Everyday Tantra
3 ways to approach life with a Tantric attitude
Tantra is a spiritual practice that brings immense pleasure, joy and fulfilment to your life. It’s also a way to experience the truth and reality of yourself and the world around you. It is a fascinating journey to the core of life, and it starts exactly where you are.
It is often not so easy for us to be present and aware of ourselves; lost in our heads, preoccupied, stressed, we often engage life on autopilot and as a result feel disconnected, numb and not really alive. Tantra offers techniques and skills that allow life to unfold towards a higher state of fulfilment, meaning and deep happiness.
Here are three ways to connect to life and ourselves, allowing us to approach life with a Tantric attitude:
1. Bring awareness to every experience. Rather than being on autopilot, aim to be fully present and aware of each experience. Tantric awareness is when you simultaneously become aware of the object of awareness and the one who is aware of it — you. It is not just being conscious of the nice taste you are experiencing, it is also being aware of how that nice taste makes you feel. When you smell the flower, also notice how that beautiful scent makes you feel.
2. Master your desires. But without suppressing them! Almost all spiritual traditions agree that desire is one of the biggest forces in the universe, a force that can move the stars. Tantra invites us to bring this power into our everyday lives.
Desires are there to tell us something about ourselves and help us grow — not for us to be consumed by them. When you have a desire, pause. Don’t jump to fulfil it and also do not ignore it. This attitude allows you to harness the power of the desire and gives you a choice; perhaps you fulfil it, perhaps not.
3. Regain control of your life without suppression. Continuously shift your attention from the experience to the one experiencing it (you). Bring yourself with everything you are into the light of your awareness. If something disturbs you; ask yourself why it disturbs you? Usually we turn the attention to who or what disturbs us and try to make it go away. We are then dealing with something we cannot necessarily control and that therefore continues to disturb us.
The controls are not where we expect: we cannot rely on removing something exterior — we have to take control from the inside. We might not be able to make the noise go away, but we can transform the inner set up, so the noise no longer disturbs us. In other words, you cannot always control external circumstances, but you can control your reaction.
Co-authored by Tantra teachers Advaitananda and Maria Porsfelt of the Tara Yoga Centre. Join their weekly Tantra course, the most in-depth and extensive Tantra course worldwide, now available online as well as in person. Visit: tarayogacentre.co.uk
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