BY DAVEN LEE

It is a heartbreaking truth that sometimes the most powerful and transformative sexual experiences occur in relationships that are also unsustainable in intimacy and commitment. These lovers open a profound door in us and then suddenly we are alone. We find ourselves in the midst of the huge mystery and power of our sexuality, having glimpsed our deepest truth. The shock of abandonment can feel like some dark joke from the universe.

I have come to believe this isn’t a dark trick of the fates, but rather is our soul being drawn forth into the sacrality and singularity of our sexual calling. There are truths of our sexual soul that can only be discovered alone. We must be thrown back on ourselves, our erotic door having been blown open, and face a choice: to try to stuff everything back in and wait for the perfect lover to appear so we can live again, or to take ourselves by the hand, bow to our deepest self and to the Divine, and become the lover we long for—for ourselves. We can step onto the solo path of sacred sex.

It’s not easy to find guidance for this path. The only notion our culture has about it is masturbation, a word whose Latin roots mean “to defile or debase with the hand.” There seems to be an unspoken agreement that self-pleasure is second-best, a subtly humiliating practice of the lonely. Even in modern sacred sexuality we may find no better. A recent book about Daoist sexuality reports that masturbation is a “waste”; the “old wives’ tales of excessive masturbation leading to blindness, memory loss, and other mental problems are upheld in Chinese medicine”; and “another problem . . . is that no exchange occurs—there is no sharing, no communion with another.” This last one sounds a little convincing, with that emphasis on the spiritual, even religious, idea of communion. And we all agree that sharing is much better than its opposite, selfishness.

In other words, this form of attention to ourselves is still laced with shame, even within sacred sexuality. In the absence of a partner, our body is with us always, available and beautiful, and yet we can slowly begin to abandon our sexuality while we long for a lover. What if we accepted our sexuality—our sensitivity to touch, our arousal, our erotic imaginations, our physical and emotional responses—as a sacred gift designed to keep us healthy, open our hearts, give us pleasure, align us with our truth, and bring us into communion with our understanding of the Divine?

In Chinese medicine, one of the three “treasures,” or forms of chi (energy) that we are gifted with is the Jing. Jing is our individual essence, our procreative energy: it is synonymous with our sex—from a sexy thought, to a bubbly sensation in our belly, to the full response of our genitals. Revering, protecting, and cultivating our Jing is considered a sacred responsibility for both optimal health and fulfilling our destiny. Practices like diet, qigong, and conscious lovemaking cultivate our Jing—as does lovemaking with ourselves. So it is through this lens that masturbation is transformed into a devotional practice of self-cultivation.

Self-cultivation. Whisper that a few times and imagine what it might feel like to touch yourself by that name. Self-cultivation denotes a spiritual commitment to refining ourselves on all levels. Just as with sacred lovemaking, it requires time, physical discipline, practice, and incredible tenderness—toward the self. We gain self-knowledge, exploring self-intimacy, subtlety, and sensitivity. We support our health by stimulating essential meridians and pressure points (the genitals of both sexes contain pressure points for all the major yin organs in the body as well as the glands). We learn to consciously integrate the power and intensity of sexual energy. And it nourishes our Heart chi, resulting in that opposite of selfishness: a generous heart. Self-cultivation is a prayer of gratitude for Being.

How do we transform masturbation into self-cultivation? We consecrate a space, calling in our chosen Divine archetypes, ancestors, and energies. We bow in, to ourselves and them. We begin to touch ourselves as we would the most cherished lover. We follow our deepest sensations and longings, blessing each as they arise. When we engage our sexuality with the Divine, we move beyond the limits of human relationship and open ourselves to vast potential. We have an opportunity to take the lid off of our experience and our exploration in a way that may be unavailable with a partner. We can completely set aside self-consciousness and the bounds of convention and culture, and invite our sex to lead us to places that are truly our individual (and universal) birthright as spiritual beings. We can shed our stories and our history, becoming more naked than we thought possible. This relationship with ourselves and the Divine is not more than, less than, or instead of having a lover. It becomes fulfilling and worthy in and of itself.

This merging with our sexual soul profoundly aligns us with our deepest truths. As our practice of self-cultivation deepens, our sexuality comes out of the shadows and emanates into all aspects of our life. We experience our sex as a unique and holy expression of the universal creative life force. Then when we join with a lover again, we meet them with our wholeness, sharing with them the sanctified beauty of our sexual soul and inviting them to do the same.

