Orgasm IV

You’ll find the previous three posts in this series Here, Here, and Here.

Jack and I began a study of Tantra together obviously and to me it shed light into my world.. I realize now that it wasn’t a spiritual path for him, it was simply how he preferred at the time to express his sexuality because it caused intensity between himself and his partner. He liked intensity then. All kinds. For me, it was a course into the holy and into an awareness of life and it was my course toward self mastery. It was not just play for me. It never has been and never will be.

If you’ve read here awhile, you’ll know that as time passed, Jack became less and less interested in intensity. Life happened. Intensity came to live with us in fully living color in the form of his two children…He grew as a person and didn’t want that intensity any more. He was experiencing a level of intensity in life already that was more than he could take. He stopped practicing Tantra with me.

And I grew lonely. I didn’t understand why Tantra didn’t bring him peace…why he didn’t find it comforting and uplifting as I did. For him it wasn’t relaxing. To him it was something that left him vulnerable and open to the abusive energy of his children and he didn’t want to be vulnerable in his life any more at all anyway. In some ways, my husband devolved as a result of the intensity of trying to help his children. It brings me much sadness to see it and admit that.

I expressed my need for the spiritual practice…and when he saw my unhappiness and loneliness finally, he suggested I find another partner. Neither of us realized that doing so meant that I’d end up making someone else my primary emotional partner…nor did we really recognize that there would be an added stress to our marriage as a result.

This right here is the reason that I feel so concerned about how the practice of Tantra will find a place in my life in future. To me, it is a part of my spirituality. I can’t just cast it aside any more than I can cast aside my pipe for someone I love. It feeds me and helps me grow. Tantra is something I need. But if it is something I need and my partner does not wish to give this to me…what then? This is the crux of my inquiry really…

So far, I have been unable to find the same joy in it, nor have I been able to reach the same bliss that I can achieve with the combined practice with a partner. Instead solitary practice takes me into the loneliness of hiding my orgasms from my partner…perhaps because I have felt so rejected by my Tantric partners…and yes there has been more than one Tantric partner in my life, in case you are new reading here. There have been three actual partners, including my husband, and two failed attempts with two other men to create a practice together. All of them moved on instead of creating depth with me with this practice.

And there is a great depth to experience in it. I wish for a partner, because I am trying to understand Union from all its aspects. I am trying to understand what happens after that is achieved on all levels of being. I am trying to understand the self mastery that can happen through the study of my own orgasm through Tantra. I know that I need to disconnect my emotional security from orgasm. I know that I need to master my libido more fully. I understand that there’s an emotional need for love that is satisfied in just such a way through Tantra that I can’t seem to experience in any other way and I’m keeping my eyes open for opportunities…the only thing that comes close happens in pipe ceremonies.

I know that the practice of Tantra is a part of spiritual development for many Buddhists and that eventually, they are able to release themselves from the clutches of the libido, choosing it or not as a celebration of loving.

And all along, Tantra has been a part of how I experience bdsm. I find myself terrified each time I have tried to share bdsm with a partner who doesn’t get spiritual with me. Its a physical, primitive brain response. I am sure that I could over come that…but frankly, since mixing spirituality and sex is something I feel nourished by, I haven’t felt any compelling reason to push myself through the process of desensitizing myself to aggressive sex absent of some kind of spiritual experience. I can share some lighter forms of bdsm with a partner without it being spiritual in nature, but I can’t trust him with submission fully without it. I have tried that and it quite simply creates panic.

