Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (5 page)

MYTH #8: YOU MUST HAVE A PARTNER
. You already have a partner: yourself. Solo Tantra offers endless opportunities for sexual and spiritual growth. Many Tantric techniques are meant to be practiced alone, while others intended for partners can
easily be adapted for one. In a solo practice, you can proceed at your own pace and focus completely on yourself. You may feel as if you are making love to the whole universe. Your solo rituals can become as important to you and as indispensable in your life as your meditation practice or your exercise routine.

If you are single and looking for a partner, these practices can help you attract someone with whom you will truly resonate by enabling you to recognize your true feelings, needs, and desires. In Tantra, you will also learn to speak your feelings and desires safely and with love.

You do not need to be in a long-term, committed relationship to do Tantra with another person. Tantra practitioners in the original Hindu Tantric rite were probably strangers prior to the ritual. They achieved Tantric intimacy by using breath, intention, and movement. So can you. Tantra will provide you with many excellent exercises to get to know someone better and will help intimacy grow in any relationship—new or established.

MYTH #9: YOU NEED A GURU TO STUDY TANTRA SAFELY
. It’s easy to figure out where this myth came from. Many if not most of the early Tantric teachings were never written down. You would have to become a disciple to a guru in order to learn them. The Tantra that was written down was often couched in code. Imagine the trouble you could get into practicing it literally! A guru would have been a very necessary guide, indeed. Today, many of these teachings have been decoded and recorded by scholars, gurus, and people who have studied extensively with gurus.

Do I think you need a guru? Not unless you want one. But I do think qualified teachers are extremely valuable. I have had many good and some great Tantra teachers, none of whom I have considered a guru. I have learned something important from all of them.

MYTH #10: A BOOK LIKE THIS IS NOT ABOUT REAL TANTRA
. Anyone in the Western world (and some in the East) practicing what they call Tantra today is actually practicing some form of neo-Tantra, a westernized reduction of the original. Some people’s practices may appear more traditional than others. They may have a guru; they may have studied in India. They may chant Sanskrit words, play Indian music, and decorate their homes with saris. And that’s fine. It’s a lovely way to practice Tantra if it makes you feel blissful and juicy. But the art of living Tantrically is living authentically, consciously, and sensuously. And that can be done in an infinite variety of styles and practices, all of which can bring about prolonged states of love, connection, and bliss.

A Quick-Start Guide

There are as many ways to approach Tantra and Tantric sex as there are reason for wanting to try them. However, it is helpful to first understand a few fundamentals. In Tantra, how you do sex is more important than what sex you do. This means that you’ll probably need to adjust your approach to sex and your thinking about the way sex “works.” That’s what the chapters in the first part of this book, “Tantra: The Basics,” will do. They will write Tantra on your mind and on your heart. But you do not need to read the whole section before you can have some fun.

In the remaining chapters of
Urban Tantra
, the sex gets increasingly physical. Jump in anywhere. Try out any exercise that appeals to you. If you like a more step-by-step approach, the book is organized in a more or less linear fashion, so you can start at the beginning and proceed as though you were attending your own private Tantra workshop.

But please remember that the physical/sexual Tantric exercises are simply the ways in which you implement the Tantric principles outlined in the first section. In order to experience the depths, breadths, and heights of Tantric ecstasy, make sure you have written Tantra on your mind as well as on your body.

This section of the book
will tell you not only
how
to begin to practice Tantra but also
why
.

Tantra teaches us that by embracing everything in life and delving into it totally, anything can be turned into a transformative, ultimately ecstatic, experience.

We’ll begin by exploring ecstasy. What is the difference between pleasure and ecstasy? Why is ecstasy important? Why might you want to prioritize the pursuit of ecstasy in your own life?

Next, I’ll ask you to change your mind about how sex works. I’ll introduce you to the energetic aspects of sex and give you some simple yet powerful tips on how to double your pleasure simply by changing the way you think and focus your attention.

Then I’ll move to the body. You’ll learn why breath, meditation, movement, and laughter are the building blocks of expanded orgasm, and you’ll learn how to use them to build your own sensual stairway to paradise. You’ll also learn the secrets of exquisite touch and how the way you touch can transform your relationships. Last, you’ll learn how to do all of this in the time you have available in your busy schedule.

Ready? Let’s get started.

It is no surprise that one of the most popular recreational drugs is named for—and induces feelings described as—ecstasy. Humans crave ecstasy. We go to impossible lengths to achieve it, and we’ll settle for almost any available substitute. This is one of the reasons sex—even bad sex—is so popular.

Ecstasy (also referred to as bliss or ecstatic bliss) is a peak experience. Peak experiences expand our possibilities. They give us permission and encouragement to reach higher and receive more. They give us a taste of our own physical power and put us in touch with our higher metaphysical power. Wilhelm Reich, in
The Function of the Orgasm
, even wrote that ecstasy in the form of total orgasm was medically necessary to the health and well-being of the human body.

Sex is not the only way to experience ecstasy, but it is certainly one of the available. Sex can give you a moment of bliss—a taste of the

GR
e
At

cosmic

ORGAS
m
.

