Why I Don’t Fuck Spiritual Guys

PRE-ORDER MY BOOK, 

FROM 6 TO 9 AND BEYOND

I like fucking all kinds of people.

But when it comes to “spiritual guys,” I just can’t fuck ‘em. Or, more precisely, they can’t fuck me.

It’s not that I don’t fuck spiritual guys from lack of wanting. I don’t fuck spiritual guys because they don’t know how and aren’t willing to be fucked themselves.

Let's not confuse a "spiritual guy" with a mature, fully integrated spiritual man; so I'll define what I mean by “spiritual guy.”

It has little to do with whether or not he believes in God and a lot more to do with what he thinks about his own humanity. Many “spiritual guys” come with a belief that they are “better than” their physical selves and should “rise above” their baser instincts.

I often see this kind of man in “conscious communities.” He’s all about being “heart-centered” and having “slow, tantric sex.” He walks around with a glassy stare, never gets angry, talks in a creepy whisper and greets every hot woman he meets with the ubiquitous “spiritual guy” pick-up line, “Namaste.”

He professes that money is evil, believes that commitment robs him of his enlightenment and prefers eye-gazing over hair-pulling. He is a participant in a kind of “spiritual sexism” that we often see in “conscious communities,” i.e. reaching for the ethereal stillness (masculine) while rejecting the material chaos (feminine).

While I have nothing against heart-centeredness and eye-gazing, a man who prioritizes “higher” virtues ends up disconnecting himself from his lower three chakras and committing the equivalent of energetic castration.

Imagine a car with no engine or gas. No matter how “loving,” “nice” and “sweet” it looks on the outside, without the raw material to fuel it, the car won’t run.

However “spiritual guys,” tend to demonize and negate their own “fuel.” Then they use the name of tantra as a tool to bypass the “nasty” work of being human and try to get laid by pretending that their cocks have magical, healing “spiritual” powers.

Traditional tantra teachings believe that everything is fuel for awakening. Looking at tantra from an etymological perspective, tan means expansion and tra means liberation. (UPDATE: A Sanskrit scholar has informed me that tra is actually closer to the word "means;" so tantra is literally "a means of expansion").

So rather than excluding and rejecting the coarser parts of ourselves, we expand and liberate ourselves through alchemy, converting megalomania (third chakra), lust (second chakra) and anger (first chakra) into purpose, desire and power, respectively.

In order for a man to fuck, he himself must be willing to be soul-fucked by Spirit. He must fall on the ground in love with surrender. He must expose and accept every part of himself while in connection with his partner. Only then can he hold a woman in total presence and approval of everything she throws at him. The combination of compassion and animal-power is what pins a woman down and penetrates her to her aching core.

To be fair, a more “worldly” man in our society, i.e. one who is open in the lower chakras and closed in the upper, cannot truly fuck either. His lack of emotional connection, unwillingness to speak vulnerably and dependency on linear scripts of relating prevent him from deeply feeling a woman and earning her trust. His material merits may win him points in the immediate “pick-up” game, but he will lose out in the long-term.

Not to say that every sexual encounter needs to be a step towards a long-term relationship. This is where we women often to lie about their own desire, using the old excuse “I’m waiting for “the one” as a shield against feeling the magnitude of animal hunger that lives within us.

The feminine fable about “the one” is what makes men more apt to don the “spiritual guy” mask. He thinks if he acts humble and nice and safe and “conscious,” he can win the prize (her pussy). But ultimately he is cheating himself (and women) of an opportunity for awakening.

By acknowledging our shame, rage, greed, lust, victimhood, hatred and addictions, we get to know and love the human parts of ourselves and learn to work with these pieces as allies, rather than having these shadow bits secretly run the show and hijack our power.

When we courageously allow our soul-fucked selves to show up sexually, it invites the people we love to expose their blessed and wounded parts and sets the stage for trust, connection and intimacy. Then we come to know the true essence of tantra: that there really is no separation and that everything—divinity, humanity, ordinary, mystery, light, dark, earth, heaven—is a vital and necessary ingredient on the spiritual path.

Article adapted from its original appearance in Corset Magazine

Want to stay connected? Follow me on Facebook and Twitter.

