western tantra – Page 3 – Western Tantra

Interfaith

I don’t think anyone has all the answers to the most important questions of life: What is the meaning of life, if any? Are we more than mere organisms? Are we alone in the cosmos? What is it to be human? What is right and wrong? What is consciousness, where is it located, and what happens to it when the body dies? Is there a supreme being or some part of the greater universe that is conscious, and does it care about us or even know we are here? Is 42 the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything? Or is there no answer at all?

Most religions posit one or more higher beings, and assert that our task in life is to do the will of this entity, for which we will be rewarded in some way. Most philosophies elevate the exercise of human reason to discover inherent or relative meaning for ourselves as guides for our lives. Most atheists and agnostics reject fanciful concepts and promote ethical standards for the benefit of humanity. Many scientists reject things that cannot be proven, and use well established theories as their guides for life. All these approaches have value for their proponents.

The philosophy of Western Tantra arose from a scientific and interfaith perspective, the idea that all sincere efforts to discern answers to the ultimate questions will produce meaningful information that, when combined with the efforts of others, will provide more illumination of reality than having a narrow focus on only one school of thought. Western Tantra draws on many religions, philosophies, and science for its concepts (see References), but is open to new ideas and is willing to change. Western Tantra asserts that many differences between the various religions and philosophies (even within the same religion and philosophy) arise from the use of words to mean different things, not the underlying concepts which may be essentially the same. To avoid the appearance of disagreement where none exists, Western Tantra defines its use of words having multiple meanings in the Glossary of Terms, and capitalizes words defined by Western Tantric usage.

The aim of Western Tantra is not to replace anyone’s religion or philosophy, but rather to enhance and rejuvenate it by means of added practices and concepts. We call your current beliefs your Base religion or philosophy, and invite you to add Western Tantric practices to what you already have. Western Tantra has an interfaith focus.

Western Tantra is a branch of pragmatism (Western Tantra, the White Path of Ethics, p. 138) which asserts that the meanings of concepts are determined by their utility, the function of thought is to guide action, and truth is to be tested by the consequences of belief. In other words, check things out for yourself, and if they work as planned and lead to beneficial results, then keep those beliefs and practices. We can learn from others if we keep our minds open to new ideas, try to understand what they really mean, and accept things that lead to beneficial results. What do you think?

Tuning

We all live in different inner worlds. We project this inner world on our outer world, distorting our view of the world around us. In other words, we tune our minds to perceive the world in our own unique way. If you do not like the world you live in, learn to tune your mind to a different reality. As the Buddhist masters say, “If you would change the world, first change your mind.”

We start life with chaotic minds. Everything vibrates. As Spiritual Children (see Glossary of Terms), our attention flits from here to there, from bright, shiny objects to interesting sights and sounds, to pleasures and pains of our bodies. As we mature, we gain some control over our minds and can focus our attention on tasks as long as we are not distracted by outside events or compelling thoughts from our own minds. Some of us take up meditation and encounter a constant stream of distracting thoughts, called the “monkey mind” that tightly grasps a thought and reaches for another before letting go of the first, like a monkey swinging through trees from branch to branch, never still. Always oscillating.

Watch a young child try to tune an old-fashioned radio, the kind with a dial that changes the frequency in order to “tune-in” to various frequencies that have radio stations. You may have to visit an old person or ham radio operator to find one of these radios. When a young child tries to work this kind of radio, they rapidly twist the dial one way and the other and hear nothing. They think nothing is there. Hand the radio to an adult and they turn the dial slowly, and a host of different radio stations are found. Do this with a short-wave radio, and an entire world of communications opens up to us.

We all have such a radio within us that is capable of tuning in to a universe of possibilities in the Spirit world. We also have the five senses of the body, each sense pre-tuned to a specific energy type, frequency, and range of energy: light, heat, touch, smell, and sound. These pre-tuned senses allow us to operate in the world, even with immature monkey minds. Those with Child minds think that if they cannot sense something, it does not exist. But time, space, love, hate, dreams and many other things exist and affect the world, even though they do not register within the pre-set range of our bodily senses. Skeptics notwithstanding, there is a sixth sense capable of tuning in to the Spirit world, and all of us can learn to use it.

