From The First Rung To The Last This Is Tantra

This is my Joy to bring to you the journey of Tantra and how I applied it in my life. After all, we are all on a journey towards death. It will one day happen why not beat it by dying before you die. This I promise is the sweetest track you will ever listen to.

Transcript

Hello beautiful people.

Welcome once again.

I've shared wisdom from great masters with you before.

We've talked about Patanjali,

We've talked about Buddha,

And maybe a few others that don't come to mind right away.

Tantra is one of the most amazing sciences you could ever discover.

You could ever dive into.

But you have to,

It's like walking on a tight rope with tantra.

Because one side of you is indulgence and the other side is repression.

And you're like right in the middle.

A very thin line right in the middle.

So come with me on this journey and we'll discuss the beauty and the elegance of tantra.

Many years ago,

Probably about 23 years ago,

I started getting into meditation for health reasons.

And basically I learned to meditate and I started meditating once in the evening and sometimes once in the morning.

But things didn't change in my life until I started putting these meditation sessions into everyday dealings with my life.

With what I was doing at work or what I was doing at home.

But bringing meditation into work is kind of a beautiful thing to do.

Because I was doing low voltage work at the time and I would punch down these data patch panels.

And basically you can punch down a data patch panel using your consciousness and not think.

So you're staying ahead of your mind.

You're staying ahead of your thoughts.

But then when you finish the project,

Like I've terminated this patch panel and I look at it,

I'm like,

Wow,

That was such a beautiful experience.

And the patch panel looked beautiful too.

It's just implying and taking the next step into what Buddha calls the fine middle line.

This living in the present moment.

And tantra goes even deeper than Buddha does in a way.

Tantra says that what some people would look at as sin or repression is actually a virtue.

So we look at life and we go through life thinking that this is right and this is wrong.

But sometimes these stepping stones,

What's wrong might look like a block in your path and you shouldn't deal with it.

You shouldn't approach it.

But tantra's philosophy is that it is just a stepping stone.

Okay,

So to one person what might be a sin,

Like maybe sex,

We could definitely use sex as an example.

Because tantra is not 100% based around sex,

But it's got a big part of it.

So we'll discuss that in a little bit here.

So I was going through my younger years learning to meditate,

Getting over my physical problems in life.

And meditation was the key.

Because prayer will get you so far,

It will get you up to heaven's gate.

It can get you that far.

Prayer does work and it's got beneficial uses and everything.

But it won't get you in the gate and it won't open the gate for you.

For that you're going to need meditation.

For that you're going to need things like tantra and learning the middle path.

So yes,

I say that tantra is very in-depth and steeped with sexuality and intimacy.

Because there's intimacy with another person.

There's lust and there's intimacy,

But then that intimacy when awareness is applied to it and when you're being conscious of this intimacy,

It raises the intimacy.

So it's kind of like the first rung on a ladder.

Lust and intimacy,

Then intimacy between humans or intimacy between you and something you love.

It could be a sport,

It could be an adventure,

It could be anything.

Just something that you're intimate about.

When you apply awareness to all this intimacy,

It brings it up to love.

And then human love is the next doorway,

The next step to divine love.

And divine love is the next step into union with the God.

Devotion and then union with your maker,

Union with existence.

And I know all that sounds kind of crazy and scary.

And along the way,

If you decide to follow the path,

At some point you're going to get scared.

Things are going to happen.

And you will probably resist as the mountain gets higher,

It gets steeper.

And you'll probably resist and get scared.

But that's okay,

That's normal.

I say embrace that fear because what have you got to lose?

You've lived this whole life and you've been breathing your whole life and you never had to think about it.

You've been conscious,

You've been aware,

You've been loved,

You've seen so many things.

But don't be afraid of what you don't know.

If you embrace the unknown and make a space for it,

Then the unknown has a place to come into you and fill you with more.

And not one person,

Not one single person who has ever become enlightened has ever regretted it or felt that it was the wrong thing to have done,

That have happened to them and to have done to themselves.

