INTRODUCTION TO TAOIST TANTRA
By Raphael
Tantra comes from the Sanskrit root word Tundra, which means to weave, to merge.
In Tantra there’s a lot of merging, that’s what love is. The recognition that we are one being. There’s only one person in this room there’s only one being. In the history books you have to admit that love does tend to inspire unity. And unity brings power. The more unified you are the more powerful you are, with your family, city, etc. And freedom, the more power you have the more freedom, the freedom to choose, and with freedom comes love and the circle turns.
Tantra is basically, 5000 years ago Taoist and yoga masters came up with very simple and clear techniques for strengthening the immune system and creating longevity. As time went on these techniques were empowered with the heart, with love, these techniques became miraculous. On the other hand, my wife, the feminine would say, Tantra is not techniques, Tantra is a path of the heart. Tantra is like St Francis of Assisi there is love coming at you all the time, in the stars, in the birds, the trees, your friends, from the galaxies, from the earth. Everything is love, God is everywhere. Tantra is about opening to love. Opening to energies within and without.
In Tantra everything is a sacrament. Whenever you are totally walking on the earth with your feet. Whenever you are totally with someone. When you are totally with your food, tasting every bite. When you are totally with a lover, there is god, there is what we’re after. The Holy Spirit.
Tantra says celebrate everything. If it’s the end of the world, you celebrate it. In Tantra there is no good or evil. A master is one who knows that whatever is happening, whatever has happened, or is going to happen is perfect for your spiritual growth. So Tantra celebrates everything and in a way there is a lot of pleasure with Tantra. If meditation isn’t pleasurable after a while you’ll stop doing it.
Jesus refers to himself in two ways, as the son of God and the son of man. Take a look in the mirror and you’ll notice that you are an animal, canine teeth and about everything else. And at the same time who you are is not based on time space reality, who you are is eternal. You are a soul. To heal is to make whole, that includes the body as well as the soul. So in Tantra sometimes things will be very spiritual and at times it will be very animalistic and Tantra celebrates the totality of who you are, there is no repression. So sometimes things will be animalistic and sometimes spiritual. To heal is to make whole.
You’ll notice most religions are about how to get out of here. In Tantra you don’t transcend life going into to la la land you go through life. Tantra is not about belief either, not something somebody said and so it’s true. That’s not what Tantra is about. Belief is just…well take a look at your history books and see where that has lead. In Tantra you experience.
Also you’ll notice that Tantra is really quick, it’s not like yoga where you do this for a long time and then you get there, it just goes directly there. If you want to be enlightened you go there immediately. If you want to dance with full body brightness you go there immediately. If you want to heal yourself or be a healer you go there immediately. It tends to be the root of all the other teachings, all the qi gong’s, etc, rebirthing, everything basically comes from Taoist Tantra. Most of those things were written on leaves. So it tends to be the root of everything, if you learn the root then you can learn everything else.
Today we’re going learning to learn three things. We’re going to learn how to discharge unwanted feelings, emotions, and toxins. We’re going to learn how to receive energy from the earth. And we’re going to learn how to stop the world. We’re going to meditate.
SHAKE OUT
Everybody stand and form a circle. I want you to help me out, whenever I say “What’s our motto?” You say “Be Total!” Really with emotion like that. That’s what Tantra is, when you’re totally there with someone, there’s God. When your feet are totally on the ground, there’s God. When you’re totally present.
Everyone standing in the circle, take your left hand and really shake it. You see a thousand hands but there’s really only one hand. There’s a bunch of people in this room but there is really only one person here. It’s very Tantric. Shake, shake, shake. Breathe into the hand. Wherever your awareness is that’s where the breath is, where the energy goes.
Ok, now put your hands like this in front of you, shut your eyes and feel the difference. Which hand feels lighter yet more powerful? Which hand feels more alive, less dead? Have you ever noticed when you have an orgasm you feel very light but very powerful at the same time? This is the Holy Spirit, that’s what we’re after. How would you like to have your whole body feel like that?
