Tantric Sex for Men: Making Love a Meditation (18 page)

The Solar Plexus and Emotion

In addition to emotional alarm signals like suddenly feeling paralyzed or disconnected, you can learn to recognize states of emotionality through your solar plexus. Consider this area as a sensor, because here the tensions of emotions can gather and create a lot of discomfort. These tensions try to seek discharge in various ways—through irritation, complaining, nagging, or passing on your frustration to family members or colleagues. When you develop awareness of the solar plexus, the moment someone says something that strikes an uncomfortable chord in you, you will probably notice a response in that part of your body: the sensation of tension or congestion, like having a stone in your stomach, or a hollow, empty, nervous feeling in the stomach. These kinds of body responses let you know that you are emotional and that something unresolved is being triggered. If the solar plexus is free of tension, it allows for unobstructed flow of sexual energy between the genitals and heart. There may be slight feelings of nausea when first relaxing into lovemaking (perhaps more common in woman), but this is nothing to be concerned about. It is a sure sign of the surfacing of old tensions seeking release. Nausea is usually a by-product of the sexual energy expanding, displacing, and cleansing the restricting tensions from the body.

OVERCOMING FEARS CREATED BY LACK OF LOVE

Many people begin experiencing feelings of being separate, wrong, unworthy, or not good enough very early in life, already as young children. We become separate from ourselves, from each other, and from the whole of existence. As we cut off from our pure energy, we also cut off from our love source, and as fear replaces security and joy, a false self gradually develops around us. The fear is due to imprints made by an absence of love in the immediate surroundings (family and parents). It provokes a child into behaving differently in order to try to get approval (or disapproval, through rebellion, where at least some attention is gained) and secure the love so necessary for survival. And so our parents begin to write the script for who we are and how we should behave, and we gradually lose our authenticity.

Emotionality is an unconscious, automatic reaction to a situation or circumstance, like when a switch is flicked off, and light turns to dark. It can even be a learned habit: some people learned to be emotional as young children by mimicking their parents’ behavior. As the years go by, we begin to define ourselves according to our emotions, thinking our emotional part is who we really are. It is as if we are in a movie, and the situation is not actually real. Only the past makes it real. (If we were to wake up one morning without our memory, with no past, what then?) But in spirit and essence we are all interested in love, and to keep love alive, love has to be separated from the unconscious backlog of stored emotions. As we begin to release these old feelings consciously (whenever we notice them arising), pieces of the past get healed.

Toxic Emotions and Conventional Sex

Emotions are extremely toxic and will poison the atmosphere by striking deadly blows at the person we most love. This is a big problem; we unconsciously put all our unresolved feelings onto the person we most love and thereby contaminate the love. We say the most awful things to our partner in an attempt to unburden ourselves of our emotions. Emotional statements stick like glue in the mind and revolve endlessly in the thoughts, long after the fight is over. Did she really mean that? Am I really like that? And then the mind will create more emotions from endlessly rethinking the past. In truth, love cannot withstand too much emotion; it is a delicate and fragile flower that requires awareness to keep it blooming. Love will slowly slip through our fingers when we let emotion have the upper hand.

A big source of emotionality lies hidden in sex. When energy moves downward, as it does in conventional sex with its usual discharge, tension and anxiety are by-products. This is why arguments and dissatisfactions easily follow. Sexual tensions eventually create a subtle overpositive charge in man and a subtle false-positive charge in woman. These falsely acquired charges make woman slightly male and distort her essential female qualities. Man’s essential qualities are also distorted as he becomes a “tough guy.” These accumulating tensions have to be discharged in some fashion, and they are often released through arguing, finding fault with each other, or complaining. When emotions are in the air they easily spawn excitement, which gives rise to the famous fucking-after-a-fight syndrome to heal the rift. But trying to repair the damage through sex and ejaculation/orgasm is a vicious cycle, because through that very same fuck we acquire more charge, which can flare up into emotion at any moment. This explains why, even in the absence of an argument, after a so-called good fuck, a fight can start so easily.

Recent brain research has revealed that chemicals released during a conventional peak orgasm have a separating effect that causes withdrawal and disconnection (see Marnia Robinson’s book
Cupid’s Poisoned Arrow
in Recommended Books). Previously we mentioned a tendency for men and women to withdraw and feel separate after peak orgasms. Now we know that behavior is actually controlled by a chemical event in the brain. Conventional sex ultimately causes separation, not union.

False Female Emotionality

The false charge built up through a misunderstanding about how genitals relate to each other is a big factor in the emotions for which women have become famous. The overcharge, tensions, and stresses present in the system seek release in order to keep the system in some kind of balance. One way they manifest is in the form of overwhelming emotions. Women seem so sensitive, get upset easily and cry, have dramas, and start blaming. This is man’s nightmare! These emotional reactions affect a woman’s equilibrium and her capacity to love and be loved. The tensions can also be reflected in women as various menstrual syndromes or genital disturbances.

Man unknowingly contributes to this. When man has hot sex and ejaculates, he frequently (but not always) deposits some of his sexual/ emotional tension in woman’s body, which she later has to process in some way or other. Woman is unconsciously accumulating stress and tension on a few fronts, which affects her behavior and self-perception, and men’s perception of women.

The Emotion of Jealousy

Jealousy is perhaps the most debilitating and excruciating of emotions. Jealousy is about having the desire to possess and control another person; it is not an expression of love for that person. Jealousy has its roots in comparison, and we are taught to compare ourselves in all kinds of ways, particularly in the sexual sphere. Comparison is a useless activity because each individual is unique and incomparable, and once you truly understand this, jealousy can evaporate. Sex certainly creates jealousy, but jealousy is a secondary thing, so it is not a question of how to get rid of jealousy. It is more a question of loving without conditions. Love that does not control or posses but honors the other’s freedom to live their own life.

