Tantra is one of those things many have heard about but know little if anything about it.  A common perception of Tantra is of an esoteric teaching from India that involves weird sexual techniques that those New Age folks like to practice.  So what really is Tantra?  I looked around for a definition of Tantra and I come up with the following:

Tantra is a spiritual path dedicated to the challenge of becoming aware, in every moment of our embodied lives, of the supreme flow of the sacred unity of love.

Sounds like pretty heavy stuff. No doubt when many first encounter it, a lot of its concepts seem too complicated to grasp.  But is Tantra really a bunch of incomprehensible nonsense with no meaningful or practical use?  Based on my own personal experience I would suggest that Tantra and its many sexual practices can enhance your sexual and spiritual life immensely.

Tantra’s roots do indeed lie in India and it is closely associated with the religions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.  Tantra is closely related to the Vedic tradition or rather the rejection of its orthodox beliefs.  The objective of Tantra is to bring the practitioner a feeling of blissful self awareness while connecting with the divine.

While, Tantra has been practiced in India virtually unchanged for thousands of years, it undergone a major transformation during its introduction into the West.  In the West Tantra evolved into what became known as NeoTantra.  NeoTantra carried on Tantra’s tradition of sacred sex as well as many of its concepts and terminology.  However, NeoTantra abandoned the involvement of a guru as well as some of its meditative practices and ritualistic rules.  NeoTantra practitioners prefer to study Tantra concepts like full body orgasm and female goddess worship.

To help explain what Tantra is all about, I will be writing a series of posts describing my experience with Tantra.  My journey into Tantra is very unique as it did not involve reading and studying any Tantric literature until very recently. Rather my journey involved asking myself a series of questions over many years which helped me to develop some very unique sexual skills.  It was only when I started to explore alternative lifestyles and I came into contact with Tantric practitioners that I began to recognize the similarities between my abilities and Tantra.  Thanks to working with some very skilled Tantric Goddesses, I have been able to gain a much clearer understanding of what Tantra is and what my abilities really are.  Tantra is real!  I have felt it and experienced it at some very deep and profound levels.

We all live in the West.  Our minds have been immersed in Western thought and logic all our lives.  As great as Western thought is, it does make it difficult for us to understand metaphysical concepts like Tantra.  We struggle with Tantra because it comes from a tradition that seems so foreign from ours.  Try as we may to understand it, many just don’t get it.

As I tell my story I will not use a lot of Tantric terminology or esoteric concepts.  Rather, I will be describing my experiences using normal everyday language that we can all relate to.  From there I will then connect my experiences with Tantric concepts.    Many Tantric concepts are very hard to grasp and even harder to master (especially for men).  By sharing my journey I hope to simplify this process of understanding and make Tantra more real.