Step one is learn to control your mind, teach it to be still. The monkey mind of a Child cannot hold its attention on one object long enough, like trying to tune that radio by spinning the dial. They hear nothing but static. Meditation is the training to quiet the mind, especially shine (shi-ne, pronounced “she-nay”), shamatha, calm abiding, single-pointed meditation, zazen, centering prayer, and similar methods. This takes practice.

Once you can focus your mind reliably on a single object or thought, or no thought at all, the next question is what do you want to see? What world do you want to live in? The Spirit world contains everything that can be imagined, infinite possibilities. Heavens and hells exist there, and everything in between. If you have a mindset that pits you alone against a hostile world or particular groups at war with others, that is the vibrational state your mind is tuned to, and that is where your mind will go to dwell. That is hell.

We put our minds in heavens and hells in this life and the next by the power of our beliefs, by the aspects of reality we tune our minds to. Fortunately, if we have control over our minds, we can retune our Spirit world perception to a different reality. We can leave hell and live in heaven, even in this life.

All established religions have rituals and practices designed to put us in a heavenly state of mind, and have commitments to help keep us there. The Western Tantric method is to visualize yourself as a divine or heroic archetype, and see yourself surrounded by others who are saints, angels, heroes, buddhas, and developing Children with those potentials. Try to help others at all times in any ways possible until you find yourself loving everyone and hating none. This tunes your mind to that vibrational frequency. When you drop the boundary between yourself and others while tuned to a loving totality, your immortal stream of consciousness will be in heaven, even while still in your human body in the world as-it-is, a perfect place to learn to be human.

A word of caution, when you drop the boundary between yourself and the universe, you will have access to the feelings of others, as well as other worlds and states of being. It’s best to have a firm commitment to a religion, philosophy, or personal code of ethics before tuning in to other worlds in the Spirit realm of imagination. Try to find guides in the physical world and the Spirit world who can help you if you find yourself on a meditation “bad trip.” Take baby steps in meditation and tuning your mind, and be careful until you can fly. Let us know what you find.

Renunciation

Renunciation is the mental attitude of one who looks to the Spiritual and Divine for the pathway to the eternal, rejecting the Material world and physical possessions as the solutions for most problems. In Western Tantra, a renunciate may keep and use necessary material possessions, even enjoy them to some extent, but must never cling to them or view them as a source of ultimate happiness. The Western Tantric renunciate is always ready to give up material things to loss, wear, theft, charity, and death without distress.

To develop this state of mind, reflect that while we try to be happy in our Material lives, we are only able to achieve fleeting moments of joy. The primary reason happiness is fleeting is because everything Material requires effort to create, and thereafter it begins to decay. Material things are in a constant state of change. They are created, persist for a time, degrade, and dissolve.

We must work to create or purchase all things material, but these things never quite meet our expectations. When we create, we are never able to exactly match what we visualize, and when we buy, we either cannot afford what we really want, or what we think is perfect turns out to have flaws or does not meet all our needs. Even if Material things are great at first, we find they deteriorate with age, requiring time and effort to maintain and protect from loss.

We try to develop relationships to help us cope with the problems of Material life, but find spouses, children, and friends have different needs, so we have to help them with their needs so they will hopefully help us with ours. Sometimes our Material needs match those of our life companions and we experience joy. More often, needs merely multiply or we have to work harder to maintain relationships with our helpers than when we were trying to meet our own needs alone. Some lucky few, like the rich or powerful, manage to get a great number of people working in their behalf to secure their Material visions, but find managing their empires stressful as their complex organizations threaten to self-destruct from internal and external forces. Nothing happens in the Material world without costs.

Our Material bodies are the same way, disappointing us with our appearance and abilities when we are young, requiring work to improve and maintain it as we mature, and disappointing us as it deteriorates with age. Eventually bodies die, losing us everything Material.

No matter what we do, the Material world disappoints and eventually goes away. It is not the way to ultimate happiness. So the first step in embarking on a Spiritual Path is realizing you will never achieve true happiness with the Material life, and you must look elsewhere. This realization is called Renunciation. When we realize this, we turn our hopes to the Spiritual and Divine realms. These realms require time and effort to access. We need to consult masters or their writings for guidance, and we need to perform the practices prescribed in order to reach Spiritual and Divine realizations.

