The Tantric Path

Many yoga traditions reject the material world as unreal and the life of the body as a distraction. This is the realization of neti-neti, the way of negation, literally translated as "not this, not this." Leave the body and leave the material world behind. Think of the skinny guys in the cave or maybe you heard about the person who walked away from their corporate job and went off to an ashram and was never heard from again. Or maybe, you have contemplated walking away from your own life.

Their are many yogic and religious traditions that believe:

I am not this body and its sensations.
I am not this mind and its thoughts and desires.
I am not even intuition or insight.
I am pure spirit.

This is the view that sees the material world as an illusion and human embodiment as a fall from grace in which Spirit becomes trapped in matter. The goal of these approaches is to drop the body and leave the world behind.

Personally there are many days where I go to my mat and want to leave this body and world that can disappoint me. Personally there are times when I feel that this world is cruel and hard and on a path of self destruction.

So how do I embrace my yogic path. The path to Tantra. Tantric yogis believe in "spirit" or a "oneness" underlying all of the creation. The actual word tantra means "web" like threads in a tapestry. As yogis of a tantric tradition, we embrace that oneness or "spirit" but we believe it manifests in the material world as well. We believe that it cannot be separate. It is woven together and the material world naturally flows out of spirit and is always co-existing with Spirit. In simpler terms, the material world and the spirit world are separate but one does not exist with out the other.

So, in Tantra, Spirit is in this physical world and the yogi embraces the whole of life as the outward manifestation of the invisible Spirit.

A willful yoga practice is a Tantric path. It guides us to experience the unity of matter and spirit reflected within us as body and mind. Consider a long holding of demanding posture such as bridge pose. As you enter the posture, you breathe and relax to stimulate the flow of energy and sensation through the body. Next you feel, focusing the mind on the flowing sensations. Watching, you observe your inner experiences as a witness developing concentration and entering the state of meditation. The final step is to allow. This is the essence of Tantra. You accept your experience as it is, dropping the need to change it in any way, and realize the truth that, at our essence we are all amazing, we are divine.