May we follow the light and darkness of Consciousness with trust and knowing.

May we live in the knowing of our true nature and oneness while playing at separation.

May we play at being embodied from the whole range of consciousness accessible to us and through the nuanced expressions of our vehicle.

May we forego the empty promises of human doing to live in the realm of blissful presence.

May our human hearts and minds be free from the distortions of desire and perceive reality clearly and multi-dimensionally.

May this year see us master walking the Soul’s path from higher wisdom and non-doing.

May we release all obstacles to letting Consciousness play us as the hollow bamboo we came to be.

May we be compassionate and loving with all as we keep co-creating experiences.

Blessed BE.

Art: Namaste by Whole Hearted Art

The post Blessed New Year appeared first on Venuskind.

A time that calls to us to turn within, to retreat from the bustle and rush of man-made reality, to rest in communion with our essence, and reflect upon our year while safely reposing in the arms of the Dark Mother. Listening to her words of wisdom, love, and guidance, we may joyously and gratefully receive her precious gifts of inspiration and emulate her generosity by gifting and sharing of ourselves with others.
This is a time of seeding new beginnings and nurturing these with the heat of our passions for being, consciousness, creative play and love. In her dark and fertile realm everything exists in potentiality, available to any consciousness which calls it skillfully forth into matter and form.

This is is the cradle from which everything is born into our experience.

Here we are being initiated for what wants to be lived and experienced by us and others.

Open yourself dear heart, allow the subtle energies to gently wash away the dust from your windows of perception, allow the Dark Mother to take what no longer serves you and alchemize it, embracing her potent stillness before new creations arise and call you to play. Step out of your comfort zone, face your shadow play, and let your Soul’s song lead you to the precipice of the gifts of life that await you.

Surrender and allow yourself to be held by the Dark Mother as your Soul remakes you.

Trust and know that you are loved, infinitely loved and supported in more ways and dimensions than you ever can be aware of.

Bowing in gratitude to the Dark Mother in her season.

Blessed be as we journey this season of abundance beloved Soul kin.

Photography by Vlad Sokolovsky

The post Winter appeared first on Venuskind.

At my core I hold a hypersensitive, loving, gentle and guileless little girl believing firmly in the goodness of humanity. These very qualities singled me out and attracted many forms of subtle, overt and pathologically cruel abuse and heaped shame on all of these traits beyond anything I could bear. To the hurt and confused younger versions of my self it felt at as if life was teaching me to drop these aspects of self and so I developed a seemingly powerful outer persona that numbed the sensitive in me to a degree my mind could handle, learning and expressing the ways of unlove like a new language I had to gain fluency in, practicing delighting in harshness and derision of others, cultivating a cold unfeeling capacity for ruthlessness and hyper-vigilant distrust.

In my healing journey of reclaiming said little girl a new layer of shame began to be heaped on all the traits and behaviors I adopted in my survival and moving on from the fear-inducing past. As I reclaimed what lay at my beginning, external voices, once again, shamed the parts of me who helped me survive. Another layer of burden and drama to work through thanks to the ‘good girl’ and ‘love and light’ bias I surrounded myself with in this phase of my life. A growing unease and restlessness kept me looking for the next step of my journey because this felt equally unhealthy and unbalanced as the phase of survival did before.

Enter shadow work and mystical studies to blow dualities and more importantly preferences to smithereens in my mind, then in my emotions and now successively in my body. Nothing about this chapter of healing was and is exactly easy or painless, and yet the pain was ‘just’ the pain of having to let go of lies and misperceptions that had endeared themselves to me and to welcome the unknown in their place. 

And the deeper and more visceral pain of facing the accumulated shame, the pain of titrating in and out of it until I could hold more of it and for longer periods without giving in to the habit of fleeing it, read compensatory avoidant behavior. It took some time to make my peace with a reality in which I can feel shame, around certain things, and can be lovable and beloved to myself and others. To not judge shame or only perceive its corrosive effects and to see equally its natural and helpful manifestations and functions. To end dualities held in the depth of my subconscious, non-verbal conditionings and belief systems.

The Unknown – the ultimate fear fed by the orthodoxy of beliefs, the illusion of knowing what I haven’t experienced, researched, explored or deeply contemplated myself and the fear of ego death. Who would have thought that the unknown has always been my best friend, a space of blissfulness veiled by the nonsensical lies of my conditioning?

I like to think of the Unknown as another word for the Field – the Dark Mother of all that is in form, sound, geometry and light. The first step of the One becoming the many and the last in going from the illusion of separation back into oneness. I like to gender the Unknown as a HER: mystical, nurturing, creative, playful, surprising and loving from a non-dual perception and manifesting vantage point. 

When I allowed my mind to explore many a rabbit hole or alternative narrative about reality (which some like to label as conspiracy theory in their varying levels of cognitive dissonance), she sat by my side and watched me get drawn into dark and light narratives, snagging here getting entangled there, struggling to grasp the reality of multidimensional concurrent realities feeling my human captivated by some and their strange effects on my biology. When it got intense she would tap on my shoulder and let me gaze deep into her luminous darkness as she smiled at my slow disentanglement and transformation. 

