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Tingling up the Central Channel Viijnana Bhairava Tantra 44th Sutra In some moment when The senses rest from flowing outward, Notice the current of sensing As it starts flowing upward. Be alert to sensations, Tinier than that of an ant walking on the skin, Subtly tickling, as the undulating energy leisurely Tingles up the central […]

In the last couple of months, through closely observing myself, I have come to see how much of my life – reflecting human life – is controlled by unacknowledged fear. I have come to believe that a very large percentage of our actions are motivated by this fear. The occasion that initiated this insight for me was one that most people would regard as unmistakably fear-inducing. I had received news that cancer had increased in my bones and I had been sent to get a CT scan to check whether the cancer had spread to my organs. In the few days before I got the CT scan results, my inner life became dominated with intense survival fear: What if the scans showed that my body was riddled with cancer? Have I come to the end of my life?

In popular media, mermaids are depicted as Barbie-like Disney characters that evoke in us a whimsical imagination of a certain quality of the feminine. I want to tell you today about the Mermaids of Africa – and invite your imagination to go to entirely new places.

Mermaids are well known in African culture – more than known, they are revered, and feared. In Southern Africa, they are called the Mondao. The Mondao is a water spirit in the shape of a snake that lives in water bodies. This shake has tremendous power, and she is said to be in charge of money and abundance. Years ago, I visited rural Zimbabwe where the villagers would not dare take any water from the local river before praying to the water spirit. In the tradition of African Shamanism, the Mondao is one of the non-familiar ancestral spirits that Sangomas (African shamans) may need to learn to work with. I was in a room once with a woman who had the calling to work with the Mondao but hadn’t been initiated into it. When the Mondao came and possessed her, her body was being flung around with a force so intense that it took four of us to hold her down.

On Sunday night, I found myself lying naked under a blanket on the earth, tears rolling down my face, red embers burning in the fire pit and a sky covered in stars shining shyly next to the brilliance of the almost-full moon above me. It was an icy mid-winter’s night but a warmth was washing through me because I was being so intimately present with my tender self, and with this magnificent moment on planet earth.

Tantra is a collective term for spiritual traditions that focus on practices which integrate transcendent awakening and embodied realization of the Self. The premise of Tantra is that we are not in a body only to realize our true nature beyond form, but also to bring that realization back into form and into our everyday living. Can we realize our divine nature and then let that realization shape and direct every choice we make on the earth plane? That is what Tantra invites us to.

We have been trained to be productivity machines, which devoids our lives of true meaning and sensual pleasure. It is time to return the rhythm of our days to devotion of Eros. In early Greek mythology, Eros was a primordial God involved with the coming into being of the world. Later, he became depicted as the mischievous son of Aphrodite whose arrow would ignite passion between lovers. The word Eros means Love or Desire. It refers to the original impulse of life, bursting forth from the seed, and growing endlessly – for no reason other than as an expression of Love and Life’s Desire itself.