What is Tantric Orgasm?

In conventional sexual encounter, orgasm tends to be the goal. For many men, achieving ejaculatory orgasm is their only goal. For many women, pleasing the man by making him 'come' is the only purpose of sex. When the man becomes a little more conscious, he gets focused on the woman's orgasm. The flipside is that the woman's orgasm can very easily now become the goal.

In both cases - man's ejaculatory orgasm, and woman's vaginal or clitoral orgasm, the emphasis is on genital release. In order for this release to happen, a huge amount of tension is built up in the body through accelerated movement and breath, and through body tension. Genital orgasm can make you feel like you touch God - just for a second.

That second is a premonition of the real thing.

What is happening in genital orgasm is a stirring of the base chakra, the first point where our sexual energy gets awakened. In Tantra, our sexual energy is called Kundalini. Kundalini is our vital life force, or sexual energy, which lies coiled up at the base of the spine like a snake. This snake stays asleep, perhaps our whole lives long, until one day the process of our awakening begins.

This awakening happens when we start to ask the big questions in life: What is my life really about? Who am I? How do I find the divine in everything? How to live unconditionally? These questions become intentions that start to direct your life force.

In the body, the direction that our life force wants to go, is up. When the kundalini energy awakens at the base of the spine, it slowly starts to uncoil and rise up in front of the spine, through energy centers called Chakras.

A big part of the work of Tantra is assisting you with unblocking the chakras, which are the gateways through which this energy - our sexual energy - moves. When the gateways are blocked, the energy doesn't move up any higher. The opening of the chakras requires the willingness to feel everything that we have suppressed so far.

When the sexual energy moves up the chakras, it does so through a central channel that in Sanskrit is called the shushumna. In Tantra we affectionately call this channel the hollow flute, because when it opens, the song of spirit starts to play through us. The movement of our sexual energy becomes a dance of the divine. As our sexual energy moves up, it radically opens our hearts, and eventually moves through the crown of the head so that we experience our infinite oneness with all that is. This can happen as you work with your own sexual energy, and also during lovemaking with a partner.

The awakening of sexual energy as a spiritual force in the body is what we call Tantric of kundalini orgasm. It is a subtle - and sometimes huge - rippling of electromagnetic energy up the body, from the perineum at the base of the body all the way out through the crown of the head. When kundalini moves through us, we surrender completely to what is. Emotions may move through - we welcome them and don't identify with them. The body may be still or thrown around in wild abandon. We can never predict. In the middle of the orgasm, is infinite silence. We come to meet ourselves as who we really are. There is no greater peace than this. No greater bliss. The question, of course, is: (as you know by now if you have been following my postings) How much bliss can you stand? Are you willing to let the ecstatic truth of who you really are shatter all the hard treasured perceptions you have been holding on to? Think about it. Because this is what will happen.

With love
Shakti

One partner or many partners? My view on relationship


There is a collective perception that Tantrikas support multiple partnership. In this blog article, I quote an eloquently phrased question on this theme that has recently come my way, and share with you my response.

The Question

"I have a question that came up; your group is emphasizing as it were having several partners...I'm curious about how woman deals with it, (having more than one partner at the same time) from my understanding is that woman can only give herself "fully" (& even this is rare...) to the "One" (in or via a male-body), when she has more than one lover she becomes divided & often confused - She is already the "Many" that's why she's looking for the One! ... can I ask you how was your process, development in this? & how do you see it now?"

My response

The number of partners a person has is not at all key to Tantric practice. As Tantrikas, we do not advocate or reject monogamy, polyamory, celibacy or any other form of relationship. In fact, our focus is not on relationship as such. Our focus is on awareness. We support whatever assists you in moving through illusion and closer to a true knowing of who you really are. Along the way, we support you in the gradual opening of the heart into unconditional love.This often means being taken into experiences where your heart contracts and has not been able to stay open.

Tantra is a practice of non-duality; Advaita. This means that we recognize the dualities or polarities that form and sustain our ego identities, and we find ways to help people break the gridlock that these fixed positions can create. I say "we" but more accurately my experience is that existence decides what experiences sincere seekers of truth will have. What makes us unique perhaps, is that we don't take sides in the game of "good" and "evil" in people's minds. We are as happy to guide people into the mud as into the stars. We smell the scent of truth and follow that in you.

