All energy will be experienced as bliss when the appropriate volume of it is channeled through your awareness. The only difference tantric energy has from other forms is the route that it passes through your awareness.....how it is moved, channeled, and how it is interpreted. The yearning to merge into the deity is not always tantric, but tantric energy is a powerful way to do this since it is by its nature about union. But all energy serves to merge one into union also, so no one energy is better than another since this, I sense, is all life force, and part of a continuum of energy that is all a part of this thing called kundalini. Sublimation, for example, takes the more sexual side of the experience and channels it "upwards" into other centers for different experience, or to fuel other experiences. This is in effect using the fire of kundalini to entrain and utilize it for less obvious purposes (at first) to help in refining the self and reach higher states of awareness. There will simply be different focuses, interests, or desires. However, don't take this to mean that any one means will not require you to feel. The path to the divine is the path of feeling. The language of the deity is feeling. Thus, too, the language of the universe is through feeling. The more distanced you are from feeling, the more distanced you are from yourself. This is the lesson of karma, which is the VERY act of distancing yourself from your true original and primordial nature. You will not come to the divine bundled in your conceptualizations of what it is You will instead be stripped bare of everything you ever thought you knew. You will be stripped of your shame, your hatred, your anger, your hurt, your jealousy, your illusions, and in a way you will also lose your life in order to make the radical step away from the world that has been built here that has been bits of truth used as mortar to hold together edifices of illusion and all the things and more that the divine will strip you of just in order to experience what It is.
Those familiar with my writing know that I awoke without any practice, no locks or mudras or meditative practice to speak of. Mine was spontaneous in a sense, but also the result of a process of relinquishing inner material that allowed the two energies within to merge into union and begin the fire of awakening. As such, while I know that there are methods and techniques that have been used for centuries for kundalini, I also feel that it is also possible to navigate awakening using your own intuitive abilities since these become much sharper as you awaken. Many who have awakened in the same spontaneous way as I have also tend to report that they have a greater tendency toward a self reliant process and using their own experience as the guidebook or ruler. I am not saying a practice is of no value, for it certainly CAN be, I just feel that you should observe and watch for what is useful and not take anything entirely on faith. Believing that breath IS prana may work until you realize you can raise prana without the aid of breath, and then what does this mean? Yes, a practice might work, but as is so often the case a practice is seeking to substitute a physical movement to mirror an inner energetic FEELING of some kind. It is FEELING that allows energy to move. FEELING enables the release of blocks. It is true that when many blocks are released in awakening, it comes with a flush of feeling, of emotion, that was the stored up energy of the emotional block itself. You do not get to awakening by way of 1 +1 =2. It is not a logical process, but entrains both sides of the consciousness in this process. As a result, if you go about this in a one-sided way without your left and right brain sides engaged, your experience will also tend to be limited and one-sided. Awakening can bloom into a remarkable experience to the degree that YOU allow it. So what someone may have created as a practice may help in some ways, the root of the practice is almost always meant to get you to a place of feeling. Even mudras, which shift in subtle ways how energy flows through the hands and the rest of the body, these shifts change how you feel. You can actually block the delicate effect of what a mudra offers and not notice its effects at all. In order to feel it, you have to be able to quiet the mind and turn up the inner volume of your energy body. You become more sensitive, more feeling. I am not suggesting that you become more EMOTIONAL, although emotion will naturally have a part in this. Emotion yes, but not swept away and out of control.
The pure pulse of tantra is what one feels on ones own with no other. We have inculcated others in it because it feels so closely aligned to what we feel sexually, but you will feel the tantric flow of bliss whether you are with someone or not. We have become so focused on tantra as sex that we have lost sight of what it is deeper down. Deeper down, it is a very powerful and pure way to be. It is a way that lives without shame, that allows ones self to feel pure bliss and not feel bad for doing so. It is just a sideward step to sexual union because there is a lot of clear up about our shame regarding sex. But the inner guru, the soul which has no shame and seeks this union with the divine which can lead you to where you need to go. There is a curious issue, though, regarding transcending this plane to be in this perfect bliss. the issue is that we have the capability to visit these realms and even begin to anchor this feeling in our own lives here in an ongoing way, but until our very earthly karma is resolved, there will remain "problems" in our becoming the guru inside of us. We will be limited in some way. And yes, as you refine and release those old soul scars, it will bring you ever closer to this inner guru and to the infinite resting within.....but it is important to be honest with yourself about what works remains in you to do. The power of the tantric flow is in you as a birthright. You have identified others as the object of that flow just as you own karma has guided you to them. To move beyond karma means dissolving the karma within and realizing who you are inside. We are here to heal the karma, wake up to who we are and help bring heaven to earth before we ourselves leave for parts unknown.
