~Tantra,Karezza Sacred Sexuality~

Transcendence, the other key aspect of spiritual experience, means going beyond perceived limits. Transcendence carries us beyond conditioned,learned behavior as well as beyond personality and narrow definitions of self. It even takes us outside space and time and beyond cause and effect.On a personal level, we transcend when we act in spite of our fears,see something with new eyes, or open up to intense possibility. In practice,this translates into experiencing a different view of the self. We understand that we are much more than we thought. We can move beyond perceived physical limitations, for instance, being able to make love for hours and emerge nourished and strengthened, not drained and exhausted.

During Tantric sacred loving, timelessness becomes common—five hours fly by in what seems a minute, and a minute is eternal. Sensory capacities are heightened. Sight, sound, taste, touch, and smell are sharper, more pronounced. Extrasensory perceptions such as telepathy reveal themselves. Your awareness can be somewhere other than where your body is.Transcendence can also elicit intense emotions and feelings. Even completely ordinary things can appear extraordinarily beautiful. Hearts crack open—love comes and goes, receiving and giving in an easy, spontaneous way. There is a sense of having returned home to a state where nothing is lacking. There is no longer any need for faith, because there is a certainty, a deep inner knowing that everything is perfect the way it is. Everything is as it should be.

On the level of relationships, transcendence occurs when we move beyond our perceived boundaries between each other. This can occur as a mystical ecstatic experience during sacred sex. For example, we experience each other during those times of deep spiritual connection as god and goddess—Pala becomes very young, a timeless beauty, and Al metamorphoses into all sorts of fantastic creatures—some human,others animal.Transcendence can also occur on what we might consider a more mundane level, when we challenge our assumptions about ourselves and our relationship. We can be absolutely positive that this is the “way I am,” the “way you are,” the “way men and women are.” Then we break through those barriers to create something new. We let down our walls of emotion, ideas, and learned behaviors. In letting those walls down, it can seem as if we are going contrary to what we really are and that we will be unhappy or even diminished if we let go. When we transcend our self-imposed limits, however, we become greater than we could ever have imagined.For instance, you might think you are not someone who is particularly sexual. You might see enjoying sex as bad or even sinful.

You may fully believe there is no way you could act lustily, as in initiating sex with your lover by walking up to him in the middle of the day, unzipping his pants, and performing fellatio. Alternatively, you may feel like you are too tired to have sex or to be excited by your partner. You have reached your physical limits and you cannot go beyond them. However, if a dear friend you had not seen in 15 years suddenly appeared at your door,that tiredness would likely disappear. You would be lively, perky, and interested. You can make the same shift with your partner. That shift,the transcendence, is primarily an internal decision.When you transcend, you choose to behave in a certain way to create what you want in your life. This requires you to change, to go beyond your limits.



You do that thing you believed was bad (like mid-afternoon fellatio) or impossible (like changing sleepiness into wide-awake enthusiasm). You have an inner guide to help you differentiate conditioned feelings,which keep you stuck in old behaviors, from intuitive feelings that are based on growing forward. These intuitive actions will be seen to be right in practice, even though they might feel wrong when you first consider them. We are not suggesting that you throw out your sense of morality or ethics, but that you expand your moral framework beyond cultural conditioning to one based on trust in your higher self and your connection with The Creators.

Seek moral guidance from your inner guide instead of the conditioned ego. It becomes easier to listen to your higher self as you grow into your Tantric practice.In Tantric practice, you learn the power of visualization, which you can use to help you focus on your relationship. Formulate an image of your relationship as a separate entity created by the two of you but possessing its own integrity and independence. You are both responsible for it, and you are both responsible to it. There are many images to choose from as metaphor for your relationship: a beautiful child, a thriving corporation, a flourishing garden, a wise spiritual guide.We see our relationship as a garden.

