Tantra loses it’s refined power and beauty as a product

My main point is that "tantra", in my view, loses it’s refined power and beauty when pushed as a product, or connected with them, like that LuvSeat TM.  That was what got me.  Why represent or portray a uniquely non-fashion-industry set of practices and understandings, a sacred tradition, with furniture etc. that only the leisure-rich could afford or only the consumer-benumbed would buy, luring people with very un-erotic (and standard "pornographic") female figurines dressed in leather boots?  Babaji must be giggling forgivingly out there in the Himalayas.

No, it has nothing to do with strictures and prohibitions, not at all.  I know that like you do.  I’ve studied and practiced tantra earnestly for 15 years, spending 5 years in India, along with training in martial arts and other practices.  But you have to understand (or state, since obviously you already do know) what kind of freedom IS involved. 

I like erotic material as much as you, and of course I know the power of eros is the basis of tantra.  But as I’ve already noted it’s not about that dichotomy.  Still, parts of your site, like the one I was led into, have only the vaguest rumor of the spirit of the practices, and that being the purely technical-material.  Sure, at times these things can help, but my gut-and-mind impression was that you’ve misrepresented and commoditized a sacred reality.

I wasn’t seeking information, but am I at least clear in my critique?  My sense is you must understand the concern I have.

ANSWER

            There seems to be a widespread opinion and assumption that Tantra has nothing to do with sex, but to me this is the same repressive attitude expressed by so many religions that sex and spirit must be separated. Our Tantric experience is that body, mind, heart and soul are one in union. They are our natural freedoms to be embraced and experienced fully. That the lovers, masculine and feminine (archetypes), Yin/Yang are one in union, that the profane and sacred are one in union, that light and shadow are one in union.

            We are in a body and we must make our way in this material world. That includes making a living, paying the rent, chopping the wood. These things are not separate from our spiritual life, they are our spiritual life. Each act is done with conscious awareness of what we are doing, with our attention fully in the present moment, as an offering to God, not as a search to find Him. We do not separate what we do in the more ordinary parts of our lives from the parts one might think of as spiritual practice. Our lives are our spiritual practice. Our web site is our spiritual practice. Chopping wood is my spiritual practice. Selling love-seats is our spiritual practice. Making love is our spiritual practice. Wild fucking is our spiritual practice, and we invite God into bed with us in celebration of having these beautiful bodies, gifts from the Creator.

            Many people come to our web site looking for information on sex, sexual products, even pornography. Yes we even have links to pornography. Who is to judge what any man or woman needs or what is right and wrong? We do not assume that role. Better that we pay attention to our own inner work. Our web site is a collection of information about sex and sexuality (a sex-information web site) without the moral censoring so common with approaches to living that are closer to a religious orientation and farther from a spiritual one. 

Al Link and Pala Copeland

4 Freedoms Relationship Tantra

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