Now we’re going to put on some music and Shake Out. Scientifically proven by the Berkeley School of Medicine to shake toxins from the body. Any unwanted emotions just let it out, scream and cry or whatever you feel like. And while we’re doing it you can add a prayer of whatever you want, but it will sound like “Oh holy mother discharge these feelings of inadequacy. Or Oh holy mother discharge these feelings of anger.” The thing of it is she comes down and takes them from you and five minutes later you’re wondering what it was you were discharging. It’s kind of a spiritual thing, you’ll see.
Feel your feet. What’s our motto? Be total!
If anyone has bone problems or circulatory problems or people have just eaten then you would do this very lightly or not at all. That’s very important to remember.
Deep breaths, Be total.
While they’re shaking out keep an eye open. Sometimes it’s good if you open up and get wild, make animal sounds, it gives them permission to get wild. Some people at first will just sort of do it. Maybe have them practice before the music starts just to see if you can help. I always growl but how you teach this is just kind of yours.
FEEL YOUR FEET
Alright everyone has just finished shaking, they’re there in their feet. Gentle voice.
“Ok let’s form a circle. Literally feel your feet resting on Mother Earth. Knees slightly bent. Literally feel the ecstasy of the soles of your feet resting on Mother Earth. And breathe out. Mother Earth is alive, she will hear you and heal you. Mother, Mother, I rise in you. Mother, Mother, I am grateful in you. Feeling your feet, take a deep breath out. Slowly breathe in, two, three, four. Breathe out, two, three, four. Breathe in, two, Thank you mother, for this body, three, four. Breathe out, letting all tensions out into Mother Earth, she loves the compost. Breathe in Mother Earth up your legs up your spine, three, four. Breathe out, all tensions and worries and fears back into Mother Earth. Breath in Mother Earth let her penetrate your tissues let her enter through the top of your head. Breathe out all tensions and worry and fears back into Mother Earth. Breathe in mother earth let her rise in you. Breathe out, two, three, four. Breathe in, Thank you Mother Earth, for this body, for these sacred teachings. Breathe out, two, three, four. Breathe in Mother Earth let her into your heart. Breathe out, two, three, four. Breathe in with the body, the blood, the fire, the nerves. Breathe out, two, three, four. Breathe in, Thank you Mother Earth. Let your awareness go even deeper. Feeling your feet on Mother Earth you let your consciousness go into the concrete below, into the room below, into the lava rocks below into the water, into 10,000 miles of fire. Let your awareness expand in your feet and be apart of the Earth.”
MACROCOSM
“Ok lets all sit down in a circle. You want to sit up kind of straight and yet relaxed. Ideally is to sit high up on a pillow so that your legs don’t fall asleep. And ideally it’s good to put a pillow in your lap so that your arms don’t weigh heavy on your shoulders. It’s the Taoist way of doing it.
You go to any Kahuna, or any American Indian Shaman, or any Healer, you go to Deepak Chopra and the first thing they want to know is can you stop the world, can you meditate. You go to Deepak Chopra as a cancer patient and the first thing he’s going to handle is that person does twenty minutes of transcendental meditation in the morning and twenty minutes of transcendental meditation in the evening every day from now on. Stop the world and meditate.
Deepak Chopra points out that our body/mind is a very small part of who we are. Imagine this dot here on the rug is your mind/body. Now imagine this whole rug is who you are, that tiny dot is your mind/body. What masters have been telling us for years is if you spend all your awareness in mind body and don’t spend some time just being who you really are, you can get a little bit off-balance. Like how our whole planet is off-balanced.
The beauty of Tantra is that it considers the body first. They don’t just sit down and then do a mantra. It considers the body, which has a great advantage. So don’t be afraid of emptiness. Buddha puts it beautifully, he says discovering who you are is like an onion. So “I am not my body,” whoosh, that onion peel goes, bodies come and go. “I am not my thoughts,” whoosh, my thoughts come and go like the wind. Scientists tell us that 80-90% of our thoughts aren’t our own anyway, they come from somewhere else. “I am not my feelings and emotions,” whoosh. “I am not what other people’s beliefs are about me,” whoosh. And so forth, until you get to that final peel. “I am nothing,” whooooosh. “I am absolutely nothing.” And it’s not a graveyard nothing, it’s an all encompassing, beautiful, all possibilities. Ram Das calls it the pregnant silence. It’s liberation. Along with it comes what the Buddhists call the cosmic joke. It’s like you realize, you were ok all along, everything was ok. The original sin is simply forgetting your origin.