I owe her my freedom from energy sucking entanglements and the clarity that arose with blinding light from the depth of her darkness and I delight in the laughter we shared about my slowness and blindness to fact that fear of the unknown was what allowed for entanglement and entrapment in limiting narratives about life. 

She taught me to dance through and across narratives, to dip my feet, to swim and dive deep into them without losing my perspective or anchored vantage point of not knowing. To entertain ideas which align or contradict with no attachment but with all the more joy and creative playfulness. To be free from the egoic need for certainty, absolute truisms and setting myself apart from others by virtue of illusions of absolute knowing. 

She reminded me to enjoy this ‘soul playground’ and helped me develop new skills of engaging and interacting with it from spaciousness and with bliss.

I bow to the plentiful gifts of embracing the unknown, of letting the dark mother hold me and inspire me through changes and evolutions, to her gifts of expansion to my consciousness and to her mysteries that shall remain untouched by me in this timeline. 

In gratitude to all that is unfolding as I dance with my fellow travelers across timelines, dimensions, incarnations, narratives, system and cultures with lightness, ease and grace!

Art: “Ms. Universe” by Jessi Jumanji

The post Hello from the Other Side appeared first on Venuskind.

When I look at it closely and feel into my response, I hear the voice of the wounded child that wants to be nurtured and taken care of resonate with my pull to accommodate this narrative. I see the aspect of self that is lazy and wants things handed to it instead of creating and working for them resonate with this. I sense the appeal to my masculine to take its “rightful” position of leadership, the promise of empowerment reverberating in it. The validation of “I know best” that the ego holds, the illusory promise and feel of “right order of things” hailing from millennia of conditioned gender roles and narratives. I see residual and persistent thought forms, emotive responses and beliefs arising from patriarchal romantic conditionings resonate with it.

And so I sit in silence and let the narrative of the leading masculine and surrendered feminine hover in space as my awareness illuminates it to know its nature, level of truthfulness and distortion. Drawing on eclectic spiritual teachings, knowing, insights, sensed and felt experiences with both energies my observations are combined and recombined with these to illumine and distill more of the underlying patterns, energies and archetypal forces at play in this narrative and in the seeding, enforcing and amplification of this new agey subgroup of patriarchal gender narratives.

I sense the overlay and undercurrent of history and the affinity of the ego to recreate the past in its mistaken idea of safety. I recognize the blindness towards the nature and quality of both energy signatures arising from matrix conditioning, incapable of perceiving the reality of the energy while the mind keeps projecting and overlaying it with subconsciously held narratives of masculinity and femininity. I see how entrancing and actively resistant these narratives are to the perception of existence beyond the concepts of the matrix or even imagination beyond the entrenched narratives which are heavily protected by weaponized cognitive dissonances.

From the detachment of a higher vantage point of perception, i.e. beyond self-identification and its limiting factors, this is quite amusing to observe. A highly intelligent and deceptive virus (patriarchy) adept at adapting to and defeating his hosts immune system strategies by making the immune system believe it is part of its defense and serving the wellbeing of the host. It is fascinating and entertaining, I can see why consciousness chooses to play at this in so many variations, layers and dimensions.

From my blended perception, i.e. from a union of human and higher Self perception, I lean towards wanting to engage with more reality and leave the games of egoic illusions, archetypal storylines, wars over layers of the matrix artifice behind me. These games feel exhausting, futile, senseless, destructive, stale and repetitive. I want more, I want different, something new.

I now operate more and more from the knowing of my essential conscious/divine/energetic nature. My practice of making more time for being in that nature and experiencing life from that state is shedding layers upon layers of conditioning, ancestral and karmic burdens of distortions and allows me to clear my eyes, heart and mind to perceive life anew. To dream of bringing into being new and more joyful ways of perceiving, making sense, relating, creating and being on this planet and with all that is.

Rehashing old games of duality, gender oppositions, disempowering relational dynamics, pigeonholing ourselves in ever more fragmented identities, beliefs, opinions and groups is a slow and painful path to walk from where I perceive things. Nonetheless, I respect people’s choices to experience life in that way. We came here to experience life in individual ways which serve and grow our soul’s journey and ultimately the evolution and self-exploration of divine consciousness and I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of that. 

I am all for exploring and playing with power dynamics in life, relating and creating. I don’t mind being in a submissive role or a dominant role. But that is all it can be for me: a role I choose to play with awareness, not who I am. I AM so much more than the narrow definition of the feminine or masculine in the new age mindset or current narrative spin. I AM all, I can embody all traits, roles, expressions and play with all. As can everyone else. Why limit myself to a stale overplayed repertoire when I came here to drink experience to my fill? 

There is so much the new age propagandists don’t seem to understand about the way the feminine and masculine energies work together or what the hieros gamos feels like when embodied. The idea that “one leads and the other follows” is painfully colored by patriarchal dominator thinking and cannot even come close to fathom the beauty of how the union of masculine and feminine expresses, feels, senses and vibrates. There is no leadership in union. Who is there to be lead and who can lead in oneness? What is this foolish nonsense we are being served up if not the regurgitation of old paradigm thinking?

 If you have experienced and felt the union of masculine & feminine within, you will know the numinous nature of the union and how it creates and acts, which defy words and explanations as we lack proper concepts and words to hope to express it even in the vaguest terms. Similar observations can be made in the experience of union between self and higher Self. There is still so much we have to EXPERIENCE for ourselves to truly KNOW about reality. Higher experiences defy the limitations of our current perceptions, thinking, culture, norms, languages and modes of communication.

