Sacred Sexuality: Beyond Wanting - Part 2: Body Language

(Continued from Sex and Spirituality)

 

Whether we are heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, a polygamist, a monogamist, or celibate, our physical body is part of a vast, multidimensional whole. What we do, think, feel, taste, smell and touch is never limited in isolation to our immediate sense of self, but has ripple effects throughout the entire universe.

 

When we communicate, we take in and impart information. For most, this is thought of as a verbal exchange. But for those who are sensitive to otherness, we understand that there is no such thing as purely verbal information. In addition to what we speak, we are also sharing our emotional presence, all the contents of our body language, the subtle innuendos, and our vibrational intentions.

 

When we share with someone, we are in contact not just with the physical being that we see, but with all that person’s past thoughts, experiences and actions, as well as all energies with which they have been in contact. We are in touch with the totality of their soul's evolutionary journey. Even when we are physically alone, we are never truly alone. Whatever we think, feel or do, we are continually in communication with an immense universe that comes home to us through our physical body.

 

The body is literally a channel for unseen forces. We know we need to take care to communicate appropriately when we share our ideas and our heart, whether silently to ourselves, thoughtfully through prayer or orally to others. We know we must be attentive to our audience and communicate appropriately so that we may be understood and so we may fully feel connected.

 

The same is true with sex. It is a form of communication, communication with self, and/or with other(s). Sexuality in the positive possibilities is about receptivity and trust, because in order to fully meet the divine, that is, the pure consciousness that runs through our being, and share in its presence that runs through everything, we must lay down our ego, rest in humility and let go of wanting. This takes spiritual maturity.

 

If we were deeply honest with ourselves and looked courageously into the recesses of our psyche, we would find that for most, sex is an expression of seeking external fulfillment, getting or giving to get, which are forms of our ego attempting to gain approval, feel safe and find control. Sex for most is a form of trying to find connections while feeling disconnected. Even when we feel we love someone, we need to be careful we are not still seeking their approval, playing out childhood patterns and being inauthentic in the moment. In this way, the sober truth is that for most, sex is more of an expression of the impossibilities, because it often comes from a place of scarcity, wanting and lack, rather than genuine and pure love.

 

Just like anything in the universe, when we approach life from a perspective of lack, we will continue to feel unfulfilled no matter how many fast cars we buy, how many shiny shoes are in our closets, how big our house is, or how many multiple orgasms we have. Unless we embody the courage to face our inner emptiness and switch internal dials so that we may let go of our inner wounds that tell us we are unloved and unlovable, we will not find the fullness we ultimately seek. Similar to the rules of abundance that tells us that riches cannot be made from feeling not enough, we cannot meet the eternal and divine through sexuality if we are in a disconnected state of wanting. Love comes when we love ourselves.

 

Sex transmits information. It is a form of communication - communing with self, others and otherness. It brings us beyond our limited sense of self and opens us to something else, be it the divine, or more wanting. (As a transmitter, sex also gives us STDs, which sadly have affected many, many people all around the world.)

 

When we look at sex from a spiritual perspective, we also understand that sex transmits information from the unseen to the seen. When we are spiritually centered, we realize that sexuality opens a multidimensional portal and has the capacity to transmit beauty, peace, joy, as well as unseen STDs, that is, interference patterns that take root in our physical form.

 

When I was living in Montreal and ran a yoga studio there, I went away one weekend on a meditation retreat by myself for personal recharge. When I came back, I was greeted by my then boyfriend and a swirling array of women I could see in his energy field... three to be exact. As soon as I saw him, I exclaimed, "Who are these women?” I knew he had been unfaithful to our monogamous relationship while I was away. I could see their energy imprint in his energy field. I knew that if we were to be intimate again, I would be interacting with him, his unseen field, as well as all those with whom he had been in contact. For me, the spiritual path is complicated enough, full of promise and pitfalls. Engaging in such complicated and unclear energy systems was not for me, so we parted ways.

 

That partner and I practiced at that time what most people popularly understood to be Tantra. It is from experiences like that relationship and others that I came to develop a deeper understanding of Tantra and know intimately the power of sexuality to touch the divine or to add complication to our lives. Sex can support our evolution if the energy is handled with absolute awareness and true understanding of wanting and desire. For most, sex either keeps us in cycles of wanting providing temporary highs, like white sugar rushes that do not ultimately feed our soul and body/being, or (when sexual desire is misunderstood as love, rather than seen as tricky wanting) it adds layers of complications to our path, and brings into our body/being energies from which we will eventually, in this life or the next, need to release.

