By Mysti Easterwood
Human potential and self-awareness are something we could do with a lot more of right now. I keep hearing people ask when everyone is going to wake up; this aspect looks a lot like an awakening. I would be more optimistic if I heard people ask about when they are going to wake up. — Eric Francis, Cosmic Equinox
This week has seen the opening of a 10-day international music festival called South-by-SouthWest here in Austin. It’s the very essence of Vernal/Aries/Creative energy is roaring through the city. Since my health club sits at ground zero (well, on the 8th floor) of the festivities, even without the $500 pass, I am marinating in its ambiance.
Yesterday, with Dawes, John Hiatt and Carolina Chocolate Drops playing downstairs in the lobby of the Hilton (off the schedule), I met with longtime Hindu Tantrika Paul Garza. We met to discuss what a Tantra-101 class taught in the West might look like. My background in Tantra is Buddha-flavored, so we’re cooking up a view from both sides of the tradition.
One common ground we quickly reached is what Tantra is not. For example, it is not — per Robinson Jeffers — the “Indian recession.” In this context, recession, referred to in a poem by Jeffers, means a way to escape reality.
While its Asian expression has been shaped into a passive, quietus-seeking, transcendentalist appearance, Tantric practices were first the province of Scythian warrior priestesses, whose Awakening was part of a very active life, one lived mostly on horseback. Scythians were a culture located in what is now western Iran, before the Persians, contemporaneous with the Hellenistic Greeks, who called them ‘Amazons’.
Paul Garza’s Catholic background includes a hefty social justice component, so while he has great respect for the contemplatives — the rishis and swamis who have informed his path — the question of how to activate the practice in the world has never left him. He is concerned with how we practice Tantra as an active way of reshaping the world, and to influence events.
Now, ironically, I am in the middle of developing a workshop on a particular kind of retreat. Not just a nice few days near the lake with a good massage and a cup of tea, but what is called in Tantra-lingo ‘close intensive retreat’.
Initially, this is a solitary practice that allows the retreatant to a) determine what they want to get done, b) find a sadhana (spiritual practice) that addresses that goal, c) request the assistance of the guardians of that practice, d) set the thing up, and e) do it.
Oh, and f)inally…dedicate the Merit. This business of dedicating the merit is generally viewed as a scattershot event, disseminating the virtue collected during the retreat for the Awakening of every creature in the universe. In my workshop I recommend focusing a little more tightly, and I show why and how this is accomplished.
Does this seem too Western? Why, we’re setting intention, looking for techniques, targeting goals.
Does this sound ‘spiritual’? From a South Asian perspective, maybe not. From the Western perspective, absolutely. And since Tantra originated in what is now Western Iran, we are seeing it evolve toward its original function: keeping the goddamned Greeks away from our men and horses.
As we can see from our upcoming Jupiter/Uranus conjunction, things are getting ready to go all rodeo on us. Time to find that horsie and saddle up.
Mysti Easterwood writes for Examiner.com organizes Tantra in Texas and writes Tantra for Bobos! under the pen name Eleusis D. She has practiced close intensive retreat since 1993.
First image – Tomb of Sauro-Sarmatian priestess from Prokhorovskaya culture (east of the Black Sea, near the Turkish-Iranian border, in approx, 4th – 2th century B.C. (probably much older). Excavated by Jeanne Davis-Kimball.
Second image – 16th Century Nepali Vajrayogini. (Note the direction of the gaze.)
Third image – Vajra-Dakini Hum (Goins-Easterwood composite)
Thank you for this information! I recently started rereading “The Firebrand” by Marion Zimmer Bradley; it’s a version of Kassandra of Troy’s story. One thing I really admire about Bradley’s writing is the ability to take legendary stories and bring them to life.
The familial and spiritual relationships are as well fleshed out as the ones Bradley handled so adroitly in “The Mists of Avalon” (the retelling of the Arthurian stories from the female/priestess POV).
In “The Firebrand” Kassandra spends a few seasons with the Amazons, coming of age with her matrilineal relatives. In their travels, she encounters the Kentaurs and powerful women who practice Goddess worship with serpents. The story takes place as the worship of male sky gods is slowly supplanting the earth centered goddess worship that has been practiced for centuries. Many characters in this story have recently had asteroids named after them. I think many of these energies are an aspect of a female warrior/priestess archetype that is in the process of re-emerging in a modern way. There are also some surprises regarding gender roles in the latter part of Kassandra’s tale.