The invitation I extend to those who are willing to read, listen and reflect upon this is to explore new paths and pioneer novel, playful, expansive explorations beyond the pitiful and limited archetypal narratives humanity has been handing their power over to for millennia. 

Join us in owning our quantum consciousness nature and let us play outside the limiting normativity and prescriptivity that some try to lord over our minds, hearts and bodies. Let us strip off the narratives, identifications and labels that make us susceptible to the allure of their cat’s gold of matrix fueled illusions and let us alchemize real gold of consciousness with Spirit. 

There is so much more to explore, be, learn, create, experience, share, give, receive and become one with. Let us not settle for less than our soul’s and consciousness are capable and hungry for! 

With love and blessings to all ways of dancing the dance of consciousness.

Art: Yin and Yang by Wuukasch

The post Masculine Leadership and Feminine Submission appeared first on Venuskind.

My mind assumed it to be a call for assessment of how well I did in the past year or where I failed to show up in my core relationships, oh how stunned it was to realize it was wrong. 

At first the retreat was met with a silence of both, reminding me of the importance of patience, stillness and being. Once my being leaned into the silence and simplicity of being a sweetness and blissful flow of harmony arose in me. A sweetness that had lessened in the engagement with loved ones and catalysts in the past months. Yet its rising was not accusatory but a gentle reminder of what the baseline of my existence has become through the hard work of the past years and the grace bestowed by Spirit. 

Leading me to reflect on why I allowed my inner wellbeing to lessen, how I participated in or instigated the lowering of my vibration. Then my inner Guru pointed to the experiences of the past months that challenged me to meet unlove with love over and over again. Showing me the patterns and scripts I have been enacting while observing it with awareness and working on responding from love even if it felt nigh impossible. Proving once again that the mind and its beliefs on what I can or cannot do are stuck in the past and need to be left behind on a path of growth. Highlighting where I still hold attachments and blind spots in need of my loving illumination, integration and transmutation in order to follow the call that has been stirring within and becoming louder by the day.

A call I sensed and knew deep in my cells. 

A call into Divine Union and a new path announcing its opening.

This union is first and foremost internal, a higher state of union of inner feminine and inner masculine, of polarities and energies within. A union that enables and necessitates a higher kind of relating, relating based on the foundation of knowing and values I have embraced and learned to embodied throughout the past years. This inner union demands a higher level of integrity, clarity and alignment to be embodied and lived by me than I have ever done. No more letting things slide or allowing aspects of me to rationalize holding on to the dysfunctions and superfluousness of what is belongs to the past. Consciously offering it all on the altar of the eclipse season and letting it be transmuted by Spirit to be of service of the experiences to come.

This new path of being and creating life comes with its own soul family, tribe and fellow journeyers. Holding on to the status quo or trying to fit in what isn’t energetically aligned with it will create unnecessary suffering for all involved. 

Source is illuminating where I need to let go, where relationships have to be adjusted to a form and level of engagement that befits their energetic reality and where the interfering fantasies of the mind need to end now. 

I am being reminded how important it is to start a new part of your life with care, awareness and integrity. Any kind of laziness, be it emotional, spiritual, mental or physical, in preparation of my new beginning will have larger ramifications in the time to come. 

The quality of the seeds planted in this time is of utmost importance and that is why we are collectively called into reflection and meditative contemplations. We are calibrating and attuning our energy, by releasing whatever obstructs the flow of Source energy or distracts from our inner callings and evolution of consciousness and thus the seeds of the new realities we are building on various dimensions are purified and elevated.

May our inner divine union help us seed external divine unions, families and tribes of love and creativity which serve all of life in the highest and best way.

Art: “The Beginning” by Anna Ewa Miarczynska

The post Divine Union appeared first on Venuskind.

I held an unconscious misunderstanding of what it means to give of ourselves and our gifts to life for most of this lifetime. Conditioned to (un)consciously take undue responsibility for the wellbeing of all beings and things around me and having come with a contract of lightening and healing karma and distortions in my ancestral lineages was a fruitful if unhealthy combination that fed into above misunderstanding.

In my limited human feeling I longed to share and give of myself to all beings to alleviate their pain and lighten their load while my limited human thinking informed by trauma and conditioning held to people needing to earn and be worthy of whatever I have and was gifted to share. These two contradictory stances, in their decades of conflict, have attracted many an interesting albeit at times painful or confounding experiences.

I realize now that there were aspects in both attitudes that were right and equally wrong for lack of perception of reality as it truly is and not the illusion we perceive within the distortion fields of our collective and individual conditioning. 

The reality of existence is that we live in a permanent vibratory communication with everything in the Universe, we simply cannot not communicate. Therefore all we do, believe, feel, think is constantly feeding into what connects all of life in oneness. None of us can ever stop being of service to the One, regardless of our choices and deeds, it all informs and serves the collective and the unfolding of life.

And yet this doesn’t translate into us sharing everything and giving of ourselves equally to everyone who crosses our path in the denser physical reality of human interactions. This is where discernment and higher mind can come into play and engage in creative, un-linear and seemingly illogical or inconsistent ways through our beings. If we step out of their way they can create more meaningful experiences born from what feels like magic and incites bliss, equanimity and a deep sense of alignment in us.

