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When most people think of the word "sex" they think of copulation, not Life. They think of what happens for a specific period of time with specific physical organs, (possibly including a little foreplay and afterplay), and they limit sex to that.

With my students I do not often speak in detail about specific sexual practices. We have talked generally about an approach to sex, but I have stayed away from specific instruction in Taoist, Buddhist, or Hindu tantric technology. One of the reasons is that the joining of man and woman in genuine sexual communion doesn't need instruction. Academically, if our lives were surrendered to the essential Work we were doing, if our lives were free of the handicap of the cramp, if our lives were not defined by the strategy of survival, the highest forms of sexual communion would flow very naturally from within our relationship as a couple. No instruction would be necessary.

A few years ago there were two books that were very popular for awhile -- one on the use of male sexual energy and one on the use of female sexual energy. Everyone was reading them and getting excited about all the techniques. One of the men in our community was reading the book on female sexuality, and another man asked him about why he was reading that one instead of the one for men. He said something like, "I've learned more from reading this book than I have in years of studying women."

It struck me again how easily seduced we are by techniques, and how unwilling we often are to learn from life itself. That person thought that all of the descriptions of techniques meant something. But the techniques are cool, unreal, mental. It's true that if you read those books and use the techniques you can get a pretty strong buzz on, but that's not the point. A man doesn't need books on sexual energy if all he wants to do is have a bunch of women think he is the best screw they ever had. On the other hand, if a man or a woman is really interested in what sexual energy is and what it means, all those techniques don't amount to much. That is because the use of them will only make you an energy-mechanic-machine. You will be able to manipulate energy very effectively, even brilliantly, and 99% of the people on whom you manipulate it will be wildly impressed. But none of that has anything to do with the transformational possibilities of sex as I'm speaking of it in this book, or with what we are doing in spiritual work together. You can experiment with those kinds of things here and there if you don't miss the point. But, essentially it's all missing the point.

You don't need to know which muscles to clamp, when to breathe in and when to breathe out, when to cross your eyes, and when to put your hands around your partner's neck. You don't need to read the Kama Sutra or the Ananda Rang or The Perfumed Garden.

Can you imagine two Bauls getting ready to have sex -- sitting in front of one another and looking into one another's eyes to get into the mood? No way! When Bauls are ready to do it, they do it. They tackle one another. They go for it. Passion! There is none of this cool shit, none of this working up to it ... none of this staying away from one another, as some Tantric books recommend. If they want to caress, they get in there and caress. They use their hands, their feet, their ears, anything they can use. They don't watch every breath and every thought as the man enters the woman. None of that stuff.

Sex has got to be natural. If you're going to do tantra, it should be spontaneous, natural tantra; and if you love someone deeply enough you will do tantra. The kind of conventional "getting your rocks off" attitude that exists around sex is a function of selfishness. If you are not selfish and your own satisfaction doesn't come first, even if there are subconscious drives, you will discover tantra naturally in your intimate relationships, and in relationships with friends also. Tantra works between friends. You will discover it naturally if you are not selfish in a relationship, although it might take a little while.

What you need is for your life to be free of the strategy of survival (the vast repertoire of ego's attempts to survive as a separate, independent entity, all of which keep one under the illusion of separation from God), in every moment. Then, sexual communion will be the most natural expression of bonded love between mates. "Sex Education" from my viewpoint is essentially about working with denial, confusion, unconsciousness, the cramp, recoil, reactivity -- whatever you call it. If you clear up the obstacles in that domain, you don't need sex education. The essential urge to join in communion and travel through the labyrinth of love between man and woman is completely instinctual. It needs no training.

Man and woman, as polarities in the great universal scheme of things, actually know the way through that labyrinth. You will know the way when nothing stands in between your knowledge (which I refer to as ?Organic Innocence' - a term which characterizes the basic ground of being of all existence; the essential intelligence of being or existence itself as it shows up in particularized forms. For human beings, to function "from Organic Innocence" means to live as the body, because "the body knows," intuitively), and your journeying. All the things that do stand in between are the things that you need to work on.

So, to train yourself in esoteric sexual techniques, in the manipulation of body systems, is putting the cart before the horse. When you have hooked the horse up properly, that's all you need to do. To understand intention is far, far more important than any consideration of specific techniques -- of how to do anything. Sexual energy is alive in life, in being in relationship. Techniques like those in books depersonalize. They turn life into business, genitals into tools, people into mechanics or computer operators. The use of techniques by "sleeping man" (terminology used by Gurdjieff and others to indicate the condition of the unconscious human who has not yet awakened to his work function, or realized his essential condition as being non-separate from God) doesn't help to wake him, but serves to reinforce the principles upon which sleep or habit arises and is sustained. That is very dangerous to one's work.

We don't have to train ourselves. The only thing we have to do is remove the obstacles superimposed upon us as essential beings. When the things we are working on are practiced free of complication and confusion, we will be sensual beings when we need to be. We will be in sexual communion with our partner when that's called for. We will also, in fact, be in sexual communion with nature. No one, no malevolent spirit, has superimposed these things on us. The human condition is the human condition.

The human condition gives us certain challenges, and when we have successfully met those challenges, the rest of it is pure instinct.

The primary challenge, of course, is resolving the strategy of survival so that it ceases to be the autonomous governing factor in our moment-to-moment functioning. You don't follow instinct with your mind. Following instinct is not a matter of seeing signposts ahead of you and knowing which way to go.

Following instinct means being "what is wanted and needed in the moment", that is, being in alignment with the Will of God.

That's all there is to it.

This article is excerpted from The Alchemy of Love and Sex, ?1996, by Lee Lozowick. Reprinted with permission of the publisher, Hohm Press. http://www.hohmpress.com

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About the Author

Lee Lozowick is an American spiritual teacher who has taught thousands of people since 1975, both in the U.S. and Europe. He is also a poet, songwriter, and author of fifteen books of non-fiction, including: Conscious Parenting; The Alchemy of Transformation; and The Alchemy of Love and Sex. Many of his books have been translated. His poetry ranges from rock lyrics to bhakti (devotional) mysticism. Lee is based in northern Arizona and travels yearly to India, France and Germany, where he gives seminars on the subject of spiritual life.

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