When most Westerners hear the word, “Tantra,” they immediately think about sex, and that is only if they have any meaning to assign to the word in the first place. Perhaps a better way of looking at it is that Tantra is a path without a destination. What is already in you is the destination, and you are already there. Tantra is a path that has no destination because you are already there.
Tantra is a pathless path. It is a way of going nowhere, because you have already arrived at the destination, which is being yourself. Part of being yourself is expressing your sexuality. Not expressing your sexuality is an expression of sexuality. It takes as much energy to repress sexuality as it does to act out complete sexual abandon. They are flip sides of the same coin.
We live in a culture that represses sexual expression. The flip side of that repression is a media that exploits sexuality to manipulate consumerism. If we weren’t so repressed, we wouldn’t be as easy to manipulate. The extremes feed each other.
Traditionally, there are three paths to Tantra. The right-handed path is the path of sensual deprivation. It is very similar to the Western Judeo-Christian tradition of repression as the path to enlightenment. It has more to do with what you don’t do than what you do. The list of “don’ts” is very long. The goal is detachment from the sensual world to attain awareness of higher realms.
The left-handed path is the path of complete abandon to sensual desire. This is the “if it feels good do it!” path. It is a path of action and surrender to sensual desire as a way to attain awareness of higher realms. Where the right-handed path serves to repress the serpent of desire to awaken the higher mind, the left-handed path lets the serpent loose and rides it to the other side.
The middle path is a way of being that neither endorses nor opposes the extremes of the right and left-handed paths. It is the path of, “if you lived here you would be home by now.” It is the path of the heart. It is non-linear and irrational. It is the synthesis of the extremes. It is the transformation of extremes when they are united in wholeness. It is the rainbow bridge between the yin and the yang.
There is no path to enlightenment. Enlightenment always exists within you. You are already enlightened. It is simply a matter of realization. The path is simply a necessary stage of suspended disbelief on your journey of personal discovery that you were never really going anywhere, because the only destination is a place you never left. It is everywhere, in every place and every time. It is a singular reality manifesting in infinite variety, and it is within you and you are within it.
It is simply a matter of being. Being is very simple. Even not being has being. Absence can speak louder than presence. Our essence is very much like water. Water takes on many forms. Whether it is still, turbulent, a raindrop, or an ocean, it is still water wherever it flows. Still water is no less water than raging water. The essence of water is not motion or stillness. Water is water wherever it flows. Wherever you go, there you are.
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