Our Tantric Path: Connection With Others

We are social creatures. We have the ability to deeply connect with our friends, children, lovers, and even strangers. It is in this connection that we truly feel a part of the fabric of the world community. This is where we know we belong... in a deep and existential way.

Transcript

Today we're continuing our series about our tantric path and today we're talking about our connection with others.

This is really important to talk about because I actually believe that certain spiritual teachings rise because we need them.

If something wasn't needed we wouldn't be drawn to it,

We wouldn't desire it.

And things like Tantra and mindfulness and even yoga and meditation it's needed.

It's the necessary medicine for what we are lacking or what's harming us.

And one of the great challenges is that human beings we are social creatures.

We are meant to interact with each other.

You know I remember Jim saying to me once,

Jim was my first spiritual teacher,

He once said to me,

You know you're not an island Katrina.

You know there's millions of planets in the galaxy.

You could have been born to a planet all by yourself and you could have just existed.

But you can kind of feel inside that that's not the point.

The point isn't to be an island.

Even people who say,

You know I don't want to be around people I just want to be by myself and that kind of thing.

Really?

Like if you were on a planet all alone,

Is that really what we want?

Or is there some kind of desire inside to connect with other people?

So one of the great challenges is that we've lived in such a difficult time and we still live in a difficult time for the past couple millennia where there's so much pain when we connect because of many of the things we're going to talk about.

Even to the point that some people might say that love just equals pain.

It's not worth it.

Don't even go there.

Well we know that love doesn't mean pain.

Love is joy.

Love is connection.

But it's really interesting to look at why we believe love is pain.

And it's a lot deeper.

But that's a real dangerous thing that that's even an idea in our culture.

So then all of a sudden connecting with others in a very authentic and open way is really confusing.

How do you do that?

But if we actually redefine love and we imagine that love is simply connection and it's meant to nourish us.

It's meant to bring us joy and happiness.

And this is one of the things that's really important when we look at topics like this with a tantric lens.

Because tantra at its foundation is the merging of the divine and the physical.

As much as we are in this body,

This body is divine.

This being is divine.

This incarnation is divine.

And so the way to actually live tantrically or have tantric relationships or have tantric connection with others is to always come back to the idea that I am divine.

I am galactic.

I am infinite.

Whatever the words are that click inside of you that suddenly allow you to expand beyond this physical.

I'm still in this physical.

I'm still taking care of the puppy and paying rent and hanging out with my friend later.

Like I'm still in this physical life but I'm also divine.

So this is the perspective that we want to bring to all these conversations.

So one of the interesting things about the tantric path and it doesn't matter whether we're pondering our connection within,

Our connection with God,

Our connection with others.

It doesn't matter what we are talking about.

The tantric path is very seldom about actually learning something new.

The tantric path is almost a hundred percent getting rid of all the mental constructs that stand in the way of who we already are.

The idea that we are fully divine and fully physical,

That just is.

It's not a discussion.

It's not a topic of debate.

In the tantric perspective this just is.

So all we need to do is actually release all the mental constructs that stand in the way.

And of course that's really easy to say.

It's easy to say,

Oh yeah I'll just get rid of that thing that society passed down to me.

But we need tools to be able to do it.

And one of them is having faith in this idea that we really are bigger.

And that's where we may do yoga.

We may meditate.

We may do practices that help us connect with that divine self.

We may read the radiant sutras,

Those beautiful Vijnana Bhairava tantra,

This beautiful old text and contemplate the meditate on them.

Allow them to become part of who we are.

And suddenly we start to experience glimpses of divinity.

We start to have little glimpses and they don't go away.

They're still there even though we may still have the majority of our life doing whatever we're doing or stuck in a funk or having a great time or whatever.

We still have these glimpses.

I remember when I was a foster parent,

I remember going for training and someone said,

You know,

The best thing any child can have is one person in their life.

Even if it's an aunt or an uncle that's kind of sitting over in the corner who believes in them.

That's what it's like.

It's like,

Imagine you're going through all the muck of life or whatever or the happiness of life,

But let's say the muck.

If you've had any moment,

Any glimpse of joy,

Any glimpse of infinity,

It's almost like we'll play over here for a while,

But I can always go over there and kind of grab it and bring it into and weave that in.

And that's what gives us hope.

That's what gives us a thread of faith.