I discovered that who I am is not based on any thing, it’s just that emptiness. Jesus going into the desert for 40 days and 40 nights, you have to be an empty chalice in order to receive the Devine.
Einstein was famous for his ten minute naps. They’d get stuck on some physics problem, “I go take a nap,” he went away, stopped the world, came back, “I have all the answers.” In that emptiness is based mostly in the heart. It’s like the Bible said, God resides in the heart of all mankind.” And in that heart is all knowledge past, present, future. Infinitely timeless.
When you’re in macrocosm, which is where we’re going, there are no limits. You can do, go, be, anywhere, anything you want.
Ok, sitting up straight, your eyes closed, and just allow the top of your head to be very relaxed. Imagine the top of your head, your scalp, is very relaxed, very light, no big thing. Imagine there is light radiating out, shining out from your head, three inches. Relax. Feel your blood pulsing, light. And from this relaxation and light, waves of loving relaxation flowing down the back of your neck. Permeating your tissues, waves of loving relaxation, flowing out the shoulders, down the upper arms, elbow, forearms, wrists, hands, fingers. Waves of loving beneficent. Relaxation flowing out. Down from up above, down. Relax.
And once again feeling the top of your head, waves of loving relaxation flowing down the back of your neck. Down the spine. To the heart charka, waves of loving relaxation flowing down to the liver area, to the colons, to the tip of your spine. Flowing through the knees, calves, feet.
Allow the emptiness in the center of you to flow. Allow to open your chest up. Waves of loving relaxation flowing down the liver, kidneys, all the way to the genitals.
And now feel your eye lids becoming so relaxed, even if you wanted to you couldn’t open them. Eye lids becoming so relaxed and so heavy. And from those eyes, that are so relaxed, it’s like a baby relaxation. Waves of baby-like relaxation flowing over the forehead over the scalp, the ears, down engulfing the entire head, nose, gums, teeth, flowing down the heart and the lungs. Kidneys to colon, flowing out the thighs, knees, calves. And enjoy this empty place.
And with your physical voice in physical place, repeat after me. “I am empty. I am empty. I am absolutely empty. I know nothing. I feel nothing. I do nothing. I receive everything. I receive everything. I receive everything.”
Now just notice your breathing. Don’t do anything to it, just follow it. Follow the air going in, follow the air going out of your nose, paying in particular awareness to in between breaths. Feel the curve of in between breaths.
Now in this state, we can go anywhere. You can guide the people into imagining sitting in their favorite chair at the beach, or in their room. Take them anywhere. Feel the earth of it, feel your clothes, feel the air. Now imagine a chair sitting in front of you, or a cushion. Now imagine the person you hate most, who hurt you most in the world, who you dislike the most, is sitting in that chair. Now send this person love, send this person total forgiveness. May this person be free from suffering, may this person achieve the highest level of awareness possible in this lifetime. Or you can take them to talk to their mother in the spirit world, or Jesus could sit in the chair. You can guide them all sorts of places from here.
OK Let’s say you just brought everybody to macrocosm, you’ve done the “I am empty,” you have them in a relaxed space. First thing you’re going to say is “Notice your breathing. Don’t necessarily do anything to it, just follow your breath. Follow the air as it goes in your nose, follow the air as it goes out, paying in particular awareness to in between breaths.” Then wait a minute and just let them be.
Now from here you can go to many places. That’s what we’re going to be talking about. One of the places you can go, the most important one, is the forgiveness one. That’s a very important meditation of Tantra. If you were to go to Tibet, or what’s left of it, and ask I want to learn Tantra, rejuvenation, time travel and all those things. The first thing the Buddhist monks are going to do is look and seee if your heart is clean. Then if you heart isn’t clean they’ll give you in a meditation. The meditation is to put you in macrocosm. Then imagine you’re in a room, maybe by the beach, or some place you like to be. And you’re sitting in a chair or cushion then sitting in front of you is a chair or cushion that is empy.
