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!

Teaching Tantra

          If I were to suggest to you that tantra has little to do with intimacy and even less to do with sex you would probably think I was crazy; looking at most books and workshops around. Agehananda Bharati the great Indian scholar of tantra estimated that seven percent of tantric texts were to do with sex and sixty percent were to do with mantras. In the Vigyan Bhairav Tantra a 1,700 year old text of 112 methods of meditation only 3 are to do with sex. Mantras and yantras are intrinsic to tantra. But "What of the Kama Sutra!" you may cry. It has nothing to do with tantra; it is a bedroom manual for rich Indian men to try and teach them something about women and sex. Mostly it is OK (but bear in mind we have an edited version) but tantra is a spiritual practice and you won't find anything much about spirituality or consciousness in the Kama Sutra.

            So what is tantra about? It is about not intimacy with a person but about the identity or resonance between you and the whole universe and about subtle ways of  "seducing the powers of nature" as one modern Indian tantric text has as its subtitle. The intimacy in tantra is intimacy with the whole. Some of the practices of tantra; the more popular ones, can help with intimacy with a partner or help to heal personal issues; but these are a side-effect and can be a diversion. If you strengthen the small ego, the self then you can create more barriers. You are strengthening the spiritual ego; what Chogyam Trungpa called spiritual materialism. This is certainly true if you think that the essence of tantra is challenging restrictions and behaving outrageously. If you can dance naked on the table; you may be drunk or crazy, but you are not necessarily tantric! This was a way in tantra of challenging the Vedantic orthodoxy several hundred years ago but nowadays anything goes anyway. If you realise your essence as the divine you may be enlightened but you may also be caught in a grandiose and narcissistic delusion; "I am a Goddess so everything I say is right!"

          Cynically, you could say modern tantra is sexual because sex sells anything including enlightenment; however sex and desire can provide a motivation for practice and can help the skillful development of relationship. Ecstatic states give a taste of enlightenment. There are many traps in all this.  For example; there is absolutely no connection that I can see between tantra and polyamory or polyfuckery. Both of which are OK lifestyle choices but very little to do with tantra and again easily subject to much delusion. Relationships just becoming another acquisitive commodity, If there is any sexual lifestyle implied by tantra itself it is probably celibacy and there is only one tantra book I have ever come across that uses the word celibacy with any prominence (it is the excellent Eros, Consciousness and Kundalini by a therapist Stuart Sovatsky for the record).

     The real difficulty in teaching tantra is very easy to state. It is much easier to teach about energy than it is about consciousness. Energy is sexy (literally!). It's usually fun and fits with our need for more and more intense experiences. Breath, sound and movement the three keys in tantra are all about increasing energy flow. Consciousnesses by contrast is boring!!! It is still, steady, spacious but empty.  However, traditional tantra is clear in Abhinavagupta's first Shiva Sutra; Chaitanyamatma. ‘Everything is Chiti, everything is Consciousness’. How to teach about consciousness and awareness the platform on which Shakti creates the whole universe? How to get people to value the floor and  pole which allow the pole dancer to perform? To do this requires loosening our addiction to phenomena and experiences. There are many more methods than the traditional one of sitting on your meditation cushion observing the mind or the breath; though they are still excellent. Osho has given us some methods that combine movement with observation and stillness. Ramana Maharshi has given us Self Enquiry; continually looking for the questioner not for the answer to the question. Of course Ramana was not very sexy - he never got away from his mother; she came after him; and Osho is more cuddly than sexy.

Imbolc - Life re-awakens within

 Today is the first day of Spring; it is Imbolc  derived from the Celtic words for “in the belly,” or “the quickening.” in recognition of the fact that the subtle energies and the life forces of this side Earth are becoming more alive and vibrant. Snowdrops are out. It is half way between the winter solstice and feminine the  spring equinox.

Imbolc is associated in the Celtic tradition with Brigid, the virginal first form of The Triple Goddess -
Encountering this energy form is exciting and inspirational. She is called The Bride because Imbolc sees the first ‘marriage’ of the two energy polarities - the returning male energy and the ever-present female energy combining to create a vibrant and creative impulse which brings forth life.

So celebrate life every day; but particularly today. Celebrate the life of the body, and Shakti as the creative force of life itself which again is beginning to stir in the earth and in the body.  Do it symbolically and find your inner feminine or find a woman and celebrate her.