Dear Tantra: Time for renewal?
(This text also appeared in my blog on Healer & Creator).
This text will not be easy to write, and for some it may not be easy to read and feel, I sense that ahead of time. My writing and my perspective of truth sometimes triggers, and sometimes that’s quite good.
Nevertheless, I hope that my words do not come across as hurtful, presumptuous or know-it-all to you, dear reader. I always write from the heart and in deep connection with my spirit guides and wish that you can receive it with your heart.
Although I have been writing new texts and book chapters on Sacred Sensuality for a while now, I have been dithering about going to a Tantra workshop for a long time.
For one thing, I always felt a great deal of uncertainty beforehand as to whether I would feel safe and cared for in a group. That is why I also prefer groupings between three and nine souls, in order to be able to establish a good connection with all of them.
In addition, as a very sensitive human being, I have to deal with all the different energies and frequencies, and with the many different names on top of that.
On the other hand, I always intuitively felt that the sacred teachings of Tantra were not passed on in groups in the past, but from single souls or couples to other single souls or couples. Later I researched it and found my feeling confirmed.
Also discouraging was my own deep understanding of a man’s desires. When men gather their consciousness predominantly in the lower chakras (that’s where the ego rules) and don’t involve the upper chakras of the heart just as intensely, a lot of competitive drive is often generated. With women, too, by the way.
Meanwhile I see it in such a way: If a man would like to live out his underchakrigen animalistic hunt instincts gladly in this way and a for me interesting appearing woman wishes that apparently exactly in such a way, then I leave both gladly with their classical robber-prey-game. There is also a lot of energy in it. I send them love and wish that their hearts open further and further.
At some point, curiosity won…
… and on the other hand my need for more closeness and touch with other humans. I booked a two-day Tantra workshop with a well-trained and heart-centered teacher and her partner. I knew there were some stories and important lessons for me to discover there.
So I focused on the positive aspects: Although Tantra encourages rather superficial contacts with many different humans, this is exactly its strength: An ideal playing field with stimulating exercises and many possibilities to try out and experience, to get to know oneself better in the process.
The joint exercises that could be physically experienced and felt were mind-expanding and, despite the large group, there was a wonderful human meeting space.
When all the exercises were over and tried, when we had gotten to know each other a bit and also started to trust and accept each other in some combinations, the so-called tantric temple night began.
In these hours, everyone should be as respectful and aware of each other as possible, without conversations, using words preferably only when the own limits were not interpreted correctly just by body language.
Since such temple nights can mean something completely different at each event and at each place, I hold back with descriptive words. So my readers can assemble their preferred inner images completely freely.
What if I don’t have a partner?
How does it feel when I can’t find a partner in a group to experience my wishes?
Who remembers the years when play groups in competitive sports at school weren’t diced with an app, but by one team leader pacing off the distance to the other, one step set closely in front of the other? Whoever ended up stepping on the other team leader’s toes got to pick the first player into their own group.
In basketball, I was sometimes chosen to be in the group right at the beginning because everyone knew my fearsome deep dribbles. Even then I was a bit smaller and very speedy. In other sports, on the other hand, which I wasn’t so good at, I was sometimes even chosen last. That’s not such a nice experience. I then felt left out and behind.
Only in a retreat in complete darkness, all alone with myself, could I gratefully and lovingly forgive myself for these and other school memories. After that, there were no more dreams from that time. Also my trained competition ideas dissolved a good deal more with it, matching also my giving away of most of my competition-based “parlor games”.
In the past, I never had any problems getting together with women who were beautiful both inside and out, as long as I made a little effort and communicated my feelings directly and honestly. Of course, I received countless baskets in the process, but I was a good “hunter” with my four planets in the zodiac sign Sagittarius, once my heart was wide open for another soul.
Now some women sometimes find my frank words or a touch on the back or hands so frightening that they even terminate the friendship afterwards. Others just back away a little.
Some also ask about my intentions. This is not always easy to answer in a newly established contact. Above all, I want to find the natural flow in an encounter with another soul. And I want to find out why Mother Gaia and the universe brought me together with this soul. I ask: What is there for me to learn here?
