Love, Sex & Enlightenment
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| by Margot Anand © 2002 SpiritWorks Church |
Many people mistakenly believe that Tantra is a spiritual bastardization of sexual therapy, an excuse to indulge in sexual games or orgies, an addiction to hours of sexual orgasms. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Tantric path teaches us to embrace and unify the ordinary, the erotic, and the sacred dimensions of life, all of which have their roots in Spirit.
The beauty and wisdom of Tantra is that it enhances sexuality as a doorway to the "ecstatic mind of great bliss". Truly, at the peak of orgasm, we pierce through the illusion of fragmentation and separation, and glimpse the unity and interconnectedness of all beings. And through the other—our partner—we fall in love with life.
Because sex holds this great potential for opening our being to the experience of ecstasy, Tantra has for millennia taught the cultivation of sexual love as an art, as a skillful spiritual practice. Then, as now, Tantra challenges the belief promoted by most spiritual and religious paths that we must suppress or transcend out sexuality to practice meditation or awaken our Spirit.
Tantra arose in rebellion against the repressive orthodoxy of the Hindu priesthood, the Brahmins—especially against the idea that one had to be celibate to gain enlightenment. Tantra acknowledges that sex is at the root of life and that to make human sexuality and erotic union a form or worship and meditation is to practice reverence for life, leading us directly through the pleasure of the sense to spiritual liberation.
Cultivate Ecstasy
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| by Margot Anand © 2002 SpiritWorks Church |
As a therapist, I knew that the process of healing emotional wounds by focusing on the past to find their source was limited. Although it can bring about healing, it all too often promotes a fascination with the problematic. Furthermore, when we focus obsessively on our problems and pains, the ecstatic potential in most of life's moments goes unrecognized and unacknowledged, and our lives are emptied of a sacred and joyous dimension. Life appears problematic rather than ecstatic, more a puzzle to be solved than a pleasure to be cultivated.
I realized that existential or psychological pain was actually the absence of ecstasy. It was the outcome of being cut off from the source of one's being, the source of life. On the other hand, cultivating ecstatic states of consciousness and learning how to integrate them into our lives can have profoundly healing effects. I have come to believe that our suffering has its roots in the loss of ecstasy and that reclaiming our natural ecstasy holds the key to our healing and our liberation.
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