So in a way,

Tantra is kind of,

You can analyze it like this,

That it's like,

Instead of swimming upstream in a river trying to cross the other to the other shore,

Instead of swimming upstream your whole life,

Like if you're repressing your whole life,

Then you're swimming upstream,

You're swimming upstream,

Eventually you're going to get tired.

Eventually you're going to wear yourself out and then you'll drown.

And when I say drown,

To a person who represses all the time,

Then they give in,

Because the spring goes from one extreme to the other extreme,

From completely pressed in all the time to all the way out and extended to the other direction,

To its maximum reach.

And when a spring does that,

It can't find the center,

It can't find the middle.

So Tantra says that basically you're like a river,

And Tantra says,

Float.

If you can learn to float,

Then you've learned the greatest mystery of all existence.

And we all learned to float when we were little kids,

Hopefully,

And you just learn to trust that everything's going to be okay,

And you can just sit there and with little movement keep yourself afloat and not have to panic,

No matter how bad the currents get,

No matter how difficult life gets,

We find that right in the middle,

Right in the exact middle,

We can float.

And we can make our way through life by floating.

When times get hard,

We float.

When times get too easy,

We float.

You find a middle path.

And it's said that every river,

As you're flowing down this river towards the ocean,

Every river,

Right before it reaches the ocean,

Looks back and says,

Ah,

You sure I want to be part of the ocean?

You sure I want to make this last leap?

But no river can turn around.

Once you've gotten to that point,

Once you've let yourself go,

And once you embrace existence and be receptive towards whatever's coming your way on this path of Tantra,

Whatever comes your way,

You just accept.

And then as the last step,

You let go of being the river and you dive into what is now the ocean.

You become,

The drop becomes the ocean.

And the ocean becomes the drop too.

And that's a very mystical thing to even think about.

I remember my very first skydive.

I've been wanting to do it my whole life.

And then after September 11,

2001,

9-11,

It kind of woke America up.

I was meditating in 2001.

And basically when all the catastrophe hit and everything,

I just went into a deep meditation and centered myself and said to myself,

Hey,

I need to deal with this catastrophe that happened to America in my own way.

And that was to find myself,

Find my center,

And act accordingly out of my consciousness.

But anyway,

I wanted to get into skydiving.

And my birthday was coming up,

And I really wanted to go skydiving.

So we went out to Suffolk,

Virginia,

A small drop zone on the east coast of America in Virginia.

And I went through the class,

And I experienced so much.

They teach you so much.

They teach you how to,

All the malfunctions.

They teach you how to use your equipment.

They teach you a little bit about flying,

How to arch your back.

And then you just got to trust them.

But you've never done it before.

It's a new experience,

And you've never done it.

And it's very fearful.

It's like,

Holy crap,

If I do this and everything goes wrong,

I could be dead in three minutes.

But they also tell you that if everything goes right,

It's the best three minutes of your life.

So anyway,

My turn came to get on the plane.

It was almost towards the end of the day.

It was the last jump of the day.

They barely fit me in,

But they were determined to get me up.

And I stayed all day and watched all the other jumpers and got a feeling of,

Hey,

This ain't so bad.

If everybody else can do it,

Then I can do it.

And even still to this day,

When I go to jump many years later,

When I get to the drop zone and I see other people jumping,

It just takes all the nerves away.

When you see somebody else can do it,

It kind of changes life in a positive way for you.

And if you can see that other people are becoming enlightened,

Other people are crossing and leaving the river and becoming the ocean,

Then it's less fearful.

It makes the jump easier for you.

But anyway,

So we get in the plane and we're riding up to altitude.

I can't remember exactly all the thoughts that were going through my mind.

It's like,

Holy crap,

I'm going to do this?

Holy crap,

This is scary.

Oh,

Oh God,

We're up so high.

But they train you right.

They train you what to do and everything.

But I remember climbing out of the aircraft when it was my turn to jump.

And you've got a jump master on the outside of you and a jump master on the inside of you.

And I swear,

If my fingers would have been strong enough,

I would have probably dug my nails right into the frame of the airplane.

I was just so scared and so nervous.

