Tantric Awareness

Written by Kathryn Ryder Sunday, 06 December 2009 16:37

TANTRIC AWARENESS Kathryn Ryder

Tantra manipulates the materials, energies, and limited awareness
associated with the human body, to help the practitioner realize the
unlimited consciousness that permeates all space, time, energy, and
matter.

There are many methods in Tantra.

Some use complicated rituals of dramatic actions using ritual objects
to lead the mind to a particular feeling or awareness (Kriya Tantra).

Some tantric methods use no external objects, but still rely on
physical technique to move energy and awareness in the body - prime
examples are Tantric hatha yoga, and the sexual rituals called
Maithuna.

Tantric Hatha Yoga uses physical techniques (postures, breath
awareness, internal breath pressure, spinal manipulation, hand and
body gestures, internal muscle contractions, pressure on the various
external pressure points called marmas).

These same physical methods are shared in some varieties of Tantric
Maithuna (love ritual or union), with the added ingredient of sexual,
emotional, and spiritual arousal.

Other methods use intentional, patterned movement of the consciousness
through the body to harness and control the jumpy cognitive "monkey
mind".

For example, in Tantric Kriya Yoga, the practitioner moves his or her
awareness along specific meridian pathways (nadis) in order to achieve
more calmness of mind, along with and internal control of prana (chi
or vital breath energy).

Control of internal energy and placement of awareness allows the
practitioner to modify his or her consciousness and emotional state at
will, as well as claming the mind enough to achieve meditative samadhi
(absorption), and, by adding additional techniques from other systems,
or simpley abiding in naked awareness, Realization.

Hindu Kriya Yoga is analagous is practice and purpose to the
Taoistsystems of internal Qigong called Nei Gung.

In Tantric Laya Yoga, also known as the yoga of kundalini, the tantric
uses the resonant frequencies of the various parts of her energetic or
physical anatomy to "tune in" to new, different, or more precise
"bands" or wavelengths of consciousness, often using auditory tools
(mantra), visual tools(yantra), and anthropomorphized principles
(devata) to amplify and fine-tune her awareness and energy.

Laya Yoga principles can be used individually, in a loving couple, or
in a practice group or sangha.

In internal martial arts like kalaripayattu, tai chi, hsing-yi,
baguazhang, hoshinjutaijutsu, and pencak silat, the external
(physical) training and internal (breath, energy and mind) training,
mirror each other, similarly producing awareness of aspects of the
mind, energy, and physicality that are ignored or overlooked by the
normal person.

There are many more methods and schools within Tantric practice - but
they all intersect and build on each other...and they all rely on
experiences provided by the practice itself, not on book learning, to
deliver increased awareness of the nature of humanity and the nature
of consciousness.

If you truly practice and understand the view, principles, and methods
of any complete esoteric method, from any full system, in any culture,
when you really investigate any other system, you will see how things
fit together in the broader spectrum of tantric practice.

You will also see that if you wish to cut away all attachments and
prejudices, to really free you mind from limited concepts, there are
as many cultural prejudices in the esoteric arts as in any other
field.

The truly universal personality will want to leap over these
prejudices, ultimately leaving behind even the ideas that enabled the
practitioner to travel inwards towards freedom.

There are wonderful esoteric tools and traditions in all of the major
religions and spiritual traditions of the world.

Because of early human migrations and later the trade and cultural
exchange along the silk and spice routes, every one of those
traditions has absorbed practices from every other- nothing is, or can
be, ethnically, culturally, or religiously "pure"or separate -
Archeology is showing us over and over that everything culturally
distinct will ultimately mingle with, share fractals of, or reflect
everything else, or die off entirely.

Tantra would say thet the root or base of all these memes (ideas,
thought forms, or concepts), permutations, traditions, and individual
splinters of consciousness is the same ineffable primordial
consciousness behind and within everything, beyond name, beyond
concept.

The esoteric traditions are merely systematic methods to
experientially realize and live in full awareness of that primordial
consciousness!

If you begin esoteric practices - yogic, sexual, meditative,
scientific, shamanic, or otherwise - take each principle or method you
learn, practice it, play with it, experiment and explore it, and fit it
and its experiences into the bigger whole!