 

(Continues tomorrow with Wanting Fulfillment or Open to Divine Love)

Sacred Sexuality: Beyond Wanting - Part 1: Sex and Spirituality

Sex is everywhere in our media. It sells. It builds brands. It feeds consumerism. It is not a surprise that it does, as the energy of sexuality is the very energy that creates life. It is a very powerful force that is best used with conscious understanding.

 

Sex is a powerful vehicle for the divine. As I celebrate in my song Sanctified Skin (which I will officially release early this summer), the light of pure consciousness dances within us. Our body is a temple for divine play. But if we are to play, we must be aware of who or what we are playing with.

 

There are interference patterns in the universe that do not have physical form, but covet our physical bodies. Because a physical body is subject to natural laws, it creates the experience of polarity that provides an opportunity to add jet fuel to the process of evolutionary process. To have form, means having the gift of spiritual alchemy. But we must be aware what base metal we wish to transform into gold, hence the power of free will.

 

We have all been there, freely expressing our wants. Crushes and heartbreaks, great sex, bad sex, the partner we wished we had, the one we once loved but now hate, the one we are with and no longer want. But what is behind the roller coaster of sexual desire and how does it fit in with our spiritual path?

 

Tantra and sacred sexuality are not the same. As I said in my recent blog entries, Tantra as a whole does not condone the use of sexuality while on the spiritual path. But not everyone is meant to be a hard-core yogi where celibacy is usually considered essential. Most often, people wish to find a more integrated approach to their spirituality and their modern, family life. So where does sex fit into that?

 

(Continues tomorrow with Body Language)

Hello from the Yoga Show

Dear friends,

I am at the Yoga Conference in Toronto to promote Yoga as Energy Medicine and Yoga in the Nightclub. If you are there, please come by and say hello. I am in booth 806.

My next blog topic is sacred sexuality. It will be posted beginning tomorrow. But here is a preview of what I'll be talking about:

Tantra and sacred sexuality are not the same. As I said in my recent blog entries, Tantra as a whole does not condone the use of sexuality while on the spiritual path. But not everyone is meant to be a hard-core yogi where celibacy is usually considered essential. Most often, people wish to find a more integrated approach to their spirituality and their modern, family life. So where does sex fit into that?

Until tomorrow, be very well. This human form is a gift. Celebrate it!

Parvati

Wanting and Spiritual Materialism: How Not To Feed The Greed

Wanting and Spiritual Materialism

 

Over the last couple of weeks, I received a variety of emails from people who read my recent blog entries on Tantra. Some were delighted to have greater clarity on the subject, feeling inspired by the idea of the body as a vehicle for the divine and an opportunity to practice witnessing pitfalls along the path. Others felt confused and upset at the idea that Tantra is not a sexual free-for-all. This pushed the button of their attachment to their libido. Everything that pushes our buttons gives us an opportunity to see ourselves in a new way. Aspects of our shadows are being highlighted for us to see, showing us ways in which we are attached to unfulfilled desires that may be outdated or may need voicing.

 

We all have unfulfilled desires. Many spiritual environments become a feeding ground for these, where practitioners may be wearing flowing clothes and chanting prayers, but feeling inwardly tied in knots. Wanting is insidious and we must be aware of it - whether we are in the office, following our creative voice, practicing bendy poses on our yoga mats, or exploring sexuality in our bedrooms.

 

We want. We want more. We get. But it is not enough. So we want more. In a perpetual cycle of wanting, we consciously and unconsciously feed into a human tendency for greed. We feel it is our right to get, so we want. Unaware of how it all started or what makes it continue, we seek external things to temporarily quell the hungry lizards in our bellies and brains, until yet again, we want more.

 

Most of us are unaware that we spend much of the time in a state of wanting, because it is a deeply unconscious part of how we operate. Part of the process of enlightenment seems to be shedding light into areas that are in shadow. Seeing aspects of ourselves that are disconnected can be an uncomfortable process, especially if we feel we have things figured out, we want things to be a certain way, or we are simply attached to wanting.