Now on my personal experience. As my desire to live in truth grew, life presented me with potent opportunities to feel what I had suppressed in the areas of love, intimacy and sexuality. I have had to sit in the fire of my own ego's polarity patterns, which were deeply felt and embedded in the body. Some of these were:
trust - betrayal
acceptance - rejection
being special - being invisible
belonging - abandonment.

This is the theory. The practice looked like years of intense processing, crying, screaming, feeling physical and emotional pain beyond what I thought humanly possible, and often staying away from other people because I knew they would feel overwhelmed by the intensity of my experience. What was happening, in essence, was that the states that I had been suppressing all my life - trying not to feel - like the feelings associated with betrayal - had a chance to be deeply felt through my nervous system and emotional body.

As I allowed the feeling and processed the dualities, patterns would start to fall away of their own accord. It took hard work and commitment in the face of what appeared like total madness at times. But the patterns changed, and keep changing. The effect is that I am less trapped in webs of unconscious patterning, and more available to see and feel the real of what is here.

As a Tantrika, I understand (in my nervous system and in my bones) that my sexuality belongs to the Divine - existence - all that is. If there is going to be any possession or belonging involved in my sexuality, it is this: My sexuality belongs to the Tao, presence, the Self. It is a gateway to the Divine. It does not ring true for me to think of partnership with another person in possession terms. I know this statement gets read as a rejection of monogamy and marriage; it is not. It is perhaps an embracing of the core dream held in monogamy: Pure presence, commitment to what is, right now, total devotion to the One as embodied by the person I am with right now.

Yes, the feminine in me (and for sure in women I have worked with) delights in the one-pointed focus of Shiva lingam - the masculine principle - rising up in us. Yes we are looking for presence in the masculine. We feel in the masculine the potential to be the rock of pure presence, and we support that movement in the men in our lives. But in Tantric practice, this encounter with the masculine principle happens strongly within us as well.

Do I get confused when men in my world get interested in every woman who walks past? I do not get confused, because my sense of myself is not dependent on the feedback I get from men. If I see this pattern externally and I feel an emotional response, I will look in the mirror and ask: What is happening in my inner relationship that encourages my inner masculine to be flighty and lacking deep presence?

Having said that, there have been profound moments in my life where I have seen lovers move in attraction towards another woman or women. I have experienced partners move into a relating with someone else that I could feel was going to go very deep. I have felt all the feelings that have come up for me in the moment as this reality arose - strong sensations in the body, rapidly moving emotions. And I have experienced extraordinary turn-arounds in my experience, to where I could deeply share in and support the ecstasy that was now flowing between these two people. Isn't it strange how, in our conditioned idea of love and relationship, we vehemently resist other relatings that are clearly bringing our partners great joy and experience that will deepen their awareness?

If there is going to be presence between two people, it will be there because it is there - not because they are following external rules or guidelines to keep them with each other.

The deepest commitment that I can offer you is to be totally present, right here, right now, with the fullness of who I am. Relationship is a space in which we can practice presence and all the challenges that that brings. If my attention is flitting about all over the show while I am with you, this is a sign that there is something happening in my inner life that is calling for attention - and I have been resisting. I would like to sit with this and become quiet with myself, giving myself time to feel and perceive what is being covered up by endless distractions.

You ask me how it is for me as a woman to have more than one partner, and what my experience has been around that. My honest response is that it is not important to me whether I have one, many or no sexual partners at any given time. What I am following all the time, is presence and truth. Remember that my sexuality belongs to the Divine. I follow the Divine as s/he manifests in this moment, as an energy formation that is receptive to presence, depth of presence. Often that means sitting in silence. I am single a lot of the time. Sometimes I have one partner, and sometimes several. I do not particularly keep track of the numbers and configurations; for me this would feel like the ocean counting the waves and measuring its reality by how many there are.

As I write this, I realize that my experience has perhaps got not so much to do with being a woman. I am man and woman, living with great delight in a female body. The processing I have done through relationship has been invaluable in supporting this inner marriage and in clearing layers of collective female unconscious patterning that would otherwise have directed my experience of this moment.



