Contemplatio

Author: Robert

  • Detachment and the Noble Goals of MGTOW

    “Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

    Janis Joplin

    Like other Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), I feel no desire to be ‘in’ the gynocentric, feminist-infested, misandrist, man-belittling world any more than I must. I also do not feel any desire to not be in the world.  I know that everything visible is necessarily transitory and thus not really real in the permanent sense of having a fixed, immutable, unchanging essence.  Whatever comes into material being will go out of being. Only that which is invisible could be eternal and unchanging and thus capable of being really real. I am interested in the eternal and whether going my own way is a way to get there.

                What value is it to become attached by desire to what is visible while knowing that the visible world I perceive is not the really real world but merely appearances of the real, perceptual phenomena?  None. I don’t know how I came to be manifested in this visible world articulated in accordance with my sensing it. Yet I feel certain that I must guard against getting trapped in this ever-changing realm, trapped in the false belief that it is somehow the ‘really real’ realm…which is impossible. As I said, the really real can only be invisible, unchanging and eternal. Thus the really real is necessarily beyond time and temporality, beyond space and spatiality.  The really real is forever. I would like going my own way to go there.

                Here is another approach to the same idea.  What a strangeness I am to myself! How odd that I should be present to myself at all, capable of  knowing myself—the strangest of things! But I lose the sense of how odd and unlikely I am in my everyday life among other human beings, a forgetfulness born of habit and efficiency. I get used to myself. I get lost in everydayness and become familiar to myself, assumed, along with everyone and everything else. I take my being for granted and accept it as normal. Yet, my being is far from normal if normal means immediately making sense or being structured within the comprehensible. I am not comprehensible to myself. I am the oddest of oddities, more odd than odd can be.

                Being is forever estranged from itself and does not know itself and will never catch up with itself and reduce itself to an act of knowing certitude or production of knowledge within the temporal, material plane of some perceiver. To think otherwise is presumptuous, a simpering presumptuousness born of a fear of the unknown and unknowable that drives us to fashion our being into the goes-without-saying until it disappears behind many guises.

                Of all human foolishness, the drive to twist ourselves into the belief that we understand anything, including ourselves, first and foremost ourselves, is the most foolish. We are gripped by being, yet not for a moment do we grasp it. To believe otherwise is to have given yourself over to the need for some felt-security, some being-found sameness that will save you from your essential, ontogenetic lostness. That is precisely the essence of attachment, the place from which you must begin to get free.

                I am here, yet I am passing and thus not really here or there entirely and I do not want to get stuck in the illusion of materiality. This life is merely a passage, a transformation process, a being-born out of what we call death, the final transformation or transmutation of this material plane, the final letting-go we will undertake.

                My work here, the work of a hermit, is to get free of attachments to being here while simultaneously finding unity with it all at the same time.  Unity in detachment.  Not to not be here, but to be here free of being attached to being here. To get free of attachment, you must first see how you are attached. That’s a good place to begin.  Make it your main life pursuit because getting-free of attachment is the way of forever, the way of letting-be and letting-go is the approach to immortality.  It is the space of true freedom and independence.  Men Going Their Own Way will be found there.

  • On the Way to MGTOW: The Origin of the Sovereign Individual in Nietzsche

    – 1 –

    A chief characteristic of Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is autonomy or self-determination, i.e., creating yourself out of yourself and taking responsibility for who you are on your own terms.  To be autonomous or “sovereign” is to be fully in charge of your life from top to bottom, fully and completely morally responsible for your life, for who you are, for being the man you determine yourself to be. Friedrich Nietzsche’s description of the origin of such a Sovereign Individual that is presented below is a clear recipe for what is needed by any man today who wants to embark upon his personal MGTOW journey.

    Nietzsche begins his analysis of the origin of moral responsibility  in Sections I-V of Essay 2 in The Genealogy of Morals focusing on the notion of forgetfulness.  Forgetfulness works in opposition to the ability to make promises, Nietzsche asserts. Forgetfulness is not merely a kind of passive inertia (“vis inertiae“), a mere resistance to moving memory to recall.  Rather, forgetfulness is an active power that keeps certain experiences from entering our consciousness, just as in the process of digestion we don’t merely passively absorb everything into our system.

    Forgetfulness is thus a positive power in the sense that it keeps us from being overwhelmed by all that is happening to us.  If we are in the midst of an ongoing problem with our significant other, for example, it is helpful to be able to forget that relationship trouble when we must focus on studying our philosophy or on following a recipe to make a cake.  Otherwise, actively remembering the problem would interfere with our ability to get our work done.

    Thus, without forgetfulness, Nietzsche claims, we would not be able to be focused and present to anyone or anything.  If we can’t forget the cares of our day, we will have difficulty focusing on what is happening at work or in school.  To be unable to forget is like being unable to digest, Nietzsche claims, in yet another pregnant metaphor taken from the realm of sensuous lived life.

              But human beings have also developed memory in opposition to the positive power of forgetfulness.  Memory keeps forgetfulness in check, which is necessary to do if we are going to make promises and not forget them.  Memory is an active power of not letting something be forgotten, and not merely the passive indigestion of something we are unable to forget.  Memory is an active power that can keep a promise in mind even though other events intervene between the time the promise was made and the time it is carried out. Thus, Nietzsche refers to this power as “an actual memory of the will” (115d). And insofar as memory is always oriented toward the future, most importantly toward the future keeping of a promise, it is a power to regulate the future.

              But who is capable of thus regulating the future? According to Nietzsche, only the person who can distinguish between what is necessary and what is merely accidental, that is, what truly needs to be done and what doesn’t need to be done; a person who can think according to cause and effect, who has foresight, who knows exactly what he or she wants and who also has the power to get it; a person who knows how to calculate his or her moves in advance, like knowing how to get to be CEO of a corporation, or being able to figure out what a teacher is going to put on a test—this ability to calculate your moves in advance is perhaps the most important of all the qualities of the person seeking to be MGTOW.  The person capable of making promises, who has taken his life in his hands and determined or calculated who he will be at some point in the future and has been able to see this in advance.  This is the person who has control over his life, the person who is capable of guaranteeing himself a future, of designing it and knowing how to bring it about (116a).

    – 2 –

    The ability to make promises and keep them is responsibility, an ability which has developed only after a long period of customary morality.  Customary morality is the morality of the herd. Here individuals do not calculate themselves but are calculable and predictable; they go along with the customs and norms of the times; they do not think for themselves. Thus, Nietzsche argues that autonomy and (customary) morality (all ‘morality’ is customary for Nietzsche) are mutually exclusive.  To be MGTOW means to rise above the conventional morality of everybody and nobody and live by the values that you choose.

