Spirituality

I came across this a few days ago and it is without a doubt one of the most profound spiritual books I've ever read. I found myself intensely engaged the entire time and officially blown away because of the underlying experiences this man had on his journey, as well as the feeling of fire in my heart.

For a little context, Daniel Odier (the author), at the age of twenty three, left Europe for the Himalayas looking for a master who could help him penetrate where texts and intellectual searching could no longer take him. He wanted everything: the wisdom and spirituality gained from the life of an ascetic and the beauty, love, and sensuality of a life of passion. After months of searching deep into the Himalayas, Daniel met Devi, a great female yogi who radiated immense love, beauty, and grace. Devi had been practicing Shivaic Tantrism for about seventeen years, primarily living in the mountains in a homemade hut.

This is a conversation between Daniel and Devi.

Devi, talking about Awakening, said, "The intensity comes precisely from the fact that there's no end to it. There's no return to restrictive activity. All activity, all play of the mind takes place within Awakening. Everything can enter and leave, everything can emerge, everything can be tasted in all its richness."

Daniel asked, "But why do we lose this capacity for wonder?"

"Because the little grey men come to reside in the consciousness. Education, society, sick love, hate, desire, jealousy, ambition, mental and material quests, all these things make us strangers to ourselves. We think only of copying, imitating, achieving new states, and whether or not our desires are fulfilled, we lose the happiness within us. Then we come to imagine heaven and hell separate from ourselves. This is a great subterfuge, which allows our consciousness to function outside of ecstasy. If man knew that he himself was God and heaven and hell, no illusions would have a hold on him; nothing could limit his consciousness. Placing heaven outside self allows suffering to become an institution maintained by society's dream at such a high level that we can no longer escape from it. Whatever our fortune starting out in life a day comes when we decide to limit our consciousness, to dry it up."

"As for the mystical crisis of adolescence, the great revolts that make us doubt the path indicated by others, one day we step back and decide to pay our imaginary debt to society. We accept the death of our true selves. And the great fraud is that this death troubles no one. To the contrary, it is watched for, welcomed, and rewarded. As soon as the price of this spiritual death is accepted, it becomes extremely hard to follow another route. That can happen only at the cost of immense effort and very great courage. Those who have accepted their own deaths have only one possibility: to become followers of a religion or group that places the divine outside the self. Thus, everything is subsumed by society's order and interests, aligned to those of the churches and sects, which operate from the same common base: the death of divine consciousness. The driving forces are guilt, fear, obedience. The results are rigidity, distance from sensory objects, obsession, Puritanism, violence, moral codes, exclusion. In India, America, China, the Mideast, Europe, that is the mode of operation we see at work throughout."

When I first read that I was absolutely speechless. I read it over and over again, letting it sink in. This is the truth that I've experienced. What stood out to me is how dysfunctional the belief, that God, or the Universe, or Cosmic Consciousness, or however you want to define it, is separate to us. We are divine beings. Christ himself said, "The Kingdom of Heaven is within." So why is heaven and the divine looked at as somehow external to us? To me Christ is saying, "Look inside! Heaven is simply a state of consciousness, and you are it, you are heaven, you are hell, you are everything. It's all inside you. And it's your choice in what place you choose to dwell." Just as when he said, "I and the Father are one." He's saying, when you are aligned with your true essence, you are One with everything and everyone. That essence could never be external.

Also, what stood out to me obviously is how the driving forces of many religions are guilt, fear, and obedience. I know firsthand what that way of living did to me, and all I have is my own experience to work with. It drove me into my own miserable psychotic world, and I will NEVER be a part of those beliefs ever again.

What I appreciate immensely about Tantrism is not only the simplicity and spontaneity, but the divine perception of women. The fact that in many religions men hold all the power positions, and are even seen as holding more Godly power, is one of the most judgmental, sexist, disrespectful beliefs that I know of. To me that feels so deeply wrong. That belief system reeks heavily of the male ego.

Here are some more gems from the book.

"We all feel that we must find an antidote to the frenzy in which we live, but for all that we are not ready to adopt beliefs and practices that are culturally foreign to us. In Tantrism, we do not go toward some external thing. On the contrary, we direct ourselves toward our core, our own minds. Tantric practice demands nothing more than this return to the Self. To know, observe, and to calm ourselves, we don't have to take recourse in any belief whatsoever. Everything is born of the mind and returns there. We are image and reflection at the same time. By observing the mind we will find there all that we have lost to the exterior: peace, tranquility, the strength to act without being subject to filters or limitations that we have accepted or created, the power to fully communicate with life."

"The means for knowing our minds are mediation and the practice of full consciousness. In Tantrism, meditation is very simple. There are no supports, no visualizations, no complicated mantras, no fetishes concerning posture. You sit on a comfortable cushion or on a chair. You calm down. You breathe peacefully, without forcing anything, and you observe. Ideas run by very quickly. You do nothing to slow down this relentless rhythm. You simply take note of the degree to which the mind is racing out of control. For many, it already comes as a huge surprise to see that we can be conscious of this incessant bombardment. Little by little, after three or four mediation sessions, the sitting, the calm, the fact that we are there waiting for nothing, not competing, without a single goal except to be open, to breathe, to feel, brings about in us a strong sense of well-being."

"In order for the practice to change our way of living and perceiving the world, it's important to make an effort and compel ourselves to meditate each day. Very quickly, the pleasure and the calm that come over us will make it so we don't need to force ourselves to meditate. That will happen naturally, like being drawn to a source of please. Deep well-being restores communication between our minds and bodies as well as the potential of our active and emotional life and quality of our relationships with others. This pleasure has the particular advantage of always being available, since it depends only on itself."

"While everything else in life is an occasion for measuring oneself against others and putting on performances, meditation opens a space where there is nothing to prove. We are there simply to know ourselves, to accept ourselves unconditionally, and to love ourselves without making judgments on what we do or think. We communicate with all our energies without dismissing anything. All energy is precious. Anger, jealousy, violence, and negativity are just as acceptable as their counterparts that we consider positive."

"By no longer labelling and classifying our impulses, we gain access to a fabulous reserve of energy we can use for meditation and for paying attention to the world. There is no progress, in the sense that we apply that term to a sport or a game. Everything can happen very quickly if we simply agree to sit down in complete freedom. There is nothing to learn, no texts or esoteric principles to study. It's enough to let oneself be free from all mental and physical constraints. The single indispensable thing is to have the desire to know oneself, to take full advantage of life, and to release oneself from suffering."

"The whole art of Tantric practice is to develop this presence in the world, which meditation deepens daily. You find yourself enjoying things that until then didn't seem the least bit interesting. You note with surprise how this opening completely transforms your quality of life and interactions with others. All of a sudden, you will have created an empty space in yourself, a sort of park where the trees, the flowers, the pools, the shade, and the light will allow you to relax and let others enter."

What profound material! I love where I'm at in my journey. Putting all my focus on the values most important to me, which are love, acceptance, complete openness & honesty. At this point I seek to embody everything I've learned from many religions and teachings, like loving service from Christianity, non-reactive meditation from Buddhism, Yoga, the ancient wisdom of Chinese Tonic Herbalism and Ayurvedic Herbalism, specific stretching and exercises and ways of living from Taoism, as well as connecting sexuality with spirituality, and now the simple wisdom of Tantrism.