[Mantak_Chia,_Michael_Winn]_Taoist_Secrets_of_Love(BookFi.org)

The Seven Spiritual Stages 167
LEFT HAND PATH
Even among the Taoists who were ambivalent about the practice of
dual cultivation and maintained strict celibacy, it was not because
women or sex energy were considered dirty, impure, or evil. The
yin essence of a woman was always acknowledged in China for its
power and harmonizing influence. The doubts about the practice of
exchanging energy during sex mostly centered on whether the adept—male
or female—practicing the technique would continue to
progress beyond the sensual and emotional pleasures of sex to
achieve the highest spiritual awareness.
There is real danger of confusing your emotional attachment
to your lover with attunement to the higher subtle union of yin and
yang. I would say it is a phase that for most men cannot be
avoided, but that in time and with continued cultivation of your
energy through meditation, Tai Chi, and related practices you will
naturally pass beyond it. This does not mean living without emotions;
it means keeping them in balance and using the emotions that
do arise to lend positive power to your chi cultivation process. It is
more dangerous to force yourself into celibacy before you are
really ready for it, as you will never know if you have really mastered
your sexual desires and emotions or just avoided or otherwise
suppressed them.
Celibacy can also be very distracting if you enter into it prematurely.
You can easily build up more sexual power than you are
able to balance in your meditation. You may have the inner will to
resist sexual involvement with women, but if your soul keeps wandering
back to them in dreams or thoughts you will lose energy and
it will divide your attention. For this reason men need women;
whatever the difficulty in coming into balance with them, their very
presence affords a certain primal peace of mind.
In this sense, dual cultivation is the safest path, as it leaves no
stone unturned. You have someone to accompany you on this long
journey through life, and that makes it fun if you enjoy your path
you stay on it more surely than someone who forces himself into an
austere program of self denial. A woman's heart filled with yin
essence is beautiful, accept it. You can both use the relationship as
a microcosm of the universe. It will act as a mirror and reflect back
to you a certain spiritual truth. This feedback from a partner is
valuable and is one of the reasons the Taoists often worked in