Tantra

I can't explain it as well as this man, here is a very appropriate quote:

AS LONG AS we follow a spiritual approach promising salvation, miracles, liberation, then we are bound by the “golden chain of spirituality.” Such a chain might be beautiful to wear, with its inlaid jewels and intricate carvings, but nevertheless, it imprisons us. People think they can wear the golden chain for decoration without being imprisoned by it, but they are deceiving themselves. As long as one’s approach to spirituality is based upon enriching ego, then it is spiritual materialism, a suicidal process rather than a creative one. All the promises we have heard are pure seduction. We expect the teachings to solve all our problems; we expect to be provided with magical means to deal with our depressions, our aggressions, our sexual hangups. But to our surprise we begin to realize that this is not going to happen. It is very disappointing to realize that we must work on ourselves and our suffering rather than depend upon a savior or the magical power of yogic techniques. It is disappointing to realize that we have to give up our expectations rather than build on the basis of our preconceptions. We must allow ourselves to be disappointed, which means the surrendering of me-ness, my achievement. We would like to watch ourselves attain enlightenment, watch our disciples celebrating, worshiping, throwing flowers at us, with miracles and earthquakes occurring and gods and angels singing and so forth. This never happens. The attainment of enlightenment from ego’s point of view is extreme death, the death of self, the death of me and mine, the death of the watcher. It is the ultimate and final disappointment. Treading the spiritual path is painful. It is a constant unmasking, peeling off of layer after layer of masks. It involves insult after insult.
~ Chögyam Trungpa, The Myth of Freedom and the Way of Meditation

Astral Travel

Abstract
Every intentional act is an act of magic. The practice of magic is therefore the exercise and growth of conscious awareness, an expansion of the self in all directions and on all levels of experience.
One such level of experience is the imagination, or astral plane. The magician possesses an imaginary body, which inhabits an imaginary world with its own specific rules, flora and fauna.

The Point
1). An expansion of the self.
2). A greater awareness of the environment of the imagination and its peculiar laws and nature.
3). The ability to perform acts of magic in a virtually unbound medium.
4). The ability to have experiences otherwise impossible in the physical realm. The Technique
1). Lie down and relax.
2). Become aware of your imaginary body. Although you are essentially imagining the body, there should be an element of allowing the sensations of the astral body to arise.
3). Now move around in your imagined form, see with your imaginary eyes, hear with your imaginary ears, etc.
For some, astral travel comes easy, but for a lot of people it can be quite difficult. If at this point you are struggling to ‘leave’ the physical body and sense with your imaginary senses, there is only one possible course of action – practice!
Some find it useful to move a physical limb, remember what the physical sensation felt like, and then use that memory as basis for moving the corresponding astral limb, as an exercise in slowly building up the astral form. However, I very much believe in simply repeating the above exercise – usually, the ‘knack’ is suddenly gained and the problems vanish.
4). Explore! However, be cautious – not all astral beings are who they say they are, and not all beings mean well. It is prudent to have a good banishing ritual under your belt. If you wish to gain a greater understanding of a certain idea, travel to its astral abode. For instance, if you wish to explore Malkuth on the Tree of Life, you can create a door with the necessary attributes (such as the appropriate colour, symbol, and material peculiar to Malkuth) to take you there.
5). Be sure to return your astral body to your physical body at the end of the practice – who knows what might happen to it left unattended...
Duration
A good half hour everyday until basic competency is achieved (i.e. you always experience the astral plane and yourself from a first person perspective, and the body of light is good and solid). Then explore as often as is required.

Expected Results
Mastery of the astral plane.

- Alan Chapman, Three Steps to Heaven

Awakening the kundalini is very difficult and it could be very dangerous as well. Finding the right teacher is very important, and you should have a strict kundalini yoga practice and daily meditation. There are astrological influences that could trigger an awakening, but it depends on your natal chart. My first astrology teacher had experience with kundalini and if I remember correctly, I think he said that it was due to his retrograde Mars opposed Neptune.