But the thing just came to me at that time.

It's like,

Look,

You're going to do this.

This is going to happen.

So I basically said,

F it,

And let go of the plane and proceeded to skydive.

Not knowing anything about what's going to happen or what it's going to feel like or anything like that.

I just said,

You know,

Like the river leaving the river and becoming the ocean,

I just said,

I want this,

I'm going to do it,

And whammo,

It happens.

So as you leave the airplane and you let go,

The first few seconds is what they call getting over the hill.

It's about five,

Six,

Seven seconds that it takes before you get up to speed of 120 miles an hour,

Which is terminal velocity.

So those five seconds,

There's this feeling of falling,

But beyond those five seconds,

The feeling of falling disappears,

And it's a feeling of floating,

More or less.

So it's just something that only a skydiver ever experiences.

So I wish that everybody,

If they're healthy enough or well enough and have the money to do it,

Should at least try skydiving at least one time and experience that freeness.

And in a certain sense,

Outside of meditation,

It's the closest thing you're ever going to get to knowing God.

It's just that intense of an experience.

So this whole philosophy of being one with the river and being one with the ocean and giving into existence and trusting existence,

You're going to be alright.

That's the cool thing about trust is that beyond all bounds,

Beyond fear,

Beyond aggression,

Beyond everything negative and everything else positive,

Also that you're going to be okay,

That everything's going to be fine.

But this trust is just something that you have to learn by meditating and meditating more and bringing meditation into your life,

Into your daily practice.

And then,

While you're practicing awareness and meditation,

You practice awareness towards emotions or towards situations in your life.

Every situation looks like a stumbling stone,

But actually it's a stepping stone.

It looks like it's a block in the path,

But no,

It's actually a challenge for you to get past in life.

On the negative side,

You could think of anger or jealousy or any of these negative emotions and say that that's a bad thing.

And yeah,

It looks bad,

Okay?

It's a negative emotion,

But it could also be used as a stepping stone.

When anger is looked at with awareness and you concentrate on your breathing and you focus on your awareness and just try to watch the anger,

You'll see that you can't be angry for long.

It will disappear.

And when that anger disappears,

It turns into compassion.

And compassion is the fragrance of the situation of a flower.

They say that you can't touch fragrance,

You can't put your hands on it,

But it's everywhere and it's pervading and it's beautiful but it comes from something negative.

I mean,

There are always going to be thorns in the path.

I mean,

Every rose has a thorn and you can get past the thorns,

You can get past all this negative stuff if you make an effort to be aware and to have consciousness in whatever you're doing as you apply it in,

Like I said,

All the things you're doing in life.

And all these things are basically getting you to a boiling point,

Getting you to a point where you're going to be 100 degrees Celsius,

That is.

But 100 degrees Celsius,

If you're 99 degrees Celsius,

Nothing's going to happen.

Okay,

Life is just going to go on on its own and nothing spectacular will happen.

Sure,

I mean,

There will be great moments of your life,

But nothing like the moment of enlightenment.

But like I said,

Don't let enlightenment scare you,

Don't let that word scare you.

It's just an expression.

Like I said,

We go through our lives with all these things happening to us.

But in a way,

If we're not practicing awareness,

If we're not being conscious about these things,

We're kind of living our lives in illusion,

In the mind,

And the mind's journey is a little bit different than what reality is because of your perceptions and your conditionings growing up and how you perceive things is always different between every person.

But like I said,

If we practice awareness,

If we concentrate on being conscious and being 100% in the present moment,

Walking on that tightrope,

Like I said,

You've got indulgence on one side and you've got repression on the other.

And like I said,

One looks like a sin and the other looks like it's absolutely no fun at all.

But anyway,

The spring,

If it's in the center,

And it's not compressed or it's not expanded,

Has no momentum to move in the opposite direction anymore.

So once you become centered,

Once you learn how to walk that tightrope,

It won't be long before the most beautiful thing in your life could happen.

Like I said,

Prayer will get you up to God's door.

Meditation will open the door.

But then you've got to walk in.