If you would like to join us in a workshopping of this theme, please join Stephen and myself next Monday night 22 February 7 - 10pm; cost R350. Bookings at shakti@shakti.co.za by Friday latest.

Personal love up the Chakras

This article is an exploration of personal love-attraction as it moves up the chakras. My focus here will be on the healthy impulse of attraction in each chakra.

First chakra (perineum/root of the body): Your relationship is infused with vitality. The procreative impulse is strong. There is heated passion between you, fiery attraction. You feel grounded in this relationship.

Second chakra (just under navel): The relationship gives you a sense of belonging, comfort, loyalty to yourself, and gentleness.

Third chakra (solar plexus): You are in this relationship out of pure delight and personal attraction, rather than out of a sense that society or your tribe will approve. You feel expansive, strong in your sense of self and a flow of healthy personal power in your relating.

Fourth chakra (heart): Your loving is an expression of unconditional love; you both have the capacity to hold your hearts that open. Your love for all that is expands through your loving of each other. You are gateways for each other towards the awakening of the heart. The sensation in your lovemaking is that your heart expands tremendously.

Fifth chakra (throat): Your loving is a co-creating with the divine. Your desire is beyond personal will, and at the same time you are willing to become tremendous forces of awakening in the world.

Sixth chakra (third eye): Your relating becomes a psychic sharing involving sense perception beyond ordinary everyday awareness. You listen into the sound of silence and smell states of consciousness. Your energetic form becomes fluid and attachment to your manifest shape drops away.

Seventh chakra (crown): Your lovemaking becomes a melting with the divine - all that is. Sexual energy begins in the base of the body, and moves all the way up through the crown of your head. In this the 'self' disappears; you know for sure, experientally, that you are one with all that is.

With love, as with all good things, it is good to start at the bottom and work your way up. Aspiring to a seventh chakra relationship when you don't have your rooting in the world strong, is asking for disaster and mega-illusion. Life will naturally move through you in this way; just let your ego get out the way of the process.

The kiss - why not to, and how to

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news: Tantra doesn't like kissing - or at least not kissing as it is generally done. Here I shall explain to you why, and then bring the good news: There are some potent alternatives.

The problem with kissing

Boy meets girl (or girl meets girl/boy meets boy): If there is sexual alchemy, two things tend to happen. The masculine (in men or women) goes into sexual excitement and starts to work out a plan to get to base 1. Kissing has, in his experience, good direction to aim in. Why so? Because as the masculine experiences sexual excitement as first response, so the first response of the feminine (in men or women) when she feels attraction, is to enter romantic fantasy.

Kissing supports romantic fantasy. It happens close to the brain, and puts you into a light - or sometimes heavy - trance - that supports the building of ideas and fantasies. Check for yourself. Does that feel true? You are literally stimulating the brain as the main organ of sex. This is a wonderful idea of building sexual illusion. A deep kiss is likely to make the feminine feel that she is loved. Unfortunately this feeling is the result of chemicals released in the brain only. Fortunately for the masculine, however, this illusion of love that the woman now feels is going to make her willing to enter base 1. The sexual excitement builds.

It is important at this point to distinguish between love, excitement and romantic fantasy. Love, the way Tantra understands it, is pure presence - no story, no expectation, no projection. Kissing early on in sexual connection, is a pretty full-proof way to trigger the brain's projective mechanisms. The result is so much less of a chance to connect with the real of this moment.

How then to go about the kiss?

Save the kiss for later. First get the whole body involved. Love all of her/him. Meet in presence. Breathe together. Explore each other in conscious touch. Try a full-body melting hug. That will communicate something of the real of embodied love.

Kiss the body. The mouth can be a wonderful lover, for sure. You can use your lips and your tongue to love his/her whole body - starting with the big toe (unbearably delicious) and moving all the way up to the nape of the neck.

Kiss on the mouth - later. Kiss lightly, preferably not french kissing. French kissing is an imitation of penetration. Don't substitute - go for the real thing. Once you have really made love, engage the kiss by all means.

Tongue on upper palate. Keep your tongue on your upper palate while making love. This encourages sexual energy to rise, from the genitals, all the way up the spine, through the brain and the mid brow-point and coming to rest on the palate. The upper palate is the point where the upward and downward flow of sexual energy connect. From here the sexual energy flows down the back of the throat, through the heart and comes to rest in the belly as life force or vitality. If you cycle your sexual energy like this, you are more likely to experience full body orgasm, and the man is less likely to ejaculate (and thus lose his sexual energy.)