Another thing I noticed immediately upon seeing this priestess’ grave is that the Sheila-na-gog imagery from European churches is in a strikingly similar pose. The vulva and womb are definitely emphasized in the bones and stones of these two examples. Blessed indeed!
besitos,
liminali
Carrie wrote… “This makes me wonder; how would one go about helping women free up their lust and desires within the context of any vows/relationships they may have already made? I mean I would be hesitant to facilitate something that may change a woman so much that she could no longer remain within the intimate relationships she already has; especially if there are children within that relationship. ”
Honeybunny, I need to clarify some things. First, this workshop (and anything I do on Close Intensive Retreat) is *not* dealing directly with sexuality. Desire, yes. Sexuality as the expression of desire is another level.
As I was telling Eric recently, Close Intensive Retreat is to spiritual practice what masturbation is to sex. It’s a simile – but not the same thing.
The recovery of women’s sexuality within Tantra is the recovery of the wisdoms that ride along inside of the passions. For example: I’m much more concerned with helping people feel the circuit between the sense power of taste, the rising of lust and the co-emergent wisdom of discrimination. One uses close, solitary *intensive* retreat to activate that circuit.
Yes, sexual energy is *in* that circuit, but once it arises as part of a larger system, it is no longer ‘disruptive’ in the way that ego-driven craving can be.
Does that make sense?
(heh)
Love ya…
M
carrie & mystes (&eric):
thanks to both of you for taking the time to ask & answer questions about this one! it’s easily one of the most helpful dialogs i’ve seen here on the blog. still a bit above my grasp in some ways, but i think i can see what’s there to reach for.
🙂 amanda
Mystes,
I would have used the word “mis-directed” myself but then I am often penned as being rather blunt at times. :::evil grin::::
Yep, women’s libidinal freedom is exactly what I have been talking about in other comments for other articles. So your retreats help women with that? Cool! If I weren’t so tied up with my regular responsibilities I would LOVE to be a fly on the wall at such an exercise. As we may not even be in AZ after late this summer, who knows what will happen.
This makes me wonder; how would one go about helping women free up their lust and desires within the context of any vows/relationships they may have already made? I mean I would be hesitant to facilitate something that may change a woman so much that she could no longer remain within the intimate relationships she already has; especially if there are children within that relationship. Helping a person find themselves (to use shorthand here) is ok but I worry that in doing so, it may help cause damage to the innocent and voiceless children that are along for the ride. How does anyone working in that kind of field deal with that? Any info or insights you have on that would be very welcome as I am sure you have dealt with such issues already. See, its the inner child-advocate in me that worries about stuff like that.
I completely forgot about that other article we discussed last March. You have a very good memory!
Carrie! //::::lights popping on in my head:::THANK you so much for clarifying all that! It makes a lot more sense to me now. And thank you for not getting upset at my asking.//
You and I do this, you know? We did it with the article Rachel Asher published here last March (The Day My Hair Turned Green). We spent a day or so thrashing out what I meant by ‘engaging anger’ and its relationship to focus and passion in that article.
Couldna done it without ya!
And yes, from my untutored view, it does seem that Close Intensive Retreat *is* like Pagan grounding practices. Lots of similarities. And a few key differences. Come to the workshop (I’ll get to AZ sooner or later) and see.
Tantra has been very, very institutionally, ummm, what’s the polite word here? ‘redirected’ by the loss of women’ libidinal freedom. There is some recovery work to do there.
Mystes,
::::lights popping on in my head:::THANK you so much for clarifying all that! It makes a lot more sense to me now. And thank you for not getting upset at my asking.
I surmise, from what you have explained, that Tantra as you defined it is a way of doing what some do with a lot less discipline and focus (I would be one of those that does it without the focus etc) and that Eastern concepts of Tantra are less focused on goals (from the original post) and more on general enlightenment. Western Tantra focuses more on mundane things such as specific goals.