 

Greed is everywhere. It is easy to see greed present in our consumer world. As spiritual aspirants, we are also asked to witness the tendency for greed in our spiritual pursuits, wanting to be yogis, wanting to find liberation. Fueled by good intentions, our wants don’t end up supporting our evolution, but instead perpetuate a feeling of being disconnected from the perfection of the now. If you have not yet read “Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism” by Shambhala founder Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, it is a classic book on the shadow of the spiritual path, a practical guide for seekers of truth.

 

Though I am not a practicing Christian, I was raised in a Christian home and go to church on high holidays; and the Bible is among the spiritual texts that feed my inner life. To me, the famous Psalm 23: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” speaks of the way we return to wholeness when we turn our hearts to the divine. Wanting ceases. We feel fulfilled in the moment because we are, in truth, in a unified state with pure consciousness, rather than temporarily believing that we are lost, divided and alone.

 

The ego is a tricky and hungry thing that has power only when we feed it. But sometimes – even often - we are unaware we are doing so. Just as a chameleon can change colour to blend with its surrounding, so too our ego can shift and fool us to suit our desires. We may think we are evolving when in fact we are unconsciously justifying our self-serving ego.

 

Our feeling of being disconnected is at the root of our suffering. Wanting feeds our feeling of being disconnected and incomplete. We want, because we feel lack. We wanted a perfect mommy or daddy to make us feel special when we were children, and we still seek that mommy or daddy in our material acquisitions, in our spiritual pursuits, in our friends and life partners.

 

EXERCISE

 

Take a look this week at how wanting is present in your life. I have spoken much of practicing non-resistance to what is in past blogs. Wanting is the exact opposite of non-resistance. When we want, we are either pushing the flow or resisting it. We are in a state of disconnect, feeling lack and wanting more. There is nothing wrong with the desire for fulfillment, when it comes from a relaxed place of joy. When it comes from lack, we are trying to fill ourselves up from a place that does not believe we can be fulfilled, so the cycle continues.

 

It is natural to desire a nice job, car, home, or loving partner. But when we feel that we are not OK without them, then those things possess us, hold us in some way. They become temporary gap fillers and will not bring us the lasting happiness we truly seek. The desire for them will bring about not joy, but suffering.

 

Look for wanting in your life. Begin to notice it at work, at home, with your friends, with family and spouse. Notice it also in your sex life (or absence of one). Wanting has a heyday in the land of the libido. Next week, I will take a look at the power of sex and where sexuality and spirituality meet.

 

Until next Sunday, be well.

Parvati

Tantra Yoga: What's Sex Got To Do With It? - Part 4: Funky Sex and Multiple Orgasms

(Continued from The Catch: Tantra’s Sex Appeal and the Need for a Guru)

 

A branch of Tantrics, known as the Left Hand Path, supported, encouraged and condoned the use of sexual rituals as a means to cultivate spiritual enlightenment, whereas the majority of Tantrics, known as the Right Hand Path, frowned upon such, casting out the beliefs of the other group as erroneous, even dangerous. The Right Hand Path instead promoted celibacy as a means to mastery over desire and wanting, in order to merge with the Divine while in form.

 

Saying Tantra is about sex is like saying that Muslims are about terrorism. Nothing could be further than the truth. The vast majority of Muslims are a faith-loving, good people who promote wise and compassionate action. An extreme sect promotes the use of terrorism. The same could be said for Christianity and Buddhism and other world religions, where small sects seem to paint a general picture over the tendency of that belief system. Perhaps because we lack cultural and spiritual maturity as a people, we allow the flavour of one grape to affect the entire batch of wine.

 

I have always had a natural connection to the unseen realms, ever since I was a child. As such, my yoga and meditation practices and studies naturally and organically flowered into a relationship with the realm of the energetic. Fueled by the desire to understand what was naturally occurring within me in my yoga practice, I uncovered references in the Tantric texts to contextualize what I intuitively knew and what I was physically and energetically experiencing.

 

It has been in some sense a personal interest of mine to support a deeper understanding of Tantra through my musical works and performances, and through my yoga teaching method called YEM: Yoga as Energy Medicine. YEM naturally finds home in the Tantric traditions, since this Hatha Yoga practice emphasizes the alchemical power of breath and its relationship to the flow of life-force energy throughout body/being in order to create a body/being that consciously co-creates with the divine.

