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