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)

 

Ask Parvati 28: Enlightenment and Emotions - Part 6: Guidance from the Enlightened

PART 6: GUIDANCE FROM THE ENLIGHTENED

(Continued from The Rise And Fall Of Emotions)

“He who sees all beings in his own Self

and his own Self in all beings,

by virtue of that realization, feels no hatred.

He who has known that all beings

have become one with his own Self,

and he who has seen the oneness of existence,

what sorrow and what delusion can overwhelm him?”

- Isavasya Upanishad

We have explored this week the relationship between enlightenment and emotions. Enlightenment is a topic that is beyond most of us, as most of us are not enlightened. The masters show us the way through the perils of the mind and our tendency for attachment.

When we look at dealing with emotions along the path, we must remember that to feel better than or more evolved than another person, immediately lets us know that we are in our ego. The masters tell us that in an enlightened state, we would see all as divinity. There is no greater than or lesser than feeling in the divine.

We are human beings, sentient beings, returning to love. Emotions will come. Emotions will go. Until we are enlightened, we learn to witness them in ourselves and in others, without attachment. This is our practice until we are established in an open, flowing field of wisdom-compassion. We learn to respond to our emotions rather than react to them.

A friend of mine found out I was writing on this topic this week and sent me the most perfect quote from Amma, that I feel answers this week’s question perfectly. In the words of a true master, who resides in the One, Amma says:

“Enlightenment is not a rock-like state where one loses all inner feelings. It is a state of mind, a spiritual attainment into which you can withdraw yourself and remain absorbed whenever you want. After you tap into the infinite source of energy, your capacity to feel and express everything gains a special, unearthly beauty and depth. If an enlightened person wishes, he or she can express emotions in whatever intensity he or she desires.

Sri Rama cried when the demon king, Ravana, kidnapped his holy consort, Sita. In fact, lamenting like a mortal human being, he asked every creature in the forest, "Have you seen my Sita, where did she go, leaving me alone?" Krishna's eyes were filled with tears when He saw his dear friend Sudama after a very long time. Similar incidents are there in Christ's and Buddha's lives as well. These Mahatmas were as expansive as limitless space and therefore could reflect any emotion they wanted. They were reflective, not reactive.

Like a mirror, Mahatmas respond to situations with perfect spontaneity. Eating when you are hungry is a response. Whereas, eating whenever you see food is a reaction. It is also a disease. Responding to a particular situation, remaining unaffected by it and then moving to the next moment is what a Mahatma does.

Feeling and expressing emotions and honestly sharing them without reservation only adds to an enlightened being's spiritual splendor and glory. It is wrong to see that as a weakness. It should rather be considered as an expression of their compassion and love in a much more human way. Otherwise, how could ordinary humans understand their concern and love?”

May you witness the flow of your emotions and learn to rest in the field of true compassion for self and all beings. May you serve love by witnessing the ebb and flow of your thoughts and emotions. May you learn to love and serve the greatest good in all as you express presence by being in non-resistance to what is. May you move swiftly along your evolutionary path to enlightenment.

Parvati

PS: My next post will be this Sunday.

 

Ask Parvati 28: Enlightenment and Emotions - Part 5: The Rise and Fall of Emotions

PART 5: THE RISE AND FALL OF EMOTIONS

(Continued from Body, Mind, Emotion And Compassion)

“The single most vital step on your journey toward enlightenment is this: learn to disidentify from your mind. Every time you create a gap in the stream of mind, the light of your consciousness grows stronger. One day you may catch yourself smiling at the voice in your head, as you would smile at the antics of a child. This means that you no longer take the content of your mind all that seriously, as your sense of self does not depend on it.” - Eckhart Tolle

Learning to witness is essential as we learn to let go of our identification with our ego and our emotions. On the journey towards enlightenment, we will experience periods when the mind is still and pure. In this state, we can witness and watch life from a place of spacious presence. Life arises. We witness. We are part of life, also dancing, yet still, watching the dance.

This space between thoughts is where truth lies. In this, is the eternal, the reality of existence, the enlightened presence. As we learn to meditate and evolve, we learn to find more space between our thoughts and emotions, so that the grip of our mind softens and our emotional flux becomes more balanced.

There is a reality that exists beyond our mind and beyond the up and downs of our moods and our feelings. This is an infinite space that is, that always has been. Our purpose is to rest in the fullness of that space and allow ourselves to be one with it. In that space is pure consciousness. All of life is pure consciousness arising, yet we think, we separate, we identify with our minds and allow our ego to control our life. We become constrictive and we lose sight of that space.

