Ecuaciones uniformemente el´ıpticas completamente no li-

flue-tuations that harmonize our emotional, mental and physical bodies.

6. Sperm (Ovarian) Energy: "Ching" is the sexual essence that exists from birth but grows more powerful when fed by other types of chi (food, breath, etc.) Sex essence is the source of all energy available for creative and thinking processes (shien).

7. Spirit Energy: "Shien" is the light behind our personality, the ability to discriminate, human self-awareness. At its purest level, it is our very being.

8. Wu Chi: The emptiness, or void from which all chi energies originate and must return. (Original Chi)

DIAGRAM 4

THE CYCLE OF SUBTLE ENERGY

Wu Chi (Nothingness)

Yang/Heaven Shien, Ching

and Chi Reunite

Ching Chi, Sexual essence underlies all procreation

T'ai Chi (Pure polarity) Yin/Yang duality underlies all existence

Five primordial elements (Fire, water, earth, metal, wood)

Various kinds of Chi energy

Outside Chi energy is converted to Ching Chi inside the body

•

Yin/Earth

Sun

Food ' Water

The goal of Taoists is to cultivate the life energy to the highest level possible, bringing good health and deep fulfillment of the human aspiration for wholeness. The early sages observed the nat-ural process of the raw chi of the universal elements—sun and earth, food and air—being transformed into ching, or sex energy, and in the male stored as sperm. The next step is far more subtle and difficult to observe. The sperm energy is mixed with the chi of the human vital organs and refined into shien, or spirit. In short, sex energy offers a link between our biological and metaphysical identities, between the animal and the divine. Sexual ability gives man the divine power to re-create himself, but it also binds him to his animal body and that of his lover.*

The Taoists believe that you can use any substance or force that exists in the universe to feed the process of cultivating your spirit, and thereby free yourself of the limitations of your animal body. Everything has energy in it, and human consciousness can absorb that energy if it so desires. But some substances are easier for the human body to change into a useable form than others. For example, you can absorb the energy from eating a good hot meal more easily then you can from sitting on the beach under the sun.

The solar energy is too raw and too powerful to be easily "di-gested" by the body. Sunlight will burn you severely if you try to absorb too much. But your body can easily assimilate a plate of food and function for a long time on the calories and nutrients digested.

DIFFERENCE BETWEEN HUNGER AND SEXUAL DESIRE What is the difference between food and sex as energies that our bodies crave to be fed? Many people confuse the hunger for food and sex as being similar biological desires that are both necessary for survival. Clearly they are connected, as many people feeling sexual frustration turn to food for gratification. An imbalance in

*If you are interested in a fuller elucidation of the working of chi energy in the spiritual realms, read two books by Taoist Master Ni, Hua Ching: "Tao: The Subtle Universal Law"

and "The Taoist Inner View of the Universe and the Immortal Realm" (College of Tao, 117 Stonehaven Way, Los Angeles, CA 90049). There are many volumes in Chinese on this subject, but I feel these are the best translations and commentary on the Taoist canon available in English. Ni's translation of the I Ching is preferred over those of western scholars, who don't understand fully the esoteric aspects of these classic texts. His transla-tion is titled "The Book of Changes and The Unchanging Truth."

ching (sex) energy ranks as a major cause of obesity—when you are sexually frustrated, food is the easiest substitute.

The major difference between food (chi energy) and sex (ching essence) is that sex energy, because it has already been refined and produced inside the body, is much easier to "digest" or

"absorb" than a raw substance like food. Food must be broken down and connected before it supplies any useful energy. Sexual essence is already in a state of readiness that is linked within milli-seconds to our hormonal and nervous system. The image of sex or the mere thought of it can instantly enter our brain and alter our entire psychological state as well as our bodily feeling.

Thus sexual energy potentially has a far higher value than food as a kind of "nourishment" needed for human emotional maturation and spiritual growth. That is why sex was also consid-ered a department of Chinese medicine and treated so matter-of-factly. A Taoist doctor might prescribe a two week round of love making in certain positions to heal your illness. Human love, ex-pressed through the function of sexuality, was seen as the most potent medicine you could take. It was a kind of "human herb"

that could cure most ailments as it restored the flow of chi which governs our organ vitality and general immunological system.

People become obsessed by their relationships as the ex-change of sexual energy that occurs is the most important source of sustenance in their lives after food. Relationships invariably get complicated because although your friends and lovers are visible and tangible beings, the sexual energy you are constantly exchang-ing and transformexchang-ing into emotion and spirit with them is invisible.

It can be known only through your feelings and intuition.

A relationship fails when the spirit of it is not properly culti-vated, and you force yourself to "eat" negative, or poisonous, sexual energies without transforming them into positive or neutral energies. When the imbalance in energy becomes strong enough, divorce occurs unless the couple finds another way to correct it.

Reading pornographic magazines or masturbation are other exam-ples of negative cultivation of your ching, because they stimulate the "yang" essence in your sperm without balancing it with a real woman's "yin" sexual energy.

The major difference between ching, or sex essence, and food and sunlight energy is that your ching chi is physically manufac-tured and stored inside your body. This precious substance—

sperm, with its extraordinary power to mate with a female egg and create another life—is manufactured and stored in your testicles for safekeeping. The point is that you are free to tap into your supply of sex energy at anytime by drawing the sperm power from the testicles.

DIAGRAM 5

The modern character for fire can be interpreted as: the primordial element of fire, physical fire, or psychic heat burning beneath the Taoist cauldron.

If you run out of sperm your body automatically makes more.

This allows you to be physically ready for your lover at all times.

Even if you are alone, without a lover, and never intend to procre-ate, your body produces the sperm and transforms it into creative sexual energy. So you can always transform this stored sex energy into spirit, your pure awareness, and express it through creative personality at will. So in fact "ching" is internal energy that nour-ishes us night and day without ceasing. The process of refinement is partly automatic, and partly voluntary. We can either help or hinder the process of transforming our sex energy into creativity depending on how aware we are of our internal process. Yet, like breathing, we draw on this source of energy constantly without being aware of it.

Freud stumbled partially upon this truth many millennia after the Taoist masters had clearly mapped out the role of sex in shap-ing our destiny. Freud didn't realize that the mental neuroses he discovered could be healed by cultivating the sexual and other Chi energies within the body. When these energies are re-balanced through proper love-making and meditation, the mind is re-pat-terned and freed of old traumas and habits. Taoist cultivation of one's sexual energy is an extremely powerful tool for self therapy.

So powerful, in fact, that it should be used only by those who have achieved a certain degree of integration in the body, mind, and

spirit. Severly imbalanced individuals may release more energy than they can safely deal with, and should see a psychiatrist before attempting to learn the Taoist methods.

DIAGRAM 6

The average male spends about Vs of his lifetime to produce sperm. This energy can be cultivated for health & spiritual development.

100% Life force energy v

30% to produce sexual energy

70% Is used for dally work, digestion etc.

This unique human freedom of utilizing our sexual energy so flexibly does not come without it's price. The price is that we spend an estimated 25% to 40% of our chi energy taken in through food, air, and sunlight just to manufacture this sperm energy and maintain sexual readiness. Why does the body spend so much of its valuable resources to produce billions of sperm cells and regulate them with an accompanying hormonal system? Simply to produce a few children over the course of a lifetime? Nature is not that extravagant. The enormous investment of our bodies in producing this sperm energy is to speed our overall evolution. The more successful man is in transforming his stored energy into higher creative and spiritual energy, the more rapid his evolution. This path of Taoist cultivation of chi energy is simply an attempt to most efficiently utilize the natural gifts every man is born with to evolve the maximum possible in a single lifetime.