Tantra, More Tantra

We as a culture seem fascinated with making love…but not on learning about love. Popular magazines abound with stories about hot new sex tricks and techniques…but not on the nature or practice of love.

‘How-to’ articles abound – about sex, not about love. While tracing the letters of the Greek alphabet on your lover’s clitoris may bring some thunderng orgasms, it brings us no closer to manifesting real love. A fire and ice may make your guy happy right now, but it won’t bring about the union that keeps us happy.

This focus on the gross aspects of lovemaking is the result of a basic misunderstanding; many of us think we make love with our bodies only. So we focus on how good our bodies look or perform, on the mechanics of sex…but not on what making love is.

When we truly make love, we bring body, mind, and soul to the bed (or beach, to meadow or mountaintop). We engage with our entire beings, holding nothing back. Anything less is just making the Beast With Two Backs. While that may seem fun enough, it is ultimately disrespect – using the other as an object, to scratch our itch.

That dishonors us, and our partners.

A handful of Viagra and mindful of fantasies does not a lover make. No amount of techniques can make you a good lover. Mastering every position in the Kama Sutra might make your partner come…but it won’t make them stay.

Making love starts when clothed…when demonstrating love and consideration out of bed. It just concludes in bed. To be more accurate, real love-making takes a lifetime to complete.

Now don’t get me wrong – the physical aspects of making love are a beautiful, sacred gift we give each other…but they do not solely constitute making love. When you think of old lovers you might .miss, do you remember the sex or the love? When you think back on the great times with them, do you think of sweaty gyrations or the beautiful moments of interpersonal communion, of shared laughter and experiences?

When younger, I mastered the techniques of sex and self-control, learned the mechanics and thought I was suddenly a good lover. On the surface, I was. I could make a woman come like none other, but witheld that crucial part of me, failed to offer up that bit of essence that makes a great lover.

Mechanics alone won’t do it; we’ve all experienced lovers who loved us mechanically, perfect in action, but somehow missing something. Without mutual passion and sharing, sex is simply fucking…and that’s gross. Maybe not gross like a piece of dog poo is considered gross, in the modern vernacular…gross as in lacking the subtle, the magic that turns pretty good sex into great lovemaking.

If I could again be with old lovers I missed, making love physically is not the first thing I’d like to do with them. I’d prefer to first listen to them, feel with them, share with them. It’s like setting out the blanket for a picnic – you have to first set the atmosphere, the environment, create a safe place for your sacraments.

Then can begin the real lovemaking: laughing, sharing, growing closer.

The sex is just icing on the cake, an outer manifestation of the real, inner lovemaking. The sex is not the core (as we seem to think), but the crown of lovemaking.

Totally being there, absorbed in every action. Completely giving one’s self, without reservation. That is really making love; uniting as one, our focus not on ourselves, but on the other, on US. In that beautiful crucible, we join together for a sacred moment as One.

Can we make love without touching? In tantra, we try.

In tantra, we hope to transcend the mere physical, yet engage fully in it to accomplish this. Tantra is about so much more than making love, or even love itself. Tantra (like the Tao) cannot be described; it can only be experienced.

From most reports, the average lover focuses on the mere physical when making love. The focus also appears to be on limited physical (‘erogenous’) zones, rather than the entire body…mouth, nipples, and genitals, for the crudest. Throw in a brief sortie to the neck or the area between chest and genitals, as an afterthought on the way from one to the other, for the rest.

Leaving your Lover essentially unloved (‘loved’ in only the physical realm, and a limited version of that) is never a recipe for sacred union, for truly mind-blowing sex or complete lovemaking. In tantra, we seek to make love not only to the whole person, but with the couple we create, and through it, the entire world.

So don’t get tantra wrong; it has nothing to do with sex…and everything to do with it. Through the practice of tantra, we elevate it (and ourselves) to a higher level, a more complete and Divine manifestation. Through our personal union, we reflect and invoke the Divine Union. Through our physical (and mental and spiritual) selves, we allow God and Goddess to make love, in us and through us.

We merge Yin and Yang, animal and Divine.

This is truly a rare and sacred gift. After sharing this nectar, the crude potion of mere fucking becomes distasteful, repugnant even. It serves only to dishonor and denigrate ourselves and those who we participate in this travesty with.

The sages of Vedanta and Buddhism (and indeed, of all religions, at their core) speak of right action and wrong action. Right action is seen as that which brings harmony and union, which is undertaken selflessly, without regard for or attachment to the result. They are actions that are natural expressions of our higher Self, our true, authentic, and intimate Selves.