Will a contact be more likely to open or close my heart?
This is perhaps the most important question in every new encounter. We don’t want to experience further inner injuries, so we are careful with each other, we need our time and our meeting space. We want to learn to understand each other, to trust each other and above all to feel each other, because in the ego competition of the “modern” world we have all forgotten it to some extent.
That is why the many trust-building preparatory exercises for a tantric temple night are so important for the “modern” human being.
We get to know humans in a completely different, more sensual and physical way. Here, it’s okay if we touch each other and get closer. In doing so, we automatically build new neural connections that also help us in our future encounters.
Above all, we learn that others need not be enemies. We can accept them, we can trust them. In a protected group, we are allowed to be a little more the way we want to be, we are allowed to show who we are.
In a group like that, it’s okay if I took off my top. Nobody would say anything or look funny. Nevertheless, I didn’t do it: 1:0 for the old herd instinct! I don’t want to stand out and step out of line, but I want to feel like I fit in.
We are all the same. We all want love. A baby who does not receive loving touch dies shortly after birth. (Thank you, dear participant, for reminding again of this clear message!)
Natural small grouping
An opening for several different souls at the same time is unusual for most and often also not desired, because we prefer to focus on one or at most two humans.
So in a tantric temple night, small touch and experience pairs or small groups form naturally. We have been equipped beforehand with some trained action tools so that we can go between such a group if we want to join in and feel that it is good for everyone.
But what if I already perceive a fondling group of two or three humans as “perfect” and feel that my intrusion into this intimate zone would be rather disturbing?
Some tantrics say that I then have to change my inner world so that the universe offers me a chance and opening. In this way, the old ego-hunter games can continue to be lived: the supposedly strong and beautiful touch each other, the more sensitive watch. Those who do not fit in are to go into self-responsibility. The previously practiced togetherness is quickly forgotten in the temple night.
Perhaps the biggest unsolved problem in “modern” Tantra
When there is a surplus of men in the group, it is not entirely by chance that there are quickly individual isolated men who cannot perceive any possibility of contact. Often it is the most emotional among them who no longer want to participate in predator-and-prey games.
Many have a legitimate fear of further rejection, perhaps they have already tried multiple times and were repeatedly not welcomed.
There are many of these individuals who tend to keep a low profile, who listen and observe and learn a lot about themselves and others in the process. They are told to be active and behave like a yang herd animal, but they don’t always want to. By continuing to be present, they energetically form the opposite pole of yin that is quite obviously missing in such a group.
In old world yang tantra, as a partnerless man, it is very difficult not to feel excluded. Just a few months ago, I might not have been strong enough in my self-love for this practice and learning experience, I could have hurt myself inside.
But thus I could stay in my heart and just watch if I could jump somewhere into the flow. But continuously it seemed to me as a disturbance. The enthusiasm of the audible sounds was already beautiful, an additional guy would not be able to contribute much extra.
In Tantra, we want to give love. What do we do when no one wants our physical love?
We listen within
When our inner self-love is strong and mature, we can go with our awareness into our subtle heart center. We feel ourselves, deeply. We close our eyes and immerse into the group consciousness, into the common WE experience, as if the outside were playing as a stage play of love within us. We feel a whole universe of love within us.
We feel inside: What do we feel? Where do we feel it? As the healing feel-good sounds of two women became audible, I could feel the subtle energies inside me. They swirled through me as well as through our entire group field. Everyone who goes “online” in their heart can tune into these receiving frequencies and feel and experience them inwardly.
Of course, these sensations are never 1:1 identical with the actual experience of the other souls. We interpret our perceptions in very different ways, matching our own current feelings and personal coloring. We change the group experience because we are there, because we are logged into the group’s field of consciousness.
With a little intuition, we then sometimes even vaguely feel the energies set in motion in our inner being.
Let’s stay firmly in our heart center, it is the most important instrument during the tuning into a group. The heart chakra breathing described in almost all my books can be of help.
So that night, after completing the last contact improvisation exercise, I remained inwardly quite loving within myself. I listened into myself, perceived myself as part of the group, as part of something bigger. And I decided it made no difference to me whether I was physically experiencing something myself at that moment or whether I was (only) perceiving an intense group consciousness deep within.
