"For Serious Tantrikas Only"

I'm currently experimenting with Diigo.com, an online bookmarking, sharing, highlighting and annotation service. So, this is a bit of an experiment... you can click on the following link to see the whole original article along with my annotations (just hover over the little speech bubble thingies). There you can view my annotations in the original context. Below that, I'll focus on the two or three most interesting remarks and add my personal views.

"For Serious Tantrikas Only": Good Tantra Article from Pinklotuss.com

multiply orgasms,  non-ejaculatory (non-depleeting) orgasms, full body orgasms, spiritual orgasms...simply all the capabilities that have been given to women by nature.

Well, that line about nature's gift to women is definitely a good sales pitch. And of course, it's probably more of a snarky remark than a serious description of reality. At any rate, I do not have the impression that it is true. Too many women going on about how they can't reach orgasm at all; too many women who don't have any connection with spirituality whatsoever.

I believe from my own experience that tantra can help you reconnect your sex with your "spiritual" side, however you like to define it. I believe that this is a very good thing. Would my (young, attractive, female) next door neighbour profit from it? I can well imagine that. (Especially if I were to teach her...) Would the journey be any easier for her than it is/was for me? Without really knowing her, I highly doubt it. Given she's a young citizen of a modern western society, she probably has all the misconceptions in her head that a slightly catholic modern upbringing will give you... she'd probably think she has better things to do, and if there are issues in the bedroom, she'd try all kinds of stuff  (including, of course, outright denial) before daring to venture into tantra... let alone serious daily practice. So, even if there may be some slight advantage for women here, because we grant them more emotionality, a lot of other factors will far outweigh that slight bias.

And of course, ultimately, it doesn't matter. You go on this journey because you feel that it might help you, and you stay on it if you feel that it actually does, and that's all that really matters.

It it's about taking the lust out of sex and transforming it into love.

I wouldn't call it "taking lust out...". It's more like adding a completely new quality to it. My approach here is very much like my approach to dieting: always add good stuff - the bad stuff will fall away all by itself anyway. Well and also, I don't see lust as a bad thing. But I do respect that it is virtually impossible to talk about those things without exposing any bias whatsoever, and I don't think that this sentence was intended quite the way it may sound.

Tantra is a path of enlightenment, differing from other spiritual paths by not trying to escape the reincarnation cycle, but bringing enlightenment into this body, into this world.

This definitely has a true ring to me. Putting aside the issue that enlightenment doesn't exist in any strict sense, as far as it goes it is definitely to be found in the body.

Or, putting it into more secular language: Paying more attention to what actually goes on in your body, without being judgmental about whatever happens to surface, seems to me like one of the healthiest things you can do (as long as you're not suffering from some severe mental condition or substance addiction that might warp the experience into some freakish nightmare).

we don't talk  much about the 'death of the ego' (this only sets the ego up for a fight), essentially that is what happens.

I often have the impression that tantra is something of a form of benevolent self-outmaneuvering.

The old ego is to be transformed into a devoted servant to the soul.

It is somewhat shocking, but I do know what she's aiming at, and in some way I even agree.

At some point it dawned on me that this path is not about 'happily ever after'. What I was presented instead was the process of developing ability tobecome comfortable with increasingly higher levels of discomfort.

I had never realized it, but "becoming comfortable with higher levels of discomfort" really nails it (harhar). In a way, orgasmic meditation seems to help me overcome my civilizational discontent. I never felt so free to assert myself as in those past few weeks, and at the same time, it was never easier to accept the sheer insanity that any sane family will always throw at every last one of us. It is distinctly odd when your father says something that always has you up in arms, and being almost completely unaffected.

The danger is, obviously, to delve into apathy and disaffection. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. So I have some hope I'll manage not to go there again!