VirgoSun1978 said:

Awakening the kundalini is very difficult and it could be very dangerous as well. Finding the right teacher is very important, and you should have a strict kundalini yoga practice and daily meditation. There are astrological influences that could trigger an awakening, but it depends on your natal chart. My first astrology teacher had experience with kundalini and if I remember correctly, I think he said that it was due to his retrograde Mars opposed Neptune.

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Ever since I hear about Kundalini I have heard warnings and it is a hard to reach process and you should not look for it. I am glad to know of the warnings so I can understand what will happen but the warnings do not matter even if I wanted because I am many years away from a Kundalini rise.

What you said about it being dangerous is part of why I am years away from it. The reaosn it is dangerous is because you will lose who you are and what you think you are, if you are lucky. That is a process and will require a lot of months and a lot of protection in order for what will happen to me.

For example when I look in the mirror at myself and I see i don't like my nose or ears or thighs. I have this weird feeling of being able to imagine what I look like exactly when I am working or talking to people. Then I think those things are what make me scared? Let us dig deeper and ask myself what I see about my personality I do not like. I see it like a non physical boxing sport where I still work even though I feel scared. If this is the start of Kundalini then I will find it eventually.

The important thing we must remember is not to pretend to have what we don't have. The video posted earlier is an example of what not to do and I am glad it was posted for that reason as it shows the ego in a man or woman's mind can make them act very stupid and lie about being spiritual.

I am confused because this is a different path to what I was on previous. This is a spiritual approach that is also going to increase my magick and my awareness about myself. Awareness about other people will come after I work on my shadow and I am stupid to think it will not be difficult or scary. What I find confusing is the amount of information I am receiving about how it all connects.

I am also reading about information and am trying not to get too involved with religion because Buddhism and Hinduism is too large a subject and I do not want to follow down this route but a magick path.

I did have a teacher but not anymore. It was a friendship but he was aware of a lot more than me. He did not want to teach me but for me to learn myself and I have seen others who wants to teach for reasons of power and control. Teachers are for school.

The more I learn the more I see how this is the path I was already on.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/earlytibet.com/2009/02/19/a-tibetan-book-of-spells/amp/

The timing of Buddhism is earlier than the timing of Sanskrit in history. Below is a use of the etymology of words from a Tibetan Book of Spells photo. This shows the connection to Sanskrit, meditation and magick.




No pi ya ka

thos bsam sgom pa’i snying po 'NO PI KA' - the essence of hearing thinking and listening. The capital letters show the similarity to the first words.

Sgrub thabs - a Tibetan word for the Sanskrit word,

Sadhana - a manual for ritual and meditation.

Sadhana

This is a plan to follow for beginning journey into Tantra.

Reading material -
three books of occult philosophy

Meditation routine -
In morning the mantra is OM KLEEM OM for 30 minutes
In evening the mantra is OM NAMA SHIVAYA for one hour meditation.

During meditation I use the Ganesha, Dhyana and Prana mudra's.

I also use guided meditation videos -

https://youtu.be/pbw4Q12_d0I

And learning hatha yoga with different asanas

https://youtu.be/-F6IBUIhvxc

Breathing is important and will come with yoga experience I think but the use of mantra and mudra with yoga will be put together after practice of this yoga.

"Life is tragic simply because the earth turns and the sun inexorably rises and sets, and one day, for each of us, the sun will go down for the last, last time. Perhaps the whole root of our trouble, the human trouble, is that we will sacrifice all the beauty of our lives, will imprison ourselves in totems, taboos, crosses, blood sacrifices, steeples, mosques, races, armies, flags, nations, in order to deny the fact of death, which is the only fact we have. It seems to me that one ought to rejoice in the fact of death—ought to decide, indeed, to earn one’s death by confronting with passion the conundrum of life. One is responsible to life: It is the small beacon in that terrifying darkness from which we come and to which we shall return."

from James Baldwin's Essay 'from a region of my mind.'

