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From "TANTRA: The Art of Conscious Loving"
by Charles and Caroline Muir
1989, Mercury House

        Introduction  

"... Tantra is a spiritual system in which sexual love is a sacrament. ... It is a system that can elevate a couple's relationship to the level of art.

"... we are not born naturally good at sex or at relationships. ... Even though we are children of the sexual revolution, we are still largely conditioned by belief systems that may have instilled in us guilt or fear or insecurity or shame. Such negative imprints ... rarely allow us to journey into the spiritual potential of sexual love. Tantra can help us do just that because a spiritual goal is as important to the tantric couple as their love.

" Tantra is a school of many courses in which there are many levels of study an unlimited degree of potential for spiritual gain, for sexual delight, and for worldly success. p. ix

"... Tantric sex does not promise instant results; it is not a "one-minute" technique for achieving sexual prowess. But for couples who want to enrich their relationship, it can release a particular kind of energy that can bring about harmony between them and increase their sexual pleasure and intimacy. In sum, tantric sex can create an extraordinary partnership. p. X
 
 

Part I Tantra for Couples

[There are two parts. Part 1 is about tantric beliefs and practices and how they relate to the modern system described in the book and seminars. Part 2 is about the practices that involve sexual ritual for attaining unity, etc.]
 

Chapter 1. Happily Ever After.

[discussion of divorce, people "sticking out" relationships for reasons other than personal happiness ... how the sixties tried out a bunch of consecutively happy for awhile relations to replace one life long relationship ... AIDS and bad experiences showed that alternative was not satisfactory ...]

... we meet men and women whose desire for partnership stems from a feeling that there is something important to be gained from a significant relationship. ... Couples today are looking for a commitment from each other, but a special kind of commitment -- one that contains a spiritual as well as a physical element [3] and emotional and psychological aspects as well as material ones.

[... discussion of modern era, marriage for love, criticism and characterization of the past for being alienated, sexually disordered, concept that we are in a New Age and have more knowledge but are less successful than previous generations in making relationships last ... discussion of the different intensities of love ...
 
  IF WE'RE SO SMART, HOW COME WE'RE NOT IN LOVE?  

There's love, and then there's Love. There's passionate love, and then there's love after passion or without passion. The latter has been known, in fact, to be quite cozy and satisfying in many ways; but love without passion may also deteriorate into as pale a version of the original as benign tolerance, and there is the risk that it may die completely or turn into resentment or disrespect, or worse.

It is not dispassionate love that we want to discuss. We want to focus on love that is full of passion and heat, love that makes your blood fairly pulse inside you; love that is all the nourishment you need. This is the love that overcomes all obstacles, dissolves time, obsesses you, possesses you, and radiates from you so that people comment on your "glow," and are drawn to you as if by a magnet. This is love that expresses itself sexually as a wonder, the best ever. It is so for both of you - you can't get enough of one another.

Love is not necessarily blind, as Shakespeare claimed, but it is surely an altered state. Physicians tell us that biochemically, love shares a lot of the same exhilarating effects that amphetamines produce. We know that the immune system can be strengthened by it; that white blood cells perform better; and that the production of endorphins increases. We feel terrific!

So what happens? What causes passion to close its doors after such a promising opening to such good reviews?

Part of the answer can be found if we consider passion as a kind of energy that depends on other energy for its survival. When we are in the early passionate stages of a relationship, we expend a lot of energy trying to win one another, enchant, impress, and attract one another. We mentioned that passionate love overcomes obstacles. It is the energy required in that overcoming that is most significant. For example, when men and women decide to live together, they eliminate one of the biggest obstacles of all - physical separation-but they don't realize that they are removing something that has contributed to their passion. They need to find a way to compensate for the energy-hole their relationship experiences when they no longer need to overcome the obstacle of living separately. They have created an energy void, and passion suffers for it. The diminution of energy diminishes passion.

In the early stages of a love affair, passionate energy seems self-generating. The newly attracted couple is in a nearly constant state of arousal. They're charged. They're superconductors. And then, usually, the lovemaking falls off - quantitatively, anyway. It's less urgent once you've come to trust your relationship, come to rely on your partner, gotten to be "familiars." We want to trust one another -- but why must we lose Love?

In fact, we don't have to lose anything. What usually happens is that the lessening of lovemaking means a lessening of energy in the relationship. When couples don't make that physical connection as often, the atmosphere changes. Love begins to stagnate and energy is directed elsewhere.