Tip pushing up on palate. If you like the penetrative feeling of french kissing, here is a potent alternative. When your sexual energy is high, arch your tongue backwards, and push it up against the upper palate, as though you want to penetrate the palate. Look into the third eye. Squeeze your PC muscles, and pull up the sexual energy.

Bite the upper lip. The upper lip in a woman is directly connected to her clitoris. In love play, experiment with lightly biting/chewing her upper lip. Wait for the woman to be very relaxed and receptive before trying this. Personally, I prefer this move to direct clitoral finger stimulation, which tends to be too harsh on the highly sensitive nerve endings of the clitoris.

Curling tongues. Ok, if you have to do the French kiss thing, then put it to good use. The Taoist way is thus: Curl your tongues around each other, and hold them like this while you cycle your sexual energy in the microcosmic orbit (see tongue on upper palate.)

Let the sounds come out. Kissing is engaging the throat and mouth area. Perhaps this part of your body wants to be more expressive in lovemaking. Let the sounds come out!

Sucking nipples or penis. French kissing has a sucking quality which draws on our earliest, infant memories of belonging and nurturing. It can be really healing and integrating for a man to take time - a good half hour a day - to suck his lover's nipples, almost the way a baby does it. Women, you can suck the penis. Take all your attention and presence into this act. Make it an act of pure devotion.

The victim-rescuer-predator triangle

Much of the work of Tantra is about uncovering and integrating what has been lying hidden in the unconscious. The unconscious is where we store all suppressed experience, which includes all experiences that were too much for us to feel to their depths at the time of their happening. This can be anything from rape to the first time our mothers decided not to breast feed us any more. If the feelings that came up as a consequence of the incident were too much for you to deal with at the time, they would have been stored in the unconscious. Feelings only move through once they have been felt.

Why are we interested in integrating matter from the subconscious? Tantra is about your awakening - waking up to the truth of who you really are. On the way there, we get to face all illusions we have been holding on to. Repressed experience that is held in the unconscious becomes like a grid or a filter through which all of our life experiences get perceived - without us consciously knowing about this. We might see the signs - for instance, that we keep repeating the same patterns in relationship. But the cause is not visible to us. Unconscious patterns shape our sense of who we are from a place where we do not see this happening.

Much of Tantric technique is focused on enabling what has been hidden from you to become accessible and integrated. For more on this, see my article on sexual healing. A significant pattern that gets revealed when the unconscious gets integrated is that, somewhere along the line, we have felt like we were victims. It is about this that I want to write here.

Victim, rescuer, tyrant

A victim is someone who feels, or perceives themselves to be, helpless or having no control over the experiences which s/he is 'forced' to have. We have all felt like victims at some point in our lives. Here are some key principles for understanding how victimhood works.

If you have felt like a victim somewhere in your life, you have most likely also identified yourself with the rescuer role. In fact, 'victims' can become intensely identified with the rescuer role. Here is an example. If your experience of relationship has been that women get attracted to you because you can 'rescue' them in some way, then chances are that somewhere in your life, you have probably been feeling like a victim. We project the victim role out on to others, because we find it too difficult to deal with in ourselves.

Where there is a victim, there is also a tyrant or a perpetrator - the one or the collective that makes the victim a victim through their actions. This one we tend to project out strongest. So guess what that says about the tyrant? If you regard yourself as a victim, somewhere in your psyche there lurks a tyrant/abuser. The stronger you identify with the victim, the stronger the abuser in you could potentially be.

If your strongest identification is with the rescuer - often also called the healer - then have a good look too to see where the victim and the abuser in you are hiding away.

The victim, the rescuer and the abuser form a triangle. If you identify with one of those roles, the other two will be strong archetypes in your living as well. Most likely, unconsciously so.

Power in the victim triangle

I know about all of this from personal experience of course. For much of the first half of my adulthood I was in the rescuer role. My uncovering of how this process played off in me took place over many years. An incident that shattered the illusions I were still holding on to was the following. For a good four years in my life, I was put in a situation where I had to assess the impact of proposed golf estate developments on vulnerable local communities who lived in the areas where the estates would be built.