Our (conditioned) human perception of what another needs or wants is faulty at best and harmful at worst. This is why humility and higher discernment are needed, to counter the prideful or shameful conditioning in us that we may walk with loving-kindness and playful fire of Spirit in our being. 

Therefore I choose to focus on my vibratory integrity, walk this earth with sovereignty, being as joyful, peaceful, loving, compassionate and mindful as I can, listening to intuition and Spirit to guide my sharing and keep knowing and thoughts to myself whenever they are silent. My life is now about honoring and being in service to the higher wisdom of Life/Spirit/Source (or whatever you prefer to name it).

If you want to awaken all of humanity,

then awaken all of yourself,

if you want to eliminate the suffering in the world,

then eliminate all that is negative in yourself.

Truly the greatest gift you have to give is that of your own self-transformation.

~ Lao Tzu

Photography by Dewan Irawan

The post On Service appeared first on Venuskind.

It is temptingly easy to walk the path of the ego and uphold narratives of victimhood and helplessness while giving away our power by blaming life or others for the pain and challenges we face. Our cultures have conditioned our responses and thinking to fall into these self harming habits and they sure can be overpowering. Yet at some point in our life, evolution, maturing and growth we have to cultivate the ability to check our ego and keep it from lashing out at others and diminishing ourselves with thought patterns of blame/ guilt/ shame and denial of our co-creative responsibility for our lives.

We cannot change our experience, communities and world if we keep going back to the dysfunctionalities we were raised in. We need to learn to cultivate self leadership, to support each other in this shift. Therefore I will not silently accept when I see actions that lack integrity and wisdom play out in harmful ways. With fierce compassion and kindness I will remind you when you have fallen out of alignment and offer you my hand in finding your way back. And I hope you will reciprocate in kind when my darkness gets the better of me.

Let us learn to tell our stories and experiences without blaming, guilting and character assassinating others while keeping our eyes fixed on ourselves and the power we hold to change and create. I know it is hard and challenging but also very empowering and holds the gift of freeing us from the addiction to unconscious perpetuation of the pain we experienced. 

We can choose to transmute our pain into inspiration and become more loving and kind with ourselves and others or we can let it fester into suffering which we (passive) aggressively take out on others.

I do not wish for a council, no external authority to create a corrective in our communities because I trust you and I to work it out without giving away our power and shrinking from our responsibility and accountability for our actions and words. Accountability not only in a larger karmic sense but in a very real everyday life sense.

The conscious/ spiritual/ self work communities have to awaken from the trance of their infatuation with “love and light” to hold everyone accountable and not keep bypassing the wiles of spiritualized egoic patterns. It is a truly lacking facsimile of love that allows the other to remain stuck in blind ego pain. Love doesn’t coddle, it gently reminds us of the grandness and strength at the core of our being, it leads us back home and calls our deeds by their real name: without blame and also without acceptance of our bullshit rationalizations.

We are capable of so much more! 

Please let us not remain in the illusions of our egoic comfort zones but keep waking each other up to deeper truths and higher wisdoms we can access through our hearts and spirits! 

Photography: Embrace #47, 1970 by Eikoh Hosoe

The post Accountability appeared first on Venuskind.

1) CALCINATION: The process of Calcination is meant to assist in Destroying the Ego’s Attachment to Material things or things outside of the Self. Physically, Calcination is related to exercise and Chemically to Fire, as it burns away at all Material that is undesirable. Psychologically and Spiritually it is the Flames of the Higher Consciousness which will burn away the dross of the restricting habits, beliefs and limitations of the Ego Self.

7) COAGULATION: Coagulation is like the Precipitation of Purified Ferment which arose during the Distillation. The final operation of Coagulation occurs in the 7th or Crown Chakra on the top of your head which effects the Pituitary Gland. It is believed that some sort of Brain Ambrosia is released from the Pineal Gland (phallic shaped gland)and that it combines with the Matter of the Pituitary (vulva shaped gland) to give Birth to your Permanent Body of Light; which is the Immortal Vehicle for your Highest Aspirations and Evolved Aspects of your Mind. The Body of Light retains your Memories and Feelings from your Lifetime on Earth and is able to become one with Soul and Spirit at Death. The Body of Light is similar to the concept of the Astral Body raised and purified through repeated cycles of the entire Process until only the True Essence of the Astral and Mental faculties of the Individual remains. The remaining Being is your Rebirth and that is the part of you which is Immortal and Born from Humanity. This Body of Light is the “Greater or Philosopher’s Stone” of the Alchemists. The achievement of a Permanent state of Coagulation is also referred to as a Return to the Garden of Eden and denotes a Solid Unification with the Divine Mind.

~ via Chaosophia218

The post The 7 Steps in Alchemical Transformation appeared first on Venuskind.

A confluence of new insights and knowing which created more internal cohesion, new spiritual tools and practices that enabled the healing of deep childhood traumas and more self loving choices on my part created a bountiful inner garden.

It is an awesome feeling to look back at a year and feel more than content with the work I accomplished and the freedom, joy and creative flow it allowed for.

