What Is Tantra?

Following post is contributed by our member teaher Amanda Biccum

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There are so many misconceptions around the word “tantra.” Yet when we look at the root of the confusion, what it boils down to is that people just do not know what it is. What is it and how do we understand it? Amanda explores tantra and how it relates to sacred sex, sexuality, and the masculine and feminine. More than just sex itself, she shares how tantra is this ultimate union and balance between the energies that we hold in each of us. Amanda talks about this and more as she shows the importance of self-love and serving your higher self in order to genuinely serve everything and everyone around you.

What Is Tantra

We are going to be talking about one of my favorite subjects and something that I haven’t come out a lot about. Years ago, I wrote my first blog on Tantra which was Tantra – SEX Like You Mean It. That was the first blog that I wrote. It was very good and it got a lot of traction. Then the second blog was True Tantra Starts with Self. After I wrote the first blog, a lot of people were writing to me saying, “I want to practice Tantra with my woman. What should I do?” To be honest, true Tantra starts with self. I thought that was important because if someone’s coming to me saying like, “I want to learn Tantra with my partner,” unless you have a very embodied practice in and of yourself, the most beneficial way to enter the world of Tantra is start with self. It’s not even all about sex. It’s more about energy than anything. A lot of people have misconceptions when it comes to Tantra, which is exactly why I felt inspired to release this episode, “What is Tantra?” It’s this word that I feel is so often thrown around in this new age spiritual culture. There’s a lot of buzzes and there’s a lot of excitement around it and that’s beautiful. I love that sacred sexuality is coming back. It’s coming back with this oftentimes beautiful, ethereal energy surrounding it. It’s mysterious, exciting and sacred.

Masculine And Feminine

I feel as though there’s also a lot of confusion around what it is. Is it just Kama Sutra? That’s why I wanted to create this episode. I feel like this is a good episode to help introduce people to this understanding of Tantra. If you have not read, I have three blogs written on Tantra. Tantra is one of my favorite subjects and something that I feel I’ve been studying for three years. I feel that this has been a part of my journey. I naturally fell into Tantra. Once I understood sacred sexuality, there was no way that I could ever go back. That was the beginning. Let’s be honest, the majority I feel from what I’ve had these conversations with multiple people, the first sexual experiences that we have are oftentimes not that great. As you may have hopefully read How To Make Love To A Woman, that podcast I often recommend or rather I talk about, how we don’t have good influences around sex. It’s this taboo subject that nobody wants to talk about. It was shamed in religions around the world. It’s unfortunate because sex is truly one of the most sacred acts that one could ever do.

For so long, we were worrying about procreating and maintaining ourselves as we were hunter-gatherers and exploring the terrain of the new worlds. Who knows what happened between then and now but somewhere along the way, we’ve gotten lost to what the divine union of the masculine and feminine is. Tantra is the divine union between masculine and feminine. What does that mean? Hopefully, you’ve tuned into some of my other podcasts around masculine and feminine energy. That’s what it is. It’s not even about between man and woman or even making love. It’s the union between the masculine and feminine energies, the energies that are both within us and that surround us. Tantra is this beautiful dance between the two. The dance between the stable, grounded, solid structure, direct, focused, penetrative, masculine and the fluid, voluptuous, expansive, creative, inspiring woman or feminine. It’s interesting that I said woman there because oftentimes that’s what we refer, the masculine and the feminine to. It’s what we’re conditioned to that the masculine is for the men and the feminine is for the females. There’s such a beautiful movement with the trends and the non-gender binary. It has helped us to reconnect to this idea that masculine and feminine are within each and every single person. They’re within the energies of our universe.

It’s so important that we reconnect to these energies and understand these energies within ourselves. I did a podcast about How To Make Love With A Woman where it talked about it’s so important to get in touch with your feelings as a masculine and body into being in whatever way that looks like. It’s important to be able to connect to these feelings because if you can’t, which is unfortunately what we train our boys not to feel their emotions, not to get in touch with this beautiful sacred part of themselves. If you cannot get in touch with that part of yourself, it is going to be very hard for you to meet your feminine counterpart in any way emotionally, even communication-wise, especially sexually. This is why I feel that true Tantra starts with self.

