Being light yet masterful means not being needy, not having expectations or anything to prove, but just letting things unfold as they will.  In the case of a man this means letting the woman make all the forward moves rather then manipulating to get one’s own way.  To a woman, being light yet masterful means not being clingy or pushy.  Since our society has trained us to go into relationships filled to the brim with expectations and fears of all sorts, it is often necessary to do some self-psychotherapy to decondition and recondition ourselves in order to be able to just relax and let things unfold naturally, instead of trying to control and manipulate things.  My book <i>Thought Forms</i> gives some techniques for losing expectations based upon Carl Jung’s Active Imagination technique.  What Active Imagination does is enable us to see for ourselves, on our own, what our expectations and fears of sex in fact are, before getting up to the firing line of a relationship wherein we will have these expectations and fears thrown back in our faces.  There are really no shortcuts.  You can make all the prayers and cast all the spells you want to for a love relationship, but if you’re not doing the inner work at the same time then you’re just whistling in the wind (the prayers and spells <i>will</i> bring potential true love relationships your way; but if you’re not doing the inner work you won’t recognize these opportunities for what they are, and will simply reject them when they occur since they don’t fulfill your expectations; or they play upon your fears).

A good lover is also considerate and tender.   In stimulating your partner’s body, light and soft is usually much better than hard and fast (except when nearing the point of orgasm).  It takes most women time to get into sexual gear, so the man has to go slow, very slow, rather than try to race to intercourse and thence to orgasm.  Unless for some legitimate reason a quickie is <i>sine qua non</i>, spend at least an hour with soft touches barely brushing your partner’s skin; caressing your partner as lightly as the breeze, with little licks and blowing on your partner’s body; doing very light, teasey things which little-by-little lead to stimulating erogenous zones.

If premature ejaculation is a problem, wear a condom – even if you don’t have to.  When you get too turned on, think on other things.  Focus your attention on neck or ear kissing or on some other anatomical part rather than genitals.  Slow way down.  Except right before orgasm everything should be moving in super-slow motion.  Only by putting your attention on the now moment (instead of racing to climax) can you satisfy a woman. 

This relates to all aspects of the relationship, not just sex.  But vis a vis sex, here is the alpha and omega:  <i>don’t be clunky!</i>  Most people in our society have been taught to hate themselves, and that self-hatred is affixed to their sexuality.  When making love I can usually tell how my lover’s mother bathed her and touched her body when she was an infant, by the way she touches me and reacts to my touch.  Clunky lovers had mothers who were rough and perfunctory with them when they were babies, so they never learned how to touch another person tenderly and attentively. 

Don’t lean or rest your arms or legs on your lover’s body; that hurts.  Support your weight on the bed, and hold yourself upright (not recumbent).  Pay attention to what you are doing – give it your full concentration, which you can’t do laying down.  You must touch your lover with the utmost delicacy and softness.  When walking hand-in-hand, it’s best to just enlace little fingers rather than to hold the entire hand.  

You just <i>don’t lean on the other person</i> in any sense or in any way.  That means don’t expect or depend on the other person in any way (which is why casual or new relationships are so much easier to handle than serious ones).  Even if you wind up marrying the person, if you expect anything from them (support, sacrifice, giving up their dreams and goals to enable yours) then you are, at the very least, putting yourself in a most disadvantageous power position. 

Being considerate and tender when having sex means being touch sensitive.  By “touch sensitivity” is meant that when you touch your lover’s body, you can feel exactly how that touch feels to your lover.  It’s a way of telepathically projecting your awareness into your lover’s body.  When our hearts are open to other people, we can feel exactly what they are feeling, as if their feelings were ours.  This is what infants feel from their mothers   An exercise which can help to cultivate touch sensitivity is to make a hand puppet out of a sock, with button eyes and the gap between the thumb and the rest of the fingers being the mouth.  Practice projecting your feelings into the puppet – have the puppet “feel” sadness, gaiety, perplexity.  When you can project your feelings through your hands, you’re well on your way to being able to pick up your partner’s feelings through your hands as well.  Touch sensitivity is actually a precursor to astral projection:  being able to project one’s awareness into another person’s body, “sharing” their awareness (what things feel like to them), is on the way to being able to journey out of the body.  Being able to feel your partner’s feelings as your own is what tantric sex is all about – i.e. it is a path to enlightenment.

Unquestionably the best books on sexual magic are those of Mantak Chia, a Taoist master resident in the west.  The idea is to refrain from orgasm and instead circulate the chi energy, the sub-orgasmic feeling, up your spine and around your body (or through both bodies during intercourse) instead of blowing it out your genitals.  When the energy is circulating it opens doorways to higher states of consciousness.  I’ve tried these techniques personally and was getting excellent results from them until my marriage broke up.  At that point I let it slide, but I plan to resume the practice.  The general theory behind chi energy, and good exercises which are not specifically sexual, are contained in Chia’s introductory volume <i>Awaken Healing Energy Through the Tao</i>.  There are two follow-up volumes, one for men:  <i>Taoist Secrets of Love – Cultivating Male Sexual Energy</i>; and one for women:  <i>Healing Love Through the Tao – Cultivating Female Sexual Energy</i>. 