What a change to the past 9 years that felt like an endless grind of cycles of painful losses, purging and disintegration to now experience the reclaiming of inner landscapes and seeing them bloom as I gain mastery of my selves and learn to embody my sovereignty in more and more areas of my life with clarity,  ease and flow.

Nothing beats this feeling of inner cohesion, joyful and creative interplay of selves after decades of inner conflicts and sabotaging.

And the cherry on the pie is the freeing of the relationship with my first love and healer from the pain, limitations and blockages past betrayals, disappointments and fears caused… welcome back Music, it has been too long! 

How is your spiritual gardening? 

What are the gifts this year brought to your life? 

Are your inner landscapes thriving and blooming? 

Which new seeds do you plan on seeding for the next cycle? 

Art: Arctic-Designs via DeviantArt

The post Spiritual Gardening appeared first on Venuskind.

“According to the tenets of Easter Occultism, DARKNESS is the one true actuality, the basis and root of light, without which the latter could never manifest itself, nor even exist. Light is matter, and DARKNESS pure Spirit. Darkness, in its radical metaphysical basis, is subjective and absolute light; while the latter in all its seeming effulgence and glory, is merely a mass of shadows, as it can never be eternal, and is simply an illusion, or Maya.”
~ Helena Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine

There is a bias in the spiritual communities towards the light born out of a rejection and fear-laced perception of darkness while professing to believe in the oneness of all. Something I have fallen into as well for a while as nagging thoughts and sensations pointed to the logical contradiction and incompleteness of this attitude, inciting me to keep researching and meditating on it. In time it was easy to perceive the avoidance and subconscious patterns of victim mindsets and fear programming at play in this as well as the dualistic and oversimplified christian narratives.

I realized that our understanding of darkness affects our capacity and effectivity in our shadow work. Therefore it was not much of a surprise to me how lacking the shadow work of those who hold on to the above mentioned light bias mostly is. How can you own your shadow aspects when you demonize darkness while aggrandizing light? Who will bear the pain or shame of facing that they are holding aspects of what they reject and deny?

To see darkness through the eyes of the eastern masters is to dive into the mystery and truth of the inter-oneness of Yin & Yang. To know the inherent oneness of light and darkness, to learn to recognize it in all that surrounds us and is within us. 

The nature of existence opens up to the observer who can let go of his attachments to dual perceptions of right/wrong, male/female, etc. Duality, though being a fundamental principle of our Universe, eventually merges into the oneness of consciousness on a higher or existential dimension. The inquiry into and contemplation of oneness are pathways of decolonizing and deconditioning ourselves in order to experience and know reality as it is and not through inherited and distorted filters.

Seeing darkness as a mother principle that birthed our universe of light and matter takes us closer to the creative potentiality of the void and allows us to meet our shadow aspects without fear and find healing through our curiosity, compassion and love for them as we do our self work.

Darkness is another expression of the One, nothing to fear, recoil from or oppose. What sense does opposing make in a universe where resistance creates persistence by feeding our energy to that which we fight?

We can calmly face it, shine our light of awareness on it and pierce through its Maya (illusion) to perceive deeper truths and principles at play in our moment and experience. We might even glimpse the “light of darkness” — its elegance and beauty in the universal play of consciousness as we perceive from higher mind and consciousness.

Artist: Unknown

The post Darkness appeared first on Venuskind.

One of the oldest offshoots of Hinduism in the world, tantra has seen a renaissance in the last 40 years.

The ironic thing is although tantra has gotten a lot more attention recently, it’s also been greatly misunderstood; many people think tantra is either a sex practice or black magic.

The Meaning

The word tantra comes from the combination of two words: “tattva” and “mantra”.

Tattva is the science of cosmic principles, while mantra is the science of mystic sounds and vibrations.

This means that tantra is the application of cosmic science with the determination to attain a deeper spiritual connection.

The Big Misunderstanding

Unlike many other traditional religious perspectives, tantra takes the entire person into account- their worries, fears, and worldly desires.

Most teachings believe that the pursuit of material pleasures and spiritual aspirations are mutually exclusive; that is, they are in direct opposition to one another.

This gives rise to an inner struggle that can lead to lots of inner turmoil.

In tantra, instead of drawing a line between these two seemingly different impulses, it’s taught that a practitioner should embrace both.

Since tantra means “to weave”, many tantra masters teach life can only provide fulfillment when we follow the pattern designed by nature.

Anger, fear, attachment, and negative emotions tear the threads and causing the fabric to rip.

Tantra seeks to repair that fabric.

To the tantra practitioner, worldly experiences are the same as spiritual experiences- there is no difference.

This simple philosophy has led many to conclude that tantra encourages people to be indiscriminate in their worldly pursuits.

But in reality it’s a philosophy that encourages seeing the divine in everything, no matter how dark or materialistic.

They’re all the same.

Weaving the Fabric

Tantra isn’t a naive philosophy or world view in anyway.

It encompasses everything.

Even in the hardest of situations, there’s still room to notice the deeper meaning.

And ultimately, this leaves lots of room for a person to grow into their own understanding and how they fit into the world.

Tantra is an ancient Sanskrit word, meaning “to weave or to expand.” In tantric sex, we weave and expand our energy with our love partner, for the purpose of opening up to the entire universe. Shaped variously by Hindu and Buddhist traditions, sometimes constricted by Confucianism, Tantra in its widest meaning describes an approach to living that links the physical universe to the cosmic whole.