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If you haven’t connected to your own masculine and feminine, if you have shame whether you’re a female putting down your strong driven characteristics because you want to be more womanly as we’ve been trained in our society or whether you’re a male and you’re putting down your connection to a deeper sense of self, your emotions of what lies beyond the mind, then you’re not going to be able to fully connect and dance in that flow in yourself let alone that flow with someone else. It takes a lot of desire. On the podcast with Anahata where we talked about being the wild men in the bedroom, he talks about this. He says, “You need to go in order to understand your own landscape.” This is why we have so many codependent relationships, where relationships aren’t working out and divorce rates are high and all of this stuff. It’s because we’re expecting the other person to fulfill us or to fill us in on some level. We’re expecting whether if we have a feminine partner, then we expect her to hold our feminine for us and that’s not how it works. That’s not how the universe works. The universe was created with both forms and formless. You needed the Earth in order to be a space for creation to take place and that’s exactly what the masculine and the feminine are.

It’s Mother Earth, however, the structure in and of itself, the mass that is an idea of masculine because it’s form and it’s structure. The feminine is this beautiful dance that has been created upon it with all of the beautiful nature, the people, organisms, animals and everything that’s created because there were structure and form. Especially with the #MeToo Movement, there’s a lot of shame in the masculine. Men need to be more sensitive and softer. While some of this is true, we all can learn to understand these energies both within us and around us. It’s necessary in order for us to find this union, which is what we’re all truly seeking. When you’re thinking the ultimate union, it’s this divine dance, expression, balance. The ultimate union is this true connecting of our understanding and accepting both sides, realizing that no side is inferior or superior, that they are both whole, beautiful and complete. When they come together, they create absolute magic. This is important and I know that many of you were like, “I’m going to get some tricks and tips on Tantric love.” I invite you to first go back to the blogs that I’ve written about it because that’s going to give you a little bit more.

Self-Love

The Tantra is the dance between the masculine and the feminine in all things and all aspects of ourselves. It’s incredibly important to understand this. If you’re feeling that you’re in a relationship that isn’t truly serving you or there are a lot of struggles or you want a relationship and it’s not happening or you continue to see relationship patterns come up, it’s a good indication that it’s an opportunity for you to go within and ask, “How is my relationship to my masculine? How is my relationship to my feminine? Am I denying any aspects of myself?” which is what we’re taught to do. As men and women, we’re taught to deny aspects of ourselves therefore, we push them down because they’re considered not lovable, less manly, less feminine or whatever it is. Therefore, we’re not fully in love with ourselves because we’re denying aspects of ourselves. Self-love is so incredibly important and I talk a lot about that in the Tantra True Love Starts With Self. Self-love is the basis of what’s going to be able to allow you to authentically connect and have deep fulfilling relationships. If you’re having relationships that are not fulfilling, chances are you’re looking for something outside yourself to fulfill you. That may work for a short period of time but in the long term, it’s not going to be something that’s sustainable. It’s a lot of expectation on something outside yourself and it’s not fair to either people in the relationship.

Tantra can happen in all places. It is truly a dance between the masculine and feminine. What encapsulates this dance, what makes this dance possible is presence. You cannot have the dance of the masculine and feminine without being fully present. This is why our world so far has been ran by the masculine and conducted by the masculine, which I believe we needed. We needed form and structure. We needed this type of stability in order to progress in the way that we have. Now, we have the stability and the structure. Most people have a place to sleep. They have food around the world for the most part and we have more free time than ever, which is what allows us to be more creative. We’re not working so hard to get our basic needs met. Now, we can bring in the feminine. The feminine can come in and she can play, dance and create even more magic because we’re not trying to survive. The masculine and the feminine can show up in every aspect of your life. In order to truly understand the relationship, you need to be able to tap into how they show up in your life.