Climactic orgasm is the product of focus.  To be able to have climactic orgasms we must strip all joy and pleasure from our moment-to-moment existence every day, and concentrate it down to a few seconds of intense sensation.   If you refrain from having climactic orgasms for a couple of months (e.g. following Chia’s method), then you begin to notice that <i>all</i> your senses (particularly touch) have a pleasurable, sub-orgasmic piquancy that they lack when you are having climactic orgasms regularly.

To continue: a good lover is also uninhibited and adventuresome.  Because people in our society are so sexually uptight, they are often too embarrassed to ask for what they want (or even to know what they want).  A good lover has a wide repertory of techniques to please his or her partner, no matter what he or she prefers, and is always willing to listen to partner’s feelings.  A man must bear in mind that all women are different, and what turns one woman on, another woman would find painful.  So you have to experiment and be open to what she wants.  Some women love having their ears licked or lightly blown into, and others absolutely hate it.  Most women prefer rear entry intercourse to missionary position.  <i>Listen</i> to what your lover tells you, or pay attention to where she or he moves your hands.  

A woman must bear in mind that <i>all men</i> want their penises sucked, even if they are too embarrassed to ask for it.  So if a woman wants to please her partner, she will do this joyously and swallow it with alacrity.  Disgust at this – or at any other sexual act – is one way in which society gets in between people to drive them apart.  Just as all anger is self-anger*, so too all disgust is self-disgust.  Whenever you feel disgusted by a sexual act, know that what you are really disgusted at is yourself:  you are disgusted at how you have permitted society to bend your own feelings out of shape and turn you into an unfeeling robot. 

It’s good to start slowly and tease; sex is not a race to see how fast you can finish.  Lightly licking toes, feet, ears, neck … gentle but firm little bites on the neck and back; all these are appetizers.  Very light touches, barely grazing your partner’s skin with your fingertips, are very chilling and exciting.  Lightly licking your partner’s anus is also a very sexy and intimate thing to do; a super turn-on which doesn’t lead to orgasm.  Do a little something over here; then move a little bit over there for a bit; then go back to the first thing for a while, and so on.  Zero in on the major erogenous zones little-by-little, in a teasy way.  Underdo it rather than overdo it.  Make your partner hungry and keep her / him wanting more. 

The tongue is a much more sensitive antenna than the fingers or the penis.  When giving oral sex to a woman, you must little-by-little seek out the center of her clitoris, which is a depression in the middle of a bump.  It’s different in every woman.  Just as every woman’s body, breasts, vagina, are different, so too are their clitorises.  When licking a woman’s vagina you start around the edges (lightly), and eventually – in no hurry – zero in on the clitoris and that depression in its center.  Slow, slow, slow.  There’s no hurry.  With a woman, there’s never a hurry.  Indeed, the slowness is a turn-on for a woman.  You do a something clitoral; and then move back out a bit and do something light on the outside.  Then return to the clitoris for a bit; then move away again.  It’s partly teasy, but you can’t drive a woman to orgasm. Unlike men, for whom it’s all in the penis, orgasm isn’t the main point for a woman, just as dessert isn’t the main point of a meal.

            When inserting your finger in a woman’s vagina, the G-spot feels like a “rough patch” to your fingertip, towards her front, which you really have to stretch to reach.  But not only do lots of women seem to lack G-spots, even with women who do have them, you can’t always find it (some days you can, others not).  Stimulating the G-spot seems to produce an effect similar to stimulating the clitoris, but even more so (that’s how you’ll know when you’ve found it). 

When you insert your penis in her vagina, it’s a good idea to vary the tempo:  shallow – shallow – shallow – DEEEEEP; shallow – shallow – shallow – DEEEEEP.  Tempo variation is also good when you suck your partner’s penis.  For example, you can do light tonguey and lippy things on the tip for a while, then a DEEEEEP suck; then light tonguey and lippy on the tip and then a DEEEEEP suck.  When your partner comes in your mouth, swallow it joyously.  If you are turned on by the guy, then you should be super-turned on when he comes in your mouth; else you are repressing something (withholding your own joy).  Of course, if you’re <i>not</i> turned on by the guy, you shouldn’t be having sex with him in the first place.  Just before he is ready to come, do a deep massage on his prostate – press deeply and firmly into the gap in the bone between his balls and anus – in order to magnify his orgasm.  Or, you can put your finger in his anus and massage his prostate from the inside (use lubricant for this).

There are lots of books on sexual technique; the foregoing suggestions are just to give a general idea.  The important point is that being a good lover entails throwing off a lot of social conditioning and opening up your heart.  Look at what disgusts you, because that’s a good lesson in how you disgust yourself.  When you are truly light yet masterful; considerate and tender; uninhibited and adventuresome; then you can consider yourself enlightened. 

* * * * * *

* “All anger is self-anger” because what we are angry at isn’t that S.O.B. who screwed us over.  What we are <i>really</i> angry at, beneath the surface, is ourselves – for having let that S.O.B. bend us out of shape; for having taken his attacks personally; for having permitted him to make us forsake our inner joy.  As long as we are angry at him, he wins (and we permit his demons to suck our energy).  This is the way average people react; but not magicians (hopefully).   It’s the same with disgust:  all disgust is self-disgust; and in fact, anything we disapprove of in other people is just something we disapprove of in ourselves that we refuse to recognize there so we project outwardly. 

(Excerpted from Magical Almanac free monthly ezine, http://groups.yahoo.com/group/MagicalAlmanac)