A tantric approach to spirituality is where you make use of any kind of situation and experience to invite in, clarify and live from the awakening.
I rarely use that term since it seems obvious. If we are serious about this exploration and use the right approaches for this type of exploration, why not make use of any kind of experience?
I intentionally say “kind of situation and experience” since we may not make use of every single situation and experience, but we can make use of every kind of situation and experience.
What’s the alternative?
I guess it would be an approach where we only make use of what’s happening while we engage in meditation or another practice, and live our life without paying much attention to what we are or how we relate to what’s happening.
How do we take a tantric approach?
Mainly, through our orientation and the type of approaches and practices we use.
We intend to make use of any kind of situation and experience, and we find approaches that allows us to do so.
Most of the approaches I mention in these articles are tantric in nature since anything can fodder for them, and the orientation is to make use of anything.
We can take any situation or experience to inquiry, whether it’s The Work, Living Inquiries, the Big Mind process, or something similar.
We can find ourselves as capacity for our experience and the world as it appears to us, in any situation, especially as we get familiar with noticing through Headless experiments or the Big Mind process.
Similarly, we can notice the true nature of whatever we experience – for instance emotions, thoughts, and physical discomfort. We can notice that their true nature is the same as our own. (And has to be since, to us, it’s all happening within and as what we are.)
We can use any situation to see how it is to live from noticing what we are, especially as we get used to noticing this.
We can bring any prayer with us through the day. Prayers tend to become automatic over time and run in the background even if we are focused on daily life activities. They live their own life after a while. The Jesus or Heart prayer is an example, as is ho’oponopono and metta. The words may come and go, but the orientation and energy – for lack of a better word – continues.
We can use any situation to pay attention to what’s triggered in us – of hangups, beliefs, emotional issues, and trauma – and invite in healing for these, in whatever way works for us. For instance, dialog with subpersonalitites, inquiry, energy healing, or something else.
In these ways and many more, we can make use of any kind of situation and experience to support awakening, healing, and living from noticing what we are. Most of the articles here are about this, even if I don’t use the tantric label.