Taoist alchemy, love and sex

Protectiveness, strength, power, decisiveness, direction, purpose, presence, stability. These are qualities that feminine energy, almost by definition, naturally seeks.

The ideal of Taoism is not to create a watered down grey soup where every individual is a little island of perfectly nice, sanitary internal balance. I see it more like that the world itself, our interactions with others, with nature, with animals, with the sky, the sun, the moon, this is “external” alchemy (external in quotes because the universe is our body one part of which is our individual physical body), and in a sense it’s an infinite game, or if you prefer an infinite dance.

At times, perhaps even for an entire lifetime, there are dancers in this play of human alchemy that are more like fire and other human forms that are more like water, and when they come together an arc of sexual alchemy occurs between them. It’s not fire’s purpose to become half water, or or water’s purpose to become half fire, they each have their own natures. They need at least the principle of the other’s energy for the alchemy of their destiny. And again, not to become the other or half and half, but to fully embody their own true nature (which is both beyond and also fully is their form).

In lovemaking for example, I’m not sure about you, but in my experience, enjoyable lovemaking involves polarities of strongly embodied feminine and masculine principles, principles of water and fire, of reception and penetration. Perhaps these energies occur as “roles” that each partner switches, back and forth, but not in effort to dillute them into one substance.

Perhaps that is why these energies were called fire and water. Obviously the two cannot truly “get along” and fully understand the other. The best we can do is enjoy the dance.