    The autonomous, MGTOW man who breaks free of the herd, who breaks free of the predictable uniformity of the masses (“the masses” are people who go along with conventional customs and norms thoughtlessly); the person who breaks free of customary morality and creates his own morality through his personal competency to make promises and keep them … this person has risen above the common morality and is “‘supermoral’” or a “sovereign individual,” Nietzsche pronounces, someone who resembles only himself, for whom there is no adequate measure other than himself … in short, the man of the personal, long, and independent will” (116b).  This is the noble, and thus free individual.  He is superior to all (lesser animals) who are unable to bind themselves by promising.

              The man who is competent to promise has gained freedom in the sense of having power over his life, power to control the circumstances around himself, power even over nature.       Because he is free from the influence of cultural values (values proffered by TV and popular culture and vigorously promoted by the big three powerbrokers of customary morality—big business, big government, and big religion), the morally responsible man makes his decisions based on his own free will as his “standard of value” (116c).  He honors others who are like himself, who know they are superior because they make promises only rarely, with caution and good judgement and somewhat reticently, and thus who disdains those who make promises at the drop of a hat and who break them as easily with a glib “I’m sorry” that rolls off their lips with the same ease as the meaningless promise.  For these “lean and empty jackasses,” Nietzsche says, the noble and free person “will have the heel of his foot ready.”

    The “privilege” of being this kind of proud man, this responsible man, becomes second nature (i.e., habitual), like an “instinct” is second nature.  This instinct that is the result of being a responsible man (i.e., a noble man, superior man, self-controlled man, an in-charge-of-one’s-future mand, disinterested, dispassionate, not swayed by mere emotion but moved by a deep feeling of self-confidence and mastery over oneself and one’s world, beyond the reach of fate, answerable to no one, MGTOW all the way…), this core instinct of such a person is called conscience (116d).

    – 3 –

    The conscience of the noble person has taken a long time to form, Nietzsche claims.  It is a strange thing, uncommon.  What is conscience?  Conscience is the ability to “guarantee oneself with all due pride, and also at the same time to say yes to oneself…” i.e., to be competent to promise with self-assurance, which is the power of memory.  In pre-historic times people did not make promises.  Even now, young people need to be taught to make and keep promises.  This is the same as saying that one must develop memory.

    The development of memory was historically thought to need a painful experience in order to make what was supposed to be remembered stick: “only that which never stops hurting remains in his memory.”  Mnemonics, a system of remembering which associates the thing to be remembered with a negative experience that is not easily forgotten (the tedium of endless repetition, for example) was the old-school approach.  Perhaps negative things even today are a reminder of this old approach to remembering.  The heaviness of the past is remembered in all “seriousness.”  Perhaps all forms of horror and cruelty can be traced to this demand to remember, the way punishment associates pain with transgression so as not to forget.  Perhaps this is what asceticism is all about, like yoga and transcendental meditation, Nietzsche muses, a process of using difficult methods to keep in mind certain ideas while forgetting others.  Here Nietzsche seems to be talking about memory as a collective phenomenon of mankind and not just individual memories which reflect the collective.

    – 4 –

    The collective memory power of a people, their relative place on the scale of nobility, could be determined by how memory and forgetfulness were manifested in their culture.  Strict penal laws indicate a low power of memory; a person’s word in this culture isn’t worth a plugged nickel.  Here Nietzsche is criticizing the Germany of his time for being irresponsible, commoners lacking nobility and sovereignty.

    The Germans had a hard time breeding themselves a memory, Nietzsche argues, breeding a conscience, the competency of responsibility, as is evidenced by the severe means they use to help themselves learn to remember, i.e., be responsible before the law.  Nietzsche seems to be saying here that society is built on the power of memory, the power or competency of promising, i.e., responsibility or nobility, the way of the truly autonomous person.  The ability to remember allows us not only to make promises but also to attain reason; for without memory we could not reason.  Alas, developing memory is painful, like developing a conscience, the consciousness of sin.  The development of the consciousness of sin, bad conscience, seems to be a stage along the way toward the development of responsibility, or an aberration of this process.

    – 5 –

    How did bad conscience, the consciousness of sin, come into the world?  The genealogists of morals are no help (those who wish to show the origin of ethics or moral responsibility in transcendental values of Good and Evil) because they are only focused on what is happening at present and have no sense of the past, no memory of the past, no ‘second sight’ (which is what is required for an understanding of ethics).  These don’t know the truth; they are moral philosophers caught up in the herd mentality of forgetfulness.

              The ‘ought’ of morality is derived, not from some otherworldly God or abstract first principle, but from the concrete and naturalistic idea of owing someone something.  Punishment is developed out of retaliation, a systematized form of retaliation (equal to the crime), and not out of some abstract notion of freedom.  In the same way, Nietzsche sees that memory or responsibility is not something commanded from on high, but which is the result of a natural process.  Nietzsche was against any form of extrinsic, transcendental authority if it interfered with the self-assertion of the natural sovereign individual, whether this interference came in the form of a vengeful God, the threat of karma, cultural values, or any other form of authoritarian suppression of the sovereign individual’s exercise of personal moral power, which would try to diminish the ultimate value of the free or noble (responsible) individual.  The highest value for a MGTOW is to get beyond all values to where he is the creator of his own values through the competency of making promises.  This is what Nietzsche calls the transvaluation or revaluation of all values, a kind of taking your life into your own hands and abiding by only the rules you establish for yourself, while avoiding the short-sighted interference of lesser mortals who are still in thrall to conventional morality sleepwalking through life.  The Sovereign Individual is above the conventional law because he is the origin and creator of a higher law for himself.  When we can truly make and keep promises, we do not need the laws established by others.  The word of the MGTOW sovereign individual is his bond.  End of story.

  • MGTOW Evolution: The Deluded Animal and What is Coming to Replace It

    The romantic ideal of erotic love in our society—what I call The Myth of Romantic Love (MORL)—is an unachievable ideal.  It is a recipe for failure.  What forces would construct a myth, a fable that is so toxic?  Perhaps we may find an answer if we look at who benefits from this impossible ideal—big business, big government, big religion and, leaning on these three pillars of conventionalism, women.  Men who have come under the influence of MORL are doomed.  Their lives will surely be undone.  Hope the catastrophe wakes them up!

    The mesmerized masses of people sleepwalking through lives of narrow self-interest are in a state of ‘blissful’ ignorance.  What they think is happening, what they tell themselves is happening, is not what is actually happening.  As Nietzsche put it succinctly: “All common people lie.”  As long as you are invested in the outcome of your seeing, you won’t see clearly what is happening.  And it just gets worse from there.