Daven Lee practices and teaches MogaDao Sacred Daoist Sexuality, qigong, and yoga, and runs the business LoveandLeche.com. DaoistWoman.com

BY DAVEN LEE

What mystery and beauty we women have within our bodies! What surprising and messy expressions our sexuality holds! Female ejaculation, known in Sacred Daoist Sexuality as “bringing down the waters,” is one of these gifts. And like so many of our native feminine powers, it has been repressed, mocked, and misunderstood. It is also remembered, celebrated, and written about, and has become a competitive edge that we measure ourselves against.

Whew.

We all have the anatomy for this response, just as we all have the ability to be natural and sexually free. Our sex—our vagina and vulva—is filled with erectile tissue, the same tissue that enables men’s penises to swell and stiffen. We have this tissue in our labia and clitoris and just inside our vaginas, at the bottom, against the wall between the vagina and the anus, and at the top, surrounding our urethra. The erectile tissue surrounding the urethra has become famously known as the “G-spot.” It is in fact a tube of tissue that swells with arousal, pleasure, and stimulation, becoming ever more sensitive. At a certain point in arousal, these erectile tissues contract, excreting fluids, and voilá: the waters. Sometimes this contraction is strong, creating a surprising and delightful fountain. Other times it is subtle and almost constant, like a bubbling spring. Unlike men, who have a recovery period post-ejaculation, a woman’s waters are abundant and endlessly renewable during pleasure and lovemaking.

The Daoists teach that there are three kinds of waters that come from three different places: the clitoris, the Jade Dome (the G-spot), and the High Dome (the cervix and uterus). Each water is of different significance medicinally, spiritually, and ecstatically. The release of our waters exemplifies the yin: yielding, surrendering, the chthonic, the source and the return. The Daoists also believe that our fluids contain our essence, the code of our individual destiny.

While this understanding of a woman’s sexual response—that she can release fluid during arousal, orgasm, and ecstasy has become more common knowledge, liberating many women—those who haven’t experienced it can feel “less than,” or that there is one more thing they must now do to be “good in bed.”

Do we need to release our waters in order to have a deep sexual experience? In a word, no. Descending the waters is not some new standard that women must live up to or a new trick they must learn to impress a lover. Like so many things sexual, our conditioning, stress, confusion, and sometimes just the blameless ignorance of our sexual potential has prevented us from experiencing it—or perhaps even realizing that we already do experience it. Books that discuss this topic are careful to say that ejaculation is not necessary for good sex, orgasms, etc., and not to feel inadequate if you have not had this experience. All this is so very true.

And yet, as a woman following a path from the ancestors toward what is possible, and what in antiquity was considered holy about our sexuality, I encourage women to open themselves to this potential that every female body anatomically and spiritually holds: the sacredness of our deepest sexual and ecstatic responses. I want to be a whispering voice that suggests there is astonishing experience and beauty to be had, and that to seek it is to step onto a path of the yin, necessarily turning away from the yang imposition onto our sexuality, and the pressures and untruths of our current culture. It is an erotic baptism for ourselves and our lovers, an invitation to make love with our essence. It is a blessing of the deepest yin as described in the Dao de Jing:

The Valley Spirit never dies.
It is called the Mysterious Female.

The entrance to the Mysterious Female
Is called the root of Heaven and Earth,

Endless flow
Of inexhaustible energy.

And so . . . how?

What follows is not a prescription of some very specific practices that can help you experience your waters. What I offer is more of a way to pray, with your body, and to orient yourself, like a compass, toward this beauty.

The first step is not to create a goal of achieving female ejaculation. The first step is to soften into your body’s sexual responses.

In your daily life, allow yourself to cry a little more often. Instead of clamping down on emotion as it arises, let your tears and feelings flow.

Become acquainted with your fluids, those that come through your sex as well as tears and saliva.

Let go the constraints of time on your pleasure.

Massage your belly, releasing the tension and holding, and feel the sensuality and power there.

Penetrate and stimulate yourself internally and deeply, feeling the fullness and swelling of your sex in arousal, and the increasing sensation and sensitivity that comes with it.

Allow yourself to be “messy” in love: give yourself over to the irrational, emotional, confusing, and mysterious experience of yourself in the throes of desire, need, and pleasure and recognize that what issues forth from you is a blessing of the yin.

Choose lovers who recognize this as well and who can call this out from you, hosting you as you cross over into the unknown.

Then, when you find yourself on that precipice, about to crest into a mysterious and unpredictable ecstatic chaos, whisper to yourself yes . . . let go of the reins . . . receive your body’s deepest responses . . . and let the waters flow as they will.

Daven Lee lives in Santa Fe, where she practices and teaches MogaDao Sacred Daoist Sexuality, qigong, and yoga. DaoistWoman.com