tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-34853088014013209552024-03-19T06:05:28.475+02:00Leandra's JournalExperiences, thoughts, teachings, personal messages...Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-15644733084598114222015-04-12T01:37:00.002+02:002015-04-27T17:28:04.011+02:00On turmoil and crisis, Existence and change....and the joy of grey hairs and ageing!<span style="font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCl_NZKVYAzjQISwqZjUweOYAvH_myHryJE4A2Nq3d90rsz2SmxVxnNodL_jkgrU0k8IvXi94_Ervqf84vXHshc9kBf_G6TFvMDNXls2AU6eg12x3XWAJ5h4574scUKowXOFepSDJ5VQU/s1600/ever_graceful_mother_goddess_durga_or82sm.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCl_NZKVYAzjQISwqZjUweOYAvH_myHryJE4A2Nq3d90rsz2SmxVxnNodL_jkgrU0k8IvXi94_Ervqf84vXHshc9kBf_G6TFvMDNXls2AU6eg12x3XWAJ5h4574scUKowXOFepSDJ5VQU/s1600/ever_graceful_mother_goddess_durga_or82sm.jpg" height="200" width="140" /></span></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">The Goddess Durga, the embodiment of all the feminine Hindu deities,<br />loving and powerful, who combats all evil and wrong doing.</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">At last I am finally able to take up sending regular <em>Durga Tantra School</em> and the Tantra Sacred Massage<em>™ </em>newsletters as well as updating my websites and writing and posting here in Leandra's Journal. I apologise for the long pause in communication. Since my last newsletter many months ago, my life has been in a progressive process of change, some quite dramatic, some really subtle. Not knowing what direction my life would take, both professionally and personally, I found it impossible to write a newsletter, write articles and plan workshops and retreats. To those of you who have waited faithfully so long, as well as all the newly signed up people, I send a big thank you for waiting and I hope it will prove to be worthwhile.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The year 2014 was a year of tremendous upheaval and change for me. Looking back, I recognise it as a year of the removal of all aspects of life that were eating away my energy and preventing me from moving forward. This included people who were draining me with their behavioural patterns, as well as my own personal behavioural patterns that inhibited my real self finding form and materialising. For some time, I had been in a constant state of crisis. I thought I needed to retire from working life completely and pursue other personal interests that had been neglected in order to find serenity.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">In the midst of this, in September, I was diagnosed with a mango sized tumour that needed urgent removal and as a result I had major surgery from which I ended up needing three whole months of daily nursing care to recover physically. The long recovery time gifted me with a period of rest and time feel into what my life had become. I found much that needed changing.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">A further period of nearly three months was needed before a vision of which direction to take and where I wanted to go emerged. In fact it took me by surprise when it emerged, not as an idea but quite practically. Individually, a number of people arrived on my contacted me all requesting training in <em>Tantra Sacred Massage™.</em> Suddenly I had a small group of dedicated participants for this training and found myself busy facilitating it to my deep enjoyment.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The full emergence of the vision of where I would be going, came in the form of an exceptionally well trained and experienced facilitator, who participated in the training and joined the <em>Durga Tantra School</em> with the passion of the masculine in full form: the actor, writer, director, voice and drama coach - Jason Potgieter! </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">As I write this, over the Easter weekend in a small secluded cottage on the top of a mountain in the Swartland, we are busy formulating the direction in which the <em>Durga Tantra</em> <em>School</em> will be mobilising very soon this year. It appears that without much of my own doing, the direction and the space for new growth has emerged and I am now committed to this going forward once again.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">After the operation, I felt an inner and outer vitality that had long been missing, it however had no direction. Now, the masculine provided the inspiration and navigated the direction! The will, the desire and a deep longing to continue the work I had been doing for the past 12 years is once again strong. The dance of the masculine and feminine, when they dance well together in total support of each other is beautiful - strong and graceful at the same time. I had lost the vision I once had for <em>Durga Tantra School</em> over the last years and Jason knew what was needed to revive it again.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: Trebuchet MS;">In addition to this, the<em><span style="color: black;"> participants of the Tantra Sacred Massage™</span></em> <span style="color: black;">practitioner training took up their work and provided further support of directed growth. Things began looking really good again!</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The removal of the tumour became a symbol for what was needed in order for something new to emerge which could enable me to move whole heartedly back into all levels of my life. Space was needed into which that which was new could grow. When the space was there, growth began.</span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">During the months of hospitalisation and home nursing, I had to neglect my usual hairdressing visits and missed out keeping up my hairstyle and dyed red hair colour! As my hair grew and some previously hidden grey tones became visible, I became curious about my present real hair colour, something I hadn't seen for years! This curiosity was accompanied by a deeper embracing of my physical aging. Funnily enough, I had not had long hair since my late twenties and now, at 63 I found myself wearing a pony tail again...only with some lovely natural grey strands (well quite a few actually), which I found I really liked! It was as if a re-birthing had taken place. This was an embracing of a new me, not a return to who I had been before all the turmoil and the operation. Rather a new identity, not completely new, not completely formed, but one that incorporates the wisdom and clarity that perhaps only age can bring. I feel wonderful with this new me and I celebrate this with the new profile photo of how I look today.</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thus it has been all my life, in crucial transformative phases, when things feel devoid of inspiration and direction, Existence, the Divine, Father-Mother God steps in and nudges me forward, offering exactly what is needed to facilitate the necessary internal growth that has to precede external expression. This is in itself a very tantric process. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thank you Existence for your never ending abundance and the lessons placed in my path. Since embracing the path of Tantra whole heartedly some 13 years ago, I have a way of experiencing life that takes me intensely into the depth of my very being while incorporating all of my body, my senses, emotions and spirituality. </span></span><br />
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">Thank you all of you for your encouragement, your patience and continued interest in the work I do. </span></span></div>
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<span style="color: dimgrey;"><span style="color: #444444; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">As always, I send all the readers much love,<br />Your Leandra</span></span><br />
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<a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/" target="_blank">Durga Tantra School</a><br /><a href="http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/" target="_blank">Tantra Sacred Massage<em><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS;">™</span></em></a><br />
<a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/info-centre/newsletter.php" target="_blank">Newsletter registration</a> <br /><a href="http://www.meetup.com/CelebrateTantra-CapeTown/" target="_blank">Celebrate Tantra MeetUp</a><br />
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<br />Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0Cape Town, South Africa-33.9248685 18.424055299999964-34.7681915 17.133161799999964 -33.081545500000004 19.714948799999963tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-81486496965488326352013-09-19T02:52:00.002+02:002015-04-26T03:17:03.638+02:00Awareness of the obvious things in life - the weather!<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJYDZv2MwVWJLbiwQGaT3t_FvSMRBPs6eJpF7cIocQk27Bf8wr8ZUtsZ64pjOJY279mMSph1Fz9lCupPiV3I62j5s4uVfR3m-l0_FHMMHMSOpBCHaLqVNaHHsOKHGE-iC0VPoYSTqps60/s1600/AfterRain+-+Copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJYDZv2MwVWJLbiwQGaT3t_FvSMRBPs6eJpF7cIocQk27Bf8wr8ZUtsZ64pjOJY279mMSph1Fz9lCupPiV3I62j5s4uVfR3m-l0_FHMMHMSOpBCHaLqVNaHHsOKHGE-iC0VPoYSTqps60/s200/AfterRain+-+Copy.jpg" height="200" width="136" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">After the Rain (Tempera), Ma Anand Leandra 1985</td></tr>
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I was back in my house in Pennington last month and fortunate to experience some the warmest days this spring right up to 30 degrees! Then I returned to a Cape Town burdened with immense rain, wind and a heavy cold front. What polarities! </span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">The photo I chose for this a post is of a painting I did many years ago called "After The Rain". The inspiration for this painting was a trip to a retreat venue outside of Hamburg, Germany (where I lived at the time). It was a Friday evening and the road was very busy. In the pouring rain, the street lights reflected in the wet tar of the road, and the car lights created interesting effects distorting everything. My husband was driving and I had time to take in the reflections. Once the retreat started (it was a creative art retreat in which we were participating), we were asked to create a painting of our impressions of our journey to the retreat venue with simple wall (tempera) paints. </span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />I still love this painting, when I look at it, it brings up a vivid memory of that road journey that Friday night. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">After being back in South Africa for quite some years, I notice that, although entirely different to the weather of Germany, we have a wonderful diversity of weather and vegetation here at home!<br />I experience the different shades of weather that our vibrant Geographic's offer us quite intensely; on the one hand it is physically tangible through the senses, on the other hand our impression of it is emotionally induced atmospherically. What is more, I enjoy all of it alike - hot and dry, cold and wet, bleak and colourful, still and windy, quiet and thundery. I love the changes evoked within me, how I am taken to different parts of my soul, to differences experiences within my spirit.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">I have always loved nature and felt a particularly close affinity with the wind and the early evenings as the day recedes. Experiencing all that the colours of the sky, the quality of the seasons, the heat and the storms, always brings me back to my spiritual nature.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">In Tantra we use the senses for meditation purposes, to learn and experience absolute presence in the now, using the physical as a gateway to the spiritual.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Inner depth is not about collecting knowledge of spiritual things, it is not accessing a certain vocabulary, reading particular books or aligning one's self with a modern-day guru. It is about the individual experience of many now's. It is about being fully in your life as you live it day by day, hour by hour and even minute by minute, elevating so called mundane things to higher and higher levels of perception.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">Weather, being something central to our lives that we experience on a daily basis, is a beautiful way to tune into and connect with our senses. However, so often, we take weather for granted...or more frequently, we are irritated by it, complaining in summer that it's too hot, or in winter that it's too cold... or when it rains, wishing it would stop. </span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"><br />The question is: are we able to use these obvious things in life as sensory experiences that bring us into the now? I believe that if we cultivate using our senses, with regards to all of our repetitive every day life events, we learn to be authentic. The physical senses do not know how to lie, our mind so often does.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">What a pity it would be, to let all this pass by unnoticed of the chance it offers us. Amidst all the problems facing our country we should never forget just how blessed we are with the vast canvas of nature and weather surrounding us at all times, throughout the year.</span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #000033; font-family: "Lucida Sans Unicode","sans-serif"; font-size: 8.5pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-ZA; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: Calibri; mso-fareast-language: EN-ZA; mso-fareast-theme-font: minor-latin;">With love,<br />Leandra<br />
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<!--[endif]--></span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0Cape Town, South Africa-33.9248685 18.424055299999964-34.7681915 17.133161799999964 -33.081545500000004 19.714948799999963tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-72616924447728625492013-08-08T00:00:00.000+02:002013-08-09T06:06:53.475+02:00ZEGG, Center for Experimental Culture Design...<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHBmMgxy9E0jdnwmqJaPXsxsdTidJ-Dd8iDuCp-UmBytLviKnuWNHtTn_vB5RQAjjTAaf9ggxtIEnpiHzvqho1TLIFU8FZoxWrEg4S0kxSYiRvyKMLUfPNgYnLnfsOBInGwZJVG_G4xmc/s1600/ZEGG+Campus.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHBmMgxy9E0jdnwmqJaPXsxsdTidJ-Dd8iDuCp-UmBytLviKnuWNHtTn_vB5RQAjjTAaf9ggxtIEnpiHzvqho1TLIFU8FZoxWrEg4S0kxSYiRvyKMLUfPNgYnLnfsOBInGwZJVG_G4xmc/s320/ZEGG+Campus.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Campus at ZEGG, Bad Belzig, Germany</td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em></em></span> <span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>“Love is the home of the divine on earth and the quality
that makes us human beings. </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>We want to create ways of living that integrate
these sources </em><em>in a conscious and positive way. Consciousness in Love’ </em><em>is in
this sense, </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>an all-encompassing cultural work </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>to heal</em><em> </em><em>these sources of our
life. </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>A peaceful culture </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>is rooted </em><em>in </em><em>solidarity among </em></span><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><em>men and women.”<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">T</span>his is how the ZEGG community introduce themselves on their
website. I had the privilege of holding my first tantric weekend retreat in
Germany at ZEGG last month. It was my first visit to ZEGG, a community that
fascinated me from the moment I first heard about them some years ago. A number of
my German friends have attended seminars there or been on their annual Summer
Camp. Some had even spent time there on extended working retreats.
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<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Situated on 15 hectares of light woodland in in the
Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse in Bad Belzig, a beautiful country town about a 2 hour
drive south-west of Berlin, ZEGG - Centre for Experimental Culture Design, been going for 20 years now, so one could say that the original vision has been tried and tested. They understand themselves as an international community and conference centre whose aim it is to develop and implement practical models for a socially and ecologically sustainable way of living.<br /><br />Today ZEGG is an 100 strong tantric community
committed to developing new ways of harmonious living in
a community. The process of finding this harmonious living in a community,
necessitates the individual members being on a journey with each other. It takes dedicated individuals to
make this work and am not surprised that men and women who are drawn to drawn to Tantra, who are willing to confront their conditioning about relationships, sexuality and life in general, are the ones who have the dedication it takes to do this.</span><br />
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<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">“Our community is a
living organism, </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br /><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">constantly changing a</span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">ccording to the needs of its members.</span></i></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Our
visitors too </i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Calibri;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">are a part of this organism.”</span> </span></i></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><strong></strong><br />Over the years, ZEGG has experimented with different ways of
organisation and management, today the community is organised into independent working areas: the kitchen, conference business, children's house, garden and site crew. For financial decisions with a wider impact, there is a management circle embedded within a sociocratic structure. The management circle is made up of two representatives from each of the working areas who meet regularly to reflect on current developments and prepare for strategic decisions. <br />
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The project has been developed into a totally
self-sufficient ecological system. One hectare of farmland has been dedicated to
an organic garden from which almost all the food including fruit and herbs for
dining room is grown. For heating and hot water needs, they have
environmentally friendly wood chip- and log-fired heating plants and several
co-generation (CHP) plants. Electricity is produced by a photovoltaic system on
the roofs different buildings and waste water is treated in their own
constructed wetland sewage treatment plant. <br /><br />
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">For me, the most interesting part is their tantric understanding of sexuality and relationships. They also experiment with and develop different
ways of relating on a personal level. Thus different forms of relationships are
being lived in the community, with various interest groups supporting
individuals in the process.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: right;">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">“Many people see the
issues of love and sexuality as exclusively personal affairs and </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">try to solve
them in private or within the framework of therapy. We see love as a political
issue because social and cultural changes are needed for love to grow.”</span></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Needless to say, many
of the seminars held there are based on or around tantric and spiritual themes. There is even a dedicated oil
room, consisting of a very large square 60 cm high oil bath for the special
hot oil ritual that certain schools offer. In fact, while I was facilitating there, I was delighted to meet the lovely Mara Fricke-Wirth of the Secret of Tantra school, who was facilitating a woman's retreat for this ritual.</span> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Before I tell you what my favourite discovery was, I’d like
to share with you the extent of this community which is essentially a village.
</span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1k53FgEWEU3Kw8N5kfu7yDDQp_9fGRBsnmSJETITKDWFOWMB1nrrhSRHVt8AfknIihX4mx6E5WIceIJcwbUTGkAcQ8S0nZiWndhWYX2nG-1DOQ0zrrUop-3ZG-l9AT6Lh6hKj40IMTzY/s1600/ZEGG.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1k53FgEWEU3Kw8N5kfu7yDDQp_9fGRBsnmSJETITKDWFOWMB1nrrhSRHVt8AfknIihX4mx6E5WIceIJcwbUTGkAcQ8S0nZiWndhWYX2nG-1DOQ0zrrUop-3ZG-l9AT6Lh6hKj40IMTzY/s320/ZEGG.jpg" width="201" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The ZEGG village layout</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Centrally situated is a large round paved area called the Campus, used for
gatherings of all kinds as well as being the gathering place in case of a
fire.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There is also a fire pond which
can be swam in, a volleyball court, an almost Olympic sized swimming pool which
has been turned into a huge eco pool and there are wonderful walks in the wood
where there is also a stream. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The three storied guesthouse, called the
Hotel, houses the dining hall and kitchen as well as accommodation for
seminar participants and visitors. Further accommodation is available for campers or in two dormitories connected to a couple of the seminar rooms. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br />An extremely large central building called the Uni (short
for university) houses a variety of seminar rooms and the Aula, a
beautiful hall with a semi-circle stage for concerts and other large indoor events. The
Children’s House is a separate building close by. Businesses in the ZEGG
village, include an internet shop, a bicycle rental shop and a gift shop
selling self-made ceramics, textiles, jewellery and other gifts. A variety of
workshops and various commercial premises, a media and office centre and two
art studios are also situated in various buildings. <br />
<br /><span style="font-family: Calibri;">Of course there are a variety of small and larger houses for the community members, most are in the form of collectives or communes with a number of people sharing a house. </span><br />
</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8mbtXVwpJXRTylLHdJsietsFHjos1uguVlntO9HuRHsZYsQX2h_RiTHFEwk7xa_YchHFVbAQum7zlRtRvcmMb6LVr3OLNn07YB5limInvjwC2HemuX_ez5pXTDbqAjAkKHFTQITTz1hI/s1600/ZEGG+village+center.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8mbtXVwpJXRTylLHdJsietsFHjos1uguVlntO9HuRHsZYsQX2h_RiTHFEwk7xa_YchHFVbAQum7zlRtRvcmMb6LVr3OLNn07YB5limInvjwC2HemuX_ez5pXTDbqAjAkKHFTQITTz1hI/s1600/ZEGG+village+center.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Village Square</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><br />One of the
sweetest places is the village square with its quaint village pup, open till
late, where I enjoyed a drink and a chat at the end of my working day which was
usually around 11pm. Of course it being summer, I was able to sit outside
sharing the space with a community of mosquitoes. Thank goodness for mosquito
repellent!</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Being a spiritual tantric community, there are also special outdoor
places for rituals: a beautiful Place of Gratefulness with a “ceiling” of
colourful ribbons tied from tree to tree, and a special space in the woods for
women and another for men. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">So you may now ask, is there still more? Yes, my favourite
discovery, making this community really special to me, is the fact that they
have three separate and individual “love houses” for the sole purpose of love-making. There
is a notice on the door saying discussions need to stay outside, the space is
solely for lovemaking. Sexuality is an integral part of life. That is the way
it should be. And because it is sacred, it requires a dedicated space. Something I teach the couples I work with. The bedroom is for going to sleep. If you don't have the space, you need to transform your bedroom into a sacred space for your lovemaking is what I preach! It does make a difference. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxXjimPUQQORETdZIM_0vmCDf29SgddniX82GUoqb7yt3G-n2qfwAg0SDRDGITilldGFB4wcunDiMU8beubNADnhuQ_4RT0-RSojnIa6UvHDiXMoUpDcu0NajUoTvFSQ2Jgne-lV7VHQ0/s1600/mulch1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="132" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxXjimPUQQORETdZIM_0vmCDf29SgddniX82GUoqb7yt3G-n2qfwAg0SDRDGITilldGFB4wcunDiMU8beubNADnhuQ_4RT0-RSojnIa6UvHDiXMoUpDcu0NajUoTvFSQ2Jgne-lV7VHQ0/s200/mulch1.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mulched fields</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The aims of these people are high. They still have many
plans, for example to extend the Uni building, creating more living space for community members for example. Will they achieve it all? Probably, going by </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">what they have achieved
already. So far 3million EUROS has been </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">put into the project. They have a very
large support community </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">from all over the world who come on working visits,
helping to </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">keep the grounds in shape, or supporting the harvesting and</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;"> cooking,
cleaning and other practical things. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">The entry process for those wanting to become community members, is quite stringent. One has to show
dedication and commitment over quite a period of time in order to be taken in as a permanent member. It starts off with working visits to get to know the community and ends with a
6-week course on community living and organisation. I have a number of friends
who would consider joining, but the logistics of organising the time away from
work to do all that is quite daunting. As for me, I really like having my own
place and navigating my life on my own, but I can't deny that it does attract and inspire me and I certainly will go back and I hope to be able to facilitate there again. It is such a wonderful
place to be. </span></div>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><em><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>“Community is a lifestyle in which </em><em>the healing
of love can take place in a stable surrounding.”<o:p></o:p></em></span></div>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">On paper things sound so much easier that they really are. I do not doubt for a minute that this takes very hard on the part of the individuals that make up this community. It requires a huge portion of willingness to be on such an intensive journey with each other. It takes dedicated individuals to carry through such a vision. I don’t wonder for one moment that this would be the result of people on the path of Tantra. </span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt;">
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMUlQ7bec2tPfu1NOTe2dJ1NMgau1J3azOhl8QjfQPo_5JGGjuLy4WdjK6mnZSdnWR7fLHXWwEOQf3tXAjlPW0fTo5BmNlJceDDj_WX4OAf3N1jR7UGPLfqTyhcxxWmO9PMuuRq3YdAI/s1600/Zen+garden.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiFMUlQ7bec2tPfu1NOTe2dJ1NMgau1J3azOhl8QjfQPo_5JGGjuLy4WdjK6mnZSdnWR7fLHXWwEOQf3tXAjlPW0fTo5BmNlJceDDj_WX4OAf3N1jR7UGPLfqTyhcxxWmO9PMuuRq3YdAI/s200/Zen+garden.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Zen garden at the Uni</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I was only there for not quite three days and really busy
facilitating </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">my Tantric Fire Couple’s Retreat, however the special atmosphere
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">and energy of the place is impossible to avoid. Just spending time </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">in the atmosphere of these people who have worked
so hard at </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">creating a sustainable version of their collective and individual
</span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">dreams, is rewarding…and healing. </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">It just goes to show what we</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">humans are
capable of when we try, when we give our best trying </span><span style="font-family: Calibri;">to create something new and
different. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I will be writing more about my time and the facilitating I did last month in Berlin. I met such interesting people and had wonderful experiences with some of the fabulous tantric community there. Watch this space.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">I close this article with one of the most beautiful pieces of text I found on the ZEGG website. Take it to heart, it is true, it does work exactly like that. This is how I transformed after being initiated into Tantra. I underline every word below...and add to that: </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;"><em>Not only will we have more to give, we will also have more joy to experience and share.</em></span><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Calibri;"></span></em><br />
<span style="font-family: Calibri;">Namaste<br />Leandra</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="font-family: Times;">"</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">If communication
about love is cultivated, love can <br />become free of the fear of abandonment, lies
and pretence. <br />The bigger the social and mental/spiritual context for love is, <br />the more </span></i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Times, "Times New Roman", serif;">we are able to handle difficulties in a playful and unattached way,
<br />the less we depend on this one moment of fulfilment,<br /> the less we tend to
accusations, <br />the more truth we will risk, and<br />the more power and love we have
to give to the world.”</span></i><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 8pt; text-align: left;">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">ZEGG Website: </span></span><a href="http://www.zegg.de/en/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://www.zegg.de/en/</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> (English & German)<br />Secret of Tantra - School of Integral Tantra: </span><a href="http://www.secret-of-tantra.de/"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;">http://www.secret-of-tantra.de/</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> (German only)</span></div>
Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-23520372753512307942013-07-01T23:57:00.002+02:002015-04-26T03:15:42.310+02:00Letting go<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXupy7CVvbUStNUdae9AaQDzYLjqACHa2AteBTPak8vZfB-V45IvcYFJ7WL7vtLg3Oxq7uCMDUbYeczRVC7XIw-hUcD6Rs9faAQOGXJERF135LuNRYlxrVbdVzGTygGep6r9lAjl5MxTA/s960/Pink+flower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXupy7CVvbUStNUdae9AaQDzYLjqACHa2AteBTPak8vZfB-V45IvcYFJ7WL7vtLg3Oxq7uCMDUbYeczRVC7XIw-hUcD6Rs9faAQOGXJERF135LuNRYlxrVbdVzGTygGep6r9lAjl5MxTA/s320/Pink+flower.jpg" height="240" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
Letting go - what exactly does that mean? When do we need to let go? What happens when we don't? How do I let go?<br />
<br />
There are many things in life that we need to learn to let go of. It is a never ending process throughout our lives - needing to let go of situations, memories, things and people. Sometimes we even need to let go of ourselves, let go of who we planned to be, or who we think we are, in order to accommodate change and inner growth. We all seem to experience quite a bit of this in our lives and know how hard it sometimes can be. <br />
<br />
Letting go in its self implies that we are holding onto something. We are holding on, it's not holding us, not sticking to us, not glued to us. Letting go IS the solution, we’d be rid of whatever uncomfortable feelings we’re experiencing... yet we linger longer in the "holding onto". Why?<br />
<br />
Holding onto something already known appears safer. At least I know it already; at least this horrible feeling I am having is nothing new, I know it. The known, no matter how difficult or uncomfortable, offers a safety net, whereas letting go....no idea where that will take me. What happens then, when I’ve let go? The space left over is empty; there is nothing there automatically filling it when the letting go has taken place. This seems to be extremely threatening to us. <br />
<br />
Empty space. Free energy. Spare time. This should excite us, but it seldom does. It implies becoming active, it is I who needs to fill it. And so, I feel, we have the crux of the matter. The fear is <i>to be active</i>, creatively forming who and where we are in our lives. It boils down to have the “<i>creator power</i>”, the realisation that we are both created and creator, at the same time. What we create is what we experience.<br />
<br />
It’s a lot easier to just leave it all up to circumstances, bad luck, out of my power. In that we hold no responsibility. To become active is also to take responsibility. And thus by learning to let go, we learn to be responsible for filling all the gaps, all the open spaces, all the undirected energy. It means we become creator of what is.<br />
<br />
How to let go? This is difficult to describe. What works for one person, does not necessarily work for another. I personally may go through a tense period of almost letting go but still holding on, walking on the edge so to say. It is excruciating, a horrible space to be in. I feel like I sway from one side to the other; from letting go to holding on; from open expectation of something unknown to the trustful known; from insecurity to security. <br />
<br />
This in itself is a very tantric process. Experiencing the polarities of your inner experience and swaying from one side to the other in full awareness of exactly where you are energetically. For me it is like the swaying becomes faster and faster as my awareness reduces the distance between the two opposite poles, faster and faster until it is a simple vibration. Zizzzzzzzzz....and then that nothing; the space appears to simply be there. Looking back to what I was holding onto now appears weird perhaps. I was holding on to THAT? Strange, it feels so different now. And life continues. If our awareness was totally spot on, we will now fill the space with something else, with creativeness, with the energy of who we really are.<br />
<br />
Unfortunately, many of us don’t go through this process. We end up imagining we’ve let go when all we’ve done is immediately picked up something else to hold on to it inexactly the same way. It takes courage to move across the edge, to take sides with the openness, with the space. I encourage you all, who are holding on to something you know you need to let go of, to take that step. And then, start creating in the void, in the space that has been left. Become the creator of the created. It is actually wonderful! <br />
<br />
Julia Butterfly Hill puts it beautifully: <br />
<i>“As I started to picture the trees in the storm, the answer began to dawn on me. The trees in the storm don't try to stand up straight and tall and erect. They allow themselves to bend and be blown with the wind. They understand the power of letting go. Those trees and those branches that try too hard to stand up strong and straight are the ones that break.”</i><br />
<br />
And in the words of Anaïs Nin:<br />
<i>“And the day came when the risk it took to remain tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.”</i><br />
<br />
I wish all of us a blossoming of self, an opening and blooming of many buds in our lives. I wish us all the courage to become what we are, what we have been all the time. As a result of holding on so tight, we have not noticed that it is all already there! Our fear is unwarranted. Whatever it is we need to let go of, the new is already there. All we need is the space to feel it, to experience it, to become it.<br />
<br />
<br />
Namaste<br />
LeandraMa Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-56190978681626744192013-06-02T17:32:00.001+02:002015-04-26T03:19:08.303+02:00Ups & downs, back & forth, to & fro!<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #333333;"></span> </div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNYjExMagZwzlM7DvielcE_jhcGP12M0WXUOgFDEceytx1ucNu4LplV6GFXV6nqLhPy9RCRIPxWqFruGuI13GpIcZhhvvQZzY3hMOvCnMS1V05paFC5zn4MiyUBw5w4HVOdOZabzO2SA/s1600/heinbuche_snow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUNYjExMagZwzlM7DvielcE_jhcGP12M0WXUOgFDEceytx1ucNu4LplV6GFXV6nqLhPy9RCRIPxWqFruGuI13GpIcZhhvvQZzY3hMOvCnMS1V05paFC5zn4MiyUBw5w4HVOdOZabzO2SA/s320/heinbuche_snow.jpg" height="255" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Heinbuche in the Snow - Ma Anand Leandra<br />(taken in Germany many years ago)</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"></span><span style="color: #660000;"> </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: x-small;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There has been a lot of upheaval in the last months but also a great deal of
development. While this was on the go, I did not really know how to write, or what to write about. I
was so full of dealing with the events being catapulted into my professional life, that I felt totally uninspired to put word to paper. <br /><br />For me, writing is a
process that orders the mind, putting thoughts into meaningful
place more so than verbalising thoughts can. Writing only happens when I am ready to put it all together, when I am ready to structure a jungle of thoughts, feelings and ideas into a few sentences. In fact, for me writing can happen when some form of order is already there. I have learnt, that if I wait it out, allowing my thoughts free reign to come and go, back and forth, to and fro, the clarity begins to emerge. This is, of course, greatly helped by a friends listening to chaos in my head for hours on end. Thank you friends!</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Structures I had put in place to accommodate new practitioners seemed to be crumbling after only a few wonderful months of running smoothly. As these structures
crumbled, new doors were opening wide and I was not sure how to respond. I went into a kind of
spiritual incubator, a warm waiting, an evolving space within me, at the same
time trying to keep outwardly warm as the wet, windy winter hit Cape Town.