 

So I say to the New York Times article, “Come on! Really?” Surely we have evolved into a people that can hold the notion of potential paradox so that that a few does not colour the whole. A few Tantrics were keen on sexual rituals, whereas the majority stressed the rituals’ deviance from the spiritual path and warned of their self-deluding tendencies. But I guess if we elect presidents and leaders who are overly ready to press the button on war with alarming reactivity to fight terrorism, we must not be quite ready to see that a few does not make the whole. We may need more time to mature.

 

Until then, Tantra will be seen as being about funky sex and multiple orgasms, Hatha Yoga will come from a sex cult and yoga studios will be full of those who seek beautiful bums instead of spiritual alchemy. I used to own a yoga studio in Montreal, then one in Toronto. But my music career become too demanding so instead I offer YEM workshops as I tour my music and shows. I used to also teach Tantric workshops, but tired of having to continually explain that Tantra was not about orgies and how to master blissful sexual climaxes. Thanks to John Friend and the recent sex scandals, here is another opportunity to help clarify the beautiful and powerful roots of Hatha Yoga and Tantra, illustrating what it is, and what it is not. Thank you, John.

 

I believe that sex has a place in the spiritual arena and by no means, though my personal practice lies most naturally in the Right Hand Tantric field, do I dismiss it. But just like Tantra and yoga are easily misunderstood, so too do I feel that the spiritual power of sex is largely misunderstood and misdirected. Sexual power is after all the very force that creates life! So what are we creating with it, beyond new babies? Whatever consciousness we bring to sexual acts will be amplified through it. But this is for the topic of another blog.

 

Until next time, practice fierce discernment and courageously follow your deepest joy.

Jai Ma,

Parvati

 

Tantra Yoga: What's Sex Got To Do With It? - Part 3: The Catch: Tantra's Sex Appeal and The Need For A Guru

(Continued from Hatha Yoga, Sex Rituals and Tantra’s Shadow)

 

“Wow,” you may be thinking. “A spiritual path where sex is seen as a path to the divine! Sign me up!” But here’s the catch. Firstly, Tantra as a whole does not support the actual practice of sexual rituals. Only one offshoot branch of Tantra does, and that is a branch not generally condoned as a viable path by Tantrism as a whole due to its inherent spiritual dangers. These dangers are part of the second catch.

 

Secondly, when a spiritual aspirant begins to look at matter and the body as vehicles for spiritual evolution and personal transformation, he begins to walk the razor’s edge journey to spiritual enlightenment. He must learn to discern between the ego’s tricky wanting and expansive evolution. He must learn to balance the relationship between Nature’s involutionary tendency, that is, the rootedness of being in form, and the evolutionary cosmic play as it unfolds spiritually.

 

A Tantric aspirant can easily either become overly mired in the pleasures of the physical and lose spiritual expansion, or he can become overly lofty, detached and ungrounded by the spiritual and lose the presence of the physical. Like a gracious balancing act, the Tantric yogi walks an extremely potent path that is both delicate and dangerous.

 

I agree with Georg Feuerstein who stresses the need for Tantric aspirants to find the guidance of realized masters. I could not list the number of people I have seen over the years in my teaching and healing work – beginner and advanced practitioners, even teachers - who feel they have found their path through Tantra, yet seem lost. Without a guru while on the Tantric path, one runs the risk of losing the plot altogether and sinking into the mire of seductive wanting.

 

I have met many people in the yogic world who expound wise teachings, but vibrate with constrictive and involutionary energies. Void of humility, openness, honesty and pure spiritual shakti, people can easily become trapped in the Tantric path. One must remember that a fully realized master is one who loves all beings equally and sees all beings equally. This is not the case in most leaders and teachers.

 

The ego is a tricky and hungry thing that has power only when we feed it. But sometimes – even often - we are unaware we are doing so. Just as a reptilian chameleon can change colour to blend with its surrounding, so too our ego can shift and fool us to suit our desires. We may think we are evolving when in fact we are unconsciously justifying our self-serving ego.

 

The ego can even quietly adjust to fool us, so that we think we are growing when we are actually becoming more attached. It can even feign enlightenment. A spiritual aspirant must be careful of this. Only when we have surrendered to the guidance of a fully realized master can we overcome this.