And the only way to walk into the door,

The only way to become part of the ocean,

Is to dissolve as a drop.

And yes,

That is a death.

That is a certain death.

That's a death of the ego.

It's a death of the personality.

But it's the beginning of your individuality.

It's the beginning of a new life.

It's the beginning of experiencing everything in its total reality.

And then from that moment on,

You're not pulled by stress anymore.

You're not pulled by time anymore.

Sure,

It exists.

You know it's around you and it's everywhere.

Time seems like every— I mean,

The whole universe is tied in with time in a way.

But there's two energies.

There's gravity and then there's levitation.

And if you can learn the art of meditation,

The art of tantra,

Then your energies get raised and raised.

And every time you do something,

Overcome an obstacle or meditate quite a bit and raise your energy up,

You keep levitating that energy to a certain point where it all meets up in the heart and your heart chakra and everything.

And once 51% of your energy gets up to the heart,

Then that's when the explosion happens.

It's like a democratic process.

Once 51% of you dive into the ocean,

There's no returning back.

That's the breaking point.

But if you can go your whole life with your energy,

Like I said,

If you don't get the boiling point of 100 degrees Celsius,

The energy can come up to the heart.

And like I said,

Prayer gets you that far.

But it doesn't open the heart.

That takes love.

That takes devotion.

That takes prayer.

It takes everything.

It's a total combined theology of life to open the doors of existence.

But just keep working.

Just keep at it.

Keep meditating.

Enjoy your life.

Take in the beauty of life.

Smell the flowers.

In Tantra they have a saying that you should be like a bee.

And a bee goes around and takes the pollen from every flower and they make honey with it.

And a bee will only stay on a flower while it has pollen on it.

And when the pollen's all gone,

It moves to another flower.

So if we apply that into our relationships and our lives,

You can stay with the person as long as there's love,

As long as you feel love flowing.

And you can stay with that person your whole life as long as that love is still flowing.

I have many friends who have had that relationship.

I've had some very long relationships myself.

But when the love dies,

When the love's not present anymore,

It's kind of a sin to stay into a relationship because you're going to hurt each other.

When love disappears,

Tantra says,

Move to the next flower.

And stay with love.

Always stay with love.

So anyway,

This is the introduction to Tantra.

And most of what I learned of Tantra,

I learned by the Tantra experience,

The discourses on the royal song of Saraha.

And I've applied Tantra to everyday living,

Everyday life.

It becomes a part of your life,

This walking on a tightrope.

Some people like it.

It may not be for everybody.

Some people may find it too scary to walk on a tightrope.

You have to definitely overcome fear.

And that is a big part of life in general,

Is overcoming fear.

Then you have to overcome greed too.

A desire to go to heaven is a subtle form of greed.

So we have to keep in mind that these two things,

This fear and greed,

Are pulling us from one side to the other in time.

And if we can stay right in the middle,

That very fine line right in the middle,

Then we don't feel the pull.

We can move forward.

But you have to find that fine line in the middle and apply it to your life and try to live as beautifully as possible.

Smell the flowers,

Be like a bee,

And know the beauty of love and divine love and know the ladder.

And it's okay to go back down and rung on the ladder.

It's okay to move forward and go up when the time's right.

When you raise enough energy,

The time will be right to move up the ladder.

And then,

Of course,

The ultimate goal,

If there is an ultimate goal,

Is union with the divine,

Union with all of existence and coming back home to the ocean.

Okay,

Guys,

Thank you for staying and listening to all this beautiful talk on Tantra.

And I look forward to many more conversations and many more tracks laid down on Insight Timer.

And I've got about,

I think,

About 25 or 30 tracks on Insight Timer now.

So I think they're all pretty good.

Of course,

I would.

I'm the author of them.

But it's just my joy to share these things I've learned along the way,

These things that have made me a better skydiver or made me a better person or made me a more beautiful person.

I guess that's all perspective,

Right?

But take care of yourselves.

If you like this talk,

Please leave a nice rating at the bottom.

And we'll talk to you again soon sometime.

Bye.