What Tantra Is And What It Isn't*

It's about sex and has nothing to do with sex. It's about how we approach life.

Tantra isn't memorizing and perfectly executing all the chronicled positions from the Kama Sutra. It is about being your body and following its impulses rather than some rote routine in sex.

Tantra looks like it's all about pretty and light. Which it is...but it's also about being with the Dark...which often shows up in the middle of playing in the light.

For instance- the biggest sort of cliche thing I hear about Tantra is that it's about lighting a few candles and gazing into each other's eyes (snicker, snicker). Many find this boring, silly, trite. And it can be. Sitting there looking into another's eyes while a Sting song plays in the background isn't what Tantra's all about.

Tantra is all the resistence that comes up for you when you think about doing it or actually do look into your Beloved's eyes for a half hour, going deeper into yourself and them with each passing minute. It's about not burying whatever comes up for you that gets in the way when you think about being seen and seeing someone else for an extended period of time without the distractions of talking, moving, pretending.

Can the real, quiet, you be seen?...for an extended period of time? How, when, where do you want to hide?

So what happens when you start to look into another's eyes? First off you giggle. You call it trite and silly because you feel like a poster child for all the woowoo shit that exists on the planet. You do all sorts of behaviors to avoid actually having to look into someone's eyes for an extended length of time and be seen.

But if you stay with it, and just be with whatever comes up...don't fight it...just laugh, giggle, make jokes, be and allow the flow of whatever is authentic in the moment and stay with it... things can start to change inside you in magical and unexpected ways when you allow yourself to be vulnerable and open to someone.

If I'm coaching and someone resists looking into another's eyes, I asks them to internally explore why they don't want to be seen. What about them is unwilling to just sit with someone else and be. What's going on that you can't slow down enough to really connect? What happens inside you when the boom chicka-chicka of porn sex is gone and you are left with only the connecting of one soul to another? What kinds of feelings are coming up that make you want to look away? Is is shame? Fear about stuff hidden?

What happens if you just allow yourself to feel that shame and keep looking into your partner's eyes? I've found that all sorts of different emotions flow into one another if I look into another's eyes for an extended period. Layer after layer comes up, flits and floats away. If I'm with a partner I may flow from love to anger to disgust, back to love again, just by not editing anything.
Often, if I just keep sitting, I start to merge with that person...boundaries stop existing. Everything starts to hum and glow. But it could also be that I never get to that place. I remain twitchy, angry, maybe even rageful.

That's Tantra, too.

Tantra is being fully present with the world.

Fully being with a cup of tea, involving all my senses and concentration, with my brain fully present right here, is way more Tantric than doing position 37 of the Kama Sutra but being disconnected from both myself and my partner. Whipping the the tar out of your lover with a cat o' nine tails with full presence is way more Tantric than trying to figure out your Christmas shopping list while pretending to look into your lover's eyes.

I've talked about tons of exercises on here to learn to be "Tantric," but each of those exercises is not Tantra. They are the path to Tantra. They get us out of our minds and into our bodies, letting go of MonkeyMind to the best we are able and learn to really hone into our bodies. The whole idea is that once one masters the exercises, you let them go as that's all they are: processes, not experience.

All of Tantra's messages for me are found in breathing fully: taking life in, letting it go, being here in the middle of all of it.

Don't forget to visit my Sweet Tantra Sister and Friend, Greenwoman, who talks about kissing for this week's Thursdays's Tantra.

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*My flavor of Tantra, anyway, smiles.

Art

Image from here.

Couple with head together in prayer from here

My New Friend, EFT

A few weeks ago, a good friend of mine called to tell me about a special healer lady who was in town who did this tapping thing with the meridians. She was highly impressed and would I like the opportunity to have a session with this woman?

I had been asking for "something more," as a new tool. So even though I didn't feel an immediate attraction to go, I said I'd think about it. When I called back the next morning, I got the last slot.

I'm a fairly open, yet highly skeptical person. I have high standards for new techniques that come my way. I was open to this, but had my feelers up big time. As I listened and considered it, I was more attracted to the principle behind it...that when things happen to us, our bodies may respond by having our electrical wiring (the meridians) discombobulated. If that doesn't get tended to, it creates a glitch in the matrix.