 

(Continues tomorrow with Funky Sex and Multiple Orgasms)

 

 

Tantra Yoga: What's Sex Got To Do With It? - Part 2: Hatha Yoga, Sex Rituals and Tantra's Shadow

(Continued from Hatha and Tantra Yoga)

 

I love the descriptions of Tantra by the widely respected yogic scholar Georg Feuerstein who penned one of my favorite books, “Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy”. For those of you who have seen me perform my song “Yoga In the Nightclub” in my current show “Natamba” (and if you have not yet, please come out!) you know that I use elements of the following quote from Dr. Feuerstein in my extended version of the house music track:

 

“What Tantric masters aspired to was to create a transubstantiated body, which they called adamantine (vajra) or divine (daiva) – a body not made of flesh but of immortal substance, of Light. Instead of regarding the body as a meat tube doomed to fall prey to sickness and death, they viewed it as a dwelling-place of the Divine and as the caldron for accomplishing spiritual perfection. For them, enlightenment was a whole body event.”

As such, the body is more akin to place of alchemy, a caldron to transform the base metals of crude desires into the gold of spiritual perfection. Tantra was not an endorsement of bestiality and debauchery, but a highly ritualized practice that keenly witnessed the nature of desire and a fiercely confronted it at its root in order to use its powerful charge to fuel the fires of inner transformation. Tantra was not about freely doing what one spontaneously desired, but about developing razor-sharp insight in order to understand the impulses that arose through the body and learning acute discernment as to what those impulses fed. Enlightenment for Tantric practitioners is not an intellectual thing, nor something that is beyond form, but a full body experience.

 

The Yoga Bija celebrates the power that the physical body can provide a spiritual aspirant:

 

“The fire of Yoga gradually bakes the body composed of the seven constituents [such as bone, marrow, blood, etc…]. Even the deities cannot acquire the exceedingly powerful yogic body. The [yogin’s] body is like the ether, even purer than the ether.”

 

The obvious shadow to a practice that embraces the physical as a means to enlightenment, and why Tantra is considered the razor’s edge of the razor’s edge, and by far not for most spiritual practitioners, is that aspirants can easily fall prey to the subtlety of greed, the tricks of desire and the illusions of wanting. Just as modern bodybuilders can become overly attached to their physical form, so too can those who use their body as a vehicle for spiritual transformation start to think that their body and themselves are the divine. We see this often in Hatha Yoga, where the goal of the practice seems not to be the release of attachments to desire, but the cultivation of the best yoga butt in Lululemon pants.

 

It is also easy, I guess, for newspaper reporters to let their imaginations get carried away with the idea of sexuality being integrated into spiritual practice, while forgetting to dig a little deeper to find that in fact only a small sect of Tantric practitioners actually used the physical practice of sexuality in their spiritual pursuits. On the issue of sexual practice, Tantrism split into the Left Hand Path, a group that practiced ritual sex, and the Right Hand Path, a group that understood sexuality more symbolically than physically enacted.

 

The development of Hatha Yoga as part of Tantrism was developed to help support the body’s potential so it could meet the challenges of, and change in concurrence with, spiritual transformation. Spiritual bliss is seen not as a purely mental state, but something that involves the whole body/being. The Hatha Yogi therefore cultivates a body of light that is both metaphorically and actually baked in the heat of transformation, and ultimately freed of all notions of separation and desire.

 

As a warning to this shadow of attachments to the body and desire, and an admonition that body-practice alone is not the goal of yoga, the Hatha Yoga Pradipika, considered the most popular manual for this path, clearly states: “All means of Hatha [Yoga] are for [reaching] perfection in Raja-Yoga. A person rooted in Raja-Yoga [truly] conquers death.” (IV.102)

 

Even the purified body of the Hatha Yogis is subject to the laws of nature and will eventually pass. If one is a true yogi, one must be rooted in Raja Yoga, that is, yoga that brings aspirants to the goal of full realization, seeing Hatha Yoga as a part of such, but not an end goal in itself.

 

(Continued tomorrow with The Catch: Tantra’s Sex Appeal and the Need for a Guru)

 

Tantra Yoga: What's Sex Got To Do With It? - Part 1: Hatha and Tantra Yoga

“Yoga teachers and how-to books seldom mention that the discipline began as a sex cult — an omission that leaves many practitioners open to libidinal surprise.”