The Merit part is just called something else in non-Tantric terms; the Pagans call it “working with the energy” and they use their bodies to focus it and ground it. So they are similar concepts but with different terminology and different methods.
Did I understand you enough to get the gist of it? Your post was very clear to me this time. 🙂
I really appreciate the time I took for you to type all that up for me and anyone else that may be reading and not understanding.
Carrie, I *very* much appreciate how different disciplines have different languages. And I am schlepping around about a 30-lifetime vocabulary (ridiculous, but I try to use it playfully).
“Commit the elliptical” was an attempt at humor. At least it was self-referential. (Still not laughing? Sigh… really, it’s me, not you…)
“Tantra” is way too big to cover in a single sentence or paragraph. My reckoning is that it’s roots go back about 32,000 years. But in a nutshell: Tantra is a set of rituals that are designed to a) purify the senses so that, b) Awakening, in and *through* the body, can come about.
The slightly longer form of that idea goes like this (taken from the Bobos intro):
“Tantra is derived from a Sanskrit word meaning variously ‘expansive,’ ‘weave’ or ‘basket.’ The Tantric ‘basket’ contains a couple of jewels so exotic they barely register on the Western scale of value. The first gem is Liberation. Not just political or sexual liberation, but more fundamentally, freedom from anything that interferes with direct perception.
“As Liberation flares up, the second jewel –Awakening– begins to sparkle. To Awaken in the Tantric sense is to not only to enjoy Liberation, but to extend the gift of recognizing it in others. These two stages comprise the fruit of Tantra: Subtle Body/Naked Mind. ”
These are two very distinct and *physical* stages. “Liberation” means liberating the sensory array to operate in ranges of awareness that we –rather stupidly– call ‘psychic.’ The senses become pratyaksha Direct Perception.
“Awakening” is whole ‘nuther discussion, one I will pursue when I am qualified. (Not yet. ) But in brief, it’s where you reside once the “liberation” process has been stabilized within your sensory array.
***
Now, on to “Dedicating the Merit.” In one branch of Buddhism, Liberation/Enlightenment are pursued through 2 collections : Punya (merit) and Prajna (wisdom).
Within that system, Punya or Merit is acquired by doing religious stuff, and doing things selflessly. And eventually, you get to work with Wisdom (Prajna).
Merit in the Tantric sense is a little different. In Tantra, you are working with really primitive energies in the body, so to collect Merit means to refocus those instinctual energies.
You don’t wait for ‘wisdom’ (prajna) to arise from good deeds. You ‘collect Merit,’ that is, refocus the instinctive drives, from the ground of the Wisdoms themselves, which are a set of powers that abide *inside* the sensory array.
When I say focus how you ‘Dedicate the Merit’ – I mean, offer the results of your practice ( your instinctive-drive wrangling) to the right recipient. Giving it to Universe is a fine idea, but a little vague. Tantrikas are generally working on things. Specific things. Defining clearly who or what gets the Merit has a way of helping you cook a tastier practice. You wouldn’t feed Cheetos to a lumberjack, right?
Okay, that’s enough from me for now. Hope I’ve managed to say something sensible… Gotta run.
Kissies,
M
I forgot, what does “dedicate the Merit” mean? Is the term “Merit” a Tantric term and if so, what does it mean? Thanks in advance.
Regarding the following phrase: “commit the elliptical,” what does that mean? I had to look up “quiddity” as well. I feel out of the loop somehow. Thank you Eric for asking readers, “are you following what this article is about” and for explaining the deeper nuances of it.
Not to pick on any one person here but I feel impelled to comment about something that has been bothering me for a while that has to do with my question above.
Lawyers have lawyer jargon and doctors have Latin and CEO’s have executive speech. I have long noticed that each profession, once it became a profession with special classes that confer certification in the field, has adopted exclusive language to separate the “members” from the uninitiated “non-members.” Such professional fields have their own language and it is a way to a) identify those that have also done the requisite classes and received the social stamp of approval (the degree) and sometimes b) it is a way to exclude others that are not of the group. I have seen New Agers and Pagans do it too; they use terms most non-New Age or non-Pagan people would not understand.