But our Material lives intrude. We must still take care of our bodies, jobs, and homes which provide us with food, water, and shelter. The more beautiful and elaborate our Physical support systems, the more demanding they are to maintain. So the wise tell us to embrace simplicity, the minimum Material necessities needed to maintain our Physical life. Most of us should own as little as possible and make sure what we have is easy to maintain or cheap to replace. Learn to appreciate things that are old and funky. In this way, we leave extra time to discover and explore the Spiritual Paths that lead to the Divine and ultimate happiness. Even Ecstasy.

Healing

Probably the most desirable spiritual skill is the ability to heal. It’s also the easiest to do. Just focus your attention on the part of the body or person you wish to heal and visualize healing life force flowing from you to what needs healing. Unfortunately, to make this work, you have to have life force energy available to send, and most of us are using all the energy we have on ourselves. We are reinforcing our own Ego, our self-concept that wants to see ourselves in a particular way. Our Ego is under constant assault by a world that is trying to show us that we are not the way we think we are. We are always focusing our energy on repairing our Egos from damage caused by others and encounters with reality, leaving little energy for healing.

So step one in acquiring healing power is to free up enough life force energy to do the work. That means accepting life’s hits to your Ego, your life plan and the way you see yourself. When you are wronged or your life plans go awry, just let it be. Save your energy for other uses.

Step two in learning to heal is to allay fears that you will deplete yourself if you send your energy to others. According to Western Tantric philosophy, we are immersed in a universe filled with energy. This universe is conscious and cares about us. You can verify this for yourself by using the methods described in Western Tantra, the White Path of Ethics in the chapter on Karma. Basically, if you consistently help others and pay attention to the results, you will see the universe helping you do that. So what healers typically experience is not depleting themselves, but rather letting the vast stores of energy in the universe flow through them.

How do we tap into universal energy? One way is finding your Heart of Love and connecting it to the loving universe that cares for all of us. Using the Tantric technique of visualization, see yourself as immersed in this Universe of Love, imagine dropping the boundary between yourself and the Universe, open your heart and become one with the loving power of the Universe, then let Love flow through you to whatever needs healing, without any discriminating thoughts. If you wonder if they deserve to be healed, that is Ego thinking, and energy will flow to the Ego, not the target of healing. That is why most healers cannot heal themselves. You can check with healers to verify this for yourself.

After you have closed the door to Ego’s energy appetite and opened the door to the Universe of healing energy, touch the target for healing and visualize Love energy flowing from your heart center to the point of touch and from there to that which needs healing. Wish that the target be healed. If not able to touch the target, visualize healing energy flowing from your heart center to the target’s heart or bursting over their head and bathing them in healing energy. I’ve seen remote healing work, though I can’t verify that it works when I do it, because I have no continuing contact with the target. I do have considerable evidence that touch healing actually heals and that altruistic healing does not deplete me. This method is safe.

A less safe method for healing is the Buddhist practice of Tonglen. Tong means giving or sending. Len means receiving or taking. So this is the practice of visualizing giving benefits and taking difficulties from others. In the traditional method, the practitioner visualizes taking problems from a person, group, or everyone, and giving the problems to their Ego to gradually wear it down. Then they imagine generating an opposing benefit in their heart center and sending the benefit to the target.

For example, if you are already suffering from an affliction like an addiction, you may as well take on the suffering of everyone in the world with that affliction. If your suffering is already intense, the suffering of all will not make it feel worse. Wish to yourself that by your suffering, may all the others be free of that affliction. Then visualize sending the joy of that freedom to those you chose to heal from that suffering. The idea here is to weaken the cause of suffering (the second noble truth) which is the self-cherishing thought that wants only for itself. Then strengthen your divine heart of compassion by wishing for cessation of suffering for others. Perhaps this should be called Lentong, taking and giving. Tantra always seems to do things backwards.

A Western Tantric variation on Tonglen is discouraged by professional healers. This variation is to first take the affliction of the target sufferer into your heart center that is connected to the infinitely wise Universe. Then your heart center will know what specific form of healing energy the sufferer needs. That way, when you visualize sending healing energy to the sufferer, it is exactly the energy needed. When I do this, I do experience the sufferer’s affliction, but it is in attenuated form, barely perceptible. This gives me not only a flavor of their suffering, but also what Ego affliction is maintaining it. For example, the person’s suffering may be intense and real, but because of their affliction, they get attention from their loved ones that they would not otherwise receive. As intense as the suffering is, sadly it is worth it in order to receive the loving care and attention their Ego needs.