I was re-thinking the structures that had at first seemed so good. Existence appeared
to be telling me: "the way things are simply has no substance". </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As process
intensified, Hari pointed out it was exactly the 9 days of Navariti, a Hindu
religious festival devoted to the Divine Mother Durga in all her 9 forms.
Durga represents the furious powers of all the male gods and is the ferocious
protector of the righteous and the destroyer of all evil. Durga is the great
Mother, the epitome of the Divine Feminine and it felt very relevant that which
was not good, was being destroyed. </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The timing was perfect: the structures I had
so believed in were crashing, this and my subsequent process reflected exactly
what the festival is about. Out of the rubble at my feet, newness would emerge,
and it would be clearer than before.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I cannot say that the process has been completed, but it has evolved enough for me to be able to write about it. What I have learnt is that I need to put more emphasis on the quality of the training of Tantra Sacred Massage practitioners in order to get the quality of work I am wanting for the practice. Simply put: the training was too short. I had compromised my better knowledge of what it takes to do this work in order to accommodate what I called "South African circumstances", namely that many individuals who wanted to come into Tantra Sacred Massage practice did not appear have the money to pay for a lengthy training, nor the time to take off work. While these circumstances have not changed, a slightly different way of facilitating the training is emerging. It will certainly entail a longer and more detailed mentoring period than in the past.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So while a number of practitioners left the affiliate program, some new tantra practitioners walked into the space left behind, bringing fresh energy and new ideas. You will hear more about this in the next few months as it all emerges.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is what I can say now:</span><br />
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<li><span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantra Sacred Massage(TM)<span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"> has become a registered trademark. Only certified practitioners will be able to use the name and offer our massages, which those of you who have been for sessions will know, are very specific and authentic Ayurveda based tantric massages, making our work quite unique, not only here in South Africa, but from what I hear from visiting clients/students, world wide. More info: <a href="http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/pages/newsletter.php" target="_blank">Tantra Sacred Massage Website...</a></span></span></span></li>
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<li><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We have now formally started the gay branch of tantric work and have joined forces with Tantra4GayMen UK, an established school of Tantra run by Jason. Hari and Leon will be the force behind Tantra4GayMen SA and have great ideas of what they want to do. It will take time to emerge and during the next few months you'll hear more. For the time being, for those who wish to know more, please join our Facebook group: <a href="http://www.facebook.com/groups/gaytantrasa/" target="_blank">Tantra4GayMen SA</a></span></span></li>
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</span></ul>
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There is more being conceived at the moment but I'm not ready to birth the new plans yet - they will come into being next year and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">include bringing out international facilitators with some really interesting trainings.</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small; mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I have written about my process because this is what happens to all of us. Life brings ups and downs all the time. I get asked what has changed since becoming tantric? The ups and downs have not changed - they certainly continue. I have changed, that is what is different. I understand drawbacks, failure, difficulties as opportunities to grow. I understand that Existence pushes you to see things you have not yet seen and the circumstances created force you to understand it all in a different, positive way. I am not afraid of self-criticism, I want to recognise where I have gone wrong and have no</span> <span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">desire to uphold a construct of who I am in order not to feel disappointment and pain. I now like to take the hint and change my ways again and again. Nothing has to be perfect or final, and indeed it cannot. There is no finality to the process of living our lives. While our humanity dictates a beginning and an end, it is just the beginning and end to a particular journey. And what a journey it is, as difficult as it seems at times, it's enthralling, wondrous and vibrant!</span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Much love to you all,<br />Leandra</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If you would like regular info of events etc., please join our newsletter: <a href="http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/pages/newsletter.php" target="_blank">Tantra Sacred Massage/Durga Tantra School Newsletter....</a></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Verdana;">And visit: the <a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/" target="_blank">Durga Tantra School website....</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Calibri; mso-bidi-theme-font: minor-latin;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Calibri;"></span></span></span><br />Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-10597195303292682902013-02-09T23:39:00.001+02:002013-08-09T05:55:23.358+02:00What role does sexuality play in Tantra?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqw5cXls8Ba4YMfRXm_qMIGchwAXdfYxe5XfkArxp0AxvMysej8qi_ACJUFFDjhd_9Plt0SJX10oe7OKIuPrs0NmTG3wJ9QP5EZvqqr4RvGCGlPBN4tYPa3O0Pf9xbrhwNjrL3v9V7ps/s1600/FrangiPani.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgoqw5cXls8Ba4YMfRXm_qMIGchwAXdfYxe5XfkArxp0AxvMysej8qi_ACJUFFDjhd_9Plt0SJX10oe7OKIuPrs0NmTG3wJ9QP5EZvqqr4RvGCGlPBN4tYPa3O0Pf9xbrhwNjrL3v9V7ps/s200/FrangiPani.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>
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<span style="color: #cc0000;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Have you noticed the Easter products in the shops already? We are hardly over the festive season and our drive to consummate products is being fueled by the marketing strategies of stores getting us to buy, buy and buy. <br /><br />Celebrations are no longer season driven rituals filled with meaningfulness and the question is: how do we bring Spirit-filled meaningfulness back into our lives? There are certainly many ways to approach this, however Tantra is the most holistic path I know of. It is a path filled with rituals that not only fit into, but become part of our daily lives. It includes everything, right down to the most fundamental ritual of human life - sexuality. </span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;"></span><br />
<span style="color: #cc0000;">Unfortunately, in a similar way that life's celebrations are marketed to become something they were not orininally meant to be, the ritual of personal sexual expression is marketed for a community whose new word is "pro-sexual". On the background of a repressed sexuality, this is meant to be positive. The yearning for a sexuality free of shame and guilt however, has resulted in an on-going sexualisation not only of Tantra but of most aspects of human life. Tantra is thus reduced to only one aspect of what it is actually meant to be. <br /><br />So what role does sexuality then really play in authentic Tantra? It plays an important role - but no more important than anything else that plays an important role in Tantra!<br /><br />I was fortunate to participate in one of Daniel Odier's* seminars while I was in Europe earlier this year. He spoke of 4 practices of Tantra, and interestingly, sex was not one of them! So what is Tantra really? <br /><br /><strong>Tantra is the Yoga of Presence</strong> - of being in the moment, the "now" of whatever is in any given moment. If the "now" happens to be during sexual expression, then it is about presence in that - and this applies to all of the further practices.<br /><br /><strong>Tantra is the Yoga of Creativity</strong> - of being aware of our ability to create actively in all aspects of our life, giving us power to never have to be a victim or have someone to blame.<br /><br /><strong>Tantra is the Yoga of Breath</strong> - of recognising breath as the life giving substance that feeds not only our bodies but also souls, leading us to cultivate a practice of breath work on a daily basis.<br /><br /><strong>Tantra is the Yoga of Touch</strong> - of touching all of Existence deeply and profoundly, of being in conscious contact with all things, "without mental commotion" as Odier puts it.<br /><br />Put these 4 practices together and you have the most holistic practice available to us today. It is also one of the oldest practices, recorded in the most ancient of holy books; a practice that has come through time and religion to us today. Giving us the full potential of our sexuality, bringing back sacredness to our personal sexual expression, is only one aspect of what the path of Tantra gives us. Far more, Tantra gives us our full potential - period.<br /><br />In this sense, we continue our work with gratitude and in awe of the process within not only our clients, but also within ourselves.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #cc0000;">Ma Anand Leandra<br /><br />(<em>A slightly shorter version of this article was written for my February 2013 newsletter Tantra Talk. If you would like to register for the newsletter, go to one of my websites to register:</em> <a href="http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/"><em>http://www.tantra-massage.co.za</em></a><em>; </em><a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/"><em>http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za</em></a><em>.)</em></span><span style="color: #cc0000;"><br /><em>* Daniel Odier is the author of</em> <em>Tantric Quest: An Encounter with Absolute Love, Desire, the Tantric Path to Awakening, Yoga Spandakarika</em></span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-43389961195668910112012-05-30T00:59:00.000+02:002012-06-15T19:26:50.547+02:00The Emergence of Tantra in the West - Historical Background Part I: Freud, Reich & Sex<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU2OxG2pJid6dLhcDVf4DURUtFOVMOxdJHcEhdacOxxDxnDkJNJ22dS2l6StnDpMlKbymhgl50jaqg6kkDy1eDx9LKIb_YlTJ0b6MwyQSEhMczGyCuV6UWH1qCmS37J_HK8wC4ckuN8E/s1600/Pods.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img alt="" border="0" fba="true" height="224" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqU2OxG2pJid6dLhcDVf4DURUtFOVMOxdJHcEhdacOxxDxnDkJNJ22dS2l6StnDpMlKbymhgl50jaqg6kkDy1eDx9LKIb_YlTJ0b6MwyQSEhMczGyCuV6UWH1qCmS37J_HK8wC4ckuN8E/s320/Pods.JPG" title="Masculine-Feminine, (Original title: Pod) s1989, Aquarelle on paper, Leandra" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="color: #990000;">Masculine-Feminine (original title: Pods)1989<br />Aquarelle on paper, Ma Anand Leandra</span></td></tr>
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Many forms of Tantra have developed since the sixties and seventies when an eastern mystic, Bhagwan Shree Rashneesh, later known as Osho made Tantra accessible to the west. </span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Osho taught from the ancient holy books, the Vedas, and particularly from the Bhagavat Gita, which is a part of the ancient Sanskrit epic Mahabharata, (also known as the play of creation). He explained the scripts in a new way and emphasised a witnessing awareness in daily life, including in sexuality, as a means to enlightenment.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Today we see a watered-down version of Tantra taking the world by storm, a Tantra that appears to be no more than about great orgasms and a free sexuality, polyamory instead of monogamy, and yes even BDSM. Whereas authentic Tantra raises the level of sexual energy, ultimately to a transcendental level, much of modern day Tantra seems to be focusing on sex alone, and appears to get stuck on a very physical, sexual drive orientated level. This development is not something I particularly like. I find that far to often Tantra seems to be used as a label to hide the one or other form of sexual addiction and if not that, then at least a stagnation in the physical - a far fetched scenario from my understanding of Osho's teachings.</span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">As I looked for an answer as to why this is happening globally, my research took me away from the eastern origin of Tantra and into the western origin of what may be considered pre-occupation with the sexual. </span><br />
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<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The times in which Osho appeared on the scene as a spiritual teacher were ideal for the western ear to receive his message and the west did indeed flock to hear him speak and take in his teachings. The question is, what was it that made Osho's teaching so desirable at the time?</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Setting the scene for the sexual revolution - Sigmund Freud</span></strong><br />
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />On the background of the fact that all world religions had suppressed sexuality, resulting in a rigid patriarchal form of relating to the world and each other, an emerging sexual liberation had begun well before the end of the 19th century in Europe. Sigmund Freud had made his mark on the world by discovering that suppressed sexual desires created emotional, mental and even physical illness. He not only changed the way we understand outselves, his legacy included a possible “cure” (or perhaps I should rather say healing modality) in the form of psychoanalysis - bringing the supressed into the open. <br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Leading up to his discovery of the libido theory, during the time he worked as a lecturer in neurology at the University of Vienna, he travelled to Paris to study under Jean-Martin Charcot, the director of the Salpêtrière Hospital, an asylum known as the "mecca for neurologists" in Europe. Charcot later became known as the founder of modern neurology. Freud spent nearly 5 months there, accompanying the famous director on his rounds through the wards, and apart from becoming acquainted with hypnotism as a treatment method, Freud also encountered another interesting form of treatment that today would be unheard of.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Healing aspects of orgasm</strong></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /><span style="color: #990000;"></span></span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the treatments for female patients suffering from Hysteria was to induce orgasm manually. In fact, inducing orgasm of female patients was an ancient cure that went back to the classical Greeks who thought that an orgasm might reposition a wandering womb, which physicians thought was the reason for Hysteria and other ailments. The term Hysteria takes its name from this thinking. At the time Freud started working, Hysteria was <em>the</em> mental illness of the day, thought to be caused by a congested womb and affecting mainly females, and occasionally males. </span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br />In the 1998 book, "<em>The Technology of Orgasm: Hysteria, the Vibrator, and Women's Sexual Satisfaction"</em>, the historian Rachel Maines writes about this. <em>"Massage to orgasm of female patients was a staple of medical practice among some (but certainly not all) Western physicians from the time of Hippocrates until the 1920s".</em> The physical manipulation of the clitoris was first done by a medical practitioner manually, and from 1878, an electro-mechanical vibrator was used as this was considered "safer". This was all done at the very hospital that Freud was visiting.</span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">After his return to Vienna, he set up his private practice and began developing his theories. While it is not known if Freud himself ever operated as a <em>"gynaecological masseur"</em> coming into contact with this treatment would have influenced him. In fact, in his <em>"Studies on Hysteria</em>", Freud mentions a patient who a had an orgasm when he <em>"pressed or pinched"</em> her legs to test her response to pain!</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Free sexuality </strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The fact that at he time, a number of physicians believed that female orgasm would bring release to the energy bound up in neurosis is historically interesting. Much of the work I and my affiliates do today in our <em>Tantra Sacred Massage</em> practice here in South Africa, deals with frustrating experiences with orgasm - lack of orgasm, or orgasm that comes to quickly for example. And while orgasm is never a goal in Tantra, in our work it often has to be as we guide both men and women into the full power of this energetic release, which has far more meaning and health benifits than one generally imagines. Obviously we take it further than those physicans could have done back then. The fact is, orgasm was not only considered healthy but also a cure.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As early as 1893, Freud entertained ideas about a free sexuality that reminds one of an era that almost burst into life over six decades later. In a letter to his mentor and friend, Wilhelm Fliess, Freud wondered if the cure for neuroses could be "<em>free sexual intercourse between young men and women. Otherwise the alternatives are masturbation, neurasthenia...".</em> Freud speculated that the the absence of such a solution to free sexuality would doom society to "<em>fall victim to incurable neuroses".</em> </span><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><br /></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Slowly a number of physicians who were also intellectual thinkers gathered around Freud, many of whom began as his students or analysands, and they became the early practitioners of psychoanalysis. Amongst them were Karl Jung, Erich Fromm, Fritz Perls, Alfred Adler, Melanie Klein, Bruno Bettelheim and of course Wilhelm Reich. As these progressive thinkers emerged, and many of them discovered their own diversions to the original teaching, they took Freud’s discovery to new levels of understanding human nature, levels from which the world would never again depart. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With Freud and his peers, the birth of psychotherapy took place. Although many would deny this, Freud is defacto the father not only of psychoanalysis but also of what became known generally as "talk therapy". His students, followers and dissadents alike, developed the basis for most forms of psychotherapy that are in use today including Person Centered Psychotherapy, Gestalt, Jungian Therapy etc. </span><br /><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #990000;">Freud himself moved away from his original belief that neuroses were caused by "<em>enforced abstinence and coitus interruptus"</em> or by suppressed desires, for example as seen with the Oedipus Complex. By 1920 he had published <em>"Beyond the Pleasure Principle"</em> and had set the "<em>death drive</em>" against the "<em>sex drive",</em> claiming that "<em>the drive for gratification, love and life is always overshadowed by a self-destructive urge toward aggression and death".</em><span style="font-size: xx-small;"> </span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Although Freud moved away from his original theories, the influence of these had far reaching effects on German speaking society. There was already a more general growing mo</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">vement towards understanding the negative impact of sexual repression on individuals and on society in general. Thomas Mann's 1924 Bildingsroman ("novel of education"), <em>"The Magic Mountain" (Der Zauberberg), </em>one of the most influential works of 20th century German literature, emphasised the negative effects of sexual repression on individuals and society in general. In the book, the fictional clinician, Dr Krokowski, warns of the dangers of sexual repression: <em>"Suppressed love was not dead, it continued to live on in the dark, secret depths, straining for fulfillment and broke the bands of chastity and reappears through transmuted unrecognizable form...in the form of illness". </em></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Wilhelm Reich</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As Freud moved away from his original understanding, a number of Freud's colleagues, amongst them Wilhelm Reich who seems to have led the way, stayed with the original sex drive theory, and promoted amongst other things, a free love society. Reich however was not to find lasting recognition in Europe and he would eventually be ostracised by his peers for his radical thinking and for equating political freedom with sexual freedom and vice versa. For Reich, the one could impossibly not exist without the other. </span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Psychoanalysis and Reich</strong></span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"></span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">William Reich was a difficult person, very loud and forward with his ideas, certainly not discrete, and Freud and his psychoanalyst peers eventually threw him out of the professional bodies of the psychoanalytic movement. They saw his loud communist and anti-Hitler views as an attempt to politicise the psychoanalytical movement. Reich however, saw no difference between political freedom and sexual freedom. He clung to Freud's libido theory so strongly and continued to give orgasm a huge role in healing neuroses, that it became embarrassing to the faithful die-hard followers of Freud. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><br /><span style="color: #990000;">What Reich stood for went way beyond what Freud had discovered. Reich promoted a free culture of nudity and sexuality, masturbation as well as free peer child and adolescent sexual activity. His own children went to schools that practiced this literally - the children were allowed to follow their drives as they pleased. Many years later Reich's daughter would write about how uncomfortable it was that there was no potty training and that the children walked around nude, some of them leaving little brown packages behind themselves! The fact that such schools existed in Berlin at the time, and later the infamous Summerhill in the United Kingdom, shows just how much this thinking had caught the hearts of large parts of society.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>The communist party and Reich</strong></span><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br />Initially, Reich was welcome into the communist party. He was welcome because of his radical alternative views which attracted the youth. His equating freeing sexuality from conditioning with freeing society from fascism fitted party lines well. He taught that in order for society to be healthy, society needed freedom from repression of all kinds including from a repressed sexuality. After initially being a huge draw card for attracting the youth into the movement, he was later thrown out of the communist party because of the same radical views about sexuality. It appears to have gotten too much for them and in addition, he was attracting a strong following of youth and this threatened the party. </span></span></span></span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><strong>Exile</strong><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: red;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /><br />Finally Reich had to leave Germany, the result of being a Jewish, a communist and such a loud propagator of free sex, made him perfect prey for the Nazis. </span></span></span></span><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"></span><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"></span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">But Reich was to subsequently became a kind of "superstar" in the freedom movement (free love, free sex and free drugs) of the 1950s and 1960s. The term "sexual revolution" was in fact coined by Reich. </span></span><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><br /><span style="color: #990000;">After much coming and going between Germany (he returned a couple of times incognito to collect belongings or visit his children), Denmark, Sweden and France, in what proved to be an extremely painful period for him, he finally ended up in the USA. Most of his friends rejected him and only a few stood by him as he struggled to find a country that would take him into exile. Both Denmark and Sweden refused. He was in good company in the United States, many of Europe's top Jewish thinkers ended up there. </span></span></span><br /><span style="color: #990000;"></span><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;">He already arrived as a very welcome guest. Freud's 1909 visit to the United States at the invitation of Clark University where he held a number of lectures, paved the way for Reich and a few others who believed in Reich's brilliance. On arrival they were met at the docks by peers who could hardly wait to have him on American soil. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;">Reich's fame for being a misfit traveled before him. In America it seemed, one could be a misfit - at least for a while. There was a growing community of men and women who thought and lived differently to the status quo. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><strong><span style="color: #990000;">Reich and the United States of America </span></strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Thus it was in the United States that Reich finally, not only found recognition for his theories, but in certain circles was almost worshiped as <em>the</em> messenger of sexual freedom and non-conformist politics. Again it was the youth that he appealed to. He was in the right place at the right time - America's youth were ready for his theories about orgasm and free sexuality. The fact that he equated sexual freedom to political freedom and vice versa, put him on the map for all times to come. </span></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">He rose to fame as one of the leaders of the hippie free love movement that had already begun to sweep through the country in the 1940s through to the late 1960s and early 1970s, taking also the United Kingdom and Europe by storm and reaching significant world wide following. Reich </span></span></span></span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">fitted in perfectly with the Zeitgeist of the time and became a kind of superstar.</span></span><span style="color: #990000;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: #990000;"><br /><br /><strong>Zeitgeist</strong><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">The Zeitgeist prevalent in the United States and into which Reich arrived, had built up over a number of years owing to a number of important events and developments at the time. Some of which are:</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<ul>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the pill had been discovered in the fifties which allowed for a sexual freedom unknown before, particularly with regards to women, releasing them from the fear of pregnancy and allowing them to experiment with their sexuality as men had been doing all along;</span> </li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">rock and roll and Elvis Presley paved the way for a huge surge of breaking away from norms of the day by the youth;</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">the Vietnam war grasped the hearts of the USA's youth, who no longer felt patriarchal about their country in view of the damage caused, resulting in a politicising of everything dear to a generation, including their music;</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">the hippie movement of the sixties followed with the idea of free love, and sexual exploration as well as the </span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">exploration of natural and chemical substances to promote altered mental states which were claimed to further personal development; </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">finally, the downfall of that very movement. The Vietnam war was over and the experimental use of LSD (which was initially legally available), Marijuana, Magic Mushrooms etc., led to an excessive use of drugs and drug addiction. The anarchical, communities and communal way of life of the hippies finally had to give way to the fact that individuals needed to finance themselves and the families they had produced. This resulted in more middle of the road lifestyles; </span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">throughout all this, growing criticism of main stream religious systems led to disillusionment in the western religious beliefs and ethics;</span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">led by George Harrison, the<span style="color: red;"> </span><span style="color: #990000;">Beatles had very publicly visited India to the eastern mystic Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (founder of Transcendental Meditation) at his ashram in Rakish, India. This resulted in a surge of interest in the west in interest in eastern mystic teachings, mediation and yoga. </span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"><span style="color: #990000;">the hippy movement finally ran out of momentum, Many were disillusioned but found themselves unable to return to main-stream thinking and society. Or if they did, it was because a living had to be made in order to finance the upbringing of children. Left with a void and looking for meaning, there seems to have been a general turning to eastern mystic practices and teachings in an attempt to find answers and look for meaning, </span></span></li>
</ul>
