The most succinct definition of tantra that I've heard is this: "Yes."
Tantra is about saying "yes" to life in all its beauty and chaos: light and shadow, hard and soft, movement and stillness, masculine and feminine, lunar and solar. Tantra is a Sanskrit word meaning "weaving" and "expansion." Tantra reminds us that all the diverse threads of our experience are part of the whole (and holy) tapestry of life. It's easy for most of us to embrace beauty and joy, but it's much harder to accept pain and darkness. Ancient tantrikas would dance and make love in the burial grounds as a practice of saying "yes" to all of life, moving beyond illusion and into awareness of Oneness.
Although in the West we have associated tantra with sexuality, it is actually a broad and ancient spiritual path of many dimensions. Because the body and sexuality are part of our human experience, they are vehicles for, rather than a hindrance to, enlightenment. In this way, the tantric path is one of incarnation rather than renunciation. It's about fully experiencing and diving into life rather than repressing or rejecting any part of it. And this is why tantra has long been considered a "fast track" to enlightenment: because using the potency of sexual energy and pleasure as the fuel for opening our hearts more deeply and surrendering more completely can be very efficient and effective in awakening us to our inherent divinity.
Most of the world's religions require celibacy for its leaders and shame sexuality for followers because, frankly, most of us find that it's easier to have no relationship with something tempting than a balanced one. On the other extreme, the path of hedonistic desire and indulgence can be equally lacking in authentic freedom. Tantra asks us to walk the middle way with awareness, diving into and fully experiencing life-pleasure-sex without becoming attached, falling asleep and getting trapped in ego illusions.
There is no dogma in tantra because it is a spiritual path not a religion. Most of what we know about tantra today comes from ancient oral traditions in India written down about 2,000 years ago as a dialogue between the God Shiva and his consort Shakti. The ancient tantric masters of India believed that the world was created through the erotic union of Shiva (pure masculine consciousness) and Shakti (pure feminine energy); all living things emanate from their holy dance of consciousness and energy. The sacred sexual practices of tantra pre-date that period in India, however, and have their roots in the priestess communities and mystery schools of Isis and ancient Egypt. Tantric practices can be found in cultures all over the world including Native American, Scandinavian, Taoist and Buddhist traditions, and many more.
My Personal Tantric Model
I would not call myself a tantric "master" or "expert" and frankly feel I'm much more of a student than a teacher. My experience is that the tantric path chose me rather than me choosing it. Once I found tantra, I realized that everything in this life (and many other lifetimes as well) had prepared me to walk this path. What I do know is that I am passionate about sharing what I've learned over the last ten years and serving others in their awakening.
The model that works best for me with sacred sexuality and tantra is to think of the three main centers of the body. The first is the head or crown and that corresponds with Spirit. The second is the middle of the body or the heart and that represents Love. And the third is the root and womb, the lower half of the body and our sexual organs and that is the seat of Energy.
Another way to think of it is that we receive light, grace, and spiritual sustenance streaming down from above, from Heavenly Father. We also receive nourishment, grounding, and energy coming up through our root system from Divine Mother. The energy of Father Sky from above and Mother Earth below meet in the center of our body, in our heart. Together they dance, couple and generate new love which streams forth from our heart into the world.
Ultimately, everything I teach has its roots in these three centers: Spirit, Love and Energy. And together, I've found that they're a recipe for miracles and ecstasy not only in lovemaking but in life.
One Tantrica’s Journey
I was conceived in love and passion and in the middle of the 1960s (my first word was "flower"). I remember being sexually awake and orgasmic at a very early age. Preceding that was an early incident of sexual abuse. Although I had a fairly liberal and non-religious upbringing, I still remember feeling shame and secrecy about sexuality. Before I even learned how to pleasure myself, I remember feeling waves of what I would now call kundalini energy that were so ecstatic I thought I would disintegrated into a thousand pieces.
Although I always felt loved by my parents (thanks mom and dad), their turbulent relationship caused a good deal of chaos and uprooting throughout my childhood. As a teen with my own surging hormones, my mother was an on-call rape counselor, who unfortunately processed much about her job and her divorce with me. I took on fear about men, sex and violence. I gained a lot of weight as a way to cope with the conflicting feelings. I didn't lose the weight or my virginity until I went away to college.
I married my college sweetheart; we started businesses, had a baby, bought a fixer-upper and coped with two miscarriages. We were ten years into our relationship when we began exploring tantra together, first by reading books and then by taking classes. Our sex life was OK and we were both orgasmic but we yearned for something more, deeper intimacy, more passion, a stronger connection, more frequency. Our communication about sexuality often led to conflict. We would often fall into patterns of blaming, making each other wrong for what wasn't working. "If you would just ....then I would be...." The impact on us was frustration, sadness, greater separation, and more anxiety about sex.