Sexuality, the most physical and intimate of human interactions, is thus seen a sacred activity, continuously reenacting the original creation of the universe. The First One, separating from Itself to know Itself, embracing Itself to experience Itself.

Tantra proposes that each one of us must undergo within ourselves this total union, a joining of the female and male within us. And when love partners dance the path of Tantra together, the relationship is transformed into a sacred journey to Oneness.

Tantra describes a movement of energy, a welling up within us, of joyous excitation. Unlike forms of meditation that cause us to withdraw from the world of senses, Tantra encourages us to start with the senses, building on their ability to focus us in the present moment.

This energy need not be explicitly sexual; all sensual experience is appreciated as a tool for awakening the energy within us.  In the moment that we shift from overt physical pleasure to an internal joy, to a focus on the internal movement of energy, the subtle nature of our being is exposed and Tantra takes place. Nor does Tantra exclude experiences which are not overtly pleasurable; this same internal shift of focus can take place as we experience outward pain, even death.

Tantra occurs only in the present moment; yesterday’s experience has no relevance.

When I smell a rose, I smell it in this moment, not yesterday or tomorrow, but right now, right here. And if I embrace that moment of smelling the rose as the prelude to a spiritual experience, if I invite the rose-smelling into my total being, aware both of the scent and my total bodily response to the scent, aware of the softness of the petals and the rose energy in my heart, then in that moment I am open to the fullness of who I am. This is Tantra.

And if you and I both smell the rose together, and sharing that experience, dissolve our separateness into an infinite Oneness, then together we experience Tantra.

Tantra brings poetry to lovemaking. When my lover caresses my face and our eyes meet and we breathe together and acknowledge our rising passion, sense our hearts joining and our spirits soaring, the energy rising through the power centers of our bodies, this is Tantra.

Some spiritual paths teach us to deny, to say not this, not that; they teach that who we are is not the body, not the mind, not our actions, not our thoughts. Stripped of what we are not, these paths allow us to see the emergence of who we may be. Tantra takes the seemingly opposite approach and teaches us to say YES! to this, YES! to that. I smell the rose and I am that experience, my lover touches me and I am that experience, there is nothing that I am not, I am everything. All experience can be a doorway to who I am, provided I focus on the experience itself, with the intention of energetic awareness.

To learn and benefit deeply from Tantra, we must practice being still, undistracted. When I am smelling the rose, I smell the rose.

To make love in the Tantra way means to be fully present, to allow each moment to be the entire experience. In Tantric lovemaking, there is no goal, no race toward release or orgasm.  Instead, there is complete attention to each touch, each breath, each movement of energy.

Every moment in our lives can be shaped by Tantra, can be lived in fullness and acceptance.

However, our minds, our thoughts, are constantly darting here and there. We are consumed with busy-ness, at our jobs, at school, taking care of our children, our home, our parents. Birthday parties.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, weddings, funerals. We are bombarded by input from phone, TV, fax, e-mail and junk mail. Bills.

When we finally get away on vacation, often as not we’re busy skiing or snorkeling, eating, shopping, museuming, being transported from place to place.

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off! But first, I need a haircut, car wash, new blouse, shoe repair, show to see, and of course, those bills to pay. Our lives are structured around busy-ness, not around living in the moment.

While we are skiing, or snorkeling, or playing tennis, basketball, or golf, the world does disappear, leaving only the action of the sport. This is the attraction of athletics. It is a natural occurrence.

But how do we make time for a momentary tantric relationship with a flower, let alone an hour with our lover? How do we say Yes! to each moment, when the next moment is already here and then gone?

We need to do even more than make time to smell the roses. We need to learn how to let the scent permeate into our belly, deepening our breath and opening our heart to the expansiveness of spiritual experience.

Athletic pursuits require practice and training. They are designed to take place in a zone outside of daily living.  Tantra provides us a way of living daily in that zone.

Tantra is being in the flow. 

Being in the flow of all that is. 

In the present moment. 

Being in the flow,

of all that is in you.

~ Soul8love

Photography: Unknown

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I sense for one an undertone of affirming separation (self vs. other) and on the other hand a strong potential to feed the christian martyr programming (selflessness, sacrificing yourself for the other). Both of which to me are unhelpful distortions of this matrix maximizing polarity and duality to the point of losing our inherent oneness out of sight. These undertones might of course be owed to the distortions of my experiences and lifetimes.

I decided to go on differentiating the two approaches to life as Service to Self and Service to SELF.

Whereby “self” stands for the limited, conditioned egoic sense of self and “SELF” represents our eternal undying essence, the divine spark and fractal of the One Source in which we are one with all existence.

This way of differentiating the two paths has more integrity to me as it underscores the Law of One and sidesteps the trap of “othering” and separation or getting lost in the illusion of dualities as contrasts, as well as feeding the unloving conditionings of self abandonment and lack of self love and care.

Furthermore it resonates with a rooting in the foundational principles of Oneness and an understanding that all things having arisen from the One Source and will eventually merge back into the One Source. 

When I chose a Service to SELF path I choose to live a life of caring for myself so I can show up everyday to serve all of existence to the best of my abilities and knowledge. To me that is more encompassing and resonant with a higher frequency of love than what the term Service to Other evokes in my mind, body, heart and spirit.

