Waking Up

Tantra is really about waking up to who or what we really are. Can you say the leaf is separate from the tree? Yes and no. Is the leaf a leaf without the tree? What is the tree? What is the leaf?

Where do we come from? How did we get here? Where do we go after it’s all said and done? Tantra doesn’t claim to have the answers to these questions. As Swami Prem Pranama says:
“Tantra takes the jump into crazy wisdom by eliminating even God from the equation, leaving only the mystery with no ultimate attempt to define it… With Tantra you are not getting somewhere; you are just waking up to the true nature of things as they are. The colors inherent in clear light [as when reflecting it through a prism] are not other than the light.”

Tantra is about sexuality and spirituality, the relationship between the two, how they dance within us, how they can be seen and experienced outside of us, in the material world. We are sexual beings and spiritual beings. They go together.

If all of life manifests from a “primordial goop” or primary energy, then there is a place in us that is connected to all of life, a part of us that is a part of everything. How does this shift our consciousness, our perception, how we are in the world? This is spiritual realization in Tantra.

I’ve focused on sexuality in this article, on Shakti, orgasm, pleasure because there is an emphasis on sex with Tantra in the West, as if that is what Tantra is. Tantra isn’t just about sex. And sex isn’t just about sex. Sex is about life. Tantra brings these two separate-seeming notions together in the form of Shakti — which I appreciate.

The spiritual side of Tantra is the wonder and mystery of it all. For me, having the experiences I had (and still have) around sexuality have opened me up to life in a way that leaves me humbled and mystified.

Yes, Tantra does provide a framework to understand things like orgasm without stimulation, but even without understanding the tenets of Tantra, sexuality can open up to intensely spiritual dimensions — it did for me.

So, more than being about Tantra, this article is about sexuality. I wanted to reframe sexuality, dissociating it from the way it is popularly conceptualized — as a simply physical, pleasure-driven act — towards a stance where it is more about connecting with life itself. Tantra was just the way in for me to say this.

Part of me is averse to Tantra because of how much it is solely focused on sex and orgasm; people get drawn to its glamour and miss its essence, its spirit. But more and more I’m realizing that the path I’m walking is the path of a Tantrica.

This quote by the aforementioned Tantric master brings home elements in this article that I hoped to convey. But it also brings me home; it brings me to my path, to my deepest truth, to the knowing that resides in me. I must be a Tantrica at heart. I’ll leave you with it:

“As Tantric practice takes root in our culture it is important that there be an understanding of the vastness of possibilities that Tantra offers. Waking up into the bliss-mad realm of the perfect union of perception and pure pleasure is really quite something. It is better than what people are dreaming up in the sex workshops. For one who is awake, the relationship to the world, to the elements, is completely different than for anybody else. We have to be able to move into the really magical and wondrous forms of transformational practice where you are working not only with your own body/mind at its most subtle levels, but the elements themselves. That level of awakening needs to be realized. Its power needs to be applied to the culture and the actual ground upon which we live. To work at these levels — the beginning levels and the most advanced levels, which bring radical awakening or enlightenment — to work with all of these is the real gift that Tantra brings. The gift is that we can encompass the whole of our lives, from the ordinary to the most wondrous, in a single path.”

Curated by Erbe
Original Article