I could accept it as it was, I could let go. These are also basic qualities of Yin, which I was allowed to “train” again and again in my individual retreats in the darkness. Now I was ready for the challenge. I was not hurt by being alone. I allowed myself to feel enriched that night.
Then why am I not caressing a man?
Sometimes it is women who tell men that they must also be interested in same-sex loving contacts. After all, most women can do this too, so it must be “natural” and should therefore be adopted for both sexes and for every soul.
A little touching is all right, I was able to get rid of my homophobic fears. Still, I don’t feel as much motivation to cuddle with a man. There is the argument of lifelong learned social gender rules, which I should reprogram in me, but it can’t convince my inner feeling.
I love all humans. But especially women. Unconditional and all-accepting love of the universe or not: Behind my spiritual perception there is also additionally the physical and energetic alignment of my Yang surplus. I search for the Yin with my physical and with my energetic body. As a human being this wants to be felt and lived.
Those who deny the personal biological orientation of an individual human being have not understood the principle of 5D consciousness: All perspectives are equally correct. Thus, there is no “all are equal”, because each soul brings a different coloring, perception and perspective. Exactly therefore we experience this creation play with each other.
Isn’t it a natural feeling when I feel in my innermost being that I would rather have a loving and possibly intimate contact with a woman, when I would like to feel her skin and not so much his, to hear her sounds, to perceive her smell, her movements? It is the otherness that fascinates and attracts me.
And whether trained or not, who says I have to change? It’s often those who set particularly high standards and rules in their own choice of contacts.
We do not want to experience physical touch with every soul. That’s okay. But on a tantric temple night, what do we do with the remaining men who don’t experience healing because no one wants to touch them?
For whom is Tantra?
It has been whispered to me for years that Tantra is mainly something for women. And for those men whom these women find interesting or attractive. The preference for the needs and desires of women is of course very praiseworthy and a wonderful and for many very healing gift.
However, the old hunting rules and patterns of yang are maintained in the temple night, just as in “normal” competitive life. Thus, small groups form quickly, often consisting of several women with fewer men, and these small groups then behave in a protective rather than open manner.
The seperation threshold for the increasing number of men remaining is becoming larger….
These people are particularly sensitive. Some almost inevitably feel frustration, loneliness and being outcasts. Perhaps they will be (further?) traumatized in such a temple night, if they do not put their focus on the already described common energetic group healing effect.
Sensitive men do not like to disturb intimate contacts already in progress, if they do not feel that they have been invited. Sometimes the invitation can be invited, and sometimes it does not work out.
So it can happen, if in the group energy the old Yang rules and customs prevail and rather ego, demarcation and protection are sought and little security and openness is offered. The yin in a group can then not be fully lived and experienced.
Maybe it’s time for a new Yin Tantra? There would be neither competition nor exclusion. Instead, everyone is included, as is normal in all other spiritual ceremonies. Just as it is still practiced in the preparatory exercises. What is the use of practicing cohesion and connection, if the old sub-chakra hunting and drive patterns are then lived again during the temple night?
We are always connected, there is no seperation
(…) We are one unified field. We breath as one. Our hearts beat as one. And we move as one… it played just during the writing.
In line with the new age, we can now be led to a new Yin Tantra (or: Angel Tantra?) if we want to open ourselves to it. Instead of freestyle according to the old hunting rules of yang, the connection between spirituality and loving and erotic energies may now become more ceremonial, sacred and open again.
We come back to our original form. We integrate the Yin into ourselves again, not with new rules, but lovingly and intuitively lived from within. We include everyone again. We give protection and support and comfort. We learn to live our Yin with each other again.
I vaguely remember ceremonial meditation circles, with alternating pairs or triads in the middle. Do these images come from earlier incarnations at times of primal spirituality or are they “memories” of the future? Perhaps in this particular case both.
A healing and loving experience for all who are present is very close to my heart, so that everyone can let their love flow and no one has to receive new hurts. I feel how important this is for a healthy life with a wide open heart chakra.
(To be continued…)