I remember when I was a teenager and I used to talk to my grandfather all the time,

My dad's dad,

And he was an Anglican minister.

And at the time I would consider myself agnostic.

I don't think I've ever been full out atheist,

But definitely agnostic where it makes sense,

But I certainly wasn't feeling anything.

I had no embodied experience sort of thing to go by.

I remember my grandfather telling me this story that,

I asked him one day,

I said,

Why did you ever become a minister?

Because being a minister and living a minister's life,

There's a lot of things that aren't any good.

They really suck.

Like I remember like going to go grocery shopping with my grandma and back in the day before we had like the barcodes and stuff,

Everything had a price tag on it.

So we would get home to their apartment and we would be putting the groceries away and she'd say,

Oh no,

No,

You have to take off all the price tags off of all the bottles.

And I said,

Why?

And it turned out that they had congregations.

Their income of course was determined by the congregation.

And so every so often the women of the church would come over to her place for tea and they would kind of snoop through her cupboards to see what she was paying for things.

And if she was paying too much,

They would like lower their wages and crazy things like that.

And so we heard all kinds of stuff about the politics and the stuff inside the church,

Which really made me ask this question one day.

I said,

Why would you ever do this?

And grandpa said,

You know,

When I was young,

All I really wanted to do was be a fighter pilot.

And grandpa was born in,

I think 2001.

So you figure his desires to be a pilot was all through the First World War.

That'd be a pretty amazing job.

I mean,

I'm not saying I'd want to be in the war,

But it'd be a pretty passionate thing to be passionate about.

And to this day,

They were always passionate about planes and stuff like that.

And he said,

But then one day I heard the call and I knew I was meant to be in the ministry.

And through all my years of school and in university and believing I know everything about everything,

That was like a thread,

Like a little thread in the back of my mind,

That no matter how agnostic or atheist I might have been in my academic journey through spirituality and religion,

Someone called grandpa,

Something and something changed his mind from,

I want to be a fighter pilot to I want to be a minister.

And so in many ways,

This is like the tantric journey.

When we do the practices,

And again,

The practices can be many things.

They could be staring at yantras on the wall,

Or they could be chanting mantra,

Or they could be meditating,

Or could they be doing,

They could be doing any of the practices you already love.

They could be horseback riding,

Or swimming in the ocean,

Whatever it is that connects you to the divine,

That becomes like a thread inside of us.

So then all of a sudden,

Every time we look at one of these mental constructs that we're struggling with,

We have a thread of truth inside of us that we can always balance against.

Because the words of society are so strong.

But we have this thread,

I always picture it like a silver thread,

That we have to consider it in the equation to really find truth.

So let's look at the mental constructs that make it difficult to connect with others in a tantric way.

And when I say a tantric way,

I mean,

Open hearted,

Whole,

Loving,

Expansive,

Infinite possibilities way.

You are this happy whole person.

And you meet another happy whole person.

And you actually connect,

And you communicate.

And maybe you touch,

Maybe you hug,

Maybe you walk down the beach and have a nice conversation.

Who knows,

But there's this openness,

This ease of flow.

And that's what I mean by tantric connection.

So one of the curious constructs that actually,

I don't believe it comes from inside of us,

I believe it comes from society,

Them,

Whoever they are.

And it's this idea of the royalty complex.

This idea that there's any such thing as royalty.

And of course,

Obviously,

We could look at something like royal families and countries and things like that.

But we can use that as an example.

Because when you think about that,

There's really no such thing.

Everybody's just human.

There's no such thing as a royal bloodline.

There's no such thing as one bloodline being better than another.

It's a created concept,

It's not real.

But that idea of royalty has bled into all of our society.

That famous people are like royalty.

Wealthy people are like royalty.

Actors and actresses are like royalty.

Musicians are like royalty.

They are literally like treated to the red carpet.

And this is really an insidious thing.

Because it comes all the way down to the grassroot,

Right down to our day to day life,

Where that person down the road is more important than I am.

Because they have a big house,

And I'm just renting,

Or they have a good job,

And I'm on disability or mother's allowance or welfare.

They're more important than I am.

They're more important because they are male and I'm female.

They're more important because they're our parents.

The idea that any other human is more important than you and should be treated a certain way,

This is insidious.

This is so important to ask ourselves,

Does that exist in my life?