Initially, I identified two clear polarities in the roles. There were the greedy go-getters - the developers who would do anything to get their multi millon rand developments approved - and the needy children - the vulnerable communities whom the developers tried to bribe by promising them houses. Leslie Temple-Thurston (see corelight.org) was guiding her students through processing these polarities at the same time that I was in the thick of it.

I discovered through my processing that the needy child and the greedy go-getter both exist very much in me as well. I started to own the anger that that the oppressor-oppressed relationship evoked in me as my own anger and vented the anger in my car and in my home. I took responsibility for what I was seeing happening out there. I owned both sides of the polarities in myself. I also saw that I was putting myself in the third position - that of the rescuer. In taking responsibility and facing my own internal reality, I got in touch with my authentic power.

I also started seeing very clearly how the power dynamic between victim, rescuer and predator works. The biggest shock for me was to realize how the vulnerable communities were using their victimhood to manipulate everyone around them. One particular community I worked in made this abundantly clear to me. Every leader amongst them had developed his/her own strategy for maximizing the leverage they could get out of their historical victimhood. As a result, a fierce competition developed between them all that became a terrifying maze for anyone wanting to engage with them.

The question I want to ask you is: how do you use your victimhood to gain power and control?

Identifying your type

Let's unpack that question step by step. First, the question is: what kind of victim are you? What kind of predator? And what type of rescuer? To find the answers to these questions, we have to stalk ourselves a little - get into the blind spots of how we perceive ourselves. Why bother? Because in seeing honestly how we have manipulated power, we get to our authentic power. What helps me to stalk myself is to be playful about it. I identify the characters/caricatures inside me. Here are a few examples of types. Do any of these fit you? Any others you can add?

The predator/tyrant

The greedy go-getter
The judge
The manipulator
The righteous one
The sadist
The rapist
The stalker
The bureaucrat
The avenger
The critic


The victim

The needy child
The damsel in distress
The disenfranchised one
The slighted one
The abandoned child
The betrayed lover
The slave
The martyr
The sacrificed one
The masochist
The retarded one
The rescuer

The rescuer role deserves some more elaboration. Some sub-archetypes of the rescuer are:

The healer
The mediator
The community worker
The campaigner
The donor
The problem solver
The mother/father
The teacher
The soldier/guard/policeman

You can see that many occupations and social roles relate to the rescuer archetype and its sub-archetypes. Examples are doctors, nurses, social workers, community workers, councilors, social workers, development workers, parents, housekeepers, conflict resolution specialists, human rights and environmental activists, soldiers, guards and policemen, and of course teachers.

When in balance, each of these healing/giving roles are a beautiful expression of our creativity. However, the rescuer role is the one in which we most easily hide our embeddedness in victim triangle. Being a rescuer looks like a noble role to have, and it is one in which we can maintain our dignity and moral high ground. However, the rescuer role easily turns sour, and then the experience becomes something like the following:

The exhausted healer
The anxious mediator
The self-sacrificing community worker
The angry campaigner
The resentful donor
The hyperactive problem solver
The drained mother/father
The over-extended teacher
The wounded guard, soldier or policeman

Do any of these feel familiar? Then it is time to have a good look at what you are doing, and more specifically, why you choose to play your role in a way that it gets out of balance for you.

How the one becomes the other

By now I am sure you have noticed how any position in the victim triangle - victim, rescuer and tyrant - relates to the other two. Here are some examples. It is well known that people who abuse their children or wives, or who abuse alcohol, have often grown up in homes with abusive or substance abusing parents. A man who grew up with abusive parents may have coped as a child by adopting a rescuing position in relation to this sister. If he doesn't resolve the unconscious victim triangle in him self, his rescuing of his sister may become an insistent habit towards woman which could become highly manipulative and disempowering towards women around him. He may be so determined to find the victim in women that he would unconsciously turn them into victims.