If you plant seeds in a garden,in a clear, sunny spot of tilled, rich earth, soon they will sprout in a beautiful flurry of color. You may be delighted and proud. If you simply leave it on its own, weeds will quickly grow and over run your lovely plants. Your garden will go to ruin. Relationships are very similar to this,and just as a garden requires continual attention to reward us with its great bounty of foods for our bodies and flowers for our pleasure, so does the relationship. If you want love, ecstasy, joy, and harmony, you must cultivate them.Many relationships start off like our garden: clean and fresh and bursting with life. When you and your mate establish an intimate connection,there is excitement, newness, passion, and great sex.

Each of you is showing the other your best, and it is effortless. It feels marvelous, but soon enough you start to see each other’s warts. You become aware of things in each other you do not like. Ironically, many of the things you found intriguing and attractive at the outset can soon be annoying or downright exasperating. Spontaneous becomes irresponsible. Self-confidence turns into bragging. Attention to details shifts to nit-picking. There may not be any actual difference in the way your lover is behaving, but you might see another side to the behavior or a different interpretation that did not occur to you before.At the same time, the world begins to intrude with demands that cannot be ignored. You cannot continue to focus only on each other because,for example, you have been offered a job in another city, your paycheck runs out before the end of the month, you still do not get along with your mother, the kids are driving you crazy, you get the flu, someone crashed into your car in the parking lot, and his or her ex-spouse is calling again.In other words, the weeds spring up. This is a critical point in the relationship.Now it has to graduate to another level. You must give it the attention it needs.

You have to start weeding the garden and planting more seeds, or the relationship will be lost in a tangled mess.Paying attention is ongoing. Weeds never stop sprouting. Seeds always need replanting. There never comes a time when you can sit back and expect nothing but fruits and flowers. In addition, you constantly have to invent new ways to fight the weeds, because the old ways get stale and stop working. What was effective yesterday in keeping the world at bay will not be effective tomorrow. It can be especially dangerous when something that formerly worked stops working. It takes effort to find new solutions, but everyone wants it to be easy. You remember that your relationship was easy in the beginning and you still crave that easiness. The terrible temptation is to go out and find it with someone else, either in an affair or by ending the current relationship and beginning a new one.Sometimes the urge to run away from the effort of tending your relationship garden is overwhelming. Where do you find the motivation to persevere in making your relationship thrive in the face of obstacles and problems? An effective strategy is to begin to view your relationship as a spiritual practice.What Is Spiritual Practice?“Through Tantra, one’s sins are burned.”—Mahasiddha Tilopa Spiritual practice always includes a search for the deepest meaning in life. It can be a search for personal salvation or for a direct experience with the Divine.

Those who have the faith would make any sacrifice to come face to face with The Creator. When you see your relationship in this spiritual context, there is an extraordinary motivation to do whatever is needed to make it work. Our relationship is our spiritual practice and the primary form that practice takes is Tantric sacred sex. We consciously use our personal interaction to help us bring out the best in ourselves and in each other, to continually learn and grow, and to connect with The Creator.Something spiritual has two main characteristics: union and transcendence.Tantric sacred loving enables us to regularly experience both of these amazing states of consciousness. The exercises and activities presented in the following texts will make it possible for you to know them as well. Union To unify means to bring separate parts together. It can happen on a number of different levels.

Union of the Person“As a man in sexual union with his beloved is unaware of anything outside or inside,so a man in union with Self knows nothing,wants nothing,has found his heart’s fulfillment and is free of sorrow.”—Brihadaranyaka Upanishads, IV.3.12-22 On a personal level, all the parts of yourself that may have been in conflict or even unknown are united, so that you become whole. Acknowledging all aspects of oneself puts into practice an essential tenet of Tantra: weaving together states of consciousness and being that seem to be contradictory or perhaps mutually exclusive. In bringing them together,you do not choose one or the other, and you do not really compromise.Rather, you find a new way, a way of integrating them into a larger, inclusive whole. In Pala’s words, “We create new ways from two ways.” In order to do this, you allow yourself to be guided by the wisdom of your heart.