Because if we have any of this royalty complex within us,

We will always bite our tongues around certain people.

We'll swallow our truth and we will not be open with them.

With them.

We will not be honest.

You'll never have a chance of ever connecting with them.

And what's even worse about how we can't connect with them,

It's how we feel about us.

That we are not good enough.

But if you don't want to know what I think,

You don't want to know who I really am,

Because if you know who I really am,

You're not going to like me,

So I'm going to hide who I am.

Well,

This causes great problems.

How could we ever truly connect with someone if we somehow believe that they are more important than us?

Therefore,

Their opinion of us is more important.

How could we ever be truly intimate with another person?

Like,

Baring our soul,

Telling the truth.

How could we do that?

And so this is where this idea that every single one of us is fully divine incarnations here on earth is so important to look at on a really practical level.

No one,

As you walk down the street,

It doesn't matter what they're driving,

It doesn't matter what their position in society,

It doesn't matter whether they are a self-proclaimed royalty.

It doesn't matter.

And that could be your boss.

It could just be someone in town that is the biggest house and that's how what they think about themselves.

It's not real.

Because this is the whole path of Tantra.

These constructs aren't real.

They're all fabricated.

And this is why the Tantrics were considered such rebels because they were like,

No,

I'm not buying it.

We are all equal.

We are all divinely amazing.

And then there's another dynamic that again is quite insidious.

It comes a little bit from that.

And it's this idea of power and domination.

That other people are allowed to overpower us or have dominion over us.

That they're allowed to decide what we should or shouldn't do.

Or that we should be allowed to decide what other people do or don't do or think.

This idea,

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there.

You'd better define yourself.

You'd better make sure you're in charge or else what's going to happen.

But how do you ever connect with anyone?

How do you ever connect if you are always needing to be in the driver's seat or you are terrified to be overpowered by another person?

This can be in romantic relationships.

This can be with children,

With parents.

A lot of people struggle with aging parents because there's still this parent-child domination paradigm.

Not everybody.

Lots of people have lovely relationships with their parents.

But there's a real curiosity where either the parents still are kind of,

That's just what I said and that's how it's going to be.

Or suddenly the children are now overpowering the parents.

And who knows why?

That's not really the point.

But if that's present in us,

How do we connect?

How do we open our hearts to someone if power and domination is on the line?

And so the key is not only to be aware of it but to really slow down in our regular relationships,

Whether it's at work,

Family,

Lovers,

Whatever.

And we slow down and if we feel that power dynamic starting,

That someone's trying to override the other,

Someone's gaslighting the other,

Someone's manipulating in some way to get their way,

To just slow down and breathe and ask,

There's another way to interact with this person.

What is it?

Because often we get very single-minded.

This is how it's always been,

They're never going to change.

But what if we don't change either?

Because that's part of that assumption that they'll never change but neither will I because I'm going to stand my ground.

But what if our intention is connection?

Sometimes it's not,

Then it's irrelevant.

But let's say it's connection.

Then we slow down,

We breathe,

We pray,

We meditate,

We ask,

What's another way through this?

And then we trust and we speak.

And then there's internal mental constructs that get in our way.

Sometimes we have patterns of pain in our life.

We have patterns that we're repeating.

Maybe they began in our childhood,

Maybe they began in past lives.

That we believe that if you get close to someone you're going to be hurt because perhaps in the past you were hurt by people close to you.

This isn't a maladaptation,

This is a real self-preservation mechanism.

But maybe now you're in a place of choice.

But maybe now you're in a place of choice.

Maybe you don't want to repeat that pattern anymore because you actually want to have this kind of connection with people.

So then we have to deeply look at this pattern.

We have to ask ourselves,

What is it that I meant to learn here?

And the answer isn't don't trust people.

There are lots of great people in the world.

So how do we look?

You just have to look at it.

We're not going to undo the past or anything like that.

But we can choose whether we want to repeat the pattern again.

Maybe we have patterns of dependence on other people.

Maybe you're the one that's dependent and I need you to take care of me.

I need you to help me make decisions.

I need you to financially support me.

I need you to love me.

I need you to think I'm beautiful.

I need you to think I'm successful.

And that can be anybody.

Many,

Many of us long for our parents to see us and respect us and believe that we're successful good people.