Note that because both suffering and the need for attention are generated by the Ego, knowing the cause of the suffering may allow helping the sufferer in other ways. You might say for example, “You know, if you stop taking that drug, maybe you won’t end up in the hospital again, and maybe your family will still love you, even if they aren’t showing it the way they are now. In fact, if you keep testing their love the way you do now, they may tire of the drama and leave you, despite their love for you.”

If you fear taking on the afflictions of others, start with loved ones. I don’t know any parent of a sick child who wouldn’t willingly take their illness onto themselves if they could. So start small, and cautiously try this Tonglen method on loved ones. If you can handle it okay, and if you can see results (or at least it does no harm), continue and expand your healing practice and see for yourself what happens. I dedicate this practice to the late Venerable Yangchen Gyalten who wished only to heal others.

Ego

Known in Buddhist practice as self-grasping, in psychology as personality, and by writers as persona, Ego is considered to be our chief obstacle to spiritual practice. Western Tantra will use this term to designate our life plan for interacting with our environment, which includes our characteristic ways of relating to other people, the methods we use to do things, our “style,” the ways we see ourselves and the ways we hope other see us. It can include even our homes, cars, family and country identification. But Ego especially focuses on our physical body and the way we clothe and care for it. Think of Ego as our self-concept and its habitual way of relating to the world. Ego interferes with our spiritual progress in three primary ways.

First, the physical body belongs to the material realm, and its demands tie us to the material world. We then focus on the material world as the solution to our problems. It’s great to have a comfortable material life, but we should keep in mind that our physical body will eventually die, leaving all our material wealth behind. So to be realistic, we should use our time on earth to find our pathway to the eternal.

The second way our Ego interferes with our spiritual progress is by draining our Soul of its power. Our Ego is merely a mental concept, how we view ourselves, and the habitual ways we relate to the world, our personality. Our personality usually conflicts with the way others see us. We try to help others and people accuse us of selfish motives. If we think of ourselves as tough-minded, we are criticized for showing weakness. Wherever we go and whatever we do, we have to defend ourselves and our actions. This takes energy. On a purely physical level, the brain works hard to correct dissonance between personal and external perceptions, and this expends neurotransmitters. Threats to our self-concepts take mental work which exhausts us.

On a spiritual level, maintaining Ego also takes energy. If you are in tune with your inner mental realm, you realize that challenges to our self-concept weaken our Ego, and the Ego must draw consciousness energy, life force, from its source, the Soul, in order to restore the Ego. The more our Ego’s life plan fails to supply our needs, the more Ego drains our Soul of energy to maintain our image of ourselves in the face of reality. We experience blows to our Ego as Soul crushing.

Those of us with awareness of our life force, the energy of consciousness, realize how essential this life force is to our wellbeing. In different cultures, this life force is called: prana, chi, qi, kundalini, juju, esa, medicine, breath, light, love, and many other names. The spiritually aware can feel this energy and where it flows. Your life force flows to the focus of your attention. It’s why we say pay attention. It costs us something, our juju.

When the Ego hurts, we pay attention to ourselves, and life energy flows from our source of divine energy, our divine Soul, to heal our hurt Ego. The more the Ego is out of step with reality, the more wounds our Ego takes from the world, and the more energy it takes from the Soul to support itself. The Ego is a fixed self-concept that is trying to deal with an ever-changing reality, so our Egos are constantly draining our Souls of energy, leaving little of no energy for other uses, including healing our body or discovering our gateway to the beyond.

The third way our Ego interferes with our spiritual progress is by sabotage. We mistake our Ego as our true nature. We think the ways we see ourselves and all our support mechanisms that maintain the Ego are our true state of being. They are not. Our true nature is pure consciousness in union with all-that-is, what some call Soul in union with God, Consciousness dwelling in Emptiness, Enlightened consciousness, Nirvana, Satori, Paradise, and many other terms. Many people have described the ecstasy of discovering their true nature in the universe.

However, when we discover our true nature, we naturally abandon our false nature, our Ego. We stop feeding it our life force energy, and Ego dies. Our Ego knows it lives only by means of the consciousness energy it draws from the Soul. Because Ego thinks it is us, it thinks we will cease to exist without the Soul’s life energy, so Ego enslaves our Souls. When our Souls eventually discover this subterfuge as part of the spiritual path, we discover we do not need a concept to exist. We exist beyond concepts, and the Ego dissolves. We become selfless.