      When you look phenomenologically at what is happening, opening your heart and mind to seeing it without prejudice or fear, seeing what is happening as it naturally unfolds of its own accord, you soon see that people are generally ignorant about what is truly happening with themselves and in their lives, glossing over their lack of self-awareness with conventional platitudes, false beliefs and values about which they lack understanding.  They are like robots. They sleepwalk through a fog of misguided beliefs and values every day, feeling strongly that everyday reality is clear, comprehensible, and straightforwardly given.  They whisper assuredly to themselves that God is in His heaven and all is right with the world.  No need to worry or wonder, life has a clear and comprehensive rule book that simply needs to be followed.   In other words, such people as this, the masses of conventional people, are comfortably and complacently deluded.  But there is a big problem with the false comfort of their delusion.

    When the impoverished, conventional, TV-driven, digitally enhanced lives of the masses don’t work out as they hoped; when, by an unexpected turn of events they fall into the pit of depression, disillusionment, self-doubt and despair, the deluded masses have no framework for understanding how to deal with unexpected upheaval, disillusionment or grief, and they do not know what to do to alleviate it.  Must be “bad karma” or God’s justified punishment for my sins, they tell themselves.  Must be bad luck.  It surely can’t be my fault, not my responsibility.  They assure and re-assure themselves, looking for approval from others to forestall any guilt.  And so, they suffer at their own hand without knowing it, without ever having a clue that they are pulling the rug out from under themselves, that they are their own worst enemies.

    Humans have finally achieved the dubious ability to delude themselves.  What difference does it make to be such a deluded animal, one who thinks it knows, believes it knows, when, in fact, it doesn’t have a clue as to what is happening?  Behold the deluded animal, fully capable of deceiving itself without letting itself know that it is doing so.  The most dangerous animal that ever lived.

    Have we really evolved as a species?  There is no conclusive evidence to support the theory of evolution with absolute certitude.  There is no clear and definitive link between species, for example, no certain proof that something greater can ‘evolve’ from something less, that natural selection and random mutations could ever produce rationality, consciousness and self-consciousness, value, life itself. I don’t think so.  That an ill-defined engine called “evolution” could ever produce such rarefied elements as these seems unlikely.  Perhaps it is not so much that humans or any animals or species “evolved” as it is that the whole Earth has ‘evolved’ taking everything along with it, producing everything as a kind of afterthought from the future to the now.

    What, then, might be the new generation of animal that Earth will have engendered look like, the post-delusional animal?  Surely, it will not be anything that we can see right off.  We can’t even see ourselves or see what is happening right in front of us.  Forget about seeing what is coming.  It seems more likely that the new, post-delusional animal that Earth might serve up will arrive unseen among us.  Perhaps it has already arrived.  Those stuck in the perceptual framework of conventionality will certainly not be able to see the end of delusional storytelling and the new beginning.  It will not be like us.  It will replace us before we know what is happening.  Perhaps it has already replaced us from the future in an evolution that has already been accomplished before it has played itself out.  One can hope that it will bring a new way of seeing, a new perspective, a new hope.

    What will it take for you to be there, to be ready?  Here is what I think it will take.  Above all other requirements, it will take a letting-go of the old way, detachment from the comfortable way, the familiar way, the conventional way of everybody and nobody, the way of striving and contending to be the same as but better than everyone else, always figuring, plotting and scheming, grasping and clawing at ghosts of delusional self-importance, manipulating and controlling others to get what you want, wanting others to see things your way, to validate you.  Let go of all that and you will be well-started on the journey called going-your-own-way.

    But who is willing to let go enough to make that happen?  Who is daring enough?  Free enough?  Mad enough?

  • Men Who Need Women For Masculinity Validation Are Doomed. MGTOW is the Antidote

    Photo: P. Ree and F. Nietzsche submit to be draft animals in the service of Lou Salome

    Men who need women for masculinity validation are doomed to a life of emotional slavery and personality degradation.

    How do you know if you are such a man? Here’s how. If a woman makes you feel a heightened sense of self-esteem, self-confidence, ambition and drive that is lacking otherwise; if you feel that you could not live without her; if you would do anything for her although she often treats you badly; if she makes you feel like a man some of the time and a shit the rest of the time; if you have fallen helplessly in love with her … then you are such a needful man and you are likely doomed without knowing it!  Some guys find out the hard way.

    Sherrone Moore, the Michigan State football coach who just got fired for having an “inappropriate” relationship with a female underling is a perfect example of a man doomed by his strongly felt need to have his masculinity validated by a woman.  He was emotionally addicted to the young woman with whom he was having an affair.  He had given himself up to her power over him.  His relinquishment of his power to her was his downfall.  He was smitten unto derangement, totally hooked on her! You can always tell how desperately hooked on a woman a man is after he gets dumped by her.  True to form, Moore hit that wall and then made the very bad worse and worse. 

    His emotional enslavement to his assistant coach, his abject need for the validation of his masculinity from her, became disgustingly clear after he got fired when he threatened to kill himself as a way of punishing her for ratting to the university, saying it would be her fault that he did it. Oh, excuse me while I gag.  

    Suicide as a way of punishing others is the simpering passive aggressive threat of a lost soul, a doomed soul, the floundering of a powerless cuck.  On the other side, her complaint to the university, knowing that it would totally ruin the man’s life while saving her ass, shows the depth of her uncaring vitriol—as the house of cards they built together came crashing down on him.

    How is it that men become helplessly, emotionally and ontologically dependent on women for ‘masculinity validation’?

    Some might say that Sherrone shouldn’t have gotten romantically involved with her in the first place since she was his assistant, his subordinate.  But that is a naïve viewpoint and a fruitless argument.  The idea that there are not going to be love affairs between bosses and subordinates is unrealistic. It happens. Always has, always will.  C’mon, Sherrone’s girlfriend there is a grown woman who wants to be equal.  Okay then, man-up, woman!  Making it seem like he took advantage of her is pure bullshit.  It’s the proverbial pot calling the kettle black.  When are women going to start taking responsibility for their actions?

    If you look closely (i.e., truthfully), in fact, you will see how she made it happen.  She decided to seduce her boss, thus making the extramarital relationship possible.  The instigation, the solicitation of the woman is essential. He could not have had an affair with her without her wanting it and without her making it happen. 

    He was a wedlock-fatigued, emotionally needy black coach with a wife and three kids.  She was a cute young blond.  When she batted her eyelashes at him, he didn’t stand a chance because he was needy and vulnerable.  I don’t know what his married life was like, but the fact that he was having the affair at all suggests that his marriage was not satisfying his need for masculinity validation.  So, he went looking elsewhere.

    Most men are putty in the hands of a seductive woman intent on scoring with them.  Monica Lewinsky seduced Bill Clinton.  They make it sound like he was taking unfair advantage of her, but it was actually her that made it happen.  Bill fell (tumbled, crumpled) under Monica’s seductive spell.  She was always the one in charge because Bill was always the one in need.  You would be too if you were married to Hillary. 