Many of us want our partners to think we are just drop-dead gorgeous or desirable,

Which hopefully we do because otherwise I don't know what our relationship is.

Many of us want our colleagues at work to respect us and treat us a certain way.

But there's a,

That's a dependence.

That I need you to look at me a certain way.

I need you to feel a certain way about me.

This is dangerous territory because again,

Are you really connecting with them?

Or are you just playing a role hoping that their response to you is favorable?

We all know that if we think of friendships or love relationships where there's hard times,

Bonding comes because we're real.

Because we actually are honest.

That we trust the other person enough to share our truth and where we're really at.

This is true connection.

And I'm not saying you need to go to work and tell everybody all your problems.

That's not it.

But if we are needing other people to feel a certain way about us,

We'll never get to any kind of connection with them because we're just playing a role.

And then there's things like expectations.

And expectations really drive huge wedges between people.

Maybe I have an expectation of you.

Maybe I expect my children to get a good job,

Go to college and university.

This is really important.

I expect this of them.

But what if they don't want that?

What if it's the last thing they want?

Or what if I expect them to care for me?

Or what if I expect them to live in a certain area?

What if I expect them to be close to me?

Because otherwise I'll never see them.

It has nothing to do with the person.

We have expectations of people.

They are objects in our life.

They're just a piece on our chessboard that we want to be able to move.

We want it to present in a certain way.

But these children,

For example,

Are also galactic beings incarnate here on earth.

Who knows what their path is?

And it has nothing to do with us.

And this is where it's really important that we are whole ourselves.

Because when we're whole ourselves,

Everyone else gets to be whole.

Everyone else gets to be unique.

And then how could you ever have an expectation on someone else?

Anybody else?

Now again,

We have to be careful that we're always in choice.

We're always listening inside.

We're always in guidance.

We're always following our satya.

Because then sometimes we have expectations of people because we feel trapped.

It's sort of like in the olden days when you couldn't get divorced.

Well,

If I'm going to survive here,

Then I have some expectations of you because I'm not going to live this way.

But I can't leave.

So I'm going to just keep at it until you change.

But that's not where we are now.

And it's not the tantric way.

The tantric way says every single one of us is on a soul's journey.

A divinely inspired one,

Whatever that means to you.

How could we ever have expectations of other people?

And then sometimes we're driven by the expectations of other people.

Well,

I don't want to say that because they expect me to show up a certain way.

I'd better do this because otherwise they're going to be really upset with me.

Or I'd better agree to that.

Or else what if they're really disappointed?

If that's how we're acting,

What kind of connection is that really?

That we actually can't be honest.

And honesty is such a funny thing.

Like when you think of what truth is,

Truth isn't some bizarre thing out there.

Truth is just reality.

Truth is it's raining out.

It's sunny out.

It's just what is.

And so if we can't even share reality with another person,

Do we have any connection at all?

It's reality.

It's like the other person is like,

I don't want to know that it's raining.

And then you're just going to keep on going on talking like it's not raining.

When maybe it's important because they want to go for a walk,

But you can't say that it's raining.

It's just,

It's weird to not be able to share our truth.

Because then we're not really sharing anything.

We're just sort of a talking head.

So when I wrote the book Tantric Intimacy,

One of my greatest struggles was how to begin the book.

I had all kinds of stuff I wanted to say.

But there had been a lot of people study with me who just,

They were missing something.

There was something that I wasn't teaching.

There was something that I was missing so that we could actually grasp it.

And one day after a lovely tub,

I realized that it was love.

That we actually had to redefine love.

Because without it,

None of this makes sense.

And the way we define love in our current society does not apply.

So much of how we define love is actually some combination of lust and codependence.

If it's in a romantic relationship,

Love might simply be the bonds of the clan.

Well,

I love them.

They drive me crazy and I can't talk to them and I can't trust them with anything.

But you know,

I love them because it's my sister.

So define your relationship with them.

You can't stand being around them.

They don't get you.

They don't know anything about the real you.

So you're actually less than an acquaintance.

And yet somehow we call this love.

Well,

If this is our definition of love,

We can't even have this conversation.

Because basically,

Love means distance,

Bad treatment,

Codependence,

Power over everything that we've talked about here.

Overattachment,

Control.

So it's really,

Really important to redefine love if we're going to use that word.

And the foundation of all connection,

The foundation of all love is agape.