I have heard several times in the blog comments on PW (to paraphrase the gist of it based on my understanding and no, I don’t remember the exact posts so as to cut and paste them here) that people here wish others would understand, stand up, get with it or some such similar sentiment. I would say to anyone that is posting comments here; if it is your goal to allow readers to understand what you are writing, then please stop using the exclusive language. If PW posters really wish to foster understanding (as opposed to misunderstanding or disinformation) why use the unusual terms?
For example, note the opening question above. Or Tantra…what is meant here by the word? I have heard of Tantra used in what I think is a different context (dealing with the breath, or sex and energy and other things) so a definition would help. These two are just examples and by no means do I mean to pick on Mystes here. I have seen terms I don’t understand (or used in unexpected, unusual, grammatical ways) posted by others as well (and no, I don’t remember who they were because I only pay attention to a poster’s name when I plan to address them in a comment).
Terms are bandied about in comments as though everyone that comes here should know what they mean. I do know what some mean but I also don’t know what others mean. I am sure there may be other readers (and possibly lurkers) out there that might have no idea what we are talking about here at times. I only point this out because I need clarification and I wonder if others may need clarification but are afraid to ask. Please know I say this not to be mean or nasty but to point out that if getting a message out is the goal, the use of plain terms would facilitate that. It would certainly help ME understand things better. ::::smiling::::
Please clarify so I can understand and others can understand as well. Thanks.
my Mother is not doing so well. When she is gone, I may move to Texas if my 2nd daughter goes there (her husband wants to move back). My grandchildren are in Texas. Life changes on a dime but it goes on. Is it just chance that I ended up with so many of my roots in Texas?
I never understood Tantra at all but your explanations are working wonders. I hope everyone is reading this.
I just broke up a dog fight. Little Jack got the crap knocked out of him by a large female!
E… honey, fine summary. Any reader who is deep into Sufi mysticism or Western Alchemy will see plainly that Tantra is also Western (and I have a friend who swears that native Americans have a version). I’ll get grief for spreading the word “Tantra” so thinly, but if we attend to the practices themselves (and their results), it’s pretty much indisputable.
You also hit the quiddity of the thing with how Tantra serves the issue of women’s empowerment. Or, as I tend to think of it, self-trust. Miranda Shaw –with Passionate Enlightenment– was one of the first scholars in the West to notice that Tantra actually originated with female teachers.
Jeanne Davis-Kimbell’s work just sealed the deal. Also, I collaborated for several years with an Azkhenazi Jew by the name of Tamiris (the historical Tamiris’s grave is in the first image) so something started loosening up a while back…
Oh, final note – Paul is a friend and fellow-traveler. Not my teacher or mentor. My teacher is Green Tara.
Mysti – I would dearly love to go to this. Unless a miracle happens between now and then, I’m not going to get there. But there will be more – right? At some point, I have no idea when, I am planning a trip to USA – this would be a wonderful thing to do while there. I will let you know as soon as I know myself.
I love the tale of your writing. I myself have a Phd in displacement activities, at least so my beloved informs me. To overcome this, I write in my sleep. No joke. It’s taken years to let this, what now feels to me, totally natural method to find it’s way through and to trust it. But it actually works. I wake up and the thing is written – all I have to do is type it up.
Love the work. Thanks, H.
Here’s the truth – nobody here has ever met me or talked to me, so you don’t know — I don’t really exist, except on the Internet.
Okay I have a very sophisticated connection which does not require an iPhone.
No really, I am against texting while driving, but I think that blogging while driving is fine.
Okay okay I talk to Anatoly on the phone, in Russian, and he translates everything into English. We’ve been doing this for a while now.
Anyway my Chinese take out is waiting down the street and yes it is R-R time. I have some ideas for our mini-Saturnalia of Sun-Saturn opposition on the Equinox, which I count in most time zones as sunrise Sunday morning, the first day the Sun rises in the new sign. The astrological day beings at Sunrise; most places today began in Pisces, in the degree of The Great Stone Face, one of my favorites.
How was my summary of your article, Mysti?
Madame LaRue (and others who might be in Central Texas) FYI on the workshop.
