Deep in the Tantra: part 1

"I'm an acquired taste".

Those were the first words uttered from Douglas Brooks at the Tantra Philosophy workshop I attended last weekend.  I totally related to that statement and felt myself sit a little taller on my stack of blankets.  I took pages of notes and have enthusiastically been sharing tidbits in classes and conversation for the last two days.  Several people have asked me to post them, I have not review them enough to put them in essay form (and I REALLY want to do that, so it's coming....), here are just a few points that really struck me...

• The sacred is a relationship.  We bring ourselves into the sacred because we can and because we want to.
• This is a powerful universe, not a moral one. It is what it is based on its expression of energy.  Nature does what it does. Nature has no moral presence. Energy = power. Power = advantage. Nature = success.
• We can achieve collectively that which we cannot achieve independently.  In the greater relationship of collective energy we can gain success.  The universe "rewards" success.  We are just part of nature. We  are not the center of the universe, this world was not made for us to take care of. The universe is doing, not being. We are bound by the patterns of nature. (chew on that one for the next 10 years)
• Your intention and your behavior are the same.
• Letting go is the hardest thing to do. Yet we don't really have natural boundaries. We create, address and define them.  We put ourselves into being by the way we create our boundaries.  We write the book of life, we're not written into it. The more we can move the boundary, the more we can increase.
• The greatest is not the only. Unique does not exist. The power of the universe is never one of a kind. It is everywhere. Oneness is diversity.
• Power lies in the way you treat the relationship. Inaction has consequences. Those who deny relation are practicing a yoga of exemption.  Principle is only as good as the outcome. Anything out of relationship is not sacred.
• Yoga is not virtuosity is someone else (some days I would like to put this sticky note on my forehead). You are free. You are not ever exempt from you. Do not do as another desires, do as you are. Stop looking for "it" and start making "it".  Looking for one's self is like looking for the infinite.
• If things aren't different, there is no meaning.
• The gift is in the accepting, not the receiving.
• Stop looking for what was never there and look at what IS there.
• There are no static absolutes. The absolute is dynamic.  It is living, not fixed. Absolutes engage passive energy.  Everything is the way that it is because it is perfectly free to do so.

Deep in the Tantra: Part 2 coming soon....

May you be awesome.

Namaste

xxoo