Men and women who are passionate about their work, or their art, or their politics are recognized for the energy they manufacture in order to pursue and maintain and advance the endeavor to which they are devoted. in the same way, men and women who are passionate about their relationship must be committed to manufacturing the energy needed to sustain it. This is especially true in an era that offers so many opportunities and so much personal freedom. Many of ushave several passions, and sometimes the amount of energy spent pursuing them exceeds the amount of energy they return. When this happens, we operate with a "passion deficit." We have to borrow energy from other sources to compensate. Ultimately, unless we rectify the deficit at its source, we will suffer serious losses. Too often one of these losses is passion. We meet many couples who are simply too busy or too tired to make love. Both work, they have children, they contribute time and energy to their community and to their church. They're concerned about selfimprovement, so they devote several hours a week to their health and physical fitness. Many have aging parents to look after. It is a fact that modern couples are on the go. They're exhausted by the end of the day, and sex is the last thing on their minds. The irony is that making love can provide both partners with more energy. The reality is that when a couple lessens their lovemaking they begin the not-so-slow process of starving their love. Love is nourished by the sexual energy a couple generates.

THE PASSIONATE PARTNERSHIP  

A passionate partnership not only needs the nourishment sexual energy provides, it also needs maintenance. Conscious maintenance. We believe that as much care, thoughtfulness, and attention should be paid to a relationship as to a career, a family, or a cause. Unfortunately, this is not a popular concept. More popular, but less realistic, is the theory that love, having visited itself upon us, is here to stay; that a relationship, once established, will operate on automatic, will be self-sustaining, and will not interfere with the partners getting on with their individual lives. Furthermore, couples expect their relationship to augment and complement them professionally, creatively, socially, and economically. That's a lot to ask of coupledom; but in fact a loving relationship can provide

in fact a loving relationship can provide nourishment in all areas of life. It can generate energy enough not only for itself but also for work, family, friends, hobbies. But that doesn't happen by magic. A relationship is like a garden. If it's not watered, weeded, pruned, fertilized -- cared for -- its yield suffers. If it's untended it goes to seed. One of the main reasons relationships deteriorate is that the partners neglect them.

Another reason is that partners don't communicate their needs to one another. Many people are too shy or too afraid to say what they need in order to feel loved, or whole, or just happy. Some people do it know the words, or they are afraid of having their needs rejected or of being thought less of for being needy, or they are ashamed of their needs. So they sometimes hold back what's in their hearts or on their minds, and when they finally do express themselves, having stewed too long in silence, the communication comes out a little too sharp, or too flat. We need to learn how to communicate with one another as lovers and as partners, and we need to find a different form of communication from the ones we use elsewhere in life. We'll discuss this subject more fully in Chapters Three and Four.

In addition to neglect and lack of communication, preconceptions about what the relationship should be can also cause problems. These preconceptions are often deep-rooted: they are based on what we observed of our parents' relationship while we were growing up; on how church, society, and the media promoted relationships then, and on what is acceptable now; and on our own experiences in relating to people-family, friends, lovers-and how these people have related to us. Our personal histories and past experiences are part of who we are, and so of course they have an influence on our partnerships. But when we become a couple our new relationship should have no history, only a present and a potential future. Part of what we do in living the relationship, in fact, is to create a history for it together.

Every couple is unfairly burdened by histories and experiences that

insinuate themselves into the present. She mustn't forget that "men are liars and cheats," for example. He'd better remember that "women can't be trusted," that "they are likely to reject a man sexually or abandon him entirely on a whim, any time."

And yet we are drawn to one another. Men and women have the undeniable urge to merge. Whether coupling is symbolic of attaining union on a higher level, or whether the urge is purely biological, the desire to become one with our beloved is undeniable. And in our fervor, it is possible to mistake oneness for sameness. In fact, we are not the same. In fact, it is the differences between a man and woman that can make their combination succeed.

We don't mean irreconcilable differences, of course. Nor do we mean that men and women are different in every way. We share a lot, and we are naturally drawn to someone who is like ourselves in certain ways - someone with a similar sense of humor, for instance, or a common background, or a shared sense of right and wrong, or similar goals and dreams. The differences we are talking about are those basic ones that actually distinguish male from female-the differences in sexual nature. Attempting to satisfy a passionate relationship while denying these differences is almost always impossible. But when one understands the nature of the differences between the sexes, one can learn to capitalize on them, making them work to the advantage of both partners and to the advantage of the relationship. Because in fact the differences are complementary - what a man lacks, a woman has to spare, and vice versa. Learning how to make your differences an asset to the relationship-learning how those differences can fulfill the relationship instead of eroding or depleting it-is what this book is all about.
 