Ego is terrified of losing its life energy and will do anything to sabotage progress on the spiritual path to discover reality, that we are not our mental concepts of ourselves. That is why the Ego is known as the enemy we carry around inside us. As described in Western Tantra, the White Path of Ethics, Chapter 6 “The Enemy Within,” the Ego will even kill its host body to escape from the reality that Ego must surrender and dissolve in order to liberate the Soul. That is why most spiritual traditions forbid suicide. They realize that surrender of the Ego is an essential step on the spiritual journey.

As traumatic as losing your concept of self can be, there are great benefits. One is the feeling of freedom. You no longer need to feed your Ego, and it can no longer be hurt, because it is gone. The other great benefit is that without the need to feed your life energy to your self-concept, you now have energy for other uses. You can heal your body with your own life energy, you can heal others, and wishes backed by the power of your unselfish, divine Soul now have the power needed to manifest. Magic becomes real. Really.

Reincarnation

Western spiritual traditions have three major blind spots: the need to overcome ego, the way karma works, and reincarnation. This blog will discuss reincarnation, rebirth in a new body or other form of life, the idea that we live multiple lifetimes. This idea is generally disregarded in Western circles, some believing that when we die we no longer exist as a conscious being, others adopting the conventional Western view that an invisible spirit leaves the body to reside in a heaven or a hell, depending on our conduct when alive.

Objections to reincarnation include:

No part of the human body is able to generate thought, speech, or movement after it dies and disintegrates. This is true, but science has not yet identified 95% of all that exists or the source of consciousness, so the possibility that there is an invisible spirit residing within the body is not ruled out.
The Bible says there is no reincarnation. This not true, there are numerous passages in the Christian Bible referring to reincarnation, such as Matthew 17:10-13 which says John the Baptist is Elijah returned. Many Christians believed in reincarnation until the idea was banned by a council of churches over 1000 years ago. The dogma of resurrection of the human body still persists. Scriptures and oral traditions of many other current and ancient religions describe reincarnation in some detail.
No one remembers past lives. This objection is not true. Many people remember past lives. Some can supply details and identify past places and objects. About a quarter of Americans believe in reincarnation. The experience of “deja vu” may relate to past life memories.
All people claiming past lives remember being famous people, so it must be wishful thinking. This is not true, most people remember ordinary lives. But famous people usually did something memorable, so those lives are easier to identify by name. Also, people who surrounded famous people may mistake their past life with the one they can identify. There have been tens of thousands of famous people, and each had dozens of associates. Finally, with few exceptions, famous people are just like the rest of us, nothing special there.
Multiple people claim the same past life, so it must be false. This reflects lack of imagination by critics. According to Buddhist beliefs, enlightened beings can emanate in an infinite number of incarnations. Perhaps multiple personas can inhabit one body, as with multiple personality disorder. This might explain how some people have more charisma, they may house multiple souls. Perhaps actors are actually expressing multiple personas. Buddhism leaves open the possibility that one person could reincarnate as more than one person. We just don’t know.
Reincarnation is for people who can’t face the idea of dying. Actually, for those of us who believe in reincarnation, there is no rest in heaven or oblivion until we find a way out of living multiple lives. For many of us, reincarnation is far more terrifying than non-existence. That is why Eastern religions have methods to escape from reincarnation.

Reasons to believe in reincarnation include:

Many people experience “deja vu,” the feeling that they have seen a place or done something before, but have never seen or done that in their present life.
Many people remember past lives and can recall details that can be verified.
Many children within the same family come into this life with personalities very different from each other and their parents.
Many very young children say they were a different person or an animal before this life.
Some children come into this life with skills that require years of practice to develop.
Many people have fears of things or events that have never harmed or happened to them in this life.
Many people have seen ghosts, one of the many different forms reincarnation can take. Eastern religions call it rebirth to encompass the many different ways that beings continue to exist.
Most people believe in some form of an afterlife, be it heaven, hell, resurrection, ghosts, souls, or similar concepts. The concept of reincarnation is not that different. Wouldn’t it be comforting to believe we have more than one chance to “get it right” rather than the idea we get one shot at life and then are judged, no matter how bad the hand we are dealt? Wouldn’t it be better to believe we have to care for this world, because we have to come back to live in it?

So what do you think? Is reincarnation real or not?