Awakening is facing death each day and conquering it; every challenge surmounted, ever fear surrendered is given up when we die to the resistance we feel in relation to it. This is, for most, what death is. We resist it. It means the end of us, we think or believe. Our feet resist the forward motion through time even though we are powerless to stop it. And yet, at some point, most of us will experience the surrender to give into it in peace instead of struggle. When we give in and allow ourselves to die, we discover not a blotting out of what we were, but a blooming of what we were always meant to become. Sadly, though, in real life, we discover this only as we exit. At least we do this, though. Awakening brings all of this into sharp focus as we die daily as the force of kundalini forces us to face our many "problems" and surrender them. Each time this is a death, and each time, we witness or experience the rebirth that always comes with these small deaths. Each time we arise, ressurect, and are reborn. Always. And so, bit by bit, we learn that there is no death, that surrender is itself an ally, not an enemy to be staved off at all costs. We conquer the death of the soul with the life of rebirth which always follows this kind of death. But it is not different from a small realization that means letting go of an old idea of what we thought was true or whether it is the seeming end of our physical presence on earth. Tantra brings you to this point of surrender and to know it most fully, your life will rapidly accelerate into this death. Death. Do not fear it, the sound of it, the seemin finality of it. you hold an idea in you about it that has served to enslave you and tantra, among other currents of experience will free you if you allow it to do its great "work" within. In complete compassion it will show you what you yourself refused to look at....the safety of your life as you remain unsatisfied and unfulfilled, living a life of silent and persistent desperation, hiding its facts even from yourself so you can keep going with a life you say is at least better than anything else you have experienced. Why limit yourself? But death will not ask this of you. Death will simply carry you from conception to conception and it will all be up to you what you derive from it. Death will know that whatever it is will be perfect for the time. Perhaps you have made a world of compromise, but just as you have made it, you alone unmake it. For some, this means death. Death to what you were, death to what you thought you were. And for some, they will even hasten their own deaths due to their persistent and deep certainty that their own steps do not follow their brightest star or most inward compass point. The current will draw you back always in the end. This ending will itself be a beginning. Uroboros-like, the tail shall be at the head as beginning becomes ending and on and on it goes as the stars duck and sway in this, the lost night of souls.
EDIT: only hours after writing this I came across a quote by Krishanurti that I thought I ought to include here since it fits in so well to what I was saying. The quote:
It seems strange to speak of death and tantra side by side. But there were never more familiar bedfellows than this, for just in death, tantra draws you forward, this time eager for death to come, hungry and wild with yearning. It will lead you ever deeper into death, the truth of all death, the great promise that death holds. This is not your macabre conception of death, for death is everywhere misunderstood by the fear we dress it with. It does not suit it. For tantra draws you into this death so you will give up something in the process as you are cleansed of what hurt you. In tantra, you die the little death which is itself a true death and you awaken changed in some small way, ready to carry forward some new glint of the true being that shines so powerfully within.
There is no simple path to awakening, for the simple truth that what we have created in our world as "reality" is but a confusing mass of complications. This has served to keep at bay what should be a natural consequence of our development in any given life but instead has become a distant star to strive for with very few attaining it. Kundalini, awakening, or whatever term used to describe this universal human experience, should in truth be part of our normal experience as it returns us to our primal or authentic selves. All of nature teaches this, that in balance, we reach the the highest places in our being and awareness. Instead, we complicate and create hurdles for ourselves to run around and never fully experience or glimpse the true nature of reality. Those who awaken do not become complicated but simple. Our layers are stripped away, our buds opened as the flower of our awareness changes from a hardened sheltered form afraid to FEEL anything to opening to total vulnerability. The movement from this age is out of the masculine mode of being, which is armoring and protection to the age of the feminine which is opening, surrender, and vulnerability. It is in this age that anyone can embrace this and feel what this force will do for you in realizing your divine purpose, your innermost presence which dwells with the divine both within and without. We are now balancing the terms of engagement as human beings and saying yet to this side of ourselves which has lain dormant, repressed, hidden, and all but destroyed. The truth here is that we as a race have been scared shitless over the power of the feminine. This fear hasn't just been just on the part of men, although the most vocal and obvious outward expressions of this have most certainly been enacted by men and their male dominated culture, religions, societies, and institutions of thought. But in order to get this right, we all must recognize that we all have played a role. We have all taken part and as I am stripped layer by layer, I see that much deeper into people I see on the street and as I gaze across the world of women I see that they are like fortresses within themselves with the sleeping goddess hidden in a deep protected place where even her own conscious self isn't fully aware of what her great power is. And her great power is everyones power, the power we have hidden from ourselves, the power which we must take back if we are to move forward as a race into a new world with promise instead of what we see today, which is an effort for more of the same. It is through us that the world will change, for we will BE this change and the power of the feminine is just too strong to hold back once she emerges from her dungeon.
I am on the soap box here, I know, but I have seen the divine feminine and I know what she is. I know just how buried she is in the consciousness and awareness of others. I have seen how deeply buried she has been even as my own tantric presence has sought to ferret her out. The one great gift a man can give to woman is his ability to sense her deepest being. It is a gift so simple and straightforward. It is the same gift that a woman has in equal measure for her man. To use it properly means letting go of all the ramparts that you have built within yourself, for those very armaments will cause others to feel pain and shrink back. A man;s gift will devolve into his not honoring Her power but seeking to use it for his own short term gain. Her power will lapse into mere manipulation in order to get what She feels she cannot get for herself. The war of the sexes will continue unabated and the two will not touch in the way that bids worlds to explode into view. If you doubt this, then do the work yourself and only then you will know what I am speaking about. It is a path to awe, the road to the divine. If I can see in woman her own great potential, this offers me a great perspective, which is awareness. It is through awareness that something revolutionary will turn in humankind. This can bring something remarkable to the race if we are ready to accept the feminine as a limitless force on the planet to come forward on her own terms and not seek to apply masculine characteristics to her lest we dilute and disarm her one great power that is Her. This process means returning to the garden to heal the separation, to forgive ourselves and sometimes to realize that most of our old stories have been created to serve the march we have been on the last several thousand years at least, which is that of the tide of paternalism.
