The practices and rituals you will find here are doorways that reveal the inherent beauty and meaning of our ordinary moments.
Say yes to life in all its erotic passion.
Go with the flow of the life force within and all around you.
Trust yourself, and allow your personal power to manifest in life.
Open your heart in loving compassion to the self and others.
Authentically express your creativity and your truth.
Look within to achieve clarity and insight in your life.
Surrender to your Source and know gratitude, spiritual peace, and a new capacity to live at your maximum potential in every moment.
These seven Tantric keys can open us up to our essential selves and unleash in us that abundant, joyous energy -- EveryDay Ecstasy -- that allows us to be all that we can be as human beings with our partners and our children and in our work, our community, and the world. In the process, we discover the meaning of elegance, the art of achieving maximum results with minimum effort. Elegant people are in love with life. And their love calls them to make contributions beyond the call of mere duty, to participate fully, to share their joys, pains, gifts, and truths with others. And, by their example, they remind us that beyond our apparent differences, we are connected in Spirit, We are One.
My own spiritual journey, which led me to the path of EveryDay Ecstasy, began in Paris, when I was eighteen years old. I was wildly in love with my boyfriend; and the first time we made love, at the peak of orgasm, my consciousness expanded until, suddenly, unexpectedly, nothing was left but the absolute certainty that I was utterly and totally free and that this absolute freedom was, for me, the secret of life. This realization set the course of my life.
This may seem like an unusual beginning to many people. Yet most of us have enjoyed one unforgettable peak moment that leaves us with a yearning for that sense of ecstasy, wholeness, or exquisite peace. Unfortunately, our culture does not teach us the value of such experiences or the skills to cultivate them. But after this first ecstatic moment, I knew I wanted to discover how to integrate spirituality with sexuality in my daily life.
My studies and degrees in psychology and philosophy at the Sorbonne in Paris did not bring any answers to my quest. Later, my practice as a therapist failed to satisfy my hunger for experiential wisdom. I turned to the study of bodywork therapies and self-development groups: bioenergetics, encounter groups, rolfing, Gestalt, Arica, integral yoga. And still I found no direct answers that explained the connection between sexuality and spirituality.
I set out on a journey to explore the traditions of sacred sexuality around the world. I soon was introduced to the ancient Eastern science of Tantra; like yoga, Zen, and Sufism, Tantra is a spiritual path to enlightenment. But unlike most mystical paths, Tantra includes sexuality as a doorway to ecstasy and enlightenment. The essence of the Tantric teachings can be summarized as this: Choose with awareness what gives you joy, and it will lead you to Spirit. A particularly attractive approach, I thought, for us Westerners so deeply influenced by the puritanical Judeo-Christian tradition, which conceives of pleasure not as a door to heaven but rather as a shortcut to hell!
What Is Tantra?
Many people today mistakenly believe that Tantra is a spiritual bastardization of sexual therapy, an excuse to indulge in sensual games, an addiction to hours of sexual orgasms. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Tantric path teaches us to embrace and unify the ordinary, the erotic, and the sacred dimensions of life, which all have their roots in Spirit.
The beauty and wisdom of Tantra is that it embraces sexuality as a doorway to the "ecstatic mind of great bliss". Truly, at the peak of orgasm, we pierce through the illusion of fragmentation and separation, and glimpse the unity and interconnectedness of all beings. And through the other -- our partner -- we fall in love with life.
Because sex holds this great potential for opening our being to the experience of ecstasy, Tantra has for millennia taught the cultivation of sexual love as an art, as a skillful spiritual practice. Then, as now, Tantra challenges the belief promoted by most spiritual and religious paths that we must suppress or transcend our sexuality to practice meditation or awaken our Spirit. Tantra arose in rebellion against these ascetical and life-negating creeds. It acknowledges that sex is at the root of life and that to make human sexuality and erotic union a form of worship and meditation is to practice reverence for life, leading us directly through the pleasure of the senses to spiritual liberation.
Tantra teaches that we master desires not by avoiding them but by immersing ourself in them. Once known and experienced deeply, they can be transcended. In fact, Tantra teaches that nothing is to be excluded from our understanding of reality. We need not suffer by sacrificing pleasures. We can cultivate them as opportunities for awakening. Tantra teaches us to embrace every moment in our totality, to respond bodily, feel from the heart, perceive with clarity, and be fully present to others and to life.
Tantra is a Sanskrit word derived from the root tan, "to expand". In the process of my study and practice of the Tantric arts, I developed this definition: Tantra is the art of weaving the often contradictory aspects of our self or personality into a unified whole, for the purpose of expanding our consciousness. Scholar Ajit Mookerjee defines Tantra as "knowledge of a systematic, scientific, and experimental method which offers the possibility of expanding man's consciousness and faculties, a process through which the individual's inherent spiritual powers can be realized."
Create an Ecstatic Life
What if you began each day from a state of creative awareness, with a clear vision of what you want and how it can be achieved? For example, when you want to create a perfect dinner party for good friends, you begin with a vision of a warm gathering filled with intimate friendship, laughter, and good food. You begin, first imaginatively, then actually, to feel and create the atmosphere -- you choose a menu, the lighting, the dishes you will use, the music or games you will play. You feel the enjoyment of the evening itself as you prepare for it and anticipate it throughout the day. Below is a ritual for starting your day with clarity, by opening all your centers.