The social/environmental activist can end up using the same strategies - the same weapons - as the developers whom they regard as the enemy. They become predators just as much as rescuers. The drained mother/father can keep her/his children emotionally codependent by holding them responsible for the lack of energy that s/he feels.
Breaking the cycle

The first step in breaking the cycle is to do some honest self reflection. Stalk yourself. Discover what you have been hiding from yourself. The role you are most likely to be aware of in yourself is that of the rescuer. The key question for the rescuer is:

1. What is in it for you?

Look at the emotional benefits you get from playing the rescuer. Perhaps being the rescuer is your attempt to avoid being in a position where you may feel rejected, abandoned or betrayed. More importantly, and more difficult to acknowledge to ourselves: The rescuer position comes with power and status. Rescuers are esteemed and given special privileges. They get access where others won't be allowed in.

The same question of course applies to the other roles.

What is in it for you?

If you were orphaned or raped or abused and your identity has become attached to this experience, ask yourself: What is in it for me? Why am I holding on to this experience and this role? Why do I choose to stay identified with it? Begin by identifying how as victim you also play the tyrant and the rescuer. Then have a good look at what the victim role gives you. Being a victim implies that you have no choice, no power and no control over your experience. Where and why are you choosing to hide your personal power from yourself? Is it more comfortable for you to be pitied by others than to stand on your own two feet? Are you attached to the manipulative privileges of the victim?

If your main identification is with a position in which you have all the power - the tyrant role - you probably feel repulsed by or irritated with anyone who is identified with the victim role. You may even feel that they deserve what they get. The question again is: What is in it for you? Are you perhaps hiding some traces of the victim in you by projecting the victim out there? This brings me to the second step in breaking the victim cycle:
2. Watch your projections

A projection is an experience or trait that we see in others but which actually resides in us. By their nature, projections are often external reflections or aspects of our own psyches that are unconscious to us. We are not consciously aware of those facets of our beings, or we are in denial about them. The projections you really need to look at will be in your face. You will notice them as patterns in the people who are in your life, or they will be unavoidably visible to you in your relationships with significant others. Begin with your parents: Which qualities do they have that really annoy you? Have a good look where you are hiding those qualities in yourself.

If you tend to see victims, rescuers or predators/tyrants out there, have a look to see where they reside in you. If you need to see healers all the time or need to have a teacher for everything, the same may apply.
3. Dreams and fantasies

Your dreams and your erotic fantasies can help you become conscious of the victim/rescuer/predator types that you unconsciously or consciously identify with.

4. Act them out

A wonderful way of bringing consciousness to your victim-predator-rescuer roles is to act them out in a playful way. The best way to do this is with partners who also want to explore and play. During the four years that I was in the thick of exploring this material, I wanted to experience my killer instinct. I had a friend who wanted to feel her prey character. We got together and each made a mask - she made a prey mask, and I made a victim masks. As soon as we put on our masks, the fun began. I started chasing her about the house with a huge, roaring voice. She hid under the tables and chairs and her voice became queeky and pleading. The secret of course is to stay in the play-acting. The exercise is about exploring and experiencing your own dynamics, not about harming another. Which brings me to the next important step.

5. Feel your emotions

Emotions will come up when the victim triangle in your becomes conscious - most likely feelings you have been trying to avoid all your life. The most painful aspect of our feelings (as with anything) is our attempt at avoiding them. Make a practice of noticing when an emotion comes up for you, and allowing yourself to feel the emotion. When emotions are deeply felt, you own them. When anger comes up, go to your room or get in your car and vent the anger. DON'T vent the anger at other people. Doing that doesn't help you to integrate the old emotion. It just makes more.
6. Accept your power

Find where you are hiding your personal power from yourself. Accept your power. Live it consciously. And live your gratitude for the gifts that you got from the experience that made you feel like a victim.

7. Who would I be without my story?

Next, consider this question of Byron Katie's: Who would you be without your story? Could you think of your past differently? Could you imagine an authentic identity for yourself that is not woven around your victimhood, not even in the subtlest ways? Could you even just creatively, playfully, explore different possibilities? Having said this, I do believe that it is important to feel the emotions to their depth first - imagining yourself without your story should be the result of deep integration, not mental avoidance strategies for what has to be felt.

8. 100% responsibility and no control whatsoever

Finally, consider the truth of this: Life happens to you, from moment to moment. Your ego structure can do everything in its capacity to help you maintain control and to get to experience life as you will it. But this is never possible. The reason is that the ego is an illusion. And you are not separate from the flow of existence. What is going to happen, will happen.

