Female sexuality – a divine mystery

It is said that Buddha called the Yoni (Sanskrit for vagina) the gateway to Nirvana. Herein lies a deep truth that is little understood in our day. Tantra is the ancient mystical tradition that honours and reveres female sexuality as a gateway to transcendence. The knowledge and practices of this tradition have remained hidden for thousands of years only to be shared with advanced initiates. In our day, however, it has become imperative that this knowledge be known, and that our relationship to female sexuality be restored to its rightful place.

Tantra is a practice that traditionally has been taught by women. The reason for this is profoundly simple. The essential quality of women’s sexuality in its purest form is receptivity, openness, responsiveness and sensitivity. For a human being to become receptive to the mystery of existence, we need to open to this quality in ourselves. If we remain too attached to our identities, goals and ambitions, the seamless fluid oneness of all things passes us by. Through the opening and receptivity of a woman’s Yoni we get to experience in our cells what it means to merge with all that is. For woman, this happens in our own bodies. For man, this happens through woman.

The reality of our sexuality today is that few women are in touch with the authentically feminine quality of sexuality. We know what the media presents as female sexuality, and we know what our male lovers taught us about sex. But a woman’s body works differently from a man’s. Whereas the Lingam (Sanskrit for penis) is designed to be linear and focused in its movement, the Yoni wants to move round, in an undirected, undulating play of pleasure. When a woman allows this relaxed, expansive flow of sexual energy through her Yoni, ripples of sexual energy start to run up her body. This energy is called Kundalini or vital life force.

As a man opens more to the quality of female sexuality, he too relaxes into this rippling flow of sexual energy that courses up the body. While retaining one pointed focus, he surrenders to the flow of bliss through his entire being. Tantric orgasm is a movement of energy through the entire body, and specifically up to the crown of the head. In this deep allowing, we enter Nirvana – stillness and peace beyond words.

Female sexuality – a divine mystery

It is said that Buddha called the Yoni (Sanskrit for vagina) the gateway to Nirvana. Herein lies a deep truth that is little understood in our day. Tantra is the ancient mystical tradition that honours and reveres female sexuality as a gateway to transcendence. The knowledge and practices of this tradition have remained hidden for thousands of years only to be shared with advanced initiates. In our day, however, it has become imperative that this knowledge be known, and that our relationship to female sexuality be restored to its rightful place.

Tantra is a practice that traditionally has been taught by women. The reason for this is profoundly simple. The essential quality of women’s sexuality in its purest form is receptivity, openness, responsiveness and sensitivity. For a human being to become receptive to the mystery of existence, we need to open to this quality in ourselves. If we remain too attached to our identities, goals and ambitions, the seamless fluid oneness of all things passes us by. Through the opening and receptivity of a woman’s Yoni we get to experience in our cells what it means to merge with all that is. For woman, this happens in our own bodies. For man, this happens through woman.

The reality of our sexuality today is that few women are in touch with the authentically feminine quality of sexuality. We know what the media presents as female sexuality, and we know what our male lovers taught us about sex. But a woman’s body works differently from a man’s. Whereas the Lingam (Sanskrit for penis) is designed to be linear and focused in its movement, the Yoni wants to move round, in an undirected, undulating play of pleasure. When a woman allows this relaxed, expansive flow of sexual energy through her Yoni, ripples of sexual energy start to run up her body. This energy is called Kundalini or vital life force.

As a man opens more to the quality of female sexuality, he too relaxes into this rippling flow of sexual energy that courses up the body. While retaining one pointed focus, he surrenders to the flow of bliss through his entire being. Tantric orgasm is a movement of energy through the entire body, and specifically up to the crown of the head. In this deep allowing, we enter Nirvana – stillness and peace beyond words.

A Tantric perspective on Love

Love is a concept used with a wide array of meanings, most of which are usually unconscious but reflected in the way we do our loving. Here are some examples:

I love you because you are mine.
I love you as long as you protect me from feeling what I don't want to feel.
I love you because you support my co-dependance patterns patterns in just the right ways.
I love you because I can effectively project my fantasy on to you.

Tantra is interested in taking you to the real of love. I have reflected on how love gets felt and expressed from a Tantric perspective, and have come up with six aspects so far.