<span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">I</span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">t was on this background that, when a long bearded mystic called Bhagwan Shree Raschneesh appeared on the scene in India, the west was more than ready for his teachings - and so they flocked to him.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Osho</strong></span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Just like Reich, Osho was in the right place at the right time. Embracing humanity as <em>the</em> vehicle to the spiritual, his teaching caught the spirit of what a generation of individuals were now seeking. Nothing need be avoided, everything could be included - so also desire and sexuality. Osho was also politically outspoken, criticising socialism, Gandhi, religion and just about everything about anything status quo. He emphasised the importance of meditation and awareness and love but also of celebrating life, love and sexuality, of creativity, courage and humor. He told those who listened not to take things too seriously, and instead to be and feel light and okay with whoever they were and to be joyous. </span><br /><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">His idea was that freedom became negated, even suppressed by adherence to an un-free society, by obedience to politics that one did not believe in, by religious indoctrination and the conditioning of upbringing, education and society in general. The path to happiness, to freedom was to free oneself from all that inhibited a full expression of a joy and almost lust for life itself and an appreciation and love of everything physical. Spirituality was attained, and indeed consciousness through almost any human activity. At last, a generation of young adults felt understood.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">When one looks at both Osho and Reich, their thinking is astoundingly similar. Each one of them in their own way caught the Zeitgeist of a generation and made their mark on whatever was to come. If Freud paved the way for Reich, so did Reich pave the way for Osho. People were now ready in large numbers for any teaching about freeing up sexuality and particularly when this teaching was also politically critical.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">I welcome comments...<br />Namaste<br />Ma Anand Leandra.</span><br /><br /><span style="color: #990000; font-family: Verdana;">To be continued next month<em>..."Osho's tantric teachings and Neo-Tantra<strong>"</strong></em></span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-89081018634463800752012-04-11T23:02:00.004+02:002012-04-11T23:27:49.559+02:00Uniting Western Science With Eastern Mysticism<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmlJHVq-Uti7VcFObNst-ArIE3TTcpGihU4CiowAzcAWuNIJkBr6If04oq8LTnEN2guILkJ4jXE_IoOgtCJLZdcfrzc0Ye5Of62xSaqP1Vw_dF6-VsZ5lDkQzoCFHk-IMqvt9SUrb5JI8/s1600/treelight.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 260px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 161px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5730256664760068306" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmlJHVq-Uti7VcFObNst-ArIE3TTcpGihU4CiowAzcAWuNIJkBr6If04oq8LTnEN2guILkJ4jXE_IoOgtCJLZdcfrzc0Ye5Of62xSaqP1Vw_dF6-VsZ5lDkQzoCFHk-IMqvt9SUrb5JI8/s320/treelight.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#660000;">This is the first time I am recommending a book here in my journal. Although it’s not about Tantra, it explains tantric philosophy from a non-tantric but spiritual perspective. For those of you who do not yet know the author Gregg Braden, his book "The Divine Matrix" is a good way to get to know his writing. </span><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;">Tantric Philosophy is founded on the Interconnection and Unity of the Universe. The human being does not exist in isolation, but is part of the One and is connected to all other matter in the universe. The human body in Tantra is seen as a microcosm of the universe and all that exists in the universe, exists also in the human body. The path to “enlightenment”, to conscious awareness, is through recognising our connection to the dynamic unity of reality. Through the intimate connection of body and universe in Tantric thought, we can understand how sex and orgasm can be seen as a cosmic and divine experience. </span><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;">Many ideas of Tantric Philosophy can be found in other branches of philosophical thought and scientific study throughout the ages. It has however been relatively recent discoveries of the properties of space and the wave structure of matter that provide a scientific and logical explanation of the ancient Indian philosophy of Tantra, allowing humans to understand, for the first time, how they exist in space and are interconnected with other matter in the space around them. </span><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;">I would like to suggest a book that explains all this beautifully. As it states on the back cover:“With easy to understand science and real-life stories, Gregg Braden show us that we’re limited only by our beliefs, and what we once believed is about to change!” </span><br /><span style="color:#660000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;">Although it offers an easy to understand and fascinating history of modern science and new physics, this book is much more than a book about science. It allows us to see and understand everyday life in new way and gives us tools, based on scientific knowledge, which empower us to change to take charge of and change our experience.<br /><br />Namaste<br />Leandra<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#660000;">The Divine Matrix – Bridging Time, Space, Miracles, And Belief by Gregg Braden.<br />A Hayhouse publication:</span> <a href="http://www.hayhouse.co.za/">http://www.hayhouse.co.za/</a><br /><span style="color:#663300;">Gregg Braden's website:</span> <a href="http://www.greggbraden.com/">http://www.greggbraden.com/</a>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-27954327932579033752012-03-15T14:05:00.004+02:002012-03-15T14:24:38.201+02:00The Relationship Business<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1Msw8moaJh4p1p75ZfhzHTErshoFd8BhCnf8xRMkm8_u2pCWebHjIPSBJWxUVgS_nX4ua5sNhBb_4atFKIF8LJwrfpGptiDxBQnWQdsQ1E9nigGZ39gc-1dnyOhrgNCd1nTYHCs3zug/s1600/loving+couples+-parrot+3.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 145px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 159px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5720098568469305378" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjg1Msw8moaJh4p1p75ZfhzHTErshoFd8BhCnf8xRMkm8_u2pCWebHjIPSBJWxUVgS_nX4ua5sNhBb_4atFKIF8LJwrfpGptiDxBQnWQdsQ1E9nigGZ39gc-1dnyOhrgNCd1nTYHCs3zug/s320/loving+couples+-parrot+3.jpg" /></a>I work with a lot of couples wanting to enhance their experience of intimacy and sexuality. For some, the children are out of the house and they wish to renew their relationship after completing the offspring raising phase. For others, the aim is to start off “right” by setting standards for their love life from the outset of their relationship. For many couples however, it is the fact that they are experiencing sexual difficulties of some sort and their intention is to find a way of getting beyond these difficulties.<br /><br />The difficulties can be very varied and no matter what they are, these difficulties impact the emotional and spiritual aspects of the relationship severely. More often than we like to accept, the problem is that one partner wants more sex than the other, usually the male with the female being less interested. Sometimes it is the other way around. I have had wives sending their husbands to me with the request to do something about their libido. and more and more I am seeing male clients whose Urologists, after all the medical options have been tried out without the hoped for results, have suggested they see me.<br />Whatever the case, I would like to share with you three simple suggestions that I give all these couples. Often, when put into practice, these simple ideas work wonders and intimacy begins to flow anew in the relationship.<br /><br />The principal is very simple: the practical side of living relationships is completely different to the original love affair. So here are my suggestions:<br />- hold weekly Relationship Business board meetings<br />- create a sacred space for intimacy and bonding (I like to call this Relationship Yoga)<br />- hold weekly Relationship Yoga practice meetings<br /><br /><strong>Weekly Relationship Business Board Meetings</strong><br />All relationships require decision making. In most marriages and long relationships, important decisions are taken at all times of the day when couples are together: at the dinner table, in the bathroom, the kitchen and even in bed. Arguments often arise or one partner getting into a bad mood. Often one partner is not ready to discuss whether or not to visit the parents for Christmas or to buy a house or where to go on holiday. No business is run like this; there are agendas and meetings that take place for this purpose. One of the reasons for friction in long term relationships is that we run our relationship totally disorganised and pretty chaotic!<br /><br />See the running of your relationship as a business and have a weekly board meeting to discuss subjects on which important decisions are to be made. If your decisions include the children, they too can be invited to a board meeting. This way you clear up the space and relationship energy for living, enjoying etc instead of using it up for planning and organizing.<br /><br />My suggestion is to set a regular time every week for your Relationship Business Board Meeting and stick to that time. You can have a counter book in the kitchen for jotting down themes and topics for discussion and you start your meeting by setting an agenda. If you can’t agree on a topic, listen to the arguments and take the decision over to the next meeting. This will give you time to ponder over it. If you require extra meetings, they can be set up but arrange an extra meeting together with your partner. If you are experiencing a lot of organizational and decisional difficulties, have two or even three board meetings a week for a while. But take the discussing out of the time when you are supposed to be enjoying each other’s company or when you are spending time with the children.<br /><br />If you stick to this, you will find that a lot of daily tension is avoided and you also don’t draw the children into the business energy of your relationship.<br /><br /><strong>Create a sacred space for intimacy and bonding</strong><br />Many tanrikers do not use their bed time in the evenings as a time for making love. The bedroom is a place for going to sleeping; the energy, the atmosphere of the bedroom, is often not conducive to intimacy as it holds every day accessories. And usually one is tired by the time you go to bed. Creating a sacred space gives you a space for sharing intimacy apart from the bedroom. If possible, this should be a separate room which is especially decorated as a room for Relationship Yoga as I like to call it, a room for tantric bonding and intimacy rituals giving sexuality the special place it should have in our lives.<br /><br />This room is sometimes called the Tantra Temple and sometimes simply, the Sacred Room. Ideally, the room should have a double or queen size futon mattress on the floor or on a low wooden frame. Futons are great as they have the hardness required in order to move around without wobbling or bouncing too much. It should be in the middle of the room so that you are able to move on and off it all around. Many tantric rituals begin with sitting opposite each other. There is some lovely rituals to be done sitting at the head or the feet of your partner (foot washing ceremony or foot and head massages for example).<br />You can have a cushion at the foot end as well as the head end for this purpose.<br /><br />Choose linen that you really like. I prefer white but you may like a color. If you are going to use oils, please see that you have a waterproof sheet on the mattress to protect it. You can create an eastern look if you like this, or use any other deco that will enhance your intimacy. Soft lighting and gentle music should also be available.<br /><br />If you do not have an extra room you can turn your bedroom into a Sacred Place. Take some time before your intimacy and bonding rituals to change your bedroom into this space. You can have a box of goodies which you open up and arrange in the room after taking away all the everyday items. The bedroom should be free of clutter and you arrange a few drapes and set up your altar. Let the daily stuff can disappear into the box after you have taken out your special deco items for creating the sacred space in your bedroom.<br /><br />Soft drapes, a candle, incense or another form of aroma (I find the small humidifiers that are not available in health shops really lovely for this and they purify the air as well as giving it a aroma of your choice). Have a couple of objects that have meaning to you and create a small altar with these. Perhaps some fresh flowers…whatever it is that you like.<br /><br />It is not so much about creating a sexy atmosphere, but much more about creating a sacred atmosphere. This is a room for connecting with your deepest self, with each other and for worship. You worship each other, you worship the Universe, Existence, the Divine, God when you bond and make love with love, awe and reverence in your hearts. Create a space that supports you in this.<br /><br /><strong>Weekly Relationship Yoga meetings</strong><br />As mentioned earlier, going to bed time is time is not the best time for intimacy and bonding. We seem to think that sex is supposed to happen all the time. Three times a week is not enough for many of us – yet, what about the quality of that sex? Nothing wrong with delightful quickies but when sex and intimacy get reduced to bed time all the time, it is no longer what it was when we were falling in love - long afternoons or mornings of being in each other’s company, bonding, holding, chatting, touching, loving and sharing sexuality.<br /><br />So set aside one time per week which will become your Relationship Yoga time. Relationship Yoga is bonding, sharing intimacy, sharing physical, emotional and spiritual pleasure. If you have children, organize for them to be cared for. You need at least 2 hours undisturbed, 3 – 4 hours is better. Ideally this should be the same time each week, very much in the same way as you would go to a yoga class in a yoga studio. Stick to it, it is worth it.<br /><br />When it is time for your Relationship Yoga class, enter your sacred room and begin the process with a series of rituals. I teach a variety of these rituals in my private Couple’s Workshops and on weekend retreats. Welcome each other, bless each other, thank each other - not just generally, specifically. Then take turns to pleasure each other. This way the one who is relaxing can simply enjoy and is not responsible for anything. The other one is active and does not receive or expect anything in return. You let your sexual energy arise if it does, become a witness to it, as opposed to having to act on it or to satisfy it. You can take turns on the same occasion to be in the active role, I however prefer to rather have the change-over on different occasions. This way you can go totally into either the active giving role, or the passive receiving role.<br /><br />I hope I have inspired you to take up this simple program. If you do, I’d love to hear from you. Let me know how it worked for you. If you’d like to learn more, contact me for a private Couple’s Workshop. Singles can book a Tantra Sacred Massage session.<br /><br />My warmest greetings to you all,<br />LeandraMa Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-67530738108275911262012-02-09T22:33:00.015+02:002012-02-10T21:32:29.598+02:00Neo Tantra and Post-Neo Tantra<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYp3HSlwC3zrluzyGfxL6ncJip_GDYdR5bNTk8B_guhIdHizTFjRTIPsuZPKU7d3HSBTeDwOfLktnfTmtJR9KBoGsWzlYO_hYv1OkhqL1GS6h9DoipqzE16ewdjyH1V8YM_ZtU0t6Mt_Y/s1600/Loving_Couples+-+Copy.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 194px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 184px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5707534472421995234" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhYp3HSlwC3zrluzyGfxL6ncJip_GDYdR5bNTk8B_guhIdHizTFjRTIPsuZPKU7d3HSBTeDwOfLktnfTmtJR9KBoGsWzlYO_hYv1OkhqL1GS6h9DoipqzE16ewdjyH1V8YM_ZtU0t6Mt_Y/s320/Loving_Couples+-+Copy.JPG" /></a><br /><br /><div><br /><br /><div align="left"><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">Osho coined the term "Neo Tantra" for a good portion of his teaching. There is much confusion as to what this actually means. Many of today's teachers of Tantra claim that this is the physical or sexual aspect of Tantra, or that Neo Tantra implies a focus on teaching tantric sexuality as opposed to teaching the spiritual or transformational meaning of what Tantra is. This is, in my opinion, totally incorrect and really not comprehensible as to why this is being done. </span><span style="color:#990000;">When one reads Osho's writings about what he meant, what he taught, one gets a very clear picture that Neo Tantra is being misinterpreted.</span></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">Neo Tantra is also often referred to as "western tantra" or "modern tantra" as an expression of our modern times being pre-occupied with sexual matters. I understand Osho’s tantric teachings to actually pick us up where we are - with the human preoccupation with sexuality.</span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">The sexual revolution was essentially about women becoming more open to sexual exploration. The discovery of the birth control pill in the fifties revolutionised sexuality by reducing fear of pregnancy which resulted in women beginning to feel more free about exploring their sexuality. The sixties and the hippy movement with it's "free love” philosophy, opened the doors for sexual exploration even more. As a woman, it was no longer necessary to be shameful about sexual escapades. Since then, it has been a slow movement towards what we have today, the signalisation of almost everything in life. The question is whether this serves us or not.</span><br /></div><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">Tantra does not sexualise us, it picks us up where we are and that is with a huge preoccupation of sexuality that has not ended in spite of a deep shift into more esoteric and spiritual understandings of life that have emerged since then. And indeed, it cannot end because of its very nature and importance to our humanity and lives. So we need to take our pre-occupation with sex into account when our intention is to live more spiritually. Not doing so results in, for most of us, a separation of spirituality and sexuality and this, in end effect, inhibits our spiritual growth, let alone our physical pleasure.</span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;">How can we live a spiritual lifestyle and in the bedroom resort to animal nature and a testosterone driven, goal orientated sexuality? Spirituality that includes the body, our senses actually changes our experience of sexuality and gives it back the sacredness it was meant to have.</span></div><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">It was natural that after Osho made Tantra accessible to the West in the sixties and seventies by re-visiting the ancient texts and teaching them for a free-love inspired public, the emphasis would be on experiencing sexuality in all manner or ways, all the while getting rid of inhibitions, as well as guilt. A lot of the tantric work that began in the eighties and nineties focused on sexuality.</span><br /></div><br /><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">In latter years, a new tantric teaching is emerging out of the Neo-Tantra era. Tantra in the west is is no longer "just" about sexuality and although sexuality plays a large role, the emphasis is more on the spiritual aspects of our sexual energy. This Post-Neo Tantra is closer to what Osho actually taught - the transcendence from physical to spiritual and more about transcending sexuality. I personally think that the phase of an almost "free for all" in sexuality where anything goes is done. It is well done and now is the time to go further, but not back into suppression, which is sometimes the case. Having had enough of the sexualisation of Tantra, some schools feel the need to once again reject the sexual aspects of the work. This is unfortunate, it is a step backwards. What is needed is the integration of the polarities that Tantra places us in. Only when this integration has taken place, do we find the complete picture. Only then will we realise fully what it was that Osho actually gave us.</span></div><br /><div></div><br /><div><span style="color:#990000;">I share the following Osho quotes with you in an attempt to make clear what Osho meant and how the term Neo Tantra should be understood if used correctly. The quotes will also give the reader a good idea of what the path of Tantra in our day and age and in all cultures really is.<br /></span><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Osho quotes<br /><br /></span></strong><em>"The first part has to be sex. The second part has to be love. The third part has to be prayer, and the fourth has to be transcendence. So from the gross to the subtle you move. And in the fourth, sex has to completely disappear, love too, prayer too. Make it absolutely silent, peaceful, meditative... not even a trace is left. These are the four stages of Neo-Tantra..." </em></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#990000;"><em>"Sex is just the beginning, not the end But if you miss the beginning, You will miss the end also."</em><br /></span><br /><em><span style="color:#990000;">"If you remain aware you will come to know that sex is not just sex. Sex is the outermost layer, deep inside is the love, and even deeper is prayer, and deepest is God himself. Sex can become a cosmic experience. Then it is Tantra."</span></em><br /><br /><em><span style="color:#990000;">"This is tantra's proposition, that mind is nothing but subtle matter; it can be changed. And once you have a different mind you have a different world, because you look through the mind. The world you are seeing, you are seeing because of a particular mind."</span></em><br /><br /><em><span style="color:#990000;">"The moment you enter love, you enter a different person. And when you come out you will not be able to recognize your old face; it will not belong to you. A discontinuity will have happened. Now there is a gap, the old man is dead and the new man has come. That is what is known as rebirth - being twice-born." </span></em><br /><br /><em><span style="color:#990000;">"Tantra's contribution is the greatest, because it give you keys to transform the lowest into the highest. It gives you keys to transform mud into lotuses."</span></em><br /><br /><span style="color:#990000;">From the Prologue to Osho's book <strong><em>Sex Matters</em></strong> in answer to the question: "Why does the topic of sex make people so uncomfortable? Why is it such a taboo?"<br /><br /></span><em><span style="color:#990000;">"The simple reason is that people have been for centuries living a repressed sex life. They have been told by all the religious prophets and the messiahs and the saviors that sex it sin. To my understanding, sex is your only energy, it is life energy. What you do with it depends on you. It can become sin, and it can become also your highest peak of consciousness. It all depends on you how you use the energy. There was a day when we had no idea how to use electricity. Electricity was available always - as lightning - and was killing people, but now it is your servant. It is doing everything that you want. Sex is bio- electricity. The question is how to use it. And the first principle is not to condemn it. The moment you condemn anything, you cannot use it. Sex should be accepted as a normal, natural thing in life - just as sleep, as hunger, as everything else. Furthermore, sex can be joined with meditation, and once sex can be joined with meditation its whole quality changes. Sex without meditation can only reproduce children. Sex with meditation can give you a new birth, can make you a new human being."<br /></div></span></em></div></div>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-68951703981075298742011-12-13T01:07:00.011+02:002015-04-26T03:22:55.388+02:00What is...?<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ9bpYE7s149SLdjpy-OtKgZvPfyWeVLRW_GYg3p2HeKKChPv00QeB0uabLbeqnTGqIaVYmglWsnN22qn_2Eu473MLAuydaei5v9UEW19nl808pYojZ9KMJf-kJ12536KR5v5eEZoAGMs/s1600/woody+flower+Kogelberg.jpg"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZ9bpYE7s149SLdjpy-OtKgZvPfyWeVLRW_GYg3p2HeKKChPv00QeB0uabLbeqnTGqIaVYmglWsnN22qn_2Eu473MLAuydaei5v9UEW19nl808pYojZ9KMJf-kJ12536KR5v5eEZoAGMs/s320/woody+flower+Kogelberg.jpg" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5685386634177822546" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 146px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 159px;" /></a><br />
<span style="color: #444444;">Over this busy festive season, stop and ask yourself "What is...what is this moment, what is in this moment, what do I experience, perceive, realise?" We so seldom do this. Our lives are full, day for day, minute for minute...and moment for moment. Life is not slow. Work is not forgiving. Even our "play time", our relaxation time is full of doing. Full of appointments and activities. So much of modern spiritual talk is about "being in the moment: - but what does that mean. <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Osho</span> puts it beautifully, simply in his answer to a student's question below. Such moments of conscious awareness are meditation. Pure meditation. Tantra uses the senses to be in the moment. Sight, smell, sound and touch. You can do it anywhere. At Christmas dinner with the family, on the beach, in the mountains, the desert...and even in a busy shopping <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">mall</span>. It only takes a moment!</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">I wish you all, dear students and friends of Tantra, many moments of such beauty and calm over Christmas and the drawing year -end.</span><br />
<span style="color: #444444;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Namaste</span><br />Leandra</span><br />
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<span style="color: #444444;">In one of his lectures, <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">Prabhati</span> (a student of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">Osho</span>) asked:<em> </em></span><em><span style="color: #444444;">"Beloved Master, What Is?"</span></em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5"><br /><span style="color: #444444;">Osho</span></span><span style="color: #444444;"> <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">answered</span>:<br /><em><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">"Prabhati</span>, there are two kinds of things in existence: one, that which can be explained; and the other, that which can only be experienced. The things that can be explained are mundane, ordinary, have no intrinsic value in them. And the things that cannot be explained are really significant, have intrinsic value. For example, sex can be explained, love cannot be explained. Hence, sex becomes a commodity - it can be sold, it can be purchased. Love is not a commodity; you cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it - there is no way. Sex can be explained because it is part of physiology. Love cannot be explained - it is part of your inner mystery.</em></span></div>
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<em><span style="color: #444444;">Unless your sexuality rises and reaches to love it is mundane, it has nothing sacred about it. When your sex becomes love, then it is entering into a totally different dimension - the dimension of the mysterious and the miraculous. Now it is becoming religious, sacred, it is no longer profane. And there is an even higher stage of love - I call it prayer - which is absolutely unexplainable, which is absolutely ineffable. Nothing can be said about it.<br /><br />When a disciple asked Jesus, "What is prayer?" Jesus fell on his knees and started praying. What else can you do? Prayer cannot be explained, nothing can be said about it, but it can be shown. What can you say about death, what can you say about life? Whatsoever you say will fall short; it cannot soar to the heights of life and death. Those are experiences. </span></em></div>
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<em><span style="color: #444444;">What can you say about beauty? Even if the lake is full of beautiful lotuses and it is a full-moon night, and all is benediction, somebody can ask, "What is beauty?" What can you say? You can show! You can say, "This it it!" But he will say, "I am asking for a definition."</span></em></div>
<br /><em><span style="color: #444444;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">Rabindranath</span>, one of the greatest poets of this country (India), was living on a small houseboat. He used to live for months together on that houseboat; he loved living on the houseboat. It was a full-moon night and he was reading in his room, a small cabin, just by a small candlelight, and he was reading about aesthetics - what is beauty? And the full moon outside, and the cuckoo calling from the distant shore, and the moon reflecting all over the lake, and the whole lake was silver...! It was a tremendously silent night, nobody around, except that cuckoo calling. Once in a while a bird would fly over the boat, or a fish would jump in the lake - and those sounds would deepen the silence even more. And he pondered over great books on aesthetics in search of the definition of what beauty is.</span></em><em><span style="color: #444444;"></span></em><br />
<em><span style="color: #444444;">Tired, exhausted, in the middle of the night, he blew out the candle...and he was shocked, surprised. As he blew out the candle, the moon-rays entered through the window, through the door, inside the cabin. That pale light of the candle had been keeping the moon out. Suddenly, he heard the cuckoo calling from the distant shore.</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #444444;">Suddenly, he became aware of the tremendous silence, the depth of the silence surrounding the boat. A fish jumped, and he came out.... He had never seen such a beautiful night. A few white clouds floating in the sky, and the moon and the lake and the cuckoo calling...he was transported into another world.</span></em></div>
