Tantra is a mystical religious tradition that began three to five thousand years ago, sometime between 500-1500 AD. It has many branches and schools similar to how Christianity has a variety of schools of thought and ways it is practiced throughout the world.
How is Tantra a Spiritual Practice?
In Tantra, we are taught that you ARE God/Goddess. This is not an intellectual belief. You have to experience it for yourself. Once you do, you will always know that God/Goddess is expressing itself through you in the good times and the bad.
This tradition allows you to become what the system teaches you through your own personal experience. You learn to work with your own energy body to discover it for yourself. You are a sincere participant in the system.
Everything is divine
Everything is divine is one of the main tenets of the Tantric approach to being human. This is radical, I know. Tantra teaches that the body is divine. The mind is divine. The emotions are divine. Our sexuality is divine. Our humanity is divine. Our consciousness is divine. In fact, there is nothing in existence that is not of God/Goddess.
When we approach reality in this way, in full acceptance of our divinity, we have the potential to receive more energy, more opportunity, more love, more pleasure, and more ecstasy. We have access to an infinite source of vitality.
What is Tantra Yoga?
Tantra Yoga is a collection of powerful texts. It is a system of practice for the purpose of enlightenment. This system uses a set of tools for humans to use and practice in everyday life that can and will enhance our understanding and ability to live our fullest life.
Some of these tools include mindfulness, yoga postures, deity worship, pranayama/breathwork, puja/devotion, mantra, mudra, yantra, and guru worship.
“Tantra is the awareness that life is messy. Life is not meant to be only austere and flawless.”
Tantra is a path to enlightenment
What does enlightenment mean? To become enlightened is to wake up to your own divinity. To learn to perceive your experiences as spiritual, but more so about cutting through the illusions, dissolving the belief systems you were raised with from family and society, and getting to the core of your true nature. Sounds good, right?
But isn’t Tantra all about sex?
Classical Tantra teaches a lot of practices to get to God. It teaches this through how you eat, how you breathe, how you pray, and how you have sex. Some of the oral Tantric traditions that were passed down from woman to woman, were about menstrual health, womb medicine, and female sexuality.
Obviously, since Tantra began so many thousands of years ago, it needed to find new teachers who could speak about it in a way that modern humans could relate to it. Because of politics and religion, Tantra spent many hundreds of years pushed into the shadows. When it emerged in modern times, it has become known as Neo-Tantra. The same goes for the ancient Chinese system of Taoism which is now known as Neo-Taoism.
Key concepts from neo-Taoism to uplift and enliven your human experience:
- Goddess worship
- Love is the key to transformation
- The taboos are a fast track to awakening
- Sex is a spiritual path because everything is a spiritual path
- Spirituality can be enjoyable and pleasurable
- The body is a deep dive holy map
- The pussy and cock are divine and deserve to be worshipped
- Honor What Is, rather than try to change it
- Cycles of nature and the elements are holograms of the divine
- Yin and Yang are ways in which we understand the God/Goddess in each of us
So, remember, YOU are divine!
YOU are holy. Your body is sacred. Your life is a living temple that when honored as such can be the ultimate pathway to understanding and knowing that YOU are God/Goddess.
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*Concepts are taken from a lecture by my teacher @LaylaMartin