Tantra has given me many gifts that are subtle and important…Its given me a very unique way to be intimate with my own soul and I’ve discovered new aspects of it in Kundalini experiences. I have learned that I can shine spiritually in front of others; that my soul is very powerful and safe. It has brought me a spiritual awakening that is hard to put into words. I have and am experiencing something Buddhists call Realization. Its nothing to feel superior about at all…but its a very important developmental experience to me. I am now more than I was because of Tantra. Tantra taught me to trust…as has bdsm. Tantra most of all though, because when you view things through the soul, you can see both how transient the whole ‘thing’ (read issue/concern/problem/challenge/limitation) is and how powerful and resilient you really are. You can see how you can expand way beyond the wounds to encompass so much more than the wounds; so the wounds no longer hold the consuming place with time practicing Tantra….cause it can seem that wounds are all there is to life when they ache and bleed constantly. Tantra healed me and so not only did I not ache and bleed emotionally all the time, but I also could see that I was far more than my wounds. Tantra taught me how to love unconditionally. How to accept people just as they are with out any need to change them at all…and most important, it taught me to trust my own heart and intuition.

There was a time last year when Jack tried again to share Tantra with me. Over time we found that two things were true; he didn’t really want it any more and I couldn’t trust him to share it any more either. A sad signpost of the end of our marriage. *sighs…*

I have stopped talking about Tantra in the last year. I grew sad about having a solitary practice. The sadness hasn’t passed either. In fact, I’ve had to turn to my pipe ceremonies to deal with that pain of loneliness for a partner. I stopped talking about it too because I had given up the whole idea of having a Tantric partner. I didn’t want to leave my husband you see. I wanted to live out my life with him. I wanted to hold on to my hero, my father figure, my Beloved.

It wasn’t meant to be as you know if you read here regularly…but that too isn’t really relevant to this inquiry into Orgasm and Tantra for me. As you remember, I’m trying to understand what’s next…What place does Tantra have in my life? How will I deal with these emotional dilemmas if my future partner doesn’t want Tantra or finds it an on again off again practice? Can I find other ways to create intimacy…the kind of intense intimacy that I know with Tantra…in another manner? I don’t know you see. I don’t know and so that makes me focus on the place Tantra has in my life.

I am realizing something just now…that Tantra and submission feel inextricably intertwined for me. Every Tantric partner but one has been dominant to me. Every dominant in my life but one was a Tantric partner to me.

Also every Tantric partner has related to me in some way as a father figure. It did not define those relationships, but it was a huge part of what was shared through Tantra…because Tantra takes me into my Child’s Heart…that liminal, wise heart that’s innocent and joyful at being alive. The Child’s Heart is the part of me who relates to the world with irrepressible optimism and through the filter of Realization and Truth…and though I can see terrible things very clearly…I still see also the wonder and beauty in everything…even the terrible things because I can see the big picture. Just as I can see the big picture of how sexual trauma has taken my life toward holiness.

So I started this inquiry into Orgasm because I needed to celebrate my journey with it…And I continued the inquiry because I thought, why do you feel such a compulsion to share all this about your own orgasm? That led to the questions I shared in the last post about my future and Tantra’s place in it.

Understanding these last facts about Tantra, submission and my Child’s Heart makes me want to cling to it all the harder.

That’s not necessarily what’s right for me though. Perhaps the reason I don’t have partners is because I need to focus my life/spiritual journey in other ways? Perhaps I haven’t met the right life partner/dominant and so Tantra just can’t form the basis of my experience with my spirituality until I find him? Perhaps, this is a time for some self understanding, a time between partners? I just don’t know…I really don’t know.

What I know for sure about me is that if my primary partner doesn’t want Tantra, then I will not have Tantra in my life…because Tantra makes my Tantric partner my primary emotional partner. It is simply the nature of its impact on my heart. It is the most intensely intimate form of intimacy that I know of. There is no way to practice it and not find that my partner becomes my primary emotional relationship…

I have tried to have a marriage and a lover who is my Tantric partner. It leaves me incredibly vulnerable to emotional hurt and insecurity. I haven’t the emotional resilience nor the health to tolerate the stress of such a dynamic in my life. I have learned that the hard way…so I must then feel that I’ve no choice but to view this as a very real question in my life: If my future partner doesn’t want Tantra, can I live with that given how important it has been to me and still feels to me?