The truth her is that the masculine has been scared to death of the power of the feminine. As I look into it, it was because the masculine saw her as so different from himself. In a very real way, the masculine power had a quality of the lightening bolt in him. His power was that of sparking the world to life. But he saw or sensed that her ability to bring such supreme bliss and pleasure was os total that he feared losing himself, losing the definition and outlines of his very powerful lightening bolt like self. And yet, this was the whole point. The masculine does this in order to be taken apart. He is taken apart because his very essence is the key to creation. We see this happening all around us expressed in myriad ways. A male zygote or sperm cannot nor will never bring the spark of life unless it is willing to sacrifices itself to a new life. Defined and purposeful, like a spark, her must lose all he thought he was to become more than he could be otherwise. And out of this one simple act of surrendering his very essence to Her, a new world literally blooms into being that could never be anticipated. A woman's power is in taking this spark and giving birth to forms that are beyond even her own ability to comprehend or predict. It is the very fact that she does not seek to control this life but nurture it compassionately that has gives us the wildness of creation, be it artwork or nature exploding into endless lifeforms. In all of this engagement between the two in spiritual energy is bliss. It is the most disarming bliss there is. It will take you apart and put you back together the right way. It is the key to the kingdom and it is the force of what awakening does to each and every person who comes to it, to the degree that they make themselves available to it. This is why most awakenings become like a constant prayer for union. It is because it is what we are deeper down in our true primordial selves. By this I do not mean somehow primitive. I mean beyond all of your conceptions of what you think it is. You wont get there by supposing what it is or using your mind. Only by feeling at your deepest level will you reach it. Yes, ghosts and skeletons will come rushing out of your closet, but it was only because those closets weren't even closets for keeping such old deep secrets within. These were the chambers where the very divine within were meant to inhabit.
In the movie The Fountain, the male character who is expressed in various physical forms in different lives is seeking a great secret, which is the fountain of life. In his higher form as the oversoul, he is also grappling with this same challenge just as his female counterpart is also deeply engaged in like measure with him. In the end, he sacrifices himself as a star goes into supernova or explodes, turning him into cosmic dust, showering his beloved with the very force that she needs to awaken the buds on her nearly dead tree to spark it to a new life. But the male has to destroy himself, die to himself in order to experience this new life that will emerge as a great tree of life that will spread its limbs across the universe. The story is itself based on some Mayan creation stories of how creation works, which involves sacrifice of the self, the body of the First Father in order to serve the genesis of new life seen as the very feminine Tree which is refreshed and renewed by this singular act of surrender. in the Fountain, he became the kind of tantric pollen that would noursih his feminine counterpart and bring her to a new life. This story is more true than most any other story I have read or known. It is this story that has been playing out in countless lives in one way or another for a very long time. We are beginning to get the drift, and many on the planet are waking up and feeling the force of this great power which will be our undoing and recreation.
So whether it is through devotion, tantra, or other means, these currents will all merge into one current at one point or another. What was purely sexual will refine into a current of pure bliss and shake us free of all the hindering concepts of selfhood. It will strip you bare of what you thought you knew and it will stand as a reminder forever to remind you that you cannot return to those limiting self concepts or else feel great pain and anguish as a result. The way forward is in embodying the feminine in all. This as I have said in the past is not about becoming androgynous. You remain who you are, but are increased in your awareness. The most masculine of men who are most touched by their own inner feminine are informed of what it is that the feminine in their physical relationships most needs. The same is also true of women, for it is their own inner masculine current that will guide them to give to their men what it is that is perfect. It heals homophobia, too, which is a very good outcome as well. The simple understanding is that in all form, all life, there is a dual current of the masculine and feminine in EVERYTHING. The degree that you deny this is the degree to which you will deny this in your perceptions of the world. It is true that a woman is made more feminine by her awareness and ability to touch the inner masculine. A man is made more masculine by his ability to touch his inner feminine. It is a matter of FOCUS; where along this seeming duality does your energy express itself? Here, we have a model of the infinite since anyone can choose any orientation along the north and south poles of this great magnetic field that is the yin and yang. I have written extensively about this in the past and it all comes down to freewill and your own essence. the self will choose lives and experiences that will mirror its inner essence. A soul which wants a blend of very masculine traits tempered by the feminine traits will thus seek lives to bring that particular kind of balance, which reflects through the higher self and is seen in all lives in one way or another. When you can surrender to what this higher self or awareness is, the greater your awareness will be of the divine, for the higher self is itself the ladder through which your awareness will travel into the divine.
For now, the focus is on helping to bring back the feminine. This is already happening. It is very natural and has been unfolding naturally as women have asserted themselves and begun to take back basic elements of worldly power. IN similar fashion, though, an equal kind of change has been happening within men, which is that they have been more free to take on roles that would honor the feminine within themselves more. This has had a humanizing effect on men and on our culture. IN the classes I teach I see males who are sensitive, soft and receptive who are not made fun of or made to feel bad for how they are. These are very masculine males who simply choose to esteem certain traits that may have caused people to be derisive just a generation ago. We are slowly breaking out of the old repressive armoring the race has held. We are asking the question "why not?" and it is leading to some great discoveries about ourselves. We are increasingly free to be who and what we are. Far from perfect, it is at least a step forward in the right direction as we feel our way through it. There is more work to be done and the hope is that women will not mistake their power for that of the masculine force but learn now to embrace the other side of the masculine force which is the feminine force, something so powerful it must be whispered instead of shouted. Only then will we each understand the great potential that the feminine has. This is a power that is never obvious at first, but whose results are overwhelming. Her power will strip you bare so fast your head will spin. And men did fear it perhaps because they feared their grip on some version of reality they thought was real or that they needed to build merely for the necessity to control. We each fear letting go, and only in letting go will we ever find what is beyond our little worlds full of comfort and safety which ego and mind tell us is real but is not.
