Everything You Do

Everything you do in life has the potential to be transformational. At every moment you have the opportunity to change your experiences for the better.  Practicing staying present, focused and in the ‘Now' is the path to inspiring transformational change. Though it may begin to sound like a cliché there isn't anything closer to the truth.

Tantric practices where developed for just this purpose. In development for over four thousand years, Tantra sees the potential a human has to expand their capacity for awareness, pleasure, compassion, love and mutual understanding through first hand experience. In Western Tantra the senses, sexuality, breathing, sexual exercises, ritual lovemaking and exploration are the keys to not only exquisite lovemaking but transformational experiences that can reframe your world-view.

Expansive sensual and sexual experiences open our mind's eye, as well as our body's gross and subtle capacities for pleasure, to a greater understanding of what we, as humans, are actually capable of experiencing. These experiences can sometimes be so astonishing that we perceive them as mystical or magical. A few studies have shown that a fairly large percentage of people report mystical imagery, feelings and perceptions during or right after intense sexual situations. A gateway opens, if the conditions are right, that can transport a person to these experiences.

In a Tantra.com survey from 2000, 2,400 people answered this question: "Have you ever had a mystical, out-of-body or Kundalini experience?" Twenty-four percent said ‘Yes'. Of that twenty-four percent, seven percent said they had had the experience during sexual activity. I have had two Kundalini experiences in my life and they both came directly after having had a long, Tantric sex ritual with my husband. They came right after sex and I have always attributed them to the expansion and openness I felt after the sexual experiences.

In neural science there is a concept called ‘gating'. If you imagine a gateway and hordes of people trying to get through it from one side, it's obvious that only, say, five people can get through at a time no matter what you do. But if the gate is made bigger more people can get through and more quickly, too. This is the concept at work when we ‘train' our body/mind/soul to receive more; more pleasure and a greater capacity for experiencing something at any given moment in time. The more we receive, enjoy, acknowledge and repeat an experience the more our gates grow and open to receive more of it. And the more we can remain in the ‘present' with the experience the more we can use it to train ourselves to pay attention in life.

Athletes do it. Meditators do it. Yogis do it. Scholars do it. Surgeons do it. Surfers do it. Lovers do it. We all do it at times when we must pay attention to details. Things like breath, relaxation, learning to cultivate ‘witness' mind, practicing receiving sensual touch, expanding our repertoire of sexual positions and techniques, setting intention during any kind of communication or ceremony, practicing awareness of all kinds - all these things and more contribute to the transformation of experience and therefore life.

It is difficult to understand why some people, and religions, separate the sexual from the spiritual. For those religions or beliefs systems that honor the experiential over dogmatic ‘thought' the adherent can fully claim the spiritual aspects present in any human experience, be it sexual or otherwise. Embracing a more holistic viewpoint is analogous to the gates being more wide-open.

These concepts are at work with our need for healing or enhancing, whether it is sexual or emotional or even physical. To change the size of the ‘gate' and keep it from getting narrower there are many experiences that can help. If we look at Premature Ejaculation in men with the concept of the ‘gate' in mind you can see that one of the things that may be going on is a lessened ability (small gate) to take in the feelings and pleasure of the experience without losing it to ejaculation. By expanding the ability to experience all of the sensations during arousal, and relax into them, the ‘gate' of the pleasure a man allows in can open wider. He can then hangout in the pleasure and choose when he ejaculates, if at all. I say ‘if at all' because there is a school that says "Why let go of those sensations at all?" That, of course, is a choice left to each man for himself.

It is often said that Tantra says ‘Yes' to everything. While that is easier said than done it is a good guide to go by. It means a bit of ‘risk' has to occur to grow and expand. The metaphor of the ‘gate' can be used in all of our life situations. Calculated risks can ease the gate open in friendships, with lovers, in work, with children and teens, with parents - in all of the life situations where we come up against a wall of struggle. Widening the gateway of our heart and mind increases the capacity in our soul to receive more feelings, love, compassion and pleasure. It transforms our consciousness in ever-expanding ways.