Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty-First Century (7 page)

I had to change my mind about “doing things right.” I had this belief from childhood that there was only one way to practice a religion, and if I didn’t do it right, I would go to hell. I was repeatedly taught that Tantra was not a religion. Rather, it was a spiritual path and a way of life. But I had only one unconscious model for anything spiritual—the Catholic Church—hardly an appropriate role model for sacred sexuality! It took time and patience and a lot of positive, calming self-talk to change my mind in the area of “doing things right.” As I came to understand that my practice of Tantra was as good and right for me as anyone else’s practice of Tantra was good and right for them, I was able to lighten up, loosen up, and take some risks. I stopped believing that I would land in Tantric hell if I looked a little foolish or did something “wrong.”

The other thing I had to change my mind about was ritual. I had years of experiencing ritual as boring. So my early Tantra rituals were all the same: mudra after
mudra, very serious and very borrring. When I finally released my belief that rituals were dull and boring, I started creating wacky, crazy Tantric events with food and toys and loud music and laughter and no Sanskrit whatsoever. Suddenly people were telling me I was throwing the best rituals in town. And just as suddenly, people were telling me I was throwing the best sex parties in town! To be perfectly honest, I have not entirely banished this old belief about boring rituals. I still take a bit of convincing when someone invites me to a ritual. And sometimes I get lazy and lapse into repeating a ritual I’ve done before rather than creating something new. But I have learned that there’s very little more deadly to me than endless repetition. So when I’m tempted by the God of the Deadly Dull, I try to create something much more bizarre and perverted as a physical affirmation that I no longer choose to believe that rituals are supposed to be stultifying.

Do Some Affirmations

Perhaps you use them now. Perhaps they are new to you. Perhaps you think they are silly New Age hokum. If the latter is true, please change your mind about that. Affirmations are very powerful and useful.

An affirmation is a simple positive statement that you make about something that you want to create for yourself. It is stated in the present tense as though what you are affirming already exists in the present moment.

“I love myself exactly the way I am.”

“Everything is working out for my highest good and for the highest good of all concerned.”

“I am safe.”

“My income is constantly increasing.”

Every thought you think is creating your future
.

If you’re thinking, “I’m fat, ugly, and broke, and I’m never going to find a partner,” that’s what you’re creating in your life. If, on the other hand, you affirm, “I am attractive, prosperous, and lovable, and I only attract loving people into my world,” you will begin to create that reality. Very simple. Very powerful.

Throughout the remainder of this book, you will read example after example of affirmative language and behavior. You are completely in control of the style of language in the affirmations you wish to use. If you cannot imagine yourself saying, “I
am the source of my own love,” perhaps you could say, “My happiness is up to me.” If “I am a beautiful and loving person” makes you gag with self-consciousness, you might say, “I totally rock! I am a love magnet!” You get the idea. The point is that we must stop beating ourselves up with what we say. How many time a day do you hear yourself or someone else say something like “I can’t believe I did that. I am so stupid!” Or, when presented with the possibility of a raise or a promotion or a new lover: “Yeah, like that’ll actually happen!” So next time you hear yourself say or think something negative and insulting about yourself, try to stop, forgive yourself, and create its affirmative opposite: “I am intelligent, prosperous, loving, and loved.” Pretty soon you’ll notice that you’re treating yourself more gently and lovingly in all areas of your life.

A basic premise of Tantra is self-acceptance. Another is self-love. With these, you can create or change anything in your life. Your mind is either your most powerful ally or your worst enemy. The choice is yours.

How do you wish to use your mind?

What is it you want in your life and in your sex?

Will the thought you’ll think when you look up from this page be something you want to see happen in your life?

Get clear on what you really want and start talking and acting like it already exists, because on some level it already does; it just may not have fully manifested yet. The thoughts you think today create your tomorrow—so when tomorrow comes, would you rather be greeted with your fondest dream or your worst nightmare?

However, no matter how much you love yourself or how many affirmations you say, you cannot control what others do. Sometimes things happen that make you feel powerless and sad. Whether what happened was intentional on someone’s part or not, you always have the choice as to how you respond to it. If your lover leaves you, you can blame him or her for everything that’s wrong in your life; or you can be grateful that their departure has created room for the person you’d be much happier with. I have found that no matter how bleak or tragic the situation, there is always something to be grateful for. For example, even though I lost nearly two hundred friends and colleagues in the AIDS crisis, I am eternally grateful for all I learned about the power of unconditional love during those difficult years. I have even heard victims of sexual abuse say that they would not be as whole, happy, and powerful today without the skills and the self-awareness they acquired in their recovery.

Here’s a powerful use of affirmations worth noting: people who affirm that they are
survivors
of their sexual abuse subsequently are; they are no longer victims of it. They have not forgotten about the abuse, nor do they deny it happened. They have made a decision to no longer be victimized by it.
They have changed their minds
.

We can always change our minds, but there are situations in which we might not chose to change our behavior. A friend of mine was brutally abused by her stepfather as a child. One of his most abusive acts was to put a dog collar on her and chain her to a post in the backyard. My friend has done an astoundingly effective job of forgiving this man and transforming her life. But does she find bondage and domination play involving a leash and collar erotic? Hell no. She won’t even wear necklaces. None of us is under any obligation—spiritual or otherwise—to do things we don’t want to do “in order to grow as a human being.” In fact, saying no can be one of the most healing things we can do, especially in sex. (It’s only fair to note that I also know people who have consciously used BDSM as a powerful healing tool for their sexual abuse issues. What works for one person may not for someone else. It all comes down to making conscious choices and being willing to change one’s mind.)