All energy can move you, and when in sufficient volume, can move you into connecting into the vast awareness that is the universe. Think of it as a very real extension of you. This is what happens, or can happen, often happens, in awakenings. I this way, space no longer is an issue. You feel someone as though they are sitting in front of you. Because they are. The universe is now an extension of your awareness. It forms a vast interconnected network like the internet is connected. It is the same basic concept and the internet emerged out of a very basic sense of our deeper connectivity, effectively giving this deeper sense or knowing a kind of physical analog or voice. Like a metaphor.
Tantric energy does not begin with the Other. It begins with you. As a result, you have complete control over the ebb and flow of your own energy. Before the kiss is the anticipation of the kiss. I wont say the kiss is not important, for it is, but look at what happens to you before the kiss even comes to be. Her is where tantric energy can rise like a great wave. It builds and builds just as your own awareness and attention builds. Expectation, excitement, joy and connection help fuel it. But before the kiss is made real, a world of events stream through you. Here, you have the core of tantra. Tantra begins within your own awareness. The secret of tantra is in learning how to convey this energy effectively. It all follows feeling. We all know how to build sexual tension. It most often leads to release, the most blissful of experiences which we call orgasmic release. Tantra, then, though, is often concerned amongst some as the maintaining of this tension a t lower ebb instead of allowing it to build to its most expected and common of conclusions. Tantra is often about allowing your own energy to rise with the understanding that being energy, it is not dependent on anything physical to transfer it. It can be transferred over miles as much as it can be transferred in front of another. It can be true for those awakened who are still working through their own issues that connecting fro a distance is actually easier because it feels safer that way. Yes, you connect to deeply, so completely, and yet, the physical element is just so intimidating or fraught with past fears over hurt or physical vulnerability. While the flow of tantric energy works in this way, it can also become a crutch that serves to keep people from being able to connect when they are dwelling physically in the same space. This can lead to hurt of its own kind, a sense of rejection or even abandonment. All of this is hard. And unnecessary. I say this because our essence is to love, to be love, to give and receive love. It is through tantra that we can heal in powerful ways, but only when we make ourselves available. Yes, we can experience incredible energy in the other, and yet we can help the other to realize their own potential for love and union both within and without, but the march of spiritual evolution has been in knitting heaven and earth into a unity, to realize our heavenliness here. This includes our tantric vehicle, our tantric energy.
When you begin to sense in this way, what I term non locally, you quite naturally feel into the other person. This is where it gets difficult to fake anything or do anything halfway. You are either in it completely or you aren't. You are made to know this and recognize it. If it is off in the other, this can be hard. It is hard because of the level of empathy that is required. You just feel everything so clearly and powerfully. A small thing is not small. A small thing may in fact be a splinter carried deep in the energy body of the beloved. Our role can become the force of awareness and compassion to help locate and remove this thorn. Whether we are there physically or not. A mans energy needs to feel the presence of surrender in his beloved and the feminine must feel as though the masculine is not holding anything back, but bringing himself directly and powerfully into the moment with confidence and assuredness that cannot be faked. This is not lovemaking in the old way. You have to BE the talk if you are to present a good mirror for the beloved to gaze at the divine within. It is the single most complete and total experience. And yet, the path to it is not always perfect. The path of tantra, if only frenzied sexual energy, becomes a raw force that is single minded. Humanity must be able to take the reins of the horse and drive it with purpose and compassion also to the valley of desire where the two may dwell and heal and discover one another. Being able to be within a blend of energies all at once is the real mastery of tantra as far as I am concerned.....for without this "multichannel" mode at work, it all becomes a race to release tension in which case it is not elevated beyond much more than mere sexual union.
So let yourself expect and draw near. Raise the energy; become excited. Go beyond excited; move into bliss. Here, the energy burns like a flame and transforms. You move into the realm where every religion has sought to reveal while also fearing it, even covering it up to hide our shame about it. You must release shame to reach the path of awe, pure and simple, and the old traditions which did not carry this shame, quite naturally were also demonized by the shame-filled religions that followed after them and which also sought to destroy them as a result. It is pure flame and we only seek to be consumed. Here, shame cannot exist lest it dampen the fire. Here, the divine has no thought of any reason for there to be shame, only ecstasy as it has always been in its midst. We enter that experience through this, partly because of it, partly because of what we allow ourselves to feel.
Tantra is a discovery, a rich field of wonder that begs to be understood through feeling and direct experience. Bringing the wave to a high peak, your hand slides gently along as you are suspended along its curve as your balance leads you instinctualy to just the right place upon it as the wave moves forward in time and space and awareness as a constant pulse of bliss and desire, one feeding the other as it becomes a vehicle for ecstatic union within ourselves and with another.
Choose all the methods and techniques that you want.....but it will always serve reaching the right place for you within feeling to propagate that wave that simply feels right and that leads you to abandon. Here, you forget yourself, and here, you lose yourself to something more. It can be a means for dissolving ego as more of you merges within a larger current you did not know existed. This, you cannot fake, but only become.
Bows deep....
So in honor of love, which is a flower with many petals, I offer you this very delicate petal which is so sweet and worth considering
Something in your eyes, makes me want to lose myself,
Makes me want to lose myself, in your arms.
There's something in your voice, makes my heart beat fast.
Hope this feeling lasts, the rest of my life.
If you knew how lonely my life has been,
And how low I've felt so long.