As we progress along the path to enlightenment, our emotions provide us with humbling guideposts, mirroring the way we identify with our mind. We learn how involved we are with the story, rather than witnessing what is in the space of fullness. When we are a witness, we are not cold, but warm, connected, and ultimately compassionate. Witnessing does not mean not having feelings, not expressing vitality and interconnection. Witnessing means remaining rooted in the expansion, even when experiencing potentially constrictive situations. We see the constriction. We understand it for what it is. It is identification with the temporal, with the mind, with the passing.

There is a difference between joy and happiness. Happiness is passing. We feel happy, then we feel sad. But joy is connected to the infinite space beyond the mind, to the eternal voice of the soul as it expresses itself in this human form.

Enlightened masters tell us to watch the rise and fall of the mind, like the waves of the ocean. The waves are not the ocean, just the surface agitation. The ocean is deep, powerful and vast, just like the space beyond thoughts.

I would imagine that perhaps enlightened masters do not feel emotions the way we do, but rest in the field of pure compassion. Based on the scriptural reference in the Bhagavad Gita, I would guess that an enlightened being is beyond the rise and fall of emotion, as he resides in the all-pervading field of pure consciousness: “When you have reached enlightenment, ignorance will delude you no longer. In the light of that knowledge you will see the entire creation within your own Atman and in me.” - Bhagavad Gita 4:35

Along our path to enlightenment, we learn to respond to, rather than react to emotions, until we are in a oneness state of pure consciousness, residing in pure compassion. Until such time, we witness the rise and fall of our emotional landscape, like waves upon an ocean. As we watch the waves, even delight in their dance, we remember that we are as vast as the ocean and as open as the sky.

(Continued tomorrow with Guidance From The Enlightened)

REMINDER: Don’t forget that today submissions are due for this week’s Ask Parvati blog. Send your questions to ask@parvatidevi.com

 

Ask Parvati 28: Enlightenment and Emotions - Part 3: What Is The Mind?

PART 3: WHAT IS THE MIND?

(Continued from Enlightenment Now)

“When the walls of a reservoir are destroyed, the waters rush out in all directions. Similarly, when the limitations of restlessness and delusion are removed by meditation, the consciousness of man spreads out to infinity and merges in the omnipresence of Spirit.” - Paramahamsa Yogananda

The mind only knows division. It knows the past as a body of memories. It feels it knows the future as a body of projections. Even though we feel we have lived the past so it is therefore for us “fact”, it is still only a collection of perceptual experiences that make up our reality. It is no more fixed, in essence, than our future, which is a series of perceptual projections based on anticipation and expectation.

When we explore the mind, we see that in fact, it does not exist by any other means than by the energy we give it. We believe our thoughts. We make them fixed. We feel that person hurt us because we experienced that in our past. That is the truth with which we identify. We feel that terrible thing will happen, because that is what we fear. Most of what we think and feel we “know” is a configuration of the mind, mental constructs to help make us feel in control, powerful, important.

But all thoughts are passing. There is no thought that is fixed, permanent or eternal. Thoughts exist within the realm of the temporal. They come. They go. New ones come again. It is the nature of the mind to think, and thinking it does. It goes on and on - thinking - until we bump up against grace and notice that perhaps what we think may not be so fixed and solid after all.

When we look at our lives, we see that what we think in fact is not all that reliable. We think for sure we will get that promotion, or that we won’t get it. We get ourselves all worked up about it, either with excitement or with foreboding. Then the opposite occurs and we are relieved, happy or sad. When the thing we like happens, we are happy. When it does not, we are sad. We are like weathervanes turning in the winds of our passing, ever changing thoughts.

So then what is beyond the mind? Is there something that is not subject to moods, to the ebb and flow, to every whim and change? Does the eternal exist?

Most of us have had, at some point or another, an arresting experience where what we thought was real, turns out to be false. We are shocked, shaken, and a whole new reality opens up to us. In that opening, something magical occurs. Perhaps we notice it. Perhaps we are too afraid of it, so we shake it off and close down again.

If we remain open, we begin to see that between our thoughts is a space, just like the pause that exists between each inhalation and exhalation. In that pause, lies possibility. Yogis have taught this wisdom for millennia through meditation and breathing practices, in which the aspirant learns to observe the space between.

Amma guides us through our attachment to our ego by saying: “By extinguishing the smaller flame of ego, you will lose your identity as a small, limited individual. Nevertheless, this is absolutely nothing compared to what you gain from that apparent loss - the sun of pure knowledge, the inextinguishable light. Also, when you lose your identity as a small, limited self, you become one with the bigger than the biggest, the universe, the unconditional consciousness.”