What you do have though, is 100% responsibility - the ability to respond. Your experience of life will be determined by how you choose to respond to what happens to you. Isn't that beautiful?

Inner and outer heat in Tantra
Copyright Shakti Malan

In Tantric lovemaking, an extraordinary movement of inner and outer heat occurs. This heat and what accompanies it, is what I call dragon's nectar - the theme of my upcoming retreat in the Drakensberg. I will attempt to give you a sense of the experience of this heat here, as well as some information on how this energy has been perceived in Tantric mystery traditions.

Building a bonfire

In ordinary/unconscous lovemaking, what effectively happens is that suppressed energies build up to an involuntary crescendo of contraction and drivenness. The heart rate increases rapidly, as do body movements and organ pulsation. We race towards peak orgasm. And then we collapse in exhaustion. This is like building a huge bonfire - putting all the logs on at the same time - and enjoying the short ecstasy of heat before the logs burn out.

Physiologically what happens here is that the sympathetic nervous system - our fight and flight response - goes into overdrive. This can be very exilirating, a bit like the adrenalin rush we get from extreme sports.

But that fire burns out pretty quickly. It is like one big fiery roar from our inner dragon - impressive, volumous, short lived, and it leaves a trail of destruction in its passing. You may get tired or suspicious of this kind of sexual expression at some point. Good. Now it is important to realize that the trouble is not the fire. The fire is needed. Without the dragon there is no dragons nectar. What needs to change is the way we build the fire.

Stay at the beginning

In the Vigyam Bhairav Tantra, Shiva says: "At the start of sexual union, keep attentive to the fire in the beginning, and, so continuing, avoid the embers at the end."(verse 42)

The art is to learn to build that fire slowly, consciously, with full awareness and clear intent.

Inner heat and the feminine

"In order to allow for the birth of the [ultimate dakini, the wisdom that realizes emptiness], one must eliminate the gross forms of consciousness
by means of the inner heat (tummo) practice that is a particular form of bliss.
This bliss is the means of eliminating coarse consciousness:
therefore, the inner heat represents a meaning of dakini"

- HIS HOLINESS THE FOURTEENTH DALAI LAMA

This quote comes from a beautiful book by Judith Simmer-brown called Dakini's Warm breath. She describes that in Tibetan Tantric practice, it is understood that the subtle body has three main channels: the non-dual central channel (called the shushumna in Sanskrit) and the two flanking channels. One of these channels is regarded as feminine and is governed by the fire element and the sun. The vital breath of the feminine is warm. The other is regarded as masculine and is governed by the moon and the water element. The vital breath of the masculine is cool.

The focal center of the cool masculine breath is the head, and the center of the warm feminine breath is the navel. Tibetan Tantric practice brings the energy of the icy father down to the navel to be melted by the fiery mother. In that way, the energy of the flanking channels gets united in the central channel. From this comes a great centered stillness and inner heat.

The inner heat is associated with the quality of bodhichitta. Bodhichitta refers to the awakened mind that aspires to liberate all sentient beings. When the vital breaths get united in the center, we live in unity consciousness. There is a quality of bliss associated with this state. But even greater bliss is that of the bodhichitta, who desires to share her bliss with others. This is an essential quality of the dakini.

The inner fire in the belly burns up all states and experiences that keep us from living in pure presence. Therefore, the dakini takes great delight in pulling the practitioner into this fire, even if the burning feels to the recipient like a cruel and heartless act. Dakini knows that true love can burn, to the core.

Outer heat and the masculine

In his fascinating book The Hero: Manhood and Power, John Nash writes about the cultivation of heat by the masculine. Nash is of the opinion that men have also encountered this heat in a very masculine activity - "its awesome power arising within himself, spontaneously, time and time again, through dangerous and exhilirating exertions of another kind - the perils of the hunt."

He also writes that, since ancient times, humanity has understood the sacredness of the feminine because of her ability to birth, without any attempt to 'make' this happen. The masculine, on the other hand, has had to prove his virility by conquering and mastering powers in nature far exceeding his own.

