India

I arrived in India as it launched a rocket to Mars to look for methane. It's just what the half a billion poor here need; to answer the question of  whether any life form has farted on Mars in the last few million years (the answer was discovered twenty years ago – it’s no!). The Chinese Mars rocket failed, so this is a chance to get one up on the Chinese. Gandhi would be spinning in his grave if it were not for the fact that he was burnt not buried.

The country is as vibrant, crazy and alive as ever. It is impossible to tell by observation of most roads what side of the road people drive on or the function of constantly sounding the horn. If it is to warn the other road users - it seems to have no effect; but perhaps it is a friendly greeting. If so the country is the friendliest ever as the cacophony is overwhelming particularly at junctions. Where I am, in the beautiful green countryside of Goa there are motorbikes everywhere. Locals seem to be puzzled or offended by the sight of any Westerner walking and will turn their motorbike around to insist that it should be a taxi for you. It is the one thing I dislike most about this part of India; that with so many people trying to make a living from a relatively few tourists, any apparently friendly approach is somehow connected with trying to get you to buy something. I find it hard to steer a course between being pulled in to pointless and mutually frustrating interactions and ignoring almost everyone Indian.

The things I do want, like another pair of socks, are impossible to buy among the hundreds of stalls of bright cotton print dresses and throws and Bob Marley t-shirts and endless offers of “smoke?”.  However after half a week I have now found a green salad that contains something greener than a peeled cucumber.  The chaos seems to contain a great deal of good-natured tolerance within and among the many ethnic, national and religious groupings. For example the 150 million Muslims here do not produce many of the world’s terrorists or suicide bombers. 

Here in Goa, thanks to the Portuguese colonisation it is mostly Christian, with some houses having gruesome portraits of a crucified Christ on their walls. Still no worse than Kali with her necklace of severed heads. As I write this, the electricity has just cut out again leaving only the glow of my laptop screen.  Yesterday it was down when a tall coach caught some of the wires. It eventually proceeded with two men on the roof with bamboo poles pushing the live wires up as it drove. Suddenly the electricity is back and my exercise in pure touch typing is over.  It’s time for bed.

Awakening Sexual Aliveness

Here is the recording of a webinar that I have just done with my colleague Cassandra. It has lots of information, particularly directed at women at awakening your sexual aliveness. Do watch it or forward it to anyone.
Awakening Sexual Aliveness Webinar 

The Paper & The Mirror

Nearly all therapy, personal development and self-help is based on the idea of learning, improving ourselves and having better habits or more skills.  We may improve our ability to meditate so we have less distracting thoughts. Or perhaps we will remove some past traumas and issues through therapy so we can be more effective in the present. Or even go to the gym and exercise more and improve our health and fitness. All of these are based on the idea of a journey to a better state and they have a long history. In America, self-improvement is virtually a national duty and even classically and mythologically, The Hero's Journey involves getting to some better place. Essentially it is seeing us as a thing to be improved. We are like a sheet of paper where past writing can be erased, new and better words written, and creases ironed out.

But there is another perspective which is deeper and very different. It is the perspective that we are not like a sheet of paper but like a perfect mirror reflecting whatever is there equally and holding on to nothing. The mirror is forever pure, unsullied infinitely open and clear.  This could be called our Natural Presence; recognising this enlightened state as our true nature and present now. It does not have to be achieved through effort. The analogies to this are, traditionally in Tibetan teachings in particular, being like the open blue sky; vast and not reduced by the flight of birds or passage of clouds (ie. thoughts, sensations or dramas). We are then not experiencing ourselves as a thing to be changed but as without essential substance, a space through which thoughts, feelings and sensations pass from within us and impressions from around us.

The first approach is useful and can work for many provided they have enough of a sense of ego available to be improved (unfortunately for some, they do not and then self-help books are cruel in promising what they cannot deliver). However, it is essential to realise that the very success in striving with the ego for whatever we are trying to achieve - including more compassion or wisdom; has the likely effect of binding us to that ego. That identification is then an obstacle.  Becoming "Empty, Loose and Natural" and using practises which can give a direct experience of our innate spaciousness beyond duality is then the only remedy. Energy work cannot do this as energy work is building something such as improved flow of energy in the body or more balanced chakras. In Dzogchen the experience of their basic open-eyed meditation method, of relaxing in to infinite openness and allowing everything to arise offering it hospitality as each thought, feeling or sensation is self-liberating and will dissolve into space on its own.  The Self-Enquiry method of Ramana Maharshi with the question of who is the experiencer is part of this pathless path. In tantra there is also the possibility of using ritual and intention and some energy practices to dissolve into the Divine becoming the vast spaciousness as Shiva.