And just so we don't forget to have a sense of humor
about this whole crazy journey called life ;)

Legend of the South Seas (written 5/3/2009)

Venice Beach, CA. Photo Copyright Candice Holdorf

Legend of the South Seas

(written 5/3/2009)

My heart hums in a secret volcano

Hidden patiently dormant

Midway between Helena and Espiritu Santo

Teetering on the tip of tectonic bliss

A loner by nature

(She never fit in with Pangea)

She calls the ring of fire

Home

Enigmatic magma rumbles

Beneath her crest

Luring worthy sailors

To slip onto her shores

Map-less, they must brave her currents

(No easy sextant for celestial navigation)

Caressing her whispering zephyrs

Riding her blistering squalls

‘Til they wash up famished

On her full, wet sands

Igniting her belly ablaze

Swollen earth morphs to enveloping lava

And in unrivaled eruptions

(Pele is so jealous!)

Impassioned ashes descend

Searing skin-to-skin, soul-to-soul

Immortalizing their bodies

In cinder-splendor

A pacific monument

To her tempestuous love 

Which Donkey Should I Take?

Stroking for 15 minutes vs. tantric sex for hours? Which is “better?”

In a recent FB post, Laurie Handlers, respected teacher and Butterfly Workshop leader, wrote “OneTaste is not really the forefront of the slow sex movement. It's nice to say that and position themselves as that, but really, come on now....stroking for 15 minutes is not the same as Tantric sex for hours and hours now is it?”

First, I absolutely adore Laurie, have taken her workshops (which have done a lot for me) and will continue to recommend them to people for whom they are a good fit. And I love that she tells it like she sees it. I admire someone who is not afraid to speak her mind.

So here I am, a OneTaste-certified coach going “Hmmm…?” I mean, I can see her point: tantra has been around for millennia and yes, feeling good for hours does sound like a better offer than for just 15 minutes. But when I looked closer I could see something deeper within her words. She presents two arguments—One: OneTaste is not really the forefront of the Slow Sex movement and Two: stroking for 15 minutes is not the same as tantric sex for hours.

I want to look at part two first. She’s right: stroking for 15 minutes is NOT the same as tantric sex for hours. Both are two completely different kinds of experiences. But to imply that one is “better” than the other seems limiting. It’s like asking, “Which is better: a breathing meditation or a hatha yoga class?” They both serve a purpose, get you in touch with your body and help to root you in the present moment. What’s so lovely about the 15-minute stroking practice (OM) is that it is a manageable, bite-sized chunk of time for most of us to build up, stroke by stroke, to the place where we can experience the kind of sex we want. Most of us in this culture push for some outrageous goal, i.e. sex for hours, get frustrated when our expectations are not met, cast blame and walk away. OR, we have a mind-blowing experience, freak out about how much we’ve opened and then run away in embarrassment. OM is a simple, sustainable practice that will translate to a deeper, richer sexual experience. So rather than pitting the two experiences against each other, why not expand and include? Do we not do a breathing meditation within the experience of a hatha yoga class? Why not have OM AND tantric sex (or whatever kind of sex you want)?

Which brings me to the first point she makes: OneTaste is not really the forefront of the Slow Sex movement. Yes, OM (and all its incarnations) have been practiced long before OneTaste and tantra has certainly been around to teach us about mindful sexuality for some time. What makes OneTaste unique for me is that it is consciously reaching out to people who have never even considered that an orgasm could last for more than a few seconds as well as puts the idea of female pleasure front and center of sexual/spiritual awakening. For those in the sacred sexual community, this may seem like old news, but to most people living in non-urban locales, this idea is rather revolutionary and can be very confronting. To introduce a practice in a safe, clean, well-lit environment that you can do in your own home with your own partner is a new approach expanding sexuality. The fact that OM and OneTaste were featured in a NY Times bestseller (Tim Ferriss' "The 4-Hour Body") is extraordinary. To return to my yoga analogy: yes, yoga existed for many years, but it wasn’t until Krishnamacharya (and his students, Iyengar, K. Pattabhi Jois and Desikachar, to name a few) brought the practice outside of its birthplace did we see a world-wide explosion of yoga. A small change within the DNA of one individual is mutation. A small change within the DNA of many is evolution.

True, OneTaste may not be the path for some. Then again, tantra may not be the path for some. My advice: Research. Experiment. Play. Test it out. Draw a hypothesis and then scrap it and try it out again. Remember: there are many donkeys that will take you to the top of the mountain, but the view looks exactly the same no matter how you got there.

Photo copyright Candice Holdorf. Donkeys in Petra, Jordan.