The Dance of Tantra

I will admit that I used the title to grab your attention.  When we think of the word tantra, it sound exotic, a spiritual way to feel sexy, or maybe a sensual form of spirituality.  Unfortunately, tantra I think is being utilized in a way that helps sell workshops on how to be a better lover, but maybe not always a better person.

I will keep this short and sweet.

Beneath what you feel is what has been overlooked.  What is overlooked is what it yet to be resolved.  What is not resolved turns in you and is your master.  Most people simply do not have the awareness of what lies deeply lodged in them.  Sometimes they need the awareness in others to point it out.  Sometimes we have seen it but ignore it or do not see it for what it is.  But as you do the work to surrender all of your junk, to die to what you were to be born to what you can be, your experience of energy will absolutely change.
It will be like layers of old clothes are taken from your body as you return naked but intensely alive.  What was removed was what you thought defined you.  And for a time, it did.  Your hates, your dislikes, your fears, your worries, your concerns, your hopes and dreams (often driven partly by some fears and worries!!) all come off of you and what remains?

You do.

So your experience of what you think tantra is will change dramatically.
I have discovered how sexual energy can actually be sublimated fear and rage.  Really?  Yes, really.  But its not easy to get to, but its always there if you look at it.  Look at HOW you feel with your sexual energy.  really be honest with yourself.  Do you ever feel an edge of fear?  DO you ever feel an edge of rage for some reason?  Do you tell yourself "Oh, that's just my animal nature coming out," or "It's only natural to want to pull hair or rip off clothes...."  Look more deeply into this.  FEEL into it.  Do you feel yourself expanding or do you feel some part of you contracting?  Do you feel sexual energy as sexual tension that has to be released?  There is something deeper down.  We can get so drawn in by the draw, the yearning that this energy drives in us.  But the energy is not like some perfectly sacred thing that is perfect.  it is only as good as our insides.  We are like a lampshade that has any number of smudges and darkened regions that when cleared allow the light to shine through without any struggle to see or know it.  The sad thing to me is that tantra is so often sold as a sexual experience when in truth it is a path of liberation that only comes about when you are willing to remove all of the old lenses that have made it seem so raw and even hard sometimes.  At first tantra might lure us through lust, but it wins us through bliss.  Not just yearning, but a yearning that is like a river that flows into larger and larger tributaries and then opens out into a sea and then vast ocean.  It is hard to know sometimes where all of this will lead, but if you want to know where you are, observe your yearning and how it makes you feel.

It was once explained that tantric temples were themselves entirely empty and plain.  They might have had incredible depictions of sexual love on their outsides.  They might even have sensual sculptures as one enters.  The central areas, though, were plain and remarkably empty.  Perhaps that might serve as a clue to what lies ahead in this journey.

Part of the answer lies in death.  Death, you see, is the soul of surrender.  Implied in it is a form of surrender that is ultimate.  In dying, we give up all investment in what has come before in order to know what lies ahead.  By conquering our fear by simply allowing ourselves to allow what is inevitable to be, we die.  We die to what we conceived of or were.  And the truth is, we can die many many deaths in any day or week or year.  Most often, we cling to life over our fear of death.  When we embrace death, not actual physical death, but the soul of what death is, we are transformed.

In releasing the fear we have of our ultimate death you can also begin to free yourself from the fear of other forms of death, the ones that actually make the biggest difference in your life.  By learning to be fearless and to live in the present, you overcome death.  You do. It isn't that you become immortal, it isn't that you will continue to live in your body.  No.  Your body is designed to live a certain time and then return to the earth.  It serves you in the same way that a petal serves a flowering tree.  The petal will soon fall and become the earth even as the tree continues to live and grow ever larger.  Your soul is like this tree.  It lives on forever.  Countless lives, realities, worlds.  You may not see it or know it.  You may not have to, either.  That isn't the answer.  Knowing about a past life isn't as important as being able to surrender all that hung you up in that past life and that also hangs you up in this one.  As you remove these barriers to becoming, you also open new doors to perception, memory and awareness.  It is just that simple.  Your higher self knows the many lives you have lived, yes, for THAT is important to it.  What is important to you is that you get this one right.  In so doing, you do a service to all the selves that you are....that you have been and shall be, for even as you release fear of death, you also open up new possibilities in living.  You begin to realize that you are just one of many bodies, lives, experiences.  Suddenly the picture broadens because your perception also broadens.  Here, fear of death begins to wane.  We each cease the grasping to the material that held us and which kept us powerless through fear.

It is the same with tantra.  It is the same with a smile.  It is the same with food.  The same with music and a billion other things.  They all change.  You change.  It is marvelously simple and direct.  And the way to making this road smooth is to know that you are more than just this one self, or life.  As ego slips away, something more slips in. Your larger or expanded self has more and more room to simply be.  Before, it had been crowded out.  Now there is more room for it to express itself.

Then, the old sexual draw becomes something lighter and more wondrous than ever before.  We are each here, knitting heaven and earth together.  When you can face death head-on, those countless deaths to what you thought were ideas and investments that were so important but now no longer matter, you touch the essence of this path.  It is not for the feint of heart, but we were all born with radiant hearts and souls.  So how about we let in that light?