In the space between, we open up to the field of pure consciousness that has been there all along. It seems that is why our way of understanding change is not the same as how an enlightened being understands change. We see the change we need to make through the lens of our limited, ego self. We either see our self as good, or bad, because that is all the ego can do: divide.

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says to Arjuna: "What is day for me is night for all beings, and what is night for me is day for all beings." This reference reminds us that what we perceive with our minds is not the way for the enlightened master.

The change we are inspired to embody in the process of enlightenment is one that dissolves the grip of the mind and opens us to the field of possibility that lies as a substratum beyond it. This, in essence, is at the root of meditation practice and ultimately, enlightenment: becoming one with the space through which pure consciousness arises. Eckhart Tolle goes on to say:

“As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.”

As we begin to loosen the grip of our mind and ego, we create space in which we can explore possibility. Part of what arises in the space is the flow of our emotions. So how do we learn to master that flow along our path to enlightenment?

(Continued tomorrow with Body, Mind, Emotion And Compassion)

 

Ask Parvati 28: Enlightenment and Emotions - Part 2: Enlightenment Now

PART 2: ENLIGHTENMENT NOW

(Continued from What Is Enlightenment?)

“Self-realization is the knowing - in body, mind and soul - that we are one with the omnipresence of God; that we do not have to pray that it come to us, that we are not merely near it at all times, but that God's omnipresence is our omnipresence; that we are just as much a part of Him now as we ever will be. All we have to do is improve our knowing.” - Paramahamsa Yogananda

It is my understanding from my meditation practice, and from guidance from great teachers, that our state of unity with the One already exists, but we, for the most part, cannot see it because we are so busy, so caught up with our mind. This is why great masters tell us, it already is, that we can rest into the perfection of the now.

We on the other hand are used to identifying with our mind, to feeling that our ego is in control. We do not allow ourselves to trust and to let go. It is a bit like we are so focused on a tiny speck of cloud, thinking that it is the entire world, we miss the vastness of the sky and the infinite expanse of the universe. Amma describes this attachment to our ego so beautifully:

“Nobody likes to let go of the ego - it is so precious to everyone. However, once you have attained the state of egolessness, the world won't disappear, as you may think it will. The world will continue, but a chance takes place within you. Something is uncovered. You start seeing everything with the wonder and innocence of a child.”

We know that we are evolving, and that through evolution, we change. So we know that change is part of the process of moving towards enlightenment. However, the greats tell us that enlightenment does not actually involve change in the way most of us would think it to mean.

Most of us see change as to mean “be other than you are”, a sort of moving away from and moving towards something else. Yet the enlightened masters tell us that what we seek does not exist “out there”, but only in the infinite expanse of the now. We are told that what we seek is already here. We are told that what we are is already perfection. Great teachers like Eckhart Tolle say, “You find God the moment you realize that you don't need to seek God.”

Those kinds of thoughts can quickly become mentally confusing. Like the famous Zen koan by the Japanese teacher Hakuin Ekaky, “Two hands clap and there is a sound. What is the sound of one hand?” designed to throw a wrench in the mind’s sense of control, statement from the enlightened can leave us feeling confused, our minds reeling. For example, how can we become enlightened and also not change?

Most of us who are seeking to better ourselves or who consider enlightenment as a goal know that we have bad habits that must be overcome in order for us to evolve. In Sanskrit, teachers refer to these as our “vasanas”, our negative tendencies. We know we get ourselves into painful situations and we would like to stop doing so. So how can we already be in a state of perfection?

It seems that most of us get caught up in “wanting” to be other than we are, and therein lies the rub. We “want” to be free. We “want” to be happy. We “want” enlightenment. We “want” to have fewer emotional reactions or more emotional connection, so we live with anticipations and expectations, in dissonance with the fullness of the present moment. How many of us know how to let go and be with what actually is, now?

Eckhart Tolle says, “Life is now. There was never a time when your life was not now, nor will there ever be.”

The benevolent group of channeled guides from the Causal Realm known warmly as The Team beautifully repeat in most of their teachings that we are to practice non-resistance to what is. In previous blog entries, I have explored this idea in many different ways. If we are to move into an enlightened state and flow with emotions with wisdom compassion, we must practice non-resistance to what is.