    Men don’t have the power to make a sexual relationship happen with a woman on their command.  It helps to be in a position of power, of course.  But even then, the woman is in charge.  The woman has the power to make it happen or not.  And she can always yell “Rape!”—her special anti-male weapon.  The man can do whatever he wants but the decision to have sex will always be up to the woman. The woman is always truly responsible for spreading her legs, but the man, helpless though he is, is always blamed for causing the deed to be done.  Because women are not held accountable for the use and abuse of their earthy, seductive power, they are dangerous for men, toxic.

    Think about poor John the Baptist there in the Bible.  It is the sexy young Salome who brings Herod, the king, under her spell at his birthday party, and drives him into a lust-nut craze.  She dances seductively in front of him, and he is smitten, doomed. He gives her power over himself.  He is so enchanted with her that he blurts out that he will give her anything she wants, half his kingdom.  He will execute an innocent man for her, if she wants.

    Now there is a man who is totally under the sexual power of the woman—a lost soul, doomed, strangled by his unbridled infatuation.  But it is the sexpot and her vicious, serpentine mother, Herodias, who are responsible for the beheading of John the Baptist.

    Even the great sovereign individualist Nietzsche came under the disastrous spell of a young temptress, another Salome, Lou Salome.  Lou was a sexy, rich and well-educated seductive enchantress.  Friedrich really bit the dust on this one.  He goes all out for her, head over heels, proposes marriage numerous times and finally is devastated by her ultimate rejection of him.  Instead, and to make Nietzsche’s emasculation complete, she moves in with his best friend, Paul Ree.  It was like a knee to the crotch. The final blow.

    Salome was the great philosopher’s undoing.  Maybe it is what drove him mad and ultimately killed him.  For all his talk of the Sovereign Individual, he renounced his sovereignty willingly and readily for this globe-trotting, narcissistic Daddy’s girl (see photo above).  How desperately he wanted validation from her!  Lou was always in charge despite all of Nietzsche’s chest-thumping when he was with her.  She wound him up and then casually tossed him away.  But how emotionally vulnerable Nietzsche was!  The great man who had been raised by a series of women was completely vulnerable to the womanly wiles of Salome.  He never recovered from it.  “Going to see a woman?” he would say. “Don’t forget to take your whip!” from Thus Spoke Zarathustra

    One final, personal note. Men who need women for masculinity validation were consistently the kinds of men who ended up in my anger management classes after being arrested for domestic abuse.  For them, deluded as such men are, their anger and violence is always her fault. 

    What they don’t see, what they would come to see in my class, is that they give up their power to the woman because she is like a drug that makes them feel good and then they feel the need to control the power they have given away, and then they get angry when they can’t control her and feel insecure because of the power she wields over them to make them feel good (or bad).  Then the need to control escalates to physical attempts to control her and they end up in my anger management class working to get detached from their need for a woman to validate their masculinity.

    Last word.  It wasn’t that long ago that what we call domestic abuse today was required of the master of the house.  What happened to that sound thinking?  Here’s what happened. The women rebelled and all the pro-feminist men bowed down and castrated themselves, paving the way for the feminist assault on Western culture and beyond. Woe is us!

    It’s about time men started going their own way (MGTOW).

    Remember: If nobody is calling you a misogynist, you are surely not speaking honestly about women in general, and feminists in particular.

  • Monogamous marriage is on life support. Let’s put it out of its misery

              

                  I was raised as a Catholic.  I learned from various sources that there were only two appropriate lifestyles within this framework: monogamous marriage involving a man and a woman or the religious life.  Outside of those two life orientations…well, there was no outside.  Any other lifestyle was unacceptable and “sinful” according to Augustine’s confused idea of concupiscence and original sin. Anyone who didn’t conform would be cut off from God.  Not a place you want to be.

    The two acceptable Catholic lifestyles had sexual ramifications, of course.  Sexual activity was only acceptable within a monogamous marriage between a man and a woman and always had to be open to procreation. Contraception (except for the crazy “rhythm method” that nobody could figure out let alone practice) was forbidden.  The other lifestyle alternative, the religious life of a priest or nun, required sexual celibacy.  Any other forms of sexuality were simply unacceptable, sinful, and to be avoided.

                As a child, I found these alternatives to be stultifying even think about.  They seemed unrealistic and highly questionable as meaningful lifestyle formats.  Motivated by a fear of “going to hell” for all eternity if I did not accept them, however, was a powerful reinforcer. Acquiescence was necessary to avoid guilt.  All in all, the Catholic Christian lifestyle was troubling and would remain troubling for me throughout most of my adulthood until I was able to break free from that anti-human sexual repression.

                Neither God nor the church nor the state “marries” anyone or is needed to create a marriage.  These institutions may be called upon to “witness” a marriage but none are necessary for a marriage to happen.  A marriage ends when the people who entered into it publicly withdraw their commitment and act on that socially and with a permanent intention.  Whether property needs to be divided, official documents need to be signed for the state or the church, or children’s welfare accounted for, is entirely another matter, of some importance, obviously, but the marriage “per se” is over once one or both say that it is over and act on that decision publicly and with a sense of permanence.

                Monogamous marriage—given its high rate of failure in divorce or in staying together in an unfulfilling union for the sake of the kids, security, finances, social acceptance or whatever, should not be the only acceptable lifestyle format other than the celibate religious life.  Among an increasing number of people today, of course, it isn’t.

                Despite all the hype and virtue signaling, monogamous relationships are the breeding ground of possessiveness, suspicion, lack of trust, fear, heartbreak, jealousy, dependency, and other forms of unhappiness.  Polygyny, polyandry, “open” marriage, polyamory (whether heterosexual, homosexual, or non-sexual) or any other consensual arrangements that meet the needs of the committing participants to the marriage, can be meaningful lifestyle orientations for those who choose them.  They should be socially supported without penalty.

                Given the high rate of failure and consequent suffering resulting from the high rate of failure of monogamous marriage, especially when predicated upon the Myth of Romantic Love (MORL). Here is what that looks like: fall madly and helplessly in love, get engaged, get married, have children, grandchildren, become best friends and enduring passionate lovers, effective life partners, and live happily ever after. This is basically a man trap. Not surprising that people are choosing not to get married.  Instead of traditional marriage, young people are experimenting  with alternatives to monogamy and celibacy.  That is a good and necessary thing, and about time.  Why should anyone stay stuck with a lifestyle format that is successful less than half the time?  Would you buy a car that only started half the time?

                Procreation is not the primary or exclusive purpose of marriage.  It need not be a part of a successful marriage at all.  From the fact that male and female genitals make it possible to procreate, it does not necessarily follow that this is their primary or only purpose, as natural law theorists such as Thomas Aquinas have argued, since this fails to account for Christine Gudorf’s compelling argument re the clitoris: that the clitoris is a sexual appendage which is not required for procreation and seems only to have been created by a beneficent God for the purpose of producing pleasure.  What did Aquinas know about the clitoris? Why would God create the clitoris if the genitals were designed solely for procreation?  Thus, it seems to me that homosexual marriage and non-sexual marriage, or other forms of non-procreative marriage geared to the pleasure and self-fulfillment of the marriage partners, may be meaningful and beneficial lifestyles for marriage partners, if they can manage it against the conventional backlash and persecution that may follow.