1. Love as Presence

Love in its purest for is totally present now. It does not get drawn into the past or into the future. Love without attachment to the future means that my ability to love this moment is not a product of future visions and expectations, romantic of sexual fantasy. Love without attachment ot the past means that old stories and old body memories no longer affect my ability to be totally present with you, right here, right now.

2. Love as Devotion

I can love with totality if I open to my own vast, infinite self - the god or goddess in me - and bow in devotion to the god or goddess in you. Tantra has many techniques for deepening your devotion in lovemaking. In sanskrit devotion is called Bhakti, and it is one of the most potent ways to a) open the heart to unconditional love and b) realize the true nature of the self.

3. Love as Selfless Service

If you love with totality, you want to serve the beloved, selflessly. Note that there is a difference between selfless service and self sacrifice (the latter having its polarity in resentfulness and self rightenousness.) In Tantra, lovemaking becomes selfless service. I give myself to you completely, without any holding back. I receive you completely. I am no longer interested in building my excitement levels through you, using you to release my pent up stress, or making you a crutch for my weak self image. I know that when I make love to you, my old ego concept of who I am, is likely to die in the process.

4. Acceptance, not judgment

This is a basic principle, but one worth mentioning as it is so big for most people. Loving someone means accepting them as they are, without judgment. That kind of love of course starts wiht yourself.

5. Love as willingness to feel it all

If you desire to love fully, love without limits, then you will have to be willing to feel all the feelings that will come up along the way. Are you willing to feel beyond - way beyond - your current capacity for bliss? Are you willing to feel all the fearful and difficult emotions that will arise when you open your heart completely? That's what it's going to take of you. The heart can only be as open as it is. If you are trying to protect yourself from feeling - anything - that thing will keep your heart from loving with totality. The good news is: Your heart has the capacity to feel everything, and survive. More than that: The more you let yourself feel, the more it will flourish.

6. Masculine-feminine integration

A key element of the dream held in lovemaking is the desire we have to merge with the opposite sex. This principle applies whether you are straight, bi- or homosexual. We all have a deep yearing for the integration of the masculine and feminine inside us. Our relationship lives are learning schools towards this integration. When the inner union occurs, you will experience it as a different capacity for love.

All our activities - every workshop, retreat and session that you will find on offer by the Tantraschool - will assist you in clearing the blocks, and moving along so that you can start to Love in a way that's worth being called Love.

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?

Safety, boundaries and ethics: the conference polemic

The first annual African Conference of Sacred Sexuality Educators in Johannesburg has just been completed. It was a powerful and momentous event, the beginning of I hope an increasingly rich networking amongst South Africans and the international world on the teaching and practice of sacred sexuality. Congratulations and gratitude to BabaDez from sedonatemple.com for taking the initiative to make this event happen. Next year this event will be in Cape Town and I will be coordinating the happening.

A central polemic of the conference was the theme of ethics, boundaries and safety. What started off as a subtle and textured debate became polarized when Shima delivered a presentation that effectively was an attack on the approach presented by BabaDez. I listened to the debate with interest, and would now like to take my time to write about the subtleties that this delivery ignored.

Throwing rocks

The image that Shima's talk became most strongly identified with is that the Dakini throws rocks at whoever approaches. How this got read is that the Dakini a) doesn't care, b) is intent on harming however comes to her, c) isn't available and d) wants people to stay away.

The original image of the Dakini throwing rocks comes from the ancient tradition of the Dakini, as so beautifully depicted in Daniel Odier's Tantric Quest: An encounter with absolute love. As the seeker approaches the Dakini who lives on her own in a cave in the Himalayas, the Dakini sees him and starts throwing rocks at him. The lesson in the old story is that the Dakini puts out tests to see which seekers are sincere enough. She tests them to see how strong their willingness and determination is to learn from her. Throughout the story of Tantric Quest, the seeker gets presented with one test after the other. As he passes though the fire of her tests, the old layers of his ego drop off, and he comes to stand in front of her, naked, vulnerable and deeply available. The more naked the seeker becomes, the more available the Dakini makes herself to him. The final fire he experiences is the intense and endless sweetness of her embodied love. The test is: How much bliss can you stand?

We Dakini's no longer live in caves in the Himalayas. By choice we live in big cities - Johannesburg and Cape Town. We are remarkably easy to find. Any internet search will bring you directly to our door. Do we still throw rocks? Yes and no. No we don't , in the sense that we are available, and our desire is to be of use to as many seekers as are ready for the journey we are catalysts on. Yes we do, in the sense that we still carefully select our clients.