Paper and Mirror both have dangers. For Paper it is the endless nature of self-improvement and the possible risks of pride and attachment ("look at how hard I am trying, or how much insight I have", or its inversion "look how messed up I am!"). For the Mirror each way has dangers; sleepiness or dissociation or being stuck in the Mind with the question "Who am I?". Tantra is the most dangerous of all; addiction to intensity, and grandiose inflation are the two most common ("Wow, that was amazing!" and "I am a Goddess")

In some ways the first approach; as paper is more like Shakti, about creating things and the second more like Shiva, the open ground of consciousness itself.  In tantra; Shiva is the ground on which Shakti, the creative power of life can dance the world into being.  Chaitanyamatma can be translated as "Everything is Consciousness"  and is the first Shiva sutra, in Kashmir Shavism. In my view the highest teachings of tantra.

So; work at improving the Paper but open to some opportunities which may give the direct experience of  the Mirror as Space itself. In tantra workshops and in individual sessions this may arise but can never be engineered. Don't become too busy with self-improvement; there is no self - its a trap!

Symbols of Fear, Hate and Adoration

       

 Humans are funny creatures; we respond more to symbols than to reality and can therefore be so easily manipulated. So much more has been publicised about the bombs at the Boston marathon that killed three than the explosion in Texas two days later than killed 15 people. The Boston bombs come under the heading and therefore the hysteria of terrorism rather than the senseless madness of a couple of very disturbed people. The Texas fertiliser factory explosion is just part of the lax health and safety of the agrichemical industry which is routinely destroying our food and our earth. It is big business and therefore not a threat to us!

            Here in UK, there is so much fuss about an old lady dying in her sleep in a £3,200 a night suite at the Ritz Hotel. Mrs. Thatcher as a political force died twenty years ago when her Cabinet threw her out. She was a symbol rather than a person. I can't celebrate her death (but it does sound like quite a nice way to go...) but she represent a personification of the forces that have removed ethics, morality and compassion from the business and political world and we are today reaping the results of this as globalised casino capitalism dominates the planet.

Iron Lady Rusts

Mrs Thatcher broke the mold of boring elderly men as politicians who looked and as acted like everyone's dad or granddad. In that way she may have supported the aspirations of women. However she did this by being "the only man in the Cabinet" and being more confrontational, intransigent and bullying than most men would ever dare to be.  Her most destructive achievement was to completely remove all traces of ethics or  morality from politics. Before her the twentieth century had given us some inroads of ethics and morality into public life; Gandhi, socialism, communism, civil rights, trade unions - though all imperfect, and some like communism very distorted.  She replaced it with her ideology of the individual and the market and paved the way for "casino capitalism" which has got the world into the mess it is in today. She also gave us soft ice-cream from her work as a food chemist on the emulsification of fats and, I believe that same research, gave us Baileys Irish Cream; great with ice when in the hot tub! May she rust in peace.

Equinox

Today is the Autumn Equinox, the mid-point of day and night. The sun is overhead at the equator at midday travelling further South to give us a winter.

Celebrating this; links us to nature's cycles and a deeper connection to our own cycles, the balancing of darkness and light, the power of letting go, and the acknowledgement that everything changes. 

Tantra as a spiritual practice is always ultimately about Oneness and the skilful use of polarities like Shiva and Shakti  - or consciousness and energy. It is tempting to put the two together and think in terms of a harmonious balance of Shiva and Shakti. This can be misleading. Putting together two different types of qualities can  cause more problems than doing so may solve. The familiar yin yang symbol of a black and white sector whirling together has limitations but it is better than mixing black and white together and getting grey! 

This is true even with the Equinox as a balance of light and darkness. They are not exact opposites - one candle will dispel the darkness, but one bit of darkness doesn't remove all light.... On a planetary level from the perspective of space there isn't day and night just a beautiful blue-green planet spinning in space. 

Whatever the equinox means to you, may you be blessed, may you be loved, and may you be held gently in this golden autumn light.

Tonight is Maha ShivaRatri

It's probably not very often that Mother's Day in the UK falls on the same day as the start of the great puja to Shiva in India. Maha Shivaratri, the spiritual night of Lord Shiva, is considered to be the most sacred night of the year. There is fasting during the day and the puja goes on all night with mantras to Shiva whilst anointing the shivalingam with water, milk, honey, and flowers.

It happens the night before the new moon and is a chance to honour Shiva and the masculine principle of consciousness and awareness. For everything is consciousness and it is on this foundation principle that the world is danced into being through the awesome creative power of Shakti.  

There has probably never been a time in history when the principle of the Divine Masculine needs to be honoured and affirmed as it does now, for it is precisely the qualities of the Divine Masculine that can create the space and the safety for good mothers and mothering to happen. Far too often, in many cultures across the world women are trying to hold both poles of masculine and feminine at the same time and be mother and father to their own inner child and to their "outer children". Men are physically absent for many reasons or emotionally absent from their own lack of connection to the Divine Masculine and their historic lack of good enough mothering. They then end up as wounded, disconnected and dangerous; perpetual teenagers fuelling the cycles violence that are destroying life.  So today, honour mothers and tonight, honour the masculine principle; though you might want to ask before pouring milk and honey on his lingam!