If you knew how I wanted someone to come along,
And change my life the way you've done.
CHORUS:
Feels like home to me, feels like home to me,
Feels like I'm on my way back where I come from.
Feels like home to me, feels like home to me,
Feels like I'm on my way back where I belong.
A window breaks down a long dark street,
And a siren wails over my head.
But I'm all right, 'cause I have you here with me.
And I can almost see through the dark there's light.
If you knew how much this moment means to me,
And how long I've waited for your touch.
If you knew how happy you are making me --
I've never thought I'd love anyone so much.
CHORUS
Feels like I'm on my way back where I belong.
Those familiar with my writing know that I awoke without any practice, no locks or mudras or meditative practice to speak of. Mine was spontaneous in a sense, but also the result of a process of relinquishing inner material that allowed the two energies within to merge into union and begin the fire of awakening. As such, while I know that there are methods and techniques that have been used for centuries for kundalini, I also feel that it is also possible to navigate awakening using your own intuitive abilities since these become much sharper as you awaken. Many who have awakened in the same spontaneous way as I have also tend to report that they have a greater tendency toward a self reliant process and using their own experience as the guidebook or ruler. I am not saying a practice is of no value, for it certainly CAN be, I just feel that you should observe and watch for what is useful and not take anything entirely on faith. Believing that breath IS prana may work until you realize you can raise prana without the aid of breath, and then what does this mean? Yes, a practice might work, but as is so often the case a practice is seeking to substitute a physical movement to mirror an inner energetic FEELING of some kind. It is FEELING that allows energy to move. FEELING enables the release of blocks. It is true that when many blocks are released in awakening, it comes with a flush of feeling, of emotion, that was the stored up energy of the emotional block itself. You do not get to awakening by way of 1 +1 =2. It is not a logical process, but entrains both sides of the consciousness in this process. As a result, if you go about this in a one-sided way without your left and right brain sides engaged, your experience will also tend to be limited and one-sided. Awakening can bloom into a remarkable experience to the degree that YOU allow it. So what someone may have created as a practice may help in some ways, the root of the practice is almost always meant to get you to a place of feeling. Even mudras, which shift in subtle ways how energy flows through the hands and the rest of the body, these shifts change how you feel. You can actually block the delicate effect of what a mudra offers and not notice its effects at all. In order to feel it, you have to be able to quiet the mind and turn up the inner volume of your energy body. You become more sensitive, more feeling. I am not suggesting that you become more EMOTIONAL, although emotion will naturally have a part in this. Emotion yes, but not swept away and out of control.
The pure pulse of tantra is what one feels on ones own with no other. We have inculcated others in it because it feels so closely aligned to what we feel sexually, but you will feel the tantric flow of bliss whether you are with someone or not. We have become so focused on tantra as sex that we have lost sight of what it is deeper down. Deeper down, it is a very powerful and pure way to be. It is a way that lives without shame, that allows ones self to feel pure bliss and not feel bad for doing so. It is just a sideward step to sexual union because there is a lot of clear up about our shame regarding sex. But the inner guru, the soul which has no shame and seeks this union with the divine which can lead you to where you need to go. There is a curious issue, though, regarding transcending this plane to be in this perfect bliss. the issue is that we have the capability to visit these realms and even begin to anchor this feeling in our own lives here in an ongoing way, but until our very earthly karma is resolved, there will remain "problems" in our becoming the guru inside of us. We will be limited in some way. And yes, as you refine and release those old soul scars, it will bring you ever closer to this inner guru and to the infinite resting within.....but it is important to be honest with yourself about what works remains in you to do. The power of the tantric flow is in you as a birthright. You have identified others as the object of that flow just as you own karma has guided you to them. To move beyond karma means dissolving the karma within and realizing who you are inside. We are here to heal the karma, wake up to who we are and help bring heaven to earth before we ourselves leave for parts unknown.
Awakening is facing death each day and conquering it; every challenge surmounted, ever fear surrendered is given up when we die to the resistance we feel in relation to it. This is, for most, what death is. We resist it. It means the end of us, we think or believe. Our feet resist the forward motion through time even though we are powerless to stop it. And yet, at some point, most of us will experience the surrender to give into it in peace instead of struggle. When we give in and allow ourselves to die, we discover not a blotting out of what we were, but a blooming of what we were always meant to become. Sadly, though, in real life, we discover this only as we exit. At least we do this, though. Awakening brings all of this into sharp focus as we die daily as the force of kundalini forces us to face our many "problems" and surrender them. Each time this is a death, and each time, we witness or experience the rebirth that always comes with these small deaths. Each time we arise, ressurect, and are reborn. Always. And so, bit by bit, we learn that there is no death, that surrender is itself an ally, not an enemy to be staved off at all costs. We conquer the death of the soul with the life of rebirth which always follows this kind of death. But it is not different from a small realization that means letting go of an old idea of what we thought was true or whether it is the seeming end of our physical presence on earth. Tantra brings you to this point of surrender and to know it most fully, your life will rapidly accelerate into this death. Death. Do not fear it, the sound of it, the seemin finality of it. you hold an idea in you about it that has served to enslave you and tantra, among other currents of experience will free you if you allow it to do its great "work" within. In complete compassion it will show you what you yourself refused to look at....the safety of your life as you remain unsatisfied and unfulfilled, living a life of silent and persistent desperation, hiding its facts even from yourself so you can keep going with a life you say is at least better than anything else you have experienced. Why limit yourself? But death will not ask this of you. Death will simply carry you from conception to conception and it will all be up to you what you derive from it. Death will know that whatever it is will be perfect for the time. Perhaps you have made a world of compromise, but just as you have made it, you alone unmake it. For some, this means death. Death to what you were, death to what you thought you were. And for some, they will even hasten their own deaths due to their persistent and deep certainty that their own steps do not follow their brightest star or most inward compass point. The current will draw you back always in the end. This ending will itself be a beginning. Uroboros-like, the tail shall be at the head as beginning becomes ending and on and on it goes as the stars duck and sway in this, the lost night of souls.
