The First Aspect of Tantra Yoga
Mastery
One Pointedness, Concentration & Discipline

Mastery includes one-pointed-ness, concentration and discipline. The ordinary mind wanders in many different directions at once, fragmented, distracted, dissipating. Because of this, even though a person may have many tastes of energetic, ecstatic or expanded states, they can never maintain them, much less, cultivate and grow them. This distracted, fragmented, dissipating nature of the ordinary mind is why most people fall out of love so easily, why it is difficult to meditate and why moods so strongly govern the ordinary life. Concentration means has two meanings- concentrating on one point, one state, one vision, one-ness. It also means concentrate, like orange juice concentrate, the essence and most potent part of a substance. In a concentrated energy, a concentrated mind, a concentrated being, in one who is reduced to it’s most potent aspect, all frivolity, excess, distraction and wasting is gone. One-pointed-ness is absolutely essential in the spiritual path because without it, lost in the throws of the ordinary mind, one can easily lose sight of that which is most important. Without one-pointed-ness, a person can not be total, fully present, fully experiencing or fully aware. A one-pointed mind, fixed on the goal of awakening, is one of the most powerful forces on earth. Free of the past, free of interruption, free of projections about the future, it is one-pointed-ness that allows the practitioner to fully experience life. Discipline is the path to one-pointedness and concentration. It is Discipline that can save a person’s life by constantly redirecting it’s forces towards that which has greatest meaning.Without the discipline to remember to practice, over and over again, with consistency and intensity, the practices are impotent. Especially in the beginning of practice, the practitioner must overwhelm the momentum of their karma, their patterns, their ordinary thoughts, their ordinary emotions, through sheer exertion. When anger arises one may not feel like practicing, when sadness engulfs the heart, one may not feel like practicing. Discipline allows you to practice anyway, to move beyond the block and liberate pure energy from within. Somewhere in the heart, through discipline, one can remember what one’s destiny is and rise above pettiness and emotionality. Somewhere in the heart one can remember hir source… It is discipline that allows you to rise up and honor that vision. It is discipline that allows you to choose love, to choose your freedom and to train your body and mind to remember your true nature.

Discipline creates a friction that refines the practitioner (tapas). Discipline allows one to maintain responsibility. Responsibility is the vehicle that carries the practitioner to freedom by deeply processing and refining the mind, body and energy channels.

The path starts with one-pointed-ness, becomes two pointed, and then contains all points. The energy of total realization is so acute, overwhelming, and full…. Full realization opens you in the most vulnerable and tender way to be naked, unprotected before the great forces of life. One can only cope with that experience if you can concentrate. In the same way that in the beginning of the path, thoughts and emotions overwhelm you, as you mature in the path, the pure and great force of life is an overwhelming experience! The more awake you are the more sensitive and the more awake to the subtle and full flowing dimension of reality that the Shakti embodies. How then can you bear it? Through concentration. Concentration is a psychic muscle that allows you to reign in the mind in the beginning, and as you mature allows you also to reign in the shakti that moves through you. Concentration, and Discipline are how you stay relaxed through ever increasing levels of energy.

The path rests on the foundation of one-pointed-ness which gradually evolves into one-ness. Your awareness becomes one with it’s source. Your dual and fragmented thoughts melt into the oneness of your conscious experience. Your mind and heart become one. Your mind and body become one, moving in alignment, in harmony. In this oneness your identity and personality disappear and you take on the quality of one. Everything that enters the field of one becomes as fully you as you are. This is how lover, lover and beloved are one. Their state has broken down the barriers of separation and they receive the flow of the beings in their presence with the surrender and grace of the ocean receiving the river. This is the oneness that is important for the second aspect of the path.

Through discipline, concentration and one-pointed-ness, the seeker gradually may dissolve and digest their tensions, patterns, programming and limiting behaviors. As the mechanism becomes clearer and clearer, the obvious next step is to challenge oneself through maintaining that clear state with the other, with relationship to the ordinary world. Of course, this is also happening simultaneously. Moment after moment, one is being fed by ones own tensions, by the tensions of the world which envelops you. Through becoming conscious that these tensions are a specific food, and through the discipline to remember to practice, through the concentration and one-pointed-ness to do so- one can be nourished by digesting tensions. Unnatural mind is fortified because it is polluted by being fed garbage. Natural mind arises through a steady diet of meditation, the teachings, the master and practice.

