Taoist sexual practices are finding their way indiscriminately into the lives of people who have no idea either of their real purpose or of the physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual dangers associated with them. Though these practices originally had mainly to do with the transformation of energy for spiritual development, and required many years of close study with a master, they are often being utilized today both by men and women to increase sexual endurance, pleasure, and power, and by women to reduce or even eliminate menstruation.
Such practices, available in many books today, include, for instance, the dangerous practice of hanging weights from the genitals in order to strengthen them and increase hormonal flow. Among some practitioners, you can often hear men bragging about how much weight they can lift. ‘Boys will be boys,’ of course, but teachers should know better than to dispense such practices through books and workshops to those who are unprepared to deal with the tremendous energies that are involved.
Undertaking such practices prematurely without the close daily supervision of a master can have serious consequences. One can hurt oneself both physically and psychologically. One can even crystallize the very aspects of one’s self-image that need to be dissolved or transformed for spiritual understanding and development to take place.
What is needed by most us (including those of us on a spiritual path) is not more sexual energy, but rather more awareness of the many ways in which our sexual energy is constantly being misused and wasted in service to our self-image. What is needed is freedom from our self-image, what Gurdjieff calls our “false personality,” and the attitudes and illusions upon which this self-image depends. It is these attitudes and illusions, along with the behavior arising from them, that consume and dissipate our energy, our power. Without freedom from these attitudes and illusions, any work with sexual energy will only further amplify the false image we have of ourselves and further increase our inner disharmony.
Copyright 2008-15 by Dennis Lewis
A couple of books in this arena that you might find helpful are Taoist Sexual Meditation
