Introduction Into Tantra
From the beginning of time there have been those rare women and men who, following their hearts great yearning, have answered the existential question of birth and death with realization of who they truly are - who we all are. Pranama is such a one. He invites, cajoles, dares us to join the dance. Read his words, let them enter your heart and smash the taboo against unreasonable happiness. The flame of being is passed from master to disciple in the great silence of the heart - these words are an engraved invitation.
R. F.
“What is Tantra?”
an interview with Tantric Master Prem Pranama
This interview occurred in the summer of 1994. The interviewer, Ralph Abrams, has been a spiritual seeker for the last 25 years. He has worked with Swami Muktananda, Nisargadatta Maharaj, Chagdud Tulku, Nagkpa Chogyum, Native American teachers and currently lives in the Crazy Cloud Hermitage where he studies the Tantric path with Pranama.
R: The word Tantra is thrown around quite a bit in spiritual circles these days, and it often means very different things. I’d like to start off with the simple question: What is Tantra?
P: Tantra is the hot blood of spiritual practice. It smashes the taboo against unreasonable happiness; a thunderbolt path, swift, joyful, and fierce. There are many different types of paths. Some touch you like a gentle spring rain, but Tantra is the wild summer thunder storm churning with creation, destruction, bliss and emptiness. Tantra is a wild mother tiger - if you approach her with right motivation, right intention, and integrity, she’ll suckle you at her breast; but if you come to her in a sloppy way, she’ll rip apart your body-mind, eat you for dinner, and shit out what’s left.
R: Wow! I think that this sense of joyful abandon and the force and bliss you’ve described would make the Tantric path attractive to many people. Plus the fact that it is known to be a very swift path to enlightenment.
P. Swift, yes. But the Tantric Vajrayana path is complex and can be dangerous. It requires a strong, well integrated sense of self prepared through careful preliminary practice. Otherwise it is possible for the practitioner to make gross errors in judgment. On the Tantric path, it is perhaps easier to become the ultimate form of egohood and delusion than it is to become free. You can start off intending to liberate the tyranny of ordinary appearance into primordial awareness and end up crystallizing the ego into diamond-hard delusion. There is no authentic Tantra without profound commitment, discipline, intelligence, courage, and a sense of wild, foolhardy, fearless abandon.
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Using an incense is an important part of Tantric Yoga.
The most suitable incense for any tantric practice are Tibetan Incense.
Tibetan Incense is made from a blend of different herbs, spices, plants and minerals from centuries’ old recipes.
All natural ingredients are used such as flowers, leaves, grass, wood, bark, spices, and aromatic herbs found in the high altitude regions of Tibet and Nepal.
The tibetan incense, unlike Indian one, is made from rolled herbs, so there is no wooden stick inside and no chemicals used that could be allergenic or harmful to inhale.
Many tibetan incenses are actually made for inhalation.
The medicinal incense are prepared using strict vedic formulas which are based on ancient medical tantra texts that have remained unchanged for centuries.
In Tibet, tradition of making and using incense exists since the very beginning of human existence.
The art of making and using of incense was flourished in Tibet even before Buddhism, along with a ancient Bon mystic tradition.
Buddhism evolved in Tibet to a great extent in the 7th century AD under the reign of religious kings of Tibet, along with the development of making incense based on the sacred Indian tantric texts.
This way, the art of making and using of incense is a combination of Bon and Indian tantric traditions.
Burning of incense gives you much needed mood and environment that is crucial when you do Tantric Yoga, Tantric Massage and any kind of tantra or mystic practice.
courtesy of yabyummy.com click here for the original post.
What Is Shamanic Tantra?
Like traditional tantra, shamanic tantra is a path to enlightenment through the body, a spiritual practice that teaches us to be in the now and to open ourselves up to more bliss, joy, and connection to spirit by connecting our sexuality and our spirituality. Drawing from Wiccan, Druidic, and Shamanic roots, Shamanic tantra differs from traditional tantra in working extremely intuitively and in its strong connection to the earth. I have created the six gateways to sacred sexuality as an attempt to structure the work of shamanic tantra for teaching, but by its nature, shamanic tantra is fluid and guided through each person’s connection to the divine, and their sense of what is right for them.
What are the Six Gateways to Sacred Sexuality?
The journey to enlightenment can take many roads. The six gateways are a path that happens to be working for myself and my healing partner, Steven Jay. Together we have intuitively created this road map for discovering the bliss that is created when we connect spirituality to sexuality. This is a practice that can be used alone or with a partner. These steps are not necessarily practiced in order. In fact, they seem to interweave and spiral with each other, spirals being a geometric pattern often used to describe earth-centered spirituality, where linear motion from point a to point b is rare.
The First Gateway: Connecting to Spirit
This is where we begin in shamanic tantra, in a belief that something greater than us is willing and able to connect with us and bring us healing. This is also where we end in shamanic tantra, so that the six gateways become a spiraling circle of practice, rather than a linear journey. Through our connection to spirit, we learn to connect not only to the divine, but to ourselves, and to see that we too are divine beings. We do this mostly through meditation, visualization, and trance journey, familiarizing ourselves with the feeling of spirit moving within us before moving forward.