We tend to live in a push/pull dynamic, resisting what is because we deem it “bad”, or we grab onto it because we deem it “good”. This is what the mind does. It divides. It categorizes. It tries to control, so that we feel important. But we are told that enlightenment is beyond the mind, so we know that somehow, the mind, our thoughts and our ego interfere with the experience of enlightenment.

We speak of the mind easily, as though we understand what it is. But what is the mind? How does it interfere with our evolutionary journey towards the One? And how do we get beyond it?

(Continued tomorrow with What Is The Mind?)

Ask Parvati 28: Enlightenment and Emotions - Part 1: What Is Enlightenment?

ENLIGHTENMENT AND EMOTIONS

Dear Parvati,

When a person is enlightened do they still respond to human emotions the same way that, lets say, the average person would?

PART 1: WHAT IS ENLIGHTENMENT?

Thank you for this question. It is an important question in that there are many misconceptions about enlightenment, mostly because most of us are not yet fully enlightened. If we are lucky, we may have glimpses. But enlightenment is something most of us actually know very little about from personal experience.

They say that only the enlightened can recognize an enlightened being. So not yet being fully realized myself, I can only imagine what the end “goal” would be and how a fully realized being would respond to emotions. I have a sense based on what I have experienced and through learning from great masters.

Due to this, I feel it appropriate to talk about emotions and enlightenment in this blog referring to the body of experience that I can offer and in drawing upon to wisdom of the great masters that guide our way.

Unlike book learning, wisdom that comes from experience resonates in complete understanding through our entire being. There have been periods in my life of blissful flow and oneness, but not in a permanent way. I also experience states of division, separation and suffering. My journey is not yet complete. So we rely on the guidance of the great masters such as the Buddha and Christ to provide us with the tools and roadmaps to direct our journey to enlightenment.

So what is enlightenment? I understand enlightenment to be part of every human being’s destiny. We each are called to this state, to reach the “goal” (as some traditions call it) at some point through our many incarnations. In truth, we are one with pure consciousness. The process of our soul’s evolution involves a purification of our distorted perceptions so that we may realize our true, divine nature. This process is of personal benefit, and also of benefit to all beings, as we are all connected.

In the Hindu tradition, there is an understanding of four primary goals of human existence: dharma (righteousness), artha (wealth), kama (desire) and moksha (liberation). It is said that of these, the highest dharma is moksha, the experience of full realization.

There are various stages of enlightenment. In the early stages, we begin to awaken and realize that there is more to life than wanting and our perceptions. We start to question the nature of the mind and the grip of the ego. Then there are various stages of purification of the mind as the ego dissolves and we feel more interconnection. As we evolve, the ego holds less power and we slowly merge back to the One. Finally, we reside in a permanent state of oneness with pure, divine consciousness and feel a unity with all that is. In this final stage, we are no longer identified with the body or the mind. We have transcended even death itself.

The fully realized being, my guru, Mata Amritanandamayi Devi, lovingly known as Amma or Mother, speaks eloquently of the dissolution of the ego:

“Within the bud of the ego, it is dark and narrow. When the bud gives way and the flower emerges, everything becomes beautiful and pervaded by the most glorious light. You come out of the dark into radiant light, from imprisonment to freedom, from ignorance to true knowledge. This world of diversity is transformed into perfect oneness. It happens within you, not externally.”

It is my understanding that when we return to the One, the final stage of enlightenment, we see all that is as a reflection of pure consciousness. All that is, is divine. In this state, we don’t have emotional reactions but still have the capacity for emotion, while abiding in the equanimous state of pure compassion.

This is a very sophisticated state of being, one very few know, one that is true mastery. Such a state involves the absolute dissolution of the ego, of any notion of duality or separation and the complete merging into the flow of pure consciousness. When we are in the One, it is my understanding that we are in a permanent state of unity with the world, with the universe and with all of creation.

Amma speaks of this state of being with first hand experience:

“As the realization that everything is pervaded with Divine Consciousness dawns within you, you also see that every human being, everything in creation, is already Divine. The only difference is that you know that you and they are one with Divinity, but they do not. It is only a question of uncovering the truth.”

In the Bhagavad Gita, the sacred Hindu text, Krishna tells Arjuna that an enlightened being sees all things equally and loves all things equally. This passage expresses some of this notion:

“By seeing the Ultimate Consciousness equally everywhere, impartially situated, one does not degrade the embodied self, by the self; therefore reaching the supreme goal.” (Bhagavad Gita, 13:29)

So then how do we embody such a sophisticated state of equanimity and balance? The masters tell us, the answers lie right here, in the eternal now.

(Continued tomorrow with Enlightenment Now)