I will explain to you how this works for you. If a man phones me and does one of the following things, I am going to politely send him away or at least question him more:
• If he does not say his name or clearly has to think about what his name is
• if he expects me to be available immediately for a session
• if he wants me to fix a sexual problem but is not interested in inner change
• if he is looking for a 'tantric massage' (which in the South African context usually means he is looking for someone to fulfill a sexual need - not the job of a Dakini)

I will make it clear to any person who calls that as a Dakini I am a catalyst for your awakening. The nature of my work involves deep transformation. My work is appropriate for people whose desire for awakening is stronger than their interest in having a comfortable life. I have learnt through hard experience to come to accept that this is who I am. This does not mean that I do not have deep appreciation for people who have come to this planet to work with those who are beginning a journey of awareness and those whose mission it is to change the world and bring about a revolution of sacred sexuality. These causes are beautiful and profound, and I support them. However the work of the Dakini, the way I understand her, has a different emphasis. Unless we completely discard the historical reference of what Dakini means, we have to acknowledge that the Dakini's task has always been to work with those who are close enough to their awakening, and have enough personal power, that the catalyzing of the Dakini will serve them.

I see it as my responsibility to make this clear to the person who inquires. I find it unethical not to be absolutely clear with people about the potency of this work so that they can choose whether this is what they are wanting and can feel into their nervous system whether they are ready for this.

As you can already sense from my writing, I do not agree with Shima that the Dakini has no concern for safety, boundaries and ethics. My experience is different. I do however have a very precise understanding of these terms, and this is what I would like to write more about here.

Safety

I agree, the practice of Tantra is not safe for the ego. In fact, part of the design of Tantra is a deep confrontation with your existing sense of yourself, and quite likely one or more deaths of your existing ego structure. What emerges after an ego death is a more expanded understanding of who you really are. With every expansion, we come closer to realizing that we are one with everything. With this comes an expansion of the power available for you in your living and expression. Paradoxically, you tend to become less and less attached to this power as being "yours."

How come then I repeatedly get told by clients and students that they find themselves going through depths they never thought they were capable of because they feel so safe in working with me? Here is where our specific approach to safety becomes important.
• My main method for engagement is a deep listening into the being of the person I am with. I listen to what they are saying, but also to every other subtle layer of their being. I listen to their emotional bodies. I can feel them. I feel into the movement of energy through their subtle bodies. I literally smell how their body-minds respond to every moment. My task is to follow them, and guide them deeper into their own knowing.
• I never push a student into anything. I suggest and offer opportunities to take them to the edge of their existing ego structure. If they take the opportunity, I go along with them as a guide.
• Conversely, I mostly do not ask students what they want to experience in a session. I do ask them at length though about the desire that brought them to me. It is my responsibility to guide them as to the most appropriate way to deepen their consciousness in the area they have asked for. I choose the method. My assumption is that the client comes to me because s/he needs my guidance. It would be unfair, and possibly dangerous, to be guided by what the client would like to 'do' in a session. Many men would, given a smorasbord, of course like to choose intercourse with me. However, they have no idea what the impact of making love to me would be on an unprepared nervous system.
• Possibly the main safety feature of our work is the fullness of love we bring to it. Students often describe this experience as being met by a profound lack of judgment. I would say the main training of a Dakini is integrating the polarities in our own ego structures. I get put into the fire of rejection, abandonment, betrayal, shame and any other shadow state with such intensity that it burns through. As a result, my nervous system very seldom responds in fear or judgment to the process of a student.

Ethics

I have already said a bit about ethics. A first ethical principle in my work is to be clear with potential students about the impact of this work.
• Ethics in my work is not a code of behavior agreed on externally as general principles. My ethical response is a moment to moment feeling into right action, into the way I can best serve your awareness with what you present to me right now.
• Ethics for me does not mean keeping you from feeling what you are going to feel. I have occasionally ended sessions with clients because I felt that the greatest gift I could give them was to feel the fear of abandonment they were avoiding all their lives. My ethical behavior is guided by being as impeccable as I can in guiding you towards the goal you are here for: Your awakening and the opening of your heart into unconditional love. I also carefully sense what your nervous system is ready for.
• I expect the same of myself. To process my own experiences rather than live them out in sessions or project them on students is beyond the domain of ethics for me. It is a continuous and core part of my spiritual practice. It is an essential way of living for me. I am constantly stalking myself.
• It is ethical for me to accept and work with the reality that students and clients will project their unconscious on to me. If I took everything students and clients said to me personally, I would become madly ineffective as a Dakini. My job is to see the truth of the situation as clearly as I can and to respond with right action. Often right action is simply to be available for you to live your projections to their disillusionment.

