found that I was not the only one who was hanging on to all these old patterns and beliefs; the other women felt just as I did. And we all wanted to move forward into freedom, sexual freedom, away from all the old conditioning around men, around our partners.

In this very safe and supportive environment we helped and encouraged each other to dare do something new, however scary it felt. For me it was a great gift to be able to spend this time away from my everyday life, and discover what it was like to be with a group of women. I was amazed by the openness and total

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 42

42

Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex honesty between us. I learned so many things. I pushed my boundaries, and by doing so became much more in touch with who I really am. One of the most important things I learned was that I am indeed responsible for my own sexuality. How can I interact and communicate honestly with my partner if I’m not clear with myself, if I don’t understand my own sexuality and know what I like and want?

On my return home, I was able to bring my new insights and experiences back to our relationship. I felt lighter and more in touch with my body. I felt that I had taken another step in creating a more harmonious and joyful relationship.

Stephan’s Story

Mieke and I come from very different backgrounds. She was raised in a very traditional Roman Catholic family whereas I grew up in a liberal, freethinking environment. I was nineteen and she was twenty-three when we met and fell in love (yes, it was ‘love at first sight’). Up until the point Mieke fell ill, I had never really spent much time trying to understand what culture she had come from or how that had affected her. At times, of course, I had been completely baffled by her responses and ways of doing things but I had always put this down to the inevitable difficulties I assumed any cross-cultural relationship must have.

When we started to work with the Sacred Sex teachings, I soon discovered that we had radically different viewpoints in a number of areas. Even though we had always tried very hard to be progressive and enlightened, it turned out that a great number of negative thoughts about sexuality were still very much alive and kicking in both of us. A typical example was my negative belief, learned in childhood, that ‘women don’t really like sex; they just do it to keep men happy’.

This meant that, when I finally did find a woman who consented to have sex with me, I worked as hard as I could to try and make her happy, since I believed that ‘she doesn’t really want to do this but, if I get her excited enough, maybe she will enjoy it after all’.

When Mieke and I started to talk about our beliefs I discovered, much to my surprise, that she really did like sex. I also found out that she was quite frustrated that I was so goal-oriented and couldn’t just relax enough to give her time to warm up a bit since I was so worried about getting her excited. Once I finally heard and understood this, we both realized that we did have some common understanding to work with. So a bit of communication made a huge difference when we finally got around to it!

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 43

Dealing with Belief Demons – The Belief Awareness Exercise 43

The Belief Awareness Exercise

Goals

•

Develop a greater self-awareness of your core sexual beliefs.

•

Learn more about your partner’s beliefs.

Duration

About 30 minutes

Description

This exercise is described as a two-person activity, but you can do it by yourself if you like. Both partners take two blank sheets of paper and a pen. Put the second sheet to one side for the moment.

On the first sheet, write a list of statements that reflect what you have been taught or have learned about sex as a child up to the age of puberty. What you’re interested in is information that was given to you by others, not discoveries of your own. Here are some questions you can start with:

• What did my parent(s) tell me about my body and sex?

• What did I learn in school about sex?

• What did my friends tell me about sex? (or what did I guess they were saying?)

• What things did I learn about men and sex?

• What things did I learn about women and sex?

and, most importantly,

• What did I learn about sex that no one ever actually said to me in so many words?

Go ahead and list as many points as you like.

When you are done, go back through the list and ask yourself whether you intellectually still agree with each belief. Then ask yourself if your body agrees with the belief.

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 44

44

Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex What does ‘body agrees with the belief ’ mean? It’s quite simple really. When Mieke and I started working with the Dual Cultivation practices, it often happened that I would read about something, discuss it, try it and then find out that it didn’t work. This was a great puzzle, and a bit discouraging since I was sure I had understood the instructions. After a while I realized that, just because I understood something with my mind, it didn’t mean that my body understood it or necessarily ‘agreed’. As someone with a strong intellect, this had always been a bit of a frustration but, until I started working with Dual Cultivation, I had usually managed to succeed at most anything through sheer mental willpower. I soon discovered, of course, that you can’t do that when working with Sexual Qi.

You can’t will an erection, and you certainly can’t force an orgasm.

Instead, you need to learn a delicate, graceful dance that involves creating the right conditions for your body to unlearn, and relearn. It means becoming much more aware and sensitive to what your body is telling you at any given moment and accepting that your ‘being’ is much greater than just your mind. For many people this is completely obvious; for others it is a bit of a revelation. It certainly can be a revelation when you discover that your body has a mind or belief system of its own.

How do you check a body belief? One way is to remember a situation where a belief was brought into play and recall what your actual response was. For instance, you may have a belief that ‘sex is good, clean fun’. If you notice that every time you make love you instantly get up and rush to the shower, then this could be a good indication that some part of you thinks that you have engaged in an unclean activity. The trick then is to observe telltale signs of inconsistency between your beliefs and your actions without judging yourself. You might want to try to have compassion with yourself as you do this as everyone, at one time or another, has internal struggles between their mind and body. Sex just happens to be one of the major areas where these struggles get played out.

Another practical example of the difference between mind and body belief is one that emerged when Mieke did the exercise. In her list she wrote a statement:

‘Good girls don’t wear sexy, revealing clothing.’

When she looked at this to see if she agreed or disagreed with it now, she discovered that with her mind she didn’t agree with the statement at all. Lots of perfectly nice, good women wear sexy clothes and she has never had a problem with this. When she examined her body belief she realized that sometimes when she wears sexy clothes part of her is still uncomfortable and there are traces of the old shame that was handed to in her childhood.

Now, bring yourself back to the present. With your list in front of you: Put a ‘1’ next to each belief with which both your mind and body still agree.

tantrapp 16/7/05 5:30 pm Page 45

Dealing with Belief Demons – The Belief Awareness Exercise 45

Put a ‘2’ next to each belief with which your mind disagrees but your body still agrees.

Put a ‘3’ next to each belief with which your mind still agrees but your body disagrees.