Now imagine, find a person who has hurt you. A person who you don’t like, a person who sticks with you, or makes you uncomfortable and imagine that person sitting in the chair in front of you. Really see that person, visualize that person. See what that person is wearing, maybe touch their hair. Really see that person. Aand send that personlove. Send them total forgiveness. It’s a Bhuddist probe, “May this person attain the highest state of awareness possible in this lifetime. May this person be happy. May this person make lots of money.” See this person receiving this love, and power, and joy. Send this person total forgiveness. Take your time, and let the people doing this see this. “Beautiful. Say thank you to this person and let this person walk away. And maybe there’s some other person that you need to give forgiveness, who still owns you. So now is the time to be free.
The second place you can go in macrocosm is known as the Truth Process. And the truth process can be done on anybody or anything in the universe. Any noun proper of common in the dictionary. Maybe you want to do a truth process in your heart. So feel your heart, feel it in your body, no big deal. And say hello to your heart, let it have time to say hello, you’re experiencing as you’re doing it. And say to your heart, what attitude or state of mind do I feel coming from this heart? Listen. And maybe, what other attitude or state of mind do I feel coming from this heart. Second question, what feeling or emotions do I feel coming from this heart. Listen. What other feeling or emotions do I feel coming from this heart. Listen. What pictures from the past do I see coming from this heart? Listen. What pictures from the future do I see coming from this heart? Be total. SO those are the basic question. What attitude and state of mind, feeling or emotions, pictures from the past and pictures from the future. And listen to your heart talk to you. People rarely spend any time listening to their heart, now they have a chance to. And they love it. It’s new, maybe strange but it’s new.
Now dig it, with these questions you can do it with anything. You can have a contract to sign: macrocosm, picture the contract, what attitude or state of mind, feelings or emotions pictures past and future. You can do it with a rock, a country, anything. It’s a truth process, it opens the truth. Another question you can ask is what judgements do I have about this, but that’s kind of a shallow question.
Here is another place you can go in macrocosm, this is a lot of fun too. So you’re in macrocosm, and you want to do a psychic reading on someone. What you do is, you imagine you’re in their body. Put yourself in a room in front of a big mirror. And your pretending I’m in someones body, all of a sudden I’m a woman, I have breasts and pouty lips. Now you feel you’re a woman, you are in this woman’s body. Or whatever being. Now you ask the mirror if this person was a flower what kind of flower would I be. The mirror transforms into a flower. If the flower is alone, they’re alone, if the stem is thick, they could be very grounded. The flower will tell you about this person. Take what you get. Next question is what kind of animal would this person be? You have to kind of take what you get, but it teaches you something about this person. Laso the American Indian traditions talk about how we do have a spirit animal. I am an eagle for instance. Then they’re warmed up. Then you can go to if this person was a piece of music what would they be. If this person was a poem what kind of poem would they be. But just getting to be in this person, matter of fact feel what its like to be in this person’s heart. Remember in macrocosm who you really are is no thing that means you can be anywhere you want at anytime, because you’re nothing, so you can be anywhere.
So those are the places you can go. Forgiveness, truth process, psychic reading. With practice you can do it very quickly. I’m going to guide you now on the quick version. Shut your eyes and imagine the middle of your forehead relaxing. Middle of the forehead empty. Let that emptiness encompass your whole head, your whole torso, your whole body. Now pretend that your Kutira, you’re in Kutira’s body. Just feel what she’s like right now. Ok let that go. Come back in the room five, feel your feet, four, three, two one. You’re back in the room. So maybe you’re wondering how Mary Sue in Oklahoma is doing, go there and see. In macrocosm there are no limits. You can actually do long distance healing. Go into their body imagine joy and strength, they’ll feel it.
Probably one of the most important things to teach people and explain and warn them, is that Tantra techniques tend to be extremely simple. Kindergarten simple. It’s not like yoga when you explain over and over, its instant. If you want to go to macrocosm it’s instantly there. If you want to experience love it’s there, if you want to experience a happy body it’s instant. One of the things you should always teach is the power of breathing together. If you hold someone, usually the man follows the woman, she breathes in you breathe in, she breathes out you breathe out. Some people ask, “Is that all?” Explain to them, stay here, this is the mother of all breathing. So if you’re teaching it to a private person you’ll have to hug them, and ask them to follow your breathing. And while you’re breathing together, melt into each other. Always let them have the experience of breathing together, slow down on that. That’s a very important thing to teach.