Once you get a big enough bite of that great cosmic orgasm, you realize that sex is not the only way to have bliss. You can then find bliss in everyday, ordinary aspects of life. Osho, the visionary (and controversial) spiritual teacher, explains how sex brings us to bliss:

Because of three basic elements in sex, you come to a blissful moment. Those three are, first: timelessness. You transcend time completely. There is no time. You forget time completely; time ceases for you. Not that time ceases, it ceases for you; you are not in it. There is no past, no future. This very moment, here and now, the whole existence is concentrated. This moment becomes the only real moment …

Secondly: in sex, for the first time, you lose your ego, you become egoless.… You are not, neither is the other. You and your beloved are both lost into something else. A new reality evolves, a new unit comes into existence in which the old two are lost—completely lost …

And thirdly: for the first time, in sex you are natural. The unreal is lost, the facade, the face is lost; the society, the culture, the civilization is lost. You are apart of nature—as trees are, animals are, stars are.… You are in a greater something—the cosmos, the Tao.… You are just floating, you are taken by the current
.

—Osho,
The Book of Secrets

Sounds peaceful, doesn’t it? It doesn’t even sound like ecstasy, at least not the way we usually use the word. Ecstasy is like orgasm in that we tend to have a rather narrow definition of what the experience is “supposed” to feel like. We tend to focus on the intensely euphoric while ignoring the subtler aspects. Ecstasy is not simply the big bang of an outrageous orgasm. Ecstasy usually accompanies the afterglow of an orgasm when boundaries dissolve; when the answers to the really important questions come sailing through; when we’re deeply in ourselves and aware and simultaneously outside ourselves and not ourselves. We’ve become part of All That Is.

Pleasure vs. Ecstasy

Pleasure, like pain, belongs to the nervous system. A sensation registers in the body as pleasant or very pleasant, painful or very painful. And sometimes, to some people, the painful is very pleasant. Whatever your interpretation, pleasure is a physical experience. The sensations of pain and pleasure are created in the body and belong to the body. Ecstasy is bodiless. It is experienced as overwhelming delight and/or
inspiration. It can be a rapturous passionate feeling or a mental transport to a place of well-being, peace, or visions. It is a sense of supreme happiness felt in and by the soul. Ecstatic bliss is the joy experienced by the soul when it reconnects to Sacred Unity, to God/dess, to All That Is. Ecstatic bliss, in its purest Tantric definition, is not a feeling or a sensation. It’s a metaphysical experience that occurs when all feelings, thoughts, and sensations are eclipsed by boundaryless beingness in a vast ocean of energy where everything is connected to everything else.

You can have a whole lot of extraordinary pleasure without ecstasy. It’s also possible to have ecstasy without physical pleasure. But more often than not, pleasure and ecstasy have a pretty close relationship. In fact, sexual pleasure is one of the most universally available routes to ecstasy. But what makes some sex so mundane and other sex so ecstatic? Sometimes when you go into sexual pleasure totally and without any expectations, you stumble upon ecstasy. It simply happens. Is there a way to find it on a more regular basis? Yes. But before we try to find the road to ecstasy, let’s look back at some of the paths on which we
haven’t
found it so that we can avoid these dead ends in the future.

Adrenaline Is Not Ecstasy

Most of us live and work in a world built upon the pursuit and eventual attainment of order, logic, and success. We spend our days trying to do more in order to get more and have more. We are constantly working, studying, thinking, and planning. We have (supposedly) never been more efficient or more able to accomplish so many things simultaneously.

And we have never been more in touch. We have email, snail mail, instant messaging, telephones, faxes, mobile phones, and handheld personal computers; and new devices are being invented even as you read this. It seems we can be reached absolutely anywhere, anytime.

And yet something is missing. For all our running and grasping and striving, despite all the information instantly available to us, there’s something we can’t quite find, a connection we just haven’t made, something we just haven’t figured out yet. We know sort of what it feels like. We get a taste of it when we’re right in the center of the swirling vortex of a project on deadline. We feel invincible. It’s as if we have a dozen arms and three brains. We can accomplish six things at once while planning three more. We may be sleep deprived and we may not have eaten since god knows when, but that only makes us sharper. We are in the “zone”—it’s all happening and it’s all happening right.
We feel high and connected and powerful. That is a heck of a pleasurable buzz, but it’s not ecstasy. That’s adrenaline.

An adrenaline rush is that energy rush we can get when we are working hard, doing several things at once, and not eating much. It’s a feeling of power, of being “on the edge,” of everything being sharp and intense. Adrenaline is a hormone that also acts as a neurotransmitter, a chemical messenger used by neurons to communicate with each other and with other types of cells. It is released from your adrenal glands in relative proportion to the level of “danger” your brain perceives. Adrenaline—along with other stress hormones that accompany its release—produces arousal effects ranging from excitement to anxiety to fear, depending on the level of stimulation. The sensation you feel in an adrenaline rush is caused by the release of three chemical compounds: (1) sugar from your liver and muscles, (2) the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, and (3) internally created opiates called endorphins. The release of these three makes you feel alert, energetic, and euphoric. An adrenaline rush is an almost drug-like high. And unfortunately, it’s just as addictive.