                Human beings are thoroughly sexual from start to finish.  Being sexed is not an accidental quality added to a naturally occurring sexless human being. It is not an attribute of being human. Sexuality is essential to what it means to be human.  An asexual human being, that is, a human being who is not at all sexual, is unimaginable and unthinkable.  Even human beings who do not engage in sexual arousal or who have lost all or substantial parts of their genitals, are nevertheless sexual and can never become truly “neutral.”  You cannot sexually neutralize a human being.

                In the same way that it is simply good to exist rather than not to exist, it is also good to be sexual.  Perhaps a more provocative way of stating that is to assert that all sexuality is good.  Of course, it is difficult to separate “sexuality in itself” from this or that sexual action.  Sexually molesting someone, for example, is morally reprehensible, but it is bad not because it is sexual but because it is a molestation and molesting or coercion of any kind is always and everywhere wrongful.  And the action is perhaps more wrong because it is sexual, but the sexual part itself is not the wrong part.

                Bottom line. Human sexuality is an integral part of human spirituality.  Human spirituality means understanding the purpose of life to be a goal of some kind that transcends the three-dimensional material world. Such spiritual practices would necessarily have to involve some sexual dimension.  Let’s open the door to think about mysticism and sexuality, sexuality in religious ritual, sexuality as sacrament and prayer, sexuality as a practical path to achieving oneness with God, an approach to sexuality requiring an accompanying change of attitude, intentionality, ritual structuring, trying new things, consciousness expansion, stepping fearlessly into the unknown, etc.

                Who has the balls for such a daring adventure?

  • How Saint Augustine Screwed Up Western Sexual Consciousness and How to Fix it with Seminal Kung Fu

    “Sexual energy is one of the most abundant gifts given to us by nature, yet most people casually toss it away without realizing the full value of its treasure.” Mantak Chia

    Augustinian Sexuality

    Sexual consciousness in the West since the 5th century has been heavily influenced by Augustine of Hippo’s idea of Original Sin and the concupiscence which, he believed, follows from it.

    Original Sin is the idea that a pristine and innocent human nature was corrupted when Adam and Eve disobeyed God in the Garden of Paradise and ate the forbidden fruit, as depicted in the Old Testament story in Genesis.  Now conscious of good and evil, according to Augustine’s account, the couple noticed their nakedness and were ashamed. They succumbed to sexual lust because they were no longer able to control their desire for sexual gratification since they had lost their original perfections, including immortality, and were now subject to lustful concupiscence.

                Concupiscence is the vulnerability of the descendants of Adam and Eve to feel helplessly pulled or inclined toward deviancy and sin, especially sexual sins.  Sin, most simply understood, is separation from God.  Augustine tells us that he, himself, was torn by a concupiscence which he could not control rationally and willfully in his younger days.  He felt driven by lust, as he describes in his mid-life spiritual autobiography, Confessions.  But I don’t think concupiscence was the cause of his overwhelming and obsessive sexual desires, as he came to believe.  He was a man of flesh and blood and his persistent and inordinate struggles with sex, insofar as they were over and beyond the norm for a young man his age, were more likely the psychological result of adverse conditioning from his parents and his dysfunctional family experience than the fantasized and projected outcome of Eve’s falling for the temptation of the evil serpent.  And there certainly was dysfunction in Augustine’s family of origin.

                Before his famous conversion that would lead to him becoming Bishop of Hippo, Augustine describes himself as a slave to sensuality and lust.  He couldn’t understand why he was unable to control his sexual reactions.  He couldn’t stop thinking about sex.  Being a little obsessive about sex is normal for a male adolescent during puberty, certainly not unusual, even if it becomes somewhat obsessive and uncontrollable.  For Augustine, however, such normal sexual desire seems clearly to have been exacerbated by other psycho-social, familial factors.

                Psychologically, Augustine was emotionally stuck between his strong desire for the sensual fulfillment of sexual love and affection, on the one hand, and, on the other, his frustration about not being able to have control of and mastery over the arousal of sexual desire in himself.  How did Augustine get into this neurotic condition of being a slave to sexual lust?  Here is one possible explanation based on the evidence that Augustine himself shares with his readers.

                Augustine’s mom and dad did not have the best love relationship.  His dad, Patricius, was a worldly man who was supposedly abusive to his wife.  His mom, Monica, eighteen years younger than her husband, was from a Christian family and was herself devoutly religious.  Given these differences in age and religion, it is not surprising that there were contention and conflict between Patricius and Monica, conflict that Monica did her best to steer clear of, demonstrating her clever resourcefulness and her willfulness. Consequently, it is not hard to imagine that Augustine’s mom was not getting her emotional needs met by her husband. It would not be unusual or uncommon in such a situation for her to fall into a triangulated relationship with her son.  Such a family diagnosis syncs well with Augustine’s own report of his early childhood and youth and his relation to his parents in his Confessions.

                Augustine was Monica’s first child.  He was highly intelligent, personable, and attractive.  Augustine’s dad died when he was sixteen, leaving him more vulnerable to his mom’s emotional influence and leaving her more dependent on her eldest son.  Not only would it be natural for Monica to focus on her son to meet some of her needs for love and affection, but also to ratify the rightness of her religious beliefs and her way of life over  the pagan ways of Patricius.  The unfortunate result for the child in this type of triangulated family situation is the deprivation of unconditional love that a child would normally get from his parents if they were truly in love with one another and fulfilled in that love.  That was not Augustine’s situation. Thus, the marital conflict between Monica and Patricius undermined the possibility of Augustine experiencing unconditional parental love, an outcome consistent with family triangulation theory since you cannot love someone unconditionally while you are using them surreptitiously to fulfill your needs, laying the groundwork for an overvaluation of the sexual love relation that marked Augustine’s adolescence.

                Monica’s particular and self-fulfilling love for her son was certainly not unconditional.  Her actions had mixed motives, among which were her own emotional needs for love and affection, which, of course, is not an abnormal need in itself.  She would necessarily have represented to herself that her devoted actions were all for the good of her son.  But the genuine, caring do-gooder and the selfish manipulator can be hard to distinguish in practice, even within oneself.  

