Beloved

I have immersed in Tantra for many years. I have worked consciously with jealousy and the fear of loss of love - both being related to each other. What I have found in my work-play with Tantra is that one can think about a thing all day all week all year but until one immerses the body and mind into the experience then there is no understanding or knowing.

This being said, I chose to face my jealousy body on – not by thinking about it but by allowing the experiences that would evoke the jealousy. I have engaged in lover relating without rules or agreements on exclusivity. I threw away the safety net!

I did this for 3 years with my Tantra teacher. I faced many personal “demons” especially the act of comparison with his other lovers and the insistent belief that I was less favoured.

These women, the other lovers, became my closest and dearest friends. This path remains new and always surprising. So it is when you choose to take the path never travelled before as opposed to those paths that have never been left. I have come to understand that boredom comes from this place – the constant repetition of the safe and known past as opposed to the embrace of the unknown, of the dangerous – the path never taken – yourself.

In this willingness one meets a presence and a fullness that cannot be described only lived.

So yes my willingness to face my jealousy with my teacher brought on many painful and difficult illusions I had about myself. As they fell, I met the void of disillusionment, and in this void the space for truth and love.

Yet certain aspects of my illusions were not confronted with my teacher. I came to realise he was not the usual man, in that, he would not develop some attachment to another woman and refuse me because of her conditions. I came to see this over the years and so my fear of loss of love softened and my subsequent jealousy too was not so engaged or invoked.

I may have even believed that I had begun to transcend jealousy, but for some nagging insistence within….

Last year, I found myself in a place of deep presence. The past was of no consequence, my name did not matter, I found it difficult to engage in the chatter of others and mostly did not. When I attempted conversation I was not particularly good at it and this was of no concern. I was unable to define the experience or myself in it. This also did not matter. I was simply available to each moment and whatever the moment held.

In this place I met a man.

We fell into a deep sweetness with one another. It was easy, light, yummy. He was willing to be with a woman who taught sacred sexuality and did not agree to monogamy.

When I began my Tantra journey I thought I would need to surrender having a partner in order for me to teach Tantra. I believed my path would be far too challenging for anyone to want to hop on the ride with me. It was a day of grief, sadness and immense loneliness when I decided that this would be my way.

Then he arrived.

I was intimate with another. He did not enjoy but he stayed. I have some students. Again he does not enjoy but he stays.

I encouraged him to his own juice and to follow his love and allow it as it moves. For some time there was no one else. Then this began to change. It began to change with my closest friends. They were not making love but certainly this intimacy was imminent.

I fell into such a deep rage I wanted to jump on the cat that was snuggling beside him. I felt to shatter the reality in a single blow such was the sword I held. I could shred it with a thought. I became rage. I was the essence of it. It was beautiful and powerful and devastating. I understood what it is to stand in the eye of the storm and be the storm. I was total.

My teacher spoke to me of the beauty and the totality of the rage but cautioned of learning to wield this new found sword in right timing. I understood and did not. I did not want to put the sword down such was its beauty.

In most instances my teacher allows me to come to some understanding in my own time but for this understanding he was relentless. He persevered; my mind defended every corner. And in this defence it became clear I was insisting on my mind’s view not on the dharma. I came to see the fight I was engaged in. I chose then to stop. I would no longer refuse this learning.

My beloved is not my property to direct. He can stay or he can leave. There is nothing I can do to change his dance with existence.

I notice during this time that I am feeling some indifference towards my lover. This scares me, the absence of the sweet flow of love that is our day-to-day relating. I see that the indifference is misplaced – outrageously so.

The indifference is rightly given when he chooses intimacy with another not when we are being intimate. When I realise this and act upon it I feel a deep freedom.

We are at a party with many delicious women. He is playing and I am indifferent. He comes to dance with me, hold me, whisper in my ear and the indifference is no longer.

For some this may sound as if I am simply doing what he wishes. It is not so. I allow the real. I allow indifference in right timing not when we are home in bed together and now I am going to be aloof and indifferent because he spoke to girls at the party. And at the party I felt longing and deep torturous love because he was chatting to the girls. No, rather feel the longing and the love when he is in bed next to me and I can nail him. Or else, all I have experienced is misery.

The real is; he loves women. I cannot and do not want to change that. Ask any woman who has loved a misogynist.

He loves women. They like him too. The energy will move between them. It will happen regardless of what I want. If I manage to somehow stop the flow of his juice then it will stop with me too. Our love will become an empty but very safe shell.

Indifference has a place – allow it - in its rightful place.

In these few weeks of deep learning and allowing some very large shifts and aspects, I became ill. My gall bladder and liver became sore and my system very tired. The gall bladder is the place of fear and courage. The feeling I had in the body was that I was severely beaten up. As if I had done big battle. I think existence won.

My understanding has deepened. At the beginning of my Tantra path I felt I would lose the love of a partner, but now I see I have only begun my loving because of this path.

I understand the insistence of non-monogamy. It is not about many lovers per se, many lovers can be helpful too, but that is another story. It is about a freedom beyond fucking a lot. The repressed western mind will always make it about someone wanting to fuck a lot and they better than that because they can avoid such temptations.

No, there is a freedom that is beyond any mind’s explanation that comes when your jealousy and fear of the loss of love are no longer your masters. Imagine what it is to be able to love someone completely without any fear. Not because you placed little safety rules between you, or because you have made up nice beliefs about the other, but simply because you are no longer afraid!

Can you imagine the freedom of this place?

You will only reach this place if you allow all the fear, jealousy, rage and pain. These come when you allow what is real. Your lover may be with another. Then you feel all, then you return to the core where the storm can no longer reach or ever did.

Virtual Inner Temple

A few of us have wanted a "private" (to students and teachers) area of the website, where we can discuss Tantric practices and sexual techniques that we'd rather not publish openly. Not that we're prudish, just that we like to be a bit culturally sensitive, so we do a little self-censorship.

This websites exists to let seekers with an interest in Tantra can find us. It's of course unavoidable that 98% of people can therefore find us in web searches and such, so there's a few things we do to reduce judgemental or purient-interest visitors. This is why there's not much in the way of sexy pictures, or descriptions of advanced sexual techniques at tantraschool.co.za.

On a practical level too, if we turn up in google searches for things titillating, our little website hosting facility will be quite overwhelmed and it's costs would increase significantly. Also, a subscriber-only area of the site could help with our ongoing web hosting costs, which are likely to increase now that we have some decent video and audio recording kit (and good film technicians) in the school.

What's delayed things was having something of value to offer to our first subscribers. Sure, if there's a lot of subscribers, discussion boards, chat rooms, contact searches and other nice things become possible, but what to offer the first in, especially as there's really no guarantee that enough interested people will subscribe to make the social aspect worthwhile one day?

Now that we've made a start on publishing, a solution presents itself. We're on the point of releasing our first 3 CD's so we have something of value to offer. Hopefully a worthwhile incentive.

To begin then, the subscriber-only "members" area of the site will have these 3 CD's available for download. As we do more recordings on various topics around Tantra, they'll be free to download in the members area just a bit before they are reproduced, and available for sale on the site.

Anything we publish (eg. DVD's) that's just plain impractical to make available for download, we'll make the packaged discs available to members at a hefty discount.

There's some writing in the school which can be published in the members area. Students and teachers of the school occasionally write of some experience, and find that, because of the intimacy of the piece, or people it unavoidably identifies they've had to keep it to themselves.

So, soon, we'll have worked out what we think is fair to charge, how to receive payments and such things, but soon, very soon, come, beloveds, and join the Virtual Inner Temple.