When the end points of these meridians are tapped, while focusing on the emotions that the situation elicited but weren't healed, and repeating a healing statement to redirect the energy, the wiring gets rerouted and the emotional block goes away.

When she started the work, I remembered I had done this before...years back, maybe as an intro something and included with a something else. The memories are so foggy that I can't even remember where or why or what. But I do remember doing it. I've seen it referenced in various places, but never investigated it further.

I am now.

As I left, I asked for any information on remembering the points. The healer woman directed me to this site, by a guy, Gary Craig, who put this whole technique together. It's called Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). There's a free E-book downloadable manual that explains it all. They also have instructional DVD's for sale, workshops listed, practitioners, and an online community of support for finding shortcuts and ideas on how to deal with anything from headaches, to depression, anxiety, losing weight, addictions, PTSD, insomnia, back aches, business blocks (!), phobias and all sorts of stuff. Craig suggests trying it on everything. Yes, it's called Emotional Freedom technique. But I guess people are getting all sorts of positive accompanying physical results as the emotional basis for their dis-ease is cleared up.

The science behind it makes sense to me. I like that most of the practitioners listed are therapists and doctors. I like that there are studies of EFT being done all over the world and that the results are positive.

I'm hooked!!

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Happy thanksgiving to all who come here! Even if you don't celebrate this American holiday, I wish you all the best in your abundant Life and Loves. We are truly blessed.

image from here

Words

And these last few weeks ponderings on the meaning of words.

Another one of those paradoxes I so love:

Words mean nothing...it's action that counts.

Words are extremely powerful tools of the psyche in both creating and interpreting the world.

I have tons of emotional responses to words. The words I've been playing with these last few weeks are the differences of my internal responses when I hear or say: surrender, release, let go, or allow.

Whenever I hear the word "surrender," I feel a battle or struggle and that one side capitulates to the other. Or, at least, as in sexual surrender, there's some outside influence that I have no control over that overcomes me and I finally realize there is no way I can avoid the other's dominance. It could be two internal parts of me that are "warring." I also get this feeling that it's not something I really want...but that I can no longer fight or keep at bay. In other words: when I surrender, I do so unwillingly. If I look at that energy a bit deeper, there's a tad bit of Victim Voice in there for me.

I emotionally respond to release and "let go" in the same ways. I get the feeling, again, of a stuggle of some sort, or a resistance but that it's something I've been holding on to through either conscious or unconsious thought. No Victims here.

The newest perspective I've been focusing on...for the last...oh...seven years or so is that of "allowing." My Old Friend, Abraham introduced it to me and I like it. It feels free, flowy, opening and expansive to me. It feels in the moment, alive with life, opening to all that is

So..HA!...yeah...it feels to me as if I've been surrendering to the outer experiences in my life...letting go and releasing my internal reactions.

And I'm shifting...and getting really close into allowing all of it.

Yeah, they're only words, but words can convey to me what's really going on in this brain of mine and the ways in which I operate. They provide me with subtle nuances of my energetic response to life and what I put out/how my psyche react and attracts in the world.

Art:

Surrender by Lunea Weatherstone from her great Full Moon Dreams Tarot deck. Beautiful images, all.

Questing

I recently read a memoir by Elizabeth Gilbert called "Eat. Pray. Love." What a lovely book! It's about a woman's yearlong spiritual quest after a painful "wakeup call" divorce, where she goes to live in Italy, India and Indonesia (Bali) for four months each.

Italy was to explore the senses and pleasure. The four months in India were spent at an ashram, meditating and doing service work. Bali was to experience a life lived in combination of the two. She starts out lost, confused, depressed, and riddled with anxiety and fear. She ends up centered, happy, and feeling more deeply on her Path.

I also saw the movie "Into The Wild," a story about a young man, angry at his parents and society so he goes off, pennyless, to discover Life. He ends up in Alaska. He ends up discovering, after having been alone for months, that happiness is best when shared.

I've been thinking about quests lately. I've been on a bit of one here, although it didn't involve traveling in the outer world sense. Mine is more inward. It continues to go well. Things shift some then momentarily revert...then shift lots more. I am Blessed.

My greatest gift is, I guess, more of a relearning or perhaps a deeper understanding: that the deeper I do inside myself, the more I want to engage in Life; and that the more I learn, the more I discover I will never understand or know anything.

I find that quite beautiful.

Art:

Buddha Swirl from here.