  VIVE LA DIFFERENCE  

Men and women today look for similar things in a relationship and they desire them to similar degrees: We want psychological security from one another; we want to be able to trust one another; we want to support one another, emotionally as much as economically ... [discussion of wanting similar experience and partnering, but men and women are different ... men liking physical sexuality and women liking emotional closeness, etc. These differences can make our relationships click or they can lead us into sexual frustrations and emotional frustrations or deprivations ... sex and affection can become weapons and relations can enter into a self-destructive pattern ... they teach how to avoid this ..."The solution we teach in our seminars and workshops is based in part on the tantric "lifestyle" that was designed centuries ago specifically for householders -- that is, couples. The tantric texts are explicit on how the differences between the sexes can be used as a positive force in a partnership, how the proper combination of these differences can produce a near-alchemical reaction, an ether in which everything flourishes, in which the garden of your relationship burst with color and new life and growth, and you and your beloved thrive. ... end of Chapter 1]

Chapter 2. The Tantric Way.

[Describes tantra dating back five millennia ... books offer a complete way of living ... although it has gained a reputation as being the yoga of sex, the sexual element is only one part ...the goals are more exalted and broader in scope ... the ultimate goal is Unity... spiritual union or connection, to experience the individual self as part of the All ... "For Tantricas, the couple is the vehicle in which one crosses from reality to Reality." [17]] ....

"... It is traditional in many cultures, even western cultures, to practice celibacy in the pursuit of spiritual life.... But celibacy as a spiritual motivator pretty much limits the quest for a raised form of consciousness to a cloistered community; and of course, if everyone followed this path, the number of people making a spiritual journey would quickly diminish and disappear.

Today many of us common folk aspire to spiritual growth. But we also desire to grow with a partner. Tantric yoga was the path couples chose thousands of years ago to satisfy this dilemma ...."

[discussion of breathing, meditating, etc.]

Chapter 3. Tantric Harmony

[Creating Harmony -- discussion of the couple getting into harmony, breathing and holding and paying attention, communicating .. based on the tantric teachings of ending duality by recognizing differences and relating to another person ...]
 
  THE COUPLE AS A TEAM  

The tantric books look upon a couple as equal partners in a relationship, as teammates, which is quite astounding when we consider that tantric yoga has been around for thousands of years, while for us the idea of "equal partners" is a fairly new concept.

So we are teammates, sharing a life, which is our "playing field," in a relationship that is the "game." To continue the metaphor, it would seem obvious that the teammates in this game ought to be playing by the same rules, but many couples are not. Many operate under different assumptions, and many don't even know what the rules are. By "rules" we don't mean a stringent set of laws that dictate how things must be, or who must do what-we've just referred to a relationship as a game, after all, not a jail term. But even games are defined by parameters, and that's what each relationship needs to achieve-a mutual understanding of what the game is all about, of what the parameters are. Is it a summer romance, or are you building a future together? What do you want from your partner? What is your role? What is your partner's role? Who is the quarterback? Who is calling the plays? Is this the game you thought you signed up for? Do you enjoy it?

The general parameters you set may, of course, be changed as your relationship changes, but never unilaterally. You and your partner must redefine them together. And there is one Golden Rule that can never be changed. You and your partner must preserve harmony in your relationship by communicating and sharing on an intimate level. You can do this sexually, of course, but there are other ways, too. The nurturing meditation, for example, provides an invaluable sharing experience in which to exchange your most deeply generated energies. Some couples jog together, or bicycle together, or take long walks together as a demonstration of their shared investment in a healthy body and a healthy relationship.

Tantric couples share mentally, too. They meditate together, they share their thoughts, dreams, fears, hopes, and fantasies. And they work together. We are perhaps unusual in that we share a career, but our seminars are filled with couples who have learned to share other work - couples who do the dishes together, or garden together, or clean out the garage as a team. Many find that after practicing the art of conscious loving for a while, they are inspired to create new projects together. No matter what work you do as a couple, collaboration is the cornerstone of a good relationship because it endows the partnership with the unique productive quality that comes from working together. Working together on a project or at a job is symbolic of working on the relationship - paying attention to it, and in so doing, paying it homage. As you work together as a team, whether on a mundane chore or on an inspired creative endeavor, you are also working together toward the goal of harmony, that honeyed atmosphere in which love grows and passion is an eternal flame. Teammates help each other out for the sake of harmony. Where one is weak, the other provides strength. The couple cover for one another, support one another. They are teammates; they are pals. They build each other up, they never put each other down-they know that to hurt one's partner is to hurt oneself.