What do you think, sense and feel when reflecting on these terminologies?

What helps you come alive and shine your light brighter?

Whatever you call it I hope you choose a life of service to more than your egoic self, to your own benefit and the benefit of all!

Photograph: Little boy helps one-legged companion across street, Naples/ Italy, August 1944, by Lt. Wayne Miller

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The spiritual path is not all love and light as most of us know from experience and others are about to find out — especially in the earlier stages of our awakening process. The joy of having found truth and meaning that resounds within our hearts is often accomplished with layers upon layers of disillusionment as the untruths of our lives become glaringly obvious and unavoidable.

One aspect we do not talk much about is how our individual spiritual practice and awakening affects our intimate relationships.

In my life, traveling to Bali and being brought back to life by its magical energy and the power of meditation and yoga has had a profound transformational effect on my intimate relationships by my choice and commitment.

Contemplating about my life made it very clear to me that I was unfulfilled and unhappy in my life and relationships, no matter how much I loved my then partners. And I had a clear intuition that I needed to be single to be able to focus on my inner work and healing and not use my partners as an excuse and distraction from it.

After spending a third of my life with my longterm partner it was quite a surprising and rewarding adventure to reacquaint myself with myself in a non-coupled and non-other-pleasing-state. 

That is when a deepening of my journey into introspection, spiritual practice, self knowledge and self love took off.

I met amazing men on this journey whom I am honored to call brothers and friends, who have allowed me to see through their eyes, partake in their perceptions of life and relating in novel and insightful ways. Which is saying a lot because I had pretty amazing poly partners and friends with whom I had been having deep ongoing exchanges on the male experience, relationships, sexuality, communication and more. Later I would see that my poly friends were very versed in relationship, communication sciences, reflective, knowledgable about their emotions and psyche  though not as connected with their hearts, spirit and energetic aspects as my spiritual friends were who in turn were often lacking in the strengths of my poly brethren.

7 years of single life with fluctuating, changing and shifting attitudes towards intimate relationships, sexuality and men as conditionings and programming on gender, relationships, sexuality and romanticism were dismantled. Years of magical encounters turning into friendships, playful moments of connection which had a defined ending date by virtue of travel schedules, beautiful connections that felt like they could be my next longterm relationship but turned sour, etc., all of which came to me as teachers and catalysts on my healing path.

I realized it would be hard to meet someone and build a relationship worthy of my energy and time while I was traveling without and within. When you are constantly falling apart and pulling yourself together in a new form, oscillating through your days and weeks it is hard to keep up a connection unless it is of the lightest and non-attached kinds. 

What is more I was working my way through healing many of the relational traumas of this life, my ancestral line and karmic accumulated burdens in intimate relating. I know, I chose to incarnate into this life to clear all of this and other darkness surrounding my entry into this body.

While going through my healing and integration work I recognized quite a few narratives that are distortions of the collective conditioning we share and which sadly reverberate in the New (C)age community.

“We die to each other daily. What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must also remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger.” ~ T.S. Eliot

Why does the New Age still hold people hostage to ideas of heteronormativity conveniently treating the energetic gender principle as if it was the conditioned matrix gender? I dislike using the terms like “divine/inner feminine” or “divine/inner masculine” because so many cannot read it without the toxic matrix conditioning of gender. Often I will choose to say yin or yang because with those terms people get that this is describing types of energy signatures and not human traits. But this is a rant for another time.

Why do so few spiritual teachers talk about the fluidity of our paths and the changes we go through in this life? Why uphold the monogamous ideal of having just one partner or staying with them for a lifetime as the ultimate ideal? I cannot help but see in it unreflected Judeo-Christian religious programming in need of elevation by the law of one and spiritual teachings like the hermetic principles for a higher and less distorted perception of reality. 

Humans do change and evolve, rigid relational systems that do not allow for the change and expansion of the people in it or at least offer tools to help them relate and overcome times of dissonance are not aligned with our reality. To uphold narrow definitions and ideals of monogamy and glorification of duration of a relationship is to create a matrix of suffering for others.

Don’t get me wrong I have no attachment to any relationship style or configuration as being better or higher, my vision is to see every human to be free to choose, live and thrive in consensual, loving and expansive relationships or not.

And what is especially painful, yet a reality many have faced is when our growth paces are no longer aligned and we do not find ways to bridge the ever growing gap between us. There is no “one dogma fits all” in this. Everyone has to assess if staying with their partner or moving on is the right thing for their soul and the souls of their children. Discerning if the gap and dissonance of vibrating on different levels is just an interim phenomenon or the sign of a more permanent misalignment is impossible for the mind. These deep levels of discernment necessitate us to connect with the wisdom of our bodies and the guidance of our higher selves. These conversations and contemplations take time and cannot be rushed nor should we feel bad about the time we stayed although we knew it wasn’t serving us.

Sometimes staying serves us complete a cycle of healing or integration we might not be aware of but we will know when the time to move on has come, the clear alignment of all our parts in telling us to go. And man, it is scary to leave the security of the familiar to step into the unknown! 

But there is no alternative to stepping repeatedly into the void, the unknown, if growth and service to Life/Source/the divine is our goal.