                But listen closely to what Augustine had to say about his meddling mother following him to Milan, after he tried to ditch her, and who, when she did catch up with him, promptly sent his deeply beloved mistress and mother of his son, Adeodatus, back to Africa because she was low-born and not good enough for her son:

    “The woman with whom I was in the habit of sleeping was torn from my side on the grounds of being an impediment to my marriage, and my heart, which clung to her, was wounded and broken and dripping blood.  She had returned to Africa after having made a vow to you [God] that she would never go to bed with another man, and she had left with me the natural son I had had by her.  But I, in my misery, could not follow the example of a woman.  I had two years to wait until I could have the girl to whom I was engaged [Monica had arranged a marriage for her son with a 13-year-old girl], and I could not bear the delay.  So, since I was not so much a lover of marriage as a slave to lust, I found another woman for myself….  Nor was the wound healed which had been made by the cutting off of my previous mistress.  It burned, it hurt intensely, and then it festered, and if the pain became duller, it became more desperate” (Confessions VI, 15).

                It seems reasonable to at least consider the theory that Monica, perhaps unwittingly, used her son and manipulated him (lovingly, of course) to fulfill her own personal emotional and social needs.  The net result of Monica’s positioning of herself in such a fashion in her son’s life is that Augustine was left desiring the unconditional love he didn’t get naturally from his parents.  And perhaps that is why he became obsessively focused on love and the desire for love, the need for love that he felt so keenly but which he experienced as unbridled lust.  It wasn’t only carnal pleasures that he was seeking in the fleshpots of Carthage.  He was neurotically and unconsciously searching for the unconditional love he didn’t get from his parents.  Naturally, he was not able to find what he was looking for in his contingent love conquests and mistresses from the lower classes.  The love he found there, though physically satisfying, was never enough.  Given his unquenchable obsession and frustration with sex, along with the persistent nagging of his mother, Augustine would finally find what he was looking for in a love relationship with a transcendent God and a lifelong celibate commitment to his beloved “Holy Mother” the Church.  What he was unable to get from the woman he loved, he was able to get from this projection of mom onto the church.  That alone, sealed with a vow of celibacy, gave him mastery and control over his obsessive sexual desires, a victory over concupiscence.

                Finally, Augustine is able to resolve his obsessive-compulsive need for love by concluding that his inability to control his sexual desire and his sexual organ is not his personal fault.  Rather, it is the fault of Original Sin and the consequent fall into sexual lust of Adam and Eve that Augustine labels “concupiscence”—a convenient, rather obvious, explanatory rationalization.  Augustine comes to believe that concupiscence, the proclivity to sin, especially sexual sin, is passed on to all human beings through sexual intercourse, specifically, the sexual pleasure involved.  The only realistic antidote to this situation for Augustine, the only force strong enough to control his unquenchable sexual desire, is complete abstinence, since, after his conversion, Augustine clings to the unnatural idea that all sex outside marriage and all sex that is not open to procreation is sinful and wrong because it cuts us off from God and must be avoided since there are many ways to go wrong sexually but only one narrow way to go right. Thus, Augustine converts to Christianity and embraces celibacy which, whatever else it may or may not represent, is certainly an effective compensation reaction for his sexual obsession and, simultaneously, the fulfillment of his desire for unconditional love.  For Augustine, his ‘conversion’ to the priestly life is like hitting the jackpot.

                But what, exactly, is wrong about sex that is not open to procreation?  According to Augustine, it is a sin against nature because the natural and thus correct use of sex is exclusively for procreation, an idea that will be ratified and carried forward by Thomas Aquinas and his natural law perspective in the 13th century, and is still going strong today, affecting the lives of millions, maybe billions of Christians and which has influenced sexual mores and norms generally in the West.  All other sex, other than sex that is open to procreation in marriage, is deviation and sin.  Masturbation would be the quintessential unnatural vice since it is absolutely closed off to procreation, a sin that Aquinas thinks is more vicious than rape.

                It is well-known that Augustine’s pessimistic views about sexuality, women, marriage, and the human condition have been and continue to be hugely influential for the development of Western sexual consciousness.  Augustine’s neurotic ideas are still dominant factors in everyday conventional life. Sexual pessimism is the default conventional Western attitude about sex, despite the banal, superficial representation of sex in media, the arts, etc.  The mainstay of Augustine’s orientation is that sexual energy and sexual practice must be constrained, repressed, and controlled because all sexuality, except for a very narrow range of permissible sex, is evil and will lead to the degradation of the person since human nature itself is rendered fundamentally corrupt by Original Sin.  And that repression of sexuality in the Western tradition will have many negative consequences for individuals and for Western society as a whole, many victims and lots of collateral damage.

                In her formidable and well-researched critique of Catholic Christian sexuality, Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, the theologian and Church scholar, Uta Ranke-Heinemann, asserts that“… for Augustine, the convert, procreation became the only goal and purpose of marriage, while he saw pleasure as an evil. ‘I am convinced,’ Augustine wrote, ‘that nothing turns the spirit of man away from the heights more than the caresses of woman and those movements of the body, without which a man cannot possess his wife.’” (Soliloquies I, 10)

                Ranke-Heinemann continues to point to Augustine’s rather obvious pessimistic misogyny and naturalistic view of sexuality in his formulation of Original Sin and its concupiscent consequences for human nature:

    “Augustine was the great creator of the Christian image of God, the world, and humanity that is still widely accepted today.  He took the contempt for sex that saturates the work of the Church Fathers, both before him and in his own day, and to it he added a new factor:  A personal and theological sexual anxiety.  Augustine connected the transmission of original sin, which plays so great a role in his system of redemption, with the pleasure of sexual intercourse.  For him original sin means eternal death, damnation for everyone who has not been redeemed by God’s grace….” (76)

    Ranke-Heinemann thinks it is perfectly clear that Augustine saw the pleasure of sex as the very source of original sin.  She says that “Augustine thought that when Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate the forbidden fruit of Paradise, ‘they were ashamed and covered their sexual parts with fig leaves.’  He concludes from this that ‘this is where it comes from.”  He means that what they were both trying to hide was the place whence the first sin is transmitted” (Sermons 151,8).

                Regarding the fact that he is unable to control his lust or his sexual organ, Augustine places the blame for this squarely on the concupiscence which followed from the sin of Eve and Adam and thus distances himself from taking personal responsibility for this ‘fault’.  Ranke-Heinemann points to a most revealing passage where Augustine asks: “But whence comes this unique situation of the sexual organs, that they are not ‘moved by the will,’ but ‘excited by lust’?  And answers himself: ‘…the retribution for disobedience is simply disobedience itself….’  Punishment for the Fall was first exacted in the realm of sexuality.  The attitude of the Church’s celibate hierarchy is that the locus par excellence of sin is sex, a view based on Augustine’s pleasure-hating fantasies.” (90)  Unfortunately, Western sexual consciousness has been the victim of those “pleasure-hating” fantasies now for almost two centuries.