This is an important lesson to assimilate and put into practice. But it's not always easy, especially when your partner has done or said something you consider hurtful, and which seems to demonstrate a confused mind, or unconsciousness, or simple thoughtlessness. One of the tantric disciplines addresses just this sort of situation and suggests a method of speech, a way of talking to one another - even in adversity - without blame. We'll take a look at this technique in the next chapter.

Chapter 4. Tantric Communication.

"Conscious loving requires conscious communication. .....it does mean that you must be aware of what you are saying and that you must learn a ritual method of communication with your partner. When you are hurt, or angry, or insecure, you need to communciate your feelings to your partner (bad feelings that are not aired can become infectious in a relationship), but you need to watch your words in doing so. You need to avoid blaming your partner for your own feelings." ... [discussion of disharmony as inevitable and steps to regaining harmony ... the first one who can makes the effort to get the couple back in touch and then both work to reestablish harmony through various breathing, meditation, and communication rituals ...]

Chapter 5. Tantric Healing.

",,, we have found that extrapolation form Tantra's healing aspects can be useful as a therapy for what we might refer to a psychosexual wounds." [discussion of the various tantric arts, age of darkness, we are coming out of it, repression, fear, shame, guilt ... tantric practices can help modern people out of their own problems .. free their energies ... couples is the way of the tantric healing ...]
 

  LIGHT HEALING  

It is not easy to image a system of therapy-Freudian, Jungian, or gestalt, group or individual - that doesn't require, for openers, shining light on the problem. Lighting something is a very yang, or positive, gesture that immediately affects a negative situation. Tantra asserts that negative imprints from sexual preconceptions and past experiences make their home in the region of the second chakra, just as injuries sustained by ambition or fear rest in the third chakra, and heartbreaks in the fourth, and tantric healing requires that we address the afflicted chakra directly.

The first step toward healing our sexual scars is to shine light on the second chakra so we can "see" what is creating the short circuit, or the block, or fear, or coldness, or anger, or just plain craziness. We use tantric meditation techniques to make the lightto create an atmosphere we can see through, one that is radiant, that has the power to uplift us and move us through the darkness. In Chapter Two we discussed a number of techniques for focusing the mind; any of these techniques can be used to achieve a meditative state, which is the first source of light because it lifts us out of our lower selves and into a higher mindset. Once we have achieved that state, we focus on the second chakra. The yantra or design symbol of the second chakra is a cradle-crescent moon within a circle (see the chart on page 18). Imagine that design painted on a door and imagine that this door opens into a room filled with your personal sexual belongings. You must enter this room with a lantern held high against the darkness. You must walk through the room, past everything in it, in order to overcome your personal obstacles; each time you enter here with light, you will eradicate a little bit of darkness.

Western therapies require the individual to enter this room of preconceptions and past experiences alone. One can visualize a spirit guide, one may have the support of a therapist or counselor on the way, but the journey through the room must be made alone. Tantric yoga exhorts the couple to make the journey together. Their combined strength makes for an easier opening of those doors within themselves, and their opposite natures help them balance and heal each other.
 

  PARTNERS AS HEALERS  

When partners are healers to each other, when they create light inside each other as a kind of radiation therapy for pain or fear or distrust, they make a profound connection. This connection involves two forms of energy: the energy of intimacy and the energy of sexual passion. These are the two main ingredients in tantric loving.

Tantric texts identify the fourth or heart chakra, which is the seat of intimacy, as a center of distinctly retrograde energy for men and progressive energy for women. The man's fourth chakra may be pictured as a wheel spinning in a counterclockwise direction, while the womarfs is spinning clockwise. His is in a state of reversion, hers is capable of conversion. This is the nature of men and women, say the ancient writings. Because of this, for most men psychosexual difficulties and negative sexual imprints lodged in the second chakra find a compatible negative atmosphere in the fourth chakra, and often translate into difficulty in achieving and expressing intimacy

On the other hand the second chakra, home of sexual energy and motivation, is a center of retrograde energy for women, while for men it is a focal point for transmutable power. So negative sexual propaganda is drawn to a woman's negative second center and lodges there as difficulty in expressing herself sexually, and often as difficulty in achieving a satisfying sexuality at all.

So here we are, men and women, each proficient in an area of deficiency in the other. In combination, in balance, the couple can nullify deficiency by teaching one another the secrets of their separate strengths. They can use the art, science, and ritual of tantric lovemaking to achieve a powerful healing yoga, or union-to open doors to one another, for one another, and for the relationship itself. This yoga can replace dark memories with a bright present, create a new understanding of the meaning of sex and sexuality and partnership, and banish jealousy, possessiveness, and other ghosts of the past in the face of the absolute self-assurance the tantric couple gains in the practice of the art.

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