Some of us may be masculine in our jobs whereas in relationships, we might be more feminine. Some of us can be masculine in our relationships and not connected to her feminine at all. Maybe we’re masculine and super masculine in all things that we do. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s important in order to find balance, harmony, peace and union within yourself, which is truly the source of love. What is the ultimate union? Love, connection, divinity. It’s important to begin to understand these things because we’ve been taught to seek outside ourselves for fulfillment. It’s not going to happen like that. It never will and it hasn’t. We need each other because this is what it’s all about. It’s not about our individual selves. It’s about the dance between each other but it needs to come from a place of understanding that we’re more powerful when we are together instead of meeting each other in a codependent way. Being and bringing presence into every aspect of your life is a huge part of the Tantric path. It’s about accepting all things, accepting all emotions as they come, even in Tantric lovemaking. Understanding that all emotions, even the ones that are less desired, are perfect in and of themselves because you are divine. It is the presence that is creating the space for different sensations to move through the body.

Great sex comes when presence is there. Great sex comes when both people meet each other and have this organic union and no one is trying to get theirs or create this outcome of orgasm. The whole experience can be orgasm. When you’re talking about Tantric sex, the whole experience is the orgasm. There is no separation. There is just riding waves of orgasmic bliss between one person and the other or multiple people or whoever it is. It’s this presence that is bringing you to the state of connection and it’s so incredibly powerful. You can begin your Tantric practices by tuning into these energies within yourself. Maybe categorizing your different areas and aspects of your life and asking yourself, “Where am I more masculine and feminine?” Do it on a percentage scale. When you start to become aware of these energies and what qualities they both have, then you can begin to create exercises with these qualities to strengthen the opposite so that you can become more balanced with yourself.

Tantra Is Juicy

A lot of this is what I teach in my coaching. It’s helping individuals find union within themselves so that they can feel empowered in and of themselves and their own experience so that they can no longer depend on things outside of themselves for happiness, success or fulfillment. They can be in alignment with who they truly are and their soul’s purpose so that they can truly flourish in every aspect of their life whether that be in their relationships, work life or romance life. Tantra is juicy. It’s here and it’s now and everybody can practice it. You don’t have to have a partner. Even if you do have a partner, it starts with self. It starts with here. It starts with now. How can you bring more presence into your every moment? How can you make Tantric love with your food? It’s through awareness of how you’re preparing, how you’re celebrating, how you’re eating and your presence while you’re in it. How can you bring Tantra into your morning routine? The way that you worship your body in the shower, is it worship or is it just another thing you have to do?

What is Tantra? Tantra is the benevolent dance between the masculine and feminine that is held by the container of pure presence and the acceptance of all that is in each and every single moment understanding that it is divine. The less resistance that we have, the easier our Tantric love begins to flow from our hearts to others. It is far beyond the act of sex, although bringing it into union for the physical body is one of the most beautiful and orgasmic expressions. Understanding that Tantra in its essence is so far beyond that. It is what makes life juicy, exciting, and fulfilling. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being on your path because Tantra is another path to connect to the divine, to your soul’s purpose, to divinity. I appreciate you tuning in. If this resonates, if you want to share this out, let’s bring sacred love back. I have a whole list of different subdivisions of this that I’m going to bring with you and journey with you on. If you have questions, please know that you can always write and I love your questions. Everybody else loves your questions. Your questions help others because we’re not alone. Osho is one of the people who brought Tantra back into the mainstream. Him and Mantak Chia from the Daoist tradition. I started out with more Mantak Chia and I’m diving more into Osho.

I’d like to read an excerpt from his book. This is Osho’s, Tantra: The Supreme Understanding and this is a short excerpt. It says, “Tantra has a very beautiful thing to say to you. That is first, before you start serving anybody else, be absolutely selfish. How can you serve anyone else unless you have attained your inner being first? Be absolutely selfish. If your own inner light is burning, you may be able to help others. Otherwise, your service will be mischief.” This is another incredible point to make. We have created this story in a society that being selfish is about if you’re serving yourself, you’re being selfish and you need to serve others. It is true that we are here to be a part of something greater. If you do not serve yourself, if you don’t take time to nourish yourself with good food, to give time to yourself in silence, appreciation and gratitude, if you don’t spend time with yourself, how can you truly give authentically to someone else? You can only do that for so long before you end up burning out and that can be a job, a relationship, family. It’s different for everyone but so equally important for everyone to recognize this truth. In the name of Tantra, I invite you to be unbelievably selfish. Coming from a place of knowing that when you serve your higher self in that selfishness, you are serving everything and everyone else around you. Thank you so much for tuning in. I look forward to hearing from you from my heart to yours.

Amanda Biccum