The deep emotional dive of Tantra.
Sometimes I feel truly depressed,
So I go there.
Sometimes I'm blissfully happy,
I go there too.
Sometimes I'm grieving,
I go all in.
Sometimes I'm so excited to be alive,
And I dive deep there too.
Being Tantric is having the inner strength to fully experience everything in our lives.
The key is to have a quiet,
Peaceful center that is always there as a touchstone that we can return to if things ever get too hard.
This quiet center,
Or witness mind,
Doesn't make us lose the passion or dull our experience.
In fact,
It's the exact opposite.
It's like going scuba diving.
Your quiet center is your friend on the boat holding the rope.
Once you know that your friend has the rope secure,
You jump off the boat to see what's down there.
The more you trust in the security of your friend up there,
The more confident you will be to dive deeper.
You will find the courage to look into the caves that you were afraid to previously.
This is what our quiet center brings to us,
A touch point to breathe into no matter where we are or how we are feeling.
So where does this come from?
This center can come from a loving,
Supportive upbringing.
It can be developed through meditation practices that help us to breathe deeper,
Release old fears and unhealthy thought patterns,
And by us becoming used to the feeling of being peaceful and centered.
It can be deepened knowing that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
It can be a deep faith in our own strength,
Versatility and integrity.
But more often,
It comes from taking leaps of faith over and over again.
And slowly,
Through experience,
We find out that it's safe to jump,
That it's safe to trust our inner guidance,
That we will always come back to center.
So what happens if we don't dive deep?
When we live on the surface of life and only allow ourselves to feel some of what we're feeling,
We will often repeat our current pattern endlessly and extend our current experience long past its natural and healthy life.
For example,
A lot of people have died in my life and being allowed to dive deeply into our grief is one of the best things we can do for ourselves.
When we can cry,
Scream and rage at God,
We are able to feel everything within us.
We honor how we are truly feeling.
And once we get right to the bottom of it,
After a time,
We will slowly start to breathe again.
And when this happens,
We will truly be able to go on with our life.
And if we don't,
The grief may never end.
Relationships and love are experiences that we cannot intellectualize or philosophize about.
The only way to know anything here is through direct experience.
There is no such thing as,
Well,
I would never or I would love.
We actually have no idea how the complex beings that we are will react when our heartstrings are pulled.
It is only when we bring our whole selves to any experience that we learn anything at all.
However,
If we don't bring all of us to the experience,
We end up only living a fraction of what is happening.
We will ignore our true feelings for the sake of an ideal or a good story.
We will only share so much because we are afraid.
We will hold back parts of us and therefore not connect deeply.
And then we have to ask ourselves why we're doing it at all.
Are we even living?
Why are we not allowed to bring all of us to the game?
Why are we not allowed to fully play?
The satisfaction of going all in.
My friend recently went through a bitter divorce.
She didn't want it to be a nasty court battle.
She wanted it to be amicable and reasonable.
So in the beginning,
She ignored her own anger and hurt feelings.
She downplayed everything that had happened in her marriage.
She tried to keep everything smooth and friendly.
But of course,
This wasn't reality.
So the courts dragged on and on.
Nothing moved forward and things certainly weren't moving in her favor.
Well,
After a couple of years and tens of thousands of dollars,
She finally broke down.
She started getting really angry.
She started feeling her frustration,
Sadness,
Shame,
And her disbelief that she hadn't just been honest in the first place.
She dug deep and looked at all the places where she too had contributed to the breakdown of the marriage.
She began feeling all the feelings that she had been burying for over 20 years.
She chose to be completely honest about everything with herself and others and soon settled the divorce out of court just like that.
Yesterday she told me that she has absolutely no leftover feelings of anger,
Regret,
Or sadness about her marriage or the end of it.
She knows that she did everything she possibly could and that that chapter of her life is complete.
She is breathing happily today and walking forward in her life.
The End of Karma Osho used to say that karma was simply unfinished business.
His advice was to put in 100% all the time so that you don't have to repeat the experience later.
It's like if you only put in 70% now,
Then you will have to repeat the experience again and maybe next time you put in 75% and then 80% and then next time 90% and then one day you finally put in 100%.
At this point you will be complete and this pattern will not repeat again.
But this doesn't only apply to death,
Marriage,
Children,
Career,
Etc.
It is in every experience we have.
It's in the small joys where we stop,
Breathe,
And fully experience what's happening.
It's in the disappointments where we truly let ourselves feel them completely.
It's experiencing everything with our ever-present quiet center,
Allowing us to dive deeply into each experience,
Always knowing that that quiet center is there to pull us back to the surface whenever we need.
Just imagine living at 100%,
Being totally ourselves,
Unapologetic,
Passionate,
And free,
A fully tantric life.