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<em><span style="color: #444444;">He wrote in his diary, "I am foolish! I have been searching in books for what beauty is, and beauty was standing outside my door, knocking on my door! I was looking for beauty, searching for beauty, with a small candle, and the small candlelight was keeping the moonlight outside." He wrote in his diary, "It seems my small ego is keeping God out - the small ego, like a pale small candlelight, keeping the light of God outside. And he is waiting outside. All that I need to do is to close the books, blow out the candle of the ego and go out - AND SEE!"</span></em></div>
<em><span style="color: #444444;"><span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">Prabhati</span>, you ask me, "What is?" This...this-ness...this moment you are surrounded by the is. It is within you and without you. The chirping of the birds...and this silence...and you ask me what is? It is not a question that can be answered… We are here to experience something. All explanations about the mysteries of life are nothing but explaining away those things. The basic, root meaning of the word 'explanation' is 'to flatten a thing' - but to flatten a thing is to destroy it. If anybody could answer, "What is God? What is love? What is prayer? What is?" he would have flattened a beautiful, tremendously beautiful, incredible experience, into ugly words. All words are inadequate. Be and know! Be still and know! You are here not to learn more words; you are here to get deeper into silence. Use my words as hints towards a wordless existence. This is it! …</span></em><br />
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<em><span style="color: #444444;">Feel this moment...in its totality, in all its dimensionality, and a great beauty will descend, a great beatitude, a great benediction will surround you; a grace, a very silent ecstasy will start rising in you…that is the only way to know it.” </span></em></div>
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<span style="color: #444444;">From: The <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_10">Dhammapada</span>: The Way of the Buddha, Vol.2. by <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_11">OSHO</span>. Talks given from 01/07/79 to 10/07/79. English Discourse series.</span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-22857905441770571672011-11-22T16:11:00.010+02:002011-11-22T20:26:27.684+02:00Tantra and Sex - What It's Really about!<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrGRI_9F61SK3h3LOZqBa6kh5hAmyY_V_Wlk8dTG3Gy57HAn__7rQHQJjV-dP2PfVTpAiMX7piAaaYC73RhdpgrBcO-lI_RfJMCnyrr-2s4oUgKEqe-bSX9N1OdJ5sYWJd6w9x7ChMjAI/s1600/loving+Parots.jpg"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 178px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 133px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5677832685502228754" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrGRI_9F61SK3h3LOZqBa6kh5hAmyY_V_Wlk8dTG3Gy57HAn__7rQHQJjV-dP2PfVTpAiMX7piAaaYC73RhdpgrBcO-lI_RfJMCnyrr-2s4oUgKEqe-bSX9N1OdJ5sYWJd6w9x7ChMjAI/s320/loving+Parots.jpg" /></a><span style="color:#660000;"><span style="color:#993300;">The most predominant misunderstanding about Tantra is that I encounter, is that it is all about sex. Well, not only sex, but having great sex, the best sex you can imagine, and hours of it with multiple orgasms. The reason for this seems to be the simple fact that sex rules our lives in one way or another. We either have a partner that wants too little of it...or one that wants too much, depending on the perspective from which we are viewing it of course. Or there is no partner in sight to experience either too little or too much, it is simply zero. Sometimes there is lots of it, with lots of partners, in lots of different situations – twosomes, threesomes, foursomes, orgies etc. And of course, there are great deviations from the “normal” variations of it, like BDSM etc. Then there are all sorts of sexual difficulties that can make our lives miserable – difficulty to orgasm or climaxing far too early, having too much or too little libido and funnily enough, this </span></span><span style="color:#993300;">applies to both men and women, although we like to think it’s gender specific and applies to men only!<br /><br />Here’s the thing: sex IS important. It is the most major energy force in our lives. We come from sex and in fact, the whole of life comes from sex. In Tantra we call sex our Life Force. And as you can imagine, when our Life Force depletes, a whole lot is pulled into a downward spiral with it.<br /><br />Sexual energy is charged with an internal, mental and physical drive whether we like it or not. This in turn charged with hormones and endorphins etc., it is the single most naturally given drive we have. It is our creative energy, not only physically in the form of pro-creation, but our drive to complete ourselves, to be passionate about whatever it is we allow ourselves to be passionate about – our work, our relationships, our hobbies. Sigmund Freud discovered that it was possible to compensate desire by directing this energy into other passions and that if we don’t it sometimes finds its way into mentally unhealthy results.<br /><br />So all in all, sex is worth thinking about! The thing is to get out of the habit of simply thinking about sex as sex only. Sex as sex only is just the physical act and that in itself is a pretty mundane activity. Tantra allows us look at everything else that sex is about, it gives more meaning to sex than we generally believe is possible.<br /><br />The ancient Chinese realised the life force aspect of sexual energy and developed methods of cultivating sexual energy in the form of Taoism and taoist practices, just as the ancient people of India developed the deeply spiritual path of Tantra and tantric practices. Both cultures understood that sex was the very centre of life itself, and although the two paths differ tremendously, they do have in common that sexual energy is essential to our physical, emotional and spiritual well being in one way or another.<br /><br />Whereas in China the emphasis seems to have been on the cultivation of sexual energy for physical well being and longevity, in India, being probably one of the most spiritually inclined countries in the world, it seems natural that the emphasis was on sex and spirituality, sex and the Divine, sex and enlightenment.<br /><br />Valerie Brooks puts it beautifully in her book </span><span style="color:#993300;"><em>Tantric Awakening – A Woman’s Initiation into the Path of Ecstacy:<br /></em><em><span style="font-family:times new roman;">“Utilizing our most primitive, overwhelming desires for sexual encounter, tantra teaches transcendence of all desire. Tantra’s ultimate lesson is that all human desire carries at its source the singular desire for God. And even the desire for God is transcended once we understand that we are already there.” </span></em><br /><br />Furthermore...<br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;color:#993300;"><em>“Tantra allows anyone to experience the ecstatic, heavenly realm that saints through the ages have attempted to describe through poetry and metaphor. It’s nearly indescribable, because it’s beyond what we can mentally conceive.<br />...<br /></em></span><em><span style="color:#993300;">“</span><span style="font-family:times new roman;color:#993300;">People become involved in tantra for various reasons. The practice of tantra can bring us many personal benefits, including improved relationships, emotional healing, physical health, longevity, happiness, wealth, and of course the obvious: an intensely satisfying sex life...But, regardless of diverse initial interests, to remain on this path all must have only agenda – a profound desire for oneness with whatever it is we call God.”<br /></span><span style="font-family:times new roman;color:#993300;">...<br />“Tantra has no text or manual on how to treat others. Yet the universal call for love within all great spiritual teachings can be embodied through tantric. Tantra calls our intellectual bluff. Tantra takes the theory of loving God to a practical level. Before we can love God, we must love others. Tantra asks us not to idealize love, or to love a concept, but rather to experience love. Tantra is about really loving others, here and now.”<br />...<br />“This does not mean that we need to have sex with everyone we want to love. Tantra is a tool that teaches us how to love unconditionally, in every area of our lives. Many people misunderstand how tantric relates to sex. Tantra uses sex only as a vehicle. In and of itself, sex is meaningless. Sex is a tool, like the flame of a candle in meditation or the beads used in prayer. No tool will bring us enlightenment unless we use it for that purpose. Tantra’s purpose is never about having sex. The purpose of tantric is not even to be a tantric. The purpose of tantric is, once again, love. Tantra holds sexuality in a context that is healing and positive, as an expression of God’s love.”<br />...<br />“Tantra might be a simple path, but it is not always easy. Many people who begin tantric, even with the best intentions, will fall off the path. Why is it so difficult to make love all the time? Practicing tantric is not like going to church for two hours a week. It will make us look at ourselves. It will ask us to change. It pushes buttons.”<br /><br /></span></em><span style="color:#993300;">Tantra has pushed my buttons and continues to do so. It has changed how I deal with things, how I deal with all aspects of my life and it continues to do so. It is fascinating and deeply rewarding, and I feel blessed to have gotten over my initial belief that it was all “just about sex”. Had this not been the case, and being the well brought up, sexually conservative South African that I was, I could never have embraced Tantra. I came to Tantra looking for God, or if you prefer, looking for life. I wanted more. I felt there was more. Most importantly, I wanted my frustration with life, my pain around love, my loneliness amidst friends, relatives and people in general to end.<br /><br />I wanted life and I wanted it fulfilling, full and filled. I got it. I learnt to love myself in a way never before imagined, then I learnt to love others in a way never before achieved...and finally I learnt to love God, the Divine, Existence in a way never before experienced.<br /><br />Tantra is not a religion. I did not have to adopt a belief system or adhere to doctrines. Tantra is a path, a method, a way of life. It has become my way of life. </span><br /><span style="color:#993300;"></span><br /><span style="color:#993300;">Of her personal experience, Valerie Brooks’ writes:<br /><span style="font-family:times new roman;"><em>“ In tantra I found a synergy between sexuality and spirituality, between tradition and spontaneity, between the communal and the subjective. It was like glue to me. It brought together all the seemingly irreconcilable pieces, merging the contradictory and disparate messages of religion, philosophy and literature. Tantra guided me inward, showing me that my darkest demons were illusions built of dust. In essence, it enabled me to become a completely different person.“ </em></span></span><br /><br /><br /><p><span style="color:#993300;">I too became a completely different person on my tantric journey. Not someone else, just the person I was always meant to be. I hope you enjoyed this read and that you not only have become interested in Valerie Brooks' book, but also in starting your journey with and on the path of Tantra. </span><br /></p><br /><p><span style="color:#993300;">Namaste,<br />Leandra</span> </p><br /><br /><p><span style="font-size:85%;color:#993300;">* all quotes from Tantric Awakening – A Woman’s Initiation into the Path of Ecstacy by Valerie Brooks (pages 11 – 14) ISBN -89281-096-5 (pbk) </span></p>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-24978348848201378732011-09-27T02:16:00.005+02:002011-09-27T02:30:13.732+02:00Discovering Durga<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" style="color: rgb(51, 0, 0);" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19UG00dE_aFj5gZDBxHm-tJDPX-MHzSpKz0V7OTHhyZjJtLfU5Wr_WBEybNMXHreXGzPBGe1jN_Mjj81reEaY37OSKPNTjin7S3kXrDSZCyyyBMBuRF8CgA0O9I_0Bosw6ct_WyCbe2E/s1600/Durga+4.jpg"><img style="display: block; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 256px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi19UG00dE_aFj5gZDBxHm-tJDPX-MHzSpKz0V7OTHhyZjJtLfU5Wr_WBEybNMXHreXGzPBGe1jN_Mjj81reEaY37OSKPNTjin7S3kXrDSZCyyyBMBuRF8CgA0O9I_0Bosw6ct_WyCbe2E/s320/Durga+4.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5656829626535183938" border="0" /></a><br /><div style="text-align: center; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);"><br /></div><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">One of the most invoked forms of the divine feminine is the Hindu goddess Durga. Ma Anand Leandra takes a closer look.</span><span style="color: rgb(51, 0, 0);"> </span><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">In this manifestation, the multi-armed deity who battles and conquers the mighty buffalo demon Mahisasura, is one of the most spectacular of all personifications of cosmic energy. With three-eyes and adorned with the crescent moon, her multiple arms holding various weapons, emblems, jewels, utensils, garlands and rosaries of beads, and seated on her lion or tiger vehicle, she seemingly has overwhelming omnipotence. Also known as the Divine Mother, she embodies all the other goddess incarnations including <span lang="en-US">Kali (goddess of death and transformation), Lakshmi (goddess of spiritual and material abundance) and Sarasvati (goddess of wisdom and creativity). </span> </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">According to the myth, <span lang="en">demonic forces threatening to conquer the world and take down all who did not agree with their agenda, appeared in the form of </span>Mahisasura, the mighty buffalo demon. When all the male divinities had tried everything they could to put an end to this threat, and after realising that their methods were only perpetuating the violence and with nothing left to do, they fused their energy together allowing Durga to emerge. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">Although invoked by the merging of all the male god energies, Durga’s birth was not the result of the will of the gods, but, as with all her incarnations, was the result of her will to be in the world for the benefit of mankind. She chooses when and how to become active in the play of the goddess in the world. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">Mahisasura symbolises, among other things, the elemental powers of brutish ignorance and an exaggerated ego-sense whose sole purpose is to dominate and control, destroying the balance of the universe. Durga, her tremendous power poised and ready for this ferocious battle, changes her form time and again, matching his changing forms, until finally she wins the battle by decapitating him. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">Then, having completed what she set out to do, she disappears from the battlefield completely, but not before promising to nourish the world in times of need and to fearlessly annihilate all that is not truth, delivering all who call upon her from their enemies, and blessing them. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">This disappearance of Durga after her victory expresses one of the deepest truths of the divine feminine: her action in the cosmic drama is without retentive, ego-seeking ambition. She did not remain to be hallowed and subjected to praise and adoration for her deed. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);"><span lang="en">If Durga is understood as the wisdom of the heart, the buffalo demon </span><span lang="en">is the symbol of ignorance, reactions and ego attachments. His constant changing form is symbolic of the ignorant mind continuously jumping from desire to desire, relating directly to our irrational behavior. The demon's uncontrollable rage, destroying everything in its path without regard for the consequences, is a fitting analogy for all the levels of destruction that we face today. </span>This battle is symbolic of the universal war between knowledge and ignorance, truth and falsehood, the oppressor and the oppressed.<br /><span lang="en">This myth asks us to consider how we choose to express our anger. Will we poison our environment by being divisive, fearful, defensive and blaming? Or we will use our rage against the injustice and the polarities of separation in constructive ways? Will be contain the destructive force of our negative emotions: anger, jealousy, pride, greed and delusion over and over again, until such time as they are melted away and no longer exist?</span><br />Durga's story is a metaphor about the eternal cyclical repetition of the entire life process. The paradise which she restores on earth is temporary, and the battle between the order and chaos has to recur endlessly. On this battlefield, protagonist and antagonist take on the looks and qualities of the other over and over again, until the disguise of each is penetrated. When demon and goddess are reduced to their true nature, they are, in the last analysis, alike. Without the one we cannot perceive the other.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">Symbolising our constant struggle with all the perceived polarities of human life (male and female, right and wrong, good and bad, light and dark, pain and joy, love and hate etc), Durga’s story also represents constantly restoring paradise or bliss, until finally we are able to perceive and experience the ‘Oneness of All’ that is inherent in our spiritual nature. </p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);">When we reach the state in which all dualism has melted away, we understand that without the other we are not ourselves; when we exist together as one, I am in you and you are in me, only then are there no oppositions and no polarities, leaving only a ‘oneness in an eternal cycle of cosmic activity’.</p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);"><span lang="en">Durga </span><span lang="en">is a metaphor for the fiercely compassionate divine feminine aspect of our nature. It is our Durga nature that can and will finally free us from an afflicted ego and return us to the penetrating wisdom of divine love. She is the impenetrable place of calm within our hearts from which we are able to choose actions that promote harmony and unity over selfish, harmful acts. Formed out of the sum of all the divine masculine power, she is the ferocious feminine power that paves the way to understanding true oneness, free of all polarities. For men and women alike, it is the Durga within ourselves that paves the way to bliss.</span></p><p style="margin-bottom: 0cm; line-height: 100%; color: rgb(51, 0, 0);"><span lang="en">Published in Odyssey Magazine August/September 2011<br /></span></p>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-20629359159260766582011-06-24T23:15:00.004+02:002015-04-26T03:27:00.095+02:00Speak to us of Love...<div align="center">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEXAykH_fIDOgujN-03mUHtzoCSzyysgCB4nIF7xl6WM77jLUpOjZdI3m5P1yxf7pp5abB4yBy7d4P87Kh9Ic5r1L5diewx5jguuLlDuC3OdYzmIStHJn0NuZCUltuQAPcpsPWFNsh9I/s1600/Bridge.JPG"><img alt="" border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzEXAykH_fIDOgujN-03mUHtzoCSzyysgCB4nIF7xl6WM77jLUpOjZdI3m5P1yxf7pp5abB4yBy7d4P87Kh9Ic5r1L5diewx5jguuLlDuC3OdYzmIStHJn0NuZCUltuQAPcpsPWFNsh9I/s320/Bridge.JPG" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5621907870411937650" style="cursor: hand; display: block; height: 170px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 265px;" /></a><span style="font-size: 78%;">The Bridge, Aquarelle on paper by Leandra<br /></span></div>
Taken from the book "<em>The Prophet"</em> by <em>Kahlil <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_0">Gibran</span></em>, these words describing the ups and downs of love are beautiful and deeply insightful.<br />
I have quoted from <em>The Prophet</em> before here in my journal - in the article I wrote after my father passed away last year, I quoted a portion about death - and indeed, this is a book that has had much meaning to me since my student days when I was first introduced to <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_1">Gibran's</span> writings. It accompanied me in many roles of loving and living, being a wife and particularly a mother, with work and play and so many things along the path of practical human life.<br />
This particular passage accompanied me very recently, offering me comfort, support and clarity at a time when loving seemed to be a deeply painful process. It helped give my pain direction and meaning, and as I slowly understood the full meaning of Gibran's words, it allowed love's warmth to once again surface in my soul, melting the pain into clear flowing water, rippling over cool earth stones, beautifully.<br />
And so I share it with you all, with warm love in my heart, and a kiss upon my lips.<br />
<span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_2">Namaste</span>,<br />
Leandra<br />
<br />
<em>When love beckons to you, follow him,</em><br />
<em>Though his ways are hard and steep.</em><br />
<em>And when his wings <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_3">enfold</span> you yield to him,</em><br />
<em>Though the sword hidden among his pinions may would you.</em><br />
<em>And when he speaks to you believe in him,</em><br />
<em>Thought his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden.</em><br />
<em>For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as hi is for your growth so is he for your pruning.</em><br />
<em>Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun,<br />so shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth.<br />Like sheaves of corn he gathers you unto himself.</em><br />
<em>He threshes you to make you naked.</em><br />
<em>He sifts you to free you from your husks.</em><br />
<em>He grinds you to whiteness.</em><br />
<em>He kneads you until you are pliant;</em><br />
<em>And then he assigns you to his sacred fire, that you may become sacred bread for God's sacred feast.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>All these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart, and in that knowledge become a fragment of Life's heart.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>But if in your fear you would seek only <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_4">love's</span> peace and <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_5">love's</span> pleasure,</em><br />
<em>Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_6">love's</span> threshing-floor,</em><br />
<em>Into the <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_7">seasonless</span> world where you shall laugh but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.</em><br />
<em>Love possesses not nor would it be possessed;</em><br />
<em>For love is sufficient unto love.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>When you love you should not say, "God is in my heart," but rather, "I am in the heart of God.":</em><br />
<em>And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em>Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself.</em><br />
<em>But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:</em><br />
<em>To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.</em><br />
<em>To know the pain of too much tenderness.</em><br />
<em>To be wounded by your own understanding of love;</em><br />
<em>And to bleed willingly and joyfully.</em><br />
<em>To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_8">thanks</span> for another day of loving;</em><br />
<em>To rest at the noon hour and meditate <span class="blsp-spelling-error" id="SPELLING_ERROR_9">love's</span> ecstasy;</em><br />
<em>To return home at eventide with gratitude;</em><br />
<em>And then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved in your heart and a song of praise upon your lips"</em><br />
<em></em><br />
<em></em><br />Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-83494799939011043962011-05-26T03:53:00.015+02:002011-05-26T11:56:19.482+02:00Proudly Lingam<div align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi15PzYsXMLOA_Do0UY5Ra0gvKMYsLe5zi0vhEZo9T0WMfEQY8enyAD86R7ggNtQcSUqM5KrvnkPqH6HjAIbqXrTXbResOsaXzNSsH1HcnKf-OT8LS8_Cjpbf7MS61O_g-ydXLHoILt6Kc/s1600/Shakti-Shiva.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 320px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 216px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5610844836545475778" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi15PzYsXMLOA_Do0UY5Ra0gvKMYsLe5zi0vhEZo9T0WMfEQY8enyAD86R7ggNtQcSUqM5KrvnkPqH6HjAIbqXrTXbResOsaXzNSsH1HcnKf-OT8LS8_Cjpbf7MS61O_g-ydXLHoILt6Kc/s320/Shakti-Shiva.JPG" /></a><span style="font-family:arial;font-size:78%;">Shakti-Shiva Energy (Aquarelle on paper) - Leandra<br /></span><br /><strong>Proudly Lingam</strong><br /></div><br /><div align="center">Rigid<br />Stands in soldier-steady stance,<br />Preparing for a Tantric dance.<br />Sliding.<br />Oiled hot and stoked, stroked mildly;<br />And ever so often wildly.<br />Burning from all four watch-towers<br />He enters to the stage.<br />He's centre of the stage<br />And always by that stage<br />Proudly lingam.<br /><br />Merry choice to be a boy.<br />Merry times to wind this toy.<br />Merry meet, my phallic friend,<br />So proudly, proudly lingam.<br /></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:78%;">Justin-Dean Brown - </span><span style="font-size:78%;">May 2011</span><br /></div><br /><div align="left"><span style="font-size:78%;">(Justin-Dean Brown is now co-perating with Ma Anand Leandra and is working from her premises in Cape Town and Johannesburg. Visit his website <a href="http://www.thurisazcobra.co.za/">Thurisaz Cobra - Practical Pathways to Personal Power</a>)</span></div>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-85266919433292385232011-04-22T22:51:00.010+02:002011-04-23T13:52:01.662+02:00Starting points & finishing lines and the race in between...or what you’ve always wanted to know about orgasm.<div><br /><div align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxes0QwGuxWctFR8GNW09gfC32SjHcoi7ktqdS9qLwQp5nf981qkN2iShM59fQYAcxpmajkIqGO-9cW4_R0mWzdbnJOBDXSc3b6hBAnRSIOtpbMnFXLEgQiJE7ymY8pgLct5fahR-5EKI/s1600/Calabash+website.JPG"><img style="TEXT-ALIGN: center; MARGIN: 0px auto 10px; WIDTH: 266px; DISPLAY: block; HEIGHT: 194px; CURSOR: hand" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5598527027246789426" border="0" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxes0QwGuxWctFR8GNW09gfC32SjHcoi7ktqdS9qLwQp5nf981qkN2iShM59fQYAcxpmajkIqGO-9cW4_R0mWzdbnJOBDXSc3b6hBAnRSIOtpbMnFXLEgQiJE7ymY8pgLct5fahR-5EKI/s320/Calabash+website.JPG" /></a> <span style="font-family:verdana;font-size:78%;"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error">Lingam</span> - <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error">Aquarelle</span> by Leandra </span><br /><br /><br /><div align="left"><span style="color:#660000;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong><span style="color:#666666;">Part I - The truth about non-ejaculatory orgasm for men </span></strong></span></span><br /><br /><span style="color:#660000;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><strong><span style="font-family:verdana;color:#333333;">Introduction</span></strong><br /><br /></span>Orgasm is usually both the starting point and the finishing line of any sexual encounter. The starting point because, being the aim or goal of “normal” sex, it is generally what is on our minds as our intention when we start off with any sexual activity. The finishing line because, after orgasm there seems no where else to go, the goal having been reached.<br /><br />But then, orgasm is so often a letdown. I used to think this was my issue with sexuality but today, from my many years of experience with students coming to Tantra Sacred Massage sessions, I know that most individuals feel this at some stage in their lives. This is particularly as one reaches the forties threshold or in terms of marriage and relationships, the eight to ten year threshold. Mind you, these are estimates and it can happen earlier and later, but invariably it does happen that sex becomes a bit mundane and the feeling that orgasm is not what it is made out to be grows.<br /><br />Men particularly report that the nicest phase of sex is actually before orgasm, and they wish they could stay in this phase longer. The actual moment of orgasm is usually pretty quick both for men and women – although women do naturally experience a slightly longer orgasm compared to that of men. (I will go more into this in Part III of my article).<br /><br />In addition, many individuals have some form of difficulty with orgasm itself – either it comes too soon or it does not come at all – both variations are difficult to live with and ruin full sexual satisfaction. So it is perhaps understandable that much of modern day <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_0" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> literature and content of Tantra websites worldwide, is filled with the promise of better orgasms – either longer, or deeper, or full body, or multi and for men, non-ejaculatory – and this accompanied by the hope of greater and more satisfying sex which in turn promises a happier and more fulfilling life.<br /><br />Even without all this information, we seem to find ourselves racing after orgasm. In a sense, the event of Tantra becoming more centre stage worldwide has not done us a favour as the level of sexual expectation is now higher and more individuals are feeling the pressure of having to have more than just an “ordinary” orgasm. So it is understandable that learning to enhance orgasm is one of the main motivations for students coming to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_1" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> massage sessions.<br /><br /><strong>My personal quest on the subject of orgasm</strong><br /><br />When I came to Tantra, my motivation was to find meaning and healing in my life. I wanted my body, mind and spirit integrated and a way of life that would fulfil me. Basically I wanted my neediness to stop so that I could feel good about who I was and where I was in my life from my inner core, as opposed to having to rely on positive responses from others and situations, that would endorse the meaningfulness of my life and who I was.<br /><br />Having better orgasms was something I never spoke to my teachers about. I did however ask about the non-ejaculatory orgasm for men, as I thought teaching men this technique would become an important part of my work, and to my astonishment, two of my three teachers told me “forget about non-ejaculatory orgasm, it is not important”! The fact that they were both male, seemed to place more weight on their statements, and thus I was influenced quite strongly in this respect.