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 Love, Sex & Enlightenment
By Margot Anand
"The Tantric path teaches us to embrace and unify the ordinary, the erotic, and the sacred dimensions of life, all of which have their roots in Spirit."
Many
people mistakenly believe that Tantra is a spiritual bastardization
of sexual therapy, an excuse to indulge in sexual games or orgies,
an addiction to hours of sexual orgasms. Nothing could be farther
from the truth. The Tantric path teaches us to embrace and unify
the ordinary, the erotic, and the sacred dimensions of life, all
of which have their roots in Spirit.
The
beauty and wisdom of Tantra is that it enhances sexuality as a
doorway to the “ecstatic mind of great bliss”. Truly,
at the peak of orgasm, we pierce through the illusion of fragmentation
and separation, and glimpse the unity and interconnectedness of
all beings. And through the other—our partner—we fall
in love with life.
Because
sex holds this great potential for opening our being to the experience
of ecstasy, Tantra has for millennia taught the cultivation of
sexual love as an art, as a skillful spiritual practice. Then,
as now, Tantra challenges the belief promoted by most spiritual
and religious paths that we must suppress or transcend out sexuality
to practice meditation or awaken our Spirit.
Tantra
arose in rebellion against the repressive orthodoxy of the Hindu
priesthood, the Brahmins—especially against the idea that
one had to be celibate to gain enlightenment. Tantra acknowledges
that sex is at the root of life and that to make human sexuality
and erotic union a form or worship and meditation is to practice
reverence for life, leading us directly through the pleasure of
the sense to spiritual liberation.
Cultivate
Ecstasy
As a therapist, I knew that the process of healing emotional wounds
by focusing on the past to find their source was limited. Although
it can bring about healing, it all too often promotes a fascination
with the problematic. Furthermore, when we focus obsessively on
our problems and pains, the ecstatic potential in most of life’s
moments goes unrecognized and unacknowledged, and our lives are
emptied of a sacred and joyous dimension. Life appears problematic
rather than ecstatic, more a puzzle to be solved than a pleasure
to be cultivated.
I
realized that existential or psychological pain was actually the
absence of ecstasy. It was the outcome of being cut off from the
source of one’s being, the source of life. On the other hand,
cultivating ecstatic states of consciousness and learning how
to integrate them into our lives can have profoundly healing effects.
I have come to believe that our suffering has its roots in the
loss of ecstasy and that reclaiming our natural ecstasy holds
the key to our healing and our liberation.
SkyDancing
Over the years, all that I had discovered coalesced within me
into a new shape and meaning. I called the body of knowledge and
the ritual practices I had developed over many years “SkyDancing
Tantra: The Path to Bliss”. This path came to me as a revelation
rather than a tradition. Yet the path of the SkyDancer is indeed
one that goes back to eighth-century Tibet, when Yeshe Sogyel,
the consort of Buddha Padma Sambhava, was called the “SkyDancer”.
Together they developed Tantric Buddhism.
Originally,
the SkyDancers were wild, free ecstatic “dakinis”, also
called feminine buddhas or female awakeners. The word dakini means
“woman who dances in space” or “woman who revels
in the freedom of emptiness”. SkyDancers were, and are, women
of passion who were profoundly devoted to spiritual awakening.
The path of the SkyDancer is a path of spiritual partnership that
teaches the complete reciprocity of male and female practitioners
as they learn the art of integrating ecstatic states and ecstatic
practices in their daily life. It reintroduces in our world the
understanding that to heal the world, we need to rediscover and
respect the fact that women can be and are awakeners and initiators
and enlightened teachers.
SkyDancing
Tantra is a unique path that weaves together traditional Tantric,
Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist teaching with my studies in humanistic
and transpersonal psychology, bodywork therapies, sexology, yoga,
music, and metaphysics. All of this works with human energy systems
through the use of light, music, movement, visualization, and
particularly (and primarily) the energy map of the chakras. The
tantric chakra system offers a perfect map for the transformation
of energy and consciousness, from raw lust to love, a visionary
power, and finally to awakening.
SkyDancing
Tantra teaches us that when we learn to approach life with a relaxed
body, an open heart, and a peaceful mind, we can access ecstatic
states and learn to weave them into the daily fabric of our lives.
Sacredness
of Sex
It is crucial to understand the sacred dimensions of sex. Sex
lies at the root of life, and we can only learn reverence for
life when we learn reverence for sex. People in this culture need
training in the art of love. They need to understand that sexuality
is a very natural instinct, and there is nothing wrong with it.
The damage to human society caused by the condemnation of sex
is incalculable. Instead of celebrating sex as the creative force
it is, we have turned sex into a furtive, guilt-ridden affair.
This has misguided and influenced our entire world view. There
is a tremendous effort being made to heal the planet, save the
rain forests and to bring peace to warring ethnic and religious
factions and yet how can any of this happen when the very source
of human love is poisoned?
There
is a powerfully creative force associated with our sexuality.
It is possible for each of us to become a magician and use that
force to heal our life and transform our vision—to realize
our dreams. We have all sorts of programming blocking the flow
of our sexual power. We need to be open to be able to face those
demons, to look at the shadow with all honesty, knowing that truth
is erotic. The more you can share your truth, the deeper and the
more erotic it will become in the long run.
Margot
Anand is the author of The Art of Everyday Ecstasy
(Broadway Books). An internationally acclaimed teacher of Tantra,
Margot authored the best-selling book The Art of Sexual Ecstasy
(Putnam Penguin).
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