                In sum and ratifying my previous family triangulation analysis, according to Ranke-Heinemann, “Augustine was the father of a fifteen-hundred-year-long anxiety about sex and an enduring hostility to it.  He dramatizes the fear of sexual pleasure, equating pleasure with perdition in such a way that anyone who tries to follow his train of thought will have the sense of being trapped in a nightmare.” (78)

    Wilhelm Reich: The Evil of Sexual Repression and How to Overcome it 

                In the The Function of the Orgasm, Wilhelm Reichgoes to the heart of the main thesis of the book when he claims that“the immediate cause of many devastating diseases can be traced to the fact that man is the sole species which does not fulfill the natural law of sexuality.”  Sexual suppression causes disease.  But what does Reich mean by the natural law of sexuality?  This can be understood more clearly through the lens of what Reich calls “orgastic potency.”  According to Reich, “psychic health depends upon orgastic potency, i.e., upon the degree to which one can surrender to and experience the climax of excitation in the natural sexual act.  It is founded upon the healthy character attitude of the individual’s capacity for love.  Psychic illnesses are the result of a disturbance of the natural ability to love.  In the case of orgastic impotence, from which the overwhelming majority of people suffer, damming-up of biological energy occurs and becomes the source of irrational actions.”

                According to Reich, “the essential requirement to cure psychic disturbances is the re-establishment of the natural capacity for love.  It is dependent upon social as well as psychic conditions.” Reich’s idea regarding the failure of orgastic potency among the masses goes along with my belief that big government, big business, and big religion all seek to control the masses through the control and constraint of sexual energy in one way or another, an idea to which Reich points when he asserts that “compulsive morality and pathological sexuality go hand in hand.”  That certainly seems to be the case with Augustine, and many after him, much to their detriment and ours, if Reich is correct.

                Reich goes on to say that “it is banal and sounds rather hackneyed, but I maintain that every person who has succeeded in preserving a certain amount of naturalness knows this: those who are psychically ill need but one thing—complete and repeated genital gratification” (emphasis added).

                Reich is very clear about the centrally important place of the surrendering aspect of “orgastic potency” for good health both psychically and physically, more important than mere erectile or ejaculative potency.  He puts it this way: “Erective and ejaculative potency are merely indispensable preconditions for orgastic potency.  Orgastic potency is the capacity to surrender to the flow of biological energy, free of any inhibitions; the capacity to discharge completely the dammed-up sexual excitation through involuntary, pleasurable convulsions of the body.  Not a single neurotic is orgastically potent, and the character structures of the overwhelming majority of men and women are neurotic.” This claim is backed up by clinical experience, Reich asserts.  He states that “clinical experience shows that, as a result of universal sexual suppression, men and women have lost the ability to experience complete surrender (“orgastic potency”) to the involuntary and and overwhelming immersion of sexual desire.” In short, Reich firmly believes, following Freud, that “every form of neurosis has a genital disturbance which corresponds to it.”  And that disturbance is due to the imposition of socio-economical demands on the natural expression of sexual desires. “Sexual repression,” Reich claims, “is of a socio-economic and not of a biological origin.”  This is a very clear outcome of the Industrial Revolution, how it has impacted the geography of the human body..

    Sexual suppression has the function of making man amenable to authority, just as the castration of stallions and bulls has the function of producing willing draft animals.  No one had thought about the devastating consequences of psychic castration, and no one can predict how human society will cope with them.

    According to Reich’s analysis, there is ample evidence to support the contention that “the cultural upheavals of the twentieth century” are determined by mankind’s struggle to reclaim the natural laws of sexuality, as Reich makes clear in his analysis of the three layers of the human psyche:

    The patriarchal, authoritarian era of human history has attempted to hold the asocial impulses in check by means of compulsive moralistic prohibitions.  It is in this way that civilized man, if he can indeed be called civilized, developed a psychic structure consisting of three layers.  On the surface, he wears an artificial mask of self-control, compulsive insincere politeness, and pseudo-sociality.  This mask conceals the second layer, the Freudian ‘unconscious’, in which sadism, avarice, lasciviousness, envy, perversions of all kinds, etc., are held in check without, however, being deprived of the slightest amount of energy.  This second layer is the artificial product of a sex-negating culture and is usually experienced consciously as a gaping inner emptiness and desolation.  Beneath it, in the depth, natural sociality and sexuality, spontaneous joy in work, the capacity for love, exist and operate.  This third and deepest layer…is feared.  It is at variance with every aspect of authoritarian education and control.  At the same time, it is the only real hope man has of one day mastering social misery.” (234)

    Sex-negating cultures are carried along by sex-negating religions, aided and abetted by big business and big government “in the disruption of the unity of body feeling by sexual suppression, and in the continual longing to re-establish contact with oneself and with the world, lies the root of all sex-negating religions.  ‘God’ is the mysticized idea of the vegetative harmony between self and nature.  From this viewpoint, religion can be reconciled with natural science only if God personifies the natural laws and man is included in the natural process,” an idea with a hint of Spinozan pantheism coming to the surface and which thus implicates and characterizes some Eastern approaches to sexuality, such as can be found in the Taoist approach to human sexuality.

     Taoist Sexuality

                Reflections in this section are based primarily on two works by Mantak and Maneewan Chia: Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy and  Healing Love Through the Tao: Cultivating             Female Sexual Energy

                The Taoist understanding and practice of sexuality is substantially different than the prevailing Western model. Whereas Western consciousness, thanks to Augustine’s sexual pessimism, looks at sexuality as those actions that are rationally and mechanically necessary for procreation, Taoism views human sexuality as one of the most essential life energies, one that should be cultured and developed, refined and savored. 

                The Taoists call sexual energy jing or ching.  Jing is infused with qi or chi.  Chi is the most elemental and pervasive of all life energy and is in all human actions according to the harmonic principles of yin/yang.  Chi and jing are especially concentrated in semen, so semen is not to be wasted meaninglessly, purposelessly.  Seminal retention, sex without typical orgasmic ejaculation, especially for men, is a centrally important aspect of sexual practice in the Taoist tradition so that chi energy is amplified by jing energy during sex and is not lost through ejaculatory orgasm.

                “The Tao or the ‘Way’ for every human being,” Chia asserts, “is to creatively transform their energy over the course of a lifetime back to its original state of harmonious balance.” The “refining of one’s awareness of sexual energy—with or without a partner—is one of the simplest ways for humans to return to pure consciousness and experience the deepest rhythms of life.”

                Here is a summary of the three fundamental tenets of the Taoist approach to sex, according to Chia, an approach to sexual practice dating back 8000 years or more.

    1. Conservation of sexual energy is the first principle.  “Taoists accept sexual love as natural and healthy but know the momentary pleasure of genital orgasm with ejaculation is superficial compared to the profound ecstasy possible when love is enjoyed without the loss of the powerful male seed.”

    2. Transformation of sexual energy is the second principle of cultivation.  During sexual arousal, the “ching” or sexual essence stored in the testicles expands rapidly and causes some energy to naturally rise to higher centers in the heart, brain, glands, and nervous system.  This upward movement is cut short by ejaculation outward, so most men never become aware of the full power of their sexuality.  The Taoist method perfects this upward transformation of sex energy by opening subtle channels from the genitals up the spine to the head and back down the spine to the navel” in what Chia calls the Microcosmic Orbit.