Wrong actions are those which do the opposite. They take us not towards unipn, but to selfish gratification of desires. They are based primarily in the perceived good of the individual, of the lower self. These base and crude actions are undertaken for their anticipated results. They are engaged on to fulfill personal, lower-order desires, to join not with the world in harmony, but to use it to get what we want…not in the long term, but in the greed-filled moment.

Living life or using sex like that is perverting it. It degrades us instead of elevating us. It is the exact opposite of tantra.

Tantra is a gift. In it, we express Union (the definition of yoga)…with ourselves, our lovers, and the Divine – with the entire world. That is a gift beyond compare, a gift we give gladly, participate in gladly.

Love. It is the only goal, the only good reason, the only firm foundation for sex and life.

Love.

: )

 

 

Emotion

What is emotion?

Of course, these days if we want to find something, we Google it or look up the definition on Wikipedia. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about it:

In psychology and philosophy, emotion is a subjective, conscious experience characterized primarily by psychophysiological expressions, biological reactions, and mental states.

Okay, but what is emotion?

Is it the hot flash we call anger, the welling in our chest we call love? Is it what we feel, or the label we attach to it?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is emotion purely a physical response, or our attendant mental/psychological responses as well?

I read somewhere that (in healthy, well-adjusted people) the physical effects of emotion (increased adrenaline, pulse rate, etc.) last less than a minute. After that, any residual effects are due to our mental response to this initial (physical) emotional ‘wave’ (my term).

What about people who appear emotionless? What is going on when, in circumstances that would have most of us laughing or crying, some people display no outward emotions, nor do they give evidence of the existence of ‘inward’ ones?

These are like questions about God. Emotions are so individual and subjective (as are our relationships with the Divine) that there is no one answer, no size that fits all. Asking questions about emotions is (to no small degree) trying to unscrew the inscrutable, to define the indefinite.

Do these emotions leave a ‘residue,’ some sort of physical, mental, or spiritual after-effects?  What happened to the traces of my broken heart? Are they all merely stored in my hippocampus? How is it that when I recall them, I get an actual neurological, endocrine, and vagal response? How can a memory light up my vagus nerve?

 

 

 

Like those about God, we may never know the answers to these questions. But I do know this:

I feel.

I feel emotions deeply. They rise like waves, carrying me along with them. If I am not mindful, I will lose my balance and plunge into the dangerous seas of uncontrolled emotion, of inappropriate responses to them. I surf the waves of emotion. They pass like waves, strong and sometimes terrible and always undeniably here, now.

All the texts I’ve read on the subject, all the books and studies have brought me no closer to knowledge or understanding about emotion. Sure, I can draw you charts about brain function and can go on an on about current studies and emerging theories, but that is just information and gets us no closer to an intimate understanding of emotion.

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the tears I’ve cried and love I’ve experienced do get me closer to the subject, to a knowledge of what emotion is.

All the hours of meditation and reflection, of consideration and observation may help me gain wisdom about emotion, but nothing brings us closer to the experience than the experience itself.

Emotion is about feeling. It can’t be approached by or described with words.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So why do I even try, why do I write about a subject that defies any written apprehension of it? I don’t know, I am a writer and that is what I do, I guess. Maybe I hope I’ll somehow uncover (or stumble on, most likely) some facsimile of answers, or elicit them in others with my words. Perhaps I seek to give myself a clue by leaving my words as breadcrumbs along the trail of my search. Quite possibly, I hope to gain perspective by observing how my thoughts and words on this subject have varied over time, and with experience.

I don’t know.

Just like questions about God, the only honest answer we can give is…I don’t know. I could not possibly know, for emotions (and God) are in the realm of feeling. One can’t know them, or even know much about them. One can only experience them, down at our cores, in our hearts, where we live…in our guts, in every cell of our bodies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Talking about emotions is like trying to grasp fog, to catch the mist. Sharing emotions is another thing. But can we ever, in truth? If I am full of love for my Beloved (and she for me), how do we know we are even feeling remotely the same thing? We say (and hope) we do, but all those emotions are going on inside, all are intimately and permanently subjective.

Yes, emotions are slippery…and warm…and wet. They are hot and cold, uplifting and crushing. They are too big to be corralled with mere words. They are too vivid to describe. They are…

I don’t know much about emotions, but I do know this…I feel better somehow for having gotten this out of me. I feel better for potentially having shared my thoughts with you. I feel, I feel…

I don’t care if you hear me, am unmoved if you understand me. What I want to know is this…

Do you feel me?

 

Author’s Note: Of course, what I’d like best is to hear what You think on the subject. There are no right or wrong answers.