The Second Aspect of Tantra Yoga
Love
Love, Openness & Compassion

The second aspect of Tantra Yoga is love, openness, and compassion. Love is meant as in-love, the state of in-love, which has grace, and endless depth, and the power to accomplish anything. This state of love, which can also be called devotion, is the juice of practice. It is the harmony and beauty of the path. Through concentration, discipline and one pointed-ness it becomes apparent that the state of in-love can not only be maintained, but also cultivated and expanded endlessly. It can be cultivated so profoundly that it grows and grows beyond personality, beyond mind, beyond identity, beyond self, it grows to become a force within that puts the seeker in touch with the force of grace without. The state of in-love is not mere words, it is not just a romantic way of thinking. The state of in love is an action of the hands and feet, an inner movement of being to unite with it’s source. The state of in-love is a movement from within that inspires the seeker to embody divine grace, to manifest it in many ways in many little moments of time. I have seen this kind of love bring someone back from the dead. It is the state of perpetual refreshment, endless motivation, and richness. It is a state of richness and nothingness. In total and real love, one disappears. In total and real love, the world is healed and transformed. Without this state of in-love discipline is meaningless and dry, it is imbalanced. Discipline is the concentration to develop and cultivate that state for the joy of it’s experience and for the sake of all beings. There is so much confusion about the state of in-love in this world. In truth, for those who love LOVE above all else, this state and it’s juiciness can be accessed all the time.

The secret of Love and being a Lover, is that the only way to interact with the Beloved is to serve the Beloved. An energetic exchange takes place, through offering total Love one becomes totally refined. (Of course this does not apply to serving Karma! Never lose your common sense, and sense of the Shakti).

The experience of the Divine IS the state of Love. Lovers get so confused and think it is about the certain person before you. In reality, the one before fits the conditions you require to relax and open enough to experience Love. In reality the one before you is there to celebrate Love with you and assist you in revealing the divine place within yourself as you also assist them. Love can be directed toward God, or a specific person, and towards existence, this love is endlessly purifying.

Occasionally there are times in the sadhak’s life when they are asked to stay in a neurotic relationship. It is important to know that in serving the Beloved, the Beloved always also includes the highest most divine reality (God) and yourself. Balancing this takes skill! Supporting a neurotic relationship will only prolong everyone’s suffering and leak out the energy built by your practices. Become skillful enough to recognize what is truly before you and why your are there. Discipline and concentration are the foundation of that skillfulness. Then love adds the dimension of sensitivity; the ability to sense the highest shakti in any moment.

Love is about service. It is so magical because it introduces you to the state outside of ego which only serves it’s self and own needs. Even when the ego is doing something for someone else, it is really to get what it wants out of the situation. To truly serve means to step out of self absorption (and all the suffering it causes) and live for something greater. To truly serve means to make oneself available to the Shakti within and without, and to be available to what God puts in front of us. To truly serve means to expand the notion of your own limited identity and what you need, to expand it enough to incorporate another’s needs. To truly serve is to be total in creativity as you seek to keep in balance, maintain your vision and momentum and at the same time delight, ease and love the ones around you.

Openness is the state of natural mind which can only be attained by the first aspect of concentration. Natural mind is a wide open pasture, a panoramic awareness, and endless sky and infinite empty, clear, space. For true openness to exist, the mind must be free of clutter and content; concepts, beliefs, ideas, expectations, projections, explanations, rehearsals, and replays, preferences and aversions. This is only done through practice, which is only achieved through the first aspect, concentration, discipline, and one-pointedness. Openness is developed through a flexing of the psychic muscle of the mind, flexing to resist the temptation of concepts, and fixations, flexing to open deeply and allow the pure experience to enter you, to allow yourself you fully feel it. Openness entails a willingness to move into the unknown. Openness entails a willingness to experiment with oneself and life. Openness entails a willingness to allow the Shakti to continuously teach you.

An open being can set aside beliefs, preferences, fixations, concepts aversions, and experience directly what is before them, allowing experience to speak for itself, allowing pure experience to guide the direction of any interaction.

Openness is not stupidity, though it sometimes may be confused for that in new age circles. Openness does not mean you are so open that your brains fall out. Openness instead, is surrender, complete surrender, receptivity and willingness. Total surrender always includes letting go of anything that does not support your growth. One of the things you are open to is cosmic intelligence and the highest use of your energy. One of the things you are open to is the responsibility you carry to care for your body, to stay in integrity for the highest good of all and to move toward the light. Unfortunately for the lazy mind- there is no picture or formula for what openness looks like in every situation. The highest energy of any situation can only be felt by direct communion with the divine cosmic truth. Openness has no picture of what is always looks like- it is a state. One can be completely open and say no to a certain situation if it is from the place of egoless-ness, quiet mind and direct connection to God. One can say yes and be totally closed.

Compassion is the natural result of seeing the truth about one’s condition. All humans share suffering. All humans experience at one time or another, the excruciating nature of emotionality, the frailty of the body, the impermanent nature of life, and the horrible disease of human suffering. As one processes their own suffering, the being becomes lighter, clearer, more empty, less self-absorbed. If an empty one stands next to a full one, what does the empty one experience? Their neighbor’s fullness. The more empty the mind becomes, the more sensitive the vehicle becomes, and the more apparent and stark the suffering of those around you. A natural result of spiritual growth is compassion. Compassion arises because one sees at the same time in oneself and others, both the futility of suffering and the addictive nature of suffering. Without compassion it is difficult to progress on the path, because compassion provides the special patience that allows the seeker to go on after blowing it time and time again. It allows the heart to continue in the face of one’s own insanity, helplessness, and unconsciousness. Compassion as with all emotions, when exists towards oneself, naturally extends towards others.

