Let’s face it, human behavior is not ideal for the mutual benefit of all humans, other living things, or the planet we all live on. Regardless of our society, country, religion, or personal philosophy, we all know we could be better. The ancient practices of tantra were developed to transform us from who we are now to into better versions of ourselves. The principal tantric technique is to visualize ourselves as one of our heroic cultural archetypes, then think, speak, and act as if we actually match those ideal archetypes. Other tantric practices transform our selfish desires into beneficial motivations: greed into generosity, anger into focus, lust into love.
Instead of the slow traditional transformative methods of studying what we should be doing, in tantra we do what we should be doing. In the ancient Eastern cultures, tantra is known as the fast path to personal transformation. The main problem for Westerners with the Eastern tantras is that they evolved in Eastern cultures for people with very different thought patterns and underlying belief systems than we have in the West. Here we are largely individualistic, democratic, impatient, and scientific. We do not tend to believe in magic, in transformation of the world through the power of will alone.
In the West, we also have beliefs which cannot be scientifically verified, but our cultural stories are very different. Some may believe that angels carry the souls of the dead to heaven, but look with suspicion at beliefs that enlightened beings can vanish to nirvana in rainbow light. These are but cultural stories we tell each other. Western Tantra is a universal application of the effective transformative methods of the ancient Eastern tantras, useable with any Western faith or philosophy by substituting familiar Western terminology and belief systems for their Eastern counterparts, while retaining tantra’s essential core.
That is Western Tantra, the essential core practices of tantra, repopulated with whatever cultural beliefs and archetypes you hold dear. Whatever heroic cultural archetype you admire, you can see yourself as that archetype in the world, and your efforts to be that archetype will eventually transform you into a better person. You can be your chosen hero. That hero’s journey can be yours. How cool is that?