Paths from Retention

[thelerner]

I was hoping to get more thoughts on retention. I see three possible paths for retention. First sexually active (though non ejaculatory ofcourse) that is very yang. It gives energy, hormonally and energetically. Fail and you overheat and overload.

 

The other path is purification. Non ejaculating and diminishing all sexual thoughts and desires. From diet and Cold showers to visits to the local morgue to witness the fleshs degradations. Is this more yin, contemplative. Fail and you go into a mental ping state, hate the opposate sex, become colder.

 

Then the third path, inbetween, where you get neither extreme.

 

Does my analogy make any sense?

 

Michael

[spyrelx]

From my understanding/bias:

 

In between is more or less the average man. He ejaculates when he has sex, other times he doesn't. This is neither a spiritual path or a path of health.

 

"Purification" is contrary to daoism. It doesn't "purify" anything. Rather it unnaturally seeks to stifle a normal and primary urge. Rather than purification, it causes stagnation and pollution of vital energy.

 

Sexually Active is proper daoism as I understand it. The organs are exercised. The channells are opened. Conserved and transformed energy is used to the ultimate advantage of the organism.

[sean]

Intriguing post Michael. Lately I've been seeing the key issue in sexual alchemy as being how open the spinal and perhaps front channels are, and how prepared the system is to handle sexual energy moving upward, catalyzing increased internal purification, instead of shooting outward to generate new physical and/or astral life. So I see the two approaches you presented more as techniques than paths, both being useful means depending on the alchemy of your situation. The purification/transformation process of upward moving sexual fluids can be more blissful and grounding when done at the proper pace and more painful and disorienting when done too rapidly. (My braces analogy) Sexually active alchemy probably accelerates the cleansing process, like putting water on the stove, but only if your channels are open. Otherwise it's just retention and all this energy is just backing up in your balls for no useful purpose (actually the opposite, it's the cultivation of chaotic, pent up aggression IMO). Avoiding sexual stimulation, physically or even via excessive fantasies, pictures, etc. I believe calms down the cleansing process a bit. Taking the kettle off the stove. Brining in some more yin, as you said. So if you start getting burned by the spiritual fires you are igniting, you don't retain. You don't throw gas on the fire. Simple.

 

This actually leads me why I don't really buy into the whole "when you ejaculate you are losing months/years of progress" idea. The point of retention IMHO is to provide energy for spiritual transformation. Period. (PS - The point of spiritual transformation IMHO is to Awaken to Happiness as your True Self). If you are cultivating properly, you are transmuting all of the time. And if the proper channels are open(ing), when you have sex and don't come, those fluids are transformed and used for purification right then and there. I haven't even gotten to Yogani's lectures on Tantra yet, but he uses a car analogy a lot so I will borrow it for a minute. (BTW - I have no idea if he would agree with my theory here at all). The way I see it is that having sex with an open(ing) spinal channel is like hitting the gas on a fuel injected car. The sexual fluid is going to get injected right into the engine and burnt up completely in that moment to increase your overall speed. This is in proportion to how open your channels (read: fuel injection tube) are. If you are going too fast (or your channels are just so closed the fuel doesn't even have a path to an engine at all) you always have this safety valve to fall back on that ejects the fuel out of you. And I think it should also be obvious that this fuel-ejection process is not just a safety valve. Ejaculation can ignite new physical life in the female womb and/or also create "astral entities" shaped from your psychic impression at the moment of climax. This external alchemy of semen is not discussed by the Easterns much at all (to my knowledge) but is a big piece of inner Western occult traditions.

 

My two cents. Which I hold more humbly than I've written perhaps, I just get sick of writing IMHO, the way I see it, I think, etc. over and over.

 

 

Sean.