EDIT: only hours after writing this I came across a quote by Krishanurti that I thought I ought to include here since it fits in so well to what I was saying. The quote:
"Why is it that whatever we touch we turn into a problem? We have made love a problem, we have made relationship, living, a problem, and we have made sex a problem. Why? Why is everything a problem, a horror? Why are we suffering? Why has sex become a problem? Why do we submit to living with problems; why do we not put an end to them? Why do we not die to our problems instead of carrying them day after day, year after year?"
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It seems strange to speak of death and tantra side by side. But there were never more familiar bedfellows than this, for just in death, tantra draws you forward, this time eager for death to come, hungry and wild with yearning. It will lead you ever deeper into death, the truth of all death, the great promise that death holds. This is not your macabre conception of death, for death is everywhere misunderstood by the fear we dress it with. It does not suit it. For tantra draws you into this death so you will give up something in the process as you are cleansed of what hurt you. In tantra, you die the little death which is itself a true death and you awaken changed in some small way, ready to carry forward some new glint of the true being that shines so powerfully within.
There is no simple path to awakening, for the simple truth that what we have created in our world as "reality" is but a confusing mass of complications. This has served to keep at bay what should be a natural consequence of our development in any given life but instead has become a distant star to strive for with very few attaining it. Kundalini, awakening, or whatever term used to describe this universal human experience, should in truth be part of our normal experience as it returns us to our primal or authentic selves. All of nature teaches this, that in balance, we reach the the highest places in our being and awareness. Instead, we complicate and create hurdles for ourselves to run around and never fully experience or glimpse the true nature of reality. Those who awaken do not become complicated but simple. Our layers are stripped away, our buds opened as the flower of our awareness changes from a hardened sheltered form afraid to FEEL anything to opening to total vulnerability. The movement from this age is out of the masculine mode of being, which is armoring and protection to the age of the feminine which is opening, surrender, and vulnerability. It is in this age that anyone can embrace this and feel what this force will do for you in realizing your divine purpose, your innermost presence which dwells with the divine both within and without. We are now balancing the terms of engagement as human beings and saying yet to this side of ourselves which has lain dormant, repressed, hidden, and all but destroyed. The truth here is that we as a race have been scared shitless over the power of the feminine. This fear hasn't just been just on the part of men, although the most vocal and obvious outward expressions of this have most certainly been enacted by men and their male dominated culture, religions, societies, and institutions of thought. But in order to get this right, we all must recognize that we all have played a role. We have all taken part and as I am stripped layer by layer, I see that much deeper into people I see on the street and as I gaze across the world of women I see that they are like fortresses within themselves with the sleeping goddess hidden in a deep protected place where even her own conscious self isn't fully aware of what her great power is. And her great power is everyones power, the power we have hidden from ourselves, the power which we must take back if we are to move forward as a race into a new world with promise instead of what we see today, which is an effort for more of the same. It is through us that the world will change, for we will BE this change and the power of the feminine is just too strong to hold back once she emerges from her dungeon.
I am on the soap box here, I know, but I have seen the divine feminine and I know what she is. I know just how buried she is in the consciousness and awareness of others. I have seen how deeply buried she has been even as my own tantric presence has sought to ferret her out. The one great gift a man can give to woman is his ability to sense her deepest being. It is a gift so simple and straightforward. It is the same gift that a woman has in equal measure for her man. To use it properly means letting go of all the ramparts that you have built within yourself, for those very armaments will cause others to feel pain and shrink back. A man;s gift will devolve into his not honoring Her power but seeking to use it for his own short term gain. Her power will lapse into mere manipulation in order to get what She feels she cannot get for herself. The war of the sexes will continue unabated and the two will not touch in the way that bids worlds to explode into view. If you doubt this, then do the work yourself and only then you will know what I am speaking about. It is a path to awe, the road to the divine. If I can see in woman her own great potential, this offers me a great perspective, which is awareness. It is through awareness that something revolutionary will turn in humankind. This can bring something remarkable to the race if we are ready to accept the feminine as a limitless force on the planet to come forward on her own terms and not seek to apply masculine characteristics to her lest we dilute and disarm her one great power that is Her. This process means returning to the garden to heal the separation, to forgive ourselves and sometimes to realize that most of our old stories have been created to serve the march we have been on the last several thousand years at least, which is that of the tide of paternalism.