He talks specifically about practices to cultivate the mystic heat. One example is sweat lodges, a heat ceremony from the South American Shamanic tradition designed specifically to help men access the altered states of consciousness that women naturally have access to, especially during menstruation. Nash also refers to certain forms of yoga that raise the metabolic heat of male practitioners to excessive, unnatural degrees. He refers to the Tibetan practice of 'tummo', "'heat-yoga so intense that the monk with his naked body dries blanket after blanket that has been soaked in an icy mountain torrent."

Tummo is the practice that the Dalai Lama referred to in the above quote as a core expression of the dakini in a seeker. The extreme yoga Nash refers to here is a practice using determination, discipline and will power to invoke this fire in celibate practice. But then the Dalai Lama's quote refers to dual cultivation - in this case specifically with the dakini or feminine as embodiment of the wisdom principle. In Tibetan Tantric practice, the monk would deepen his meditation and strengthen his tummo practice until he reached a certain level of realization or awakening. Then his master would introduce him to the dakini who would take him through the final stages.

Ultimately, it is the merging of the feminine (dakini) and masculine energies that take the seeker into the central channel where the inner heat is experienced, and we live in unity consciousness. We all have both masculine and feminine principles inside us. The ultimate merging happens when masculine and feminine merges inside us. In that sense, Tantric practice supports a seeker, no matter what your sexual orientation is. When two men or two women come together in Tantric practice, one will adopt the feminine and one the masculine principle.

The rippling fire of Tantra - my experience

I have had the rare privilege in my lifetime to experience what happens when the masculine and feminine come together in pure presence in Tantric lovemaking. It has left me with a clear realization as to why the Hindu gods are always depicted as being blue. There is a fire that starts to ripple over a person's skin when s/he practices Tantric lovemaking - and takes time about it. This fire is cool, it is spread out all over the body, and for me, its colour is distinctly blue.

Building the slow fire

Tantric lovemaking builds a slow, shimmering, delicious fire. At times, yes, we welcome and build the hot fire of the dragon's breath, of wild passion and roaring delight. But the quality of the meeting is guided mostly by the feminine - receptivity, relaxation, openness to the moment, to the greater flow of what is. The feminine moves like wind and water, dissolving, flowing, folding. The masculine, enveloped by the caress of the feminine, holds one pointed focus. He is the rock. He holds stillness, but without contraction or force. He surrenders into pure presence.

In this space of pure presence, time and space lose their usual hold on us. The moment becomes eternity. Eight hours pass in one timeless flow of the moment. Slowly, deeply, your energy builds, and so too the levels of bliss you can stand. Bodies lose their familiar appearance. You come to experience, beyond doubt, that we are not as solid and fixed a we are. And that, in fact, there is no separation at all. It is this state of subtle, seamless bliss which I call the dragon's nectar.

To be available to this quality of lovemaking takes some preparation, some unlearning of old conditioning, and some sharpening of presence. It takes the willingness to face, and embrace, the erotic impulses you have suppressed. It takes the laying aside of body armoring that keeps you from being fully responsive in your body. It takes deep presence in breath and sensation. It takes a bump-up in your level of openness to sensory impulses. It takes huge expansion of your heart capacity.

Dragon's Nectar, my Tantra retreat in the Drakensberg 20 - 25 November, is designed to support you in exactly this journey. For details, see http://totalitytherapy.com/events/2009/07/dragons-nectar-tantra-intensive-retreat.html. It's time to step into the fire - and say yes!

"Some day, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides, and gravity, we will harness for God the energies of love; and then for the second time in the history of the world, men will have discovered fire!" – Theilard de Chardin

What is Tantra?

Tantra is an ancient mystery tradition which is available to us today in a new way. What distinguishes Tantra is its totality as a path of awareness - it demands total presence in every dimension of our human experience - including our sexuality. Tantra takes us beyond the dualities that keep us in ego-limitation. It is for people who are asking the big questions of life:
Who am I?
What is real love - and can I live that love?

The fire of Tantra burns away our illusions, burns away whatever keeps us in separation. The question that guides the work is: How much bliss can you stand? The misunderstanding of the West is that Tantra is some new/rediscovered pleasure drug. The reality is: Your capacity for bliss is directly correlated to the depth of your capacity for experience. Depth means the degree to which you can be present - feel deeply - whatever arises in your experience. In so doing, even our sadness, anger and depression becomes spaces filled with unconditional love. That is the true meaning of bliss.