 

Before reading the above comment by William J. Broad in a recent New York Times article, I thought of the Times as a resourceful newspaper with trustworthy articles that were well researched. That quickly changed, and I reminded myself that reporters are mere mortals who do make mistakes.

 

I wrote about Tantra in a previous blog entry, as it is a long-standing interest and integrated part of my life. I felt called to share a bit more on the topic in response to the article linked above.

 

Quantum physics tells us that the “I” we hold onto so dearly is just an illusion. It tells us that in reality, everything is interconnected, not separate as we perceive it to be. It says that our life is more like a creative projection than hard, factual truth.

 

These thoughts are not the propriety of modern science, but are at the root of mystical traditions world wide, and at the heart of Tantra, a spiritual tradition that, not unlike its offshoot Hatha Yoga, is greatly misunderstood today.

 

Tantrism, which made its appearance around the middle of the first millennium AD, pioneered the view, that quantum physicists now support, that the body is not the source of defilement, nor the enemy of spirit, as some ancient religions preach, but part of a continual flow of consciousness.

 

As with many Sanskrit words, there are various meanings of the word Tantra. Some understand it to mean “to weave”, though more commonly, it is understood as derived from the word “tan” meaning to extend or to stretch. As such, Tantra is generally interpreted as “that which extends understanding” (“tanyate vistaryate jnananam anena”, Buddhist Guhya-Samaja-Tantra), promoting a continuum of reality.

 

This is also seen in Mahayana Buddhism’s famous Tantric phrase “samsara equals nirvana”, which means, the temporal world of phenomenon is equal to the transcendental state of being-consciousness-bliss. Enlightenment is not then about leaving the world or suppressing natural impulses, but an interconnection of a lower reality contained within a higher reality and a higher reality guiding and transforming the lower.

 

Tantra then is about the integration of the temporal self with the eternal Self. This is done through powerful spiritual practices and rituals that purify the body/being so yogis may experience oneness with the divine. Hence, the flowering of Hatha Yoga, a practice designed to purify the subtle channels within the body/being so that the divine may freely express itself through us.

 

Just as Siva, the Nata-Raja (Lord of the Dance) who is eternally dancing the universal rhythms, is the master weaver of time and space, Tantrics see life as an interweaving of spirit and matter as one continuum, not a collection of separate pieces of form that are set apart from the divine. Matter and the Divine are one. This viewpoint was quite unlike a popular point of view at the time of the birth of Tantra that saw the body in direct opposition to spiritual goals.

 

The Kularnava-Tantra, an important Hindu Tantric text, highlights the importance of the body:

 

“Without the body, how can the [highest] human goal be reached? Therefore, having acquired a bodily abode, one should perform meritorious actions. (I.18)

Among the 840,000 types of embodied beings, the knowledge of Reality cannot be acquired except through a human [body]. (I.14)”

 

(Continued tomorrow with Hatha Yoga, Sex Rituals and Tantra’s Shadow)

 

Ask Parvati 20 - Tantra: Yoga Is Everywhere - Part 6, Tantra

TANTRA

(Continued from Nada Yoga: The Yoga of Sound)

 

Tantra is greatly misunderstood in the West. Incorrectly thought to be the yoga of sacred sex, confusing orgasm with spiritual bliss, Tantra is instead an ancient, wise and powerful yogic path that few can tread even with the necessary guidance of a fully realized master. Hatha yoga, the notion that yoga is everywhere and the belief that one may find the divine through creative arts all have their roots in the tantric yogic tradition.

 

Ajit Mookerjee, tantric art scholar, says, "Tantra is both an experience of life and a scientific method by which man can bring out his inherent spiritual power.” His writings stress the awesome potential inherent in true spiritual art, defining this as "art created through spiritual discovery". He believed such art to be loaded with the Power of the Goddess and that it was actually part of the body of the Great Goddess.

 

According to the Tibetan Buddhist Tantric master Lama Thubten Yeshe, “each one of us is a union of all universal energy. Everything that we need in order to be complete is within us right at this very moment. It is simply a matter of being able to recognize it. This is the tantric approach.”