Eric, honey… I thought you were on the trail to a well-deserved R&R. Don’t tell me you can drive and type at the same time (honestly, I am looking for that steeringwheel keyboard someone has in production out there). Many thanks for the additional notes. You *were* listening! 8^}
Patty, you mighta been feelin’ the *sudden* 30º temperature drop we had here in Austin at the *instant* of the Equinox. Pretty interesting. Honestly, we are going to have to have a visit sometime soon. You’ve got the stuff, doll, someone just needs to hold back the *other* stuff for 53 seconds while you go find it.
Now. *I* have to go find some hot water, more than will fit into a teacup.
Kissies,
M
I want to check in with readers who are not normally part of the conversation — are you following what this article is about?
An actual “Amazon” warrior-priestess was buried near Iran (a cradle of the Western world) in goddess pose some time in the 1st millennium BC, which exactly matches a 16th century Nepalese female Buddha, i.e., ,about 2,000 years later. Look at the angle of the gaze of both figures, and the positions of the left and right legs.
Consider the implications of this. There are lots of them and they are interesting.
Also, go back to the scene of that burial and imagine her sisters spreading her legs so that she lies in repose for all eternity in a position suitable for fucking or birthing. Go back to that scene and feel the truth of this; feel the hands of the funeral preparers on her body. This is an acknowledgment from a female-ruled culture where true feminine power exists, in contrast to our vapid, milquetoast version of femininity that we are force-fed today — which cannot deal with its own true essence, nor with true masculinity. There are signs that we are reaching for something better; I’ve heard a few here in the past few days.
There are other implications; as Mysti explained to me in a long editing session last night, helping me cross the bridge between me and someone who knows about 10x more than me about stuff I find deeply interesting, this is evidence that Tantric practice originates in the West and not the East. There is more to say here and I would encourage our readers to use this space to ask questions, and to report what you find from other sources.
Mysti and her mentor/teacher are challenging our notion of Tantra as a kind of feelgood, private, gaze in the eyes of your true love kind of thing and taking it to the level of dharma — action in the world.
I think this is a hot Tarot card to have on the cover of Planet Waves as we move into a phase of Eris conjunctions. For more details about that series of conjunctions, see the Cosmic Confidential diary’s weekend edition, and tune into Len Wallick on Monday.
Mystes – ahh yes – i think that was what i was referring to – as holy spirit – the God. Times they are a changing and things will never be the same again after this week.
I felt a real blast of energy when I read your words.
Patty!
Turn around and look at me a minute, Dame.
It’s “the” God Jeffers is drawing out.
You know the Gnostics call it ‘Deus absconditus’ — the ‘getaway God’ the one who is spinning this thing up with dabs of ignorance strewn like black pearls throughout existence.
“the God” in this instance is the-perfectly-aware in you. Don’t imagine that ‘falling in love’ with it is a form of narcissism. It is the moment (stretching into hours or days) when you-the-god regard the container of your life as the astonishing, perfect and wretched jewel that it has to be.
***
**
*
The only part I would change in the poem is “the world’s god is treacherous” lower case G, because GOD – the great I AM is not of the world. I’ve read that the holy spirit isn’t even aware of the world, that the communication from him (our inner man) to God is his only awareness because the world does not exist, any more than a dream really exists, because time is all at once – now. Even Einstein (my favorite Pisces) says it. So falling in love with God is the path to paradise? I have glimpses of another dimension from time to time, but when will I be fully awake?
Thanks, Len – brevity is a virtue I rarely indulge, though I have been known to commit the elliptical… *8^D
Also, the phrase I filched from Jeffers – ‘Indian Recession’ – should be seen in its context:
“The world’s God is treacherous and full of unreason; a
torturer, but also
The only foundation and the only fountain.
Who fights him eats his own flesh and perishes of hunger;
who hides in the grave
To escape him is dead; who enters the Indian
Recession to escape him is dead; who falls in love with
the God is washed clean
Of death desired and of death dreaded.”
Robinson Jeffers “Birth Dues”
That ‘falling-in-love-with-the-God’ part is pure Tantra.
Mysti,
What a bracing experience, to have my mind opend up to things not previously part of my awareness. And in so few words, yet. You are something else again.
Humbled and grateful,
Len Wallick
this is loverly! please do share when the workshop is available, and thank you for sharing!