Boundaries

Isaak Shapiro has a wonderful way of talking about boundaries. Boundaries come up, he says, as defenses against what we perceive as danger. Danger is that which we perceive as a possible cause of hurt. The paradox of boundaries is that we usually set them up outside ourselves. We try to protect ourselves from certain experiences, people and situations because we perceive them as the cause of hurt. The reality is that the hurt is happening inside of us because of the way we are interpreting the situation. Our interpretation usually draws on past experience and is mostly not a good guide to the presence.

I have recently watched a young man hold a woman tightly, desperately trying to protect her against the abuser he encountered in his youth. The gift of the situation for him was to be confronted with the memory, and to feel it to its depth. When this was felt, I had to make him aware of the fact that the woman he was holding was in fact a powerful, strong and very well person. He was projecting the abused sister on her, and had seen this old, unresolved archetypes in most women he got close to. The pain he was feeling was living in himself. It did not apply to the external reality of the moment. As he came to see the reality of her wellness, another level of healing could start to occur in him.

When old unresolved pain sits in us, we cover ourselves in what Wilhelm Reich calls body armoring. We literally defend our emotional bodies. This unfortunately makes us less sensitive to feeling the real of the situation. The work of the Dakini is to get you closer to the real, to help you release old memories and associations that keep you from being able to feel the real of the situation. We help you discard the boundaries, barriers and armoring that no longer serves you. Ultimately, you meet your oceanic, unbounded self.

Having said this, it is absolutely not true to say that the Dakini does not have boundaries or does not respect boundaries. The boundaries are very clear.
I will not stretch you beyond your willingness and desire. I listen carefully for the edge, the boundary, that you present. And I feel into my own. I will not go beyond my own desire and willingness. Having said that, there is nothing - no action or experience - that is expressly excluded from the session, within the boundaries of your and my willingness.

Much of my work takes the form helping people find their edges - locate where a touch or a memory evokes that old, repressed pain. As soon as the pain gets touched, I stop, and guide the person through a deep feeling and release of what has been held so deeply inside.

It makes no sense to me to take a client further in a session than their nervous system can cope with at that particular moment. My acute sensitivity and deep listening makes it possible for me to feel how far we can go today. This is often a surprise. Sometimes the client goes way beyond what they thought they were capable of. Sometimes I do not even nearly approach what the client had requested. For instance, if a client has not done the work required to clear the main layers of unconscious eroticism in his/her psyche, I cannot introduce them to the power of sexual meditation in Tantra, even if this is their expressed desire. In time, maybe. But we work with where the body-mind is at in this moment.

Perhaps my training as a social anthropologist and ethnographer helps here. I have learnt that what people say is not necessarily what they mean. People are always interpreting a situation on many different levels and choosing from many different options what reality they will present to you. My task as Dakini is to sense keenly into the reality they are choosing to present at the time of the session, and to select the most appropriate response.

Although the work that we do in Tantra is deeply transformative and in that sense radical, this transformation often happens through the subtlest of touches. It is not in our aesthetic to push people beyond where they choose to go. In this our method differs significantly from many other transformation processes. It has an extreme refinement that is guided, from moment to moment, by the truth that is ready to get revealed in your being.

Why the different expression?

You may wonder why there is such different expression in one school. I see two clear factors. The one is that each of us is very much our own person and our expression is shaped by the journeys we have traveled. The other is that the nuances of this work get clearer with practice and experience.

In conclusion

Don't come to a Dakini if you are looking for safety or escape from your own life experience. However, if safety for you means a deeper homecoming to yourself, then there probably are few better places to go. I think you understand by now that the journey home can be challenging. Boundaries will apply to help direct you there, not to help you hide. And all along you will become more attuned to your own internal ethics, as I do with mine. The further you walk along this road, the greater your responsibility - your ability to respond - to the dharma, the truth of what is.

Inner and outer heat in Tantra

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.