<br /><br />After starting my <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_2" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> work, I intensified my reading of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_3" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> literature and found that much of it was about methods to enhance orgasm. So it was natural for me to ask myself what the truth of the matter was...and thus began my research into the subject. In this series of articles about orgasm, I share my thoughts resulting from this research as well as from both my personal and work related experiences over the last 6 years or so.</span><span style="color:#660000;"></div></div><span style="color:#990000;"><span style="font-family:verdana;"><strong><br /><div align="left"><br /><span style="color:#333333;">The truth about non-ejaculatory orgasm for men </span></strong><br /><br /></span></span>In almost all <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_4" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> literature on this subject, we find the claim that men need to learn and master the method and the practice of non-ejaculatory orgasm in order to contain their energy and experience their full sexual potential.<br /><br />The reason given is that ejaculation depletes a man’s energy and that by not ejaculating he will contain his energy and be able to “last longer” (i.e. have longer erections, experience longer orgasms (generally called expanded orgasm), become multi-orgasmic (meaning being able to have a number of consecutive orgasms in a single session), and experience full body orgasms (meaning a special kind of orgasm that is felt throughout the body).<br /><br />All this of course, will result in generally more fulfilling sex and by implication, a happier life. Sometimes one reads that non-ejaculation is the clue to <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_5" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> sex, the way to achieve more conscious and more spiritual sex.<br /><br /><strong><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_6" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kegel</span></span> Exercises </strong><br /><br />The method that is taught worldwide is relatively simple and within a few weeks of practice relatively easy to achieve. Men strengthen the pelvic muscles by training them with what is known as the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_7" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kegel</span></span> exercises.<br /><br />These exercises were developed and first published in 1948 by a Dr <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_8" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kegel</span></span> in order to assist with incontinence. For women they are extremely helpful for tightening the vaginal walls after childbirth, excellent for incontinence difficulties and also increase the experience of orgasm. They assist men with prostrate health, with bladder difficulties and it is said to assist with having stronger and longer lasting erections, thus being very beneficial to men suffering from <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_9" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error">pre</span></span>-mature ejaculation.<br /><br />The next step is to learn to contract the pelvic muscles just before or in the moment of orgasm and in so doing, close off the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_10" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error">Vasa</span></span> <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_11" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error">Deferentia</span></span> or sperm ducts resulting in the ejaculate not reaching the tip of the penis to be excreted there. This then has generally been called the “non-ejaculatory orgasm”.<br /><br />Why this is commonly called non-ejaculatory orgasm I do not know because an ejaculation does occur. </div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left"><strong>Retrograde ejaculation</strong></div><br /><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="left">What really happens is that contracting the muscles squeezes the sperm ducts closed causing a blockage. When the ejaculate reaches the blockage, it is subsequently pushed back and into the bladder where it quickly dissolves and is urinated out. While the semen are not excreted through the penis, they certainly leave the testicles and are excreted. Medically this is called a retrograde ejaculation, sometimes known as an in-ejaculation.<br /><br />Retrograde ejaculation is medically speaking the sign of a blockage problem in the sperm ducts caused by infection or certain medications which is one of the main causes of male sterility. It is also the way ejaculation takes place when a prostrate operation has been performed.<br /><br /><strong>Medical problems resulting from blocking the sperm ducts</strong><br /></div><br /><div align="left">Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with strengthening the pelvic muscles, in fact this is a very healthy thing to do. For those of you who are interested in learning these, follow this link or Google ‘<span id="SPELLING_ERROR_12" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error">Kegel</span></span> exercises” and you will find an abundance of info available on the web.<br /><br />However, please do not use this as a general way of having orgasms guys. I will give you a different method, more natural method. There are a number of difficulties and dangers with this method of prolonging orgasm.Interestingly I have not found <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_13" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> literature that makes mention of a variety of medical difficulties that can result from repeated practice of this method.<br /><br />It is not difficult to imagine that by doing this, pressure is placed on the sperm ducts which can result in irreparable damage being done. This is particularly important for men nearing and reaching their fifties. Apart from this, regular retrograde ejaculation can result in a further variety of medical problems which I won’t go into now.<br /><br />Another important fact is that regular ejaculation is important for the health of the prostate gland and it used to be medical practice for men to have their prostrate glands “milked” regularly as a preventative measure for the development of cancer. This was a method of massaging the prostate gland to empty it of the colourless thin fluid that is produced there.<br /><br />So all in all, I do not recommend this method or even regular non-ejaculation through any other method. And in fact, my experience shows that it is not preventing ejaculation that contains a man’s energy but they actual way he orgasms – whether he ejaculates or not!<br /><br /><strong>How this method was assimilated into <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_14" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> teaching</strong><br /><br />The method of in-ejaculation comes from a completely different tradition to that of Tantra which originated in India. It goes back to ancient China and the Taoist tradition and was originally used as an ancient birth control practice. This makes sense as today we understand blockages of the sperm ducts to be one of the major causes for male infertility.<br /><br />The Taoist also saw this as a way for males to contain their energy and prolong life. This results from the ancient belief that a man could run out of seminal fluid if he ejaculated too much in his life time and that his life would thus be shortened. Another Taoist belief was that if the man retained his sperm, he would retain the intelligence that made them and draw this up to his crown, thus increasing his intelligence. Today we know that these beliefs have no medical substance and that the male does not run out of seminal fluid through ejaculation.<br /><br />As a side note, interestingly women were encouraged to have frequent secretion of female ejaculate as the belief was that it contained a vital substance from which her partner (the male) could derive energy and power!<br /><br />Tantra is an ancient Indian tradition that emerged with or prior to Hinduism. In Tantra there is no ancient practice of this method and it certainly had nothing to do with <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_15" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> spiritual practice. As the knowledge of Tantra expanded to other countries it was assimilated into the traditional belief system and philosophies of those countries. Thus the development of Buddhist Tantra in Tibet and the incorporation of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_16" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> practices into Taoist practice in China.<br /><br />Tantra being the non-dogmatic system that it is, also appears to have over time, assimilated other practices and western Tantra (or <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_17" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error">Neo</span></span> Tantra) seems to have merged two vastly different traditions. Taoism is concerned with the conservation of energy, Tantra is concerned with sexual energy being our life force and our senses being the door to being in the body and the “now”.<br /><br />Tantra is concerned with the merging together of the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, the polarised male and female energy. In the traditional <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_18" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> understanding, it is in this union that enlightenment is made possible. Although this is mostly understood as the union between a male and a female, it can occur in a meditative way or self-loving rituals without a partner through the merging or balancing of the inner male and inner female energy.<br /><br />One belief in the <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_19" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> system is that the male needs to unite with the female and needs to remain inside her as long as possible in <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_20" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error">oder</span></span> to be able to absorb some of her vital life juices and energy, so necessary for men to attain an enlightened state of being.<br /><br /></span><span style="color:#660000;"><strong>Does then the non-ejaculatory orgasm exist in Tantra at all?<br /></strong><br />Yes, certainly, but at least as I teach it, it occurs in more natural way and is not as important as it’s made out to be. What is important, and much more important than ejaculation, is breath. It is the correct breathing technique that contains the energy in the body. As with any yoga practice, breath is the single most important aspect in Tantra and <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_21" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_23" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> work of any kind. The breathing technique, accompanied by full body relaxation as well as a specific muscular relaxation is what enhances orgasm and can lead to the experience of a true non-ejaculatory orgasm.<br /><br />This is therefore what I teach. I teach men how to orgasm, how to change their orgasm into one that will contain their energy and in addition open the door to deep and spiritual experiences – and this independent of whether he is alone or with a partner.<br /><br />The method is the same for men and women, just that women do it naturally and through understanding what they naturally do, they are able to do it more consciously thus enhancing their experience of orgasm.<br /><br />It is also the method I teach to resolve all kinds of sexual difficulties, including premature ejaculation and difficulty in achieving orgasm. </span></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#660000;"></span></div><br /><div><span style="color:#660000;"><strong>What is the secret of tantric sex?</strong></div></span><span style="color:#660000;"><br /><div align="left"><br />It is however, not beneficial in any way to chase the non-ejaculatory orgasm, just as Tantra teaches us not to chase the orgasm itself. Important is being in the moment of whatever you are doing without it having to lead anywhere. That really is the secret of <span id="SPELLING_ERROR_22" class="blsp-spelling-error"><span id="SPELLING_ERROR_24" class="blsp-spelling-error">tantric</span></span> sex. Furthermore, it is a way of life. A way of living and experiencing each moment as it comes along and this way of life does not back away when things get sexual – on the contrary, this momentary experiencing continues throughout the sexual act.<br /><br />I hope you enjoyed the article so far. I welcome your comments below!<br />Next month I will write about the real meaning of orgasm and finally I will give you the method I teach.<br /><br />Warm autumn greetings<br />Leandra </span><span style="color:#660000;"><br /></div></span><br /><div><br /></div><br /><div align="left">Next articles:<br />Part II) The real meaning or orgasm<br />Part III) The Method to enhance orgasm<br /><br /></div><span style="color:#660000;"></span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-69501282341953189232011-03-14T22:40:00.033+02:002011-04-24T20:02:47.755+02:00On being rock bottom...and just an ordinary woman!<div align="center"><span style="font-size:78%;"></span></div><br /><p align="center"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbNf8ZitITXiCyYOHjhx8TVEYp9G5mFLThbq8XHakjImM29VH-QekTd_gdFYhcgT0qx3KC0tXTAURjDnVzvObfUPg-kbE40H5hGAfo6cMZXCKbqhS9mHJ4ClWbKx7875sPw4T-86Tb_6M/s1600/AfterRain1_small.jpg" q6="true" /><br /></p><br /><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:78%;">After The Rain - Leandra (Dispersions paint on paper)<br /></div></span><br /><br /><p>I recently watched a TV interview that Opera did with J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series. Known in the USA as the first billionaire author, Rowling spoke about her life before and after her success and what motivated her. A lovely woman with a very interesting life, one of the things she said resonated with me particularly. After leaving Spain where she had been living with her first husband, she returned to the UK and found herself in the situation of being totally “rock bottom”, a single mother of a small child, pretty much penniless, alone and without work, the situation could have not been worse. She said that this “rock bottom” became her starting point....and I thought YES, this is what being rock bottom is about. It’s about starting points. To really appreciate being rock bottom, we need to recognise this!<br /><br />Being rock bottom is always scary. It feels like having no way out. It feels like everything is against us, like there is nothing we can do and we feel very vulnerable. More often than not, it comes as a surprise, not being our own doing and is mostly accompanied by feelings of despair, helplessness and decapitating depression.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#cc0000;"><strong>On being "rock bottom"...<br /></strong></span><br />I know this situation. I have been in it many times in my life for just as many reasons. The reasons were always good, very seldom was it my own doing, life seemed simply to be extremely unfair. I was after all a talented, hard working girl, always trying my best to do things right and yet, again and again, finding myself in personal “rock bottom” situations. It is only in retrospect that I recognise that these rock bottom periods were also always my starting points! Each time, as hitting rock bottom seemed to get worse and worse, more and more difficult to bear and less and less easy to move out of, the reward of having gone through it got better and better. My situation always improved as I was catapulted into making decisions that would force me to follow my dreams, believe in myself and become what I became for a while – until the next rock bottom hit.<br /><br />My phases of happiness would last a while, until circumstances forced me to re-think my initial idea resulting finally, in making a new decision as I moved along my life path. All the time, it was the difficult times that were my motivation to move on, to change aspects of my life, and achieve even more than I already had. Life seems to be filled with these rock bottoms, but more importantly, it appears to me that they are there for a purpose - the purpose of continually pursuing happiness and satisfaction. After all, if we found ultimate happiness and satisfaction, what would motivate us further?<br /><br />Looking back, I see that my curve of happiness went steadily upwards, my rock bottoms effectively pushing me to know myself and what makes me tick; to understand what I like and don’t like, what I do well with and not so well, and what motivates me – and “failure” always motivated me. Actually amazing actually is it not? Well, thinking about it...not really!<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#cc0000;"><strong>So what is failure? </strong></span><br /><br />Failure is really only the end of one thing and the beginning of another. It is like a doorway, a threshold, an opening to something new.<br /><br /><strong><span style="font-size:130%;color:#cc0000;">Theories of Creativity and Creative Problem Solving...<br /></span></strong><br />One of the subjects I taught ongoing art therapists in my training institute many years ago was Theories of Creativity. </p><br /><p>Now this is interesting. Perhaps you are unaware of the fact that artistic creativity is nothing other than a constant problem solving process and that it is always a problem that motivates decisions for the artist: which materials to use for example and which format, what subject...and then where to start, what colours, how to use the brush etc., a series of never ending little problems which can feel quite daunting, followed by decisions or solutions. Well, possible solutions because every time these decisions would be followed by yet another small problem and another big decision! This, never ending, until the painting or art work is completed and then, finally, after completion, there would be the question of what next?<br /><br />Theories of Creativity are very similar, if not the same, as Theories of Problem Solving and what is more, these are really the same theories used in business all over the world as well as in life in general. So looking a little closer at this, I want to share some thoughts on creative problem solving with you.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:130%;color:#cc0000;"><strong>Firstly some definitions...<br /></strong></span><br /><strong>What is creativity?<br /></strong>There are a number of theories on creativity but what they have in common is that it is a destructive/constructive process that destroys old perceptions through new ones. All creativity involves combining and re-combining previously known elements into unique new configurations. This process is guided by the subconscious which is normally restrained, but during a creative process is far less restrained. In order to be creative, one has to be divergent, convergent, and evaluative and this is measured by the flexibility and fluency of our responses. One needs to be sensitive to what needs changing in order to redefine the information or the situation. And in the end, the success of any creative or problem solving process is based on the originality of the result or product. The product is always a transformation something known into something not previously known. This then leads to another definition..<br /><br /><strong>What is creative problem solving?<br /></strong>Creative Problem Solving is the mental process of creating a solution to a problem. It is a special form of problem solving in which the solution is independently created rather than learned with assistance. To qualify as creative problem solving, the solution must either have value, clearly solve the stated problem, or be appreciated by someone, for whom the situation improves.<br /><br /><strong>What about Artistic Creativity?<br /></strong>It is incorrect to think that while problem solving always involves creativity, artistic creativity does not involve problem solving. In the fields of music, poetry, writing and art for example, the artist is constantly solving problems: which color to use, which brush, which word or which theme to make use of? The artist is trying to create something that gets as close as possible to his/her deepest desire, his/her deepest thought or emotion. It also requires newness as a characteristic of what is created, something that will appeal to the artist. However, this does not necessarily imply that his/her creation has value or is appreciated by other people.<br /><br /><strong>What constitutes a problem that requires solving?<br /></strong>The situation prior to the solution does not need to be labelled as a problem. Alternate labels include: a challenge, an opportunity, a situation which can be improved on, or in which there is room for improvement. Next, we need to have a closer look as the phases of creativity and creative problem solving.<br /><br /><span style="color:#cc0000;"><strong><span style="font-size:130%;">Phases of Creativity and Creative Problem Solving Processes</span></strong> </span><br /><br />Most theories on creativity define certain phases in a set order. Based on the work of various researchers, I have combined a number of these and defined 6 main phases to creativity and to creative problem solving. Each phase is clearly defined and is accompanied by different emotions.<br /><strong><em><br />Orientation Phase:</em></strong> recognising the fact of a problem that needs a solution </p><br /><p><strong><em>Preparation Phase</em>:</strong> gathering information about the problem and converting a fuzzy or confused statement of the problem into a broad statement, one that is more suitable to idea finding. </p><br /><p><strong><em>Incubation Phase:</em></strong> almost like being pregnant with the problem. This is usually a sub-conscious phase - waiting for the solution or illumination to “come” while the old and the new stand side by side - the most difficult phase. </p><br /><p><strong><em>Illumination Phase:</em></strong> recognising the solution, what we call a “aha” moment, accompanied by good feelings of pending activity.</p><br /><p><strong><em>Implementation Phase</em></strong>: giving physical form to the idea or “aha” solution – a very active phase of putting the solution into practice. </p><br /><p><em><strong>Verification Phase:</strong></em> verifying the solution as we evaluating or judge the result as to its effectiveness. </p><br /><p>And then we are once again very possibly at the new beginning of yet another "problem" that needs solving, and another possible "rock bottom" in life.<br /><br />The time between the <em>Verification Phase</em> and a new <em>Orientation Phase</em> may be immediate and it may be years. One solution invariably leads to another decision making or problem solving process sooner or later and the process starts again.<br /><br />Of these phases, the second one, the <em>Incubation Phase</em>, is the most difficult to endure. You know something needs changing because you have recognised the problem. Possible solutions come and go as the mind goes overtime thinking things through, going around and around in a seemingly never ending spiral, backwards and forwards. Emotions run haywire and self-esteem seems not to exist as the actual decision, the final solution seems not to completely emerge.<br /><br />This phase is ended by the long awaited for “aha” moment which is nothing else than “knowing” - knowing what to do next, bringing relief to the turmoil. Emotions cool down as the mind slows down, as it is now able to think: “I am able to do something...this is what I can do!” </p><br /><p>Once again, this is very interesting as, while realising the solution to a problem, there is no certainty about the outcome – ever. Yet we feel relieved because we can finally go into action.<br /><br />Putting the solution into practice is the real hard work which still has to subsequently be verified as to whether the solution was that good - and this always results in a new problem. Why? Because there is never a totally final solution to anything. If there were, we would no longer exist. We would no longer have anything to live for, anything to work towards - and as humans, we need this “needing” something to work towards. Our striving is always to get better, be better, better the situation, better something in our lives. And that is the very purpose of evolution itself.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#cc0000;">The real problem to any problem<br /></span><br /></strong>The real problem to any problem is having a never ending variety of choices. Some choices are perceived, some are not. And then not knowing which choice to make, or being fearful it may be the wrong one, which inhibits creative flow in any area of work or life. This is as true for artists as it is for work situations and indeed is applicable to all aspects of life. And is life itself not a series of problems that need to be solved, whether we realise this or not? We do it all the time. Perhaps we are aware of this process and perhaps not. We are however in this process constantly. In business as well as in play, in relationships and in aloneness, in all phases of life we proceed from one such situation to another.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#cc0000;">A personal account of my recent “rock bottom”</span><br /><br /></strong>I was in this predicament last year for months on end when my life was impacted by difficulties and problems after the passing of my father, and I hit aall time heavy “rock bottom”. My perceived family structure disintegrated into a continuum of total confusion as trusted family structures broke down, leaving my life in total disarray. What is more, the story reads like a Hollywood thriller/drama in an antagonist play, this being a play in which the antagonist takes over the role of the protagonist in determining the unfolding drama.<br /><br /><em>The protagonist:</em> the CEO of the large welfare organisation which my parents had begun when I was just 10 years old. She had enjoyed a particularly close relationship with my father with whom she worked together very closely. My 90 year old mother did not particularly like her and after my father’s passing, found herself totally dependent on the CEO’s decision as to where and how she would continue to live. After the CEO invited herself to our family funeral she topped this by standing up suddenly as the main speaker, catapulting my mother into a mentally confused, almost paranoid state of being.<br /><em><br />The antagonist:</em> my brother, a drug addict from an early age and now chronically alcoholic, saw this as his chance of consolidating his lifestyle, and removed my mother from her protected place of residence with all the care she needed, and refused to tell anyone to where he was taking her. This resulted in my mother being missing for some weeks. The difficulty was, she went willingly - in her mind, she was fleeing from the clutches of the CEO and she did not comprehend the consequences of such a move. His motivation, being what he was, was obviously to secure her money and her furniture.<br /><br />The police, family courts and lawyers all had their hands tied. A High Court Order placing my mother under curatorship, allowing them to become active, would take months and cost a fortune, and what is more, may not even have been successful – my mom is charming with outsiders to the family and could easily have convinced the court that she was in her right mind – thus we had been warned by social workers and the psychiatrist I consulted.<br /><br /><em>The actors:</em> My self, my sister and my nephew. Before the removal of my mom, I had exposed my brother to her when I found valuable small items of furniture missing and her bank card as well as drugs in his possession. She however did not want to believe me resulting in a breakdown of communication between her and myself.<br /><br />Then too, the communication between my sister and myself broke down as each of us, still trying to come to terms with our father’s passing, hurting and emotional, were overwhelmed by the things we had to deal with.<br /><br />Finally, the CEO informed me that my father’s firearms had been collected by my brother from their place of safe keeping with the “permission” of our mother, who thought she was preventing the CEO getting her hands on them, and my life was subsequently so seriously and evidently threatened, as to warrant a police protection order which, a few weeks later after the court hearing, resulted in a permanent warrant for the arrest for my brother.<br /><br />At the handing over of the firearms to the police, it became apparent that one firearm was missing. The the police investigated my brother for some weeks claiming they were going to arrest and charge him with illegal possession of firearms as well as the loss (or illegal sale) of one of them. This however reached a dead end after my brother befriended the investigating officer and the investigation was stalled and finally stopped.<br /><br />In the mean time, my brother’s son, whose legal guardian I am and who had been living with me since he was 8, became seriously ill with stomach ulcers (at age 14!) and was in and out of hospital during end of year school exams.<br /><br />The story then nears an ending, two months later, with my brother deserting my mother during a drunken orgy and disappearing. After two days of being totally alone, her landlord finally managed, through the police, to get the details to contact my sister and myself, resulting in the communication between my sister and myself beginning anew, and we were finally able to get our mother out of town and to a safe place.<br /><br />During all this, I spent many fearful nights of anxiety - the threat to my life in itself was no easy task to deal with, let alone the fear of what was to happen to my mother. I wept tears to fill barrels of rain water tanks as, in all this, I had no idea what to do or where to turn. All the official places of assistance offered no further help. Family members and long standing family friends became very quiet as they withdrew, one after the other, equally overwhelmed by the events and obviously not wanting to get involved.<br /><br />Nights and days of de-capitulating depression resulted, draining all energy out of my being and leaving me just barely functioning at times. At the same time, understandably, I was hardly in a position to work effectively let alone at all - and after a total of 5 months of this drama and hardly earning anything while at the same time spending more on various consultations etc. as well as the repeated hospitalisation of my nephew, serious financial difficulties followed. It was horrendous.