The truth her is that the masculine has been scared to death of the power of the feminine. As I look into it, it was because the masculine saw her as so different from himself. In a very real way, the masculine power had a quality of the lightening bolt in him. His power was that of sparking the world to life. But he saw or sensed that her ability to bring such supreme bliss and pleasure was os total that he feared losing himself, losing the definition and outlines of his very powerful lightening bolt like self. And yet, this was the whole point. The masculine does this in order to be taken apart. He is taken apart because his very essence is the key to creation. We see this happening all around us expressed in myriad ways. A male zygote or sperm cannot nor will never bring the spark of life unless it is willing to sacrifices itself to a new life. Defined and purposeful, like a spark, her must lose all he thought he was to become more than he could be otherwise. And out of this one simple act of surrendering his very essence to Her, a new world literally blooms into being that could never be anticipated. A woman's power is in taking this spark and giving birth to forms that are beyond even her own ability to comprehend or predict. It is the very fact that she does not seek to control this life but nurture it compassionately that has gives us the wildness of creation, be it artwork or nature exploding into endless lifeforms. In all of this engagement between the two in spiritual energy is bliss. It is the most disarming bliss there is. It will take you apart and put you back together the right way. It is the key to the kingdom and it is the force of what awakening does to each and every person who comes to it, to the degree that they make themselves available to it. This is why most awakenings become like a constant prayer for union. It is because it is what we are deeper down in our true primordial selves. By this I do not mean somehow primitive. I mean beyond all of your conceptions of what you think it is. You wont get there by supposing what it is or using your mind. Only by feeling at your deepest level will you reach it. Yes, ghosts and skeletons will come rushing out of your closet, but it was only because those closets weren't even closets for keeping such old deep secrets within. These were the chambers where the very divine within were meant to inhabit.
In the movie The Fountain, the male character who is expressed in various physical forms in different lives is seeking a great secret, which is the fountain of life. In his higher form as the oversoul, he is also grappling with this same challenge just as his female counterpart is also deeply engaged in like measure with him. In the end, he sacrifices himself as a star goes into supernova or explodes, turning him into cosmic dust, showering his beloved with the very force that she needs to awaken the buds on her nearly dead tree to spark it to a new life. But the male has to destroy himself, die to himself in order to experience this new life that will emerge as a great tree of life that will spread its limbs across the universe. The story is itself based on some Mayan creation stories of how creation works, which involves sacrifice of the self, the body of the First Father in order to serve the genesis of new life seen as the very feminine Tree which is refreshed and renewed by this singular act of surrender. in the Fountain, he became the kind of tantric pollen that would noursih his feminine counterpart and bring her to a new life. This story is more true than most any other story I have read or known. It is this story that has been playing out in countless lives in one way or another for a very long time. We are beginning to get the drift, and many on the planet are waking up and feeling the force of this great power which will be our undoing and recreation.
So whether it is through devotion, tantra, or other means, these currents will all merge into one current at one point or another. What was purely sexual will refine into a current of pure bliss and shake us free of all the hindering concepts of selfhood. It will strip you bare of what you thought you knew and it will stand as a reminder forever to remind you that you cannot return to those limiting self concepts or else feel great pain and anguish as a result. The way forward is in embodying the feminine in all. This as I have said in the past is not about becoming androgynous. You remain who you are, but are increased in your awareness. The most masculine of men who are most touched by their own inner feminine are informed of what it is that the feminine in their physical relationships most needs. The same is also true of women, for it is their own inner masculine current that will guide them to give to their men what it is that is perfect. It heals homophobia, too, which is a very good outcome as well. The simple understanding is that in all form, all life, there is a dual current of the masculine and feminine in EVERYTHING. The degree that you deny this is the degree to which you will deny this in your perceptions of the world. It is true that a woman is made more feminine by her awareness and ability to touch the inner masculine. A man is made more masculine by his ability to touch his inner feminine. It is a matter of FOCUS; where along this seeming duality does your energy express itself? Here, we have a model of the infinite since anyone can choose any orientation along the north and south poles of this great magnetic field that is the yin and yang. I have written extensively about this in the past and it all comes down to freewill and your own essence. the self will choose lives and experiences that will mirror its inner essence. A soul which wants a blend of very masculine traits tempered by the feminine traits will thus seek lives to bring that particular kind of balance, which reflects through the higher self and is seen in all lives in one way or another. When you can surrender to what this higher self or awareness is, the greater your awareness will be of the divine, for the higher self is itself the ladder through which your awareness will travel into the divine.
For now, the focus is on helping to bring back the feminine. This is already happening. It is very natural and has been unfolding naturally as women have asserted themselves and begun to take back basic elements of worldly power. IN similar fashion, though, an equal kind of change has been happening within men, which is that they have been more free to take on roles that would honor the feminine within themselves more. This has had a humanizing effect on men and on our culture. IN the classes I teach I see males who are sensitive, soft and receptive who are not made fun of or made to feel bad for how they are. These are very masculine males who simply choose to esteem certain traits that may have caused people to be derisive just a generation ago. We are slowly breaking out of the old repressive armoring the race has held. We are asking the question "why not?" and it is leading to some great discoveries about ourselves. We are increasingly free to be who and what we are. Far from perfect, it is at least a step forward in the right direction as we feel our way through it. There is more work to be done and the hope is that women will not mistake their power for that of the masculine force but learn now to embrace the other side of the masculine force which is the feminine force, something so powerful it must be whispered instead of shouted. Only then will we each understand the great potential that the feminine has. This is a power that is never obvious at first, but whose results are overwhelming. Her power will strip you bare so fast your head will spin. And men did fear it perhaps because they feared their grip on some version of reality they thought was real or that they needed to build merely for the necessity to control. We each fear letting go, and only in letting go will we ever find what is beyond our little worlds full of comfort and safety which ego and mind tell us is real but is not.
All energy can move you, and when in sufficient volume, can move you into connecting into the vast awareness that is the universe. Think of it as a very real extension of you. This is what happens, or can happen, often happens, in awakenings. I this way, space no longer is an issue. You feel someone as though they are sitting in front of you. Because they are. The universe is now an extension of your awareness. It forms a vast interconnected network like the internet is connected. It is the same basic concept and the internet emerged out of a very basic sense of our deeper connectivity, effectively giving this deeper sense or knowing a kind of physical analog or voice. Like a metaphor.