Tantric Love, a retreat that Stephen and I are running in the Drakensberg 8 - 11 April, is designed to support you in exactly this journey. For details, see http://totalitytherapy.com/events/2010/02/tantric-love-retreat-8-11-april.html. We also have shorter events to introduce you to this theme. 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

The dream behind the whore

In the book I am writing about female sexuality, there is a chapter about three prominent archetypes for the feminine created by patriarchy: the virgin, the whore and the women's union. Since starting this chapter I have been on a fascinating journey of discovery around the dreams underlying each of these shadow archetypes. And so it comes that I am reading Love for Sale. A global history of prostitution by Nils Ringdal. I want to share with you a bit of what I am discovering here.

History, of course, is always a matter of interpretation but still the following tales have been inspiring to me.

In India, the highest class of prostitutes were called ganika. Ringdal writes that the most prominent woman amongst the followes of Gautam Buddha was a ganika called Ambapali. She was a wealthy and highly educated woman. Ambapali contributed large sums of money to the neew Buddhist movement, while, of course, continuing her profession.

The contrast between the life of a married woman in India and that of a ganika was stark. Ganikas were the only women in India who got an education. Ganikas' services were legally recognized. They could hold money and possess land and slaves.

In Greece, the counterparts of the ganikas were the hetearas. There were few of them - an Athenian cencus of 400BC records 135. Hetearas were considered by some to be the leaders amongst all women. While Greek wives lived lives of obscure seclusion, hetearas had the same freedom as men. They roamed the streets, attended theatrical performances, joined in public processions and even made their mark on politics.

The woman poet Sapphy ran a school for women on the island of Lesbos. It is most likely that many, if not most, of her students were hetearas, as these were about the any women in Greece who were able to live a free life.

It is said that the heteara Hermione had the following words embroidered on a belt that she always wore: "Love me for all eternity, but do not be jealous of others do the same."

One of the most famous heteara was called Asparia. She grew up in the local temple of Aphrodite where she served as a temple priestess. Temple training in the temple of the love goddess included sexual service. Later Asparia became a heteara in secular life. She was beautiful, a master of rhetoric, witty and highly knowledgeable. She had as visitors many of Athens' leading citizens. Pernicles, one of Athens' greatest statesmen, left his wife to be with Aspasia. Records of the time have it that Aspasia had a radical influence on the political decisions Pernicles made since then.

After the death of Pernicles, Aspasia took as lover Lysicles, another prominent politician. She taught philosophy and rhetoric for young women at a school that she founded. in these years, Apsasia could be found in the social circles of Socrates and Plato, who lived with the heteara Arcanessa. Socrates accepted Aspasia and another well schooled heteara named Theodota as discussion partners.

And here, one final lovely tale about a heteara. Her name was Phryne and her beauty was legendary. As happens with people who are idealised, Phryne at some point fell out of favour with the masses and was charged with impiety. The question in the trial was whether her beauty would be construed as witchcraft or divine emanation.

Hyperides, a famous orator, undertook her case. Ringdal (66)writes:

"At one surprising moment in court, Hyperides went right up to the Phyne and began to remove her clothing, garment by garment, just as she herself had done during the previous year's Elysian mysteries. While people sat transfixed, he went ahead with his defense. "The judges were so seized by holy awe at the sight of the divinity that they did not venture to kill the prophetess and priestess of Aphrodite," wrote the historian Athenaeus. Suddenly, the conclusion was clear: Phryne had not commited blasphemy but given expression to a religious feeling in the hearts and souls of most Greeks."

There are many more tales about heteara who reached into the highest echelons of state. The point is clearly made: History suggests that one of the dreams behind the shadow of the whore is the woman who can stand fully in the power of her sexuality, who is free - a free citizen, who possesses herself and is not possessed - who can think for herself, and whose presence invokes both respect and adoration from society. In fact, as in the case of Phryne, she can be seen as an embodiment of the Goddess.

The position of the heteara and ganika stood in sharp contrast to that of wives in Greece and India. In fact, it was the wives who were possessed and indeed treated as the possessions of men, not the sex workers.

There is a poignant metaphor here. In my experience, women in our society who carry the prostitute archetype most strongly are often married. By prostitution I mean trading in sex. So many women, even women from the wealthiest and noblest circles, are oblidging their husbands sexually though they have no desire to do so. They trade their sexuality for the financial and social security that they get through their husbands.