Another thing you want to teach, and you might want to play with it, practice this, it can be frightening at times. What you do, is you have two people sit across from each other cross legged. They do an Ohm salutation where they bow, their heads touch each other, eyes shut, hands in prayer. You’re’ honoring each other’s higher selves, it’s not that you’re bowing to some god out there, they’re honoring themselves. Then they sit with their eyes shut and you have them feel their sit bones on their floor or anything down there, the belly, light coming from the tip of the spine, up the spine to their eyes. Then they’re centered within themselves. Then you have them open their eyes and look into each others left eye. The eyes are the window of the soul. Explain to them they are looking from the belly, not the heart and mind, but the belly. Another thing you can do is have the man put his hand on the woman’s heart and she puts her left hand over his hand and her right hand on his heart and his left hand covers her hand. Looking to each others left eye, breathing together. That’s something beautiful. It doesn’t have to be long, maybe three minutes at least, five minutes at the most. It’s just something where you get to know each other.
Now I’m going to teach you something, its called karma cleaning. Don’t do Karma cleaning after you’ve taught them how to do this, because they need to know how to connect the belly to the eyes and look empty. They do Ohm salutation, center themselves, gold light from the belly coming to the eyes, open the eyes, look into the left eye. Reach over and touch each other with one hand, the jugular vein or the heart, feel the pulse. One person starts by saying “You love me,” then the other person says, “You love me.” While looking to each other’s left eye. You do that about five or six times. Then they’re centered. Then one person, doesn’t matter which, starts talking. No movement, no hand movement, nothing. You’re allowed to say anything you want, the other person is receptive, no matter what. Then it’s important that the person talking ends with, “I have spoken.” That means the other person can talk. It’s very important you say “I have spoken” otherwise the other person doesn’t know if you’ve stopped and their waiting for you to start talking. Then the other person is allowed to talk and say whatever they want to say. The person listening is not allowed to move, she’s just centered in the belly, looking into the persons left eye. It’s not a conversation, the talk should never go more than five minutes but if you trust your heart it usually doesn’t. And it goes back and forth until one person says I have spoken, the other says I have spoken, that means there is nothing left to say, the other has nothing left to say, Ohm salutation. The important part about that is that so many people are hurt because no one will listen to them. We pay psychiatrist $135 an hour to have someone listen to us. Actually we’ve renamed this thing macrocosm communication instead of karma cleaning. It is like two people in macrocosm are communicating from there. The head of the psychiatry department at Berkeley said one hour with Raphael and Kutira is worth a thousand hours of therapy anywhere else because of this. It’s very powerful. Experience this before you can teach it. Certainly if Kutira and I have a fight we’ll go into this and in ten minutes the fight is over, which is kind of sad because we don’t get to beat each other up anymore.
Another thing to do in macrocosm. Say someone’s lying down and you’re sitting by that person. Well, then you can put your hand on their hara, below the bellybutton, or actually put your hand on the heart. Go into macrocosm, which will put them in macrocosm, which is healing status about as much as you can get. And you have your hand on that person’s heart, touching flesh to flesh and you hear heart beating, and you do the truth process on that person’s heart. Parmahansa Yogamanda points out that one of the most powerful of all laying on of hands is when your presence is in that body, then you get love. SO that’s the heart charka reading and also laying on of hands. And for example have your hands on that person instead of doing truth process you can just imagine the light of Christ, or light of Krishna, light of Mary and send it down it. Believe me this has been around for centuries, it’s just so ridiculously simple people can’t believe it.
