Taoist Sexual Meditation: Connecting Love, Energy and Spirit by Bruce Frantzis
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Taoism is founded on flow. It’s origins are mysterious but the bookish librarian Lao Tzu attained an understanding of flow after working for an Imperial household. In his retirement, he sought to exit civilization. A gatekeeper bade Lao Tzu to write down what he knew. Those writings became the Tao Te Ching. While there is evidence that Taoism is much older than that; that fragments of the Chuang Tzu were available before, Taoism has always been about the flow of life energy. It is no mistake that a human understanding of flow would be split into two energies that are sexualized; yin and yang. Female and male. Taoism gave rise to a host of other practices, from medicine, martial arts, meditation, feng shui, architecture, astrology and so on. All of it connected through these energies. So it’s no mistake that there would be a sexual component to Taoist practice which emphasizes the intermix of energy.
A huge part of Taoist mastery of its technology involves the focus and release of various kinds of energy, so that we can flow with effortless will to a changing and tempestuous context. It seems that enlightenment would be the awakening of meta-energic abilities. In a sense, much of meditation and its machinic practice is like the calibration of various machines to emphasize technical aspects — such as a bit parity check or testing each part of a muscle for its strength and dexterity. Being able to move effortlessly across a given field is analogous to mastery of a musical instrument — so that the practitioner can run across the scales and play various patterns inside outside and upside down. Only in this area, it’s moving energy: releasing and collecting it, focusing and patterning it from yourself to your partner and back. Once the field can be made smooth and awareness is gained though the technology of these techniques is one then ready for a higher plane of existence.
While at first grasp, this may appear to be a matter of various bodily poses, massages and internal awarenesses of focus, this book also talks about how these energies and their attendant blockages are bound karmatically, expressed in energy. The two for Taoism are the same. What we do, what we strive to do and how we effect others largely requires that even out and free up the flow between ourselves and others around us. Not to disturb others as nodes of flow but to compliment them. To interact with them at a mutually beneficial level, the most foundational of which would be this energetic state in which people can interact in terms of energy. The root of this would be at the most intimate, sexual practice — although spoken of in the tradition of Taoist China.
While much of the book is on specific practice and poses, in a way these techniques are beyond the scope of what a book form media can do. Actual practice requires a teacher. So this is a very basic text, much of which is designed in its brief 500 pages, to introduce us to the philosophy of how to contextual what we are doing and why we ought to do it. The how is mentioned but it is less expressible in a book form. Bruce Frantzis is clear and precise. I suppose it’s important to write a book to distribute knowledge but given that much of what he talks about is praxis that requires the guidance of a teacher, I wonder if the purpose of this book is to signal to others to get students more than it is to write a book that could in any way ever be complete unto itself.
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