<br /><br />For weeks on end, I found myself just reacting to the occurrences with no creativity, in fact no life force, flowing through me at all. The phrase “just an ordinary family” often came to my mind, and for the first time, I felt sympathy and understanding for families whose stories filtered into in the media from time to time. These stories of individuals in malfunctioning families had previously appeared unrealistic to me. Now I knew, they too, were just also just ordinary people in ordinary families going about an ordinary life - until the structures in place break down, seemingly out of the blue and nothing, absolutely nothing, seems ordinary any more.<br /><br />I knew something had to change. I needed something to change. My nephew needed something to change. Something had to give and I did not want it to be our mental, emotional and physical health. This recognition ended my Orientation Phase and set off the Preparation Phase as my mind, at last, became more active trying to think of ways out.<br /><br />After mentally playing with a number of solutions, including fleeing the country and returning to Germany, the answer arose. Thus, finally, my Incubation Phase set in. It came slowly, almost ghostlike until the solution was “suddenly” there and I could, once again, become active. On a short trip to Cape Town, two close friends sat patiently one afternoon listening to the pros and cons of my solution to this dillema, and by the end of the day I had my “aha” moment and the Illumination Phase was finally there: the decision to move to Cape Town had been made! I felt almost instantaneously relieved and catapulted out of everything that had immobilised me for months.<br /><br />It had not been an easy decision to take. I have a large beautiful house on the Indian Ocean coast south of Durban which I absolutely loved, three adorable Jack Russell’s (who by the way, were my only warmth and comfort for most of those months), my nephew was in a boarding school not too far away....never the less, it felt good to be going into the active Implementation Phase. Within a few short months of pretty hectic planning, after the school year had ended and my facilitation at the 3-week International Tantra Teacher Training in the Northern Drakensberg was over, my nephew and I arrived in Cape Town early this year - with five suitcases and 25 kilos overweight - finally leaving everything behind.<br /><br />Now, just on two months into Cape Town living, the Verification Phase to my personal rock bottom solution is feeling very good. The grass is green, the sky is blue, flowers are blooming and the sun is shining – and how it has been shining in Cape Town this summer! My heart is open and warm and I feel pretty “normal” in my life again. I function once again as accostomed, full of creativity and activity, once again enjoying my life in spite of tons of things to attend to as we settle down.<br /><br />Life now continues in a more "normal" way. I would never had made this decision had not the circumstances last year forced me into action. There is still much to be achieved (my Jack Russels have yet to join me in Cape Town, my house in KZN has to be organised and prepared to go onto the market (which granted still has to revive), new jobs for my beloved domestic workers who had been with me for so long need to be found, much of my moms' furniture has to be divided amongst family members - the list is still endless. But I am now in a position to tackle these tasks, one after the other, and I know, I really do know, that all this will subsequently fall into place slowly.<br /><br />I sleep well once again and what is more, I have been able to read a couple of novels as well as to write again! New Durga Tantra School retreats are planned and soon, next week actually, Ines, one of the tantric massage practitioners from Germany that I met on the International Tantra Teacher Training, will arrive to spend two months with me, furthering her training and sharing her work with many of my students. My nephew is well settled into his new Cape Town school, now no longer a boarder - this was part of our solution plan - and is laughing and joking and his usual self again. The transisition to becoming a real mum once again, after years of not having this role, has been gentle and actually quite easy, and I find myself enjoying all the cooking, washing of school uniforms and the overseeing of homework involved in the life of a now 15 year old boy. Life is good to both of us!<br /><br />No doubt, life in Cape Town life will present smaller and perhaps even bigger situations for similar problem solving processes. When it does, would this mean the original decision was a mistake? Not at all! It would simply mean that the circle of life continues as it always does. It presents us with various situations that stretch us, sometimes beyond our wildest dreams. The stretching will result in new endings presenting new beginnings once again.<br /><br /><strong><span style="color:#cc0000;">Why am I relating this piece of my personal life to you, the reader?<br /><br /></span></strong>I wish to inspire you to think of life along these terms. I would like to motivate you to use this pattern, this interface for your own creative problem solving processes when you have situations requiring radical change...and I hope to instil in you a feeling of everything being in perfect order when things appear to go terribly wrong in your life. </p><br /><p align="left">I have always known this basic fact of life and have always reacted in this way, intuitively, instinctively. My instinct was always to survive and to do this well. What Tantra has given me however, is the insight to understand these processes like never before and the strength to experience what has to be experienced, even more fully than ever before. </p><br /><br /><p align="left">Taking up the path of Tantra, I have a science, a method and a way of life that supports me all the way. More particularly, I have the knowledge that I can make something out of any situation, even the worst situation imaginable.<br /><br />Tantra has given me the wisdom to know that I am not a victim of circumstances. I am perhaps an executor of circumstances, but never a victim. How do I feel in my life since coming to Tantra? I feel simply human and I love my life. Just an ordinary woman in an ordinary life, I can create something that will solve anything...and so can you!<br /><br />Much love and inspiration to you all...<br />Leandra </p><br /><p align="center"><em>"The story of our life is, in the end, not our life. It is our story"<br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-size:78%;">(From the movie Americano)<br /></span><br /></span>“Two roads diverged in a wood, and I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference.”<br /><span style="font-size:78%;">Robert Frost </span></em></p><br /><p align="center"><br /><br /><br /></p>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-31066154467227978962010-11-04T21:50:00.009+02:002010-11-16T21:48:29.281+02:00The Way Home...Relationships & Sexuality - A Tantric Perspective<div align="center"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JLyjklTm6oVzxSiajJiLXaFEI9K-fXBVO1hyA-ilLEdUJEoq2VYkXnayiedukesSpbMO-9I-FgOiNfNGw8SprmKkSowgPad8PbhZiGLhjezNkOywHd7OWNGpSWSamN6FvXOjFXUTbj8/s1600/Waterways_kl_small+Website.jpg"><img style="text-align: center; margin: 0px auto 10px; width: 194px; display: block; height: 145px;" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5535788552209278882" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8JLyjklTm6oVzxSiajJiLXaFEI9K-fXBVO1hyA-ilLEdUJEoq2VYkXnayiedukesSpbMO-9I-FgOiNfNGw8SprmKkSowgPad8PbhZiGLhjezNkOywHd7OWNGpSWSamN6FvXOjFXUTbj8/s320/Waterways_kl_small+Website.jpg" border="0" /></a><span style="font-size:78%;">( Painting by Leandra - Watercolor Pencils on paper)</span></div><br /><div align="left"><em>This article was published in Odyssey Magazine (August/September 2010).</em><br /><br />Although we are living in the age of sexual liberation, it is rare to find people enjoying a fulfilling sexuality. We have been led to believe that spirituality and sexuality are divided, and struggle to find meaning in our sexuality. The sexual revolution of the sixties has in fact, led to marketing life's most intimate moments, resulting in floods of images that appear to have liberated us from conventional norms but in fact, have simply created a new cliché<br /><br />The pressures of a busy and stressful modern life, the challenge of on-going relationships and marriage as well as bringing up children within full working lives, presents an enormous strain on individuals and couples. Intimacy is often reduced to having sex as a kind of sleeping pill at night, resulting in a quick release of tension and a general feeling of emptiness. The principles of our performance-oriented society have forced their way into the bedroom resulting in more and more men and women experiencing sexual difficulties. Literature teaching sexual techniques and a variety of sexual positions or sexual diversions, do not seem to hold the key to sexual or relationship fulfillment. We seem to chase one thrill after the other, one orgasm after the other or for that matter, one sexual escapade after the other without actually finding what we are looking for.<br /><br />The result is intimacy that is not uplifting and lacking in real joy or any form of spirituality and the fulfillment of our hearts’ desires remains elusive. Over and above this, many adults are burdened with sexually repressive conditioning from childhood, education, religion, and in South Africa, we know too well that even politics can play a huge role in how we think and feel and with whom we engage sexually.<br /><br />Whether we live in a relationship, alone or in varying relationships, our lives seem so often to be accompanied by loneliness and a lack of love. Most individuals seem to be longing for an affirmation of self in a partner, while yearning for vitality and a form of sexuality that affirms the unity of body and soul.<br /><br />Despite the fact that Tantra is thousands of years old, it presents us with a very real possibility to transcend these difficulties arising from this very modern situation. Tantra cultivates, deepens and spiritualises human nature without presenting it as imperfect or repressing any aspect of it.<br /><br />Tantric literature on the market today however, is often in the form of sex manuals, promising bigger and better orgasms and more sexual satisfaction, whereas Tantra is actually so much more. Tantra is a non-dogmatic spiritual path, a teaching of non-judgmental, absolute and unconditional love. It teaches meditation in the most physical moments of human experience, positively encompassing and influencing all aspects of life and particularly relationships of all kinds.<br /><br />An ever-expanding system that has matured through the ages, Tantra is an art, a method and a science, an outlook and a way of life that teaches us how to open our hearts, how to embrace our emotionality and sexuality, enabling us to celebrate the whole of life, and recognising the Divine essence within all beings. Tantra is in effect an experiential path of transformation.<br /><br />In contrast to traditional psychotherapy, esoteric and other healing modes, Tantra uses the body and its physical expression to work on blockages in the subconscious, embracing the sexual emotionally, physically and spiritually, and thus doing, satisfying and amplifying the human soul. Most of us, have forgotten how to connect and live from a place of being whole and perfect already. Tantra shows us the way back home.<br /><br />Tantra trains the body to improve its capacity for the flow of life energy, giving the mind a higher ability to concentrate, and the soul ease and lightness. Rather than concentrating on the heights of physical pleasure alone, Tantra details the mental states to be achieved during sexual activity enabling us to bridge the gap of sexuality and spirituality.<br /><br />Each human being is understood as a reflection of the entire cosmos. By entering inside one's own subjective being with a witnessing consciousness, all aspects of the body, mind and emotions are revealed in their refined potential. With the whole person being accepted as divine, each aspect of being human can become a door to expanded consciousness. Tantra teaches how to embrace our whole experience of human existence, including sexuality, and in so doing experience something of who we really are and our relationship to the Divine.<br /><br />Central to Tantra is the understanding that sexual energy is our life force, and that the universe, and humans as individuals, are all filled with the same energy. Sexual energy is reclaimed as sacred, healing the split between body and spirit. Any repression of this energy leaves us unbalanced and damaged. Trauma, (grief, pain, embarrassment, physical or emotional abuse etc.) stored in our body as a body memory results in blockages or limitations which continue throughout our lives, reducing our emotional and physical well-being, inhibiting our flow of energy and limiting a full expression of life and sexuality. Tantra can be seen as a reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality.<br /><br />In its very essence Tantra is the yoga of presence, of becoming aware or conscious of “what is” in the body at any given moment. This includes our emotions and thoughts as we learn to accept whatever is arising in the moment without judgment.<br /><br />The refined potential of every human being is Divine, and Tantra shows you how to experience this divineness in a busy life through a new understanding of how to cultivate male and female energy and use it to our best potential. The very basic and single most important aspect of tantric sexuality and meditation is breath, which is fundamental to our very being. With the conscious use of breath during the sexual union it becomes the highest prayer, the closest humans can get to being and feeling Divine. What is more, in the very moment of orgasm, something unique and profound occurs: we drop personal identity, all that we identify as “the me” in our lives and become, for some few moments, the Divine essence that we truly are. Orgasm is the simplest way of dropping our ego’s - all it takes to experience this, is conscious awareness of that very moment. In this space, be it with a partner or alone, we merge with Consciousness and experience Bliss. Once experienced, we no longer seek that great orgasm for the sake of it, we no longer seek perpetual sexual escapades that leave us empty. We seek only to “Be”, in the moment, pure, simple, just who we really are.<br /><br />The eastern Mystic Osho once said” Sex is just the beginning, not the end, but if you miss the beginning, you will miss the end also". In order to have fulfilling relationships we need a fulfilling sexuality, and more so, we need the reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality. It is the separation of the two that predicts frustration, dooming the very relationships we hold so high, to become simply getting through life’s turmoil’s, with little of the peace of being that we long for.<br /><br />A tantric journey, both for individuals and couples, offers a wonderful answer to all of this. It takes courage to go this route, but it is rewarding in a very real sense, not just sexually. There is an abundance of literature on the market available as a guide, however the best way of experiencing Tantra and starting this journey, is with a dedicated and genuine teacher, teaching from the heart and with love, who will guide you in either individual sessions or in residential retreats. The reward for both individuals and couples is great.<br /><br />You can begin right where you now are, and what is more, there is nothing you have to believe in, no dogma to be accepted, in order to experience the benefits of Tantra.<br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><br /></span><span style="font-size:85%;">Ma Anand Leandra (September 2010)</span></div><div align="left"></div><br /><div align="center"><span style="color: rgb(204, 0, 0);"><em>"The first part has to be sex.<br />The second part has to be love.<br />The third part has to be prayer, and the fourth has to be transcendence.<br />So from the gross to the subtle you move.<br />And in the fourth, sex has to completely disappear, love too, prayer too.<br />Make it absolutely silent, peaceful, meditative...<br />not even a trace is left.<br />These are the four stages of Neo-Tantra...”</em><br />Osho</span></div><br /><br /><div align="center"></div><br /><br /><div align="center"></div>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-36932238896517554952010-11-02T21:17:00.003+02:002015-04-26T03:25:34.627+02:00Life is the rose in my heart...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwMectCiWLSVqnAH2MVUSJihHhCCal2PC8fFMIqo7c_0OFj-D1lSzBvmaHd5vh2cPF8vD-6ZejVcWuMsJCiuqcddj84NJiU8-EfSlADR_Ch5rCSBla73bFYgIcPj0o1Ch6WCRFcDWQLa0/s1600/Isaygoodby+website.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwMectCiWLSVqnAH2MVUSJihHhCCal2PC8fFMIqo7c_0OFj-D1lSzBvmaHd5vh2cPF8vD-6ZejVcWuMsJCiuqcddj84NJiU8-EfSlADR_Ch5rCSBla73bFYgIcPj0o1Ch6WCRFcDWQLa0/s200/Isaygoodby+website.jpg" height="140" nx="true" width="200" /></a></div>
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Life is the rose in my heart.<br />
Life is the scent of roses radiating through me.</div>
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Life is the sun in my in breast making the rose bloom.</div>
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Life is the rain on my skin nourishing the blossom.</div>
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Life is the wind in my soul chasing the clouds away.</div>
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Life is the storm in my mind bringing new clarity.</div>
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Life is the fire in my yoni burning the old and growing the new.</div>
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Life is the love in my heart,<br />
blossoming like a rose and filling space with it's beauty and fragrance.</div>
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Life is the air that breathes me and the power that carries me.</div>
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Life is the love flowing through my heart making me all that I am.</div>
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Life is all that I am:<br />
Beloved heart forever glowing, Beloved rose forever blooming. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJkLi7SVq8ILCzS2UZsYCUk_H6DazpNvMJZrvvPhSSdnkul5uFeay2JqIi6XqsP_SrHBsO7efYOdCybffN0sF1_U7FnebcGGMT3OKPaECAxgBTAJGN-Oiw-10cBlVSWuzzNyhVPx47ezg/s1600/Magic2_small+-+Website.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJkLi7SVq8ILCzS2UZsYCUk_H6DazpNvMJZrvvPhSSdnkul5uFeay2JqIi6XqsP_SrHBsO7efYOdCybffN0sF1_U7FnebcGGMT3OKPaECAxgBTAJGN-Oiw-10cBlVSWuzzNyhVPx47ezg/s1600/Magic2_small+-+Website.jpg" nx="true" /></a></div>
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Poem & both paintings by Ma Anand Leandra<br />
(Aquarelle on paper)</div>
Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-12443704786794531492010-09-16T17:18:00.001+02:002010-09-16T17:19:13.356+02:00Follow up on my last blog re tantric massage training...Hi everyone,<br />
I just heard about the latest training method for tantra massage: teach yourself, give a friend (who is a regular massage therapist) a massage and receive one from him and get him to give you a certificate! So beware when you read "I am currently in training". Ask who the trainer is, what his/her background is and just how many hours training is taking place. If you don't, you may find yourself getting a tantric massage by such a "trained & certified" practitioner. <br />
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This is by the way the training that the person I described in my previous blog who works in Bryanston, Johannesburg is undergoing. She had 9 hours of a 60 hour training with me before she broke the training off and started advertising tantric massage on her website. She also advertises on her website that she is currently in training and will soon be receiving her certificate. <br />
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I don't mind what people do, but I do mind when clients are conned into believing someone is trained and certified in any massage, let alone tantric massage. And remember, tantric massage is not any massage, slightly changed to be more sensual with the added benifit of a "happy end". That is sensual massage or erotic massage, and no matter how good it is, it is not, cannot be tantric massage. <br />
Make sure you get the real deal when seeking tantric massage - and ask yourself, what the worth of a practitioner is who advertises like this. <br />
Do I have a chip on my shoulder? Probably, but I think it is a good one!<br />
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Warm greetings<br />
LeandraMa Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-45106704358817590312010-08-25T04:24:00.016+02:002010-08-28T05:35:32.666+02:00What does spring have to do with tantric massage?<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The last time I wrote in my journal, winter was coming alive and this time it is spring's turn to peek-a-boo at us as the last cold days slowly recede. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Have you noticed the first new fresh leaves appearing on some shrubs or emerging buds on otherwise empty branches...dainty, translucent light green against the dark green of winter ever greens? Oh how I love the contrasting colours as the cold yields to the arrival of the warmer season allowing the new and the old to stand adjunct each other. There is no other season that shows so clearly that everything in life is a continual process of death and new birth. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Theories on Creativity & Problem Solving are a bit like spring</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Is it not like this when we make changes in our lives? The old is still apparent while the new is emerging, and we have a chance to look at both, a chance to re-visit what we are leaving behind while embracing that which is new. It is, to me, awe inspiring and quite amaizing. It is also extremely difficult. In theories of creativity and problem solving, this is recognised as the emotionally most uncomfortable phase. It is the so-called “Incubation Phase”. The creative solution or answer is not quite clear and the old and the new stand side by side. Thoughts and reasoning, accompanied by the respective attached emotions, sway back and forth until such time as what is called “illumination” is experienced. This is sometimes called an “ah-hah experience”. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But more about this in another journal entry, what is relevant here, is the fact that creativity can be defined quite simply as the ability to look at one thing and see another.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are a number of different theories on creativity, but what they have in common is that, it is seen to be a destructive/constructive process during which old perceptions are destroyed and replaced by new ones, and that the process is guided by the subconscious, which normally is restrained, but during a creative process needs to be, and usually is, far less restrained.</span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Creative or problem solving processes</strong></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A creative process involves combining and recombining previously known elements into new, unique configurations. In order to be creative, one has to be divergent, convergent, and evaluative, and this is measured by the flexibility and fluency of our responses. One needs to be sensitive to what needs changing, in order to redefine the information or the situation. And in the end, the success of any creative or problem solving process is based on the originality of the result or product. The product is always a transformation of something known into something not previously known.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Spring symbolises or rather epitomises this process. Although the process of a particular flower springing forth form a closed bud is well known to us, each flower is, each and every time, completely unique.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Spring in terms of personal changes</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For us, spring is often a time when, coming out of the cold, withdrawn winter days, we feel new life emerging as we become more active and begin to put plans and ideas, pondered on during the less energetic winter months, into action. This is often when the new feels ready to come alive, ready to be born, ready to be implemented, and also a time when we ourselves feel ready to finally give birth to something new in our lives.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It is not surprising to me that, in my life, this is exactly what is happening. I have come out of a long period of trying to do something which would just not materialise. Accompanied by feelings of despondence and perseverance, of hope and disappointment, of trust and disbelief, with spring emerging, finally all my efforts appear to have formed a new bud, and the blossom is slowly beginning to break through. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First of all I want to share with you that which is old and withered and receding in a sense, and then I will also share with you the new, a tender bud ready to burst into life, a new creation - something about my personal destructive/constructive process. And in sharing this I hope to offer an answer to the question: what makes a tantric massage practitioner real?</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;"><strong>Finding women to work with</strong></span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">It has been a very long and difficult journey trying to find women to train in tantric massage. Those of you who have followed my journal since 2008 will know this. Time and time again, I had so much hope and put in so much effort, and each time it would not materialise the way I had envisaged. Left, right and centre, the women changed their minds, often even before the training started. There seem to be many reasons for this, the main one was always their fear of the intimate, sexual aspect of the work.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Over time, I have had to recognise however, it was also the way I was going about things that was causing me difficulties. I was offering the training free of charge, and I was too trusting - so I have been told by those who know me well – and the combination of the two would not, could not work. </span><br />