The Second Gateway: Breathing Love
In both traditional and shamanic tantra, love is the key to everything. Opening our hearts and keeping them open is a foundational practice. Understand that this is different from being “in love” in the romantic sense. An open heart applies to everyone you meet in the world, and is the most profound state of joy and bliss imaginable when attained. The most powerful tool I have discovered for opening the heart and then keeping it open, is the breath. Daily practice of various breath techniques, as well as simply remembering to breathe through a painful or difficult emotion, is the first step to opening ourselves to bliss and joy. In consort practice, we learn to breathe together, synchronizing breath in an attempt to synchronize our energies.
The Third Gateway: Soul Gazing
Soul gazing is the process of looking deeply within and connecting, first with ourselves, and then with a partner. This practice is most easily begun alone, through insight meditation and then through mirror gazing. Once you are comfortable with these solo practices, then it is easier to move into gazing into the eyes of a partner to connect and allow them to see the divine essence within you.
The Fourth Gateway: Channeling the Dragon
The sexual life force energy that flows through the body has many names, but my favorite comes from the gaelic: ”nwyvre”, which means “dragon fire”. In shamanic tantra we learn to channel this fire and to move it throughout our bodies to create a state of intense aliveness. Part of this work specifically focuses on balancing and clearing blockages in the energy centers of the body, also called chakras in traditional tantra, which brings a greater openness to moving ecstatic energies through the body, as well as increased health and vitality.
The Fifth Gateway: The 16 Elements of Ecstasy
Astrologers believe that all of us are imprinted with clusters of elemental energies at the time of our birth. The 16 elements of ecstasy are the elements of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water broken down into their light and dark, masculine and feminine components. We can commune with these elements that are both within us and all around us in nature through touch, movement, trance journey, visualization, and ceremony. The free flow of energy through the body and the creation of a feeling of connectedness to all that is depends on both elements and chakras being in harmony. Balancing and connecting to these energies allows us to lead more balanced and connected lives. The elements and the dragon energies are intertwined in the practice, and often a moving back and forth between the two is required for deep healing of emotional, mental, sexual, and spiritual blocks.
The Sixth Gateway: Divine Union
In solo work, divine union describes a marriage of the masculine and feminine energies within the self, balancing our tendencies to be active, for instance, with our ability to receive, so that our inner masculine and feminine energies work together in harmony. Divine union also explores our connection with the natural world, with the life force energy in the spirits of the plants, the rocks, and the animals. In consort practice, divine union becomes the place where we merge completely with the god or goddess in our partner so that we no longer have the need for boundaries between us. This merging can only come after a sense of safety has been created through work with the previous five steps, where we learn to be strongly centered and balanced within our own energetic and emotional fields. The practice of divine union is the ultimate goal of shamanic tantra, to merge our life force energy with all that is, through the experience of the body.
Returning to the First Gateway: Re-connecting to Spirit
Once we have gone deeply into union with another or with ourselves, we cycle back to our connection with spirit, to the safety and protection of being grounded in the earth and open to the sky. We let go of any need to cling to another person to experience the bliss of this union. The beauty of this path is that once our bodies have experienced the bliss of the deeply connected divine union with another, we can return to that again and again through our connection with spirit. Because there is no scarcity of love in the universe, we can draw on this whenever we want, only now we are not drawing from another person, we are drawing from source.
Practicing With or Without a Partner
Many of our clients complain that they have no partner to practice with, or that their partner is not interested in practicing tantra. It is perfectly acceptable to practice tantra alone. In fact, traditional tantra was first taught solo, to allow the student to master the complex spiritual practices of breathwork, energy movement, and meditation before coming into union with a partner.
In shamanic tantra, we work to bridge our beginning point into the heart of sacred sexuality. For those who are more spiritually inclined, solo practice is often the place to begin exploring, because it is what is most comfortable. If you are practicing solo, I encourage you to try self pleasuring with the exercises once you are comfortable with the practices, BEFORE you move into practicing with a consort. For women, I often encourage they use some sort of sex toy for self pleasuring, so that it is an effortless practice, and they can concentrate on the breathing and balancing practices they have already learned.
If you are coming into shamanic tantra from a place of wanting to enhance your sexuality, then consort practice is a great place to begin, and slowly begin to bring the practices into your lovemaking. Like any other new endeavor, it is best to begin slowly, with the more simple exercises, and then progress into more complex work. If you are extremely sexual and do not have a partner, then begin by slowly introducing the gateway practices into your masturbation. Especially if you are using a lot of fantasy to become aroused, a large part of the work will be to learn to be fully present in self-pleasure. This can be difficult for some, and the ability to climax in your traditional way may elude you. This is natural in light of the fact that you are rewiring your pleasure centers. Learning to drop into and allow each touch to be arousing and to let go of the goal of orgasm leads eventually to a place where sexual arousal becomes larger and richer, and orgasms begin to take on an intensity and duration previously unknown.
Picture: Norval Morrisseau
