What it is All About!

There is only emptiness – vast spaciousness like the infinite blue sky or like the deepest silence beyond all sound.

There is no “me” – all I perceive is not me; thoughts, feelings, sensations, images which are apparently inside me; and  phenomena, things, apparently in a place called the world which "I" observe. In reality, on my shoulders is just a blazing empty space; not separate from the vast spaciousness of all.

There is no "I" or "me" to be healed,  improved, or become enlightened. Enlightenment is not an experience – it is the demolition of all concepts; all that we think we are.  There is no path to truth – it just is; here and now.

Resting easily in the natural state, emptiness arises readily and is luminously clear. There is no perceiver of this emptiness. Not being separate from this empty, loose and natural space allows the experience of the inseparability of emptiness and the phenomena that arise in the emptiness; thoughts, feelings, insights, perceptions, experiences. All experiences and phenomena are empty and are not different to, or separate from emptiness they are like two sides of a coin. This emptiness is not an absence but a fullness, a spaciousness that contains all. The world is not an illusion; it is the viewer who is the illusion.

The tantric formulation of this is that everything is Shiva; universal consciousness. If we don’t have this as the root realisation then we either embark on a futile game of self-improvement;  trying to  become more spiritual or more whole; or we chase phenomena such as more powerful experiences, bigger orgasms, greater realisations.  All experiences and phenomena are empty and the experiencer, being not distinct from this spacious emptiness is also empty. Phenomena of all sorts are the manifestation of Shakti - the dynamic, creative power of the universe. Therefore if we only see and worship Shakti then we are tying ourselves into the manifest world. If we are rooted in the realisation that everything is consciousness (“I am Shiva”) then we can experience Oneness; the inseparability of form and emptiness, energy and consciousness Shakti and Shiva beyond all dualities. This is true advaita tantra. 

Deeply realising this either as a gradual dawning or as a sudden awakening puts much of what happens in tantra workshops into a different perspective.