Without compassion love cannot be perfected. Compassion is the special power of love to see beyond the beloved’s personality, beyond the beloved’s actions, into the beloved’s being. Without this ability to see into the beloved’s being, the lover gets caught up with the surface drama and loses sight of love which is experienced when being sees being.

Compassion is the pure experience of the truth of life, which naturally leaves one humble, grateful, tender and compassionate. Compassion arises as we let go of our separation and begin to see what is at the core of all beings and all things and all existence, purity.

Compassion is how the dharma spreads. It is because of compassion that these teachings are reaching you. Compassion and love both demand action. This is how the light is spread. This is the way of the bodhisattva, to drink from the nectar of compassion, and to allow it to fuel one’s every moment.

Compassion is the only real motivation for attaining Enlightenment. If one is not practicing to relieve the suffering of sentient being in this world, to liberate sentient being back to it’s source… If one is not practicing to relieve the suffering of sentient being, then it is easy to get caught in the ego’s snare.

Compassion is not idiot compassion, in which the picture of what compassion is replaces what compassion really is. In the picture compassion means being nice to everyone all the time, turning the other cheek… In truth compassion is much more complex than that, and much more diverse. Compassion does have the face of kindness, it also has the face of directness and fierceness when necessary. To live in real compassion requires that the practitioner reside deep within the direct experience of primordial purity and innocence and to allow that to be one’s guide.

The Third Aspect of Tantra Yoga
Awakened Being
Spontaneity, Direct Connection & Total Surrender

The third aspect of Tantra Yoga is direct connection with God and the spontaneous life that ensues from that connection. Direct connection with God is an attainment, and can be cultivated. God is a convenient word that refers to a timeless, omnipotent, omnipresent, immanent and transcendent consciousness. God can be experienced in form and formlessness, as the great nothingness, great emptiness and also the being manifesting as Shiva, Shakit, Kali, Krishna, Durga, Lakshmi…. Formlessness has many emanations, and the play of consciousness can only be described minimally, and experienced endlessly. Direct connection with that is to have one’s center of gravity in an infinite resource. Direct connection with that is to find a quietness and dynamism that provides endless adventure. The capacity for that connection exists in all, though it is suppressed, denied, ignored, resisted, feared and lost my many. It’s intensity, fullness and unpredictability require natural mind. Natural mind has both the capacity for total concentration and also complete openness. Natural mind has the capacity for precise discipline and also radical spontaneity. Natural mind has the capacity for one-pointed-ness, one-ness and the opening to all points. The third aspect of the path is that opening, through which all duality is encompassed and reconciled. This is a state. A state of expanded being that many masters through all of time have embodied and shared.

The way to cultivate direct connection with God is through the first two aspects of the path which together cultivate a special sensitivity, and attune one’s instrument correctly. The message is all around, and yet it can only be opened to by attune in the appropriate way. In the same way, there are TV shows floating all around us, though we only know this by engaging the appropriate instrument- the TV. In the same way, there are conversations happening all around us- though we would only know this by engaging the appropriate instrument- our cell-phones. The experience of total awakening is to become the total instrument of God, completely receptive and attuned to the cosmic vibration.

This experience is not abstract, it is precise, it is rich, it is stark, piercingly real and tangible…So much so, that its experience has led some Yogi’s of the past to describe the ordinary reality as unreal; because the deeper dimension of reality is SO real and such a fuller experience. Truly awakening is to become more and more alive, to engage with reality on dimensions of being one might never have though possible. But it is possible. It is not only completely possible, it is also YOUR DESTINY.

Direct connection with the Shakti, with the truth is the no-path path of natural state. It is the level of recognition, where things are seen as they are, unlimited by personality, the past, concept, belief, preference or aversion. Situations, people, things, moments… all are seen in the space of what is, as their pure existence within the context of all points of view. In recognition things are not only seen as they are, the self is also seen as it is, in it’s true, full and radiant form as an aspect of and channel for divine consciousness.

This is the awakened state, direct connection with the Divine and the spontaneous expression of that. There is no picture that can capture that experience. One who lives in this way is not necessarily a Yogi in some remote cave in the Himalayas, not necessarily a man, or older, or from India, or wearing spiritual clothes, or behaving in stereotypically spiritual ways. The truth is that life has many aspects and qualities, is unpredictable, and varied, and so are awakened beings.

The 18 Tantra Yoga Practices
Ayurveda
Meditation
Visualization
Contemplation/Study
Asana (posture)
Pranayama (breathing practice)
Mudra (gestures)
Bandha
Kriya
Mantra
Kirtan
Conscious Sexuality
Seva (Selfless service)
Puja (ritual)
Yajna (fire ceremony)
Transformation of Emotion
Guru Yoga
Samadhi