Beyond Tantra: Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex (9 page)

Put a ‘4’ next to each belief with which your mind and body both disagree.

When you are finished, take the second sheet of paper. Draw a vertical line to create two columns and label the left-hand column ‘Coherent’ and the right-hand column ‘Incoherent’.

Now copy all of the statements that you have put a ‘1’ or a ‘4’ next to into the ‘Coherent’ column and all the statements that you have put a ‘2’ or a ‘3’ next to into the ‘Incoherent’ column.

When you are finished scoring and copying, take turns reading your lists to each other. First read to each other your coherent beliefs and then read your incoherent beliefs. Try to avoid making any comments or discussing anything that you hear. Simply listen to the information you are being given.

When you are done, go back and have a look at your incoherent beliefs.

Which ones can you identify as no longer useful or downright unhelpful to developing a positive view of sexuality? Can you write down some new beliefs with which you might replace them?

The point of the exercise is not to change all of your beliefs suddenly. It’s simply about opening up your mind to the possibility that you may need some new beliefs or understandings about sex. When you are done, file the lists away in a safe place. It can be interesting to go back and have a look at them when you have finished all the exercises in this book and see what, if anything, has changed.

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The Understanding

He who does not trust enough,

Will not be trusted.

—Lao Tzu

Strong sexual feelings and powerful emotions are intimately connected. If you experience fear or anxiety when your Sexual Qi flows, you will tend to revert to actions that allow you to feel safe. These actions are often based on old habits or, if you are under severe threat, instinctive reactions based on your primitive fight or flight mechanism.

These old habits or instinctive reactions are often not useful if you wish to practice Sacred Sex as they do not allow you to make clear, conscious and informed choices. One way to reduce fear and anxiety is to have a trust-filled relationship. This creates a safe space for Sexual Qi to flow. An excellent way to build informed trust is to practise clear and accurate communication.

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Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex
The Background

For most people, it’s not that easy to have trust in your own ability to handle sexual energy. Many people can identify experiences, often from childhood, where their normal curiosity about sex and sexuality landed them in situations where they were ‘in over their heads’ in one way or another. A quite normal reaction to these experiences is to pull back or retreat and to exhibit much greater caution the next time a sexual encounter happens. When this happens over and over again, we build up very deep patterns and habits that are hard to break even with the best will in the world. These patterns and habits are useful for protecting ourselves but not so useful when we want to start learning how to generate and channel Sexual Qi.

It is possible to unlearn these habits and patterns but it takes courage and determination. You also need to have a situation that provides physical, emotional, mental and sexual safety. If you don’t feel safe, it’s just not possible to open up to areas of yourself that are very vulnerable. We discovered that it was impossible to start on the path of Sacred Sex until we had found a way to create a safe, trusting space where we could be open and honest with each other. The exercise in this chapter helps to build that trust on an intellectual and emotional level.

The exercises in the next chapter help build trust on the physical level.

Stephan’s Story

When Mieke became ill and I started to research Sacred Sex, I took out the three books on Sacred Sex that I had bought some years earlier. I started by reading through them fairly quickly until I came to the interesting bits where the actual sex exercises were. I figured we were liberal and progressive enough not to need to do all of those communication and trust-building exercises. Well, after a few months not much was happening. It felt like we were going through the motions but none of the things that were supposed to happen according to the books were happening. No female orgasms, no increased sense of well-being, nothing at all. Mieke was frustrated and I was frustrated.

So I went back to the books and read again, a bit more slowly this time.

While I was reading, I tried to observe myself as if from a distance. I watched myself to see what sections of the book I was skimming over and, when I caught myself doing this, I stopped. I then went back and re-read the section in question, word for word. After doing this a few times I discovered that the parts I was avoiding were all the things that had to do with looking at myself and my own

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Building Trust – Stephan’s Story

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patterns, my beliefs around sexuality and, most importantly, learning how to communicate with my partner. I was so concerned with learning how to do something new that I was completely missing the bits that had to do with sorting out the old.

And so, very hesitantly, I broached the subject with Mieke during a long car ride back from Dublin to the west coast of Ireland. The roads are pretty bad in some parts of Ireland so that a journey that would take two hours anywhere else in Europe can take four or more hours. Plenty of time for a long chat!

I said: ‘You know, one of the exercises I was reading in the book has nothing to do with physical sex. Instead it encourages you to tell each other about past sexual experiences that you really enjoyed as a way of getting to know more about what each of you really like.’

Mieke went very quiet. After a few minutes she said, ‘I don’t think that’s such a good idea.’

‘Why not?’ I asked.

‘If I do, I’m afraid you’ll get very angry,’ she said.

My heart sank. In an instant I realized that we had a huge problem that we would have to deal with if we were going to get working on our sexual relationship. Ten years previously, Mieke had started, without my knowledge, a sexual relationship with another man that had lasted for five years. When I finally found out about it, I was very upset and angry and we had separated for six months as a result. After some counselling, we decided to try and start again which we had done reasonably successfully. But at that instant I realized that the wounds were not all healed and were in fact still very much present. I had a strong sense as well that this unresolved issue was at the very heart of why we were still struggling on many levels of our relationship. To put it simply, I still didn’t trust her and she was still afraid of my verbal and emotional anger. I understood that this was not a good place from which to start working with Sacred Sex and, if we wanted to proceed, something had to be done about it.

‘What could I do to make it safe for you to tell me?’ I asked.

She responded, ‘Well, you would need to promise me that, if I tell you about my experience, you will never, ever bring it up again or talk about it. I don’t want it to be used against me.’

When I heard this, I saw that she was afraid, as she had every right to be, that I would use something like this as ammunition in a future argument. I saw that I had often done this in the past and that my behaviour made it very difficult for her to trust me and show any vulnerability. It wasn’t a pretty picture of myself that was being painted. I then asked myself if I could make such a promise. I wasn’t really sure but I wanted to believe that I could and said as much.

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Beyond Tantra – Healing Through Taoist Sacred Sex Much to her credit she trusted me to keep my promise and proceeded to tell me a pretty nice story about an experience she had had with her lover. I learned something about her that I didn’t know and I’ve kept my promise. Within days our exercises started to show results. Much to my amazement, she had an orgasm, the first with me for many years. That experience showed us, in a pretty dramatic fashion, that if you are willing to trust you can free up sexual energy.

Mieke’s Story

It’s a clear, starlit night. Stephan and I are driving along the windy road from Dublin back to our home on the west coast of Ireland. It feels cosy and mesmer-izing to follow the curves in the road and the contours of the hills on either side.

There is not much oncoming traffic and the road is quiet. It feels safe just to sit in the car listening to the engine purring. On long drives we often drive in silence while listening to music. At other times, we have long conversations. This was one of those ‘long conversation’ drives.

We’ve just started a new stage in our lives and have decided to work with some sexual energy exercises to help me heal a health problem I’m having. This was not an easy decision as I have very little energy, let alone sexual energy! We’ve lived together for many years travelling, having children and working. During all that time there has been one subject that I feel was taboo for us to talk about: the love affair I had with another man in the past. I had never been able to talk about what it had been like for me, what it had meant to me and how it did not in any way diminish my love for Stephan.