Why is it that the fire so often dies out in the bedroom?
Why are many couples living together more like siblings rather than lovers?
In this blog you will learn about the tantric concept of Feminine and Masculine Essence, Masculine and Feminine Shields and the importance of Sexual Polarity. This Informative Tantric Tools blog, is based on the work of David Deida, and here I quote, adapt and summarize freely from his works.
The Masculine and the Feminine
Regardless of our gender, whether we live in a woman’s or a man’s body, we all have a feminine and a masculine side to us.
The masculine in us is consciousness embodied in deep presence. It is about vision and clarity. The masculine heart is most open when it is aligned with a mission to advance freedom, whether financial, artistic or spiritual. The masculine opens deepest when facing death or when opening as freedom beyond all things. The masculine craves unchanging nothingness and grows from challenge and by realizing emptiness, boundless consciousness and being the unchanging, ever-present witness to life.
Our feminine energy is light, life force and form. It is alive as love and showing as shape, texture, relationships. The feminine heart is moved most by all that is alive, by the coming and going and living flow of energy, nature, emotions, music, food, love… The feminine is radiant, alive, enlivening, relaxing and moving. Feminine spiritual growth is about opening to receive all deep into your heart. It grows by realizing an identity as ever-changing light, radiant love and love-fullness of all life and every moment.
Sexual Essence
The proportion of feminine and masculine energy differs per person. Some are extremely masculine, some are extremely feminine, some are neutral and most are somewhere in between. Our sexual essence has to do with the extent to which we sexually identify more with the feminine or the masculine. Most men and some women identify sexually more with masculine energy. Most women and some men identify sexually more with feminine energy. A few people have a balanced sexual essence.
If you have a more masculine essence you are mostly motivated by direction, purpose and seeking freedom in the midst of challenges. You will be sexually attracted to a more feminine lover who is radiant, fresh, juicy, full of energy, who is willing to surrender to your direction and yearning to open and receive your deep and unwavering loving presence. You will feel irresistibly drawn to feminine energy, as it gets you out of your head and into your body.
If you have a more feminine essence you are the force of life, the power of Mother Nature and you want to shine as love’s light. You will be sexually attracted to a masculine lover with deep integrity who sees your true beauty and is capable of taking you and ravishing you with loving intensity, depth and total presence. You feel irresistibly drawn masculine energy, as it demands your deep surrender that opens you more than you can open yourself.
Whatever your sexual essence, it is inextricably linked to your deepest Essence and the gifts you are here to bring into the world. What you most want to give, whether it is clarity of purpose or radiance of love, is what the world (and your lover) wants to receive from you.
Is your sexual essence more feminine, masculine or neutral? We all have both energies in us; we all enjoy both free consciousness and bright love. But unless you belong to the relatively small group with a balanced sexual essence, deep down in you core, you will have a preference for one or the other. If you have to choose, sexually, you either want to ravish or be ravished. This seems pretty straightforward. However, under the influence of the ego, and in response to our upbringing and social conditioning, we lose touch with our sexual Essence. Most of us therefore have alternating feminine and masculine shields of protection around our deepest sexuality.
Feminine and Masculine Shields
What do these shields look like? Let us take a child born with a feminine sexual essence as an example. If you are born with a feminine sexual essence, you long to open and be seen as the beautiful love and light that you are. As a child, you tend to prefer all the traditional ‘girly’ toys and games, and adorning your light with glittering clothes and sparkly accessories. But as you grow up, you may receive the message that it is more important to ‘become something’ than to be pretty, so you decide that you are going to become the ‘smart girl’ instead. You start identifying more with your masculine sense of direction, creating a masculine shield around your feminine essence. Deep down you still want to be praised for your feminine light, but since you get more attention for your direction and resolve, you embody those masculine qualities.
As you get into puberty, and those hormones get going, you may create another feminine shield on top of the masculine one in an attempt to attract the attention of the boys. You get married, and then you get divorced and decide that you do not need any man in your life after all, that you can do it all by yourself, with the help of another masculine shield. When these shields are in place, you are still expressing your masculine and feminine gifts and you are experiencing a certain degree of masculine freedom and feminine love-light. But deep down, you are always longing for something more, because you know in your heart that your deepest (sexual) essence is not being recognized and you are unable to give your fullest gifts to the world.
Sexual Polarity
One of the problems of today’s world is that we have confused social gender neutrality with neutrality in intimate relationships. Nobody is saying that women and men should not be treated with the same respect. Nobody is doubting or debating that men and women should have equal opportunities in the work place and in society at large. But transferring these ideals to the intimate moments in our bedrooms may not be the best idea ever.
Or what would you prefer?
If you have a more feminine sexual essence, would you like your partner to… … ask you what you want from him, checking with you if you agree with what he is doing or telling you that whatever you want is OK with him? (neutrality: destroying polarity) … throw you on the bed, pin you down, look deep into your eyes and tell you in his husky voice how irresistibly beautiful you are and that he is going to f*ck you until you scream from pleasure? (explicit masculine direction: creating polarity)
If you have a more masculine essence, would you like your partner to… … lie down in bed in her striped, comfortable flannel pyjama’s, responding to your invite that sex would be fine with her, showing you her pleasure in a contained, contented sigh? (neutrality: destroying polarity) … dress up in sexy lingerie, dance for you, showing off her delicious body, lying down on the bed, pushing her breasts together and opening her legs, touching herself, breathlessly inviting you in? (explicit feminine radiance: creating polarity) In other words, neutrality may be great at work, but in the bedroom, it is just plain boring. If you want fireworks, or even just a functioning sex life, you need polarity.
Start re-kindling the fire…
So, now that you know all this, what can you actually do to bring back the spark into your love life? From this perspective, a lot of the work revolves around (restoring) sexual polarity. To start with, this could mean that you take time (re-)discover your (own) Sexual Essence, learn to lower your sexual shields and begin to nourish those aspects that have been left without attention.
So, for example, if you have a feminine sexual essence yearning to surrender, but you focus too much the life of a career-driven power-woman, you may want to invest more time in feminine practices, such as massage, dancing, spending time in nature etc. If you, on the other hand, have a masculine sexual essence, but find yourself floating around without any real purpose, you will want to focus more of your efforts on things like meditation and finding your centre and direction.
There are, of course many, many more Tantric Tools that can be used for the benefit of your sex life. Keep an eye on this blog or subscribe to the Tantric Candy Newsletter for more ways to bring back the juiciness into your bedroom. If you want to know more this very instance, I can whole-heartedly recommend the work of David Deida.
XXX, Charlene
P.S. If you are looking for ways to keep the spark alive in your relationship, or if you are interested in exploring open relationships, The Good Wife short story collection and the tantric novel Free To Love are guaranteed to provide you with plenty of inspiration.