FOOT MASSAGE
Another thing you should do, spend some time massaging the foot. Even though people aren’t into the Bible anymore, teach that that Jesus was not against sensuality. The Bible is very specific that he washed the apostle’s feet, he taught them to wash their feet and said, “Go and do others and teach them likewise.” And you see in our culture that we become more and more addiction to drugs as a whole, and maybe the answer is that we touch one another, we love one another. Jesus was not against sensuality. When Mary Magdalene washed his feet with her hair everyone freaked out except him he said back off. He was into anointing of the oils, he was very much like a Tantra teacher, he wanted us to love one another. I’m not talking about lust, I’m talking about kindness, loving kindness. Touch people with loving kindness, there is more of that needed. And it’s better with a loved one, father/daughter, husband/wife, because then there is real love, and real caring then there’s a lineage of it. When I say lineage: Repetition breeds power. So in your class teach how to massage the foot. Learn from a real masseuse how powerful it is and spend some time on it. And how grounding it is, it gives you sense of well being. Also according to Chinese medicine all the points of the body are in the feet, here your massaging the liver, heart, etc. If someone’s got a headache I usually go to the feet, because there’s too much energy in the head, I bring it down to the body. Spirit in the body. Tantra is not about transcending to la la land. It’s about being here where the ultimate ecstasy is. All the other religions are telling you that the earth is a terrible place and how to get to ecstasy elsewhere, Tantra says the way to ecstasy is going to here and now, then you can go wherever you want. The ultimate ecstasy is here in now. So in your class spend time on the feet, massage feet.
I’m sorry I don’t have a teaching CD on massage, but you do have it written down. But the quick massage, the Raphael special is you shake their arms, shake their legs, do the horizontal to the vertical up the spine all the way to the neck and that person’s had a pretty good massage.
MUSIC
It’s always good in your workshops to have music for people to dance to. Mostly you need fire energy to bring the energy up because they spend a lot of time sitting. I suggest Marvin Gaye’s greatest hits, especially if it has a song called Got to Give it Up. That’s about the best, great song. Always preprogram people before you play the song, if you have a light and lyrical piece tell people about it and how fun it is to be light and lyrical. Tell them where you’re going and they’ll go there.
108 BREATHING
Now we’re going to take a look at 108 breathing. Have you ever noticed how a baby breathes. They let their belly hang out, they breathe totally. It’s always fun to watch a baby laugh and cry because their belly jiggles. As we get older we tend to stifle that breathing. So our motto is be total so we breathe total, and this 108 exercise awakens that breathing. So I’m going to demonstrate, I’m lying down and you can see my belly. I breathe in the nose and I imagine my pelvis my belly expanding and then my chest expanding, both front back, sideways, my neck and head expanding, then I breath out strongly with my mouth wide open and when I breathe out I imagine my whole body contracting the belly goes in my chest goes in. Then I breathe in the nose, expand, expand, like a wave starting at the pelvis going to the chest, the head. Then as I breathe out with my mouth wide open I imagine everything contracting. Why do we breathe out with my mouth wide open? Because Steven Chang says so, basically according to them it lets out the most toxins of the body. Now we’re going to do 108 of these. Why 108? There’s 108 beads in the catholic rosary, 108 beads in the Buddhists rosary. It seems to be some kind of sacred number. I asked a Buddhist monk about that and he said, “Well you say 100 mantras but some are unconscious so we added 8 more.” Ha ha. That’s about as good as an answer as you get from a Buddhist. But anyway, you do 108. Most of the time it doesn’t matter if you count, but this time, you count. You have to stay conscious in order to go to the 108. The trap is you might get to 40 and you hate this exercise. You’re all bummed, “Shit I only made it to 40.” But when I got to 40 I was all, “wow I’m hot shit I made it to 40.” So the trick is enjoy being a novice, enjoy being a little clumsy at this.
Now everyone lay down, I’m going to guide you. Relax a little bit, and here we go. Breathe in expand your belly. Its like a wave going in, expand your chest, and exhale, one. Expand, let the wave come up, push that belly out, let the chest open, expand, and collapse, two. Expand, expand, expand, three. Expand, expand, expand, four. Now we’re only going to 40 this time, tell them that so they’re not scared. Some can go 108, some won’t make it to 30. Then go around and make sure the belly goes first. A lot of times people when they breathe out, shoot the belly out, that’s not right, bring the belly in. Once again if you can experience this then you can teach it. But after a while it at least let’s them know what its like to breathe like a full human being. I’ll be around on the internet if you need questions on that, but that’s how I teach the 108.
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