“I want to love you without clutching, appreciate you without judging, join you without invading, invite you without demanding, leave you without guilt, criticize you without blaming, and help you without insulting. If I can have the same from you, then we can truly meet and enrich each other.” ~Virginia Satir

My wish for us to create ways of connecting and relating intimately with each other without a need to own, limit or encase ourselves in constructs of the mind arises from my fundamental values of love, sovereignty, honesty and freedom.

My dream would be to live in a world or community of beings who have let go of the tyranny of religious and cultural constructs to explore, live and learn from their individual embodied soul expression with utmost love, curiosity and care for each other. 

Living in a consciousness and value system which honors loving relationships, regardless of their duration, constellations and type. 

Capable of Un-coupling when our paths are diverting, honoring the beloved teacher and divine in the other as we accept the completion and fulfillment of our union in this now.

Meeting each other in our sovereignty and loving one other without reserve, not just as long as our relationships last, but for eternity.

Letting it be love for Self in us and the other which works on bridging gaps between us or moving apart, whatever is intuitively right in the now.

Letting us drop the negativity and fear based programming around sexuality and learning to approach and enjoy our sexuality with playful, creative, passionate and sacred awe.

Learning to merge our energies on many different levels of our being and taste the diverse flavors of uniting Self with Self with love and in ever new and joyful ways.

A collective of sovereign, loving and powerful creators immersed in a joyful and passionate dance of love exploring itself.

My insights and reflections won’t necessary align with yours as we may have different incarnational trajectories, missions and soul paths chosen for this life… only you know your path and what is right for you. This is simply a sharing and invitation for reflection and exchange.

Art: Dreams of Scorpion Heart by Cameron Grey

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If we are aligned with truth and knowing we will have no need to denigrate those who lack it or make light of them. If we side with truth in the deeper and eternal sense, truth itself will root us in love and compassion for all that is.

Dig deeper, research more, do not be easily satisfied with your first findings, do not disregard the things your mind tells you cannot be… practice open-mindedness. This reality is highly complex to the mind and makes “inception” look like a toddlers concept. Hold contrasting thoughts and ideas in your mind, consult your intuition, learn to use your heart as the processor of knowledge, live from a beginners mind and learn to bear not-knowing. Sit with not-knowing and seeming contradictions, allow time, new insights and deeper reflections to bring insights, new perspectives, integration and resolution to the contrasts in your mind.  

We live in a global matrix of mind control and distortions of history, language, cultures, morals, politics and religions that goes back centuries and millennia.

Awakening in this multi-layered system of lies, deceptions and half-truths can be deeply disorienting and confusing, yet do not give in to your minds need for simple and comfortable answers as you will not find true solace in avoidance or illusions. This reality is unbearably beautiful and painfully dysfunctional at once, you need to face the darkness and let go of the convoluted nonsense you have been force fed to find truth and beauty in this world. The truth shall make you free.. after it pisses you off and makes you want to run the other way.. but you will quickly understand that you cannot afford to and that is where your journey begins.

In time your mind will expand with higher knowledge and knowing to see the connection and oneness of things which seem like contradictions and you will learn to discern the difference between absolute truths and relative truths. And you will look back with compassion and kindness on your moments of confusion and blindness. 

There will be those you meet along your journey, seekers and lovers of truth who will become a lifeline in a world of sleepers. Embracing and living your authentic self will attract them to you, they will become your family, friends and cheerleaders while you will lose some of those you thought of as such before your ventured on this journey… and yet you will see, feel and know deep in your bones that what you gain is more precious than anything you lose.

Do not give up, keep asking yourself uncomfortable questions, keep expanding your knowledge, practicing mindfulness, sitting in silence, embracing your shadow, loving yourself, practicing love, kindness and compassion… and surrendering to the truth within. And you will find that you have all you need within you.

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We stand at a gate of vibrational integrity.

No longer can we allow ourselves to give in or be unconscious of the proclivities of the ego and only be met with their consequences after a delay. We have entered a space where we are experiencing more of an instant karma and instant manifestation of our vibrational frequencies.

All the purging, releasing of old karma, having to consciously let go of beliefs, attitudes and behavioral patterns, the practicing of awareness and self awareness in the past years were in preparation for what awaits us now.

Our thoughts, spoken words, feelings and intentional visions become the reality we experience with an imminence like never before. You might have noticed a shift in the energy, doors opening where they before had slammed shut and remained closed.

You might feel, sense and observe how things are suddenly aligning, people entering your life, inspired ideas being enhanced, co-signed by others and suddenly faster available than you would have believed possible.
Just like that – magic.

Our old mindsets and beliefs as to how things are done cannot cross this portal.

After working on reclaiming and aligning with your sovereignty in aloneness you are sensing, experiencing and recognizing the souls meant to co-create your future visions, mission and path with you. They might not be the ones you envisioned or new to your life and yet they are more familiar than those you have known for decades. In connecting you realize that you bring unique and complementary gifts and skills to the table which synergistically harmonize and co-create with potency.

Creation is no longer motivated by the small self but originates with the SELF and happens with guidance by Source in an elegant flow and dance of being, joy, love and light-heartedness transcending external circumstances in the 3D.

With gratitude, awe and excitement for the infinite possibilities awaiting us patiently.

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