    3.  Balancing the polarity of female-male (yin-yang) forces is the third principle.  Balancing this core sexual polarity in a couple or within oneself is true depth psychology, as it nourishes man and woman and the solo practitioner at their innermost root.

                         *          *          *          *

                I first became aware of the Taoist publications of Mantak Chia in 1987 while studying for my doctorate in philosophy.  Among his numerous works, I was particularly interested in Taoist Secrets of Love: Cultivating Male Sexual Energy, discussed briefly above, since I had long been interested in Eastern philosophy generally, and Taoist spiritual practice specifically.  Chia details and illustrates esoteric but down-to-earth sexual practices based on ancient Chinese philosophy in the Taoist tradition in a clear and lucid style—one of the first English-language texts to make these Taoist sexual practices and concrete spiritual disciplines readily available to Western readers.

    The basic idea of the sexual practice for men presented in the text, as noted above, involves the arousal of sexual energy (“ching Chi”), the withholding of this energy through seminal retention (non-ejaculation), and the assimilation and circulation of the aroused energy in the “microcosmic orbit”—a fundamental spiritual pathway of energy that circulates in and around the body, along with lesser ‘circuits’ radiating out from the primary orbit.

    The aroused sexual energy can also be ‘stored’ for future ‘use’ and can be deployed in various ways for healing, spiritual growth and development, and to help yourself and others in various practical ways.  The energy can also be used for accomplishing specific things in the world and for sexual ‘magik’—ends Chia dismisses as subordinate to the true purpose of the practice. 

    The benefits of this practice are claimed by Chia to be robust good health of mind, heart, and body; spiritual growth and development; peace and tranquility, happiness, longevity, and, ultimately, immortality.   When I read about this sexual practice back in 1987, I was excited by the possibility of an alternative to the repressive, disease engendering Western representation and repression of sexuality inherited from Augustine’s pessimism, if even a fraction of the Taoist claims were true.  I found the logic of seminal retention to be of special interest.

    Intrigued by Chia’s clear presentation of the ancient Chinese ideas, I began the practice of working with the various exercises he describes for becoming a proficient and caring lover, including numerous meditative exercises geared to mastering the process of seminal Kung Fu, as well as physical and emotional exercises.  There is a lot more to it than one might think at first glance since the sexual relation for humans engages every aspect of one’s life, involving many subtle energies with  subordinate, connective energies.  Human beings are essentially sexual.  Sex is not something added on to a neutral human being.  The repressive denial of sexuality is a denial and repression of our very humanity.  To become proficient at the practice of seminal Kung Fu requires that one get his or her whole life in order, as effective engagement with the practice will demand this, a lifetime project.  You can’t cheat the Way.  No parts will function well unless they are integrated properly in the whole.

    After more than thirty years of sometimes occasional and sometimes sustained practice, mostly without a partner, I believe I have made some progress, although in no way do I think I have mastered or am even close to mastering this ancient art and science of lovemaking in its manifold subtleties and connected, as it is, to the whole psycho-sexual-social domain.

    For the most part, Chia describes the process from a practice-perspective that involves a loving and committed couple, which would be the ideal, I suppose, although the practice of seminal retention and contemplative circulation and deployment of aroused sexual energy can also be accomplished just as well alone, as Chia states.  Okay, maybe not ‘just as well’ … anyway, what does that mean, as if the solo and dual practices can be effectively compared, which they cannot be and should not be.  It is all one and the same practice.  It is great if you can manage to have a partner in this practice, but dual practice is a very challenging part of the ideal, especially since romantic love relationships are already a challenge for Westerners due to reasons having nothing to do with the Taoist practice of seminal Kung Fu, as such, and a lot more to do with Augustinian pessimism.  But it becomes very clear when engaging  in the Taoist practice of seminal retention that you must get your relational life straight, as a whole, free from the value-laden depiction of sexuality proffered by the current conventional culture, eliminating all bias and pretense before you will be able to make any real progress with Taoist sexuality.

    For example, how could spiritual development happen through sexual energy if you are lying to or attempting to manipulate or control or fake it in any way with your lover?  Not possible.  And the same is true for the whole of my life since it is the whole of me alone which engages the practice.  I must be in harmony and sync in all areas of my life: personal, practical, emotional, social, spiritual, intellectual, etc., in accordance with the values I live by.  The practice itself will require that of you if you are to progress in the practice to its higher possibilities.

    One thing I have found about the practice of seminal Kung Fu is that it requires that I come out in the open about myself, no hiding in delusion and pretense. That would also be true for a couple.  It is crucial that there be a relationship of genuine love, care, and respect between the partners who would engage in this love-generating practice, requiring openness, forthrightness, and a kind of rare transparency and harmony such that they become one in their life and lovemaking, generating and circulating the love energy through the exceptional experience of what Chia calls the Valley Orgasm rather than the typical ejaculatory orgasm that drives the Western approach.

    In many ways, relationship is a fundamental part of the practice.  Getting love relationships straight in your life is always a challenge.  I know.  I have found it exceedingly difficult to do and have consequently relied more on solo practice for my development over the years, which has its own challenges.  This has led me into a prolonged, personal examination and exploration of romantic/sexual/love relationships in my life and in the society in which I live. 

    Partners engaging in this practice would have to be on the same wavelength regarding the central importance of the practice itself.  For example, making love in this practice is done frequently and slowly and can necessitate a fair amount of time from the daily or weekly schedule, which should revolve around the practice and not the other way around.  The practice becomes a major pathway to spiritual development. Partners would have to find time for the practice—while still dealing with all of the other time-demanding issues and interests of life.  This can be more challenging than it sounds on a daily basis, long-term.  Maintaining a vigorous sexual relationship for the purpose of spiritual development with a partner is difficult to accomplish in our society because of the widespread conventionality of sexual values and beliefs generated in a culture of materialism, consumerism, secularism, etc. and guided by beliefs stemming from the work of theologians like Augustine and Aquinas.

    There are many ways to be led astray and go wrong in the Taoist practice of love, just as there are many ways for love relationships to go wrong under any circumstances.  It has been hard enough trying to find and maintain a genuine love relationship, but on top of that, to find a partner who would be interested in and capable of engaging this esoteric practice and be able and willing to engage it effectively.  To find such a partner would be a gift of great value. “Life is simple and natural if you keep it that way….   For example, to balance the sexual relationship you basically need to know that woman is water and has the power to regulate man, who is fire.  On a deeper level, you would discover that man has both fire and water in his body and can achieve a perfect internal balance by harmonizing his fire (thinking mind) with his own water (sperm fluid, or sexual “waters”).”