Posts Tagged → Taoism

Effortless Alchemy – On Semen Retention

Semen retention is a beautiful practice—one with the potential to enhance every area of a man’s life: material, spiritual, and, yes, sexual.

All spiritual traditions of consequence recognize this, though they may speak in symbols. From the Daoist Golden Age – where “all men lived in harmony with nature and transmuted their energy as naturally as you or I draw breath” – to the esoteric heart of the early church, silenced by those who claimed to inherit Christ.

Each point toward a human sexuality that is both far more and far less than what has saturated the modern zeitgeist.

This is not a manifesto. It is a trace of my evolution—a path I share for those who struggled as I once did to break old ways of being and become something more.

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How I Cured My Major Depressive Disorder

Mental illness is a phantom.

A phantom conjured by ceding your power, and living out of integrity with your body and soul.

And, I remember how those words would have landed when I was kneeling in the abyss with the taste of iron in my mouth.

My younger self never expected – nor wanted – to live past thirty.

It looks like I did, and not for lack of trying.

From the ages of 13 to 28 I killed myself every day with my thoughts and addictions… with knives wielded in the spirit of hatred upon my flesh.

Eventually, I was no longer satisfied by the petty, and I carved myself with finality.

I survived.

In the shame-filled twilight that followed I made a decision.

I’m not living like this anymore.

I don’t.

And no one needs to.

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Burn Like Water

Be like water.

Do, or do not.

It’s been said a thousand ways by a thousand faces; from Yoda to Pooh, and Jesus too. If there is a mystic who didn’t… he (or she) probably isn’t.

For many years I’ve lived with that verse of the Tao t’Ching as a guiding constellation and held it before me as a shield against those who thought I was taking poor care of myself.

Emulating water has gifted me a life that was unimaginable to the version of me that took a knife to his own throat. These extra years have been filled with miraculous impossibility, adventure, and epic romance.

On the flip side, it has encouraged passivity, a seeming(?) lack of ambition, a certain level of self-ignorance, and what I’ve been told is called “spiritual bypassing.”

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