GOLDEN RULES FOR GETTING RID OF EMOTION

There are some “golden rules” (elaborated on in
Tantric Love: Feelings versus Emotions;
see Recommended Books and Resources) to help in processing emotion. The very moment you recognize that you are emotional—through the solar plexus, the experience of disconnection, or in whatever other way you recognize your emotion—the first step is to acknowledge it and say aloud to your partner, “I am emotional.” This verbalization instantly brings a touch of relaxation, because at least now your partner knows that you know that you are emotional, which takes the other out of the picture and no longer makes that person responsible for your unhappiness. It is a difficult and challenging step to take (at first), to admit you are emotional by actually saying so, because the ego will be justifying and fighting like crazy, trying to blame the other. But until you take yourself back to yourself and acknowledge the unexpressed past within you, your love life will remain a series of good times followed by bad times.

In such circumstances, having said the three golden words, “I am emotional,” to your partner as gracefully as possible, physically leave the room, adding the words, “I need some time to myself and will return soon.” Close the door gently and go outside or to another room in the house and take some time alone. (Do not drive off and feign that you are abandoning the relationship in that moment—accidents happen.) Now is not switch-off time, but the time to switch on and release, to get in touch with old feelings residing in your system by moving your body. In fact, when emotions get activated the toxins of feelings gone sour move through a layer of connective tissue in the body, called fascia. This explains why sometimes at the onset of an emotional attack you will feel the event in your body very clearly, almost as if a substance with density is swirling through you. (Indeed, fascia does weave dimensionally through the body and from head to toe about five times, connecting the superficial layers with the deepest physical layers.)

To get rid of these emotions, you need to use physical movement to help them move out of the body. Be active in some way, and do whatever you do purposefully; for example, beat a pillow for twenty minutes, bang on a drum, go for a jog, chop some wood, or dig in the garden. Talking gibberish (nonsensical words) also helps to clear emotion. It’s important to be physically active and do what you do with intention and not give in to any inclination to contract and collapse. Surprisingly, when you return to your partner after a bout of physical release you are likely to experience that the feeling of disconnection has diminished, you can make eye contact again, and the distancing “wall” is slowly crumbling to the ground.

If this is not the case, if you feel you are still looking over a half wall, that there’s still some sense of separation, you likely need an additional round of body movement. This sounds almost too simple, but it works. If you need two or three hours, or days, to get over the attack of emotion, then take the time required. As you begin to operate in this way with your emotions, soon the whole process gets faster—the recognition, the acknowledgment, and the burning up of the past.

Being creative in this way certainly beats the alternative option of dragging the emotions around for a few days, miserably wondering what has become of love, until eventually, sleepless nights later, one side breaks down into tears, gives up the fight, and starts to express the feelings lurking behind the emotions. You have experienced this yourself many times, for sure; the very instant one side gives up and starts to express inner feelings, the fight is over. We pick up the remaining threads of love and start again.

You may wonder why it is necessary to separate physically in order to deal with emotions. One of the telltale traits of emotion is that it enjoys discussion and argument, each one trying to convince the other why he or she is right. Emotion is full of ego. If you do stay in each other’s presence when emotionally activated, it is really best if you can speak only about yourself and say, “I feel . . .” This is the most direct way to step out of emotion, by expressing and releasing your deep, hidden feelings. Bring the congestion of emotions from the solar plexus—where it is likely to have formed a knot—up to the heart, and get into your inner feelings for real. Do not make your partner responsible for creating unhappiness in you. Reach behind the emotion and find what is truly happening inside of you, the old buried hurts that have nothing to do with this individual in front of you. She has only been a trigger.

Even if this person is in some way responsible for some of the hurts you carry from the past, the fact that you repressed your deeper feelings at that time and did not express them is really the issue in the present. If feelings had been authentically released at the time, they would not keep bubbling up inside of you. You would have felt a great deal better for having expressed the feelings, even if a particular issue remained unresolved between you. Through expression you release emotions you’ve been dragging around and accumulating year by year. You keep yourself free from the past.

THE ROLE OF EMOTIONS IN SEX

Because of our emotional patterns, as couples we tend to get a bit high on emotions and begin to believe that this intensity is a part of love, and that a good hurling of china is an expression of our love. We once heard Barry Long say that all anger is, in reality, the result of sexual frustration. This certainly gives food for thought, especially in light of all the wars going on around us and how little satisfying sex is being enjoyed on Earth. Men and women have pressures and frustrations associated with conventional orgasm, so they are quite likely to have anger about this as well. Many women feel deep rage toward men for their abusive behavior, a rage that extends beyond the personal to the collective level.

Discharging Emotions through Sex

Very often men use sex to discharge their emotional tension. Since they generally express their real feelings much less readily than women, men often have an overload of unexpressed feelings, along with their accompanying tensions. These cause an “itch” in the system, and a man can start to feel horny and want quick sex, excitement, and discharge in order to balance the system. This type of sex has nothing to do with man’s basic sexual system and how he is designed to operate as the male principle on Earth. Barry Long referred to the hot excitement/ ejaculation style of sex as “emotional sex,” and a demanding or hungry or aggressive penis as an “emotional penis.”

For man to discover his true male qualities he is advised to refrain from using the sexual channel to release emotional tensions. Ejaculation is certainly an extremely pleasurable way to release them, but there are consequences to such discharges. Men need to find alternative ways to release the tensions they accumulate through life in general, which often involves high levels of stress and anxiety, including survival anxiety. Men will benefit enormously from using their legs in regular daily exercise—for example, jogging, gym workouts, ta’i chi, dance, squats, and any kind of stretching—as well as receiving regular deep-tissue massage in order to relax and free tension in the musculature of the legs and feet.