Tantra alone is about practice and technique, discipline
We live in a culture where quickies, using **** for a masturbation session during lunch break, and generally just using sex for quick and easy release is promoted and normal


I feel like the focus on this thread is more about manifestation or concrete benefits or even spiritual theatrics. Tantric sex is about bringing sex to the spiritual level, drawing out the pleasure, leading to transcendent connection to self or to the partner, and to greater orgasm. It's not about a specific goal either. It's more about the journey


focus on every pleasure point and not going all in for the orgasm, and yet, it all ends up producing the most mindblowing orgasm possible


I don't think it needs to be complicated either. Just go in and don't go in just to achieve an orgasm, go in to get to know your body or the body of your partner

I agree with your description of tantra being about not a specific goal of orgasm but about being present with yourself and with your partner and this in the end will lead to a deeper orgasm.

However, I do not think this can be achieved unless each partner is on a spiritual journey so that they may work in tandem.

For this reason, I am not too offended by your comments that this thread is about 'spiritual theatrics,' because it was written like 3 years ago when I was in an in-between stage of my spiritual journey. By this I mean, I had already met the shaman who had enlightened me but I had not yet self-realized the magic of his teachings and was only beginning m self-love journey. So the previous posts are nonsense really, unless it is not nonsense because I should not judge myself for being at an in-between stage, nor should I judge others for judging it, which helps me not be offended by anyone else judging me.

So it was three years of a self-love journey, including the past year I have been celibate. I read somewhere recently that it takes a highly-evolved spiritual person not to become deeply frustrated by a long period of celibacy. I can tell you, I have had moments of frustration every few months and even planning to have sex with someone, even though I ended up not.

The decision to be celibate was not even a conscious one but happened naturally through my self-love journey because I clearly, instinctively, and naturally, became removed from the majority of people who find it normal to engage in meaningless and animal-like behaviour. To me, the casual way of having sex, is nothing more than the filling of need on an animal level and the mere thought of it feels strongly suffocating and claustrophobic to me now.

Not that I was ever really involved in that, but I have engaged in casual sex and even in supposed relationships I was a willing conduit for men who would treat my body as nothing more than a crevice and I naively accepted it. This is a normal way to have sex for many people, to see sex as nothing more than the physical act of relieving tension.

A good friend of mine who has recently split from her long-term partner who she has kids with, nodded her head in agreement when I said most relationships do not have sex with love anyway. It is as if the woman submits to the man who has conquered her like a lion would a piece of prey and allows him to use her body as nothing more than a physical release, or using sex as a weapon to keep a man under your spell for fear of him leaving you or becoming distracted by another woman, which is black magic.

Without an open heart and communication from both people in a relationship, the sex life of a couple will be based on co-dependent and selfish desires. Seeing my friend nod her head, gave me a moment of realization, that it is easy to spot the sex life of a couple once you gauge if the stage of their spiritual awareness. Without first completing an individual journey of owning your own power and finding your voice, then neither the man or the woman would be capable of having sex that is pure, enlightened, and with light and not darkness.

I used to think it did not matter if the other person was spiritual or not, hence why I sometimes planned to break my celibacy with someone willing, but now I am not sure. It is not about judging a person but just that so many sous live in shadows, and so their actions, and especially the intimate act of sex, will be done in a debased and negative frame of mind, that I would be poisoning myself to engage with them so intimately. However, I do not think the person needs to be enlightened or have even completed their self-love journey, but at least needs to have an open and pure heart. But the truth is, most people are selfish unless they are genuinely willing to surrender themselves spiritually.

I have some beautiful artwork to share that has inspired my new views on sex. I have never been one to watch p.orn and now I know why because I was always underneath a spiritual person who had not yet been enlightened and p.orn is a debased animalistic thing, and it has never bothered me to try to be interested in p.orn, but to see the beautiful artwork of the act of sex and two people engaged so intimately, is so refreshing and inspiring to me, that I finally do like it. I can post some photos here which has inspired me but I hope the old Draconian ways of safeguarding against 'pornography' does not end up in an admin deleting the artwork.

This is an example of the beautiful artwork I mean, I feel like calling it 'conscious pornography.'

GENDER

"This Principle embodies the truth that there is gender manifested in everything - the Masculine and Feminine Principles ever at work. This is true not only of the Physical Plane, but of the Mental and even the Spiritual Planes.

