all looking for love; the need to love and be loved is rooted in our very soul and accompanies us from as early as the womb. In fact, men and women, without exception, are busy for much of the day (and night) thinking of ways to realize love in their lives, or compensate for its absence.
Couples look for ways to preserve and stimulate love and romance, singles look for someone to curl up to at night, those cuddled together hope to find love in the morning, single women look for a husband, husbands want freedom and those who are free dream of surrendering themselves to another.
Monogamy, polygamy, being together or alone. Wild or gentle sex? Change partners every two weeks or find the perfect match? Is there such a thing at all? Or is it simpler to rid ourselves of the whole mess? To abstain; to live on a high mountain top, far from the noise of the busy crowd. To meditate, to listen to the rush of the water and the secret desires of the heart?
We find ourselves trying to fill this empty space in many different ways. From binge eating (who hasn’t had an uncontrollable desire for chocolate…), making money and enslaving ourselves to our careers; to an addiction to gushy telenovelas or compulsive sex. However, none of these substitutes really fulfill the role of love in our lives. Sooner or later we learn that there is no substitute for the opening of the heart to love.
And if we're already talking about sex, what does it have to do with all of this? We all intuitively sense the connection between physical love and true love, and yet we seem unable to connect these two extremes. These questions have accompanied the human race since the dawn of history, but while most religions and spiritual streams have refrained from engaging in sexuality, and even excluded it in certain cases, Tantra sees it as a kind of powerful device which can be used for spiritual development, the enhancement of love and the proper direction of the flow of the "life force" in our bodies.
Tantric practice offers practical ways to connect the heart to sex. It's not just having "a great sex experience", being orgasmic, or alternatively, experiencing a half-hour valley orgasm. These are just some of the benefits that come as a byproduct of tantric practice. Tantra is a way of life, a deep and unique spiritual investigation which first and foremost aspires to a lack of duality and a return to the source – not just another split between body and soul, sex and love, good and evil.
In Tantra, the unification of extremes leads us back to the whole, unified source – the union of the God and the Goddess within us. Tantra is not busy with moral questions or value judgments of good and evil; and as far as Tantra is concerned, polygamy it is no better or worse than official, monogamous marriage. One might say that Tantra's approach to life is similar to that of the scientist's approach to nature: the question of whether the predatory lion is less moral than the vegetarian deer is irrelevant to him.
In order to unite opposites, it is necessary to develop communication skills. The difference between men and women is obvious, but before we start learning about the opposite sex, it is important to make sure that our basic communication with ourselves – with our body, our desires, our urges, our heart's wishes and our thoughts – is satisfactory.
Sounds strange? Not really. In most of our initial encounters with another person, whether a man or a woman, we tend to put on a "mask" to portray a certain image – a virtual persona of who we would like to be. In this way, we seem to achieve two things: we present sides that to us, seem to be attractive; and conceal parts of our personality that we are ashamed of. Needless to say, in the end, this kind of encounter ends with a sense of disappointment, a lack of trust, and fear.
The meaning of good communication with our own selves is that we accept ourselves as we are, with all of our good qualities and deficiencies. Beauty as well as ugliness. Incidentally, the result of this lack of self-judgment is the great acceptance of those around us; and our wise men have already said, "he who is without sin…".
Communication with ourselves and self-acceptance is nice, but what really interests us is the opposite sex. That powerful and mysterious encounter between a man and a woman. A meeting that fascinates us and at the same time, raises fears and hopes, fantasies and disappointments. So what actually happens there?
Man and woman symbolize the polarity of creation, heaven and earth, fire and water, yang and yin. Imagine what happens when we connect the two poles of live electrical wires, and you will understand the energetic potential of such a meeting.
There is a claim that the first meditation was experienced by man during orgasm, that wonderful sense of the absence of time, the lack of thought; the momentary disappearance and total dissolution of the ego. Is not this the ultimate experience toward which so many teachings are directed? A flash of enlightenment?
If so, all that is left to do is to "stretch out" the peak moments… instead of releasing the tension and creating a short circuit, we can move the energy in the body and allow ourselves to experience tantric sex as a gateway to love and a catalyst for the opening of the heart.
Tantric techniques use simple but powerful tools: breath, movement, gaze, and sound. And yet, how many of us spend time learning to use these tools?
The experience of tantric sex opens the woman's heart, enabling her to feel her partner's skilled love along with the renewal of her love for him, while the man is filled with tremendous satisfaction; his feeling of masculinity and his male self esteem are directly strengthened through the woman's pleasure and submission. The experience renews the commitment of both partners to the relationship.
Through Tantra, it is possible to preserve, create, and develop our relationships in a way that increases love and desire, reduces and releases tension and disagreements, and always reminds us –