Tantric energy does not begin with the Other. It begins with you. As a result, you have complete control over the ebb and flow of your own energy. Before the kiss is the anticipation of the kiss. I wont say the kiss is not important, for it is, but look at what happens to you before the kiss even comes to be. Her is where tantric energy can rise like a great wave. It builds and builds just as your own awareness and attention builds. Expectation, excitement, joy and connection help fuel it. But before the kiss is made real, a world of events stream through you. Here, you have the core of tantra. Tantra begins within your own awareness. The secret of tantra is in learning how to convey this energy effectively. It all follows feeling. We all know how to build sexual tension. It most often leads to release, the most blissful of experiences which we call orgasmic release. Tantra, then, though, is often concerned amongst some as the maintaining of this tension a t lower ebb instead of allowing it to build to its most expected and common of conclusions. Tantra is often about allowing your own energy to rise with the understanding that being energy, it is not dependent on anything physical to transfer it. It can be transferred over miles as much as it can be transferred in front of another. It can be true for those awakened who are still working through their own issues that connecting fro a distance is actually easier because it feels safer that way. Yes, you connect to deeply, so completely, and yet, the physical element is just so intimidating or fraught with past fears over hurt or physical vulnerability. While the flow of tantric energy works in this way, it can also become a crutch that serves to keep people from being able to connect when they are dwelling physically in the same space. This can lead to hurt of its own kind, a sense of rejection or even abandonment. All of this is hard. And unnecessary. I say this because our essence is to love, to be love, to give and receive love. It is through tantra that we can heal in powerful ways, but only when we make ourselves available. Yes, we can experience incredible energy in the other, and yet we can help the other to realize their own potential for love and union both within and without, but the march of spiritual evolution has been in knitting heaven and earth into a unity, to realize our heavenliness here. This includes our tantric vehicle, our tantric energy.
When you begin to sense in this way, what I term non locally, you quite naturally feel into the other person. This is where it gets difficult to fake anything or do anything halfway. You are either in it completely or you aren't. You are made to know this and recognize it. If it is off in the other, this can be hard. It is hard because of the level of empathy that is required. You just feel everything so clearly and powerfully. A small thing is not small. A small thing may in fact be a splinter carried deep in the energy body of the beloved. Our role can become the force of awareness and compassion to help locate and remove this thorn. Whether we are there physically or not. A mans energy needs to feel the presence of surrender in his beloved and the feminine must feel as though the masculine is not holding anything back, but bringing himself directly and powerfully into the moment with confidence and assuredness that cannot be faked. This is not lovemaking in the old way. You have to BE the talk if you are to present a good mirror for the beloved to gaze at the divine within. It is the single most complete and total experience. And yet, the path to it is not always perfect. The path of tantra, if only frenzied sexual energy, becomes a raw force that is single minded. Humanity must be able to take the reins of the horse and drive it with purpose and compassion also to the valley of desire where the two may dwell and heal and discover one another. Being able to be within a blend of energies all at once is the real mastery of tantra as far as I am concerned.....for without this "multichannel" mode at work, it all becomes a race to release tension in which case it is not elevated beyond much more than mere sexual union.
So let yourself expect and draw near. Raise the energy; become excited. Go beyond excited; move into bliss. Here, the energy burns like a flame and transforms. You move into the realm where every religion has sought to reveal while also fearing it, even covering it up to hide our shame about it. You must release shame to reach the path of awe, pure and simple, and the old traditions which did not carry this shame, quite naturally were also demonized by the shame-filled religions that followed after them and which also sought to destroy them as a result. It is pure flame and we only seek to be consumed. Here, shame cannot exist lest it dampen the fire. Here, the divine has no thought of any reason for there to be shame, only ecstasy as it has always been in its midst. We enter that experience through this, partly because of it, partly because of what we allow ourselves to feel.
Tantra is a discovery, a rich field of wonder that begs to be understood through feeling and direct experience. Bringing the wave to a high peak, your hand slides gently along as you are suspended along its curve as your balance leads you instinctualy to just the right place upon it as the wave moves forward in time and space and awareness as a constant pulse of bliss and desire, one feeding the other as it becomes a vehicle for ecstatic union within ourselves and with another.
Choose all the methods and techniques that you want.....but it will always serve reaching the right place for you within feeling to propagate that wave that simply feels right and that leads you to abandon. Here, you forget yourself, and here, you lose yourself to something more. It can be a means for dissolving ego as more of you merges within a larger current you did not know existed. This, you cannot fake, but only become.
Bows deep....
So in honor of love, which is a flower with many petals, I offer you this very delicate petal which is so sweet and worth considering
Feels Like Home
Bonnie Raitt
Makes me want to lose myself, in your arms.
There's something in your voice, makes my heart beat fast.
Hope this feeling lasts, the rest of my life.
If you knew how lonely my life has been,
And how low I've felt so long.
If you knew how I wanted someone to come along,
And change my life the way you've done.
CHORUS:
Feels like home to me, feels like home to me,
Feels like I'm on my way back where I come from.
Feels like home to me, feels like home to me,
Feels like I'm on my way back where I belong.
A window breaks down a long dark street,
And a siren wails over my head.
But I'm all right, 'cause I have you here with me.
And I can almost see through the dark there's light.
If you knew how much this moment means to me,
And how long I've waited for your touch.
If you knew how happy you are making me --
I've never thought I'd love anyone so much.
CHORUS
Feels like I'm on my way back where I belong.
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