On the Physical Plane, the Principle manifests as 'sex', on the higher planes it takes higher forms, but the Principle is ever the same. No creation, physical, mental or spiritual, is possible without this Principle. An understanding of its laws will throw light on many a subject that has perplexed the minds of men. The Principle of Gender works ever in the direction of generation, regeneration, and creation. Everything, and every person, contains the two Elements or Principles, or this great Principle, within it, him or her. Every Male thing has the Female Element also; every Female contains also the Male Principle.”


⸺ The Kybalion

SCIENCE OF BEING
Baron Eugene Fersen - 1923

"Like attracts like.

If the vibrations of the two parents are harmonious and of a high rate, a highly evolved soul will be attracted. If, on the contrary, both parties, or even one, will manifest vibrations of disharmony, vibrations of a low rate, a soul whose vibrations correspond to that rate will be thus attracted.

THEREFORE IT IS MOST ESSENTIAL THAT THE PROSPECTIVE PARENTS CONSIDER THAT BODILY UNION AS SOMETHING VERY SACRED AND PURE, AND THAT THEY PERFORM IT WITH A HIGHER OBJECT IN MIND THAN THE MERE GRATIFICATION OF A CARNAL APPETITE. IT MUST BE A GLORIOUS HYMN OF LOVE, IN WHICH EVERY FIBER OF THEIR TRIUNE BEING, BODY, MIND, AND SOUL, SENDS OUT ITS MOST PERFECT VIBRATIONS.

No physical union should ever be tolerated when the two parties are not in complete harmony with each other at that moment, else most disastrous effects will descend upon the child born of such a disharmonious union."

THE ABILITY TO BE ALONE

"The ability to be alone is the ability to love. It may seem paradoxical to you, but it's not. It is an existential truth; only those who are able to be alone are able to love, to share, to reach the depths of the other person; without possessing the other person, without depending on it, without reducing it to one thing , and without getting addicted to it. They allow the other person to have total freedom because they know that if they leave, they will remain as happy as they are now. The other person can't snatch their happiness from them, because he's not the one who gave it to them.
So why do you want to be together?

It is no longer a necessity; it is a luxury. Try to understand. Authentic people love each other because it's a luxury, not a necessity. They enjoy sharing; they have a lot of joy, they would like to spill it on someone else. And they know how to interpret their life as soloists.

The flute soloist knows how to enjoy his flute alone. And if you happen to meet a guitarist, a string soloist, they will enjoy playing together and creating a harmony between flute and string. Both will enjoy: both will pour their wealth on the other person."

Osho

passiflora said:

Beautiful posts today, ukpoohbear.

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Thank you Passi, I'm on a roll today

passiflora said:

Ok, just don’t crash!

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Do you mean in case the positivity is like eating too much sugar which may lead to a deeper depression? I can understand why you may reach that conclusion from an outside perspective but that would only happen if you were in denial of your problems and were using the positivity to cover up the negativity, until suddenly it gets ripped off like a plaster/band-aid.

I have spent years dwelling in darkness, and even when hearing the concept of shadow work or being awoken to a purpose behind it all, sent years contemplating my way out of it. And I still do most days until a breakthrough occurs and I am able to be grateful and positive. In fact, with each breakthrough, a part of me probably stays a bit lighter each time.

Of course, I will crash again, not just with another moment of negative contemplation, but with the inevitability of future trauma that life no doubt has in store for me. I am afraid of it, of course, yet I know from looking back that through every past period of trauma, I have risen like a phoenix stronger and wiser each time.

For a while now though, things have been getting less chaotic and more stable and so it is not positivity built like a house on sand, but positivity built like a house on rocks.

I guess you could say I learnt to build my structure on top of rocks, due to those crashes.

Here is a good phrase invented by a friend of mine on this forum which I then made into a meme, which I think describes the balance between positivity and crashing well -

Ukpoohbear said:

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I like this. This is very insightful. Thank you 😊

Hkk said:

I like this. This is very insightful. Thank you 😊

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Yes it’s handy to see it clearly, I’ll post more chakra information and exercises. I’ve only done a solar plexus one