 

I love the descriptions of Tantra by the widely respected yogic scholar Georg Feuerstein who penned one of my favorite books, “Yoga: The Technology of Ecstasy”. For those of you who have seen me perform my song “Yoga In the Nightclub” (and if you have not yet, please come out!) I use elements of the following quote from Dr. Feuerstein in my extended yoga studio version of the house music track:

 

“What Tantric masters aspired to was to create a transubstantiated body, which they called adamantine (vajra) or divine (daiva) – a body not made of flesh but of immortal substance, of Light. Instead of regarding the body as a meat tube doomed to fall prey to sickness and death, they viewed it as a dwelling-place of the Divine and as the caldron for accomplishing spiritual perfection. For them, enlightenment was a whole body event.”

 

Tantra refers to both an esoteric school of Hinduism and Buddhism and to a group of scriptures known as The Tantras. The Sanskrit word tantra is derived from two Sanskrit words “tanoti”, which means to stretch, to extend, or to expand, and “trayati” which means liberation. As such, Tantra can be seen as a technique for stretching ourselves, for extending our capacity for attention to the utmost, for expanding our sense of awareness to meet the fullness of what is. According to some, the word tantra also means "to weave", suggesting that reality is a seamless whole, one continuum of interwoven fabric made up of spirit and matter.

 

This path to enlightenment focuses on the worship of the Goddess or Shakti. Through spiritual practices and ritual forms of worship, the goal of a tantric practitioner is to find freedom from ignorance and the cycles of death and rebirth through realizing the universe as the divine play of Shakti and Siva, the male and female principle.

 

Unlike any other yogic path, Tantra insists that spirit and matter are aspects of one whole. In some yogic traditions, a yogi learns to separate himself from the world. Tantra however urges the need to join seeming opposites and revel in a synthesis of reality and consciousness. While some yogic traditions encourage students to seek liberation from the body and the world, Tantra sees liberation in the world. For the tantric, the world is an expression of divine play of which we are an integral part. The body is a microcosm of the universe. As such, it is a powerful vehicle for liberation, an alchemical crucible in which spiritual transformation can occur.

 

In his book "Tantra Asana: A Way to Self-realization", Ajit Mookerjee says, "Tantra itself is unique for being a synthesis of bhoga and yoga, enjoyment and liberation. There is no place for renunciation or denial in Tantra. Instead, we must involve ourselves in all the life processes which surround us. The spiritual is not something that descends from above, rather it is an illumination that is to be discovered within."

 

“Wow! A spiritual path that embraces all of life as divine! Sounds perfect!” you may be thinking. Here is the catch. When a spiritual aspirant begins to look at matter and the body as vehicles for spiritual evolution and personal transformation, he begins to walk the razor’s edge journey to spiritual enlightenment. He must learn to discern between the ego’s tricky wanting and expansive evolution. He must learn to balance the relationship between Nature’s involutionary tendency, that is, the rootedness of being in form, and the evolutionary cosmic play as it unfolds spiritually.

 

A tantric aspirant can easily either become overly mired in the pleasures of the physical and lose spiritual expansion, or he can become overly lofty, detached and ungrounded by the spiritual and lose the presence of the physical. Like a gracious balancing act, the tantric yogi walks an extremely potent path that is both delicate and dangerous.

 

I agree with Georg Feuerstein who stresses the need for tantric aspirants to find the guidance of realized masters. I could not list the number of people I have seen over the years in my teaching and healing work – beginner and advanced practitioners, even teachers - who feel they have found their path through Tantra, yet are more lost than ever. Without a guru while on the tantric path, one runs the risk of losing the plot altogether and sinking into the mire of seductive wanting.

 

I have met many people in the yogic world who expulse wise teachings, but vibrate with constrictive and involutionary energies. Void of humility, openness, honesty and pure spiritual shakti, people can easily become trapped in the tantric path.

 

The ego is a tricky and hungry thing that has power only when we feed it. But sometimes – even often - we are unaware we are doing so. Just as a chameleon can change colour to blend with its surrounding, so too our ego can shift and fool us to suit our desires. We may think we are evolving when in fact we are unconsciously justifying our self-serving ego.

 

The ego can even quietly adjust to fool us, so that we think we are growing when we are actually becoming more attached. It can even feign enlightenment. A spiritual aspirant must be careful of this. Only when we have surrendered to the guidance of a fully realized master can we overcome this.

 

(Continues tomorrow with Being Relaxed And Alert)