And agape is an ancient Greek word and it means divine love or the love of God.

Or it's looking at someone and connecting with them with divine understanding.

So imagine,

Take a person in your life.

Let's take a person that you enjoy connecting with.

Friend,

Relative,

Colleague,

Lover,

Whoever.

You like connecting with them.

There's something that passes between you.

There's a certain connection,

A certain divine understanding of this person and why they're in my life and how we communicate and how we roll.

It's quite lovely.

And then if we imagine the people in our lives that we struggle with,

Imagine us looking at them through the eyes of agape with this divine understanding.

Well,

We may not actually enjoy their company because maybe they're very abrasive.

Maybe they're racist.

Maybe they are angry about something and everybody's paying for it.

That's okay.

That's just who they are.

Agape or divine understanding helps us still see the human.

It helps us see the struggle,

The pain they must be in,

Perhaps the experiences they've had.

It does not mean we are bound to hang out with them,

Stay with them,

Do anything like that.

It's not connected to choice.

It's just a way of connecting with them.

Seeing them with this divine understanding.

And when we have this,

We respect each other's journeys.

We may not want to walk beside them on the journey,

But we respect that they're on their own journey.

And if I had experienced everything they had experienced,

And I mean in this lifetime and every other lifetime,

I would really understand where they were at.

It's a bigger perspective.

It's not just how they're triggering me in this moment.

It's deeply understanding that this soul,

They are like this for a reason and they are sorting something.

And maybe they're on life 156 of a thousand,

But this is the chapter they're playing out.

But we can still look at them as a fellow human and say,

Wow,

I see you.

And it's just agape.

The lack of agape is why we struggle to connect with other people.

We're unkind to each other.

We push each other away.

Expectations is a pure lack of agape.

How could we have expectations of people if we really understood they had their own path?

This is where our real journey becomes actually developing agape for us personally.

As much as this talk is about connecting with others,

When we have agape for ourselves,

For ourselves,

When we truly respect ourselves,

When we know that there is no one out there who is more important or less important than us,

We have agape.

When we know that no one's allowed to dominate us and we shouldn't be dominating others either.

This is agape.

When we don't have expectations of ourselves,

Well,

You shouldn't feel like this.

You should be happier.

You should be angrier.

You should whatever.

And we were like,

Well,

This is just how I am.

Awesome.

We kind of give ourselves an energetic hug and pour a cup of tea.

That's agape for self.

And what if even we don't have to live up to our own expectations?

You know,

We're not beating ourselves up all the time.

And as soon as we can do that,

Connecting with other people is so much easier.

This is why Tantra is such a personal journey.

So then all of a sudden we go out,

We connect with other people and they're just people just like us.

And they've got foibles and they've got challenges and they've got good things.

And we just connect with all of it,

Just like we connect with all of us inside.

All of our challenges,

All of our gifts.

We do the same with other people.

If we like it,

We stick around.

If we don't like it,

We move on.

There's nine billion people on the planet.

We don't have to just stay in a bad situation.

But that's really the foundation.

We've looked at the chakras a lot.

And if you imagine,

You go through your chakras and this connection of the divine and the physical in the first chakra,

That we connect with the abundance of life.

And we also connect with our individual situation of security,

Safety,

That kind of thing.

The second chakra,

Knowing that we are meant to flow and connect with other people all the time.

And our very physical incarnation that says,

Wow,

I have some issues that I need to work on.

But you have both.

Third chakra,

To know that you truly have purpose,

Like who you are is actually perfect.

Then we actually look at,

Oh yeah,

But I've actually been raised in a family that was very,

Here's how it's supposed to be.

And I'm sort of battling with that inside.

Interesting.

Interesting.

It's this beautiful dance inside between the divine self that knows the real life and the real life that we're living.

And that's a really fun thing.

We don't have to be perfect to connect with other people.

We just have to know the dance that we're doing inside.

And then it's just really easy to open our heart to other people.

So thank you so much for being here.

And I hope you have a wonderful day.

Reviews

Wonderful talk, I feel the connection with you even so far away and through online web 💝

I resonates so much from your talks Katrina. Thank you for sharing your wisdom so openly 🙏💗🙏💗🙏💗

I am loving this topic. Thank you for shedding light on tantric. I am learning so much and appreciate you.
Thank you Katrina