<br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantra Sacred Massage training program</span></strong><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So early this year, I changed this, set up a detailed 60 hour training program for a nominal fee. It was neatly designed to include practical and theoretical work as well as an "on the job" internship in my <em>Tantra Sacred Massage</em> practice, culminating finally in Practical’s, whereby the student would work with clients under my before-and-after supervision. These sessions were to be documented, and finally there would be an oral exam on the basis of this documentation. A certificate and membership in NITSA (National Institute of Tantra, South Africa) would complete the process. And in addition, there would be an abundance of work in my <em>Tantra Sacred Massage</em> practice. The new practitioner would work in my set up premises, with no personal cost involved except their transport to get there. I also I enlisted a corporate lawyer who set up a written agreement covering the training as well as the subsequent work and I finally, would continue to mentor the new practitioner. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The standards for training in Germany, where my own training was, are extremely high, resulting also in a high financial investment. I had tried to formulate a program that suited the particular situation in South Africa: lack of funds for a many people struggling to make a living and very short yearly leave. I was offering the minimum amount of time and costs for a maximum amount of good training, plus guaranteed work after training - what I was offering felt good and really and fair and I thought it would work well. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So what happened?</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The first candidate...</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">was a 34 year old woman from my home village on the Durban South Coast. She and her partner were naturists and she already ran a small tantric massage practice from her home. Her “training” had been with a fellow naturist, a professional massage therapist who had adapted his work to include sensual massage. The issues with the intimate nature of the work that I had had in the past would not feature here. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Her training with me went very well - as long as we were working together. Then shortly after my dad became seriously ill, I asked her to go to Johannesburg to take the already fully booked massage sessions on her own, avoiding having to cancel them – and this is when everything began to go horribly wrong. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She missed bookings, I received reports that she was late, that the room was totally unprepared and cold, that she was even speaking badly about me and that on one occasion, she was busy massaging a friend when the booked student arrived. Our communication seemed to have broken down as she did not take my calls or answer my SMS. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Only when her boyfriend let something slip in a conversation with me, did I begin to understand: she had been advertising erotic massages with “happy endings” secretly on a website using nude photos of herself to animate people to book! I needed to protect myself and my work and booked an immediate flight to Johannesburg. Ten minutes before I even arrived at my garden cottage in Greenside, she had left, on foot, suitcase and all.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The second candidate...</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">was a holistic massage practitioner based in Johannesburg. As she had an 8 year old daughter, she wanted to combine a beach holiday with her daughter with the start of the training, and so we arranged for her to begin her training during the school holidays. I generously took them both into my home for 10 days as she had no money to finance accommodation – I know, same story, I was too trusting - and thus we began the training.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I arranged a meeting with the lawyer who set up the agreement, and when she asked for some changes to be made, I readily agreed. Part of the discussion (and the agreement) was the fact that she would not offer tantric massage from her holistic massage practice. This would have defeated the purpose of taking her into my practice. She had no problem in agreeing to keep her holistic massage practice and my tantric massage practice completely separate. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Now this 47 year old woman had absolutely no prior experience with Tantra, she had indeed never even read a book about Tantra and knew very little what it was about. I felt however, that the training would give her all she needed to get started and that my continued mentorship would do the rest. She had told me that she offered "happy endings" for certain clients, and so it again appeared that the intimacy problems of previous candidates would not feature here. I could not have been further from the truth! </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The training began with my giving her a very first experience of a tantric massage. It remained incomplete as she refused to receive the yoni massage. We discussed her fears at length, and agreed that we would take the time she needed to get accustomed to the idea of the yoni massage. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We then used the 4-handed massage on a client who offered to be the guinea-pig for her first training session. She however felt nauseous when I was giving the lingam massage and later told me that, this was how she always felt when she gave her "happy endings". The reason for this, so she told me, was the fact that she had worked as a prostitute in her twenties and had learnt to shut down her emotions. She further told me, that she had been sexually molested by her father as a child and had received no therapy for this. I explained that it was here that she learnt to shut down her emotions, and she had never learnt to recover them. Again we agreed that we would take all the time she needed for her to heal these wounds, and indeed, a tantric process was ideal. I undertook to work carefully and gently, her personal healing was paramount to her working with clients professionally with <em>Tantra Sacred Massage</em>.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another piece of information she gave me was why she gave some clients “happy endings” in her holistic massage practice, although doing this made her feel sick: she was not getting many bookings, she desperately needed the cash, and the “happy endings” meant “they (the clients) will come back. I do it for the money”.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the time she left, she had had a wonderful free holiday with her daughter and we had completed only 9 training hours. She had not received or given a yoni massage, she had not given or learnt to give the lingam massage. She did experience half a tantric massage, and had experienced my work in two massage sessions. After her nausea during the first session however, I had to ask her to leave the room before I gave the lingam massage in the second session - my student from Germany was well experienced in receiving tantric massages and had paid for his session, I was not going to compromise his experience as a result of her inhibitions. . </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">She also had also, as all my student do, had a brief introduction to the basic tantric breathing technique, which she was to practice on a daily basis before we would continue the training in Johannesburg three weeks later. Finally I loaned her some good tantric reading material and she returned to Johannesburg.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Again, immediately after her leaving, the communication broke down. After a few days, I visited her website and guess what? She was advertising tantric massage as a service for a fee. When I dared to mention to her "you're not supposed to be doing this..." she exploded, highly dramatic, and after a series of erratic and very rude SMS, claiming amongst other things, that I had a control problem, and that I must be a very unhappy person, she refused to take my calls. Needless to say, she also refused to pay the final training instalment, nor did she sign the agreement - and I struggled to get my books back.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">A short while later, her website boasted testimonials from more than satisfied clients raving about her “magic”, about being elevated 6cm above the table, about feeling relaxed to the extent it was like they were “drugged”, about her “magical” fingertips and the fact that she breathed with them throughout the session....and wow, wow, wow! Her website now offers "Transforming Tantric Massage" given by a "Tantriker" and the list of similar testimonials gets longer and longer. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The description of what tantric massage is and does is mostly about the “power” her clients are able feel after undergoing one of her tantric massages, plus a whole lot of other stuff, taken from the books I loaned her and from information I had so freely given her, mostly taken totally out of context – for anyone who has experienced the “real thing” it would be very clear that she really has no idea, but I assume it sounds good to the unknowledgeable reader. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm going to end my account of the story here, the rest is irrelevant. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My thoughts on this...</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">My shock about this is not so much about what happened to me – I have learnt so much from this experience that my profit is great. Far more, I am absolutely devastated by the fact that I made this possible. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Putting untrained, inexperienced people on the market, people who use Tantra as a quick fix to cash inflow problems, goes against everything I stand for, against what the path of Tantra is, against my professionalism, against my effort to offer South Africans practitioners who are not only well trained, but who have overcome their own personal issues around sexuality. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I don't doubt for one second that her clients are happy with what she does and if the testimonials are real, that they really feel she is some kind of very special massage practitioner. But is this tantric massage? That is the real question here.</span><br />
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</span><br />
<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantric Massage Training...</span></strong><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So obviously, if I am implying that it is not, what then is real tantric massage, what is a gifted tantric massage practitioner and last but not least, what is a real tantriker?</span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">First of all, going by the training offered in Germany, which probably has one of the longest tantric traditions in the western world (dating back to the seventies), certainly boasts one of the largest tantric communities with an abundance of tantric schools and tantric massage practices, extensive training is necessary. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>Nidhana from the UK, Lisa and Nils Kreidner from Germany</strong>, who all, on my invitation, worked with me here in South Africa, have had extensive training lasting literally years. The same applies to my own training. In addition we all have intensive professionally related trainings that impact directly on the work we now do.</span><br />
<em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read more about their trainings go to the previous blog article or click on this link: </span></em><a href="http://leandrasjournal.blogspot.com/2010/08/tantra-training.html"><em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://leandrasjournal.blogspot.com/2010/08/tantra-training.html</span></em></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We all come from, and have, different traditions, but the one thing we have in common, is extensive training, all of which started with many, many personal receiving, healing sessions with a qualified and experienced trainer. </span><br />
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We also have in common that we love and respect our trainers for what they gave us. We show them our recognition by naming them on our websites and sharing anecdotes from our own training in the work and amongst each other. We all have a very real sense of gratitude towards these trainers and have a connection with them, years after training. We would not dream of disowning our trainers, or of doing them wrong or showing them disrespect. This does not mean we agree with everything they do and say, the difference is that, as tantrics, we know how valuable these differences are. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>To quote Nils Kreidner:</strong> </span><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"The secret to authentic charisma lies in the ability to courageously and openly speak and live your truth and at the same time to absolutely welcome the truths of your fellow human beings, to actually fall in love with their different perspective and diversity."</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Another thing we have in common is, we got over inhibitions, conditioning, trauma, sexual hurt, and inner fears, and to at least some extent our egos or "sense of valuable self" during our extensive spiritual trainings. We all are today, emotionally and sexually well adapted and open individuals, genuinely warm, loving and joyous in our lives, which we live to the full in one or other way. We all do not need to be praised into the heavens by our clients and indeed, the kind of praise on the above mentioned website, would be an indication that we are doing something very wrong! I tell my students <em>"this is not about anything I do and I don't want you to be dependent on my massages. I want to give you the tools to understand that what you experience is all within you...all I offer you is the key to open closed doors and discover who and what you really are". </em></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Oh yes, we all receive deep gratitude and warmth from our students, and are even deeply loved. This however, is not for how well we touch their bodies, but for how we touch their hearts and for how our work impacts positively on their lives. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Perhaps then, we are not the "real thing..."? I don’t think so! </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What is genuine tantric practice..?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantra is NEVER about the practitioner and what their fingers, hands or bodies can do. It is never about having to go back to that particular person because of the magic they make possible. It is never about ego. Never! Real tantric work is always very modest, and it has to be if the spiritual process we have undergone has gone to the core of our being. We are not perfect human beings - we do however certainly aspire to live the perfection that we know we fundamentally are. We come from a place of perfection, and the objective of human life is to overcome the experience of separateness our humanity leaves us in, and reconnect with a deeply rooted experience of our real, spiritual nature.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">One of the main informative Hinduism websites explains this what a tantric process is beautifully:</span></strong><br />
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<em><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">"Tantra itself means "to weave, to expand, and to spread", and according to tantrik masters, the fabric of life can provide true and ever-lasting fulfilment only when all the threads are woven according to the pattern designated by nature. When we are born, life naturally forms itself around that pattern. But as we grow, our ignorance, desire, attachment, fear, and false images of others and ourselves tangle and tear the threads, disfiguring the fabric. Tantra "sadhana" or practice reweaves the fabric, and restores the original pattern. This path is systematic and comprehensive."</span></em><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><u>Read more:</u> </span><a href="http://hinduism.about.com/od/tantra/a/what_is_tantra.htm"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://hinduism.about.com/od/tantra/a/what_is_tantra.htm</span></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">)</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The article further makes clear that today in both the West and East, <em>"a large number of tantrik enthusiasts mistakenly identify Tantra as the yoga of sex, magic, witchcraft, seduction, and an amalgam of techniques for influencing the minds of others". </em></span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantra "training" via DVD's, books and the internet...</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">There are a number of untrained people offering sensual massage under the banner of tantra massage in South Africa and many more world wide who have learnt by watching DVD's and reading books. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In the day of DVD's and the internet as well as an abundance of literature, I think we could agree that professionalism, in any area of life, still requires personal teaching and that at it's best modern technowledgy is befincial when it comes to easily accessible information. It does not make us professionals - and this applies to any training what so ever.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantric massage given by an untrained practitioner is, at its worst, manipulation, often to the extent that the client becomes dependant on the “blissful feeling” energy the practitioner is able to induce. At its best, it is a very good erotic massage. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I do have an issue with manipulation.I do not have an issue with good erotic massage. It is a useful service. But it can at the very most, bring temporary relief to symptoms of aloneness and create a "blissful feeling". </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Had my teachers simply assisted me in having a "blissful feeling" with them, I would not have had the deeply mystical and transforming experiences that led to where I am today in my life. Had they not instilled in me that they were not teaching me anything, but only helping me to unlock that which was hidden inside of my being, I would probably still want to sit in their shadows, "feeling blissful" in their presence - and I would still be living from a space of personal trauma, fear and neediness, still looking for fulfilment outside of my being. </span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What then is the real thing?</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tantra is a spiritual teaching, uplifting the lives of those who are living with emotional pain and limiting conditioning, and for those who sincerely seek more meaning to life. This is what genuine tantric teachers and massage practitioners do. This is what Tantra is about. And it takes a genuine, real life teacher trainer or or guru to teach the teachers. Just because we all like to eat good tasty food, does not make us all five star cooks! Just because we all have sex, does not make us experts in sexual matters. On the contrary, the untrained and unmentored practitioner of Tantra can do a whole lot wrong. At its best, it can give people a good feeling, at its worst it can actually hurt and harm. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thus my account of the old and dying branches of winter ends. I now I want to share the spring buds appearing on the dried out branches of my being.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="color: #38761d; font-family: "Trebuchet MS", sans-serif;">The third candidate...</span></strong><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">was a young 27 year old woman from Cape Town. She already had a tantric massage practice in Cape Town for some years and wanted to further her training with me. Her original training took place in South Africa, but with a visiting Ayurvedic and tantric practitioner from India, on his frequent private visits to family here in South Africa. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We connected in a deep way. Her understanding of Tantra was already very good, her work very real, I felt her passion easily, and so we quickly planned the future of our connection with each other...only to run into having to confront some of our deepest fears!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The difference here was: we were both willing and able to face them. In this particular destruction/ construction process we feared what we were giving up, afraid of what we would lose, protecive of what we has already achieved. We struggled to believe what we would gain, at times not wanting to see the added value we would give to each other if we put our work together. We battled with this over a period of about two intensive, deeply emotional months. Communication did not break down - it persevered in one way or another, until finally, the fears receded. The bud of this process finally emerged and and now it is spring time and the blossom is slowly breaking the bud open to show something of the beauty it will become. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I share this with you all just as it is right now. There is no promise of success, just the promise of the process and both of us going with it to where ever it takes us.</span><br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Samantha is working in Cape Town</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So with great joy, I welcome Samantha from <em>Lila Tantra</em> to <em>Tantra Sacred Massage</em>. As of today, yes, this very day, she and I are entering a trial period of working together, and I have taken on the task of mentoring her. The difference in our ages makes this actually quite easy for us- we are mother and daughter, but also sisters, friends and fellow tantrics. And what is more, we are both students and teachers of each other, as is fitting for a true teacher/student relationship. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Samantha is a true tantric. She lives the life right down to the core of her being, as I do. Tantra is not something she only does when she is working, it is the way she lives, the way she connects with people, the way she treats those close to her, the way she deals with difficulties, the way she loves!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">To become what is sometimes called a "tantriker" takes years. It does not meal sexually open, it does not mean earning hard cash through tantric massages, it does not mean DVD’s have been watched and books read. It means we have gone through an intense process that took years, during which we transformed to be who we are today. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Samantha and I are excited and you will, no doubt, see where this takes us and where it takes tantric massage in South Africa. We are both passionate about putting the real thing out there and our hope is that we will, eventually, find others to share this wonderful work with us.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read more about Samantha on the Tantra Sacred Massage website: </span><a href="http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/pages/about-samantha.php"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://www.tantra-massage.co.za/pages/about-samantha.php</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><strong>And what about future massage trainings...?</strong> </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I will no longer offer training on a one-on-one basis. I will no longer take untrained people into practical work with my students. What I now will be offering, is a training program in the form of a series of residential weekends. The successful participation of these, will open the door to working with real clients – than and only then. This is the result of my destructive/constructive process as far as the training goes.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The first weekend will take place in the Western Cape in November and in the Northern Drakensberg early next year: <em>A Taste Of Eros I- Tantric Touch & Massage Retreat.</em> The first two weekends are open to all; the last two are for those wanting a professional qualification.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read about this on the Durga Tantra Website: </span><a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/retreat-schedule/taste-of-eros---massage.php"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/retreat-schedule/taste-of-eros---massage.php</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">These are not the only buds growing on my tree of life at the moment. There are many more in my personal spring. I share these with you now, and some of the others, I will share these with you at a later stage.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Thank you for reading this lengthy journal posting. I hope it offers you some insight into what makes a real tantric massage practitioner. I hope that ir helps you make a more educated choice when you surf the net looking for tantric massage and tantric teachings. If this is the case, my posting has served its purpose. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Namaste</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Leandra</span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-35640290045466472712010-08-24T04:28:00.042+02:002010-08-28T04:56:39.396+02:00Qualifications of Tantra professionals...To become a genuine Tantra Coach or Tantra Massage Practitioner requires extensive training. By example of the following practitioners, I'd like to give you an idea of the extent of the kind of training required to become genuine professional practitioners as well as my own trainings. <br />
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<em>Nils Kreidner:</em> Director of Sahaja Tantra, Germany & Tantra Massage Practitioner<br />
<em>Lisa</em> (Germany) and <em>Nidhana</em> (U.K.): Tantra Massage Practitioners<br />
<em>Ma Anand Leandra</em>: Personal Tantra Coach, Director of the Durga Tantra School, South Africa, Tantra Massage Practitioner<br />
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<em>(Nils, Lisa & Nidhana all visited and worked with me in South Africa on my invitation)</em><br />
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<strong>Tantra Trainings:</strong><br />
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<em>Nils</em> trained for 2 years with a well known and successful school in Germany to become a qualified tantra teacher. He furthered his training with extensive tantra massage trainings. <br />
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<em>Nidhana</em> also trained for two years with an equally well known and successful Tantra school in the U.K., and had at least three years of training in tantric massage before she opened her practice. <br />
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<em>Lisa</em> trained for two years with the oldest Tantra school in Germany and now regularly assists with the trainings offered by the school. <br />
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<em>Leandra </em>trained with three different schools, one in South Africa and two in Germany. She has been classically initiated into Tantra by Swami Advait Rahassya and underwent further training with an international tantric touch expert, who came out of his retirement, to train her.<br />
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<strong>Previous trainings in related fields:</strong><br />
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<em>Nils</em> began when he was 7 years old in Martial Arts, he subsequently became a 5th Dan expert in a comprehensive Japanese system, he quaified as a yoga teacher in India and is also a trained meditation teacher - this training started when he was 17! He has a teacher or guru that he follows around the world at least once a year, in order to simply be in his presence and learn from him, and he will join up with him again in India in January 2011, after the 21-day International Teacher Training which we are facilitating in the Northern Drakensberg in December. He also has other trainings, all offered by internationally well known teachers: seduction training with an international facilitator, wilderness training with a North American Indian. <br />
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<em>Lisa</em> has a very specialised and official training of a number of years, which empowers her to work with physically and mentally challenged people assisting and accompanying them with their sexually. She is one of very few qualflied practitioners working in Germany in this field.<br />
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<em>Nidhana</em> has had extensive training in Vortex Energy Healing, participated in the first group to have had this alternative healing work transmitted by one of only two world wide teachers. She is also a disciple of the Diving Mother Amma, and has spent time in her Ashram in India twice. <br />
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<em>Leandra</em> is a qualified psychoanalytical Art Therapist in Germany (a 4-year training), and has an abundance of further trainings in the psychotherapeutical field with international teachers. She also has 3-years training in Lomi Bodywork and all in all, about 30 years of experience working full time, professionally in Germany with all this. <br />
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She ran a busy private practice for 6 years before opening her Art Therapy training institute in Hamburg, Germany, (Institut fuer Interdisziplinaere Kunsttherapie), where she taught on-going art therapists in a unique method she developed: Psychodynamic, Process-Orientated Art Therapy. She presented this method was presented at leading Art Therapy and Psychotherapy conferences in the U.K, Germany, Austria and South Africa over a period of a number of years. She also was the chairperson of the governing body for the Arts Therapies in Germany for two years before returning to South Africa 8 years ago.<br />
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Her first spiritual teacher was Art Reade, a Mexican Apache and she participated in all his trainings over a period of 3 years in the eighties. She is a Sanyassin of Osho, the eastern Mystic who first made Tantra accessible to the western mind and who called her to him after her initiation into Tantra.Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-10622428007346374892010-04-30T14:35:00.002+02:002010-04-30T14:48:30.642+02:00Death is a strange thing....but not morbid at all!Death is a strange thing. We know our whole lives about the fact of death, but when it enters our personal experience of life, it hits us like a brick wall. Until experienced at close quarters, we have no idea just what it feels like to be confronted with it. <br />
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As children we still have a natural curiosity about in death. I remember how my daughter took great interest in dead beetles or a dead new born bird that had fallen out of its nest lying on the pavement. She asked questions like <em>“Where is it now?”</em> and “<em>What does “dead” mean?”</em> and found the whole matter, not alarming, but rather interesting.<br />
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We lose this natural capacity to be curious about death as we grow older and learn that it is one of the taboo themes, slowly but surely, encroaching our lives. It is hushed, not openly spoken about, until at some stage, it seems not to belong to life at all - except for in insurance policies and news items. Death thus slowly becomes something to be fearful about. Other than that, it becomes a quiet thing in our lives, a stranger – until such time as we are personally confronted with it in one way or another.<br />
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My own relationship with death prior to the recent passing of my father was really quite good. Part of my <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">tantric</span> initiation was facing my fears around dying...and growing up in South Africa with burglar guards and security firms, violence on street corners and sometimes a rather brutal law enforcement, it was substantial. Facing these fears, I found a willingness to embrace death as something natural, even beautiful, as my understanding of the natural cycle of our life-force energy, not only in nature, but particularly also as human beings, grew. As my understanding of the naturalness of and what awaits us after death grew, so my fear naturally subsided.<br />
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But nothing of this prepared me for the impact it would have on me when my father died. It felt like nothing I had experienced before, it felt totally new and very deep and quite shocking.<br />
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The feeling of unchangeable loss was just as much a physical as well as emotional. In Tantra we embrace all feelings, all emotions, all experiences with totality, and we learn to own them completely as our own. Allowing the depth of the experience to increase, we are catapulted into the moment of “what is” completely. As we go from moment to moment in this way, we are truly in life, in living, in experiencing, in being, in being alive with the energy of life. Sometimes this is playful, sometimes joyful, sometimes it feels great. Other times, depending on what it is we are embracing, it almost feels static and overbearing, as if we are shutting down. But, in reality, it never is. In such a moment there are many nuances. Sadness is not just sad. It is so many things. It includes anger, regret and pain but also joy – if only we are willing to see it. <br />
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Death is such a thing. It feels sad to those looking on, but in reality it is just as wonderful a celebration as birth itself – only at the opposite end of life as human beings. It is a releasing of human life energy to become fully what we are, what we are meant to be, what we have <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">strived</span> to be and if we are willing, we can experience something of this as we look oh with sadness.<br />