Focus and Imagine

By changing your mind, I mean allowing your mind to expand so that it can accept more and more possibilities—what Science of Mind teacher Eric Pace calls the “Totality of Possibilities.” For example, having a breath orgasm is easy. It’s believing that one is possible that can be difficult.

Focused Awareness

Let’s look at how we want to use our minds in the practice of Tantra. The first principle is: energy follows thought. Let me show you how this works.

1. Close your eyes.
   
2. Put all your attention on the little finger of your right hand.
   
3. Send your breath there.
   
4. Visualize light from one hundred stars shining into this little finger.
   
5. Hear the sounds inside your finger.
   
6. Feel the blood pulse there.
   
7. Do this for a couple of minutes.
   

How does your little finger feel? Bigger, more awake, and more alive, right? Some people describe it as feeling as if their little finger is the only finger on their hand.

Two techniques you used in that little exercise were
focused awareness
(also called
attention
) and
imagination
. The use of the two of them led to
sensation
. You
felt
a change in your little finger. I call this technique FITYFI (fake it till you feel it), and I will be encouraging you to use it many times in the course of our erotic travels. Not only can FITYFI help you create sensation, it can also help you increase sensation. Now try this little trick on your clit. Or your cock. (Or for some of you, both!)

The technique of using your mind to focus awareness and move energy through the body is incredibly powerful, and it’s not limited to what you feel; it also applies to what you can do with another person. I tried a little experiment once while I was making love. (My lovers have come to accept that my research persona as a lover is both a blessing and a curse.) My lover was lying on her back. I was leaning over between her legs, tonguing her clit. She was enjoying it. I was busy writing the letters of the alphabet on her clit with my tongue (a little trick I picked up from the late comedian Sam Kinison—I owe ya, Sam). I began to visualize sexual energy traveling up her spine, over her head, down the front of her body to her clit, and up her back and around again. I was wrapping her in a kind of erotic egg of energy. She reacted almost instantly! Suddenly she began to moan and writhe, and just as suddenly, she was about to come. I had very deliberating not changed anything I was doing with my tongue and my hands had never moved.

What would happen if I stopped the visualization?
I wondered. Again, I did not change anything I was doing to her clit nor did I move my hands. But I stopped visualizing the circuit of energy I had been wrapping around her. Her energy fell like a stone. I resumed my energy circle. Zoom—back to moaning and writhing. I stopped again; her energy fell. The experiment over, I tongued, “Y-o-u c-a-n c-o-m-e n-o-w,” on her clit, and she did.

Make No Judgments, Make No Comparisons, and Delete Your Need to Understand

In both sex and life, I have frequently put myself in situations that have seemed crazy, weird, stupid, impossible, ridiculous, and even dangerous by the standards I grew up with. Had I listened to old judgments, I would never have experienced a breath orgasm, never made love with the fairies in the woods, never made a sexually explicit
film, never fist-fucked anyone, never licked whipped cream off a roomful of women … well, you get the idea. I would have missed a lot.

What’s more, it’s all too easy to compare ourselves and our experiences to others. When I first went to an ecstasy breathing circle, I felt hopelessly inadequate. Everyone was breathing rhythmically and dancing around like children playing a game familiar to everyone but me. I didn’t know the breath, the dance, or what I was supposed to feel. I felt clumsy, ignorant, and inadequate. Everyone seemed to know what they were doing, and everyone seemed to be having a better time than I was. The facilitator of the circle sensed my unease. Who knows—maybe he’d matched his breath to mine. He took my hand, and he breathed with me and danced with me for a couple of minutes.

“That’s it, you’re doing great. This is your first time, isn’t it?” he said. “Don’t try to do what anyone else is doing. Just enjoy yourself. Be in your own experience. That’s the only goal.”

I felt like I’d been released from a cage. Suddenly I was free. I danced any old way I wanted and breathed any old way I wanted and got bigger and wilder and happier—and by the end of the evening, I felt ecstatic indeed. Plus, I wound up making several new friends who were attracted to my sense of abandon and silliness.

It’s easy to avoid trying something new because you don’t understand how it works or how it
could
work. Many seemingly impossible things happen when we start raising sexual energy. Peoples’ faces appear to change. We see, hear, smell, and feel things that may or may not “really” be there. We have sudden bursts of emotion or sensation that appear to have no cause or connection to the feeling preceding it or following it. Sometimes we see the Divine. It’s so unlike our everyday reality, it’s like we’ve entered a parallel universe. Furthermore, who would have ever thought that getting blindfolded or tied up or whipped could produce deeply satisfying feelings of peace and contentment? Or that some breathing and a few yoga-like positions could make you feel like you’d been blasted to another galaxy? It’s easy to be skeptical. Easy, but not smart. Nothing great has ever been achieved by affirming, “That’s ridiculous; it won’t work.” Lots of things are ridiculous and many of them work. So try something ridiculous. What’s the worst that can happen? You might look foolish? Get used to it. We all wind up looking foolish once in a while, especially during sex. As my dear friend and frequent teaching partner, Chester Mainard, says, “Blushing is good for the complexion. It brings all that nice blood up into the face to nourish the skin.” So start signing up for some foolishness facials and watch your bliss level rise.