I know that I had always wanted a partner who would practice with me traditionally, meaning daily and to take yoga classes with me…to really study it with me with the same dedication as I’ve had inside me…I have wanted to understand what it brings to my life if I do it in the traditional ways…Because I really don’t know. I think there’s a mystery in there that might hold something intensely valuable for me…that it might hold healing for me that I’ve not been able to find in other ways. And when I last had an abortive attempt to have a steady real time Tantric partner, I thought I might learn to master my libido more and that this would also inform the rest of my life by creating a greater capacity for self discipline in all facets of my life…something I really struggle with.

There’s another understanding that I have in all this…I felt abandoned when I outgrew a certain developmental stage with my husband. He seemed only able to be comfortable with me when I was totally dependent on him for my healing and spirituality. As soon as I didn’t have to lean on him for progress, he didn’t know what his purpose was and he stopped trying to engage me…instead of growing with me.

I think I have alot of fear of that happening again in my submission. It was a very painful experience…

I miss the combination of feeling the energy of Tantric practice charging through my body in this blissful amazing manner and then being rolled into his lap for a spanking? Or being tied up and filled with his energy through the practice and through is desire for me that Tantra makes so intense and focused and brought to orgasm after orgasm…Yeah…I miss that so much that it hurts me physically and so I don’t speak of it…and I can’t really find words for it anyways. If you’ve not experienced Tantric practice, you won’t really get it when I talk about this. Not really. You’ll understand how important I think it is, but you won’t really understand what I lost each time my partner walked away from me and you won’t understand what I could be giving up if I dont’ end up with a life partner who wants this with me.

I just can’t find any words about it.

And beyond letting a potential partner know that its important to me, I guess I’ve had too many disappointments about this practice to want to even ask for it again…because I have learned that if a person isn’t avid for it all on his own, the practice will only be abandoned and so will I, regarding this thing that’s so important to me. There is no point in asking for something this intense from a man who doesn’t really want it. Tantra changes consciousness and people just can’t do that to please others. It has to be important all for its own sake or it will be for naught. Its like asking a drunk to quit drinking for you or a smoker to quite smoking. Its just not going to happen.

Something else that I’ve noticed about things…I got well because of my Tantric practice and it was keeping me well. I got sick again for awhile during a time when Jack wasn’t practicing with me but I got well again when I was able to spend some time with M, who was my Tantric partner at the time. I got well until we split up and then lost control of my health again. I had another partner for awhile until last fall and again was getting well until B and I stopped practicing. I’m holding my own and slowly recovering again despite not having Tantra in my life, but its still slow and precarious. I’m still extremely vulnerable to stress. My entire being becomes strong and sharp and really resilient because of Tantric practice because it makes the kundalini very active in my body. It doesn’t become that active with solitary practice. There is just not enough energy generated to stir it and keep it stirred and there’s likely the block of feeling sad and lonely factoring in there too. I only know that it keeps me vibrantly healthy…

So…some thoughts… I’m not sure what this really offers the body of posts on the topic of Tantra beyond understanding that Tantra really is a milieu for self understanding and that it can be a tool in so many ways for achieving personal maturity and healing. I think it also illustrates just how important an impact Tantric partnership can have in your life.

This brings me to the promised four posts that I planned for. I suspect that this will not be the last time I speak of this topic. I actually wrote more posts specifically celebrating my orgasm…I actually published them on a private blog on alt dot com once and hid the posts as I decided that I didn’t want to have that much information about how orgasm works for me in such a forum. I am still undecided if the other two posts about how orgasm works for me, have a purpose at all. I had thought they might be of interest to others in that you could see how orgasm can evolve with Tantra, that it actually alters how your nervous system functions. Now I ask myself why that’s important really…but perhaps it is to you. If so, let me know and I’ll do something with those posts. Until then, they will sit tight in the drafts box as they do celebrate something beautiful for me, so I’m loath to just delete them right now.

I’d like some reflection on these posts if you have any…If not, I’ll just keep mulling things over on my own.

Image by Andrew Gonzales here.

For more posts on the topic of Tantra see this static page.