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I chose a passage from Kahlil Gibran’s <em>The Prophet</em> to read at the family funeral as well as at the large civic memorial service that the city of Durban gave my dad. Being a public figure, we had to, as a family, endure both services within two days of each other, and we wanted both to be a celebration of his life and so they were. This passage from <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Gibran</span> had great meaning to me. Apart from becoming a fan of his writings as a pseudo-<span class="goog-spellcheck-word">hippy</span> in the late sixties (<em>The Prophet,</em> for all who do not know it, this is a must read on any spiritual path), there is something else that drew me to this passage when I was contemplating what to read at the funeral and memorial service.<br />
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My dad was a paraplegic from age three after contracting polio. I knew him from babyhood to have four legs. Two wearing trousers, and two made of wood, their tops covered in dark red, or black or green velvet, and he propelled himself forwards in quite a bumpy fashion. To me it was natural. That was how he was. I don’t recall exactly when it dawned on me that he was different, I assume it did at some stage, he however always remained just my dad and no different from any other dad who was just like something else. He drove a car, we went on holiday every year to his sister’s farm in the then Transvaal and he would drive the eight or nine hours solid to get there. He took us to the beach or to the drive-in, I sat on his lap listening to the wonderful stories he told, he dried my hair with a towel – he did all the things that other fathers generally did with their children. Even when he stopped walking with splints on his legs and crutches under his arms, and took to a wheelchair some time in his sixties, he was simply still just dad.<br />
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This changed dramatically for me seeing him in his ICU bed which he occupied for four weeks before passing away. He lay in bed without his splints, without his wheelchair nearby, his torso weakened by the operation he had had, he was helpless, unable to move. His strong shoulders and arms used so much to allow him movement, could no longer hold him, and every move he made, had to be done for him. I enjoyed the closeness this allowed me, as for the first time I was able to touch him as much as I liked. I stroked his head, massaged his feet and hands, and I put my hands under the blankets and stroked his chest and tummy and even his little legs. It was really only during this time that the reality of his physical handicap really impacted on me. And this is why this passage from <em>The Prophet</em> so easily came to mind as something I would want to read at the funeral and memorial.<br />
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In the first few days after his passing, I would sit on my veranda listening to the thrashing waves of the Indian Ocean, the comforting sea breeze and the night sounds of the crickets and frogs in my garden, and I would wonder where he is, where his energy had gone, what his consciousness was like. What I “saw” after four weeks of this helplessness, was that he was now dancing, freed from the physicality that he had overcome all of his life to be simply the man he was, fathering three children, becoming a highly respected member of the community, both in business as well as, together with my mom, his life-long humanitarian work, which has left an indelible mark on the city of Durban. <br />
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I never really thought about how hard it must have been for him at times, of how much more difficult life for him had been. The pain of realising this was huge and a sense of guilt arose in me, guilt for not understanding this earlier. To me he was always so strong and so capable, that I never saw him as a paraplegic until just before his death. The guilt was short lived. He would not have wanted it otherwise. He never asked for special attention. He led businesses, board meetings, gave talks and took on top roles in commerce and society with ease. Only the on-lookers would hold a breath when they saw him for the first time standing or walking with his crutches. His life was an inspiration to others who are physically challenged; an inspiration to be who they are in spite of the challenges they face. An inspiration to follow their dreams and fulfil their aspirations. Much in the same way as he was, as my dad, a major inspiration in my life.<br />
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Some few weeks before he became ill, he watched the interview with me about my work on the <em>Let’s Chat With <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Mel</span></em> show on M-net Series and loved it! He thought I was doing wonderful, very necessary work and encouraged me, saying <em>“...you have to write a book”.</em> Two days before he died, he repeated this: <em>“You have to write a book about your work and you have to do it now. Don’t delay, don’t put it off. You must do it right away.”</em> He said this with such determination, that it made a mark on me. I have taken this, his last wish for me, earnestly and I have started! I have a wonderful researcher assisting me and I intend to take time, to make the time, to get this well on its way before the end of the year.<br />
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But I digress. I was writing about my evenings on the veranda trying to come to terms with my dad’s death and contemplating where he now was. At some stage a thought came to me: <em>“He is now free of his physical body, he is probably dancing now, dancing somewhere out <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">there”</span></em>! And thus Gibran’s <em>The Prophet</em> came to mind. <br />
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The book is a lovely little story about <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Almustafa</span>, an old wise man who had lived the final years of his life, a lonely twelve years, in the city of <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Orphalese</span> waiting for <em>“his ship that was to return and bear him back to the isle of his birth.”</em> On the eve of his final journey, the people of <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Osphalese</span> finally began gathering to hear what he had to say, and so he returns from the shore to meet them and answer their questions, thinking <em>“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn?”</em><br />
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And as the story unravels, the people of <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Orphalese</span> ask him questions about life. His answers are valid to all of us today and are an inspiration for all aspects of life – about men and women, children, friendship, marriage, love, money, work, pleasure, beauty, prayer, religion ...and much more until the final question came: <br />
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<em>“Then <span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Almitra</span> spoke, saying, We would ask now of Death.</em><br />
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And he said:</em><br />
<em>You would know the secret of death.</em><br />
<em>But how shall you find it unless you seek it in the heart of life?</em><br />
<em>The night owl whose night-bound eyes are blind unto the day cannot unveil the mystery of light.</em><br />
<em>If you would indeed behold the spirit of death, open your heart wide unto the body of life.</em><br />
<em>For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>In the depth of your hopes and desires lies your silent knowledge of the beyond;</em><br />
<em>And like seeds dreaming beneath the snow your heart dreams of spring.</em><br />
<em>Trust the dreams, for in them is hidden the gate to eternity.</em><br />
<em>Your fear of death is but the trembling of the shepherd when he stands before the king whose hand is to be laid upon him in honour.</em><br />
<em>Is the shepherd not joyful beneath his trembling that he shall wear the mark of the king?</em><br />
<em>Yet is he not more mindful of his trembling?</em><br />
<em><br />
</em><br />
<em>For what is it to die but to stand naked in the wind and to melt into the sun?</em><br />
<em>And what is it to cease breathing but to free the breath from its restless tides, that it may rise and expand and seek God unencumbered?</em><br />
<em>Only when you drink from the river of silence shall you indeed sing.</em><br />
<em>And when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb.</em><br />
<em>And when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”</em><br />
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<span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Namaste</span><br />
<span class="goog-spellcheck-word">Leandra</span>Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-37640253793230875702010-04-01T23:54:00.001+02:002010-04-02T00:28:01.965+02:00An introduction to the Path of TantraI so often get asked: "What is Tantra really about - is it all about great sex...?", and told how confusing it is looking for answers on the net. There are many paths of Tantra, many ways of teaching, and yes, it can be extremely confusing trying to bring it all down to some kind of understandable common denominator. With this journal entry, I'd like to make an attempt at clarifying some aspects of what Tantra is. <br />
For those wanting to delve more practically into what Tantra is and what it offers, this month's <a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/workshop-schedule/tantric-fire---couples.php">Tantric Fire Couple's Retreats</a> being held in Stanford and the Northern Drakensberg, and the <a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/workshop-schedule/come-together---singles.php">Come Together Single's Retreat</a> in the Northern Drakensberg, are excellent ways to start!<br />
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Warm greetings to you all<br />
Leandra<br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">An introduction to the Path of Tantra</span></strong><br />
Tantric literature on the market today, is often in the form of "how to" sex manuals, promising bigger and better orgasms and more sexual satisfaction. Tantra is however much more than a “school of sex”! It could however be called a “school of love” as it is a teaching of non-judgmental, absolute unconditional love. What it is, is a spiritual path teaching meditation in the most physical moments of human experience, positively encompassing and influencing all aspects of life, particularly relationships of all kinds. <br />
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Although we are living in the age of sexual liberation, it is rare to find people enjoying a fulfilling sexuality. The sexual revolution of the sixties in fact, has led to marketing life's most intimate moments, resulting in floods of images that appear to have liberated us from conventional norms but in fact, have simply created a new cliché. <br />
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Over and above this, many adults are burdened with sexually repressive conditioning from childhood, education, religion, and in South Africa, we know too well that even politics and governments can play a huge role in how we think and feel and with whom we engage with sexually. We have been led to believe that spirituality and sexuality are divided and we struggle to find meaning in our sexuality. <br />
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In addition, the pressures of busy and stressful modern life - of finding that “soul mate” and then the challenge of long lasting relationships and marriage, as well as bringing up children within full working lives - presents an enormous strain on individuals and couples. The principles of our performance-oriented society have forced their way into the bedroom resulting in more and more men and women experiencing sexual difficulties. Intimacy is often reduced to having sex as a kind of sleeping pill at night, resulting in a “quick” release of tension and a general feeling of emptiness. Equally dissatisfying for many individuals is one or other form of living promiscuously, one partner after the other, experiencing intimacy that is not uplifting and lacking in real joy, resulting in lives that are often accompanied by loneliness and a lack of fulfillment. <br />
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For many, the only way to combat this is by delving further into a materialistically orientated way or life, thrill seeking activities, substance dependencies and often some form of depression. Yet we long for vitality in our relationships and for a form of spirituality that affirms the unity of body and soul. <br />
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Despite the fact that it is thousands of years old, Tantra presents us with a possibility to transcend such difficulties arising from this very modern situation. Tantra cultivates, deepens and spiritualises human nature without presenting it as imperfect or repressing it. Rather than concentrating on physical pleasure alone, Tantra details the mental states to be achieved during sexual activity enabling us to bridge the gap of sexuality and spirituality. <br />
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An ever-expanding system that has matured through the ages, Tantra trains the body to improve its capacity for the flow of life energy, giving the mind a higher ability to concentrate, and the soul ease and lightness.<br />
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In contrast to traditional psychotherapy, esoteric and other healing modes, Tantra uses the body and its physical expression to work on blockages in the subconscious, embracing the sexual emotionally, physically and spiritually and thus doing, satisfying and amplifying the human soul. Most of us, have forgotten how to contact and live from a place of being whole and perfect already. Tantra shows us the way back home. Sometimes called a path to Enlightenment, to Bliss, Nirvana, Ecstasy, which occurs through the marriage of energy and consciousness, Tantra teaches you how. <br />
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From a tantric perspective, each human being is understood as a reflection of the entire cosmos. By entering inside one's own subjective being with a witnessing consciousness, all aspects of the body, mind and emotions are revealed in their refined potential. With the whole person being accepted as divine, each aspect of being human can become a door to expanded consciousness.<br />
What is Tantra?<br />
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Tantra is an art, a method and a science, an outlook and a way of life that teaches us how to open our hearts, how to embrace our emotionality and sexuality, enabling us to celebrate the whole of life while recognising the Divine essence within all beings. Tantra is in effect an experiential path of transformation.<br />
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Originating in what is now modern India, Tantra is at least 5000-7000 or more years old, pre-dating and influencing both Hinduism and Buddhism. All world religions have subsequently had some form of tantric past, subsequently destroyed by main-stream fundamentalists. The result is that many religions believe you can have either physical pleasure or spiritual growth, but not both. Tantra disagrees entirely. Physical and sensual pleasure is understood as the key to our spiritual growth; without one, you can’t have the other.<br />
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The word Tantra is composed of the Sanskrit words for weaving and expansion. By weaving together, accepting and entering deeply into every aspect of our lives, including sexuality, our hearts and minds are able to expand into blissful oneness. <br />
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Another word for Tantra is Sacred Sexuality or Spiritual Sexuality. Everyone has their own definition of what is "spiritual" and "sacred" are, but most of us agree it refers to something wonderful, loving, joyous, and transcendent – something beyond us. And yet in Tantra we find that it is within us as well. Central to Tantra is the understanding that sexual energy is our life force, and that the universe and humans as individuals are all filled with the same energy. Sexual energy is reclaimed as sacred, healing the split between body and spirit. Therefore any repression of this energy leaves us unbalanced and damaged. Trauma, (e.g. grief and pain, embarrassment, physical or emotional abuse etc.) is stored in our body as a body memory. The effect of these memories are blockages – repression and limitations - which continue throughout our lives, reducing our emotional and physical well-being, inhibiting our flow of energy and limiting our expression of life and sexuality in one or another way. <br />
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Tantra rejects the repressive, moralistic, and self-denying code of living propounded by many religions and cultures, resulting in our emotional, sensual and our body’s sexual needs are met with guilt, repression, denial and punishment. When attention is paid to bodily needs, it’s usually aimed at avoidance, for example of disease or pregnancy. Little attention is paid to the development and expansion of our body’s sensuality and there is no other teaching that shows us how to embrace and value this as does the Path of Tantra. Tantra teaches how to embrace and value your sensual self, the whole of your body including your sexuality and in so doing experience something of who we really are and our relationship to the Divine.<br />
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In order to become whole, to grow and blossom as adults, these blockages and repressions need clearing from both our physical and psychic systems. One thing that most religions agree on is the fact that we are more than our physical body. The understanding in Tantra is that, there is actually no separation between our physical body and that which is more than the body. In fact, there is no separation between us and others, between us and the world around us, between us and all of existence. Tantra is a non-dualist understanding of the world. Each and every one of us, in essence, is already divine, whole, and perfect. <br />
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In its very essence Tantra is a yoga - the yoga of presence i.e. becoming aware or conscious of what is going on in your body, emotions, and thoughts, learning to accept whatever is arising in the moment without judgment. Sexual energy and our personal expression of sexuality are included in the tantric concept of the body and of life in general. Tantra can therefore be seen as a reconciliation of sexuality and spirituality.<br />
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Although tantric strands have emerged within various religions, Tantra itself is not a religion and requires no prior belief system. It is essentially an experiential path leading to gnosis (knowing through experience) or inner wisdom. We learn to go beyond the limitations of the ego, ultimately touching the limitlessness of the Universe and within that, our wholeness. In fact, with Tantra, each sensorial experience offers a door to cosmic consciousness.<br />
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How does Tantra do this?<br />
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The sensual component of tantric rituals is characterized by creative uses of dance, music, colours, flowers, aroma, food, and particularly our sense of touch. It is systematic, serious and thorough, but also playful, fun and wild, reclaiming the body, mind, and sprit to own as ones own. This leads to inner freedom - freedom to celebrate your body, your sexuality, your soul desires: freedom from fear, from guilt and shame; freedom to breathe and feel deeply; freedom to be fully present in the NOW. <br />
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A student of Tantra will at some stage, experience what is called a tantric awakening. This means gaining mastery of the emotions. All negative emotion, when projected toward others, is like a spinning wheel or magnet. It does nothing to address the source of the issue, and hurts ourselves even more than the other. <br />
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Two things are essential to, and at the same time the result of a tantric awakening: <br />
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<strong>1.) Conscious choice or taking responsibility for all our emotions and choices.</strong> <br />
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Blame and victimization lead to feelings of separateness and neediness. Subconsciously however, we know that we must be more than this. We really do want to create our own destinies and to take rightful ownership of our full power.<br />
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<strong>2.) Discarding internal agendas that do not serve our highest good.</strong><br />
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This means the courage to know ourselves on a deep level, to know what we really want and then how to act on that desire. In other words, surrendering to the soul's desire and knowing that we are pure divinity. We are not the sum of our negative emotions, personal lies and the petty games we play. We are so much more than our judging, self-condemning mind would lead us to believe. We are talented, beautiful, and unique children of God.<br />
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The nature of Tantra is experiential. It is not something one can learn from a lecture or a book or by watching a DVD. These can only give ideas and hints. Tantra needs to be, has to be experienced. Whether you are single or in a relationship, you need to practice what you read and see. Your learning is essentially from your experiences. Each personal development in Tantra - physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually - is totally unique. You can begin the Tantric path from wherever you are right now. If you have anger or hurt, you can discover the tremendous potential for spiritual awakening contained within that energy. If you are feeling sexual, this quality becomes a key to open all the secrets of human energy. All you need is a willingness to explore your inner world and be prepared to let go of conditioning and open your heart and soul to joy and bliss.<br />
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The best way of experiencing Tantra is with a dedicated and genuine teacher. In ancient times, Tantra being a secret path, teachers were hard to come by and difficult to find. Here in South Africa there are very few trained practitioners. However, there are opportunities in the form of individual sessions as well as weekend retreats. The National Institute of Tantra South Africa sets ethical standards for the work and will in the next few years compile a list of qualified practitioners as they emerge from training. <br />
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If you feel ready to begin right now, here are some exercises to begin your journey:<br />
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<strong><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Exercises</span></strong><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><strong>1.) Using the senses to come into the body and the Now</strong></span><br />
Close or blindfold your eyes and focus the other senses (hearing, taste, smell) intensely for 15 – 30 minutes. Focus entirely on the experience. <br />
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<strong>2.) Using nature to experience our sense of touch</strong><br />
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Find a pleasant place out of doors and close or blindfold your eyes. First use sound to draw you into the body – leaves rustling in the wind, waves thrashing onto the beach, birds etc. Then slowly focus on your open skin (arms, legs, face) and feel the air touching your skin, feel the breeze caressing you. Stay in this meditation as long as you are able.<br />
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<strong>3.) Tantric Breathing</strong><br />
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Purse your lips as if you are going to whistle or drink through a straw. Breathe in and out through pursed lips, sucking the air in and gently blowing the air out. Pause on both the full breath and the empty breath and become aware of the changes in your body. Be aware of the 4 stages of breathing – the inward breath, the full breath, the outward breath and the empty breath state of the body. Do this at least 3 minutes every day. Repeat as often as you like. <br />
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<strong>4,) Tantric Touch with a partner and alone.</strong><br />
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With a partner: choose who will be passive and who will be active and change roles later. Begin with tantric breathing to get into the body and the Now and continue this breathing throughout the exercise. Take at least 30 minutes to slowly touch and stroke your partner’s body. Be fully in your hands, experience his/her body as if you are touching it for the first time. Touch to please yourself, not to please your partner. You will find, this ensures that you in fact do please him/her when you touch in such a way that it is pleasing to yourself.<br />
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On your own: touch and stroke your body as if it were a lover’s body or as if you are touching your body for the first time. Discover and explore and touch in a way pleasing to yourself. Allow sensual sensations to arise without judgment.Ma Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3485308801401320955.post-49631045270890686572010-02-12T02:37:00.003+02:002010-02-12T12:57:35.202+02:00Feeling good....Hi all friends and students of Tantra, <br />
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I am feeling good the way things are going now. <br />
The countdown to the first <em>Durga Tantra School</em> this year has begun.<br />
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I've just completed a flyer for the <em>"</em><a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/workshop-schedule/for-yourself-womens-retreat.php"><em>For Yourself" - Sensual Healing Retreat For Women</em></a> which is taking place in the Northern Drakensberg from 19th - 22nd March.<br />
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Theflyer for the <em><a href="http://www.durgatantraschool.co.za/pages/workshop-schedule/tantric-fire-couples-retreat.php">Tantric Fire Couple's Rereat</a> </em>will be ready soon, however the info is already on the website. Two dates for this one: Stanford, Western Cape 16th - 18th April and Northern Drakensberg 30th April - 2nd May<br />
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The <em>Come Together Singles Retreat</em> date, taking place in May in the Noethern Drakesnberg, will be finalised before the end of this month, when I will also put the information onto the website.<br />
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There has been a lot of interest already and I am feeling really excited about these retreats and looking forward to facilitating them with my co-facilitators.<br />
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And if any of you saw the interview in the <em>Let's Chat With Mel </em>last night on M-Net Series channel, I hope you'll agree, that it was all in all a really good show. I enjoyed watching it and felt that the guests and their themes built up nicely, one after the other and I particularly enjoyed Sharon from Lola Montez, who gave a lovely rundown of the history of the dildo, which goes back a long, long way. Amazing!<br />
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I liked what they had edited together out of the interview with me and felt they got all the main aspects of what I was saying editeted together beautifully.<br />
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Oh, and I loved Ian and Kantha. Weren't they wonderful? The TV crew flew down to my house in Pennington for a day to film the interview with them and also snippets of some of the work. Anyone wanting to catch the interest of a partner in the Tantric Fire Couple's Retreats taking place in Stanford, Western Cape the in Northern Drakensberg, this would be an ideal way to watch the show together. They talk about their experiences on one of the Tantric Fire Couple's Retreats last year and about how this transformed their marriage. They are such a lovely couple and am so grateful to them, their willingness to share so openly on public TV. There is also footage shown of snippets of some of the work we do which I think you will enjoy.<br />
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If you missed the show, the repeat is this <strong>Sunday, 14th Feb at 10am </strong>on the M-Net Series channel (channel 110). It may be a good way of sharing your interest in Tantra with your partner. If you are considering booking a <em>Tantric Fire Couple's Retreat</em>, this is a great way to hear something about the work from a couple who have experienced it.<br />
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It is with Kantha, that I am facilitating the<em> "For Yourself " Sensual Healing Retreat for Women</em> which is taking place in the Northern Drakensberg from 19 - 22 March. <br />
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So in all my excitement about how things are turning out, I think of those not so good times and want to remember the energy of this feeling good and take it with me there. Instead of simply feeling down with the energy sagging out of me, I want to feel excited about what Existence is showing me. I want to feel just as good...when I'm not good! And that is how it was recently for me. In a situation which could have become a crisis for me, (my intended partnership fell through). Although I did not feel good, I did feel excited about what the message was. I knew that that Existence always had "a good reason" for manifesting contrary to my planning, and so after the initial shock, I awaited the clarity that always comes when we allow ourselves to open up to it. <br />
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It came. It came through alright - all the good stuff that I wrote about above.<br />
And it feels very good!<br />
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I hope to see some of you on one of the retreats!<br />
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My warm greetings to you all<br />
LeandraMa Anand Leandrahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03082451202909728225noreply@blogger.com2