Tantric and sacred sexuality practices gave us a whole new realm in which to connect and ushered in a period of profound sexual awakening. We expanded our narrow view of sexuality and learned ways of using energy for healing, ecstasy, and spiritual awareness. We became much more present to the divinity in ourselves and each other, which opened up new levels of unconditional loving. We became less concerned with goals and finish lines and more satisfied riding waves of expanded bliss.
Rumi says, "Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." For us, Tantra was this new field. A place were sexuality, spirituality, love, energy, eroticism and soul were One. My husband and I explored, learned and taught classes together for many years after that. We also made some choices, individually and together, that I wouldn't make today. There were some painful and traumatic lessons for me. I was shattered when he chose to leave. Now, I'm grateful for the way in which we navigated a loving dissolution of our 23 year partnership and the way we continue to co-parent our daughter.
On my own for the first time in my life, I am now diving into the sacred inner marriage between my masculine and feminine, my Shiva and Shakti. It's abundantly clear to me now that I'm exactly where I'm supposed to be. This leg of my tantric journey has been the most powerful one yet. The surges of ecstasy I experienced as a child are with me daily now, bathing me with orgasmic joy that has me cry tears of gratitude. My daily spiritual practice drops me into intimate and immediate connection with God Source. Living in nature, on the river, with the wildlife has me surrender to the heart beat and rhythm of mother earth keeping me grounded and aware. When grief and fear come calling, and they do, I'm remember that hearts break open and I allow myself to feel all of it for as long as it lasts. I'm learning that my sexuality belongs to me and it's a sacred gift. I'm falling in love with myself and my body in a whole new way.
I've never been so clear about what I'm here to do or felt so inspired or been so humbled by the task. I know that I'm here to make love present and that our sacred sexual energy can accelerate that process. It is my profound joy to be on this journey, to share with you what I'm learning, and to support you and those you love with your awakening.
Quotes on Soulful Sex and Eroticism
If we could recover a sense of the holiness of eros and its creative, divine place in the nature of things, we might see how absurdly small our view of sex has been, and we might reinstate it without moralism at the center of life, where it can offer vitality and intimacy of unrivaled power. Before we can give depth and richness to our sexuality, we have to discover the value of deep pleasure and desire and at the same time relax our anxious attention to the control of the emotions, the justification of our lives by work and restraint, and our belief in the value of repression and suffering.
— Thomas Moore, The Soul of Sex
The true liberation of eroticism lies in accepting the fact that there are a million facets to it, a million forms of eroticism, a million objects of it, situations, atmospheres, and variations. We have, first of all, to dispense with guilt concerning its expansion, then remain open to it’s surprises, varied expressions, and (to add my personal formula for the full enjoyment of it) fuse it with individual love and passion for a particular human being, mingle it with dreams, fantasies, and emotion for it to attain its highest potency.
— Anais Nin, In Favor of the Sensitive Man
Your sexuality is god’s love letter to you, a miracle of biological engineering that could have been devised only by a mind of vast and humorous generosity, a mind that knew the pain and the sense of confinement earthly beings would feel and wanted to make sure you might always have glimpses of heaven.
— Jalaja Bonheim, Aphrodite’s Daughters
Truly qualified tantric practitioners wish to follow the speediest path to enlightenment, not with the desire to gain quick liberation, but because they have unbearable compassion for others. They realize that the longer it takes them to achieve enlightenment, the longer everyone who needs help will have to wait. The lightning vehicle of tantra is therefore intended for those who wish to help others as much as possible, as quickly as possible.
— Lama Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra
For I tell you now that within the heart and the mind and the body wisdom of the feminine lie some of the greatest secrets and greatest powers—and they await to be revealed. And all of it is laid open by the touch of another!
— Mary Magdalen (channeled by Thomas Kenyon & Judy Sion), The Magdalen Manuscript
Yes, it’s true that the senses can lead you astray and the pursuit of pleasure can get you into trouble. Sensual pleasure needs the guidance of practical and ethical judgment. But you won’t gain good health by repeatedly vetoing the vote of the senses and denigrating the wisdom of the body. Nature was neither capricious nor perverted in making sure that, other things being equal, what feels good is good for you.
— George Leonard
The essence of tantra is dealing skillfully with pleasure. The person who qualifies for tantra is someone who can cope with pleasure, someone for whom dealing with pleasure becomes a conducive situation for achieving liberation. This is the tantric personality. If a person only knows how to be miserable then tantra will not work for him or her. Like a nuclear reactor without any fuel, such a person will have no resource to utilize for the necessary transformations.
— Lama Yeshe, Introduction to Tantra
